Steal, Aurasteal, Despoil & Mug Discussion

[Nebo]

I haven't seen a thread here spcifically dedicated to these yet. A few posts here and there mixed into other threads but I think the issues with these abilities deserve their own thread to discuss.

Steal, Aurasteal and Despoil. Three abilities, bound to one (needlessly long) 5 minute recast timer.

I like that Square Enix has tried to give THF more steal-like abilities. Stealing enhancement effects, inflict enfeebling effects. These are cool ideas.

What doesn't make sense to me is the way these abilities were implemented. Aurasteal was just arbitrarily attached to (item)Steal. Why? Why, if I'm trying to steal an enhancement effect, is it bound to an ability that attempts to steal an item? Why should Steal negate Aurasteal, if item Steal is successful? This makes no sense.

I have my suspicions that this was just an attempt to make steal useful again due to a combination of the lack of anything worth stealing (save maybe dynamis currency) and the lack of desire from the developement team to add items worth stealing to the game.

Steal and Aurasteal should be two seperate abilities. Not combined into one. A 5 minute recast is too long for an ability like Aurasteal to be really relevant.

It's the same thing with Despoil. The fact that the ability to inflict a status ailment is both random and dependant on the success rate of stealing an item also makes no sense. If I am trying to inflict a status ailment, stealing items should have nothing to do with it.

Rather than attempting to steal an item, Despoil should steal the status ailment it inflicts.

Why is the status ailment random? Random makes planning any kind of tactic to utilize this enfeeble effect virtually impossible. Random makes Despoil not useful. A 5 minute recast time makes despoil not relevant, were it even made to be useful. On top of this, being bound to the same recast timer as (Aura)steal is absurd.

And that's assuming it works, assuming the monster has items to steal. Which excludes any and all Notorious Monsters, or really anything you'd actually want to be able to enfeeble.

These three abilities should not be tied to the same 5 minute timer. Especially when even one 5 minute timer is too long a recast for any one of them. These should be seperate job abilities with 3 seperate recast timers and the timers for Aurasteal and Despoil need to be lowered.

If I want to steal an enhancement effect, it shouldn't have anything to do with stealing an item. Inflicting despoil debuffs also should not have anything to do with stealing items.

Mug. A solid contender for the most useless job ability in all of FFXI, on a 15 minute recast timer.

It is pretty clear that Square Enix doesn't want us stealing any amount of relevant gil. It has come to the point where they've just stopped giving NM's gil to mug. Obviously there is potential for abuse of such an ability were it too powerful.... so I say, just repurpose Mug. Lower the recast and have it deal some small amount of damage + stun.

Change Mug and give THF something useful (on a much lower recast) in its place.

How would you fix these abilities? I would do something along these lines (quoted from another post with some other utility stuff mixed in there):

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/6916-Thief-Job-Ability-Synergy-This-is-not-2005?p=97770&viewfull=1#post97770

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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 different kinds of steal that all share this 30 second timer.

•Steal:Steals temporary items [That don't take inventory space] that are useful in battle instead of the useless items we can steal 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 temporary items used for battle.

•Aurasteal: Seperated from (item)Steal. Only steals & dispells Enhancement Effects. Does not attempt an item steal. Will not fail if inventory is full.

•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 have nothing to do with stealing an item.
*All Despoil Enfeebles and resulting enhancements last 2 minutes (enhanced by +despoil gear).
*All enhancement effects stolen with Aurasteal last the standard base duration of the enhancement effect. Duration is not determined from the time the monster used it.

Conspirator Recast is shortened to 2 Minutes and grants current stolen Despoil enhancement effect 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 90% Enmity 5 Minute recast
*Effective range will be extended

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

Hide adds Invisibe, Sneak and Deodorise effects. Recast is lowered to 1 minute.
Sheds enmity on all but a very select few HNMs (IE: Works on almost everything)

Perfect Dodge is reduced to a 5 minute recast Job Ability.
•A new 2 hour Plunder is added that attempts to steal valuable treasure from (any) Notorious Monster drop pools (Doesn't target crystals etc). Success rate is enhanced by +steal gear.
•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.

Treasure Hunter is adjusted to impact the rare loot pools of treasure chests as well (so there is actually a reason to bring us to BCNM/Voidwatch type fights).

Job Traits, THF specific Ranged Weapons, or THF specific gear will be added to enhance Status Bolts/Arrows accuracy, potentcy etc.

[Laphine]

is despoil really random? I thought/heard it had some pattern based on mob family. Idk anyway, i think used it like one single time lol.

Mug delay doesn't sound so bad either. If we are lucky enough to make a 3k mug, that's only 36k in 1h. It's just some cheap change.

[Nebo]

Hmm. Perhaps truly random is the wrong way to put it. Rather, it's not specific.

It is variable based on the item you steal (which is a sort of random chance that you have no control over). It can be one of a few different debuffs per mob family if the item steal is successful.

[Babekeke]

#1 Mob uses defensive move... THF grins and hits steal... THF aquires item worth probably 21 gil.

22 merits well spent?


#2 Mob uses defensive ability. THF uses Steal. "Unable to perform this action because your inventory is full"

22 merits well spent?


#3 THF uses Despoil (which probably misses, but is irrelevant either way). Mob uses defensive move. THF tries to use steal. "Unable to use Job Ability. 4:45 remaining"

22 merits well spent?


You get the idea. I love Aura Steal, but the fact that it shares the timer is BS.
If they simply split this to a separate JA on a separate timer, I'd be happy. Steal and Despoil could keep their timer share for all I care, but the fact that to guarantee success we need to go 5/5, then the fact that it shares timer, then the fact that the chance to steal item comes first and THEN the fact that if the mob has multiple buffs on you can't guarantee which buff you will steal!?!?

And that, America, is what grinds my gears.

[thefinalrune]

Agreed once again. In the many years that I've played thief I've been constantly annoyed that the lack luster of the only thief like abilities we have. The idea of converting Mug into a stun+damage move is much more in line with its FF roots than the current version and I would love to see it changed.

In my opinion, all steal related abilities, baring the before mentioned new mug that would work nice at a five minute timer, should have not only separate timers, but have their reuse recasts reduced to one minute each.

[Capn]

Nebo!

Seen you around a lot and like a lot of your ideas.

I think that 90% of what you have listed in your post is pure gold and would revive the dying job class (ok not dying... just losing it's place in the game... I mean who NEEDS hate control...). It really seems like thf has the most ridiculous shared timers of any job in the game...

Accomp/Collab

Steal/Aura/Despoil

and the fact that mug is on a 15 minute timer is just....... sad...

DEVELOPERS!!!
You've done a fantastic job at making gil almost irrelevant aside from consumables on the AH. Great job! now that gil means nothing... can you change mug? please?? 5 minute timer, inflicts damage and chance to stun is so Final Fantasy of olden days.

I like your ideas but I would change a few things so as not to "overpower" them (and some general commentary notes):

Hide - keep it the same shedding hate from sight only NQ mobs, added effect of sneak/invis/deod if you are not on any hate lists.

AoE Flee - Would be awesome.... just had to say that <.<;

Perfect Dodge - GIVE US WHAT YOU ALLUDED TO 5 YEARS AGO!!!! PERMA SNEAK ATTACK DAMAGE MODS FROM BEHIND WITH PD UP!!! (still 2 hours ability)

Evade - Thf third eye... yea... I like that... just had to say that too...

