SoA and the future: Can the Thief job be saved?

[Nebo]

Is it possible to save the THF job? I have serious doubts. But we haven't had one of these kinds of threads in a while so instead of necro bumping one of the old ones, I decided to start a new one.

I've been thinking about some of these ideas for a while, and though I will be quitting soon, I wanted to post them here first and try to spark some more THF discussion.

The idea's I'm proposing here mainly focus on adjusting basic Job functions to be tied to the THF realizing its damage potential, and in certain cases increasing THFs damage potential by adjusting the positional abilities and timer bottlenecks imposed upon THF DD.

In this manner, it is not my intention to request that THF be the top DD. But I desire a Vana'diel where the BEST Thieves that spend time and gear and passion on this job would be the best at core job functions like raising treasure hunter effectiveness level and enmity management.

That said, here are my most recent thoughts:

Sneak Attack, Trick Attack, Bully

The fundamental design of these abilities is one of the largest setbacks to playing THF in 2013. They come with difficult (or at times impossible) to fulfill positional requirements and recast timers that are much too long. This may have made sense when FFXI was released but the pace of battle in 2013 is far too fast for any kind of respectable Weaponskill to be tied to a 60 second timer.

Especially when all the forms of haste and auto-attack delay reduction are considered, the recast times for Sneak Attack and Trick Attack are far too long.

With this increase in the pace of battles, and power of all DDs, also comes frequent fluctuations in enmity. This means monsters are changing directions constantly, making it very difficult to fulfill these positional requirements effectively in many types of content.

With that in mind, I suggest the following changes to Sneak Attack, Trick Attack and Bully:

Sneak Attack, Trick Attack and Bully are no longer job Abilities. Instead, they are job traits that activate for all dagger Weaponskills when certain positional and enmity based requirements are fulfilled.

When these requirements are fulfilled, the bonuses I propose are as follows:

Sneak Attack:
Dagger Weaponskills performed when the THF is not the main enmity target are forced critical, deal extra damage based on DEX, and generate a FIXED amount of enmity.

Functions similarly to SAWS now, but with fixed enmity associated with the WS damage

• The job trait: Ambush will also reflect sneak attack’s new “Not the current enmity target” requirement.

Trick Attack:
Dagger Weaponskills performed behind an alliance Member will force critical, deal increased damage based on AGI and transfer enmity to the target party member with an enmity multiplier based on WS DMG.

Functions similar to a TAWS now, but with slightly more enmity transferred based on WS damage

• Trick Attack (or some other job trait) grants an increased chance to “Evade” highly damaging special attacks when standing behind an alliance member.

Dagger Weaponskills in general will be attributed with Sneak Attack and Trick Attacks’ current increased chance to raise Treasure Hunter Effectiveness level. This increased chance will vary based on Weaponskill damage dealt, NOT current treasure Hunter level versus monster treasure hunter level.

• The chat log will be updated with the ability to reflect Treasure Hunter Effectiveness increases during Weaponskills.

Bully:
Grants a critical hit rate bonus to Weaponskills performed when the THF is the main enmity target.

• Allows non-critical WS a chance to critical.

-Sneak Attack Merits changed from Reduces Sneak Attack recast to increased DEX potency

-Trick Attack Merits changed from Reduces Trick Attack recast to increased AGI potency.


Enmity:

If THF is going to be worth an alliance slot for enmity control utility, the effects of these abilities must be enhanced and made to be usable alliance wide...for several reasons.

In the current endgame situation, a THF is not invited often. This is because:

• Treasure Hunter is not overly relevant for acquiring the new delve equipment when all of the high level content can be repeated and equipment purchased by farming plasm in alliances.
  
• Thief is a weak damage dealer, with relatively low damage potential (considering Haste, BRD and COR buffs, etc) compared to other DDS. THF also has that low potential further restricted by positional conditions and long recast timers that make life very difficult when trying to DD on THF.
• Thief enmity abilities are very weak, have recast timers that are not only shared, but much too long to be effective, are party-only (do not work on alliance members), and have a very short range.

As a result, there is not really a reason to bring a THF to an event. If a THF is invited to an event, he most certainly will not be in the DD party (DD DD DD WHM COR BRD), he will be placed in the tank party (PLD WHM GEO SCH SCH THF) where he will receive no offensive songs or rolls, and would only be there if the alliance leader wanted treasure hunter for some reason. which doesn't happen often.

