Thief Job Ability Synergy: This is not 2005

[Nebo]

The positional and “only useful in groups” requirements imposed on Thief abilities do not make sense in 2011.

When parties consisted of Paladin, Thief, Samurai, White Mage, Black Mage, Black Mage, spending several minutes to kill one IT+++++ crab by closing distortion skill chains and magic burst was good strategy, Sneak Attack and Trick Attack made sense. The payoff for your party to meet these positional Thief job requirements was VERY high damage relative to what any other job could do, and was well worth the effort.

2011 FFXI does not work this way (and hasn’t for many years). Party dynamics have changed drastically. The relative damage payoff is not anywhere near as high as it was in 2005. Additionally, no group is going to form a strategy around allowing the Thief to perform Sneak Attack and Trick Attack. But here we are in 2011, and Thief is still forced to play like it is 2005. As a result we unable to make use of Sneak Attack and Trick Attack an unreasonable majority of the time.

What does a Thief do in 2011?:


Endgame Experience Parties/Alliances: Damage Dealer, Evasion Tank
Low Man Notorious Monster hunting and events (2-3 players): Damage Dealer, Evasion Tank, Treasure Hunter
Solo: NM hunting, Farming and otherwise Thief-like gil making endeavours: Damage Dealer, Evasion Tank, Treasure Hunter
HNM and group events: Damage Dealer, Evasion Tank, Treasure Hunter

It is important to point out that playing solo, damage dealing and small group evasion tanking are important roles to career Thieves. Treasure Hunter is an important part of this and requires us to be dealing damage (with melee hits, sneak attack and trick attack) to effectively reach higher levels of treasure hunter. The ability to apply treasure hunter, deal damage and use evasion to tank should work together but they don’t.

The real problem with Thief is that its job abilities lack synergy.

Signature abilities like evasion and survival are in direct conflict with abilities that deal damage. The more powerful you are as a Thief, the more limited your options become. You are putting out great damage? OK now you have the monster’s attention and your ability to land sneak attack is gone. As well, trick attack becomes very hard to land, compounded by the fact that Damage Dealers are constantly moving around and/or will move out of the way if you try to land it on them.

Why should performing your role well prevent you from performing your role well? The costs are too high:

Sneak Attack

Must be behind the monster to land: Attempt to position yourself behind a monster that is constantly changing directions due to enmity spikes and fluctuations
Requires an unreasonable level of party cooperation that a Thief is never going to get
Requires the Thief to constantly run around in hopes of landing the critical hit before the monster changes direction.

Sneak Attack is very limited and often impossible to use when playing solo. (Significantly limits damage dealing and the ability to enhance treasure hunter).

Sneak Attack cannot be used effectively for low man or “tanking” purposes. (Significantly limits damage dealing and the ability to enhance treasure hunter).

This is a fundamental job ability that is unreasonably difficult to make use of in group situations, severely limited and most often impossible to use in solo and low man tanking situations.

Result: Sneak Attack often misses and/or is just not usable most of the time.

Trick Attack

Must position yourself behind a party member to land.
Said party member will never stand still for you (Why should they have to? Why should it be their job to make sure you can do yours.)
Said party member neither wants nor needs additional enmity to be placed upon them (if they even understand how Trick Attack functions at all).

To land Trick Attack consistently in a group:

Requires an unreasonable level of party cooperation that a Thief is never going to get.
Requires the Thief to constantly run around in hopes of landing the critical hit before either the monster moves or the player moves or both.

Trick Attack cannot be used when playing solo. (Significantly limits damage dealing and the ability to enhance treasure hunter).

Trick Attack cannot be used effectively for low man or “tanking” purposes. (Significantly limits damage dealing and the ability to enhance treasure hunter).

We should also be very clear about this: due to the enmity cap, and every job being able to reach it easily, Trick Attack is never sought after or used soley for its enmity transfer….. for any event or notorious monster…..ever. In fact, party members in endgame groups will proactively move out of the way if they see you ready trick attack behind them because they do not want to be trick attacked.

Trick Attack has one useful purpose: It deals damage (and recently has an increased chance to enhance treasure hunter level.)

This is a fundamental job ability that is almost always unwanted by parties, unreasonably difficult to land in group situations, as well as impossible to use effectively in solo and low man tanking situations.

Result: Trick Attack often misses, is unwanted and/or is unusable most of the time.

----

I Suggest:

The positional nature of Thief can be kept and synergy can be achieved by simply changing the positional requirements to positional enhancements.

For example:

Sneak Attack:

Performed behind the monster: Guaranteed critical hit + Increased Chance of Treasure Hunter

Performed in front of the monster: Critical hit subject to a melee accuracy check. Small amount of additional enmity is applied to the Thief when landed + Increased Chance of Treasure Hunter

Trick Attack

Performed behind a party member: Guaranteed Critical Hit and Enmity Transfer + Increased Chance of Treasure Hunter

Not performed behind a party member: Critical hit subject to a melee accuracy check. Small amount of additional enmity is applied to the Thief when landed + Increased Chance of Treasure Hunter


(Edit) Another suggestion:

They could adjust Thief to have stances.

Stance A:

Sneak Attack and Trick Attack are Guaranteed Criticals with increased chance to enhance treasure hunter.
Sneak Attack and Trick Attack can be landed from any position.
The critical hit from Sneak Attack and Trick Attack generate slightly more enmity than normal toward the THF
Sneak Attack and Trick Attack become instant attacks without Job Ability pause that cannot be combined with weaponskills.

Stance B:

Sneak Attack and Trick Attack function exactly like they do now and can be combined with weaponskills.
Trick Attack transfers enmity.
Sneak generates a decreased amount of enmity (in this situation you won't want to take hate from the tank etc)

The beauty is that these will not raise Thief damage potential at all. If this was 2005, parties used Paladins, SATA lines, and took 5 minutes to kill one monster, Thief would be able to have consistent success with all of its abilities as the recast timers would allow.

This is not 2005. The player base does not want 2005 style parties back. Thief has to be able to adapt to 2011 FFXI. This means not forcing us to play like it is still 2005.

What this tweak will do, is allow Thief to play to its potential by creating synergy between existing job abilities for soloing, low man tanking, applying/enhancing treasure hunter and dealing damage. All of this while staying true to the positional nature of the job and balanced with an accuracy check.

On difficult HNMs etc, groups are still likely to control the monster positionally, and a Thief would still better off to use sneak attack and trick attack behind the monster/party member (or use stance B) to make the critical hit guaranteed.

Edit:
I will say that I disagree with lowering the damage of sneak attack if the hit if it's done in front because this actually lowers the over all damage potential of the job (which is the last thing we need). It makes sense to me that A Thief could land the same strength of critical hit in the front as he did from behind (using the same weapon, same muscles etc), he would just be less accurate with it if the monster could see him.

[Laphine]

i liked this, rate up!

[Alukat]

yeah the hate cap has a really good point. i was trioing nin + thf + whm. only thing i could use was trick attack + ws.
sneak attack + ws was almost impossible due to the fact that the mob turned after each hit or even if i just used sneak attack.it is totally annoying.

[noodles355]

You're really overplaying the whole people moving out of the way of trick attack thing.

[Glamdring]

You're really overplaying the whole people moving out of the way of trick attack thing.

I don't know about that, when I announce a TA generally the player in front of me runs like hell, including the tank. How about an autostun effect on the to be affected player like is inflicted by an offensive spell where they can't move or take any meaningful action?

[Bulrogg]

I think it would be interesting if landing a trick attack on a player would give them a buff like maybe attack power or something.

[thefinalrune]

Okay, as a career thief I have two points.

1). I love the adjustment ideas.

2.) I both sneak attack and trick attack constantly, even while solo. Well, trick attack is not so much solo as it is making my fellow tank for a few seconds. Anyway. I understand how thieves have it hard positioning as well as anyone, but there's really no excuse for a thief not to SA every sixty seconds in solo play. As long as you maintain a supply of sleep bolts solo SA is not only extremely possible, but usually vital in speedy killings. Using words like "often impossible" is misleading and clearly incorrect. However, I will eagerly concede that landing SA or TA in parties can be a nightmare.


Also:

...when I announce a TA generally the player in front of me runs like hell, including the tank. How about an autostun effect on the to be affected player like is inflicted by an offensive spell where they can't move or take any meaningful action?That would hilarious, but mean.

[Nebo]

You're really overplaying the whole people moving out of the way of trick attack thing.

In my experience, the better your Weaponskill gear and the more powerful your trick attack critical hits are....especially in abyssea.....the more Damage Dealers take notice that they are getting more attention than they want from the monster after they see big trick attack damage from you.

Even a solo Trick Attack critical hit for over 1000 damage will make the monster turn their way. A weapon skill combined with Trick Attack usually means that the damage dealer has the monster's full attention until the monster dies.

This is just an annoyance and hinderance for the player you just trick attacked. Your average WAR/SAM is trying to ride hasso/berserk/agressor and maximize his damage....now he has to change this and gimp his damage so you could land trick attack on him. Your NIN is just as frustrated as you are, trying to slip around the back to take advantage of their positional job abilities, now they have the monster glued to their face. God forbid there is another Thief in the party doing the same crazy run around dance that you are.

Trick Attack is an upset to the ballance of enmity, creating a situation where each damage dealer is not only responsible for their damage but part of yours as well. When every damage dealer counts on hate bouncing around so they can all mitigate their share effectively, having too much attention on one can be dangerous, limiting and frustrating for them. Who can blame them for not wanting that?

Those are just examples of people TRYING to move out of the way of Trick Attack due to unwanted enmity. It speaks nothing to the fact that damage dealers are always in a constant state of moving around the monster for no particular reason at all. Not to mention dealing with rapid enmity fluctuations causing the monster to move a little bit this way or that way, or just deciding to run toward your mages....you will just miss the Trick Attack critical hit constantly due to common normal circumstances.

I have been a THF since I started FFXI in 2005. I am a good THF. I love the job. I am dilligent with landing sneak attack and trick attack as much as super humanly possible and I have magnificent sets for landing both in a variety of situations.

I just strongly feel that the hoops you have to jump through to land them are unreasonable. Even at the highest level of Thief play they miss too much, or are just not usable in various situations.

[Nebo]

I both sneak attack and trick attack constantly, even while solo. Well, trick attack is not so much solo as it is making my fellow tank for a few seconds. Anyway. I understand how thieves have it hard positioning as well as anyone, but there's really no excuse for a thief not to SA every sixty seconds in solo play. As long as you maintain a supply of sleep bolts solo SA is not only extremely possible, but usually vital in speedy killings. Using words like "often impossible" is misleading and clearly incorrect. However, I will eagerly concede that landing SA or TA in parties can be a nightmare.

Landing sneak attack when solo via sleep bolt methods is possible, but this falls under "unreasonable" in my oppinion. I land them quite a bit. I am so good at it that I can land a sleep bolt, and SAWS betwen one attack round without disengaging, unlocking from my target or losing ANY melee time at all save for the JA pause of sneak attack (plus the recovery time from firing the bolt).

Most Thieves I know do not do this. And disengage instead to run around to the back, reengage and then SAWS. In this case it isn't even worth it for you to waste the melee time it takes to fire the bolt, unlock, run around, reengage, SA, WS.

I use the word "impossible" for situations like dark based sleep resistant monsters, of which there are plenty. But most importantly for real "treasure hunter" gil making situations when playing solo, namely sleep immune notorious monsters, which are abundant.

There is also the situation where a lot of Thieves I know don't have merited marksmanship like I do, or a near perfect racc set like I do and landing bolts consistantly is a problem on high level monsters.

Soloing fodder mobs is less of an issue in my oppinion. They die quickly anyway. Soloing Notorious Monsters and monsters you can't land sleep on...sneak attack is impossible during the fight.

Regarding trick attack solo, yes, you can trick your fellow. But they JUST made it possible to call them in ToAu field zones, you could never call them in dungeons, and you cannot call them in abyssea. Not to mention the limited amount of time you can use them in the areas where they are actually available.

What if you don't have a fellow leveled? What if their retarded mage AI frustrates you so much you don't even want to see their face?;) Why should being able to use a fundamental job ability solo be soley based on having an adventuring fellow to use it with?

Such limited situations where using these abilities is possible (or useful) is unreasonable. I question why Thief must be so creative and still restricted just to work around the hoops we must jump through to use 2 fundamental core job abilities.

[noodles355]

I don't know about that, when I announce a TA generally the player in front of me runs like hell, including the tank. How about an autostun effect on the to be affected player like is inflicted by an offensive spell where they can't move or take any meaningful action?
1) Don't tell them you're going to do it.
2) Get a linkshell or make friends with good players who realise that TA both increases damage output and also increases chance to raise the TH level
3) Remind Mnks and Wars that Counterstance and Retalliation increases their damage so it's worthwhile to be tanking.
4) Remind them that Trick Attack has the same recast as Accomplice

Most people who are idiotic enough to move out of the way of TA are usually pretty shitty players too, and not generally worth spending your time with (See point 2)

[Nebo]

1) Don't tell them you're going to do it.
2) Get a linkshell or make friends with good players who realise that TA both increases damage output and also increases chance to raise the TH level
3) Remind Mnks and Wars that with Counterstance and Retalliation it increases their damage so it's worthwhile to be tanking.
4) Remind them that Trick Attack has the same recast as Accomplice

1) I think that is what most of us are forced to do. It would be fine if DD's and monsters ever sit still. But they don't, so you'll miss.
2) Trick Attack only increases your damage while making life annoying for them.
3) lol, Good luck with that.
4) Remind them that Trick Attack has the same recast as Collaborator. Which is neither here nor there because Trick Attack generates enmity based on damage and Collaborator steals 25% of that players total enmity. The effectiveness of which depends on a whole slew of things. How much enmity the already player has, whether its the start of the fight or near the end. If you plant a TAWS on the for example at the start, the mob won't even look at you after collaborator.

Also if you are using collaborator just to convince someone to allow you to use trick attack, you cannot use it to save a mage, or a DD that is really in trouble.

I don't know, to me it just doesn't make sense that the solution to the problem of a job ability that gives unwanted enmity should be a second job ability that takes some away. Why not just fix the problem?

[noodles355]

If they're stupid enough to move out of the way of Trick Attack, chances are they don't actually know what Collaborator does. So that's irrelevant. This point is only really worthwhile in EXP situations, so saving a mage is fairly moot too.
On NMs, if they are meleeing, they will either be proccing red, blue, or be completely useless and just there for extra (likely not needed) damage. If it's the latter, then if they wont let me trick attack them after explaining myself then I would just kick them. They're not contributing anything worthwhile. Sure, this goes against the point I'm about to make below but it's to make them learn.

For point 2: Increasing your damage increases the killspeed. A Good player knows that the total killspeed is more important than his personal damage. So the point stands: Make better friends or find a better linkshell with people who realise letting you Trick Attack both increases chance for TH proc and increases killspeed.
To be honest, the first point alone should be enough for most people to just suck it up.

You shouldn't be so ready to dismiss point three. The same argument can be used for a Sam, and overwhelm. If You're tanking and they want to get their overwhelm boost then they're gonna have to stand in front of you, so TA them.

You are being far too weak and soft about the whole situation. If they can't do their job properly, get rid of them and get someone who can. And don't try and argue about having to find a replacement and just making do, because everything you will be meleeing/tanking fulltime can be killed with just Thief and !! procs. Anyone who's there who's TA-able is a waste of a party slot anyway.

The enmity really isn't a problem.
Either: Hate will be capped for both parties.
Or: You're hate will be capped and so one melee strike after TAing someone, you will have hate again.

Obviously unless you do it at the start of a fight, but after just one evisceration and some melee rounds, a 1k Trick Attack shouldn't be enough to lose you hate for any remotely significant length of time. The VE of it on it's own is not enough after you've been popping 2-3k WSs and evading monster attacks the way thief does.

There really isn't a problem with the ability. Sometimes the enmity is unwanted. Sometimes the enmity is wanted. Most of the time it's not wanted, enmity is irrelevant anyway because the mob dies so fast, or hate is capped for everyone, and the whm will be able to keep you alive with no worries at all.

Just because you've played with some idiots doesn't mean the ability is bad. I've never had a problem with someone after 1 or 2 attempts. But that's because unlike you who comes complaining on a forum, I do something about it. I tell them to suck it up and do it, and if they don't I get rid of them. In fact I almost never have a problem with anyone doing it at all as the friends I make and the linkshell I'm in consist of good players, not retards.

[Arcon]

You're really overplaying the whole people moving out of the way of trick attack thing.

This. Even in Garlaige parties back in the day I never had a problem landing Trick Attack. Every party I was in was willing to make a SA/TA lineup and went with it.

Also I don't know any player who willingly wants to avoid a Trick Attack, for any reason, and I can't think of one. In Abyssea I have our BLMs or BRDs for seal parties stand in front of me when I'm solo tanking so I can Trick Attack them constantly for Treasure Hunter, and no one complains.

And as a WAR myself, I want hate on me all the time to maximize damage, for the reasons noodles mentioned too. Losing hate is so easy right now anyway, that it doesn't really require much action on the THF's side in either way. Also, TA+WS is bad in most cases, since I'm guessing you want higher Treasure Hunter as well. And normal Trick Attack damage isn't so high that anyone else can't get it back in no time. Especially if it's a DD you're using it on, chances are their enmity was capped to begin with.

For that matter, the same applied to landing Sneak Attack. It's really not hard in most cases, spinning mobs may screw up your timing, but it still works in most cases, as long as you watch people swing and pay attention.

[noodles355]

For that matter, the same applied to landing Sneak Attack. It's really not hard in most cases, spinning mobs may screw up your timing, but it still works in most cases, as long as you watch people swing and pay attention.This. You rarely have more than 2 melees on most NMs to avoid TP feed. When both melees are hate capped, every landed attack swing will gain the mob's attention, so just time your sneak attack to co-incide with their next attack. It's not that hard.

[Nebo]

If they're stupid enough to move out of the way of Trick Attack, chances are they don't actually know what Collaborator does. So that's irrelevant. This point is only really worthwhile in EXP situations, so saving a mage is fairly moot too.

I disagree that saving mages is a moot point in exp parties, but the real reason that collaborator isn't the solution to that part of the issue is that it will ultimately slow you down. Because collaborator is so dependant on when you use it in the fight (in an exp situation) it means you aren't able to ride your Trick Attack timer if you are using collaborator as a crutch.


For point 2: Increasing your damage increases the killspeed. A Good player knows that the total killspeed is more important than his personal damage.

This one I'm lost on. Damage increases kill speed and kill speed is more important than damage?


So the point stands: Make better friends or find a better linkshell with people who realise letting you Trick Attack both increases chance for TH proc and increases killspeed.
To be honest, the first point alone should be enough for most people to just suck it up.

This is essentially the point I am trying to make. I find it unreasonable how much is required of other people for Sneak Attack and Trick Attack to work with any level of consistency. Doing your job as a damage dealer is also now their job.


Everything you will be meleeing/tanking fulltime can be killed with just Thief and !! procs.

I agree, which is why the THF is tanking most of the time. In this example you give landing sneak attack and trick attack as timers allow goes right out the window.

Even when you can land them in these situations, the job is designed against you being able to stand in front of a monster, evade attacks AND deal damage. Just because we are constantly finding ways around those hoops and land them in situations they were not intended to land does not mean the design isn't flawed.


There really isn't a problem with the ability. Sometimes the enmity is unwanted. Sometimes the enmity is wanted. Most of the time it's not wanted

That's interesting. I find that if a fundamental job ability is mostly unwanted/not needed...there is a problem with it.