Despoil - Everything you have there listed... but 50% chance to land, random effect from that list...

Steal - Temp items... fk yes... please... NQ steal and crit steal ... NQ = temp potion or cathlicon... HQ = steel ingot (lolcorbulletjoke)

Conspirator - ::Leave Conspirator Alone - Brittney.jpg:: (maybe only half potency if you have mobs attention)

Universal steal timer of 30 seconds = win

Dear SE,

If you don't want to give us survivability boosts like nin and dnc have natively... give us this... thank you

[Babekeke]

I always wondered why Perfect Dodge didn't give 'Invincible-like' enmity. One of the best panic moves in the game when your healer dies in a party, but you are bottom of the enmity list (I'm thinking lower level parties now - certainly applies pre-collomplice) so you hit perfect dodge and sit watching everyone else die in the party, and as mob turns to you... perfect dodge wears off. Nice one.

[Nebo]

Nebo!

Seen you around a lot and like a lot of your ideas.

lol oh wow. Thanks a lot!


Despoil - Everything you have there listed... but 50% chance to land, random effect from that list...

I think you have some good points, but I am very very very very very against this. I think if Despoil is going to be made useful at all it must to be able to be specific and accuracte. Even if only one or two from that list of suggesstions made it into the game, or they had to make it a longer recast, it would still be vastly more useful than a random effect because you could plan for it or use it in tactics.

Random + inaccurate is just not useful.

[Nynja]

Mug is on a 15 minute timer because HNM groups used to hold mobs and just use multiple thf' to spam mug for gil, untill theres nothing left.

Aura Steal imo should be its own JA on a reduced timer.

Desoil debuffs are not random as was originally claimed, but pre-determined by mob (by family or by specific mob Im not sure). However, its kinda dumb how you can only inflict a pre-determined debuff. Despoil list on wiki is fn stupid because its not tracking mob debuff per item...probably because some people are too stupid to realize "hey I keep inflicting X when I steal Y, and I keep inflicting A when I steal B". But, for example, Crapaudy's in Abys-LTP are debuffed with MAB down. Why would I want to give MAB down on a mob who has no TP moves and does not cast spells...therefor has absolutely no use for a MAB down effect?

[Nebo]

Why would I want to give MAB down on a mob who has no TP moves and does not cast spells...therefor has absolutely no use for a MAB down effect?

Yeah this is pretty stupid. I feel like Despoil is one of those abilities that they put almost no thought into at all....or way too much and in doing so overcomplicated and ruined the ability.

I'll admit random is the wrong word to use. The debuff being variable based on mob family and item stolen, etc (which is just as absurd imo, especially given your example).

Not having any control over what it does (as well as being tied to the success rate of an item steal) is quite useless. I can't imagine why they thought this was worth adding to the game.

[Babekeke]

Why would I want to give MAB down on a mob who has no TP moves and does not cast spells...therefor has absolutely no use for a MAB down effect?

Probably the same reason that my NPC wants to cast silence on crabs lol. She never aspirs them though!

[noodles355]

I actually pretty much agree with everything Nebo stated.

[Zoner]

Aurasteal needs to be its own ability!

[Phen]

Just bumping for truth mostly. The concept in these abilities is useful stealing enhancements, debuffing- but the implementation makes them functionally worthless. The fact that despoil cant work on NMs, those being the sort of thing the unique debuffs of despoil would be interesting on, is ludicrous and makes me wonder what they were thinking.

Two things on the probably wont happen cuz front: temp items would require them to do something like despoil with new pools which even if its by family i doubt they will do for "coding difficulty." Now mind you could just program it like scavenge or something. The second is i doubt you would see it share steal because they might need to change the way oh... what a half dozen nm/quest(af 1, BB, salvage rats) function with steal. Keep in mind i consider both of these excuses bull though.

[RabidSquirrel]

I definitely like the ideas posted here. What I really want is more things to do during a fight. Thief doesn't have any ability with a cooldown less than 60 seconds. And each one of those three 60 second abilities require other people to be effective. I like staying occupied.

[Karbuncle]

I concur with, like, the only 3 posts i read but!

On the topic of Steal, Despoil, and Aura Steal and mug....

Steal - 1min recast
Despoil - 1 min recast
Aura Steal 1min recast
Mug - 3 min recast (or less? fk)

All separate Abilities plz D:, However, If you reduce Steal to ~30 Seconds, I dont mind if it shares a timer with Aura Steal.

[Laphine]

i rather see sa/ta @ 30 secs recast before steal! lol

[Karbuncle]

Well of course that goes without saying :P

[Zyla420]

can't put SA/TA on a 30 sec timer cause all the war's will cry about how we can use the ability they're getting every 30 sec and how we're stomping on their DD output. lol...

[RabidSquirrel]

I'm liking the idea of a sneak + invisible hide on a 1 minute recast the best. You'd be able to sneak attack every moment possible in the middle of a fight. The only thing I'd like to add is that its duration should be made to last at least a minute. That way we steal dancer's spectral jig! Muahaha! But seriously. Who's idea was it to give dancers that? Why are dancers more sneaky than thieves? /slap to whoever thought of that.

[Raxiaz]

I stole Attack Boost from an Easy Prey scorpion and it lasted 5 minutes. Coincidence? I think not.

[Nynja]

the fact it was ep means nothing...

[Yinnyth]

I wish I had found this thread earlier because I was actually thinking of suggesting many of the things that the OP suggests. IMO some of the timers suggested are a bit too fast (I was aiming for PD to be a 15 minutes ability, not 5 minute, and I had no idea what thf's new 2 hour would be), and I also think that using an AoE version of flee and hide should result in a longer cooldown as well. The suggested steal system is brilliant though.

[Karbuncle]

I think allowing Despoil to Absorb the Despoiled "Effect" would be treading too much into DRK territory and its "absorb" buffs, Especially if we were allowed to chose each which debuff we wanted to inflict/absorb. regardless of a shared timer. (Plus we technically do that with Aura Steal minus the Debuff inflicted).

This is more a copy>paste of Ideas i tossed in another Thread about ways to Improve Steal, Aura Steal, Mug and Despoil to be useful.




Really liked a lot of the OP's ideas.

[Raxiaz]

Thief's 2hr should be 100% accuracy, not 100% evasion.

<_<

[Zyla420]

100% acc wouldn't do much for thf, we're already pretty accurate with daggers to begin with.

i'd much rather see something like 1min where every hit is augmented with SA and TA. or a steal ability for a 2hr that drops enemy att, m.att, def, m.def and acc to 0 for 1-2 min (thf would not absorb these stats, that's more drk's realm).

[noodles355]

100% acc wouldn't do much for thf, we're already pretty accurate with daggers to begin with.In Abyssea god-mode sure, on things that actually matter outside, don't kid yourself. We weren't even close to cap on important mobs at 75, we aren't now, and we wont be at 99. In fact even in Abyssea, we are not acc capped against higher tier stuff.

Also I believe his post was in making everything 100% accurate, including steals. Not that there's anything worth stealing once every 2hrs.

[Zyla420]

In Abyssea god-mode sure, on things that actually matter outside, don't kid yourself. We weren't even close to cap on important mobs at 75, we aren't now, and we wont be at 99. In fact even in Abyssea, we are not acc capped against higher tier stuff.

