Delgear
08-12-2025, 04:00 AM
So i know i have been putting a lot of quick fix suggestions out there but i want to tackle a different type of problem. I think in general FFXI has a lot to give and it could certainly have a rebirth much like classic wow did. The main problem that i see is that there are a lot of old jobs in the game that need some love to be on par with popular or frequently loved jobs. I think also A lot of jobs sort of lose thier usefullness when you look at the "prefered" community part composition. I talked about this in my short fixes but a serious problem here in the game is that there is one slot in a party for a tank or 1/6th of a standard party contains a tank. Also, lots of endgame is actually favoring not bringing a tank at all as the time limits make so many fights or progression levels ... DPS races and movement speed races.
Currently in the meta there are 3 accepted tank classes out of 22 or 13-14% of the classes are classically accepted tanks.
thats not enough and in a lot of ways it makes the game more stagnant and less job inclusive. since both tanks for all intents and purposes just build big stats and get hammere din the face, they dont really need to position in specific ways around teamates or move, or sometimes they are even disincentivized from engaging and thier gameplay is being removed, no tp building, no actively using abilities on swarms of monsters, and abusing the "Supertanking" mechanics that if a monster doesnt have a hate table yet it ignores the other non aggroed party members.
To start this process im going to pick an "Odd duck" just to show how far one could go to make these improvements.
Lets take thief as a job at present it is pretty much relegated to a DD only
(current META) but lets really think about what we know about thieves and how they operate and see if we cant liven the party up. Almost everyone wanting to play thief is thinking either of the Dungeons and Dragons thief who is a sneaky one. or assassin type characters from other mmo's. Also if they come from the final fantasy series as a new recruit to vanadiel maybe they know about SE's obsession with steal only items or steal making it far easier to obtain rare items.
Lets start at step one What do we want to be ICONIC to thief both as a main job and then also as a subjob. While we are doing this maybe we should think about how many roles we could make the thief take on in a party depending on thier subjob // equipment and tactical decisions(buffs, stances, etc.) character choices.
If it was me and i wanted to make a much more durable to META changes thief the first thing i would want to do is isolate the gameplay styles from each other so that as a developer i could easily tweak them individually rather than when i tune an ability it nerfs the class as a whole or buffs the class as a whole across all its potential roles. Additionally we want more jobs to be able to fill more roles .. it just makes it easier for people to play the jobs and use the abilities they want to to form a winning strategy.
I went over in the quick fix to thief i i think you should develop a stance for thief that allows them to do increased damage from behind, this is already kind of how the thief plays presently, in a lot of fights Trick attack is way too risky and hard to implement with characters being pushed, just general miscommunication, or constant repositioning required to prevent enemy AI that is constantly walking and wandering all over if you have alot of mobs in one spot. by using my previous "Quick fix" to give thief a constant buff via a stance to backside damage instead of only when the current version of Sneak attack is off cooldown, we've allowed the thf to move more dynamically and not lose so much dps either holding tp for Sneak attack or holding sneak attack waiting for the monster to turn back around, or not weaponskilling at all to maximize autoattack hits for treasure hunter .... all things subtracting from the fun of playing thief through forced Idle player behavior. this also opens up THF as a subjob whenever ANY melee DD is going to be behind the monster all the time, it allows them to help control threat and capitalize on good positioning.
But lets not just do whats already been done lets embellish on this idea.
Treasure hunter: remove this feature, its pasive and promotes incredibly boring gameplay of standing near things not attacking or participating to wait for SATA and feint for high chance to stick innitial treasurehunter upgrade.
You should replace this with a line of abilities that already exist in the game:
each type of Steal effect can each only change drop slots once per monster.
Steal(LVL1)(Cooldown 30 seconds): when successful adds another drop slot for the 2 most common items on the monster drop chart Steal's accuracy is increased by the amount of debuffs the monster has on them. (weapons that can be broken as well as horns on those types of NMS can be triggered to be lost or broken by steal)
Despoil(LvL 30)(Cooldown 45 seconds): When successful adds an additional gaurunteed drop slot for the rarest item the monster has in its drop table or allows steal only items to be placed in the drops pool Despoils' accuracy is increased by how many debuffs are on the monster.
Mug(lvl 49)(Cooldown 50 seconds): inflicts a critical hit with bonus damage based on the monsters amount of Gil then steals some of that Gil
Aurasteal Lvl 75(Cooldown 3 minutes)(Duration 2 minutes): While Aurasteal is on Steal, Despoil, and Mug will steal buffs from the targeted enemy, or if they cannot be stolen dispel them (option to merit the cooldown down to 2 minutes if 5 merits are spent).
So if you noticed, i placed a little hook in there to let thief's function as dispellers. wouldn't be a bad idea to have a thrown slot item for thiefs called (Conterfeit coins) for each ranged attack it throws three coins and each hit increases the damage of MUG by making the monster "count" as having more gil than they really do.