Just because you've played with some idiots doesn't mean the ability is bad. I've never had a problem with someone after 1 or 2 attempts. But that's because unlike you who comes complaining on a forum, I do something about it. I tell them to suck it up and do it, and if they don't I get rid of them. In fact I almost never have a problem with anyone doing it at all as the friends I make and the linkshell I'm in consist of good players, not retards.

Now we are just getting silly. When I created this thread it was not to "complain on a forum." There are a lot of threads on this very page with lots of people "complaining" about these abilities. What I did was try to describe the limitations as best I could and offer a thought out, balanced solution or two.

But since you brought up idiots and retards. Does that mean that idiots and retards don't deserve to play? Some of my very best friends are idiots and retards. I love playing with them. Does that mean as a THF I shouldn't be able to do my job? Or should I have some flexibility with which to do it myself?

Clearly we disagree, but I feel like Thief should have some flexibility to do their own job without depending so much on other players to do it for them.

[Nebo]

Even in Garlaige parties back in the day I never had a problem landing Trick Attack. Every party I was in was willing to make a SA/TA lineup and went with it.

In garlaige days, SATA was more powerful as a tactic and made sense.


Also I don't know any player who willingly wants to avoid a Trick Attack, for any reason, and I can't think of one.

I know lots. I encounter lots. Especially in pickup groups.


In Abyssea I have our BLMs or BRDs for seal parties stand in front of me when I'm solo tanking so I can Trick Attack them constantly for Treasure Hunter, and no one complains.

Awesome. Personally I would like not to have to trick attack my duo mage partner to allow me to land it.


For that matter, the same applied to landing Sneak Attack. It's really not hard in most cases, spinning mobs may screw up your timing, but it still works in most cases

Awwwwww you....Who's overstating now?:rolleyes:

Edit: I should note that I think we are talking about different things. I am not saying SA and TA are impossible to land sometimes. You are saying you can make them work when the opportunity arises. I am saying the opoortunities to use them are unreasonably limited.

I feel that 60 second timer is limit enough, and that all the other hoops you need to jump through create situations where you are waiting for the mob to turn, waiting for other people, holding TP, waiting for your !! people to line up...all limiting your performance potential. It limits your overal potential to increase TH level, it limits your damage, it limits your ability to take that hate from those hits for yourself when tanking.

Having all those limitations for a job's fundamental, core abilities seems unreasonable to me. Especially since the payoff is nowhere near what it was in the garlaige days.

[Arcon]

Whereas I believe that your view of the game is fundamentally wrong. This is a matter of opinion, and is pointless arguing about. What you're asking for is to make songs and buffs unlimited range, to cater to the needs of people who run from them.

This game is a cooperative effort, many jobs depend on the collaboration of several people to work properly. The more efficient the people, the more efficient the gameplay. It's a matter of moderation. If a job ability is virtually unusable because it needs extreme cooperative effort of several people to be pulled off, that would probably need revising. This on the other hand works fairly well as it is and I don't see a need to upgrade it in any way. THF especially is a job that relies on party cooperation, and I don't see a need to remove that. You seem to want it to work perfectly, every 60 seconds flat. Why even have a job ability, just let the mob take a flat 1000 damage for every 60s the THF is on its hate list.

Simply put, in my opinion it works very well as it is and I don't see a need to improve it. The limitations placed on it add some skill into the equation, but the same applies to almost every ability in the game, and again, I think that's how it should be.

[Nebo]

Which is cool. We disagree. I respect that oppinion.


THF especially is a job that relies on party cooperation, and I don't see a need to remove that.

I suggested the tweaks I did, not to remove party cooperation from the job. I just don't want to be so limited in the abscence of that party cooperation. More so, a balance between the two that would offer some flexibility in both situations.

[noodles355]

I disagree that saving mages is a moot point in exp parties, but the real reason that collaborator isn't the solution to that part of the issue is that it will ultimately slow you down. Because collaborator is so dependant on when you use it in the fight (in an exp situation) it means you aren't able to ride your Trick Attack timer if you are using collaborator as a crutch.Collaborator is irrelevant in Exp parties, as is using it to "save the mage". You know why? Because mobs die in under 30-20 seconds. With such high crit rate and low delay, one attack round will pull hate off a mage. Mobs usually die after 2-3 WS. Sometimes they get OHKO from 90. Mages, even with crap merit abyssites will still have 1000-1500ish HP, even if they do take a few hits, there is close to zero possibility of them dying.

This one I'm lost on. Damage increases kill speed and kill speed is more important than his damage?I thought it would be fairly simple: By forcing you to miss Trick Attack, he is lowering your damage output and ultimately how fast you kill them mob. If you trick attack him chances are it wont lower his damage output and wont slow down the speed you kill them mob. Infact, if it's a War or Mnk, it will actually increase their damage output by letting them get some counter-attacks in and again increase killspeed. If he is a good DD then he will be hate capped, will be co-tanking with you and the enmity transfer is irrelevant. If he is a bad DD, then you will get hate back off him immidiately anyway, and the chances are the damage he stopped to put up seigan or utsusemi again won't have offset your Trick Attack damage.

This is essentially the point I am trying to make. I find it unreasonable how much is required of other people for Sneak Attack and Trick Attack to work with any level of consistency. Doing your job as a damage dealer is also now their job.You are really overplaying how much "work" they have to do. On anything that matters, the melee tends to stand still (unless the mob has moved). He doesn't have to do anything for you to land your trick attack. You do the positioning yourself. All that's required of him is to stand still, which to be honest most people do do.

I agree, which is why the THF is tanking most of the time. In this example you give landing sneak attack and trick attack as timers allow goes right out the window.

Even when you can land them in these situations, the job is designed against you being able to stand in front of a monster, evade attacks AND deal damage. Just because we are constantly finding ways around those hoops and land them in situations they were not intended to land does not mean the design isn't flawed.It's called a sacrifice. You sacrifice some of your damage output to increase overall efficiency in lowman groups. In this case, being efficient is only having the Thf and !! proccers, as it means more drops for everyone and less NMs to be farmed. Can you not think of any other job that has to sacrifice their damage to be the most efficient?


That's interesting. I find that if a fundamental job ability is mostly unwanted/not needed...there is a problem with it. You misunderstand. The point is not that it's unwanted/needed most of the time. It's that it is wanted/needed some of the time. And because it's needed some of the time, that is reason enough to not remove the enmity properties from it.

Now we are just getting silly. When I created this thread it was not to "complain on a forum." There are a lot of threads on this very page with lots of people "complaining" about these abilities. What I did was try to describe the limitations as best I could and offer a thought out, balanced solution or two.

But since you brought up idiots and retards. Does that mean that idiots and retards don't deserve to play? Some of my very best friends are idiots and retards. I love playing with them. Does that mean as a THF I shouldn't be able to do my job? Or should I have some flexibility with which to do it myself? To each their own. If you want to play with shit players be my guest but dont cry when you cant play your job properly. Idiots and retards can do what the heck they want, but they can do it outside of my party. Just because you have low standards and/or don't care who you play with doesn't mean there is a problem with your job.

[noodles355]

Awwwwww you....Who's overstating now?:rolleyes:Well it's certainly not him. I explained how to SA a spinning mob earlier. But I'll state it again:
On anything that matters you wont have many melees. 2 or 3 Max. When you are hate capped, each action will spin the mob to that player. Line up opposite the player, time your Sneak Attack so the other player gets an attack round off (and subsequently pulls hate) before you land the Sneak Attack. It wont work every time as sometimes the other melee will get physically hit, which lowers enmity and may spin the mob back to you, but he stated it works most of the time. And that is true.

[Masekase]

Well it's certainly not him. I explained how to SA a spinning mob earlier. But I'll state it again:
On anything that matters you wont have many melees. 2 or 3 Max. When you are hate capped, each action will spin the mob to that player. Line up opposite the player, time your Sneak Attack so the other player gets an attack round off (and subsequently pulls hate) before you land the Sneak Attack. It wont work every time as sometimes the other melee will get physically hit, which lowers enmity and may spin the mob back to you, but he stated it works most of the time. And that is true.

I think it is being highly exageratted I rarely have any problems with SA or TA. Also if mob is spinning just trick attack someone who can hold it and then sa.

[Syllna]

Indeed, Nebo is definitely overplaying the TA thing and sounds like he needs to find a linkshell that's not full of people that don't understand how to play cooperatively. It also sounds like he's not a career THF either as true career thf's like noodles is pointing out, know how to play around mobs and know how to effectively use each of their job abilities.

[Nebo]

I thought it would be fairly simple: By forcing you to miss Trick Attack, he is lowering your damage output and ultimately how fast you kill them mob. If you trick attack him chances are it wont lower his damage output and wont slow down the speed you kill them mob. Infact, if it's a War or Mnk, it will actually increase their damage output by letting them get some counter-attacks in and again increase killspeed.

That same argument can easily go the other way. If its a NIN or THF you've just gimped their damage. There are a limited number of jobs that would be able to use abilities like counter or retaliation in the first place, there are many more that have no such benefit and really don't want any added enmity. Even that WAR will have to drop Berserk. They are being forced to play your playstyle so you can deal your damage.


It's called a sacrifice. You sacrifice some of your damage output to increase overall efficiency in lowman groups. In this case, being efficient is only having the Thf and !! proccers, as it means more drops for everyone and less NMs to be farmed. Can you not think of any other job that has to sacrifice their damage to be the most efficient?

Not as much as THF does. It is the very opposite of efficient when your 2 hour, your evasion, and tanking abilities, (not to mention your ability pull hate with shear melee DoT) are designed to work against using your fundamental Damage Dealing job abilities.


The point is not that it's unwanted/needed most of the time. It's that it is wanted/needed some of the time. And because it's needed some of the time, that is reason enough to not remove the enmity properties from it.

It is definately unwanted/needed most of the time. (even you just said this in your previous post lol) No one said anything about removing the enmity properties from Trick Attack.

I never said the job ability didn't have use. I said the opportunies to use it as a DD tool and its usefulness as an enmity tool are unreasonably limited.

This is not an overstatement.

[Nebo]

Well it's certainly not him. I explained how to SA a spinning mob earlier. But I'll state it again:
On anything that matters you wont have many melees. 2 or 3 Max. When you are hate capped, each action will spin the mob to that player. Line up opposite the player, time your Sneak Attack so the other player gets an attack round off (and subsequently pulls hate) before you land the Sneak Attack. It wont work every time as sometimes the other melee will get physically hit, which lowers enmity and may spin the mob back to you, but he stated it works most of the time. And that is true.

Noodles weighing in with the overstatements. I like.:rolleyes:

On anything that matters? What about soloing NMs? What about exp alliances? What about dual boxing? What about THF + Mage Duo? What about outside of abyssea (where we are one day going again) and its the perception of "lolTHF is there for TH We need a real DD"

You make the mistake of thinking that because you have a point of view, and you do things a certain way that that you are right, and everyone else are "Idiots and retards."

Since we are talking about what matters. Lots of things matter to me. Soloing matters to me, tanking matters to me, putting together exp alliances for my friends matters to me. There are a great many situations where Sneak Attack and Trick Attack are unneccessarily limited.

This is not an overstatement.

Lets try it this way. Since you said that I wanted to remove the enmity properties from Trick Attack, I'm fairly sure you didn't read what I suggested. Why don't you read it and tell me what you find unbalanced about it?

Given your standpoint I don't really see why you are so against it. Even if what you said was true, and it is so easy to land Sneak Attack and Trick attack all the time, my tweak wouldn't really change much except allow us to DD to Job Ability potential when the situation calls for it. A slight boost to tanking...A few percentage points here or there to account for all the misses.

[Laphine]

I liked this idea because i low man stuff a lot. So it's not even a mob turning or player moving issue.

When i first leveled thief with an exp ally it sucked though. I hate missing SA and i missed way too much. Today i can counter that by soloing my own mob, or disengaging sooner to attack the next mob. This is an ability that atmas provided, although i could still disengage back then, and actually did, but well, people whined ("assist the MA!").

So yeah, i would enjoy very much such a change one way or another.

I like ideas that change sa/ta damage too. If they kept the position restriction but provided a significant boost to their damage, i would not be against at all. According to SE thieves specialize in covert actions and aim for the perfect opportunity to attack from behind. This perfect oportunity should, of course, translate in good damage. With this in mind, for me it's unreasonable that thieves are not ws epeen kings.

Still, sa/ta today doesn't provide a big boost to our damage, and removing restrictions won't change it much. I'll even dare say that a thief that doesn't sa/ta isn't so bad of a thief. Before abyssea and lvs75+ i would laugh at such thing.

[noodles355]

That same argument can easily go the other way. If its a NIN or THF you've just gimped their damage.How? Innin? An Innin Nin is going to cap hate at a very similar speed to you, so you fall back to the capped hate - enmity not important argument. And another thief? Really? You realise they can do the same to you? If you have two thiefs the best thing to do is TA each other as much as you can. You really are now trying to argue for the sake of arguing.

Not as much as THF does. It is the very opposite of efficient when your 2 hour, your evasion, and tanking abilities, (not to mention your ability pull hate with shear melee DoT) are designed to work against using your fundamental Damage Dealing job abilities. How is your evasion working against you? You realise the more you evade, the less you have to cast shadows, the more you keep swinging, and the more damage you do? You're complaining about the 2hr? So we have a shit 2hr. Guess what? We're not the only job that does. Get over it. For pure standard melee DD and WS you don't think any other job has to sacrifice as much as thief? What about Ranger? A job that at 75 was often forced to sub /Drg ONLY for it's gimped 33% enmity shed high jump. A job who can never just go all out with attacks and WSs for fear of moving the mob. Rng has to sacrifice so much mroe damage potential than a tanking thief. Especially if you do like we are trying to show you and actually use your abilities instead of whining. Stop crying that it doesn't work because it does. The fact you can't make it work is a comment on you and not the Thief job.

It is definately unwanted/needed most of the time. (even you just said this in your previous post lol) No one said anything about removing the enmity properties from Trick Attack.

I never said the job ability didn't have use. I said the opportunies to use it as a DD tool and its usefulness as an enmity tool are unreasonably limited.

This is not an overstatement.It's usefulness as an enmity tool are limited, true. It's "unreasonable" usefulness as a DD tool aren't. That is an over statement. Or are you 100% correct in this topic and everyone else who's replied saying "Actually, I think it's fine" "I am able to do it fine" "I think you're over-reacting" is wrong? Because I wasn't the only one who said that. I'm apparantly just the only one who ruffled your feathers and got you in a huff about it.
I'm not sure where I took wanting to remove the enmity properties from trick attack from, sorry.

[noodles355]

Noodles weighing in with the overstatements. I like.:rolleyes:Hypocracy. "It never works QQ" is not an overstatement at all of course.

On anything that matters? What about soloing NMs? What about exp alliances? What about dual boxing? What about THF + Mage Duo? What about outside of abyssea (where we are one day going again) and its the perception of "lolTHF is there for TH We need a real DD" Anything that matters = Difficult alliance or party fights. Top tier Abyssea VNMs etc. Things that actually provide a challenge. Couldn't give two shits about easy 2box AF3 mat farming. All the mobs are so easy that they're usually dead before I've managed to cycle all the blm spells when I 3box Thf Whm Blm. I say all the mobs, just before you go "what about X mob?!" - every seal has at least one easy mob to fight. There is no need to fight those more difficult ones". Outside of abyssea falls into a similar catagory. How much non-abyssea stuff do you do that's actually challenging? Not much.

You make the mistake of thinking that because you have a point of view, and you do things a certain way that that you are right, and everyone else are "Idiots and retards." No, you made the reading comprehension mistake of thinking I called people that dont think like me, like yourself, who can't land trick attacks retards and idiots. I called people who move out of the way of trick attack repeatedly idiots and retards.

Since we are talking about what matters. Lots of things matter to me. Soloing matters to me, tanking matters to me, putting together exp alliances for my friends matters to me. There are a great many situations where Sneak Attack and Trick Attack are unneccessarily limited. No offence but I don't give two shits what matters to you. Guess what, many things matter to me too, however the comment "anything that matters" meant proper fights where killspeed and efficiency are actually important in a bigish group of 8-18 people. It's a general statement that is used to mean "On important or difficult HNM etc". That's why when people ask questions about which is better between two pieces of gear they will often be answered "in exp, this one, on anything that matters, that one".

Given your standpoint I don't really see why you are so against it.If it aint broke, why fix it? I'll say it again, the problem isn't the ability, it's your inability.

And I personally think being able to trick and sneak attack every 50-60 seconds seconds without any of the positioning troubles would be overpowered. Thief is not a pure DD. It is a hybrid job. Stop trying to make it a pure DD.

Party dynamics have changed, you are no longer able to play like it's 2005. Stop thinking you should be able to. Blms and Plds have gotten over it, it's time you did to. You sued to be able to ride the timers perfectly, now you can't. Big deal.

[Arcon]

Why don't you read it and tell me what you find unbalanced about it? [..] Given your standpoint I don't really see why you are so against it.

There's simply nothing wrong with THF. THF is a really well balanced job, and especially in the current state the game is in, it's a great job. It can tank as well as MNK and NIN, situationally better, while applying Treasure Hunter to the mob, which is a major factor imo. I'd prefer a THF tank over MNK or NIN for that reason any day. If THF had higher damage dealing capabilities (that increase Treasure Hunter even more than they have already), why use other tanks at all?

Some abilities simply weren't meant to work solo. And THF is one job that works heavily in that direction, it always has. The very idea behind Trick Attack is to be used to give someone else enmity, not to deal damage or increase theTreasure Hunter effect. I don't even think SE imagined THF to be as good a tank as it turned out to be, and I'm pretty sure after Abyssea it won't be anymore.

The only qualms I personally have about THF are Steal/Despoil and Mug. Apart from that I think the job performs very well in several categories, without robbing other jobs of their raison d'être. Some people complain about THF vs. DNC, and it's sad DNC can out damage thief imo, but I think it's because DNC is overpowered, in several aspects, not because THF is underpowered.

[thefinalrune]

Ha, I was going to make a post but Arcon seems to have hit every point I wanted to make.

In short, I really find no failings about thief at all outside of the practically complete uselessness and unreliability of Steal, Mug and Despoil.

[Nebo]

Hypocracy. "It never works QQ" is not an overstatement at all of course.


An overstatement of my overstatement. OVERSTATEMENTS FOR EVERYBODY!;)

In all seriousness I am fine with people disagreeing with me and thinking THF is fine. I love the job so its no suprise to me that others do. I know that THF has the potential to be VERY powerful. My only qualm is with the limit imposed on the opportunity to fulfil our current potential. I am definitely not "in a huff" about all of this. I quite enjoy the discussion.


If it aint broke, why fix it? I'll say it again, the problem isn't the ability, it's your inability.

lol it is definitely not my inability to land Sneak Attack or Trick Attack that has brought us to this discussion. It is because of my ability to really push the maximum limits of the Thief job that I see where those limitations lie.


No offence but I don't give two shits what matters to you

I do believe you just got the point. You're right. "Anything that matters" is a subjective idea.


There's simply nothing wrong with THF. THF is a really well balanced job, and especially in the current state the game is in, it's a great job.

Thief, as a job, is not fine simply because right now every one with a Weapon Skill that can critical is on god mode inside Abyssea. We are going to leave that place in the not so distant future. We need updates for what Thief will be moving forward.