Also I believe his post was in making everything 100% accurate, including steals. Not that there's anything worth stealing once every 2hrs.
while yes we weren't capped on acc on endgame content i still think 100% for a 2hr would be a waste, there far better things thf could have for a 2hr.

[Phen]

Hey lets have a survey. A lot of us play thf regularly in your last ten outings on thf how many times would you say used:
Steal to steal items
Aura Steal to dispel- also how many absorbs did you get
Despoil for items/enfeeb--- success in either.

First my numbers: ive been mainly doing twashtar work for the last two weeks. A lot of it was on thf.
Steal for steal: 0
Aura Steal(3merits): 15 times, successful absorb 3times, fail 4. I used this on Glavoid a lot after he absorbed buffs and itza super haste. In both cases we usually killed one or two more before the timer was up again though.
Despoil: I can soundly say 0 times.

[Raksha]

I don't play THF, but what if Mug were changed to be a damage + stun move (as suggested on the first page) which also kicks your treasure hunter effect up a level?

Or maybe make it add a gilfinder debuff?

[Insaniac]

Hey lets have a survey. A lot of us play thf regularly in your last ten outings on thf how many times would you say used:
Steal to steal items
Aura Steal to dispel- also how many absorbs did you get
Despoil for items/enfeeb--- success in either.

1. 1 - Did a brigandish blade recently.
2. 10/2 - Guestimate
3. 0 - I haven't used despoil since people stopped exping on murex.

[Elidani]

I thought I saw under another thread where SE had no intention of seperating the timers due to having a bunch of timers already in the game. Now, to counteract this particular problem rather than separate the timers, what they could do is merge the three.
Example you get steal at level 15:

At Level 77 it could become Despoil: (here you just steal the same items you could previously *since a lot of the new stuff is crap,* but you still get to inflict a status effect*.)

*The status effect should be something relevant to the particular type of mob you are fighting...I.E. mages lose MAB and melee lose eva or def. If that is too complicated just make it a standard -eva and -def across the board.

When Aurasteal is merited it should allow the player to *possibly* steal a buff in addition to an item. This is far better than an either/or situation.

In any case the recast timer for steal needs to be lowered 30seconds - 1minute would be optimal. 1.5 minutes to 2 minutes would be halfway decent. 3+ minutes is fairly illogical for such a job. I could see if it were /thf maybe having a longer recast. If a player's profession is THF...its only reasonable they get to do so regularly. Black mages don't have 5 minute wait timers between every nuke. White mages can cure more than once every 5 minutes. Thieves should be able to steal more regularly than every 5 minutes. (It could be a little more successful as we advance in level too since our mastery of the ability should've progressed somewhere between 1-90)

[Zyla420]

imo SE's excuse about there being too many recast counters up at once is invalid. there are mobs that reset all recast timers as it is... they really should pay attention to what they put in their own game before they try to make excuses that contradict what they've already done.

[Elidani]

I would have to agree about it being invalid. My reason has nothing really to do with the current monsters that reset timers. They are giving all of our jobs *adjustments* and have been, here and there, for awhile now. I've gotten new recast timers with new abilities. If they are going to continue to give use new ones to accompany new abilities, why can they not do the one thing, most if not all, thieves want and seperate despoil from steal, and possibly even aurasteal?

[Zyla420]

because omgohnoesstealisbroken lolz...

[Phen]

Also that I feel like on dancer I usually have more active timers than thief has at the moment anyway.

[Phen]

Actually suggestion: remove despoil and free up a timer. Its useless on worthwhile content. My thief is 90 and I get merits through NMs etc. so using it on exp mobs is useless.

[Kit_Katz]

I like the ideas and approve of looking for alternatives to the largely half baked crap SquareEnix has been doing with these Abilities.

Some of the stuff mentioned in this post however I can't agree with even as a THF myself because they are too powerful to be fair. Stealing enhancements with Dispoil sounds nice but things like stealing HP/Haste with it don't seem like things I would agree with, especially if the haste buff was not overwritten by other sources.

Steal & Mug are for sure both worthless at this stage of the game unless you do dynamis a lot, but even then the 5min recast on steal makes this pretty pointless as well.
Mug is also useless as it is now since no monsters have Gil anymore so I am all for making it actually do something at least, as well as lower it's recast. Dmg+Item or Dmg+Gil, or just give monsters Gil to mug sound okay to me.

The Idea of Perpetrator I don't agree with either, 90% of someones enmity is a pretty large chunk, one I don't think I want in most cases. Since I should usually be using these JA on mages or support classes as well, giving them buffs that I have Dispoiled is not something I really care about at all (why does my whm need 30 att?). Something just above 50, say 60-80% enmity sounds fair.

Hide I agree is also mostly worthless now since it doesn't work on most things, I use it as a short term invis when I don't want to pop a tool, so even just lengthening the invis effect would be fine.

Now the most broken thing you mentioned,... Perfect Dodge as a 5min JA... Just no. I mean yeah that would be a hell of a lot of fun and I would be quite literally nearly immortal in many cases, but God Mode is not something I want to turn on, and having PD as a 5min cooldown would be a bit too much. 20min like the cooldowns for Meritable JA seems more reasonable since as it is I almost never use my 2hr on thf because it is a waste of a 2hr charge.
Your Plunder idea I could also never agree with no matter how much I love getting my THF new shiny stuff. Snagging N.Abj off fafs and stuff? I would love to but that would be unfair to other players and everyone with Thf would refuse to play any other job in any NM/HNM fight. If it put the item into the loot pool I could consider it, but if that were the case it again becomes a wasted 2hr cause other people can get their own items I'm not blowing my 2hr for them.

[Nebo]

Some of the stuff mentioned in this post however I can't agree with even as a THF myself because they are too powerful to be fair. Stealing enhancements with Dispoil sounds nice but things like stealing HP/Haste with it don't seem like things I would agree with, especially if the haste buff was not overwritten by other sources.

I'll agree, when I actually wrote these ideas down, I intended to make them powerful enough to be relevant. Since SE doesn't want to go the stealing items and gil route, I went with the more battle oriented versions of steal abilities.

They have already kind of sort of half-ass done this with Aurasteal and despoil. They just made the recast timers much to long and shared, while still making them tied to stealing useless garbage items. I, for one, would not miss /tossing bone chips from my inventory at all...just focus on the stealing of enhancement effects and inflicting (specific) enfeebling effects with Despoil. It seems so simple and so right there screaming in your face.

They obviously don't want us stealing valuable items....don't insult us by giving us the ability to steal useless crap and try to introduce Despoil as some amazing thing that is clearly useless.

But too powerful to be fair? I disagree.

10% haste would be equivalent to things like haste samba and Hasso. But in this example I was thinking more along the lines of inflicting + 10% delay increase while stealing -10% delay reduction (similar to the effects of the COR roll). Something that is neither a slow nor a haste effect, but stacks with both. For the purposes of weapon delay...not recast timers or anything else that haste affects.

Stealing HP has always been something I felt THF should be able to do in this game. Technically we already can do this with Bolts, but I'd like to see a THF do this in a more..."Thiefy" way.


The Idea of Perpetrator I don't agree with either, 90% of someones enmity is a pretty large chunk, one I don't think I want in most cases. Since I should usually be using these JA on mages or support classes as well, giving them buffs that I have Dispoiled is not something I really care about at all (why does my whm need 30 att?). Something just above 50, say 60-80% enmity sounds fair.

