Screwed again: Proposed THF job adjustments.

man, i have exactly 0 hope for this JA ; ;

probably won't work on NMs, probably won't work if we don't have the mobs attention...

I hold your exact same fear Laphine.

Like, they want THF to be a party oriented job, But if they give it an Ability that intimidates the mob only if THF is the tank, they must not really be in too many parties. cause a THF is never the tank unless he's the only DD in the group, and by that, I mean he's soloing or Duoing.

This is me holding back my nerd-rage btw, I'll save the heavy stuff once we know the specifics. good or bad.

No, it'll last for 2 seconds and have a 5 minute recast, will be highly accurate on trash, 95% of NMs will be immune. Absolutely worthless. Though yes, look AT ALL THOSE THINGS THAT MAKE THF shine.


Honestly maybe SE physically can't update THF. Maybe they fired the guy who knew how the THF spaghetti code worked. Honestly they're begging other players to take us, but they won't give them a reason why they should.

(Look at how many threads that say, "Our fix to PLD is bring a THF." "DD, don't fret! You can help manage enmity levels by bringing a THF! You guys think hate reset is cheap difficulty? Bring a THF!"

It's like they KNOW THF is worthless, but they forgot where our sub directory was which held our abilities, JAs, etc.

Or its like they only play their game in vacuum situations that work in perfect tandem with our worthless abilities, and then think that they're okay because of it.

Something tells me they think THF is already a good job, But if thats the case, They couldn't play their game any less. Right now the only Reason THF is so high on the jobs leveled is not because its good, Its because people believe in the power of Placebo Hunter.

"Development Team: The job sucks, No one thinks THF is a good job, The only reason people level or it bother to bring it is because of Placebo Hunter, Can you please give us meaningful adjustments? The job is dying, and if Voidwatch is the best content of the future, The job is as it stands complete dead and worthless"

Collab/Accomp are nice abilities, But they're way too limited, If you want THF to be even considered for Enmity control you need to do something to those abilities, and add/build on them, improve them, They are not fine as is. Please, I know you guys are the Devs of the game, but what ever happen to "The customer knows best"? We play this game in realtime situations, we understand the ups and downs as much as you do. Is it so much to ask you might consider our pleas for use?

you mean ALL THAT ONE THING THAT MAKE THF shine? that one thing that was found recently to have close to the same effect of the subbed version...

yup, they probably look at the Vana'diel consensus and see THF high on the list and assume that means the job is good.

Which is going to be the death of the job. The assumption its fine, when in reality, Its sitting on the floor bleeding out from gunsoht wounds, and SE just keeps handing us a Band-aid. Shame that won't help...

I really don't understand why SE is afraid of Treasure Hunter, Steal, or Mug at all. You can enter Abyssea and work up to 500 Cruor/kill (1.3k gil per kill per player via Chocobo Blinkers) pretty quickly. AoE two groups of monsters down to ~20%, alternate which one you kill, pop gold chests and get fragments/weapons/etc., make a mil per hour if you have a few mules. Saying it takes an hour to set up is being generous. The gil mostly comes straight from an NPC, too.

Compared to that, how is a real treasure hunter trait increase going to break game balance? How is increasing Gilfinder, Mug, or Steal going to break game balance?

I think they're worried about increasing our efficiency to the point that we blow through new content like we blew through Abyssea. They know the release schedule is going to be slow, and they're making sure we don't get through it before they move on to the next thing by keeping the drop rates low.

I don't mind no real update to TH if their goal is to keep Content slow/tedious.

But they could at least do other things to the job lol... Like maybe some small damage potential, more control over Enmity, Better uses for Steal/Mug/Despoil. (I.E lower timers, perhaps have them deal damage and grant TP similar to jumps, have them modded by DEX, make people actually use them for more than just maybe getting lucky dispelling something).

As it stands, every THF update so far has just been a Diarrhea cannon pointed at us while we brace for impact.

Since Bully is going to suck and SE apparently wants us to tank in a low man setting despite their best efforts to convince us otherwise, the least they could have done was make this JA so that the mob is frozen in fear and we could realistically run around to the back and SA it. WTF is intimidate supposed to do that our evasion doesn't already do for us?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alaik

Honestly maybe SE physically can't update THF. Maybe they fired the guy who knew how the THF spaghetti code worked. Honestly they're begging other players to take us, but they won't give them a reason why they should.