And I personally think being able to trick and sneak attack every 50-60 seconds seconds without any of the positioning troubles would be overpowered. Thief is not a pure DD. It is a hybrid job. Stop trying to make it a pure DD.

I think you forget how hard it was to keep up with the (better designed) heavy hitter Damage Dealers before abysea, even being able to ride those timers to the max that their positional limitations would allow.

I think this and the next quote are the fundamental points we disagree on. Thief is not a hybrid job. It is a Damage Dealer with positional restrictions that can apply Treasure Hunter. Treasure Hunter is not a reason to make us a gimp DD. Are you happy with RNG being gimp now that they have bounty shot?

A hybrid job by design means that THF can do a lot of things and fill several roles. But we cannot. Our enmity abilities are mostly unwanted because they are not useful (even as admitted by you). Collaborator is really only useful for THF tanking (which we were not designed to do). Almost all of our other job abilities that aren't related to dealing damage are, well I would call them a joke, but it's really not funny anymore.

I agree with Arcon on this. THF is not a tank, was not designed to tank and can only tank inside abyssea because of atmas. This is true:


Some abilities simply weren't meant to work solo. And THF is one job that works heavily in that direction, it always has. The very idea behind Trick Attack is to be used to give someone else enmity, not to deal damage or increase theTreasure Hunter effect. I don't even think SE imagined THF to be as good a tank as it turned out to be, and I'm pretty sure after Abyssea it won't be anymore.

I absoutely agree. But trick attack isn't all that useful or wanted for its intended purpose. I disagree that this is the way it should be. Especially with the landscape of the game now and the way people play it.


The only qualms I personally have about THF are Steal/Despoil and Mug

That is a good example. Aurasteal, steal and despoil. Three abilities tied to one stupid long 5 minute recast timer (wtf?) with unreasonably low success rates (which kind of doesn't even matter because there is really not much in the game worth stealing). Out of these three, only aurasteal comes even remotely close to resembling something useful, but it still isn't because the recast timer is too long.

Mug. Enough said. Quite possibly the most useless ability in the game, on a 15 minute timer. lol.

Hide would be useful if it worked on more things.

Perfect Dodge. I've always thought this should be a job ability instead of a 2 hour. As a 2 hour it fails pretty hard.

Accomplice and collaborator were good ideas with failed implementation. Tied to the same timer, severe distance limitations. At least collaborator is still somewhat useful.

Flee is pretty good.

Even our prized evasion cannot stand on its own due to the evasion cap, the fact that we have no other defensive job abilities, and we have paper thin defense. It still requires shadows to be really exploited.

I left most of this stuff alone because our non DD stuff is such a train wreck it would be a lot of effort I don't think THF will get to fix.

Virtually everything useful we have is DD stuff. If THF is such a party oriented job and not meant to solo or tank, why do we have all this crazy evasion and a defensive 2 hour that we aren't designed to use to help a party? It's bad design.

I bring up sneak attack and trick attack because I think it would be the most subtle thing to tweak, while maintaining balance and creating a bit of synergy with the stuff we already have.

Square Enix has already said a few times that they are thinking of adjustments to bring THF to the front line and dictate the pace of battle. So with updates moving forward, those are the types of suggestions I make.

Besides, what is the point of a job adjustment update if it doesn't change anything?

[Arcon]

I think you forget how hard it was to keep up with the (better designed) heavy hitter Damage Dealers before abysea [..] I think this and the next quote are the fundamental points we disagree on. Thief is not a hybrid job. It is a Damage Dealer, with positional restrictions that can apply Treasure Hunter. Treasure Hunter is not a reason to make us a gimp DD.

And that's just that, disagreement. Why should a THF be able to do as much damage as a real DD? Yes, THF was a good DD, it was never a great one, and that's how it's supposed to be. Look at the name. Thief. We steal things. THF being on par with real DDs is almost as wrong as DNC being on par with real DDs. It kinda sounds to me like people wanting PLD to do more damage to fix it. Why not let a BRD do more damage? Give WHM Holy X and make it do 7k base damage. Why not? Because it doesn't fit their role-playing profile. Not every job is meant to be a great DD, where would be the versatility of that?


I agree with Arcon on this. THF is not a tank, was not designed to tank and can only tank inside abyssea because of atmas.

That's not quite true and it's not what I said. THF can tank just fine outside of Abyssea, and even could at 75. Charybdis for example could easily be duo'd by THF+BRD (and in fact not many other combinations). THF was always a great tank for lowman situations, just like inside Abyssea. Every job can tank inside Abyssea, that's nothing special, THF is only used there because of its decent damage potential and additional treasure hunter.

[Laphine]

I actually agree with nebo. I think we fit a DD role. Especially when most of the things that made us thieves in the past are useless now (steal and lockpick - although aura steal does fix steal somewhat).

Considering we are in fact dds, not receiving a single direct damage boost throughout the FFXI history makes no sense. The one dd boost we received was indirect (dagger damage upgrade) and helped everyone that used or wanted to use daggers. So it helped the dncs, aka, our nemesis, too. It was also a very long time ago, pretty much forgotten in our history.

Being able to sa/ta all the time isn't bad. If you have the kinematics spreadsheet, it's easy to see how awfully it affects our final damage. It's significance today is overshadowed by super dw/haste and crit and multi hit rates. Not only that, but a solo sa/ta round dps was never so much bigger than our usual melee rounds to begin with. So if take that sa/ta contribution on paper (simulating free usage of the JAs) is small, when we bring this to reality, things get even worse. We are humans after all, and we will lose time searching for the perfect spot to hit, and also, it's impossible for us to use the JAs exactly 50-60 secs. All this worsed by fatigue.

[Nebo]

That's not quite true and it's not what I said

I infered you meant atmas and abysea from this. Also the bolded part to mean that you didn't think THF was a viable tank outside abyssea. My apologies.


I don't even think SE imagined THF to be as good a tank as it turned out to be, and I'm pretty sure after Abyssea it won't be anymore.

However this...


THF can tank just fine outside of Abyssea, and even could at 75. Charybdis for example could easily be duo'd by THF+BRD (and in fact not many other combinations). THF was always a great tank for lowman situations, just like inside Abyssea.

...does not mean THF was a tank. It means that THF could survive and outlive charybdis with mage support. The more DD you add to that situation the more it starts to fall apart.

This also falls under one of your previous points of things THF was never intended or designed to do.


Look at the name. Thief. We steal things.

This part of Thief is a gimmic...a joke...a useless pile of rotting crap that the entire Thief community makes light hearted jokes about because that is all we can do. It is mind boggling that Square Enix thinks there is any utility at all within these abilities as they exist in FFXI.

This is NOT a good reason to make us a gimp DD or wannabe half ass tank struggling for identity.


Every job can tank inside Abyssea

This is also not true. Just ask Noodles about RNG:rolleyes:

[Khajit]

Sub sam, wear earth staff if not using kraken, seigan HOOOOOOOO.
Oh and I didn't see it mentioned when i glanced at things but people tend to stand at max melee distance from the mob making it impossible to TA them until you harass them into taking a step forward by which point you've lost 10x the damage you'd have gained from TA. Perhaps SE should give thf's max melee range an enhancement when TA is active.

[thefinalrune]

This is NOT a good reason to make us a gimp DD or wannabe half ass tank struggling for identity.
But thief isn't a DD or a tank. Sure, we can do these things, but its not what we're designed for. Thief isn't a hybrid job either. We're hate managers. Sure, that functionality has become less and less prevalent over the years, but that really is a failing of unbalanced party requirements and now a limit of a too shallow enmity cap. Sure, in Abyssea hate is more or less a moot point since everything dies so fast, and there are currently no standing need for hate management in most all end game scenarios outside of Aby either. But, that's not to say that won't change. Until we see what SE has in store for level 99 end game its hard to know exactly how thief will fit into everything.

I would love to do more damage with my thief, but I don't expect that to happen. Its just not in our nature. If we were meant to be DDs we wouldn't be given such low damage weapons for primary use. And our own ability to generate hate is extremely limited vs. our ability to move it around so I really don't think we're intended to be tanks. Just because the community is dead set on making jobs be other roles it doesn't mean SE should alter them to fit those roles. Everyone wants WAR to be a DD, and they are, a damn good one, but SE continually releases updates to make them more tank like. That's the role they're given. They're tanks that generates enmity via damage more than abilities. Like how a PLD is a tank that generates enmity via abilities and spells instead of damage.

Thief is a hate management job. This is what I would like to see SE put more effort into. Separate the recast timers on collaborator and accomplice, reduce their recast times and increase their strength. Give us even more hate management tools. Couple that with a rise in the enmity ceiling and we may find our proper place again in party situations.

[Nebo]

But thief isn't a DD or a tank. Sure, we can do these things, but its not what we're designed for. Thief isn't a hybrid job either. We're hate managers.

Ignoring the fact that hate managment job abilities are virtually useless, if one were just to compare job abilities, one would conclude that Thief is a Damage Dealer, not a Hate manager.

Two abilities that effect enmity: Trick Attack, Accomplorator (lets also not forget that this is a very recent addition).

Not to mention the fact that the enmity you transfer with trick attack depends soley on the DAMAGE that it does

Versus abilities associated with dealing damage:

Sneak Attack, Trick Attack, Triple Attack, Assassin, Assassin's Charge, Feint, Ambush, Dual Wield, Critical Attack Bonus.

Most of our group one merits are DD related: Sneak Attack recast, Trick Attack recast, Triple Attack Rate.

Most of our group two merits are DD related: Ambush, Assassin's charge, feint.

As a matter of fact, nothing in those merits has anything to do with enmity manipulation at all. Unless you count hide recast, which sheds hate on a very limited number of things (or doesn't work on "anything that matters" as Noodles put)

Given this, I think it is fair to conclude that Thief is a damage dealer first, with some very slight utility in the enmity area. No where near enough to call us an "enmity manipulation" specialist as a job role. Not even close.

[Khajit]

ITT: Full aurore thf telling us that THf isn't a DD.

[Arcon]

Thief is a support job. It's there to enhance the efficiency of the party. Support job doesn't have to cast buffs or heal, that's a common misconception. A Thief literally supports the party, in part by controlling the flow of the battle (Accollaborator, Sneak/Trick Attack), in part by enhancing the quality/quantity of drops (Treasure Hunter, Gilfinder, Steal/Despoil, Mug), in part by buffing the party (Conspirator, indirectly with Feint and Aura Steal), in part by providing a backup tank (Evasion Bonus, highest Evasion and Parrying skill in the game), and in part by dealing damage.

Yes, thief is a damage dealer. But the world isn't just black and white. It's not just "damage dealer" and "not damage dealer", but lots of gray shades. Thief can deal damage, so can a Warrior, or a Bard, or a Monk, or a White Mage. They're all varying degrees of damage dealers. Now people express the desire to make Thieves stronger damage dealers. May I ask why? Why do you feel your Thief should be doing more damage? So it can be as strong as a Warrior? Why don't Bards ask for the same bonus? Or Summoners?

Thief is already a strong job, stronger than it should be in my opinion. But most of that stems from Abyssea and will hopefully be adjusted with the next update.

[Nebo]

Thief is a support job.

We disagree on this. Thief is a support job? That's reaching, my friend.


A Thief literally supports the party, in part by controlling the flow of the battle (Accollaborator, Sneak/Trick Attack), in part by enhancing the quality/quantity of drops (Treasure Hunter, Gilfinder, Steal/Despoil, Mug), in part by buffing the party (Conspirator, indirectly with Feint and Aura Steal),

This is really reaching. Accomplorator, Sneak/Trick attack aren't controlling the flow of any party.

The only one that applies to your second grouping is Treasure Hunter. Come on. Really? You are using gilfinder, steal and mug to argue that THF is a support job? Seriously? :confused:

Ok I'll bite. Gilfinder does not work in parties, only solo (even though we were designed not to solo lol). Steal, despoil and mug only steal (useless) things and give them to you, not your party.

Conspirator was just added, but they just had to put that "Won't work on the monster's current enmity target" extra Thief fail limitation on it before they gave it to us.

Aurasteal is also a pretty big stretch to be listed as a support ability. But I could see someone perceiving a lame 5 minute recast dispel (that for some strange reason was attached to steal) being a "support ability" in some sense.

Aside from the fact that it is no longer very relevant, Feint is pretty good.

I just can't see where you are getting the idea that Thief is a support job from? Or why you are so against the damage that we do?

Think about what you are saying. By this definition Warior is a support job as well.


Provoke, which, in my oppinion, is a more useful enmity tool than trick attack or accomplorator, with a short enough recast to be relevant. One might also count the damage they put out/retaliation as a utility tool for tanking and holding enmity.

Warcy to buff the party, and merits to give that ability a TP bonus effect.

Blood Rage which enhances critical hit rate and critical hit damage by 20%(20 F*cking Percent) for party members within area of effect. (This should have gone to THF in my oppinion)

Tomahawk to lower special defenses of damage resistant monsters.

Heck they even have like 5 or 6 Great Axe weaponskills that enfeeble the mob in various ways. Evasion Down, Defense down, Attack Down, Slow. They even have one that Lowers accuracy, weakens attacks and defense, and impairs evasion all in one.


Sorry, it looks like we're going to have to nerf Warrior in this next update because it is clearly a support job and deals WAY too much damage.

Edit: I'm going to put this in here because it needs pointing out. Damage is the yard stick by which the utility of a melee class is measured. It seems to be a prerequisit. Damage 1st, utility second. You can see this happening with many jobs.

Look at the state of PLD. A Metric TON of utility and useful job abilities for tanking. Lacking a little too much in the damage (or at least that's how its perceived) and very few people use them for much of anything.

DNC. When the job first came out, people wouldn't use them for anything. Even though they were an endless, MPless melee healing battery, they didn't really become perceived as worth a slot until they got their DD abilities super buffed.

THF used to be TH bitch, tag the mob and sit out of the hard stuff. Now we are powerful enough in abyssea to be in there hitting and tanking the mob.

They are trying to "fix" RNG with gimmic-like utility (bounty shot updates) It isn't working because their opportunity to deal damage still suffers.

If you aren't dealing real damage as a melee class, odds are people aren't going to care very much about your utility.

[noodles355]

Thief/Rogue Has never been a pure heavy DD in final fantasy games. They have always been lighter DDs who you brought along for extra utility. The exception to this is probably Zidane in FF9 but he had to be pretty powerful as he was the main character and you couldn't swap him out.

I don't know why you think thief is purely a DD and should be able to keep up in DD potential with the other pure DD jobs. Thief style jobs have almost always followed the trend of a lighter DD, trading off pure power for speed and utility. FFXI is no exception.

[Pesh]

Or you can have an arrangement with one of your damage dealers where after you Trick Attack him or her, you instantly Collaborator. If they're a decent enough DD, you're going to steal more hate then you placed on them.

Also find the guy you know is going to be pulling the mob's attention and stand ACROSS from him. You'll land more Sneak Attacks.

The biggest problem is the hate cap. It's set entirely too low for Abyssea standard and DDs are able to cap out hate way too easy. This cause a problem because the mob spins around not really knowing who to attack and potentially screws up your SA.

I'm talking from an event standpoint with LS members that I know and trust. Exp wise, I don't even bother fighting the same mob as my alliance, just solo 2 1/2 of them while the other idiots monkey around with one .I open with a SARS, take the mob down 50-75%, then just switch to Evi during Aftermath while SA is down.

Is positioning annoying?: Yes, but it keeps the job from getting passive and boring.
Are you overreacting a little?: Also yes.

[Nebo]

Thief/Rogue Has never been a pure heavy DD in final fantasy games. They have always been lighter DDs who you brought along for extra utility. The exception to this is probably Zidane in FF9 but he had to be pretty powerful as he was the main character and you couldn't swap him out.

Not true. Locke was pretty powerful in FF6. Zidane also as you mentioned in FF9. There was no Thief in quite a few of the FF titles. In all the customizabe ones (like tactics) Thief can be leveld up with weapons and armor to be very powerful DD's.

Ignoring that, think about this utility you are talking about for a second. In almost every other FF game with a thief class or steal ability, stealing was a way to get the most powerful weapons and armor in the entire game. If we could steal D rings from KB, abjurations from Fafhog and a completed Mandau from Dynamis Lord this argument will be valid.

Every specific "Thief" ability in Final Fantasy 11 is a joke. I'm not sure how you can argue that. They have tried and failed to give us more relevant steal stuff. Aurasteal, Despoil, Accomplice etc. Collaborator is useful for THF tanking but is someting we aren't designed or intended to do.

The FFXI develepment team has made a pretty clear statement on this with their updates over the years. They took everything that was valuable out of chests and coffers THF could lock pick (and haven't added anything for lock picking since). They nerfed the stealing of beastcoins from beastmen. Mug steals like 3 gil on a 15 minute recast (That's ok though. They just STOPPED giving gil to NMs for us to Mug). Aurasteal, for some wierd reason, was just arbitrarily attached to (item)Steal (this should have never happened). Despoil is a heaping pile of failure that, just to add insult to ridiculousness, also shares a recast timer with steal. Accomplice and Collaborator share the same recast timer....its just absurd.

A thread on this page said it best. We are not Thieves. Our steal abilities are trash. All the other incarnations of Thief in past FF games are laughing their asses off at FFXI Thief.

Clearly Square Enix thought that powerful Thief utility like this is over powered in FFXI. That's probably why they decided to go more the route of DD with FFXI THF instead.

Obligatory FF11 is not any other FF game and is really not comparable in the way you are attempting to do.


I don't know why you think thief is purely a DD and should be able to keep up in DD potential with the other pure DD jobs. Thief style jobs have almost always followed the trend of a lighter DD, trading off pure power for speed and utility. FFXI is no exception.

I find it fascinating that you think that there is such a mythical creature as a pure DD job. Or that such a thing would be a reason to purposefully make thief a gimped damage dealer. No job is purely a DD. Every DD job has support and job specific utility abilities.

If you just look at all of our DD specific abilites compared to everything else, I don't see how one can conclude that we are not designed as a DD job.

[Arcon]

This is really reaching. Accomplorator, Sneak/Trick attack aren't controlling the flow of any party.

They are. The fact that currently (especially inside Abyssea) the flow of a battle is so chaotic (mainly due to flaws within the enmity system) changes nothing in that regard. The capabilities are there.


The only one that applies to your second grouping is Treasure Hunter. Come on. Really? You are using gilfinder, steal and mug to argue that THF is a support job? Seriously? :confused:

Yes, because those are supporting abilities. How else would you classify them?


Ok I'll bite. Gilfinder does not work in parties, only solo (even thought we were designed not to solo lol). Steal, despoil and mug only steal (useless) things and give them to you, not your party.

I didn't know about Gilfinder being solo only, and to be honest I'm not quite sure I should believe it. I'll have to test it myself later. Regardless, those abilities can hardly be classified in any other way. On an interesting (although probably unintended) note, Steal, Despoil and Mug all give some enmity and can be used as such. They're also nice claiming tools, especially Mug if your inventory is full, which actually would qualify as supporting the party.


Conspirator was just added, but they just had to put that "Won't work on the monster's current enmity target" extra Thief fail limitation on it before they gave it to us.

Aurasteal is also a pretty big stretch to be listed as a support ability. But I could see someone perceiving a lame 5 minute recast dispel (that for some strange reason was attached to steal) being a "support ability" in some sense.

Aside from the fact that it is no longer very relevant, Feint is pretty good.

I just can't see where you are getting the idea that Thief is a support job from? Or why you are so against the damage that we do?