90% is a pretty large chunk I agree. But if SE really wants us to be an enmity manipulation specialist, I think we should be able to steal a larger chunk of enmity with an ability like this, and either use our high evasion/perfect dodge to help the group for a bit or choose to shed the stolen hate with hide (if hide were made to work on more things.)

It is laughable to think that a THF is going to control enmity in any situation at all with 25% on a 1 or 5 minute recast and 50% on a 5 minute recast.


Now the most broken thing you mentioned,... Perfect Dodge as a 5min JA... Just no. I mean yeah that would be a hell of a lot of fun and I would be quite literally nearly immortal in many cases, but God Mode is not something I want to turn on, and having PD as a 5min cooldown would be a bit too much. 20min like the cooldowns for Meritable JA seems more reasonable since as it is I almost never use my 2hr on thf because it is a waste of a 2hr charge.

I think you are overvaluing Perfect dodge. It most certainly does not make you immortal. There is nothing Perfect Dodge can do that I cannot do (much) better with shadows and an evasion set...whenever I want...indefinitely.

Besides that, it only lasts 30 seconds and will not protect you from magic based or ranged attacks. There are a few other non-2 hour (5 minute recast) defensive JA's in the game that I would consider to be superior to Perfect Dodge in many ways.


Your Plunder idea I could also never agree with no matter how much I love getting my THF new shiny stuff. Snagging N.Abj off fafs and stuff? I would love to but that would be unfair to other players and everyone with Thf would refuse to play any other job in any NM/HNM fight. If it put the item into the loot pool I could consider it, but if that were the case it again becomes a wasted 2hr cause other people can get their own items I'm not blowing my 2hr for them.

Really, looking at SE's "vision" for THF as a stealthy pickpocket...while simultaneously saying they don't want us to be able to steal anything of any value is very confusing to me. If your vision for the job is something you don't want it to do....maybe you should look at that?...and reevaluate your "vision?"

But no, I don't feel like being able to steal from HNM treasure pools once every 2 hours, (with a low success rate) would be unfair. Although, I'm one of those guys that has always thought THF should be able to....you know...steal things for the trade off of being relatively weak at everything else.

But one could adjust a 2 THF-like 2 hour like this from actually stealing an item from the drop pool of an NM, to something like causing a significant boost in Treasure Hunter Level.

Anyway I never intended or expected that these abilities should exist in the game all at once, just to say that the way THF steals and JA's function now is a jo....well I won't say its a joke. Becuase it's really not funny to me anymore. It's sad. It's sad that we have been outspoken for so long and still hold on to any kind of hope that we could sway their (seemingly contradictory) vision for THF....when this is clearly not going to happen.

[Elidani]

A thief friend of mine stole my Fan Dance from Lord Varney who hijacked it from me. Seriously I think we're already there because it could've just as easily been my haste samba he reclaimed from Varney.

[Babekeke]

With respect to perfect dodge, it should have an enmity spike with it. We can't help a party out at all with our 2 hour unless we are already top of the hate list.

Despite this, we can still be raped by magic and ranged attacks if shadows are down, or it's aoe. I've always wondered how perfect is a dodge that can't dodge an arrow, bolt or bullet...

PD should dodge all /ra and should cap magic evasion for us. So as to not make PD beat invincible, invincible should actually be invincible. Like an infinate stoneskin for the duration, negating physical, magical and slip damage.

[Nebo]

B-B-B-B-Bump

Because o this:


Also, the situation of not having enough recast timer slots has not yet changed. In order to resolve this problem we are currently working to expand the space...

...Once we have completed this expansion, we believe that we will be able to improve not only the special job abilities, but other abilities that have been limited by this restriction (Steal/Despoil, Soul Jump/Spirit Jump, etc.)

I hope that Producer Matsui understands that simply seperating the timers for Steal and Despoil....essentially accomplishes nothing.

The real issue is that the way these abilities function, along with Mug, are completely irrelevant to the game. Their flawed functionality, coupled with the worthless items and amounts of gil they steal...are not even worth the job ability delay they cost your DPS to use.

So if your only plan is to seperate the recast timers, I humbly suggest that you not waste the developement resources...it will accomplish nothing.

Steal, Despoil (and Mug) need a functional overhaul.

Aside from the fact that every single item that CAN be stolen is purposefully irrelevant to the game because the developers don't want to give us valuable items to steal...

- Even Dynamis currency, the steal rate for which is so low that it is not unheard of to go entire runs without a successful steal. You could do nothing but farm curency yourself to build a relic (no buying), ride your steal timer every 5 minutes of every single dynamis run, and it would have no impact on how many runs it takes you to farm your relic.

...The amount of unreasonable things attached to steal (and despoil) are staggering:

-Doesn't work on 99.99% of Endgame content
-Doesn't work on 99.99% of NMs
-No Valuable Items Worth Stealing
-Very Low Success Rate
-Unnecessarily long 5 Minute (Shared) reast times
-Interferes with Aurasteal

Why, if the developers do not want us to be stealing things, do they add Despoil - ANOTHER ability that steals worthless items as a post level cap ability?

I believe a variety of adjustments could be made to provide useful funcionality to Steal, Despoil, and Mug.

They could adjust and expand on steal abilities that are useful for combat.

They could adjust Steal to take temp items that are useful in battle.

They could lower Mug recast and have it deal Damage+Stun

They could adjust despoil so that it does not atempt a worthless item steal that is of no use to anyone, but rather focus on a non variable debuff aspect that we can base a battle plan around.

They could create a DD boost based on TH level and then adjust Steal and Mug to attempt to Raise treasure hunter effectiveness level by 1 and 2 respectively.

There really are a lot of interesting, useful and balanced things they could do to adjust these abilities that SHOULD define Thief. It's clear that the ability to steal powerful armor/items (as in previous FF titles) would be unbalanced and would not translate well to FFXI.

So SE, you've already started to ATTEMPT to give us more battle related steal type abilities....I humbly suggest you don't half ass it anymore. Take out the useless garbage items/crap steal funcionality with aurasteal and despoil, and focus on the battle related elements: Stealing temp items, Status effects, or involve them in the treasure hunter upgrade system in some way.

[Ziero]

As a career Thief, I completely agree that the timers and usage of not only the stealing abilities, but most of thfs abilities, are completely out of date to the point of being worthless. And I completely agree that they ALL (aside from SA/TA, Feint and Bully) need fixing. That said, I just disagree with the specifics mentioned in the opening post and first few pages.

First off, Aura Steal *is* SE making Steal useful. And from what I've experienced, a single merit into Aura steal turns it into a 100% dispel, which takes priority over taking an item while subsequent merits only increase your chance at absorbing the specific buff. As is, I find this to be a very good way to make steal *very* useful end game. Aura Steal does not need to be it's own ability because it is in effect a direct boost to steal. What does need to change however is steals basic recast timer.

There is no reason for this to be on a 5 minute timer, the chances of actually stealing an item are already very low and even if you did there aren't any really valuable items to be stolen. Reducing Steal's basic time to be 1 minute at least, 2 at MAX, would fix both Steal and Aura Steal.

Despoil however needs a complete overhaul. It's clear that the idea SE had behind despoil was that in removing a piece of a mob (say stealing a lizard tail) would in the end weaken it (lowers defense). Thus taking different pieces of different mobs would weaken them in different ways. But due to having 1) a shared recast 2) a five minute recast 3) a quasi "random" effect 4) an abysmally short duration if the effect actually procs 5) an absurdly low chance of success 6) a terribly small amount of mobs to actually use it on and 7) only being able to use it once a fight if it actually does land successfully, the reality of it's usage just failed on all levels.