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It goes back to the whole HNM syndrome thing. They don't like change. HNM was broken forever because they didn't want to do change, so naturally they wait until it was killed by Abyssea and put the nails into the coffin with the KSNM non sense. Right now it's pretty obvious their view of THF is that they trade damage output for treasure rewards. Except now BST has had TH2 for awhile and other jobs are following. So why is THF being restricted now? Because even though they no longer have exclusive TH rights, they now have a THIII trait and +3 in gear and procs.

Wait a minute, you mean the THIII trait with +3 in gear and TH procs that's completely worthless in newly released content because you don't want no one getting through it anytime soon? Right. Okay. Why are you purposely gimping jobs? That is never okay on any level, ever. But yet that's always the answer to a problem to make things "balanced" Souleater being resisted. Gravity, bind, and silence damn near being resisted by anything ever since two years ago. I could very much go on....

But you know what? Whatever, man. I'm sick of this game being held back because of low developer support, that shit has to be gimped in order to stretch content out over the span of three months or longer at a time. It's part of the FFXI experience at this point, as far as I am concerned. From here on out when I see the word "balance", I'm going to think "best way to buy time in between updates"

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Originally Posted by Laphine

idk idk, the spreadsheets kinematics made sure show this as well. My thf build is able to beat a equally geared (or the much i know about )/buffed ukon war/sam there. So after i got to this conclusion i kinda stopped my lust for power.

edit: equally buffed is key tho. More haste (mainly) and war starts going crazy. But anyways, i didn't even set magic haste: outside abyssea we both get tp in ~32 secs (5 hit war btw). And this also is another advantage for me because the WSing syncs with SA/TA.

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I got the about the same resultes and i know that the spreedsheet is very accurate i did thr spreedsheet on the stats of Bukhis but outside abyssea.


THF:

Results Set 1

Target Bukhis SA Dmg 524
Level 101 SA Round Dmg 0
pDif Correction 0.55
Defense 560 TA Dmg 418
Dia II? 1 TA Round Dmg 0
Final Def 504
Evasion 430 Melee damage per round 101
Vit 110
Agi 100 Damage per second (total melee) 29.092

WS Dmg 0
SA WS Dmg 2097
Over-TP Rnds: 0.5 TA WS Dmg 1814
Avg SATA Dly: 5
Norm Cycle Time 0.000
SAWS Cycle Time 2099.995
TAWS Cycle Time 2099.820
Leftover Cycle Time 0.000

Norm Cycle Dmg 0.000
SAWS Cycle Dmg 3028.212
TAWS Cycle Dmg 2745.131
Leftover Cycle Dmg 0.000

Total Dmg 5773.344

Overall DPS 96.222



WAR:

Target Defbuffed: Level Corr: Food:
Level 97 Red C Bun
Defense 560 504 0.35
Evasion 430 430
Agi 92
Vit 91

Crit merits: 5%
OAT rate: 0%
Over-TP Rnds: 0.5 Hasso1



-Agg/Ber +Agg/Ber
Total Dmg 2560 3122
TP/hit:
Round Dly 482 482 13.0
Magic Haste 0% 0%
JA Haste 10% 10%
Gear Haste 25% 25%
Total Haste 35% 35%
Min Dly 96.4 96.4
Haste Dly 313.30 313.30
Total Dly 1799 1799

DPS 85.384 104.132
Avg DPS: 98.883


I been doing alot of Voidwatch i even parsed a few and before this i had only heard thf was really weak on thes and are dmg was crap. But once i got the the T3-T4 i see that its not even how i read i have 2 masa sams and a ukon war them and me make up the DD pt and its a very close race all the time we only fight mobs posy about 50% or less depending on mob and once we proc'd to the max you get dusty wings and by the time we fight we have 2 so we all start with tp its easy to land SA or TA since pld is the one with hate and hes capped once we start. Rudra storm does 2nd only to ukko furry and thats when it spikes RS is more consistent when you SA or TA and its very easy to land in this situation i have had my share of top parse sheets and right now i feel my thf is good in the DD department now that i have seen what it can do on the VWNMs.