I get the idea from the things you just listed, and from what I said before.


Think about what you are saying. By this definition Warior is a support job as well.

As I said in the post you quoted yourself, it's not just "damage dealer" or "not damage dealer", but various shades of gray. It's also the reason why some heavy damage dealers aren't the same as others. Not one job was designed to be purely damage dealer, with nothing else. WAR has Defender, MNK has Dodge and Counter, DRG has healing capabilities, SAM has Seigan/Third Eye, DRK has Dread Spikes, and so on. The question is simply where do we draw the line?

THF can barely deal comparable damage inside Abyssea, and there they still have a huge boost. Even in current outside-Abyssea content, THF performs subpar when compared to actual damage dealers. Imagine what it would be like on Lv90+ content without Atma and Cruor buffs.


Edit: I'm going to put this in here because it needs pointing out. Damage is the yard stick by which the utility of a melee class is measured. It seems to be a prerequisit. Damage 1st, utility second. You can see this happening with many jobs.

Sadly, this is often true. Especially lately, the strategic value of certain jobs and tactics is discarded in favor of brute force, because it works. It didn't use to, and I hope that will change again. On Byakko, you couldn't just throw everything you had on it and hope to survive. Well, you could, but wouldn't lead anywhere. These days you can. Will it stay that way? I don't know, but I certainly hope not. This is where it all becomes a matter of opinion again. I was very happy playing FFXI the way it was, and I don't see a reason to change it.

[Dragen]

The change to Trick Attack I'd like to see is it just allowing you to select the nearby party member you're applying the TA to. So long as they're nearby, say in Collaborator range, you can select them, then when the TA hits, they gain the enmity for it. That being said, I'd really like the range for Collaborator and Accomplice to get a much-needed increase. Aura Steal getting it's own seperate timer/ability away from Steal would be nice also.

[Nebo]

Yes, because those are supporting abilities. How else would you classify them?

Personally, I would classify them as useless. But to be classified as a support ability, I would think they should probably......support something?


I didn't know about Gilfinder being solo only, and to be honest I'm not quite sure I should believe it. I'll have to test it myself later.

It is. Lame isn't it? It's not that big a deal, though. Gilfinder isn't really relevant for anything.

Edit: To save you the trouble of tesing it:


Q: By having a thief in the party, how much increase is there in the Gil/Item drop after defeating a monster?

A: We are unable to give too many details with regards to the value of points. However, if the thief is skilled with the Treasure Hunter job ability, it may not be a bad idea to adventure with a thief. Also, with regard to gil, when a thief joins a party, there are no changes to the amount of gil obtained.


Regardless, those abilities can hardly be classified in any other way. On an interesting (although probably unintended) note, Steal, Despoil and Mug all give some enmity and can be used as such. They're also nice claiming tools, especially Mug if your inventory is full, which actually would qualify as supporting the party.

When you have to reach this hard to find uses and classifcations for these....they give enmity? lol. I agree, a good THF will use them as claiming tools (with severely limited range) but that doesn't mean they are support abilities.


As I said in the post you quoted yourself, it's not just "damage dealer" or "not damage dealer", but various shades of gray. It's also the reason why some heavy damage dealers aren't the same as others. Not one job was designed to be purely damage dealer, with nothing else. WAR has Defender, MNK has Dodge and Counter, DRG has healing capabilities, SAM has Seigan/Third Eye, DRK has Dread Spikes, and so on. The question is simply where do we draw the line?


All very good points. We just disagree where that line should be drawn. ALL of those jobs you listed are great DD's with defensive, support and utility abilities. Why should the same make THF a gimp DD?

I've always been of the mind set that most players that play melee classes want to be relatively competetive in terms of damage dealing capabilities, but differentiated with playstyle and job utility.


THF can barely deal comparable damage inside Abyssea, and there they still have a huge boost. Even in current outside-Abyssea content, THF performs subpar when compared to actual damage dealers. Imagine what it would be like on Lv90+ content without Atma and Cruor buffs.

This is exactly why I want this adjustment to Sneak Attack and Trick Attack. I'll point out again that this will NOT increase the damage potential of THF at all. It will allow us to utilize our current potiential easier (which as you noted is still lower than other heavy DD's). It will allow more flexibility when everything at an event is very chaotic, or when playing solo/duo, or in the abscence of cooperation to still use our fundamental job abilities.


Sadly, this is often true. Especially lately, the strategic value of certain jobs and tactics is discarded in favor of brute force, because it works. It didn't use to, and I hope that will change again. On Byakko, you couldn't just throw everything you had on it and hope to survive. Well, you could, but wouldn't lead anywhere. These days you can. Will it stay that way? I don't know, but I certainly hope not. This is where it all becomes a matter of opinion again. I was very happy playing FFXI the way it was, and I don't see a reason to change it.

It has been this way for a long time. Good linkshells have been using DD tanks YEARs before Abyssea because they can get the job done and deal more DMG than PLDs.

Even longer for THF when it was popular strategy to just have them tag HNMs with TH and sit out the rest of the fight. What job wants that to be their role? Furthermore, THF enmity utility is directly tied to its damage. Trick Attack utilty depends on the damage it does. THF being a gimped DD would just makes us less useful for our intended purpose and even less useful for killing things.

If SE introduces more battles, events and NMs where positional strategy is effective, going by my suggested tweaks, it would still be much more effective for THF to utilze SA and TA with positional enhancements or use stance B.

We just can't play anymore like its 2005 and be able to keep up. When the game goes outside of abyssea and challenging high level endgame content comes out without atmas like we have now...THF will be screwed.

Like this voidwatch stuff where it looks like Treasure Hunter will be useless. Rewards coming from treasure chests, enhanced only by !! weakness procs etc. Greeeeaaaaaat:rolleyes:

[Zyla420]

this has been debated for the longest time, and i can see why. thf dd capability in most of the game content is sub par in comparison to most of the other melee/dd jobs. the reason? we're classified as melee/support/utility, and that's where the problem lies.

fact: we deal mediocre dmg in comparison to solid dd jobs.
fact: our utility abilities are some of the most useless abilities in the game.
fact: we have a grand total of 3 real support abilities, 2 of which are pretty much useless at this point. (we have 5 if you count TA and aurasteal)

imo either 1 of 3 things need to happen to balance this discrepancy out:

A. increase our overall dmg potential to at least come close to sold dd's.

B. drastically increase the usefulness of the utility abilities we have, and add more to compensate for the lack of dd.

C. give us more support abilities that are actually relevant at this point in the game.

and here's the kicker guys, i have solutions to for all 3.

A. in addition to the OPs suggestions for SA and TA, a new self buff ability on a 1 min timer that will double the effectiveness of your next SA or TA. call it deadly focus, or whatever name ya want, point is the whole idea of thf's SA and TA is they study the enemy finding a weak point and striking that spot for spike dmg. this would be like focusing extra hard to make that strike twice as lethal.

B. raise the base success rate of steal to 25-35% chance, put it on a 1 min timer, and add in special ex items that can only be stolen from mobs that can be used to trade to a npc for special thf only gear/items/ammo/whatever that helps with our utility in general (i.e. key ring belt?). also separate the timer from despoil (should also be on 1 min timer), which should also see a drastic increase in effectiveness. add more things to chests and coffers that only thf can get that can be used in pt situations for additional benefits (i.e. aoe based ex items that can only be used on thf to boost the pt's parameters, kinda like the temp items but aoe).

edit: also adjust mug to a 2 min timer, and allow it to steal cruror from aby mobs. (nothing broken, 200-300 cruror on normal mobs, 2-3k on NMs or somethin)

C. give us more support abilities that debilitate the enemy (att down, def down, acc down, enemy tp wipe, etc...) that run in line with the stealing theme or that stack on SA or TA (2 short term defuffs every one min ain't that bad or broken). steal again should be on a 1 min timer, mainly for aurasteal. increase our marksmanship ability to B or B+, and give us access to new status bolts that induce stun, silence, addle, tp drain, mp drain, amnesia, etc...

edit: also thought about alot of the daggers thf can use that have add effect procs that would be useful to a support role, so maybe a new job trait that boosts proc rates on these types of weapons by maybe 25% or so?

only one of these options would need to be implemented to balance thf out a bit more, but these are just my own opinions and nobody is inclined to agree or disagree with them. just the things i feel that would help thf as a whole.

[Babekeke]

I don't know about that, when I announce a TA generally the player in front of me runs like hell, including the tank. How about an autostun effect on the to be affected player like is inflicted by an offensive spell where they can't move or take any meaningful action?

MNKs tank with counterstance; WARs (mainly in abyssea, but are sometimes used for tanking outside of abby) use retalliation for extra tp; SAMs like to have the mob facing them for extra damage from their ws (if they merited overwhelm); No reason for any PLD to not want hate; DNC is often unused, but make a great evasion tank with fan dance and are generally happy to take hate; BST when set up for pet tanking welcome extra hate (if /nin) so they can stick it all onto their pet via Snarl; DRG have high jump and super jump to allow them to avoid large amounts of hate when it's unwanted; THF if you have another thf in the pt then you should arrange to TA each other alternately.

That's 8 out of the 20 jobs, and I didn't include nin, who might prefer to be using Innin, but if fighting anything significant (NMs and such), they would possibly be the designated tank so they should welcome a TA. When you're not fighting something significant (regular exp mobs etc.) they tend to die so fast that 1 recast of utsu:Ni, or 1 use of seigan third eye is sufficient to last out the fight, so your DDs should just STFU and suck it up. If they consiistantly keep moving, either kick them; leave yourself; or just sit down and watch them kill mobs for you until they cotton on and listen XD

[noodles355]

Not true. Locke was pretty powerful in FF6. Zidane also as you mentioned in FF9. There was no Thief in quite a few of the FF titles. In all the customizabe ones (like tactics) Thief can be leveld up with weapons and armor to be very powerful DD's.That doesn't change the fact that the purpose of the thief, with their base stats and abilities always follow the same pattern: They are fast attackers, with less physical strength, who also have utility abilities like steal and flee. This is always the case. Even excptions like Zidane and Locke still have those utility abilities. The only reason they are made physically strong is because they are the main character and you have to use them. Although in the case of Zidane, Amarant, Freya and Steiner are still more powerful. And more useful.


Ignoring that, think about this utility you are talking about for a second. In almost every other FF game with a thief class or steal ability, stealing was a way to get the most powerful weapons and armor in the entire game. If we could steal D rings from KB, abjurations from Fafhog and a completed Mandau from Dynamis Lord this argument will be valid.Congratulations, you've pin-pointed bad game design. Steal is useless, well done sherlock. That doesn't change the fact that that is still how thief was designed for this game. And actually as far as utility goes, the argument is valid. What is treasure hunter? You may not be able to steal an abjuration from fafhogg, but your Treasure Hunter makes it significantly easier to get those drops.


Every specific "Thief" ability in Final Fantasy 11 is a joke. I'm not sure how you can argue that. They have tried and failed to give us more relevant steal stuff. Aurasteal, Despoil, Accomplice etc. Collaborator is useful for THF tanking but is someting we aren't designed or intended to do.I'm not sure I ever argued against that.


The FFXI develepment team has made a pretty clear statement on this with their updates over the years. They took everything that was valuable out of chests and coffers THF could lock pick (and haven't added anything for lock picking since). They nerfed the stealing of beastcoins from beastmen. Mug steals like 3 gil on a 15 minute recast (That's ok though. They just STOPPED giving gil to NMs for us to Mug). Aurasteal, for some wierd reason, was just arbitrarily attached to (item)Steal (this should have never happened). Despoil is a heaping pile of failure that, just to add insult to ridiculousness, also shares a recast timer with steal. Accomplice and Collaborator share the same recast timer....its just absurd. You do realise that nerfing coffers, lockpicking and steal wasn't because they wanted to move thief in a different direction right? You do realise they were anti-RMT measures? And the coffer nerf was to make getting your AF easier without some thief taking your coffer every 30 minutes.


A thread on this page said it best. We are not Thieves. Our steal abilities are trash. All the other incarnations of Thief in past FF games are laughing their asses off at FFXI Thief.What's your point? Se designed us as a utility job and light DD. Yes they designed us badly, but that's how they designed us. We are not heavy DDs. Stop thinking we should be.


Clearly Square Enix thought that powerful Thief utility like this is over powered in FFXI. That's probably why they decided to go more the route of DD with FFXI THF instead.

Obligatory FF11 is not any other FF game and is really not comparable in the way you are attempting to do.DD route? What DD route? Everything they've added for thief has been more utility than DD after Lv76 with the sole exception of Dual Wield.




I find it fascinating that you think that there is such a mythical creature as a pure DD job. Or that such a thing would be a reason to purposefully make thief a gimped damage dealer. No job is purely a DD. Every DD job has support and job specific utility abilities.There are jobs that were designed to be primarilly a DD. There are jobs that were designed to be less of a DD whilst adding more utility. Thief is the latter. Maybe my use of "pure" was wrong, but "primarilly" works.


If you just look at all of our DD specific abilites compared to everything else, I don't see how one can conclude that we are not designed as a DD job.[/quote]
Warrior
DD specific abilites: Berserk, Warcry, Agressor, Restraint, Blood Rage, Warriors Charge
Utility abilities: Retalliation, Provoke, Defender, Tomahawk
More DD abilities than utility.
Monk:
DD spefici: Boost, Focus, Chi Blast, Footwork, Formless Strikes, Impetus
Utility: Dodge, Chakra, Countersstance, Mantra, Perfect counter
More DD than utility
Dark Knight:
DD specific: Last Resort, Souleater, Dark Seal, Diabolic Eye, Nether Void
Utility: Arcane Circle, Arcane Crest
More DD than utility.

Thief!:
Pure DD: Sneak Attack, Assassin's Charge,
Utility: Trick Attack, Flee, Mug, Hide, Acocmplice, Collabarator, Feint, Despoil, Conspirator.
Significantly more utility than DD abilities. I don't know how you can argue our primary role was obviously that of a DD. We have much more (theoretically) utility than DD potential. The fact that most of it is irrelevant is down to poor game design doesn't change the fact that that is how thief was designed.

[Phen]

I really dont mind us going more USEFULL utility and light dd (something like dnc is to whm as thf is to rdm). Despoil was a step this way... but besides way to long a cast its functionally useless on anything you would want to use it on (read: any nm)

Really though what we need are group/solo stances. Many of the other jobs get things that function this way: nin/sam stances, whm--misery/solace war-various abilities, monk-various abilities, sch-arts.

[Nebo]

Congratulations, you've pin-pointed bad game design. Steal is useless, well done sherlock.

Thanks :). I'd like to think it was obvious but some people just like to keep arguing that this "utility" is somehow a good reason for keeping THF as some kind of weak Damage Dealer.


And actually as far as utility goes, the argument is valid. What is treasure hunter? You may not be able to steal an abjuration from fafhogg, but your Treasure Hunter makes it significantly easier to get those drops.

You are really getting the hang of these overstatements. I'm proud of you :). What is Bounty shot? Did that fix RNG?

Should THF just be happy and secure in their "utility" now that the Developement Team just gave Treasure Hunter (The ONE thing that groups actually WANT us for) to RNG and BST as well? And just gave RNG the ability to enhance it without feeding TP and safely out of AOE range?


You do realise that nerfing coffers, lockpicking and steal wasn't because they wanted to move thief in a different direction right? You do realise they were anti-RMT measures?

The fact that Square Enix has SAID themselves that they are looking to increase our damage dealing potential and looking for ways to allow us to take control on the front line is what makes me think they are moving THF in a different direction.

Everyone realises that those nerfs were anti RMT measures. RMT were able to exploit them and SE concluded that the level at which these abilities could be exploited by FFXI THF was OVERPOWERED. Does this somehow make those things NOT a direct and significant nerf to Thief utility? Or does it just make it ok that they took those things away without compensating?


What's your point? Se designed us as a utility job and light DD. Yes they designed us badly, but that's how they designed us. We are not heavy DDs. Stop thinking we should be.

"Thief is designed badly but it is not a heavy DD! Stop thinking we should be!" lmao.

I find this wildly amusing that you think you are an authority on the subject such that your oppinion is fact and you should be able to tell people how they should think (or not think) about it.

I don't recall anyone in this thread asking for THF to be a "heavy DD" either. The sugestions that I made wouldn't even increase our damage potential by .0000001%. They would simply allow us more opportunites to fulfil our current DD potential when the situation calls for it (which is still lower than your so-called "heavy DD's").


DD route? What DD route? Everything they've added for thief has been more utility than DD after Lv76 with the sole exception of Dual Wield.

So quick to try and prove me wrong that you forget simple things. Critical Attack Bonus? Need I mention the awesome DD stats on our Empyrian Armor? Powerful Magian daggers? Enhances critical hit damage armor? THF specific Dual Wield gear? Increases triple attack damage gear? And native dual wield.

Dual Wield and Critical Attack bonus alone are significant steps in the DD direction.


There are jobs that were designed to be primarilly a DD. There are jobs that were designed to be less of a DD whilst adding more utility. Thief is the latter. Maybe my use of "pure" was wrong, but "primarilly" works.

This should be fun.


Warrior
DD specific abilites: Berserk, Warcry, Agressor, Restraint, Blood Rage, Warriors Charge
Utility abilities: Retalliation, Provoke, Defender, Tomahawk
More DD abilities than utility

Thief!:
Pure DD: Sneak Attack, Assassin's Charge,
Utility: Trick Attack, Flee, Mug, Hide, Acocmplice, Collabarator, Feint, Despoil, Conspirator..
Lets try to make your lists a little more accurate shall we? Let us compare WAR and THF:

Warrior


WAR DD: Berserk, Aggressor, Restraint, Warriors Charge, Double Attack, Critical Attack Bonus, Fencer (DO WAR's use this? Lets count it anyway)


WAR Support/Utility:Blood Rage, Warcy, (can't put conspirator here unless we put these here), provoke, defender, retaliation, Tomohawk


WAR DD: 8 Vs WAR Support/Utility: 6

Thief:


THF DD: Sneak Attack, Trick Attack (We list Trick Attack here because it deals direct damage and its utility depends soley on the DAMAGE that it does), Triple Attack, Assassin, Critical Attack Bonus, Dual Wield, Ambush, Assassin's Charge.


THF Support/Utility: Treasure Hunter, Flee, Hide, {Aurasteal/Steal/Despoil}(Count as one because they have the same timer), Feint, Accomplorator (Accomplorator counts as one because they share a recast timer), Conspirator, mug, gilfinder.

THF DD: 8 VS THF Support/Utility: 9


Significantly more utility than DD abilities.

Unfortunately this is not the case (in theory OR in practice). And the fact that most of THF utility stuff is either useless or extremely limited in use compared to EVERYTHNG WAR gets for support/utility being quite useful should tell you something about what the true spread is between DD and utility for Thief.

The fact is, that in practice, we are more DD than utility. You say we should be utility and gimp DD. I say a slight DD tweak to SA and TA or stances to enhance them makes more sense. We disagree and that's fine.


I don't know how you can argue our primary role was obviously that of a DD.

That is because you are trying make a one sided argument that intentionally ignores the big picture. Not to mention grossly understating THF specific DD abilities to make it.


We have much more (theoretically) utility than DD potential. The fact that most of it is irrelevant is down to poor game design doesn't change the fact that that is how thief was designed.

We don't have more theoretical anything. Even Warrior has more ACTUAL utility than Thief does. You can cry to the heavens about the fact that we have more utility-like abilities and ignore the fact that they are useless if you want. That doesn't make your point valid.