That said, it needs a lot of change in order to be something useful. In addition to being on it's own timer, which itself shouldn't be more then 3 minutes, it's functionality needs to be entirely altered. Though having an entire line of different Despoil types seems like a bit much, the idea of actually stealing basic stats works for what the job ability is supposed to do. Perhaps just have it steal different attributes based on your positioning compared to the mob? Coming from behind would steal Acc/Eva, going from the front would steal Att/Def and so forth. Give it a 2-3 minute timer and it would be a perfect addition to a Thfs arsenal.

As for mug, 1-2 minute recast damage and stun? Yea, that'd be perfect. Maybe even give it a boost(increased damage perhaps) if done from behind and I think it would fit right in line with what Thieves should be. Heck, maybe even forgo the damage and just make it an Addle+Stun ability.

I do like the idea of linking Collaborator and Despoil, but it should also retain a bit of the position related bonus it currently has. The simplest way to boost it would be to have Collaborator give the boost you Despoiled to everyone regardless of position while also adding the Subtle Blow boost it currently gives (dropping the Acc bonus in favor of the boost from Despoil) to anyone behind the mob.

With Accomp/Collab, I do like the idea of a third tier, but I feel these actually do work well on a shared timer. that said, have the three abilities be on a 1/3/5 minute timer and steal 20/50/90% enmity accordingly.

Flee however does not need to be AoE, the only change it should have...if any...is a shorter (3 minute) recast timer. Hide however DOES need to have the ability to drop Sound and Scent aggro added to it. If not directly boosted to the ability, then gained through a trait at higher levels. Especially seeing as how it can be used in conjunction to SA/TA, Hide's viability as a combat ability needs to be increased. And the best way to do this is to make it work on a ALL non-HNM/True aggro mobs and...much like most of thf's abilities...lowering it's recast.

In addition to these changes, I would also add a small change to Bully, in that while active all thf abilities that gain boosts from specific positioning (SA,Conspirator, and the altered Mug) will gain those boosts in full. Meaning if you were to use Bully, you'd gain the full buffs from Conspirator and gain the boost to the changed Mug, in addition to being able to land Sneak Attack from all angles.

As for the two hours, other then not being able to pull the hate that Invincible can, PD is pretty much exactly what a 2 hour should be. If they add the changes to Accomp/Collab, then using them, in addition to SA+Bully etc should be able to pull hate (though most likely it wouldn't), but as is there's really not much that can be done for PD...other then letting it avoid magic as well.

For a NEW two hour however, I personally would love to see something akin to a Mimic's Death Trap, a single target strong Stun/DoT/Enmity reset...perhaps with added Def/Mdef down. While it won't be a massive DD ability on it's own, it would still be incredibly useful for NM fights whether the thf is solo or with a large group and could work as a planned combat strategy or an "Oh Shi" attack to save the thf's hide. Plus I think it would be funny to watch a Thf toss a Treasure Chest at something. But this is just pointless wishful thinking as I'm sure we'd never get something like this.

And finally, some other, non-JA changes I'd love to see for thfs:
-Boosting a Thf's usage of Crossbows and status bolts. Rangers never use bolts, Cors are all about the guns and Marksmanship is thf's SECOND HIGHEST COMBAT SKILL. Show Crossbows some love and make them useful for thf again, please.
-Bring back Thf's unique ability to pick locks and make them masters of the Treasure Chest again. It was bad enough chests as whole were nerfed to hell, but now there are literally Treasure boxes being used all over the world, and Thf has absolutely nothing to make them the best at opening them! Some of my favorite memories of being a thf were trekking through incredibly high level dungeons and popping open those hidden coffers for those rare maps and...mostly useless...items without the need to spend hours farming a key. Thfs should be better at opening these boxes then anyone else, regardless of where these boxes are found.
-STOP giving us "boosts" to Treasure Hunter. I have never heard a serious long time Thf Player go "Gee, I wish I had more TH gear!". I've heard them ask for an explanation of how it worked or the math behind it or the actual increases to drop rates they give, but never "give me more junk to make me into an even bigger TH whore!"

Thf as a job class should be a light, fast hitting melee who's always on the move, always firing off JAs (with short recasts), weakening the monster in unique ways(Bolts/Steals/stat downs) while being able to play with not only Enmity, but full on aggro, better then any other job. We don't need to be doing the most damage directly as long as we're able to boost the damage of others (and ourselves) indirectly while at the same time being the masters of all forms of treasure whether it be dropped by monsters or found in dungeons.

[Babekeke]

The only part I feel I need to respond to here is:


First off, Aura Steal *is* SE making Steal useful. And from what I've experienced, a single merit into Aura steal turns it into a 100% dispel, which takes priority over taking an item while subsequent merits only increase your chance at absorbing the specific buff.

Taking an item has priority over aura steal.

I only skimmed over the second half of the post, but in general it seemed fair.

[Ziero]

In that case it should certainly be reversed. I guess Dynamis mobs have no steal pool then since whenever I use steal on them, I dispel their buffs instead of getting items.

[FrankReynolds]

In that case it should certainly be reversed. I guess Dynamis mobs have no steal pool then since whenever I use steal on them, I dispel their buffs instead of getting items.

How often do you actually dispel something useful? In my experience, it always manages to dispel something that won't help me at all. IE. do I really care if the mob has shell IV up when I'm soloing on thief? Or it will dispel something that the mob will immediately put back up.

[Arcon]

I guess Dynamis mobs have no steal pool then since whenever I use steal on them, I dispel their buffs instead of getting items.

Unless they changed it with the new Dynamis model, they definitely do have a Steal pool, the chance is just pretty low.


How often do you actually dispel something useful? In my experience, it always manages to dispel something that won't help me at all. IE. do I really care if the mob has shell IV up when I'm soloing on thief? Or it will dispel something that the mob will immediately put back up.

Usually you're right, but it can be useful in certain situations. I often use it to Absorb Berserk from mobs (which stacks with Berserk from /WAR) or Ice Spikes, which help a lot with not getting paralyzed. Often it's pretty pointless, but it does have situational uses which I find it to be worth it for.

[Ziero]

How often do you actually dispel something useful? In my experience, it always manages to dispel something that won't help me at all. IE. do I really care if the mob has shell IV up when I'm soloing on thief? Or it will dispel something that the mob will immediately put back up.

With a shorter recast, even if the mob does put it up again, you should be able to just re-dispel it. And stealing Ice Spikes from a mob or haste or att/acc/eva buffs and so forth are always great to do. The only time you steal a "Useless" buff is if it's a whm/rdm mob who casts pro/shell/aquaveil etc on itself before you try stealing from it. And there are plenty NMs with powerful self boosts that need to be dispelled, so being able to do it on thf is great...we just need to be able to do it more frequently.

[FrankReynolds]

I'm not gonna lie, it's nice when it does steal something useful, but it's completely unreliable / situational to the point that absolutely no one is basing any strategy off of it. If it functioned by like say stealing TP or draining a chunk HP or something else that could be guaranteed to be on every mob, it would be one thing, but stealing berzerk from a DC mob is going to make me kill one mob like 2 seconds faster. Even on huge NMs, It rarely has any great affect because whatever nasty buff they had will immediately go back up. IE. mobs will almost always put ice spikes right back on and having stolen ice spikes on the most evasive job in the game is not nearly as useful as it could be.

