THF and DNC

[Byrth]

I personally think Thief has three main problems:

1) SE dramatically overestimates the frequency with which you can land SA and TA in an 80% Haste environment with even only 3 DDs, and they also dramatically overestimate the benefit of landing SA and TA. When I look at the WSs and gear they give Thief, I become more and more sure that they're assuming almost every WS THF does is stacked with SA or TA. Realistically, Thief seems to use these JAs about half as often as they theoretically could because situations that encourage one tend to discourage the other. Also, THF with Haste gear and magic Haste TPs dramatically faster than SA and TA timers can support, even assuming capped merits and no positioning problems.

TAing in Dynamis, easy! Plenty of people hitting the monster so one is bound to stay in front of you.
SAing in Dynamis, hard. The monster is spinning.

TAing when lowmanning with a second DD, easy! Just run behind him and WS!
SAing when lowmanning with a second DD, hard! It's a minute into the fight,t so you both capped Enmity already and the monster is just spinning.

Look at Torcleaver (4.5 fTP, 60% VIT) and Tachi: Fudo (3.65 fTP, 60% STR) and compare them to Rudra's (3.25 fTP, 60% DEX). Those are non-crit Empyrean WSs for 2H weapons with more than twice the base damage of Twashtar. Torcleaver's mod is a laugh, but its fTP and base damage wreck us. If Dagger got a comparable non-crit WS, it would not be a shade under 6 fTP to compensate for the base damage. The problem, of course, is that Thieves (and Dancers) can already get lucky and pull off 5-6k Rudra's when our Crit-forcing JAs work. If they essentially doubled the fTP to make it useful when it's not stacked, we'd be doing 10-12k Rudra's when we get lucky using our crit-forcing JAs.

Now compare it to Blade: Hi (4 fTP, 60% AGI, crits). This is what makes me think they're assuming THF holds TP for SA or TA to be up. In order for Rudra's to be better than a 0-crit Hi, it has to be stacked or nearing 200 TP. Then again, they could just not be thinking at all. I mean, look at Camlann's Torment. Still much better damage than unstacked Rudra's, but it would make me pity Dragoon if they didn't have access to Drakesbane.

2) The enmity system is actually a big part of Thief's DD problem, because I feel SE wants to avoid giving them the ability to instantly cap someone's VE and CE in one WS (~6600 damage). If they gave Dagger a comparable WS to Tachi: Fudo, THF could easily do thousands of damage on anything from the front and give all the enmity to someone who was just hate-reset. I think SE wants to avoid making their hate-moving JAs too powerful, not that it matters in the current state of play.

Enmity fix would be easy. Either increase the cap by a factor of 5 or decrease the enmity of all actions by a factor of 5. Then further halve the enmity generated by doing damage. No one has to struggle to keep hate off the mages right now even if they're spamming Cure 4, because we do so much more damage than we cure HP. Make it harder to hold hate through damage, problem solved.

3) The final problem for Thief at the moment is just the state of the game. Abyssea has eliminated HNMs that are 20 levels above us. Mercy Stroke, for instance, used to be mediocre to good in merit parties. It really shined on HNMs though, because forcing a crit on something with a lot of Defense or a much higher level than you is much more important than doing so on a trash merit monster. SE is possibly trying to avoid giving the only job that can evade really high level monsters the best tools to damage them. I think this is likely also why Thief doesn't have native Subtle Blow, to make them a less viable tank for high level stuff.

[Karinya_of_Carbuncle]

This is silly when you consider the fact that DNC provides a level of support and a BRD-esque Haste buff while eclipsing THF's damage output.

They have to spend TP to provide that support, which means they're not spending that TP on damage. They also have no native Triple Attack so they get less TP in the first place (assuming equal gear/SJ).

Is it just me, or are you also completely ignoring THF's two biggest sources of damage, SA and TA? There's no way a DNC can match that damage output with similar gear. Flourishes not only cost TP to set up, their effect isn't as strong. Main job SA and TA are damage monsters (they also make THF benefit more from +crit than any other job, by getting guaranteed crits).

ISTM that if THF has a problem it is soloing and some lowman situations. Some of their abilities are designed to work with other players, or specifically with the THF not tanking, which makes them less effective when they have to try to tank and DD at the same time. But that's central enough to the design of the THF that I don't really see a way around it -- any general purpose damage buff that made a THF on par with other DDs *without* using SATA would make them ridiculously OP any time they *could* use their signature abilities.

Maybe allowing you to TA off your adventuring fellow, and then move around to SA while hate is on the fellow... it would help in places where you can use it, anyway. Otherwise I think the answer is going to be "get someone else to tank so you can use your real damage abilities".

[Karinya_of_Carbuncle]

Enmity fix would be easy. Either increase the cap by a factor of 5 or decrease the enmity of all actions by a factor of 5. Then further halve the enmity generated by doing damage. No one has to struggle to keep hate off the mages right now even if they're spamming Cure 4, because we do so much more damage than we cure HP. Make it harder to hold hate through damage, problem solved.