Poor game design....Poor Thief design is the very definition of a good reason to want job adjustments for change.

[noodles355]

It's not an overstatement. And the fact that you think it is shows your lack of knowlage about how Treasure Hunter used to work. There were conclusive tests done years ago that showed the old Treasure hunter traits both added a 50% increase in drop rates, whilst the +1 items (gloves, dagger) added 1%. Two traits: 50% + 50% = 100%. Adding treasure hunter would double the chance at drops. I would call double pretty significant. Wouldn't you?

The fact that Square Enix has SAID themselves that they are looking to increase our damage dealing potential and looking for ways to allow us to take control on the front line is what makes me think they are moving THF in a different direction.Link please

Regarding the RMT nerfs: Did I ever state my opinion on the nerfing of those abilities? Did I ever make clear my position? Did I ever say it was OK? No I fucking didn't. Stop inferring such absolute horseshit from my posts. I made statements. I did not give my opinions on those statements.

Fair enough I missed off Critical Attack Bonus. But ability/trait only the majority of what we recieved were utility abilities.
And Thief is still not a heavy DD, even with all these buffs. Equally geared and played it will not put out the same numbers as an equivilent War, Mnk, Drg etc inside abyssea, and those + Sam and Drk outside.

I love how in your attempt to "balance" my list of DD vs Support abilities, you've taken it down from significantly more utility than DD abilities to just "more. As hard as you tried, Thief still has more utility abilities. What does that say?

Yes, in practice, due to bad game design, we are more DD than utility. But that is purely because of poor game design and doesn't change the fact that theoretically we are meant to be more utility based. Are you new to FFXI? If so you may not have realised yet how SE works, and that they will be ignoring the fact the utility side of our job is stupid, and continue to try and buff us in this way. They will never say "screw this" and just focus on more DD abilities. Yes of course we want them too, but they won't. But hey, maybe I'm being unfair, maybe the new dev team will realise the problems. But I would still wager money on them instead of trying to make us shift more to the DD side, that they will keep trying to buff the utility side to achieve their original goal of a light DD and utility job.

[Zyla420]

and everyone completely ignores my post for the sake of arguing.... lovely lol.
btw any testing done on TH has yet to be proven even now, like what? 10 years into the game? thus the TH testing done is highly non-conclusive. and i'll tell you from personal experience, old TH traits do not increase drop rates by 50% each, if they did everyone would have everything and servers would've shut down years ago cause nobody would be playing anymore...

[Nebo]

Link Please


[...]Thief will instead be able to direct the flow party through the use of its techniques. This will include new ways to manage Enmity, allowing the player to more freely raise and lower Enmity and avoid dangerous situations. For endgame content, the Thief may also be improved to deal out more damage[...]

http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=21769

This one was part of the whole plan they outlined for all the jobs when they first announced the level cap increase.

I'm sure you are right in that that they have no intentions of shifting their vision of our fundamental purpose or giving up on giving us more crappy utility/enmity stuff that doesn't work. Maybe they aren't aware that we find it so useless? Maybe they think its good?

I came to terms with that part of THF being what it is years ago. I don't make suggestions to fix it, not because I wouldn't like to see them become useful, but because it would take a MAJOR overhaul of the THF job to do that...I don't think we are going to see that kind of love. I would just like something along the lines of the slight DD tweak in the OP so that we can make use of SA and TA more often.

Whether or not SE will see it my way? You're probably right. They probably won't. But like the man said "If you don't ask you don't get." I would rather try and bring suggestion/discussion here where at least I know they read from time to time, rather than just complain about it elswhere but do nothing.

Looking at this thread, one can see that lots of players have very different oppinions of what Thief's identity is. "Its a utility job, no its a support job, no its a hate manager, no its a damage dealer, no its a Tank, no its a Hybrid" etc etc.

My oppinion as to why this is happening is that the game keeps changing, as it must, and the updates that SE has given us don't address the problems that come with that natural evolution of the game. So as a job we have a lot of things that aren't so useful and a lot of things we can sort of do that we aren't very good at.

Even our prized Treasure Hunter crutch that we could always count on to be wanted is being given away.

My issue with Sneak Attack and Trick Attack is just a result of the way that I play. I solo and Duo as much high level content as I can. On my own time. To make gil, to get gear, to finish Empyrian Armor, work on Twashtar etc. So to me, the "party only limitations" are in my face every day.

It is definitely easier to land them if you have a steady group that you run with, but my time is not always spent with a steady group. I join/create Pickup groups a lot for exp, Nms, and to meet new people from time to time. The limitations of the constant chaos in big groups is really apparent there.

This is where I feel those limitations hold us back as a DD (and as a TH enhancer) more than reasonable (reasonable being subjective of course). I feel like, even being able to land them once a minute, we would still be a "light DD" in the eyes of most of the playerbase. But as A THF, I think I would personally find it less frustrating.

I'm all for being a job that enhances the party or is enhanced by working together with a group. It's the whole "Nearly useless without a group" limitation of these abilities that never made sense to me.

[Laphine]

It's funny to see that they didn't provide anything that helps us achieve those objectives. I suppose we can still use the "we still have 9 levels to go" excuse. Maybe we could consider conspirator as the tool to increase our damage...err, i just can't do that because it would be like saying warcry is what really pimps war (athough acc always had more value than attack).

SE sadly did say we would stay dependant on the party. I guess we will never see any change to sa/ta into solo perspective. Well, i hope they get a damage boost then!

[Nebo]

this has been debated for the longest time, and i can see why. thf dd capability in most of the game content is sub par in comparison to most of the other melee/dd jobs. the reason? we're classified as melee/support/utility, and that's where the problem lies.

fact: we deal mediocre dmg in comparison to solid dd jobs.
fact: our utility abilities are some of the most useless abilities in the game.
fact: we have a grand total of 3 real support abilities, 2 of which are pretty much useless at this point. (we have 5 if you count TA and aurasteal)

imo either 1 of 3 things need to happen to balance this discrepancy out:

A. increase our overall dmg potential to at least come close to sold dd's.

B. drastically increase the usefulness of the utility abilities we have, and add more to compensate for the lack of dd.

C. give us more support abilities that are actually relevant at this point in the game.

I always thought about this in the sense that if I was going to "Fix" our utility I would do something like this:

A universal steal timer of 30 seconds (MAXIMUM), and a seperate category for Enmity Steals.

Dramatically increase the success percentage, with a cap of 95% with +steal gear.

I would then create a bunch of different kinds of steal that all share this 30 second timer.


(Item)Steal: Same as it is now (I like your idea of stealing temp items [That don't take inventory space] that are useful to us mid-battle instead of the useless fodder crap we can steal and despoil now). Percent chance would remain the same for valued steal items like coins and dynamis currency. These would simply be HQ steals as opposed to regular temp items for battle.
Aurasteal: Seperated from (item)Steal. Only steals & dispells Buffs. Does not attempt an item steal. Will not fail if inventory is full, etc.
Despoil (Attack): Inflicts Attack Down and Steals a 15% Attack Boost.
Despoil (Accuracy): Influcts Accuracy Down and Steals 30 Accuracy
Despoil (Critical Hit Rate) Inflicts Crit Hit Rate down and Steals a 10% Critical hit Rate boost.
Despoil (Magic Evasion) Inflicts Magic Evasion Down and Steals 30 Magic Evasion.
Despoil (Magic Defense) Inflicts Magic Defense Down and grants 15% Magic Defense Bonus.
Despoil (Evasion): Inflicts Evasion Down and Steals 30 Evasion
Despoil (TP): Steals 35 TP
Despoil (HP): Steals 350 HP
Despoil (Speed): Inflicts a 10% "Speed Down" status effect (stacks with but is not a slow effect) and causes a "10%Speed Boost" Status effect (stacks with but is not a haste effect.)
Mug: Inflicts Damage and Stuns the target. No longer steals gil.

*All Despoil abilites are specific, not random, and do not attempt an item steal.
*All Despoil Debuffs and Buffs last 2 minutes (enhanced by +despoil gear).
*All Buffs stolen with Aurasteal last the standard base duration of the buff. Duration is not determined from the time the monster used it.

Conspirator Recast is shortened to 2 Minutes and grants current stolen Despoil buff effects to your party. e.g.Despoil (Attack) + Conspirator = Party Attack Bonus.

"Current enmity target" restriction is removed from Conspirator


Enmity Steals To be on Seperate recast timers. Recast timers are not shared:

Collaborator: Steals 25% Enmity: 30 Second Recast
Accomplice: Steals 50% enmity 1 Minute Recast
Perpetrator: Steals 100% Enmity 5 Minute recast
*Effective range will be extended

Flee is a party buff (like Mazurka) so we can help them {run away}.

Hide adds Invisibe, Sneak and Deodorise. Sheds enmity on all but a very select few HNMs (IE: Works on almost everything in the game)

Perfect Dodge is reduced to a 5 minute recast Job Ability and a new 2 Hour is given.
A defensive ability called "Evade" will be added. One minute recast timer. Allows the THF to automatically dodge the next phsyical Attack (TP or otherwise) directed at him.
Job Traits, THF specific Ranged Weapons, or THF specific gear will be added to enhance Status Bolts/Arrows accuracy, potentcy etc.

That is the kind of utility I invision being relevant in 2011 FFXI.

[noodles355]

and everyone completely ignores my post for the sake of arguing.... lovely lol.
btw any testing done on TH has yet to be proven even now, like what? 10 years into the game? Actually there was significant tests done years ago, maybe 2006ish? I don't remember. Anyway, the sample size was very large and showed pretty convincingly withing a respectable magin of error that TH1 increased drop rate by 50% and TH2 increased it by 100% (doubled). The concensus was that Thief's Knife and Assassin's Armlets increased dropr ate by only 1%. Sadly as I said this data is very old (and now irrelevant), so I can't comment on how accurate the TK/AA tests were (because 1% is a very difficult number to measure when you concider margins or error and the number of results you would need for it to be accurate) but the TH1 and TH2 traits were done with a large enough sample size to be accurate.

[Laphine]

oh yeah, i myself have a parse back from when i farmed onions from gobs. At the time, the drop rate shown on the wiki was less than half of what i had (20% vs 50% or something). The wiki drop rate is probably unrealiable, but this certainly made believe that test even more throughout the years.

A reason why everyone didn't get everything they wanted could be due low drop rate. But for example, if something had 1% drop rate, adding tk and/or relic hands would do more, or at least the same, of adding TH2.

[noodles355]

I sware I wrote another reply to Nebo after my lasty post but it doesn't seem to have gone through. I don't really remember what he said without re-reading it (must not have been important) so I'll look over it tomorrow and correct him then.

[Nebo]

I sware I wrote another reply to Nebo after my lasty post but it doesn't seem to have gone through. I don't really remember what he said without re-reading it (must not have been important) so I'll look over it tomorrow and correct him then.

Sweet! Make sure you try real hard to be correct this time when you do it ;)

[Arcon]

I sware I wrote another reply to Nebo after my lasty post but it doesn't seem to have gone through. I don't really remember what he said without re-reading it (must not have been important) so I'll look over it tomorrow and correct him then.

Kinda feels like arguing with a less annoying version of kingfury (at least they're not adding "my friend" all the time). Someone who has an idea that people disagree with but holds on to it despite all criticism, and trying to debunk that criticism with invalid arguments, popping out more inappropriate ideas as they go along. Don't really see the point in it. If people believe THF should be a heavy damage dealer, let them believe it and be disappointed with each update again.

[Nebo]

Kinda feels like arguing with a less annoying version of kingfury (at least they're not adding "my friend" all the time). Someone who has an idea that people disagree with but holds on to it despite all criticism, and trying to debunk that criticism with invalid arguments, popping out more inappropriate ideas as they go along. Don't really see the point in it. If people believe THF should be a heavy damage dealer, let them believe it and be disappointed with each update again.

lol I'm not suprised you don't see the point. You've managed to miss it entirely.

Who said THF should be a heavy dd?

I know that there are people that disagree with THF getting DD tweaks. For the many years that this debate has been going on, there always have been. And I have always respected that.

The discussion we have been having has been centered around the reasons why THF should be classified into a certain role (Most people can't even agree on what that role is). The debate, at least for me, is in the "why?" Why do you think Thief should be this role or that? Why do you think THF should not get DD tweaks?

For example, in one post, Noodles argued that THF should be classified more utility and light DD because it only has 2 DD abilities. I disagree with that reason "why." Clearly THF has more DD abilities than 2.

In another post, you argued that THF is a support job by a definition that fits every other DD job, as well as argued that steal/mug/gilfinder etc are support abilities. I disagree that those are support abilities. I disagree with that reason "why." I don't think THF should be classified a support job for those reasons.

I'm actually glad that you don't agree with me, Arcon. Discussing these points allows us to bring light to the various issues of this debate.

It's one thing to disagree with me, it is another (and really quite funny) to suggest that it is just me that feels this way "despite all criticism" lol.

It's really not as one sided as you might think. Look down this page. Read through the threads. Read through THIS thread. Look at the rate ups on the OP.

That being said, none of that matters. This isn't a popularity contest. I'm sure our little conversation here is not representative of the entire FFXI population of Thieves. Nor does it negate the oppinions of those that don't agree with me or feel like THF shouldn't get any kind of DD tweak. Nor does it mean that everyone who feels one way or the other has been vocal, either with rate ups or posts.

It means that people have different points of view.

[Huevriel]

Sneak Attack is very limited and often impossible to use when playing solo. (Significantly limits damage dealing and the ability to enhance treasure hunter).


One of the many reasons why I love using the Adventuring fellow. You can Sneak Attack and Trick Attack with them.

[Nebo]

One of the many reasons why I love using the Adventuring fellow. You can Sneak Attack and Trick Attack with them.

I also very much like to use them where available. Nauthima is 70. I'll be spending some time capping her soon. Their mage AI leaves a bit to be desired but I digress.

Though, even adventuring fellows fall under both categories of limited and often impossible to use.

NPC Fellows are very limited in the selection of areas in which they are summonable. Thus impossible to SA or TA with them in places you can't call them. It sucks that the places that you can't call them are the majority.

Limited further by mob counts, time limits, and pearl charge restrictions in the areas where you can. So the usage of them for landing SA and TA is quite limited for solo purposes. Especially if you spend most of your soloing time in Abyssea.

Granted they have just allowed them in a few areas from ToAU and seem to be increasing their time out which is nice.

I've just always disagreed that the solution to utilizing these fundamental abilities when playing solo should be an adventuring fellow.

[Nebo]

SE sadly did say we would stay dependant on the party. I guess we will never see any change to sa/ta into solo perspective. Well, i hope they get a damage boost then!

In a lot of ways, this is why I started this thread. The very existance of this official forum says something about their desire to talk to us about these things. If there is a place to have a voice, talk about and ask for these things. I think its here.

In a perfect world, I would hope that they at least consider the idea that "enhances party, or enhanced by party play" doesn't have to mean "Useless without the party" with very little flexibility.

In a game where people put so much of themselves into their mains...a job like Thief that lends itself so much to soloing, lowmanning, treasure hunting/gilmaking, tanking, tactical DDing, etc. It is frustrating to feel the desires for this kind of flexibility from the community and the dev team desires in such conflict.

[Laphine]

yeah, i do post here hoping we can someday align both the community and the devs view on what exactly is thief. Only good things will happen when we achieve that. But considering that the community itself is torn on what exactly are we, this could take a while...

Meanwhile i keep posting my near broken ideas like putting dex/agi mods inside the ws damage calculation. Recently (arguably more broken lol) i thought about making sa/ta triple, as in the triple hits would crit with modified damage too, instead of only 100% acc. Could even add a less broken variation where the triple would crit, but without the modifiers too. This concept would make AC specially useful too. Lol and i just thought of maybe making sa/ta damage related to our attack speed. Like, 50% delay reduction could mean 2x sa/ta damage~. Fun stuff.

[Nickeny-biz]

I always thought about this in the sense that if I was going to "Fix" our utility I would do something like this:

A universal steal timer of 30 seconds (MAXIMUM), and a seperate category for Enmity Steals.

Dramatically increase the success percentage, with a cap of 95% with +steal gear.

I would then create a bunch of different kinds of steal that all share this 30 second timer.


(Item)Steal: Same as it is now (I like your idea of stealing temp items [That don't take inventory space] that are useful to us mid-battle instead of the useless fodder crap we can steal and despoil now). Percent chance would remain the same for valued steal items like coins and dynamis currency. These would simply be HQ steals as opposed to regular temp items for battle.
Aurasteal: Seperated from (item)Steal. Only steals & dispells Buffs. Does not attempt an item steal. Will not fail if inventory is full, etc.
Despoil (Attack): Inflicts Attack Down and Steals a 15% Attack Boost.
Despoil (Accuracy): Influcts Accuracy Down and Steals 30 Accuracy
Despoil (Critical Hit Rate) Inflicts Crit Hit Rate down and Steals a 10% Critical hit Rate boost.
Despoil (Magic Evasion) Inflicts Magic Evasion Down and Steals 30 Magic Evasion.
Despoil (Magic Defense) Inflicts Magic Defense Down and grants 15% Magic Defense Bonus.
Despoil (Evasion): Inflicts Evasion Down and Steals 30 Evasion
Despoil (TP): Steals 35 TP
Despoil (HP): Steals 350 HP
Despoil (Speed): Inflicts a 10% "Speed Down" status effect (stacks with but is not a slow effect) and causes a "10%Speed Boost" Status effect (stacks with but is not a haste effect.)
Mug: Inflicts Damage and Stuns the target. No longer steals gil.

*All Despoil abilites are specific, not random, and do not attempt an item steal.
*All Despoil Debuffs and Buffs last 2 minutes (enhanced by +despoil gear).
*All Buffs stolen with Aurasteal last the standard base duration of the buff. Duration is not determined from the time the monster used it.

Conspirator Recast is shortened to 2 Minutes and grants current stolen Despoil buff effects to your party. e.g.Despoil (Attack) + Conspirator = Party Attack Bonus.

"Current enmity target" restriction is removed from Conspirator


Enmity Steals To be on Seperate recast timers. Recast timers are not shared:

Collaborator: Steals 25% Enmity: 30 Second Recast
Accomplice: Steals 50% enmity 1 Minute Recast
Perpetrator: Steals 100% Enmity 5 Minute recast
*Effective range will be extended

Flee is a party buff (like Mazurka) so we can help them {run away}.

Hide adds Invisibe, Sneak and Deodorise. Sheds enmity on all but a very select few HNMs (IE: Works on almost everything in the game)

Perfect Dodge is reduced to a 5 minute recast Job Ability and a new 2 Hour is given.
A defensive ability called "Evade" will be added. One minute recast timer. Allows the THF to dodge the next phsyical Attack.
Job Traits, THF specific Ranged Weapons, or THF specific gear will be added to enhance Status Bolts/Arrows accuracy, potentcy etc.

That is the kind of utility I invision being relevant in 2011 FFXI.


While I agree some of these ideas are step forward I have to say some are little overpower tho.. my 2 cents are

Steal: lower the timer first off and allow us to steal temp items are something, or enhance the TH# of the mob we are fighting would be awesome...

Aura steal: Like you said let it be on a different cool down and a decent timer.

Collaborator: I don't mind that it shares a timer but would love if accomplice wasn't 5 mins jeez...