I'm not saying it's not a cool ability, it's just too unreliable to be on a minute+ timer and there are probably lots of better things that could be in it's place. If they broke out all those abilities on separate timers and put them at 1 minute, they still wouldn't be very powerful in 99.999% of the game.

TLDR; don't go giving devs the idea that thf has super powerful abilities that don't need to be adjusted up. They do.

[Mirage]

I am completely fine with not being allowed to select which status ailment to attempt to inflict with Despoil, and have it be dependent on the mob family you're fighting, as long as it is no longer tied to the same recast timer as Steal. However, I would like for some debuffs to actually make a difference on the mob you're fighting. Despoil should not lower an enemy's intelligence if it doesn't have a single attack that uses intelligence as a modifier, for example.

Additionally, if Despoil is to be left on a 5 minute timer and still not have a 100% success rate, debuff inflicted should be permanent (until the mob dies) unless it is a NM of a higher level than you.

I am also fine with letting aura steal remain on a 5 minute timer and having the absorb-buff chance be dependent on how many merits you put in it, again, as long as it is on a separate timer, not shared with Steal nor Despoil.

Just stop making every steal-like ability share the same cooldown. It is not fun and it would not disrupt balance.

[Nebo]

I don't think any THF would disagree with the idea that the ability to steal enhancements from monsters is cool thing to be able to do.

-The reality is though, there are only a handful of situations where you can steal a buff of any real value to you as a THF - 9 times out of 10, its just a utility dispel.

What I will say is that most Thieves I know feel that Aurasteal was implemented badly.

-It should have never been combined with steal just to "fix" steal. Especially since item steal procs first. Read: We are never going to fix Steal so lets just mash this totally unrelated thing onto it. Think of all the thrills you can have fighting skeltons!!!

-A 5 minute recast is MUCH to long for an ability of this kind.

You separate that sunnuvabitch from steal and lower the recast?...I'm putting 5/5 into it right then and there. (You can even make it share a recast with steal....no one cares about steal.)

The idea of Aurasteal is amazing, unfortunately the ability itself is pretty crap.

[Nebo]

I am completely fine with not being allowed to select which status ailment to attempt to inflict with Despoil, and have it be dependent on the mob family you're fighting, as long as it is no longer tied to the same recast timer as Steal.

I can't imagine a situation where this random/variable enfeeble would be useful for its enfeebling effect. How will you base a battle plan around an ability that you have no idea what its going to do?


if Despoil is to be left on a 5 minute timer and still not have a 100% success rate, debuff inflicted should be permanent (until the mob dies) unless it is a NM of a higher level than you.

Despoil Doesn't work on any NM's....at all - they don't have items to steal. Obligatory SE Bullshit response: "THAT's WHAT AURASTEAL IS FOR! IT IGNORES RESISTANCES! HAPPY RAINBOWS, CHOCOBOS AND SUNSHINE!!! YAY!!!!"


I am also fine with letting aura steal remain on a 5 minute timer and having the absorb-buff chance be dependent on how many merits you put in it, again, as long as it is on a separate timer, not shared with Steal nor Despoil.

5 Minutes cool is too long for any steal ability...especially Aurasteal. I could care less about steal and despoil though, those two retards don't do anything useful.

-Heck, SE could make steal, despoil and aurasteal all separate abilities but still share a (lower) recast timer....I'm happy. But that would be ignoring the problem that steal and despoil are totally irrelevant to the game...meh


Just stop making every steal-like ability share the same cooldown. It is not fun and it would not disrupt balance.

Agreed.

[Falseliberty]

when did despoil even come out? I can count on 2 hands the amount of times i have used this,
has got to be the most worthless dam ability ever. holy crap mug is worthless too.... do the devs even play this game?
If I sound sour, it's cuz I am ><

[Lokithor]

Steal, Despoil and Aura Steal should have their own separate timers. Each should have a base recast of 5 minutes.

Change Aura Steal merit to a Steal / Despoil / Aura Steal recast reduction of 1 minute per level to a final recast of 1 minute.

For steal, developers need to re-jig what can be stolen from mobs to make it worthwhile.

Aura Steal should have be 100% dispel and absorb. Change it from a trait to a Job Ability (therefore not associated with stealing at all).

Despoil should be changed so that the ability transfers a debuff from the thief to the mob. Eliminate completely the stealing of useless items.

[Mirage]

I can't imagine a situation where this random/variable enfeeble would be useful for its enfeebling effect. How will you base a battle plan around an ability that you have no idea what its going to do?

Non-selectable doesn't have to mean random. If the effect is consistent within the same mob group, you would get predictable results with Despoil every time you used it on specific enemies. If Despoiling a mandragora always lead to the mandy's damage output decreasing, you could base a battle plan around it.

Detaching an item-steal from Despoil, and making it strictly a debuff ability could allow for it to be usable on NMs too. The most important thing is however that it gets its own cooldown. Just splitting the three abilities into separate cooldowns alone would help a lot, because now you have a dispel, a debuff, and a potential item steal every 5 minutes, instead of only one of those three every 5 minutes.

Would I have preferred the recasts to be lowered as well? Sure, why wouldn't I want that? Decreasing them all to 3 minutes instead of 5 would perhaps be reasonable. I'm just saying that separate timers would increase their usefulness a lot already.

[Phogg]

In that case it should certainly be reversed. I guess Dynamis mobs have no steal pool then since whenever I use steal on them, I dispel their buffs instead of getting items.

I farm dyna as thf almost always and I would say in the many many runs I've done I've stolen less than a handful of coins. Its just a really rare thing.

The thing that bugs me, is something about aura steal seems to increase the accuracy of steal, but only on buffs. Mobs with no buff to steal in dyna >>> almost never successfully steal. Mobs with buffs, like crawlers cocoon, steal rate is really really high, like eyeballing 80-90% high. That aura steal rate seems consistent in other content as well, where the successful steal rate on items outside dynamis is much higher, but still lower that buff steal success rates. That just kinda bugs me lol

[SpankWustler]

The Steal family of job abilities are definitely in need of...something. Outside of Aura Steal, they're all currently so outdated that it's hard to even suggest a direction to go.


Non-selectable doesn't have to mean random. If the effect is consistent within the same mob group, you would get predictable results with Despoil every time you used it on specific enemies. If Despoiling a mandragora always lead to the mandy's damage output decreasing, you could base a battle plan around it.

A decent compromise between the dependability a player wants and the nutty nuttiness a Development Bro might want could be to make Despoil vary by the target's specific job rather than monster family, maybe?

There would still be enough randomness for the random element to be present. But, the very small pool for Black Mages could be "INT Down or Magic Attack Down", while the very small pool for the ever-popular-with-monsters job of Warrior could be "STR Down or Attack Down".

If this were combined with the enfeebling effect kicking in whether an item were stolen or not, Despoil would be...somewhat less awful than it is now.

[FrankReynolds]

Steal needs to be completely retooled. RMT have better ways to make money now. Let's make it a 99% chance that you will get a common item (single currency / log / w/e depending on the event), with a 1% chance that you will get the good item (HMP, 100 currency, B.Haidates etc. you get the point).