Additionally since the thiefs success at obtaining items is no longer passive or attached to its gear specifically other jobs you might want to play while farming items can simply sub thief and steal from thier enemies.
So ide like to talk about the next idea that rubs against NIN. I think its good to have evasion tanks in the game, as long as the way they gain that evasion through good gameplay, NIN presently in the game have been booted away from tanking by numerous game mechanic reliance on lots of shadow wiping Aoe's. like i suggested in the quick fix there should be a stance for THF that relies on evading hits, we also touched on Blind potentially being a stackable debuff and both main jobs should have a way to handle or compensate for having all thier shadows wiped ... maybe this is how thief could evasion tank, if you give them a thrown weapon type of smoke bomb that they share with ninja, whenever you throw a smoke bomb it inflicts AOE Blind and high enmity, each time a monster attacks they remove a certain number of blind stacks, if there are still blind stacks left they miss, while the tank stance thief will want to use this all the time, the high enmity on it ensures that the DD rogue is only using it as a last resort or at key critical moments because they will drop thier damage bonus and they won't have increased evasion abilities from the evasion stance.
Have wasp sting stack poison with party members maybe even make it the highest stack cap in the game so it can stand out as the best poisoner to have on a team.
Creating a sleep bomb thrown weapon could be good
Kunai much like the coins could be throwing three of them but designed for short ranged but not melee fighting
and make boomerang the AOE thrown weapon for damage.
They need valid archetypes of more thrown weapons, muskets, and crossbows at endgame, might want to add on the theme to all these weapons that they apply debuff stacks of some sort to work on that theme of wanting to stack debuffs successfully to steal better.
Lastly lets see if we cant help thief work better in a scenario where Physical Damage is not viable due to high resitance.
Make a stance for rogue that just increases attack speed and applies poison stacks on every hit ("Envenom" if you will), couldn't hurt to have an entetro ability that delivers enparalyze.
add some job abilities weapon skills changes:
Hamstring(lvl20)(costs tp): your next attack or weapon skill will severely hamper your enemies evasion and magic evasion to the next spell cast on them or weaponskill used.
Nerve strike (Lvl 30)(costs tp): inflicts paralysis stacks.
Shadowstitch: applies slow stacks and gravity stacks.
Extenerator: creates utsusemi style shadows, after a few seconds each shadow still remaining attacks for a critical hit and then dissapears
This way a job that previously had one role it wasnt particularly sought after can instead fill 3 roles or provide assistance to another role that might be less optimally geared in a task they need help with. we can get rid of how much of the class is just random number generation and idle non active play moments, and create more skill expression. Thf should dodge, it should crit, it should take cheap shots, and debilitate its enemies, but it should do it with skill expression.
Currently in the meta there are 3 accepted tank classes out of 22 or 13-14% of the classes are classically accepted tanks.
thats not enough and in a lot of ways it makes the game more stagnant and less job inclusive. since both tanks for all intents and purposes just build big stats and get hammere din the face, they dont really need to position in specific ways around teamates or move, or sometimes they are even disincentivized from engaging and thier gameplay is being removed, no tp building, no actively using abilities on swarms of monsters, and abusing the "Supertanking" mechanics that if a monster doesnt have a hate table yet it ignores the other non aggroed party members.
To start this process im going to pick an "Odd duck" just to show how far one could go to make these improvements.
Lets take thief as a job at present it is pretty much relegated to a DD only
(current META) but lets really think about what we know about thieves and how they operate and see if we cant liven the party up. Almost everyone wanting to play thief is thinking either of the Dungeons and Dragons thief who is a sneaky one. or assassin type characters from other mmo's. Also if they come from the final fantasy series as a new recruit to vanadiel maybe they know about SE's obsession with steal only items or steal making it far easier to obtain rare items.
Lets start at step one What do we want to be ICONIC to thief both as a main job and then also as a subjob. While we are doing this maybe we should think about how many roles we could make the thief take on in a party depending on thier subjob // equipment and tactical decisions(buffs, stances, etc.) character choices.
If it was me and i wanted to make a much more durable to META changes thief the first thing i would want to do is isolate the gameplay styles from each other so that as a developer i could easily tweak them individually rather than when i tune an ability it nerfs the class as a whole or buffs the class as a whole across all its potential roles. Additionally we want more jobs to be able to fill more roles .. it just makes it easier for people to play the jobs and use the abilities they want to to form a winning strategy.