Despoil: Make it not suck... I mean anything would make it better...but if I had to choose let it take all the tp off the mob IE: Thfs version of Absorb TP and allowing us to self SC This would help THF overall with DPS and allow your party to MB.

SA/TA's:I've never really had a problem landing my attacks other then SA sometimes because I am able to peel hate for a second with a couple of attack rounds which is why I would propose...
Co-defendant: Would allow us to "Give" our hate to a party member so we are able to do something like this (Steal hate from DD--->dump hate---->SAWS--->Despoil---->TAWS :cool:)

Perfect Dodge: When I see a ISL chest I cry a little inside... They really need to make this like a 10min JA or something.

NEW 2HR:Something that would bring justice to thfs EVERYWHERE. Here are few examples

JPbuttonlol2hr:100% everything drops button, double the Th on the current monster, or even steal an item from the monsters loot pool.

Decapitate: Double the damage of your Crts for 30 seconds. Can see some awesome stuff with that.

Let's hope if we get any change's they are at least a step forward...

[Laphine]

JPbuttonlol2h. Excellent lol.

[Nebo]

yeah, i do post here hoping we can someday align both the community and the devs view on what exactly is thief. Only good things will happen when we achieve that. But considering that the community itself is torn on what exactly are we, this could take a while...

I think you are right. This right here is a testimate to the fact that we have all these utility job abilites that lack utility, some DD tools dependant on being in a party, some evasion to solo/tank/survive and treasure hunter.

Those things weren't designed to work together and if we're not designed to solo, or tank, or be a "heavy DD" or have actually utility with our utility abilities. What are we? Its no wonder players disagree.

As a matter of fact, I would bet serious gil that most of the non-Thief playerbase, when asked the question "What is Thief's role" would simply reply: "Treasure Hunter."

But even now 2 other jobs have TH. Thief needs some changes and a clear direction.

[Nebo]

While I agree some of these ideas are step forward I have to say some are little overpower tho.. my 2 cents are

I'll agree I did make those suggestions powerful. I just think that if THF is destined to be classified as a "support/utility job," it should have powerful support/utility.

I thought some of your ideas were pretty cool as well. JPbutton 2 Hour lol.


Let's hope if we get any change's they are at least a step forward...

...let's hope.

[Nebo]

Two traits: 50% + 50% = 100%. Adding treasure hunter would double the chance at drops. I would call double pretty significant. Wouldn't you?

No I wouldn't. Because while a 100% increase sure does sound like a significant increase. On things with single digit drop rates, it isn't.

For example. A 100% increase in drop rate on something that has a 1% droprate is now.....2%. Would you call that a significant increase? I wouldn't.

Which is why Treasure Hunter makes behive chips rain from the sky but has less of an impact on things with low drop rates. Is it an increase? Definitely. Is it a significant increase for rare drop rates? Not really.

[Atomic_Skull]

Surprise Attack: Your next weaponskill will deal additional damage when attacking from outside the target's sight.

Works when used from outside the target's cone of sight.

Forces the next WS to be a critical attack.

Adds a weaponskill secondary modifier of STR 50%.

Adds an fTP bonus of 0.01 for each point of STR your have.

Adds a cRatio Bonus like Spinning Slash, YGK, etc.

Cooloff is 25 seconds, effect lasts for 5 minutes or until the next WS.

Can be queued up to a maximum of 3. Each WS used will remove one effect.

Does not stack with Sneak Attack or Trick Attack. SATA takes priority over Surprise Attack.


Scapegoat: Gives 30% of your enmity to a fellow party member.

Works like Collaborator in reverse.

Can exceed the enmity cap by 20%

1 minute cooloff.



There, THF is fixed.

[RygaenYuui]

Most people who are idiotic enough to move out of the way of TA are usually pretty shitty players too, and not generally worth spending your time with (See point 2)

That would actually include more than 50% of the player base imho. None of them care about SA or TA enough to bother.
Though I do agree w/ the OP; The mechanics have definitely changed. They do give PLDs and NINs the necessities to perform with the change in PT mechanics years after the PT mechanic changes, but not necessarily to THF. Honestly, I would settle if they just widened the flanking range for sneak attack to make up for missing sneak attack if the mob should turn unfavorably; it makes sense at higher levels.

[Babekeke]

The whole [thf DD and support vs war DD and support] to determine which job was designed to be a DD or a support role makes me want to list all the RDM spells by DD (Nukes, DoTs, spikes and en-spells) and support/utility (other enfeebs, cures and enhancing). I won't show the full list, but of 90 spells that rdm has, 47 deal damage. The mathematically minded of you will notice that means only 43 do not deal damage.
That's settled then, RDM is a DD, not support.
Yes it's a stupid and unfair way to look at it, and so is comparing WAR's JAs/traits to THF's simply by listing them, and not deciding how much they help damage, how often they can be used etc. etc. etc.

(I'm aware that my spell list is flawed since no tier 2 enfeebs can be stacked with the tier 1 enfeebs, and bio/dias don't stack with each other, but it shows the point quite clearly I think).

If SE gave us the same amount of DD power as the other DDs, all of them will be then complaining that THF not only is as good at DDing as they are, but we also have A+ evasion, and TH3-6+procs.
If this happened, why would anyone ever invite another DD to a party?

Correct, if you solo, you can't use SA/TA; you get nothing from collab/accomp or conspirator. What you do have though, is the ability to solo the NM in the first place, AND you have a much higher chance of getting the drop that you want from your NM. If you want to get 1337 numbers on your parser in a party/alliance, go and level a 'pure DD' job. If you want to solo NMs for drops, stick with your thf and stop crying about it! It's not like you don't have the option to level more than 1 job and use thf for NMs and another job for parties FFS!

[Nebo]

The whole [thf DD and support vs war DD and support] to determine which job was designed to be a DD or a support role makes me want to list all the RDM spells by DD (Nukes, DoTs, spikes and en-spells) and support/utility (other enfeebs, cures and enhancing). I won't show the full list, but of 90 spells that rdm has, 47 deal damage. The mathematically minded of you will notice that means only 43 do not deal damage.
That's settled then, RDM is a DD, not support.
Yes it's a stupid and unfair way to look at it, and so is comparing WAR's JAs/traits to THF's simply by listing them, and not deciding how much they help damage, how often they can be used etc. etc. etc.

I agree that one needs to look at these things in context rather than just listing abilities and assigning them categories. But such comparisons can be helpful with determining the actual utility of these abilities.

In the case of RDM DD, I don't think anyone would argue that RDM is a DD job, not a mage . On the other hand, not many jobs (if any) can match their damage output with a Brew. One could also argue that a RDM's contribution to damage is so much more useful than that of a THF with things like Dia, Haste etc. But this is a situation where we start talking about ACTUAL utility versus just having abilities that can only be classified as utility (that aren't very "useful").

In the case of WAR vs THF (melee DD jobs), the context of such a comparison makes much more sense.


If SE gave us the same amount of DD power as the other DDs, all of them will be then complaining that THF not only is as good at DDing as they are, but we also have A+ evasion, and TH3-6+procs.
If this happened, why would anyone ever invite another DD to a party?

Again, no one asked for THF to be able to DD on the level of a WAR. No one asked to be given the same amount of DD power as other DD's. Even if the positional restrictions were eased on SA/TA this would be impossible. WAR can spam immensely powerful WS without restriction. The only way a THF can even come close to the WS damage of a WAR is to stack as timers allow.

This gap widens exponentially once you start to add haste/buffs while THF is still tied to SA/TA timers.

There are a ton of reasons to invite other DD's. Especially with a lot of battlefields (Like the new voidwatch system) where TH has zero effect. The new stagger system that SE seems to love to add to everything also makes TH less of a "must have" thing, and the fact they keep giving it to other jobs also makes having a THF there less necessary.

WAR also has access to a lot of weapon types for procing weaknesses, which is just as valuable, if not more so than Treasure Hunter.

Forgetting the fact that we weren't designed or intended to use Evasion and Perfect Dodge to tank or solo NM's like we do, A+ evasion really can't stand on its own due to the evasion cap, the lack of any other defensive abilities, and paper thin defense. Evasion requires support job abilities to be really useful for soloing, and even the is very limited by things like Mage Mobs and Aoe TP move spam.

A good THF will have PDT/MDT gear sets to deal with these things, but at that level, so will any other DD job really.


Correct, if you solo, you can't use SA/TA; you get nothing from collab/accomp or conspirator. What you do have though, is the ability to solo the NM in the first place, AND you have a much higher chance of getting the drop that you want from your NM.

If you are soloing on THF, as it stands right now with the stagger systems, you have less of a chance at getting the drop than with a group that can stagger.


If you want to get 1337 numbers on your parser in a party/alliance, go and level a 'pure DD' job. If you want to solo NMs for drops, stick with your thf and stop crying about it! It's not like you don't have the option to level more than 1 job and use thf for NMs and another job for parties FFS!

No one in this thread that is asking for change is crying about wanting to get 1337 numbers on a parse. None of them said THF should be a "pure dd" or a "heavy DD" or the best DD or anything of the kind.

What I said was that the opportunities to land SA and TA are unreasonably limited in todays FFXI, and I would like to see them tweaked. Which, even if they were tweaked, THF would still have lower potential than "heavy DD's" but would make it easier to realise what a THF's potential can be (which is still weaker than "heavy DD's").

No one asked for THF to be king of the DD's or cried because we aren't. I just happen to think positional restrictions are fail in this game.

Saying that "THF is not a Heavy DD" and saying "THF is not a DD" are two different things. The first is true. The second is not. Given this, as a DD job, I think requesting adjustments (that would not raise damage potential at all) to address flawed funcionality and bad design is well within reason.

[Babygyrl]

love this! alos im not sure if oyu mentioned it but id love if thief could have some time of Voke ability now that evasion tanking is popular again.. i love tanking as thief and would love to have something like that added

[Catsby]

Sneak and trick definitely need to be updated. I cant tell you how many times I've missed despite correct positioning and the general pacing of fights renders the abilities worthless(or impossible if you are stuck tanking) after the first or 2nd use. Breaking them down into stances or reducing hide's timer might be the key.

[Nebo]

Sneak and trick definitely need to be updated. I cant tell you how many times I've missed despite correct positioning and the general pacing of fights renders the abilities worthless(or impossible if you are stuck tanking) after the first or 2nd use. Breaking them down into stances or reducing hide's timer might be the key.

I really like the idea of stances that would augment/enhance the positional dynamics of Sneak and Trick Attack somehow.

I mean, aside from treasure hunter, dealing damage is really the only useful thing we have to offer a group. There are so many situations where Treasure Hunter just doesn't apply....

KCNM,KSNM,BCNM,ENM, Voidwatch, ANY Mission/Expansion/Add-on/Boss Fight (This covers many many things), etc, etc.

...or is made less significant because the stagger system is what raises drop rates with real consequence.

This is really why I think being a relatively weak DD AND being tied down with positional restrictions is unreasonable (as well as unbalanced). I'd be happy with one or the other, but not both.

[Catsby]

Some stuff.

I agree. It doesn't bother me that thief is weak when compared to other DDs. It bothers me that any job that can pick up a sword or knife or whatever just got boiled down into a DD. If the hate system was rebuilt to fit level 90 play and THF was able to direct hate around more then it would be a blast to play. It doesn't need to be a crazy powerful damage dealer because it already has crazy evasion and the ability to make stuff drop more often (allegedly).

[Babekeke]

I mean, aside from treasure hunter, dealing damage is really the only useful thing we have to offer a group. There are so many situations where Treasure Hunter just doesn't apply....

KCNM,KSNM,BCNM,ENM, Voidwatch, ANY Mission/Expansion/Add-on/Boss Fight (This covers many many things), etc, etc.
If you don't need TH, don't take a thf to DD, take a war or sam... you wouldn't take a BLM to DD a mob weak to magic would you? Maybe you would.

Edit: Oops, I meant strong to magic, of course /blush


...or is made less significant because the stagger system is what raises drop rates with real consequence.
It is generally agreed that a yellow stagger without TH, or TH without a yellow stagger, will produce similar results. Stacking both gets the best results. I'm not too sure about how equal Blue and TH are.


This is really why I think being a relatively weak DD AND being tied down with positional restrictions is unreasonable (as well as unbalanced). I'd be happy with one or the other, but not both.

Agreed. You seem to be forgetting though, that before Abyssea we were simply TH whores, or a decent DD at bird camp. The only thing that has really changed, is that vs NMs now (or anything that you want increased drop rate from) people are (should be) splitting SA/TA/WS. And other people in the party are (should be) encouraging you to do so. This was a step in the right direction.
I agree with the points you wanted on the first post, but some of your reasoning in more recent posts is absurd.

[Covenant]

I'm not sure about your arguments, why screw around with SATA? Since we are nearing lvl 99, maybe it's time for a new thief "attack". My best (3) guesses of a likely contented would be "critical strike", "Painful strike", are least likely "Deathstrike".
"Critical Strike" is a basic SATA, but without the need for "positioning". Perhaps, treat it like a Monk's "boost", that is quick recast for critical hits. "Painful strike" I would say would be a hit that produces a mild-strong "bleed" DoT. This particular strike would in essence, but treated as an additional attack per tic. Think a strike that produces "Poison 2" or even "poison III" damage.
The final option is the "death strike". Let's face it people it's in game already whether we're talking "doom", twilight scythe, or Odin's astral flow. With a strict formula/game balance this could actually be amazing. Too weak-decent nearly X% chance of death, even-tough, tough-IT, and finally IT-NM all having different values.

[Laphine]

If you don't need TH, don't take a thf to DD, take a war or sam... you wouldn't take a BLM to DD a mob weak to magic would you? Maybe you would.

This is the point. Why can't we be more useful in such situations where th isn't needed? Today of course, it's simple enough to level and gear a new job. Still this reasoning doesn't work for me. Thief is the single job i enjoy the most. Thief not being useful implies that i will have less fun. And it should be about fun, for everyone. We shouldn't justify game unbalance with this new ease of leveling other jobs.

I like the idea of a new forced crit ja. Atomic_skull's ideas pwns for one lol. 3 forced crit jas would make us able to virtually stack ws full time, which is great for rudra and mercy.

[Babekeke]

Here's an interesting theory: If TH isn't required, I wonder just how much haste and DW and Triple attack is required before you actually lose out by using SA or TA unless with a ws.
Using the JA takes what 3 seconds? 4 maybe? It must be possible to reach enough haste and DW and low enough delay on weapons to get 2 attack rounds in 4 seconds. And even outside abyssea, it's not hard to reach 20% triple attack, so 35% with just apoc atma inside. Inside that's 1 in 3 attacks will triple, outside 1 in 5. If you're using triplus and 4/5 emp+2 in your tp gear, that's all extra damage during triple attacks too. And finally the fact that by not using the JAs and getting the extra 2 attack rounds instead, you get the extra 20+ tp to use your next ws faster.

I'm not saying it's ideal to not use it, but it makes you wonder. Even in the ideal situations where you can land your TA or SA every time it's up... are we even getting more damage from using it anymore?
Obviously we can't all have 26% haste and 20% triple attack as well as the extra 8% dual wield (unless you're using triplus AND Auric for 13% dual wield), and it's rare to even see a brd in a pt anymore, let alone have haste and double march. It is, however, possible in such a case, and in that case, you would probably deal less damage from using a JA, than you gain from it ><

[Ziero]

If you don't need TH, don't take a thf to DD, take a war or sam... you wouldn't take a BLM to DD a mob weak to magic would you? Maybe you would.

It is generally agreed that a yellow stagger without TH, or TH without a yellow stagger, will produce similar results. Stacking both gets the best results. I'm not too sure about how equal Blue and TH are.

...that's the exact issue though. SE's big boost for thf for the past few updates has been all about overhauling and adding TH...while at the same time severely reducing the amount of things it's actually useful on. That means there is less and less reason to bring a Thf over pure DDs or Nins and Dncs, or hell even Mnks, for Eva tanking stuff. From my experiences a single Yellow proc has FAR more of an affect on Seal drops then even TH8+ does. With high levels of TH on an Aby mob, it can still drop just 0-1 seal, but with the yellow proc it'll drop at *least* 3-4 each time, even without TH. So why boost, and make a big deal about boosting, TH if they're just going to add a new type of drop system that is barely affected by it in the first place. Thf needs a boost to be *more* then "just" a TH whore.

Personally, I don't think Thf should be made into a "Pure" DD, but it would be nice if it was given added functionality and utility, especially if it gained these through unique tricks and techniques. Stuff like Aura Steal, Feint and even Accomplice/Collaborator were things that made Thf useful, unique and above all, fun to play. Thf needs more abilities like those, ones with short recasts and various effects, that allow themselves and pt members to do more damage through direct and indirect means.

Thf doesn't even really need *new* abilities, just tweaks, fixes, changes and additions to the ones we have now would work to accomplish this.


I'm not sure about your arguments, why screw around with SATA? Since we are nearing lvl 99, maybe it's time for a new thief "attack". My best (3) guesses of a likely contented would be "critical strike", "Painful strike", are least likely "Deathstrike".

It's simple, why completely outdate older abilities when you can just make them useful instead? Those circle JAs many classes have were useless for years, then SE came and changed them all. Now they have a use and are actually worth the 2 seconds it takes to pop them. Last Resort was a Job Ability that's been unchanged for years until SE decided to give it a boost, now it's a powerful and useful tool for Drks and one that changed the way many build their Gear and Merits.

Changing some (most) of Thfs older abilities would go along way in fixing Thf without breaking Thf. Increasing the viable range of SA would help first and foremost. Lowering the recast on Steal would make Aura Steal *far* more useful, giving Despoil it's own (short recast) timer would also make that ability something worth using. And for the love of hell, why is Mug's recast so damn long? It was barely useful back when it was NEW, nowadays, where most NMs don't even bother dropping cash and many of the best gear are R/E anyway, why is this ability still so useless?

Changing and updating older abilities, especially useless broken ones (Seriously, 15 minutes for a useless JA? Really SE, really?) is a good, easy way to boost a job without needing to add new abilities to it.


Here's an interesting theory: If TH isn't required, I wonder just how much haste and DW and Triple attack is required before you actually lose out by using SA or TA unless with a ws.

This would be something that would be so rare a set up it wouldn't really be worth it. Plus, SA and TA's damage boosts should be substantial enough (if set up properly) to warrant missing the one or two attack rounds you'd lose procing the ability.

[noodles355]

Ok、いくぞ！

http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=21769

This one was part of the whole plan they outlined for all the jobs when they first announced the level cap increase.I believe you stated SE said "they are looking to increase our damage dealing potential and looking for ways to allow us to take control on the front line". Now, I will concede yes they do state this, however it is a very small section of the thief Subheading and more of the paragraph is dedicated to the other support aspects of thief. This supports my point about SE's view and intent of thief, being a light DD with support abilities.

Even our prized Treasure Hunter crutch that we could always count on to be wanted is being given away.Hardly. Ranger is a replacement for Thief (Treasure Hunter) in the same way that a Blm/Whm is a replacement for a Whm (Cures).

It seems there wasnt a lot to reply to here afterall, only really your innitial claim about SEs statement.

Please realise in this topic I have only ever stated what I believe SEs intent was with the job, and how versions of the job in other FFs have also followed this pattern for the majority. I never stated whether or not I want to change the role of thief to a stronger DD from this light DD/utility hybrid. Stop thinking I'm saying I want us to be a utility/light DD job.