Despoil... doesn't need to exist. Just give thief some useful ranged equipment again if you must make thief an enfeebling job.

Aura Steal is never going to be useful beyond "Oh, that was neat! I had boost for 30 seconds!" or "yay, I took down ice spikes on a level 75 skeleton that had no chance of killing me anyways!" unless they come up with some way to allow players to target a specific buff and then shorten the timer. It's not funny when a job that survives by not getting hit steals a flame spikes effect instead of that 200 hp per tick regen that was slowing you down.

[Nebo]

The Steal family of job abilities are definitely in need of...something. Outside of Aura Steal, they're all currently so outdated that it's hard to even suggest a direction to go.



A decent compromise between the dependability a player wants and the nutty nuttiness a Development Bro might want could be to make Despoil vary by the target's specific job rather than monster family, maybe?

There would still be enough randomness for the random element to be present. But, the very small pool for Black Mages could be "INT Down or Magic Attack Down", while the very small pool for the ever-popular-with-monsters job of Warrior could be "STR Down or Attack Down".

If this were combined with the enfeebling effect kicking in whether an item were stolen or not, Despoil would be...somewhat less awful than it is now.

A big part of my problem with Despoil, is that I feel like it should have been made to allow the THF to "Steal" the effect (similar to how Absorb spells work).

So for me, yeah maybe enfeebling a specific BLM job type with MAB down would probably be more useful than Despoil is curently, bu I'd much rather they give us a much more useful and consistent effect to steal with it, (TP, HP, Attack, etc). As oppose to making it some situationally useful enfeeble.

[Vold]

There's nothing new I can really add, so I'ma just throw in my support if nothing else.

This game is in such dire need for certain ability adjustments because the game has changed so much in the past 4 years. Said adjustments worked fine in the past but for today's standards they are extremely sub par at best, and it doesn't help one lick for them to go untouched as months continue to pass. I really do not want to hear another balance excuse out of SE about it. All those excuses ever are is excuses for not having to bother fixing things.

I know it's a horrible pain in the ass to have to go back and adjust things but come on, if we can't get expansion after expansion on a more timely schedule than once every 3-5 years then at least give us the courtesy of making the game as it is the very best it can be. Especially when some of us, like me these days, tend to shy away from all of the 18 man content of late because it's just not possible for me to commit to it. So I have to fall back on being made happy in other ways, like job adjustments. The VW era was such a perfect time to be done with this issue. All that work that went into job adjustments and yet some of the most basic problems that exist managed to survive. How is it even possible that they cannot see how worthless mug/steal/aurasteal/despoil is? or perhaps they know full well how worthless they are, they just don't want to spend time improving them because it's a mountain of work. Specifically for despoil.





I want THF to be a damn thief, not gimped to the point it's just a TH bitch. Is that so much to ask in 2012? Either turn us into a real DD threat like they are in most MMOs, or give us our thieving back. Either one works for me. But I grow tired when I look at my THF and know the only reason for it to exist is to provide TH7+ and maybe a little eva power if solo. That's retarded.

[Ziero]

TLDR; don't go giving devs the idea that thf has super powerful abilities that don't need to be adjusted up. They do.

I don't think anyone in here even came close to suggesting that, I know I certainly didn't.


The thing that bugs me, is something about aura steal seems to increase the accuracy of steal, but only on buffs. Mobs with no buff to steal in dyna >>> almost never successfully steal. Mobs with buffs, like crawlers cocoon, steal rate is really really high, like eyeballing 80-90% high.

Part of Aura Steal is a drastically increased success of Steal landing on buffs. Even with a single merit, Aura Steal is a close to 95% dispel. All additional merits do is increase your chance of actually receiving the buff you stole instead of just dispelling. The only problem with Aura Steal isn't that it's an addition to Steal or even the choices of Buffs we can steal, it's the fact it's stuck on a 5 minute timer. That leaves the utility of the ability incredibly low. Just lowering Steal's recast to 1 minute will fix Aura Steal so that it's actually useful...even if it's mainly for the Dispel.


This game is in such dire need for certain ability adjustments because the game has changed so much in the past 4 years. Said adjustments worked fine in the past but for today's standards they are extremely sub par at best, and it doesn't help one lick for them to go untouched as months continue to pass. I really do not want to hear another balance excuse out of SE about it. All those excuses ever are is excuses for not having to bother fixing things.

To be perfectly blunt, as someone who's been playing Thf for over 8 years, I can honestly say that Steal and Mug have never been useful in this game. Nor has Despoil despite being added fairly recently. Of all the "Stealing" abilities, only Aura Steal has actually had any use in any kind of fight, however that use is almost worthless due to it's absurdly long recast. All that said, in this day and age, Steal and Mug have only become more useless since most mobs have neither items nor cash worth taking.

All that said, while the actual ideas to fix these problems seem to vary, we all (save for SE) seem to agree on one thing. None of these abilities are useful and all of them need to be fixed.

[Nebo]

The only problem with Aura Steal isn't that it's an addition to Steal or even the choices of Buffs we can steal, it's the fact it's stuck on a 5 minute timer. That leaves the utility of the ability incredibly low. Just lowering Steal's recast to 1 minute will fix Aura Steal so that it's actually useful...even if it's mainly for the Dispel.

Disagree. There is no logical reason that the attempt to dispel an effect should be dependant on the success rate of stealing an item. There is no logical reason for aurasteal and item steal to be combined the way they are.

Steal on a 1 minute timer is still going to get you bone chips when you want to dispel ice spikes. It's still going to tell you that your inventory is full so you cannot attempt to steal those ice spikes until you sort your inventory.....by which time you are paralyzed and your steal timer resets (5 F***ing MINUTES) without accomplishing anything.

This is unacceptable.

These two (three, really) need to be seperated. Even if they share one, drastically lowered timer but are seperate abilities....the actions themselves need to be seperate. If I want to dispell a buff, I want a command that ONLY tries to dispell a buff. If I want to steal an item, I want a command that ONLY tries to steal an item.


To be perfectly blunt, as someone who's been playing Thf for over 8 years, I can honestly say that Steal and Mug have never been useful in this game.

This is not true at all.

As a mater of fact, stealing beastcoins and hiding used to be SO powerful that they had to nerf it because it was changing the balance of the game. Pros used to camp Jagedy Eared Jack night and day. People happily paid several million gil back then for steal +1. Thieves made HP convert (akin to sorcerer's ring) sets to activate the +3 steal ring. I myself, used to rob goblins all day long without having to kill them...and made good money.

Aparently we are still being punished because this is STILL reason why we can't have nice things.


By adding attractive items to monsters, we fear that it would be re-creating the scenario from the past regarding beastcoins (stealing and then hiding right after)

Mug also stole relatively good amounts from NMs for the times.

Picking treasure chests also used to be one of the best money makers in the game. Which is why they took everything worth while OUT of treasure coffers.

Thief abilities used to be SO game changing that SE either deliberately nerfed or phased out every single one....without ever properly adjusting them or giving anything of real value in return. They just took all that semi-overpowered utility and never gave anything back to replace it.

The REAL issue here is that the game has changed drastically and most Thief job abilities (even sneak and trick attack) have not. In the era when we we were the masters of the SATAVB Distortion Skillchain, running around popping chests, stealing coins, mugging HNMs....THF truly was an amazing (if somewhat overpowered) job.

