Steal, Aurasteal, Despoil & Mug Discussion

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.

B-B-B-B-Bump

Because o this:

Quote:

---

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.

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.

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

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ziero

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.

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.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 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.

---

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.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ziero

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.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FrankReynolds

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.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FrankReynolds

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.

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.

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.

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.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 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.

---

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?

Quote:

---

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!!!!"

Quote:

---

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

Quote:

---

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

---

Agreed.

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 ><

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.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nebo

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.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 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.

---

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

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.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mirage

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.

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.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 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.



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.

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.

My idea is for them to combine steal, aura steal, and despoil into one. Do away with the worthless aurasteal merit and give something else worthwhile. Do away with the despoil JA to clear up another JA on THF so it can have yet another useful JA in the future because I think the jobs have like a 15 JA limit? Or something along those lines. Then, that just leaves steal. A steal that will steal items, debuff the monster, AND steal it's buffs. Since our shit is all shared timers anyway you might as well do this so as to free up JA slots because we can't do but one of them anyway every 5 fricking minutes. We don't care about the choice because it's not much of a choice to begin with.

And if you think the ability to probably not steal an item, debuff a mob with MAB down, and stealing it's protect is somehow unbalanced and will heavily tip the battle in the THFs favor, well, I know when someone is blowing smoke up my ass to get out of some work to fix a job.


As far as I really care, I want to see mug and steal both timed to 1-2 minutes rather than 5/15. That's all I really want. I couldn't care less about your despoil or aura steal. Steal success is so low that I'll still probably not use steal but once every 10 minutes anyway when I remember the damn thing exists. I would like to use mug like once per monster, assuming it dropped gil, to get my shotty extra 1-35 gil per fight. Heaven forbid we can mug a HNM every minute. We're gonna have THFs coming out of HNM battles with diamond gold rings earrings and gold necklaces with giant pendants that reads THUGS 4 LIFE on their fingers ears and necks because they just got sooooo rich mugging gil. That's how silly a 15 min mug is. Maybe it used to be super duper in the beginning but 10 years later it's a waste of game space.

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.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FrankReynolds

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.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Phogg

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.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vold

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.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ziero

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.

Quote:

---

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.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Camate

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.

Quote:

---

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

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nebo

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.

Quote:

---

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.

Quote:

---

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.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nebo

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.

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 :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 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 :)

---

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

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 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 :)

---

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

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