No I wouldn't. Because while a 100% increase sure does sound like a significant increase. On things with single digit drop rates, it isn't.Lrn2math. You're looking at it as: "going from 2% drop rate to 4% drop rate is only increasing drop rate by 2%. 2% is not very much". Instead you should concider "going from 2% drop rate to 4% drop rate is an increase of 100%. 100% is a lot". Furthmore you should also concider that it is the single biggest boost (by virtue of being the only thing to affect it) to increase that 2%. That is significant.


That would actually include more than 50% of the player base imho. I have no problem stating that at least 50% of the playerbase are shitty players. They are.

[Babekeke]

This would be something that would be so rare a set up it wouldn't really be worth it. Plus, SA and TA's damage boosts should be substantial enough (if set up properly) to warrant missing the one or two attack rounds you'd lose procing the ability.

BRD/WHM Duo with you as THF = enough to reach this... how is that 'so rare a setup'? Most THFs reach the 26% haste tp set now and have 5/5 triple merits and some extra triple gear on top.

[Nebo]

If you don't need TH, don't take a thf to DD

Why not? THF has a lot of potential to be a quite capable DD. Definitely not the best, but a good THF is more than capable of being a good DD on anything that can be melee DD'ed. Especially now with the AGL update and all the subtle blow options.

This thread (at least for me anyway) was never about increasing damage potential. It was about allowing more opportunities to fulfil our current DD potential.


you wouldn't take a BLM to DD a mob weak to magic would you? Maybe you would.

Why wouldn't one take a BLM to DD a mob that is weak to magic? Maybe you meant strong against magic?


Agreed. You seem to be forgetting though, that before Abyssea we were simply TH whores, or a decent DD at bird camp. The only thing that has really changed, is that vs NMs now (or anything that you want increased drop rate from) people are (should be) splitting SA/TA/WS. And other people in the party are (should be) encouraging you to do so. This was a step in the right direction.

Nah. TH whores were TH whores for sure, and there were/are many of those. A good THF always had the potential to be a relevant DD, even if playerbase perception did not reflect this.

As for splitting SA/TA/WS etc. this is a topic of interest for me. As far as I'm aware, there has not been significant testing in this regard, but it has been shown that TH procs can occur during weaponskills. It very well may be that stacking SA/TA WS still gives you the additional chance to proc TH that SA/TA provide. Given that SA/TA still retain all of their other properties when stacked (100% Accuracy, Enmity Transfer, Damage multipliers for DEX/AGL etc), it seems reasonable to me that they would. Definitely worth testing.



I agree with the points you wanted on th[e first post, but some of your reasoning in more recent posts is absurd.

lol. Happy to hear you agreed with some of the points in the OP. Interested to hear what you thought was "absurd" about my reasoning since then.

I only ask because you seemed to be responding to things I didn't say....along the lines of "THF getting DD power equal to other DD's", "THF should be a heavy DD" etc etc. None of which was asked for in this thread, by anyone, least of all me.

[Nebo]

Ok、いくぞ！
I believe you stated SE said "they are looking to increase our damage dealing potential and looking for ways to allow us to take control on the front line". Now, I will concede yes they do state this, however it is a very small section of the thief Subheading and more of the paragraph is dedicated to the other support aspects of thief. This supports my point about SE's view and intent of thief, being a light DD with support abilities.


Thief employs a unique set of Abilities, but also relies on the party to bring out its full potential. This is the form Thief will retain, but expect new variations where instead of matching the pace of the party, the Thief will instead be able to direct the flow party through the use of its techniques. This will include new ways to manage Enmity, allowing the player to more freely raise and lower Enmity and avoid dangerous situations. For endgame content, the Thief may also be improved to deal out more damage. The Community Team Twitter also indicated an enhancement to Treasure Hunter and a new Steal Ability could be in the works.

THis is the whole article. You are right, they mention enmity abilities and a new steal ability (which, as it turns out was lolDespoil). They never said anything about THF being a "light DD." Only being dependant on the party to fulfil its potential. Which is why this thread exists: To attempt to start conversations as to WHY being dependant on the party rather than enhanced by the party doesn't make sense to me, in the (small) hope that we might have a conversation with them about this for once.


Hardly. Ranger is a replacement for Thief (Treasure Hunter) in the same way that a Blm/Whm is a replacement for a Whm (Cures).

With this update RNG has been given a base of TH3 (with AF3+2 gloves) and I have seen testing where a RNG increased TH to level 8 solo. This, to me, is a very significant step on the toes of the THF job and our greatest utility. THF may have more chances and gear to increase it, but RNG can get it done without feeding TP and outside of AOE range.

New content outside of abyssea will determine the actual utility of being able to do this without feeding TP and outside of AOE range, but it is very possible that RNG could be more useful for TH procing on HNMs with powerful TP moves.

And if I was a RNG, I would be very unhappy about all these bounty shot updates. RNG is a powerful DD that is also dependant on positional limitations for dealing damage. 2 updates for bounty shot, a cancellation of the enmity update and no updates in sight to address these fundamental limitations that RNG face as DD's?....Yeah I wouldn't be happy if SE was spending time to make my job another TH whore without fixing the DD issues.


It seems there wasnt a lot to reply to here afterall, only really your innitial claim about SEs statement.

Please realise in this topic I have only ever stated what I believe SEs intent was with the job, and how versions of the job in other FFs have also followed this pattern for the majority. I never stated whether or not I want to change the role of thief to a stronger DD from this light DD/utility hybrid. Stop thinking I'm saying I want us to be a utility/light DD job.

It was from quotes like this that I interpreted your desires about THF. My apologies (truly) if they were misrepresented in my responses.


What's your point? Se designed us as a utility job and light DD. Yes they designed us badly, but that's how they designed us. We are not heavy DDs. Stop thinking we should be.

But also, I was not trying to say we should be heavy DD's either. However, I still assert that THF IS a DD job and as a DD job, asking for DD tweaks as minor (in the sense that they don't increase potential) as those in the OP is within reason.


You're looking at it as: "going from 2% drop rate to 4% drop rate is only increasing drop rate by 2%. 2% is not very much". Instead you should concider "going from 2% drop rate to 4% drop rate is an increase of 100%. 100% is a lot". Furthmore you should also concider that it is the single biggest boost (by virtue of being the only thing to affect it) to increase that 2%. That is significant.

We disagree on this. I do see why you are coming to this conclusion, but we have different definitions of the term significant. A 2% increase in drop rate is no where near significant in my oppinion. A 100% increase doesn't mean anything without context. It is entirely relative to the origional droprate. So if the origional drop rate is trash, a 100% increase of a trash droprate is also going to be a trash increase.

But this, I believe is intentional and is how Treasure Hunter is balanced so that it is not overly powerful. This is also why I believe that having TH is not really a good reason to make us overly weak in other areas...like DD ability (not saying you are saying that, but I have heard many people make this argument).

[noodles355]

Why not? THF has a lot of potential to be a quite capable DD. Definitely not the best,You just answered your own question.

Ranger may have Treasure Hunter now, but it's still less reliable than thief. You should see bounty shot not as a way for Ranger to replace Thief, but for it to augment thief.

Also rangers arent unhappy about bounty shot. We're actually happy because it gives us another reason to be in the alliance. Before the TH update thief would hit it once then GTFO. Now they get to DD it properly in the hopes of raising the TH level. It's a similar situation for ranger.

As for DD updates. Yeah, we're still fuming about SE's continual neglect of our enmity issues, but at least on the damage front we got a 40% crit damage boost (although it doesnt work on WS, but whether that is intentional or a bug is not known).

[Nebo]

Why not? THF has a lot of potential to be a quite capable DD. Definitely not the best,


You just answered your own question.

While it is true that THF is not the best DD in terms of potential, it is still a powerful melee DD in the hands of a good player. Not having the best of the best of the best potential is certainly not a reason to bypass THF as a DD.

Comparisons between DD jobs are helpful to determine potential, but personal playstyle, attentiveness and skill, count for quite a lot. I (and I'm sure many others here) regularly top parses, not because THF has more damage potential as a job, but because they are good players. They have made a concerted effort to get the most powerful gear for their job and make relevant gear swaps for many different situations. They have great timing and are attentive to the various details in any given situation with regard to maximizing. They know exactly where their accuracy is and what food to eat.

If you put these things together in a THF, they are going to be a DD force and it would be foolish to bypass them.

When we compare jobs, we do it mathematically, in a vaccum, with equal level gear. This is very useful to determine job potential but it cannot account for individuals. Personality, playstyle, skill...the things that allow players to achieve that job potential.

Realistically, every WAR, SAM, DRK, THF, MNK, NIN whatever DD is not walking around with identical levels of skill and gear. And 95% of them are just plain trash in terms of damage output.

Realistically, you don't have an unlimited pool of equal level skilled/geared jobs to choose from when assembling teams for events.

In reality, you could say "Just get a WAR/SAM/DRK" whatever instead of a THF, but that also removes the human element from the game. It is about creating teams and experiencing battles with people. Not just X job is 4% better than Y job so I would never take Y job to anything.

When I pick DD's for events, I don't pick jobs, I pick people.

[noodles355]

While it is true that THF is not the best DD in terms of potential, it is still a powerful melee DD in the hands of a good player. Not having the best of the best of the best potential is certainly not a reason to bypass THF as a DD.But it's not the best. It's not even top 5. Because of that it will never be preferred over a Sam, War, Mnk, Drk or Drg for example on a mob where you don't need TH.

Put it up to wanting to be efficient. Put it up to more than 50% of the playerbase being idiots and crap players. Doesn't matter, it's still how it is.

[Babekeke]

I have to agree with Nebo on his last comment certainly with some aspects. In a meripo, it's likely that a thf can top the parse. Especially if you're fighting birds. This is mainly because of Trick attack, and what was mentioned earlier about DDs not wanting hate or they can't maximise their damage potential. If a war uses berserk, then you trick attack him, chances are he'll have to cancel berserk, unless they feel they can ride seigan until the mob is dead. Even in this case, the WAR has to use 2 JAs, missing a swing, and taking longer to reach their next ws.

The point about the job being about the player, not the job itself is also very valid. If you're fighting NMs with a SAM that thinks he's god (there are a few about, trust me) they like to run in with all their DD buffs on, sekkanokki fragmentation, meditate light or whatever, then they spend the next 5 mins weakened. Damage potential was high, but actual damage output was low XD. The THF however, just plods along, WSing every 30 secs or whatever, fully capable of taking a few punches should we pull hate (which we would if we were fast enough to save the sam with accomplice XD).

And the gear section has me down to a T. I use ~60 gear slots on thf, and tbh I'd probably out damage my own war (lol full perle) over time.

When I choose jobs for events, every DD job has to be able to take a few hits should the need arise (ie. knows how to use seigan, not just full-time hasso).

However this thread is kind of being derailed now. Yes being able to use 'stances' or SA/TA outside of the current positional requirements would allow us to more frequently hit our damage potential, and stop me from shouting at my laptop when people move in a party.

[noodles355]

I have to agree with Nebo on his last comment certainly with some aspects. In a meripo, it's likely that a thf can top the parse. Especially if you're fighting birds. This is mainly because of Trick attack, and what was mentioned earlier about DDs not wanting hate or they can't maximise their damage potential. If a war uses berserk, then you trick attack him, chances are he'll have to cancel berserk, unless they feel they can ride seigan until the mob is dead. Even in this case, the WAR has to use 2 JAs, missing a swing, and taking longer to reach their next ws.やれやれ。。。Oh dear...

If you top the parse because you are intentionally gimping other people's damage, like making them have to cancel berserk then you are a very bad player and the fact you topped the parse is completely irrelevant. Secondly, parsing yourself against random pickup DDs has never, and will never be useful for anything outside of stroking your epeen.

60 gear slots? You think that's a lot on thief? Lol.

Obviously every good LS leader chooses the person, not the job when it comes to DD roles. Don't think you're somehow special because you do this too. Example, most LS leaders call parties something like: "Whm: Player1, Brd: Player2, Cor: Player3, War: Player4, DD: Player5, DD: Player6".
That however is irrelevant. Equally geared and skilled a War (for example) will put out more damage than a thief. Thus if you have access to equally good players and have a DD spot, you would take the War. Similarly, if you do not know the players (eg pickup group) then you would also choose a war because again, on equal gear/skill, it will be stronger.

[Babekeke]

If you top the parse because you are intentionally gimping other people's damage, like making them have to cancel berserk then you are a very bad player.

You have a habit of reading what people type, interpreting it in your own way, and then commenting on what you thought they said. Maybe it's a language barrier or maybe I wasn't as clear as I thought. In a meripo, on colibri, hate gets bounced around; it's expected as there's no specific tank (unless you happened to have a Blau Dolsch NIN). Every DD there is expected to be able to tank should they pull hate (or if there's a thf in the pt, you might get sata'd).


Secondly, parsing yourself against random pickup DDs has never, and will never be useful for anything outside of stroking your epeen.

Actually, I (and most other people I know) parse myself only if I'm setting a benchmark for gear, or if I've just changed my gear, or perhaps if fighting a new mob with different stats, to see if I'm hitting the acc cap etc. etc. etc. Looks like you made a generalised judgement based on what you do yourself.


60 gear slots? You think that's a lot on thief? Lol.

Mis-quoted to make yourself sound better? "~" means "about/roughly/give-or-take". I wasn't logged on when I wrote that and don't know off the top of my head. It obviously depends on whether I'm carrying each individual stack of bolts/shihei AND the x/12 pouch. However, I usually have enough slots to carry the 6 ele ninjutsu and have a few slots free for lotting drops, so I guess it's not far off 60. If you think that's lol I'd be more than interested to see your "ZOMG I use 79 slots on THF full time!" Gear list, because mine is getting shorter and shorter as I add the new AF3 gear.


Obviously every good LS leader chooses the person, not the job when it comes to DD roles. Don't think you're somehow special because you do this too. Example, most LS leaders call parties something like: "Whm: Player1, Brd: Player2, Cor: Player3, War: Player4, DD: Player5, DD: Player6".

Maybe I wasn't clear for this, I just meant shouting for aby NMs or for missions etc. I'm not a LS leader, nor am I even in a HNMLS. I have a life outside of FFXI.


That however is irrelevant. Equally geared and skilled a War (for example) will put out more damage than a thief. Thus if you have access to equally good players and have a DD spot, you would take the War. Similarly, if you do not know the players (eg pickup group) then you would also choose a war because again, on equal gear/skill, it will be stronger.

Which if you read back a page, is exactly what both Nebo and myself already said, but thanks for pointing this out again.

[Nebo]

Yeah, I don't think anyone would argue (well, argue honestly) that THF is the best DD job, given equal levels of skilled and gear etc.

A major plus to THF DD though (preabyssea before limitless MP), was damage dealt to damage taken ratio. Something not a lot of people considered I think, but a definite plus.

I don't take equal levels of skill and gear as a given though. To me it's not a given that you will find players/jobs that are equally skilled and geared. Or players that have even the slightest clue about the various damage formulas.

It's more of a given, in my experience, that you will find lots of players that just don't have a friggin' clue what to do with it, even if they do have a lot of the best gear. It's more of a given that the vast majority of the playerbase does not discuss FFXI on forums or take the time to do the math, or think about maximizing in a variety of situations.

Oh I'm sure there are quite a lot that do. But they are definitely not the majority.

Relating this to OP, I think another fundamental reason groups prefer other DD's to THF is that the job's positional nature and the way trick attack works are viewed as unneccessary hastles. It just gives them one more thing to think about and pay attention to, when they could simply invite another DD that can do their own damage without any extra thought or effort from the group.

I know I've said this before but I am quite fine with being a DD of relatively weaker potential. But being bound to positional limitations AND being a weaker DD at the same time is unbalanced in my oppinion.

[Arcon]

I'm not a LS leader, nor am I even in a HNMLS. I have a life outside of FFXI.

That comment alone makes me not take anything you say seriously.

Seems I missed a lot of pages while I was gone, but people are still arguing the same things. Few comments:
Full THF gear? Roughly 90 slots, 100 if you go all out.
I've only once seen a THF beat a DD in a merit party. Alljoker on Leviathan at Lv75, Mandau and full Heca+1 set vs. a random, but ok geared SAM. Every other time Thief came out last, by a good margin.
THF is already extremely useful both inside and outside of Abyssea, because damage doesn't matter much these days anyway. Inside Abyssea, 3min vs. 5min NM battle doesn't make a lot of difference. Outside of Abyssea, time is not an issue anyway, and barely any mob will last through the survival stage, if it does it's usually a HNM and requires a decent setup in the first place, as opposed to THF + support.

I have PLD, WAR, THF, SMN, BRD, SCH and I play THF almost exclusively, not because other jobs are useless, or not geared decently, but because almost everything that currently needs to be done can be done with THF (and sometimes a support job) and can be done so easily and efficiently. THF can solo NMs extremely well, THF can farm extremely well, THF can tank extremely well, THF is great for brews, THF is great for just running around because of Flee and movement speed gear and naturally high evasion, you can just run through entire crowds of mobs, which makes it ideal for low lvl farming or questing.

People who say THF needs upgrades because it is useless doesn't know THF at all. People who say THF needs upgrades because it gets abused as a TH whore are playing with the wrong people. The only thing THF needs upgrades for are its Thief-y abilities like Steal, Mug and Despoil, because those are virtually useless as it is.

Edit:
Just read over a few comments again and it's interesting to see how many people who defend THF, say it's not useless and has lots of capabilities are the same people who complain that it isn't good enough and needs upgrades.

[Nebo]

That comment alone makes me not take anything you say seriously.

That's a pretty silly reason not to take someone seriously. Especially when you know nothing else about them, or their history, or whether they lead or participated in an HNMLS in the past decade. He/she is just as entitled to their oppinion (even though he/she disagrees with mine :p).

Besides which, HNMLS leaders (or even HNMLS's) may not necessarily represent the oppinnions and desires of the FFXI population. Especially now given that they really aren't needed. Most things are lowmannable.

I could also say some equally silly things about your credibility based on assumptions like:

"Arcon, you are a scrub and a bandwagon THF because you merited Flee instead of obviously superior Group 1 Merits. So I won't take anything you have to say seriously."

or

"Arcon, you have no credibility in a THF forum because you think it is a Support Job"

or

"Arcon, you have no conception of proper DD and maximizing because you gear the exact same in and outside of Abbyssea, fully aware that you aren't maximizing or DD'ing to potential, but "it's just fine so whatever.'"

I could also tell you with a high degree of certainty that my THF would not only run circles around your THF, but also your WAR as well.

All of these would be silly assumptions for me to make but, more importantly, largely irrelevant because I still believe you are entitled to have your oppinion taken seriously as well. No matter how little I personally think of it, or you as a THF.


I've only once seen a THF beat a DD in a merit party. Alljoker on Leviathan at Lv75, Mandau and full Heca+1 set vs. a random, but ok geared SAM. Every other time Thief came out last, by a good margin.

I could also say you don't have a clue what THF is capable of because of statements like this, but I don't know that. I will note though that there is really no reason a SAM should ever be beating a THF in a meripo parse.


People who say THF needs upgrades because it is useless doesn't know THF at all.

Agreed. But no one said this.


People who say THF needs upgrades because it gets abused as a TH whore are playing with the wrong people

Also agreed, but no one said this either.

THF was not designed or intended to solo and tank. THF can only tank inside abyssea because of atma's (As can nearly every other DD). THF is not fine as a job because everyone with a critical WS and the right atma's is on god mode inside abyssea. It's like you keep saying, we are leaving there soon. THF needs updates for this.