Speaking as a PLD now, I would freaking love this (or if they just gave mobs some def and eva so DDs didn't do such ridiculous amounts in the first place, even NMs are ridiculously soft targets these days), but I don't think it's going to happen. If SE had intended to do anything about tanking through damage, they could have done it any time since RotZ. Damage as the only hate that matters seems to be here to stay, which is one reason PLD is such a wreck right now.

[Eeek]

SA and TA are nice, but I wouldn't exactly call them big sources of damage. If I'm running with an Abyssea pickup group, my THF will likely tank. If I doing things with friends on Abyssea, my THF is usually co-tanking (and I don't like spinning mobs around just to TA the other melee...it exposes the mages to conal AoEs). If I'm doing something like Dynamis, mobs spin and die so fast that landing SA is a total crapshoot.

Too much of THF's damage potential relies on perfect positioning, controlled fights, and 100% cooperative party/alliance members, and that's just not reality in FFXI today.

With that being said, I don't even play my THF anymore unless myself or my group needs TH. These days, playing my THF just feels like playing a slower, weaker version of my DNC (yes, they're both above-average and about equally geared).

[sc4500]

Thief rocks it is one the easiest jobs to solo rani and shenru with brews on. outside of those two it now one best tanks in the game now days with the right evasion and gear you get and if in abyessea the atmas just not even fair cloak and dagger, shadow of siren, and one triple attacks or double attacks ones.

Dancer got some flaws but can equal all stuff that thief can do. If played right. not main healer but blood tanks on some nms and blink tank on others, few times going need whm help.

Dancer can do 2 dancing edges back to back , for skill self skill chains, with merit reverse flourish. poor mans Sata.

[Rambus]

I personally think Thief has three main problems:

1) SE dramatically overestimates the frequency with which you can land SA and TA in an 80% Haste environment with even only 3 DDs, and they also dramatically overestimate the benefit of landing SA and TA. When I look at the WSs and gear they give Thief, I become more and more sure that they're assuming almost every WS THF does is stacked with SA or TA. Realistically, Thief seems to use these JAs about half as often as that because situations that encourage one tend to discourage the other.
TAing in Dynamis, easy! Plenty of people hitting the monster so one is bound to stay in front of you.
SAing in Dynamis, hard. The monster is spinning.

can be hard anywhere:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWtmr2Lz2_0

I was in an EXP pt long ago where i was to voke to let a thf land SATA on tank. it did not work because he would auto run the mob to make it spin and flop around.

look at emp ws ( we talked about this before) it is only good with SA or TA (maybe I do not have it to quote that). having a emp ws dependent like that is not right

[Glamdring]

getting other players to understand the need for positioning and to actually do it has always been like trying to pound nails into concrete using over-cooked spaghetti as a hammer. It has gotten even worse in an era when the only permitted source of pride is "did you see how much damage I did with that ___?"

Any thief and buffer know the need to hold position so that we can do what you are asking us to do. I've developed the habit on my bard of announcing the song that's coming, those that want the buff can stay in range, those that run out can just deal; I've got too much to do to chase you down to Pianissimo whatever the hell you want.

Thief can't do that with a tank, tho'. One thing thief can do to help themselves is split SA and TA up so that we get at least some boost on 2 attacks during the cool-down for the abilities. However, a permanent, significant damage increase for all attacks from any direction outside frontal would absolutely be in keeping with the job; honestly, almost every game involving a thief-like job gives Backstab. An intimidation ability would also be fitting (think of someone holding a knife to the throat). A stun effect on Mug (or some other effect in keeping with a sharp blow to the head) would not be too much to ask, although the 15 minute cooldown has got to go. WE ARE THIEVES, TAKING SOMEONE ELSE'S STUFF IS WHAT WE ARE ALL ABOUT, IT'S IN THE NAME!

I really don't see much need for anything on dancer, I've always considderred dancer to be a utility job like red mage. Maybe a parry with a Riposte option, but until they fix parry so that it occasionally happens the ability will be useless.

[Gallus]

People actually think THF needs fixing? Couldn't agree less. I can literally engage a VT mob on it, afk, get a drink, come back, and come back to a dead mob with items in my loot pool and no loss of health. I was doing this yesterday farming Sobek pops. Outside abyssea it's slightly less drastic, but still great. I would have agreed with you back at the level 75 cap, but no way nowadays.

[RaenRyong]

THF isn't the only job you could do that on.

[Rambus]

People actually think THF needs fixing? Couldn't agree less. I can literally engage a VT mob on it, afk, get a drink, come back, and come back to a dead mob with items in my loot pool and no loss of health. I was doing this yesterday farming Sobek pops. Outside abyssea it's slightly less drastic, but still great. I would have agreed with you back at the level 75 cap, but no way nowadays.

has nothing to do with job want though.

it goes like this :

we need ONE thf for th

not:

we need thf for hate management, or we need a thf for damage.

that is a problem.

why only let one thf for event when you can have muli whm or multi war???