With that in mind, I think that Thief could offer some utility to justify a slot in the DD Party, if Thief had a way to constantly mange that party's enmity in addition to the DD changes I proposed to Sneak Attack, Trick Attack and Bully above.

I would change Accomplice and Collaborator to something like this:

Collaborator (AOE)
Steals 15% enmity from all party members and redirects to the alliance member of your choosing. 30 Second recast. - Constant enmity maintenance

Accomplice (AOE): Steals 95% Enmity from all party members and redirects it to the alliance member of your choosing. 10 minute recast. – Strategically significant enmity dump.

In this manner, THF can be in the DD party constantly lessening their enmity, but able to dump enmity onto the PLD in the tank party.

Collaborator and Accomplice Recast timers are not shared.

The increased Trick Attack WS frequency will allow for constant hate staples on the tank as well as actual real-time enmity management for the DD party. And since the THF would have to be in the DD party for him to be effective in this role, he will also be getting BRD & COR songs/rolls, allowing him to perform more (and stronger) Trick Attacked Weaponskills onto the PLD.

Collaborator/Accomplice can also be used to make use of THF evasion to tank in low man situations, delve runs, use perfect dodge, etc. This could give THF a situational utility to allow DDs to open up more.

Steal, Despoil, Aurasteal, Mug

These abilities (aside from Aurasteal) really have no use, stealing insignificant items and amounts of gil. The developers fear RMT abuse and so they should. Therefore, I suggest to make all Steal type abilities completely battle related.

Steal: Steals Temporary Items from an enemy (Berserker’s tonic, Braver’s Tonic, etc)

• Effect Duration: instant
• Recast: 1 Minute

Despoil: Steals an enemy’s Evasion and grants it to the THF (or just one, specific, useful stat).

• Effect Duration: 3 Minutes
• Recast: 5 Minutes

THF already has some momentum in this area to increase party member’s accuracy with feint and conspirator. Despoil, stealing evasion from the mob and giving it to THF could make sense in a party utility kind of way.

Aurasteal: Dispels and occasionally steals beneficial Status effects.

• Effect Duration: instant
• Recast: 30 seconds

Mug: inflicts damage + stun (dagger weapon required)

• Duration: Instant
• Recast: 1 Minute

[Babekeke]

New SP abil: Since no NMs in SoA use 2 hours, there had better be something special about our new SP to make us welcomed in delve... Like being able to steal Auras, or something.

[Karah]

Awesome post, you got my like, none of this will ever be implemented, kudos for posting it though.

[Nebo]

Like being able to steal Auras, or something.

I see what you did there.

[Karbuncle]

I'm definitely behind this. There's a lot of ways that THF could be improved, of course none of them are ever going to happen cause they're perfectly content on having 4-5 "popular" jobs and 1617 Obscure useless and utterly worthless jobs that aren't really good for anything so we try to imagine situations where they're useful and that makes everything okay.

[Babekeke]

I see what you did there.

It's a subtle hint... do you think SE will get it?

[Mohr]

You got my like, I can definitely agree to these statements above. I miss being in control of the hate in the party.

[OmnysValefor]

Instead, Accomplice and Collaborator should apply to the next person Trick Attacked.

Your overall idea would make thf an enmity-less DD, which is .... synonymous with a rogue class, so great idea^^. No offense to the thf tanks (I've done it myself), but thf should be the last person to take hate, unless they literally, take hate.

I'd bump up collaborator bonus to 25% and pretty much leave bully intact so that when a thief wants to tank, they need only collaborator the group, and voke if they're /war and then Bully for the intimidation and the bonus to the Sneak Attack trait. So if a thf can get off 4 weaponskills in the time bully in on the target, more power to them.

I'd also modify Conspirator so that it reduces the enmity generation of those affected for the duration.

If SE could balance damage taken again (so that tanks were necessary), I could see this version of thief if it could do competitive damage regularly desirable for a place or two in the alliance. Wouldn't that be a nice change.

Can we talk for a moment about the impact this would have on THF sub? It's quite possible, if enmity were made workable again, that the ability->trait conversion would be enough to make it a competitve sub. I'm not saying we need to go back to SATA lines at all, just talking about the merits of a viable thf sub.

That, and make Triple Attack 1 45 and not 55.