THF needs upgrades for are its Thief-y abilities like Steal, Mug and Despoil, because those are virtually useless as it is.

I think we agree on this as well, but we disagre that this is the only thing. I also have serious doubts that SE will fix these into something relevant.


Just read over a few comments again and it's interesting to see how many people who defend THF, say it's not useless and has lots of capabilities are the same people who complain that it isn't good enough and needs upgrades.

What I said was that THF is a DD job. A DD job of relatively weaker damage potential compared to the likes of WAR, MNK, etc, but a DD job none the less. I am fine with being a DD job of lesser DD potential, but being bound by positional restrictions as well as being a realtively weak DD is unbalanced, in my oppinion.

I am VERY happy with THF's damage potential. I don't think drastic increases in damage potential are really needed. What I am unhappy with are the current limitations placed upon the opportunity to fulfil THF's current (relatively weaker) potential.

[Laphine]

You do exaggerate with those "extremely well". We can do most of that stuff okish at best. What we do excel though is making shit drop.

The point on this thread, and mostly the op, is that by freeing us from positioning we could get better at something that we suck at. That's soloing. Not because we can't survive solo, but because our performance/utility in such case takes a dive. And this doesn't make sense when low manning is the way the game is headed. Then again, this idea goes against the understanding that SE has about thief (a job that relies on the party to bring its full potential). Still, even if we do have a party, i don't think we bring out so much to it (beyond drops). That text about thief updates used on vanafest is nothing but some pretty words.

[Babekeke]

That comment alone makes me not take anything you say seriously.

That's fine. If you have no life outside FFXI then there's no reason for you to take me seriously. Believe what you like, and do whatever boosts your E-Peen. If you can't beat any other DD on THF vs birds though, that must make your E-Peen droop.

[Arcon]

That's a pretty silly reason not to take someone seriously.

It's an adequate reason not to take someone seriously. Since this is a debate based on player judgment, and with that comment they showed the judging capabilities of a three year old, I don't see the reason to value anything they have to contribute to this discussion. You can say whatever you want about me, I don't care in the first place. And what you say about THF is still groundless, apart from your personal preference.


I will note though that there is really no reason a SAM should ever be beating a THF in a meripo parse.

Was that a typo?


Agreed. But no one said this.

Yes, you did. (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/6916-Thief-Job-Ability-Synergy-This-is-not-2005/page3#post_91282)


Also agreed, but no one said this either.

Yes, you did. (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/6916-Thief-Job-Ability-Synergy-This-is-not-2005/page3#post_91282)

And plenty others throughout this thread and more threads on these and other forums and even in the game.


THF can only tank inside abyssea because of atma's (As can nearly every other DD). THF is not fine as a job because everyone with a critical WS and the right atma's is on god mode inside abyssea. It's like you keep saying, we are leaving there soon. THF needs updates for this.

That's inaccurate, as THF is one of the better tanks outside of Abyssea right now. THF has never needed Atma in order to tank and, in fact, I always use only DD Atma in the first place. And that doesn't work on many other jobs.


You do exaggerate with those "extremely well". We can do most of that stuff okish at best. What we do excel though is making shit drop.

I don't think I exaggerated one bit. We can do those things better than most jobs, some better than any job (farming and questing I wouldn't do on anything else).


The point on this thread, and mostly the op, is that by freeing us from positioning we could get better at something that we suck at. That's soloing. Not because we can't survive solo, but because our performance/utility in such case takes a dive. And this doesn't make sense when low manning is the way the game is headed.

SA/TA don't deal much damage, neither inside nor outside of Abyssea. And you can TA perfectly fine already when lowmanning (bar soloing). So the only thing it would do would be to increase TH even more, which I wouldn't necessarily complain about, but which definitely isn't needed on the one job that already has TH as one of its greatest advantages when lowmanning.

As for soloing, THF may not be as good at it as DNC or NIN, or situationally RDM, BLM or SCH, but considering it was never meant to solo, it is still better at it than almost all other jobs. Why you would want to push that, when it's still perfectly capable of efficiently lowmanning? There's almost nothing BRD+THF can't do efficiently (and no one's talking about Abyssea here), which is already too much considering that's not what it was intended for (I actually believe that SE didn't consider any job to be a solo job).


That's fine. If you have no life outside FFXI then there's no reason for you to take me seriously. Believe what you like, and do whatever boosts your E-Peen. If you can't beat any other DD on THF vs birds though, that must make your E-Peen droop.

1.25*THF damage < heavy DD damage

As simple as that. I'm right, you're wrong. Nothing to argue, move along. Or stick around and keep throwing insults, I don't care much either way, you just keep making yourself look ridiculous. From my experience in over six years of playing this game and over 20 years of being alive, the "no life" card has only ever been used by people as an excuse for their own lack of skill/proficiency in any subject ranging from physical over academic to ridiculous.

[Nebo]

It's an adequate reason not to take someone seriously. Since this is a debate based on player judgment, and with that comment they showed the judging capabilities of a three year old, I don't see the reason to value anything they have to contribute to this discussion. You can say whatever you want about me, I don't care in the first place. And what you say about THF is still groundless, apart from your personal preference.

No it's not. Because you are making assumptions regarding Babekeke's judgement based on things you don't know. Which is silly.


Was that a typo?

You must play with some really bad Thieves?


Yes, you did

lol, no I didn't. You won't find anything in either of those posts where I said those things either.


And plenty others throughout this thread and more threads on these and other forums and even in the game.

No one said any of those things in this thread.


That's inaccurate, as THF is one of the better tanks outside of Abyssea right now. THF has never needed Atma in order to tank and, in fact, I always use only DD Atma in the first place. And that doesn't work on many other jobs.

THF is not one of the better tanks outside of Abyssea now. THF duo with mage support is not tanking. Keeping hate of other melees on anything that needs a "Tank" outside of Abyssea is not something THF excells at. Particularly because you can't use SA/TA to tank, because our WS are comparatively garbage on tanked mobs without stacking and so is our relative DPS if we can't ride SA/TA timers.

That said, ANY job can be made to tank with the right amount of support. BRDS, BLMS, WHMS, you name it. That does not mean THF is a good tank, or even one of the better ones. It was fundamentally designed against being able to use its JA's in this situation.

All Abyssea "tanks" use DD atma, and it works for every Abbysea DD "tank" job. Why? Because support jobs and WHM's have limitless MP, DD's have crazy boosted HP, etc. This is really basic stuff.


SA/TA don't deal much damage, neither inside nor outside of Abyssea.

Perhaps if you don't gear for them properly?


As simple as that. I'm right, you're wrong. Nothing to argue, move along.

:rolleyes:LOL. I have to thank you for that. I haven't actually physically laughed out loud from a post in a long time. Keep that sense of humor alive!


Or stick around and keep throwing insults, I don't care much either way, you just keep making yourself look ridiculous.

So much comedy in one post! lol. I love it!


From my experience in over six years of playing this game and over 20 years of being alive, the "no life" card has only ever been used by people as an excuse for their own lack of skill/proficiency in any subject ranging from physical over academic to ridiculous.

Ah, there's the problem. You lack experience. That's ok, you're still young yet. Wisdom starts accumulate as you get older. It takes some longer than others, but you'll eventually experience different things and make less silly assumptions as you get older. One would hope anyway.

[Karbuncle]

That's fine. If you have no life outside FFXI then there's no reason for you to take me seriously. Believe what you like, and do whatever boosts your E-Peen. If you can't beat any other DD on THF vs birds though, that must make your E-Peen droop.

Saying that "I Don't lead a LS or join one because i have a life" is why he isn't taking you seriously, or what he was judging it on.

The context of what you said, its sounds like you're saying "LoL anyone who runs a LS or joins a HNMLS has no life". Which is something only an ignorant child would say. because its classify multiple diverse people all in 1 little group.

Its also generally used by very gimp unintelligent people who use "Real life" as an excuse to remain mediocre. Tell you, For years of FFXI, I had a full time job, School, and a GF (I still have 2/3 of those!) and I learned the game and geared myself just fine. Real life has 0 to do with it.

If thats not what you meant to say, You just need to clarify, Cause i assume this could be a misunderstanding on his part.

--------------------

More on this Specific at hand topic, Is it purposefully suppose to be about level 75 colibri parties? Cause so much has changed since 75 anything about those kind of parties is obsolete and stupid information.

THF since 75 has gotten more Dual Wield, Much better gear (For instance, i Can sift comfortably @ ~20% Triple Attack rate outside of Abyssea, With capped Haste). We have Critical hit Damage+ Job traits and gear, making Evisceration more powerful a tool than it used to be, etc.

A lot has changed. Not the least of which is much higher DEX/AGI improving our SA and TA numbers.

Now, For my opinion on THF. Its a wonderful job, but seriously cram a sock in it if you think it doesn't need fixing. This job needs so many things done. Only people who think the job is find is jealous and or/butthurt people who think Treasure hunter is so awesomely over-the-top broken. Its not that great. sure its useful for just about everything, But its not an excuse to screw THFs out of other meaningful abilities.

First off, 80% of THF abilities are completely useless in Solo/Duo groups where THF is tank. SA, TA, Hide, Flee, Mug, Steal, Despoil, Collab, Conspirator, Accomp, and in most cases these days, Even Feint.

Despoil/Steal/Mug are completely useless anyway outside of making some small bits of gil, And even so they're all worthless on NMs in abyssea, as for some reason SE thought it would be cool to give THF another Steal ability that doesn't work on things you might actually want to debuff, NMs.

THF needs to be looked at and Re-evaluated. I've given my ideas in other threads, THF is a wonderful job, But it desperately needs a boost in the DD department. It doesn't need to be pushed to the point its out-damaging Ukon WARs point for point, But pushing it to where the gap is at least not as huge as it is now would be nice.

THF was meant to be a DD and a TH, SA and TA didn't happen on accident. I dont ask for much, But maybe some boosts that actually put THF on top of the Critical Hit Rate/DMG Food-chain again.

MNK got Impetus, Which is JA that should have went straight to THF. Acc, Critical Hit Rate? Sounds THF to me. Acc+Subtle Blow? THF doesnt even get native Subtle Blow. FK Conspirator I'm sorry.

On to my Suggestions
---------------------------------------------


*Job Traits
-Give THF Critical Attack Bonus sooner and more than everyone else. They should be unique in something, Critical hit Rate and Damage should be it.

-Crit. Atk. Bonus I
Level 15 THF
-Crit. Atk. bonus II
lv 35 THF
-Crit. Atk. Bonus III
lv 55 THF
-Crit Atk. Bonus IV
lv 75 THF
-Crit. atk. Bonus V
Lv. 85 THF
-Crit. Atk. Bonus VI
lv. 99 THF
*(Bonus being Starting @ +5, +3 Each Trait, total of +20% Critical hit Damage at level 99)

Also, Give THF the Same thing with Critical hit Rate. +3% Each level, Up to level V though, For a Total of +15% Critical Hit Rate. 10/30/50/70/90 levels.

This will help THF tremendously. I mentioned this before but I'll do it again:

Give us a "Restraint" Like Ability for sneak attack and Trick Attack. Make it for Each hit landed, It increases the DEX or AGI mod for Sneak Attack/Trick Attack by 0.5, for a Maximum of +50% (meaning 100 hits to cap potency).

For Fairness Sake, Give us this ability at 91+. It is rather beef,

THF doesn't need to become the best broken DD Ever, But giving it boosts like this will shorten the gap.

[Arcon]

No it's not. Because you are making assumptions regarding Babekeke's judgement based on things you don't know. Which is silly.

Wrong, I made logical inferences on things I did know. I know that they think you can't lead a LS or be in a HNMLS without having a life, because they said so. I also know for a fact that that's wrong. So either they're lying or making groundless assumptions or looking for excuses for their own incompetence.


You must play with some really bad Thieves?

You must play with some exceptionally bad DDs. I can parse my own THF versus my own WAR, and the gap is quite large. So if I suck, I'd suck on both jobs, but my WAR clearly wins. And my THF is better geared, some quite nice pieces I'm still missing for WAR, while my THF is almost ideal.


THF is not one of the better tanks outside of Abyssea now. THF duo with mage support is not tanking. Keeping hate of other melees on anything that needs a "Tank" outside of Abyssea is not something THF excells at. Particularly because you can't use SA/TA to tank, because our WS are comparatively garbage on tanked mobs without stacking and so is our relative DPS if we can't ride SA/TA timers.

Tanking means keeping the mob focused on you well enough while other members in your party can perform their job to kill the mob. This includes lowman, and THF can even hold against other DDs, if they hold back (which is not really a new idea, DDs specifically did that, they even subbed /THF for TA, just so the one designated tank could hold hate) and possibly combined with strategic use of Accollaborator. Either way, it holds true for THF + Support duo as well.


Perhaps if you don't gear for them properly?

Stack DEX for SA, AGI for TA, right? Hecatomb gear, right? Is that how you deal damage with these abilities? Think long and hard before you answer this.


I have no idea what I'm talking about so here's some random insults at you. So is your face. And yo mama.

Ah, there's the problem. You lack experience. That's ok, you're still young yet. Wisdom starts accumulate as you get older. It takes some longer than others, but you'll eventually experience different things and make less silly assumptions as you get older. One would hope anyway.

You made four factually wrong statements in this post alone, and several insults to my person and my (and some innocent bystanders') intelligence. I couldn't care less what you say, you've proven repeatedly you have no idea. The irony is, this thread's idea wasn't even bad, it simply wasn't needed. No one attacked your idea, only the motivation behind it, because you said you can't land SA/TA, which is rather easy. Yet you still feel superior and are acting smug about your THF, where's the logic in that?

You're the same as kingfury, holding on to your ideas for dear life and not being able to deal with any kind of criticism other than petty insults. But instead of annoying people by saying "nuh uh, my friend" you just say "nuh uh, idiot" and think you're done with it.

[Nebo]

You must play with some exceptionally bad DDs. I can parse my own THF versus my own WAR, and the gap is quite large. So if I suck, I'd suck on both jobs, but my WAR clearly wins. And my THF is better geared, some quite nice pieces I'm still missing for WAR, while my THF is almost ideal.

Maybe if you hadn't merited Flee? :p


THF can even hold against other DDs, if they hold back (which is not really a new idea, DDs specifically did that, they even subbed /THF for TA, just so the one designated tank could hold hate)

This is WHY THF is a bad tank outside of abyssea. Because it requires all your other DD's to hold back more than better "tanks" would. You could definitely form an entire group strategy around everyone holding back and more support, sure. That does not mean THF is one of the better tanks. Many jobs are better at it, with more useful abilities to do it.


Stack DEX for SA, AGI for TA, right? Hecatomb gear, right? Is that how you deal damage with these abilities? Think long and hard before you answer this.

You didn't know? Its AGI for SA and DEX for TA :rolleyes:.

To your point, some heca pieces actually have situational use for solo Sneak Attack (mainly on some boss fights etc when you couldn't melee full time and could just run in/out and SA/TA). But a good THF would not use them to SA DPS in.


I couldn't care less what you say, you've proven repeatedly you have no idea. The irony is, this thread's idea wasn't even bad, it simply wasn't needed.

lol. I have no idea? THF is fine? Arcon. Dude. THF as a job, isn't "fine." If its fine for the way you play, thats cool for you man. I don't have it in me to argue with you any more. It's counterproductive to the thread, anyway.

I've actually tried really hard up to this point to be patient, respectful and nice to you. You haven't made that an easy task.

[noodles355]

If you think that's lol I'd be more than interested to see your "ZOMG I use 79 slots on THF full time!" Gear list, because mine is getting shorter and shorter as I add the new AF3 gear.
If you insist.

1) Toolbags
2) Echo Drops
3) Twilight Dagger
4) Triplus Dagger
5) Rapidus Sax
6) AGI Killa
7) AGI Killa
8) Auric Dagger
9) Thief's Knife
10) Threw Bomblet
11) Xbow
12) Acid Bolts
13) Bloody Bolts
14) AF3 Hat
15) Aias Bonnet
16) Optical Hat
17) Denali Bonnet
18) Darksteel Cap+1
19) Love Torque
20) Peacock Charm
21) Arctier's Torque
22) Torero Torque
23) Tiercel Necklace
24) Twilight Torque
25) Suppanomimi
26) Brutal Earring
27) Raiders Earring
28) Merman's Earring
29) Merman's Earring
30) Pixie Earring
31) Ethreal Earring
32) Novia Earring
33) Af3 Body
34) Scorpion Harness +1
35) Lokis Kaftan
36) Hecatomb Harness
37) Pahluwan Khazagand
38) Avalon Breastplate
39) Darksteel Harness +1
40) Ocelot Gloves
41) AF3 Gloves
42) Denali Gloves
43) AF1+1 Gloves
44) AF2 Gloves
45) Epona's Ring
46) Dex Ring
47) Rajas ring
48) Agi Ring
49) Agi Ring
50) Merman's Ring
51) Merman's Ring
52) Dark Ring (PDT)
53) Dark Ring (PDT)
54) Boxer's Mantle
55) Nifty Mantle
56) Atheling Mantle
57) Sharpeye Mantle
58) Libeccio Mantle
59) Lamia Mantle +1
60) Twilight Belt
61) Warwolf Belt
62) Crudelis Belt
63) Scouter's Rope
64) Aguinus Belt
65) AF3 legs
66) Ocelot Trousers
67) Oily Trousers
68) Tumbler Trunks
69) Hecatomb Leggings
70) Homam Gambieras
71) AF3 feet
72) Aurore Gaiters
73) Trotters
74) Hecatomb
75) Shihei
76) Monomi tools
77) Tonko tools

Satchel:
75) Blind Bolts
76) Sleep Bolts
77) Acid Quivers
78) Bloody Quivers
79) Blind Quivers
80) Sleep Quivers
81) Pizza+1
82) Pizza+1
83) Red Curry Buns
84) Sushi
85) Warp Cudgel
86) Warp Cudgel
87) Tavnazia Ring
88) Nexus Cape
89) Kurayami Tools
90) Doton Tools
91) Katon Tools
92) Suiton Tools
93) Huton Tools
94) Hyoton Tools
95) Raiton Tools

[MisfitDC]

I like thief just the way it is it makes me happy ^^

Good luck everybody and Have fun :D

[Alaik]

What? You don't have some powder boots Noodles? :P

But yeah, if you don't have 75+ slots on THF of what you're *using* you can't claim your macros are that intensive. Maybe for a WAR/SAM it would be, but not a THF.

EDIT: Wrong N name.

[Nebo]

What? You don't have some powder boots Nebo? :P

Actually I do :o. But I wasn't a part of that conversation :p

[Alaik]

Yeah, all N names look alike. There, I said it.

[noodles355]

My bad, sorry I dont currently have powder boots actually. Back before everything was abyssea I used to carry 2 pairs everywhere. Although I only really used them on Ranger for claiming ixion. I also missed out AF1 feet for flee boost. That would put me at 78/98 slots.

Oh what, mr 60 inv thf doesn't think racc, mdt or pdt gear slots are worth perminent inv space? Acid Bolts proc on a lot of shit (especially old content like tiamat), and although eva is arguably more important than PDT, mobs still have physical AoE moves.

Oh and for the record, the above is what I'm aiming for with ideal gear. However without above ideal gear I may need 2 slots to make up for one of the above and one piece may cover something I dont have at all, and so my personal gear works out about the same. Sadly I've been out of the game for the last month or so, and so I am very behind (Although a cute Jp hostess was a fair trade for FFXI I think). Those DA/TA/Haste legs also deserve a mention.