No other job I can think of has seen such a drastic fall from grace due to nerf after nerft after nerf. And we are STILL bound to cumbersome job abilities, bottleneck JA timers and positional restrictions based on irrelvant battle dynamics that no longer exist....and haven't existed for a long long time.

The ONLY desireable thing that survived the years has been Treasure Hunter. But even the almighty TH has been marginalised over and over....more and more with each event released post-level cap, and given away to other jobs etc etc.

The reason for this issue? The developers still actually think its still possible to steal and hide over and over for some reason....even though they removed the possibility to do this many years ago.

Why is this the problem? Becuase it means the developement team has NO. F$&#ING. IDEA. how the game is played, how the abilities they dream up translate into FFXI 2012-2013 but most importantly, how useless the crap they have given to THF really is.

On these very forums they ACTUALLY told PLDs and RNGs in two seperate threades to "Invite a THF to help you control enmity" as if that's a real, viable, actual thing. As if anyone has EVER invited a THF to control enmity at any event since a 2004-5 exp party. As if the heavily restricted and SEVERELY limited enmity related abilities we currently possess could CONTROL enmity in ANY situation. in FFXI 2012.

The problem is that they think this....when it is so far outside the realm of reality.

The problem is that the developement team knows verylittle about THF as it exists today, and they still view it as the financially overpowered job that needs to be heavily restricted (positionally/Timers/Dependant on the party) for justification. This was their origional design and it is that place in their minds THF still holds....The unfortunate reality is that this concept of THF just doesn't exist anywhere else other than that place in their minds.


All that said, while the actual ideas to fix these problems seem to vary, we all (save for SE) seem to agree on one thing. None of these abilities are useful and all of them need to be fixed.

Agreed

[Ziero]

Disagree. There is no logical reason that the attempt to dispel an effect should be dependant on the success rate of stealing an item. There is no logical reason for aurasteal and item steal to be combined the way they are.

As I clarified earlier, the Dispel effect should take priority over the item stealing. In the current gameplay dynamics, stealing items is more or less a non-existent thing as most newer monsters and events don't even have steal-able items. Seeing as SE has made it clear there are limits to the amount of recast timers a job can have, and the fact that very few things can actually make taking an item a useful tactic in combat nowadays, there's no reason Aurasteal should be removed from Steal.

With Steal/Aura Steal, reducing it to a one minute recast and making the Dispel effect take priority would more or less fix the issue with that ability specifically.


This is not true at all.

As a mater of fact, stealing beastcoins and hiding used to be SO powerful that they had to nerf it because it was changing the balance of the game. Pros used to camp Jagedy Eared Jack night and day. People happily paid several million gil back then for steal +1. Thieves made HP convert (akin to sorcerer's ring) sets to activate the +3 steal ring. I myself, used to rob goblins all day long without having to kill them...and made good money.

Again, I was there doing just that (still have my ring actually). I used to LIVE in Oldton, targeting the Gurneymen for Platinum coins (which were 20k a pop back in the day) while mining between recast timers. At minimum, it would take a Thf an HOUR to get a single stack of coins...and that's assuming a 100% success rate on steal (which we all was impossible). I found that while the coins were a nice supplement to my income, the real cash came from the actual mining aspects of my time in that zone where Hide works on almost everything (it would fail on Bst gobs if you didn't kill the bats first!).

Even at it's peak, Steal had very limited use to normal players. It wasn't because of us that SE felt the need to nerf it, it was due to rampant RMT usage of the technique which utilized bots and 24/7 farmers...much like what they used in any quick money making scheme back in the worst days of XI's economy.

While there is certainly a lot wrong with Thf right now, and there was definitely a lot done to harm the job overall, I personally won't go as far as to say that the current devs are completely blind to the job and it's woes. It's clear they know something is wrong, they're just unsure of how to fix it without breaking it even more. But small things like the addition of Bully(including the changes made to it compared to it's original concept), changes to the merit JAs usefulness and most recently the delaying of the newest 2 hour from the test server so it can be noticeably reworked shows that they're taking (baby)steps to fix the job in ways that would actually be worth while.

The bottom line is SE has kicked thf in the balls so often it's like they're making videos of it to post on youtube or something. As one of the consistently lower end jobs in the game, Thf could certainly use a LOT of love right now. With concerns over RMTs being largely a thing of the past, it's high time SE took the chance and gave Thf a nice big overhaul and make it's less useful abilities actually something worth having.

[Nebo]

While there is certainly a lot wrong with Thf right now, and there was definitely a lot done to harm the job overall, I personally won't go as far as to say that the current devs are completely blind to the job and it's woes. It's clear they know something is wrong, they're just unsure of how to fix it without breaking it even more. But small things like the addition of Bully(including the changes made to it compared to it's original concept), changes to the merit JAs usefulness and most recently the delaying of the newest 2 hour from the test server so it can be noticeably reworked shows that they're taking (baby)steps to fix the job in ways that would actually be worth while.

I'd like to believe that, but they keep saying and doing all these crazy things that lead me to believe otherwise.....like:

"Our vision of THF is a stealthy pick pocket...but we won't give them anything desireable to steal" (This is my favourite)

"Bring a THF to control Enmity"

"Aurasteal seperated from Steal on a lower timer would be overpowered"

"THF will stay dependant on out dated party mechanics that are no longer relevant to fulfil its (relatively weak) damage potential."

They added despoil as a post level cap ability. They added conspirator as a post level cap ability. They then spent ANOTHER 2 updates on despoil....yes, despoil was even more horrible than it is now at release (you had no idea what it did until the enfeeble wore off, and the success rate was much lower.)

When they added bully, it was garbage. It was the sheer amout of outrage on these forums that gave them pause and caused them to change it. Their idea of Bully in its origional form was horrible. THVs all over Vana'diel can kindly thank us for Bully's usefullnes now.

But I'm concenred with what that change to Bully means. It says to me that the Devs sort of understand that the positional restrictions imposed on us are tough to fulfill in lots of situations and that we'd like more opportunities and ways to make use of our core DD abilities. (or the addition of new ones since we haven't seen one since lvl 30 <.<)

But then it also says "1 in 3 Sneak Attack is all you get, no love for Trick Atack" Which, yes, is better than what we had, but I am looking for something more to address this issue on a fundamental level, not just a bandaid on a shotgun wound.

All I have to go on, is what they are saying, and the updates they put out. And these things lead me to believe that they really don't play their game, they haven't got the first clue what THF really needs, and they have very little interest in listening to us when we tell them what is wrong.

[Yenecol]

And these things lead me to believe that they really don't play their game, they haven't got the first clue what THF really needs, and they have very little interest in listening to us when we tell them what is wrong.

^This. How many pages does this thread have to be before we get a dev response? I too am sick of useless thief abilities that have no bearing on the game.

[Babekeke]

I found a use for Despoil! While levelling Leathercraft and farming Peiste skins at a terrible drop rate, I discovered that I can despoil them :)

[FrankReynolds]

I found a use for Despoil! While levelling Leathercraft and farming Peiste skins at a terrible drop rate, I discovered that I can despoil them :)

New job description: "Thief - Masters at obtaining otherwise useless crap for crafting".

[Delvish]

I found a use for Despoil! While levelling Leathercraft and farming Peiste skins at a terrible drop rate, I discovered that I can despoil them :)

I wonder if Wild Onions can be obtained the same way from goblins...

Edit: According to the wiki, I'll only get goblin foods. >.>