Make sure Ukyo's has the correct crit rate. IT has something retardedly high like a 25% crit bonus attacked to it at 100tp.

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Originally Posted by Khajit

Make sure Ukyo's has the correct crit rate. IT has something retardedly high like a 25% crit bonus attacked to it at 100tp.

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i did its 30% at 100 tp and i used the 5 hit setup and the outside abyssea set up i found to try and make it best setup i can

Indeed my war spreadsheet had only 10% crit bonus. Changed it to 30% but the result didn't change much. 140 vs 132.

Against bukhis i'm still winning 82 vs 79. I'm curious that your overall dps is higher tho.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Laphine

outside abyssea we both get tp in ~32 secs (5 hit war btw)

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I completely forgot about haste from equip here. It's 24 secs for thf vs 21 secs for war.

Straight math doesn't work for THF. There's too much x-factor that you just can't math and all of that x-factor results in lower damage where with WAR all the stuff you can't math results in higher damage. If you put both jobs on a training dummy that didn't fight back or move or anything then maybe the results would come out close.

Voidwatch isn't the best place to run parses either. There's too much going on with procs and various other things. Show me a parse in WoE or Einherjar where a THF isn't scraping the bottom of the barrel for damage.

As for the new ability, at least they appear to have removed the party requirement. Maybe this will be moderately useful. I'm not holding my breath but at least it has potential now. I'm not gonna judge it til I see it.

I gotta say though... it's pretty lackluster as our only new JA. Hopefully we get some secret JT levels like DW3 and Crit damage 3.

Math shows damage potential. The potential is there for thf, we just can't grasp it. And again, low haste really do give us an edge (sa/ta doesn't get any faster). But low haste it's much easier for us to grasp that potential. Anyway, numbers with full on haste(marches+3, magic haste, samba, hasso): war 224 dps, thf 130 against something on bukhis level.

edit: then again, the thf spreadsheet is not using solo ws between sa/taed ones. And we should be able to use SA+RS -> evis -> TA+RS -> evis and still keep the aftermath 100% up with all that haste. I pretty much can do this inside abyssea with magic haste only.

also please note that if you are anywhere near the same damage as the war, you are going to have to hold back damage anytime you want the mob too look away long enough to land SA, assuming the war is the only person the mob is spinning towards.

DRK gets Aura Steal yay for more things being given away!

What the math doesn't take into account is that you can't reliably SA once mobs start riding spinnars. It doesn't count retaliation damage/TP either I assume? Spreadsheets are good for comparing gear sets but imo when you start using them to compare jobs it's just for shits and giggles.

Well, if you can't trust math what is it that you are going to trust? Parses? That's even worse. The main issue is off course the human issue. This spreadsheet doesn't account retaliation. But comparing jobs with parses would need big and controlled parses so we remove the luck factor from things like retaliation. Hell, the very basis of damage is luck based (pdif).

Retaliation proc rate is always going to be > 0 damage. SA damage is always going to be < 100% of potential.

always is a very strong word..

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Originally Posted by Laphine

always is a very strong word..

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It's true though. And I don't believe that math one bit. I find it hard to believe your experiences as well. I'm both THF and WAR, and I've compared against both other THF and other WAR a lot, and every time the difference was more than "noticeable" it was gaping. WAR + THF is pretty much the same as WAR only, DD wise, that's how much THF pales in comparison. I don't know where you're getting your experiences from.

And parses are actually reliable, if done under a large number of varying circumstances (law of large numbers). Math is perfect, but your math isn't. Statistics is also part of the math required to calculate the average damage, which is what the spreadsheet doesn't do. This includes people's behaviour during battle, the expected value for SA/TA uses, the expected value for SA/TA success, the expected Retaliation bonus, the expected Restraint bonus, etc. There are just tons of statistical factors that the spreadsheets don't cover, so that math is partial and unreliable.

The only thieves I've ever seen pull their weight in DD situations were Breaze (Mythic/X's, full Skadi set) and Alljoker (Mandau, full Hecatomb +1 set and all around perfect gear). And that was at 75 on birds.