I went over in the quick fix to thief i i think you should develop a stance for thief that allows them to do increased damage from behind, this is already kind of how the thief plays presently, in a lot of fights Trick attack is way too risky and hard to implement with characters being pushed, just general miscommunication, or constant repositioning required to prevent enemy AI that is constantly walking and wandering all over if you have alot of mobs in one spot. by using my previous "Quick fix" to give thief a constant buff via a stance to backside damage instead of only when the current version of Sneak attack is off cooldown, we've allowed the thf to move more dynamically and not lose so much dps either holding tp for Sneak attack or holding sneak attack waiting for the monster to turn back around, or not weaponskilling at all to maximize autoattack hits for treasure hunter .... all things subtracting from the fun of playing thief through forced Idle player behavior. this also opens up THF as a subjob whenever ANY melee DD is going to be behind the monster all the time, it allows them to help control threat and capitalize on good positioning.
But lets not just do whats already been done lets embellish on this idea.
Treasure hunter: remove this feature, its pasive and promotes incredibly boring gameplay of standing near things not attacking or participating to wait for SATA and feint for high chance to stick innitial treasurehunter upgrade.
You should replace this with a line of abilities that already exist in the game:
each type of Steal effect can each only change drop slots once per monster.
Steal(LVL1)(Cooldown 30 seconds): when successful adds another drop slot for the 2 most common items on the monster drop chart Steal's accuracy is increased by the amount of debuffs the monster has on them. (weapons that can be broken as well as horns on those types of NMS can be triggered to be lost or broken by steal)
Despoil(LvL 30)(Cooldown 45 seconds): When successful adds an additional gaurunteed drop slot for the rarest item the monster has in its drop table or allows steal only items to be placed in the drops pool Despoils' accuracy is increased by how many debuffs are on the monster.
Mug(lvl 49)(Cooldown 50 seconds): inflicts a critical hit with bonus damage based on the monsters amount of Gil then steals some of that Gil
Aurasteal Lvl 75(Cooldown 3 minutes)(Duration 2 minutes): While Aurasteal is on Steal, Despoil, and Mug will steal buffs from the targeted enemy, or if they cannot be stolen dispel them (option to merit the cooldown down to 2 minutes if 5 merits are spent).
So if you noticed, i placed a little hook in there to let thief's function as dispellers. wouldn't be a bad idea to have a thrown slot item for thiefs called (Conterfeit coins) for each ranged attack it throws three coins and each hit increases the damage of MUG by making the monster "count" as having more gil than they really do.
Additionally since the thiefs success at obtaining items is no longer passive or attached to its gear specifically other jobs you might want to play while farming items can simply sub thief and steal from thier enemies.
So ide like to talk about the next idea that rubs against NIN. I think its good to have evasion tanks in the game, as long as the way they gain that evasion through good gameplay, NIN presently in the game have been booted away from tanking by numerous game mechanic reliance on lots of shadow wiping Aoe's. like i suggested in the quick fix there should be a stance for THF that relies on evading hits, we also touched on Blind potentially being a stackable debuff and both main jobs should have a way to handle or compensate for having all thier shadows wiped ... maybe this is how thief could evasion tank, if you give them a thrown weapon type of smoke bomb that they share with ninja, whenever you throw a smoke bomb it inflicts AOE Blind and high enmity, each time a monster attacks they remove a certain number of blind stacks, if there are still blind stacks left they miss, while the tank stance thief will want to use this all the time, the high enmity on it ensures that the DD rogue is only using it as a last resort or at key critical moments because they will drop thier damage bonus and they won't have increased evasion abilities from the evasion stance.
Have wasp sting stack poison with party members maybe even make it the highest stack cap in the game so it can stand out as the best poisoner to have on a team.
Creating a sleep bomb thrown weapon could be good
Kunai much like the coins could be throwing three of them but designed for short ranged but not melee fighting
and make boomerang the AOE thrown weapon for damage.
They need valid archetypes of more thrown weapons, muskets, and crossbows at endgame, might want to add on the theme to all these weapons that they apply debuff stacks of some sort to work on that theme of wanting to stack debuffs successfully to steal better.
Lastly lets see if we cant help thief work better in a scenario where Physical Damage is not viable due to high resitance.
Make a stance for rogue that just increases attack speed and applies poison stacks on every hit ("Envenom" if you will), couldn't hurt to have an entetro ability that delivers enparalyze.
add some job abilities weapon skills changes:
Hamstring(lvl20)(costs tp): your next attack or weapon skill will severely hamper your enemies evasion and magic evasion to the next spell cast on them or weaponskill used.
Nerve strike (Lvl 30)(costs tp): inflicts paralysis stacks.
Shadowstitch: applies slow stacks and gravity stacks.
Extenerator: creates utsusemi style shadows, after a few seconds each shadow still remaining attacks for a critical hit and then dissapears
This way a job that previously had one role it wasnt particularly sought after can instead fill 3 roles or provide assistance to another role that might be less optimally geared in a task they need help with. we can get rid of how much of the class is just random number generation and idle non active play moments, and create more skill expression. Thf should dodge, it should crit, it should take cheap shots, and debilitate its enemies, but it should do it with skill expression.