Sure, if you just take any random WAR... despite what people say about Abyssea's difficulty, it still requires skill to be actually good. The bar for good and bad has just changed, but there's still bad people. They perform better compared to before, but still a lot worse to actually good players.

most times we let tanks cap hate so i can land SA easy and TA for is already easy to land after that mobs dead or almost with 2 masa 1 ukon and my twash + a wildfire cor and if you pull hate on a VWNM T3-4 and your not a pld you will die fast... trust me i have experienced it.
If they make SA easier to land or add a new type of force crit thats easier to land with a good mod then i think thf will be right where it needs to in DD and im sure we will get more DW. could use more hate abilities tho.

Well there's two sides to that argument. You can't rely on parses for most things as human error will always make it lower than your potential. However, given THF is a job that is hugely based on human interaction, putting it in a bubble is stupid. I will be looking at the spreadsheet tonight, because if you guys are saying it's allowing THF to hit dDEX caps easier than WARs I'm hugely suspicious. On VT/IT mobs we simply are not going to pair up or beat an Ukon WAR, not unless you're comparing an amazing THF vs a bad WAR or buffing the THF all to hell and not the WAR.

EDIT: At work so can't do much but I figured what the hell and got the spreadsheet, and yeah, there's tons missing. Retaliation being a factor as mentioned, but also, I'm getting a huge difference using it on the same target when both jobs have the same buffs in WAR's favor, not THF's. Maybe you guys wouldn't mind posting the two spreadsheets you're using for a better comparison?

What experieces did i provide? I only did talk about the spreadsheet. The only experience i have versus an ukon war was when my friend and i finished our emps back in january. He, off course, beat me handily and we both pretty much stopped playing ever since. I can't talk about experience and that was an inside abyssea experience. All this current talk is about outside tho. And the fact remains that thf has everything in its favor to decrease difference against war.

I mean put a link to your modified spreadsheet up. Experiences as in, your experience using the spreadsheet. Kinematics usually does amazing work which is why I was kinda WTFing at you saying it showed THF beating WAR as a DD. So I wanted to see if one of us was using a field incorrectly to cause the pure math to skew in another's favor.

What do you mean, "And the fact remains that thf has everything in its favor to decrease difference against war." also?

Always IS a very strong word. If the war is going all out (which is the premise of the discussion), he will always pull hate and retaliate eventually.

That's outside. Since outside we don't have crazy crits, sa/ta means more. Not only comparing against other jobs, that's comparing ourselves too. When we SA the ratio of damage between the main hit and its whole round is bigger outside. But SA/TA can only do so much, and we fall back when haste is stacked in.

The other aspect is that of melee crits. If we take the agi Kinematics uses for lv97 mobs and apply them outside. THF has capped crit while meleeing and war simply doesn't. Meanwhile our af (and we can use 4 pieces unlike most jobs) is a nice mix-match of acc, attack and dex.

edit: the issue was not war not retaliating Frank. It was saying that a thf will always miss at least one SA/TA.

And as a rule, THF will miss one. A good THF will miss them less than a bad one but to even imply a THF won't is lol.

Also, again can I see your editted spreadsheets? Putting it in again, and I don't see THF capping crit so easily when WAR doesn't. One of us must be doing something wrong.

Also, pick an area inside or outside. Inside every job has capped crits and a WHM can do amazing dmg. You use stats for inside abyssea but then act like SA usage is for outside (AKA, mob not on the fastest attacker or spinning tons). There's also the fact that a stacked WS is going to do as much as an unstacked WS for a WAR. Differences between the two only come down to the fact a THF ends up getting some JA pause to use SA/TA/AC/whatever whereas WARs abilities only incur that penalty once for a much longer duration. (3 minutes vs one hit), etc.

Would you mind posting the spreadsheets with your information plugged in?

oh yeah, sorry. How can i show them to you tho?

There are situations where we won't miss. If the fight is quick for one. For me, it's simply more reasonable to say we might miss at least one than we will always miss at least one.

Save the file, put it on google documents and post the link.

As far as the missing SA goes, I believe on Alla Breaze (Maybe Melphina) during einherjar they parsed their ability to land SA and it was at 80% or so. I can't find the thread, but hopefully someone else can.

When I parsed my einherjar events I parsed 80-90%. 80% is one in five. That's hardly a negligible amount.

war~
thf~

Hope it works. Never used google docs.

Thanks. Once you post the THF one we'll be able to see what's causing the numbers. I already see we set up the WARs differently. (You didn't factor in DA really) You also have Voracious Violet on one of their atma, yet somehow place their WS DA rate as 15%? That's 20% DA from their absolute base and the VV atma alone. I also have different STR values. +166 STR during WS for a WAR inside abyssea is REALLY low. Keep in mind, that VV atma you use adds 50 alone, an Ukon is 15. Base STR at 90 for an elvaan WAR at least is around the 100 mark. That means excluding all gear but Ukon you're at 165 STR. Needless to say, you can get MUCH higher and inside abyssea, 166 STR on a WS is a pretty bad WAR.

The WAR has no GA merits, on mine I assumed full merits for both, dagger for THF, Gaxe for WAR.

You also show no bonus crit damage or rate though the atmas are on there.

That's just a small glimpse, again, sorry I'm at work and the EMS Gods are very busy today it seems. 6 wrecks so far, joy.

Have fun posting the THF one. I know THF has like, 901 variables you have to plug in.

EDIT: By the time I typed that out you had posted the spreadsheet. iFail.

Alright, so, basically. The WAR is not buffed, the THF is, the mob is not debuffed for the WAR and it has Dia II for the THF. Those two spreadsheets show the WAR fighting a level 101 target, but the THF fighting a 97.

And I think looking at the WARs again, you're saying his WS dmg with berserk/agg up is 1211 with Ukon? I may be misunderstanding that. Your spreadsheet looks abit different.

All those factors alone I could see making a huge impact in THF's favor.

Oh, the THF is fully meritted, the WAR isn't.

I removed everything abysseawise from the war spreadsheet. From the start i was talking about outside. War has low str because i removed cruor buffs. And those 3 columns of atmas are so i copy-paste if i wanted to change. The war has Gaxe merits too.

It is 1211 with zerk up indeed. Idk if new spreadsheets changed this. I thought i had the newest one when i decided to compare war and thf. 1211 didn't surprise me so much. It is a lv 101 mob with 560 defense (504 debuffed) we are talking about.

Btw, the thf spreadsheet still has abyssea mode on. Easy enough to change tho. Oh wait ninja edits after ninja edits lol. Yeah thf is completely set to abyssea. Just change target to bukhis and set the 'in abyssea?' variable to 0.

Yeah I was wanting to see how you set up with the same buffs on the same target with the same debuffs to get that THF was ahead of WAR, which is why me and everyone else was WTFing. Also, once you correct all of that and put them both on equal footing with the same level of merits, on the same mob, with the same debuffs on the mob, with the same buffs, WAR beats THF. By a lot.

wait...
they are on the same grounds. Where are you getting they aren't?

Thf was inside abyssea because i play around a lot with the spreadsheet. But it's easy enough to change it there. It's a 2 cell change. Everything else is the same. Both with dia2 up, both with capped weapon and crit merits. None of them buffed but war with hasso. That's being on the same ground for me. If you change target to bukhis and in abyssea to 0 thf will have 84 dps. War is there with 79.5.

Outside abyssea was all i cared about. No surprise that war beats thf inside.

That's interesting.

http://s724.photobucket.com/albums/w...urrent=THF.jpg

http://s724.photobucket.com/albums/w...urrent=WAR.jpg

Those are what your spreadsheets are showing for me, and those stats are vastly different.

Some seem to have changed recently, however several of the issues are still there.

Though again, it's INSIDE that lets THF not be so far behind WAR. Outside on VT-IT stuff WAR decimates us.

The job updates in general made me happy. The Thief update, however, is sad.

No matter how many times I read the text for Bully, all I can see is "Feral Howl II: A Job Ability Sucks Again"

I'd like to think it's better than it sounds, given what other jobs are getting, but given the development team's weird ideas about Steal and Mug I am less than optimistic. The robotic pterodactyl named BAD END is circling.