Steal/Despoil timers

Thing with Carabosse and Onvi abilities is that not only can THF steal 1 of their abilities every 5mins, but guess what...so can DRK. Difference is DRK can do it every minute, and using Nether void can steal an additional 2 buffs at the same time. So THF's 5min JA that can only steal 1 buff is OP, but DRK`s 1min recast spell that can steal 1-3 buffs is legit. And before anyone says "but spells can be resisted" Aura Steal isn't 100% either.

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Originally Posted by Ophannus

Steal/Despoil should let you steal Temp Items instead of random yarn or chips. Would be so much more useful if you had a 60-80% chance of stealing a Berserker's Tonic or a Healing Mist off a mob than some random ore or clump of grass.

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I really like this idea, it reminds me of thf in GW2 with temp items they can use! I feel like THF could be a much more versatile job if they made a few minor adjustments to some abilities. If Steal/Despoil stole temporary items instead, they could probably just use the same algorithm they use for temporary item chests but have it activate when the ability is used instead.

Oh well can dream on...

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Originally Posted by Calatilla

Thing with Carabosse and Onvi abilities is that not only can THF steal 1 of their abilities every 5mins, but guess what...so can DRK. Difference is DRK can do it every minute, and using Nether void can steal an additional 2 buffs at the same time. So THF's 5min JA that can only steal 1 buff is OP, but DRK`s 1min recast spell that can steal 1-3 buffs is legit. And before anyone says "but spells can be resisted" Aura Steal isn't 100% either.

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Aura Steal 5/5 on a mob that has no items to steal (everything in abyssea) with Augmented Assassin's Bonnet +2 is 100% guarantee to steal 2 buffs, from what I can tell. As long as there are 2 dispellable buffs up.

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Originally Posted by Babekeke

Aura Steal 5/5 on a mob that has no items to steal (everything in abyssea) with Augmented Assassin's Bonnet +2 is 100% guarantee to steal 2 buffs, from what I can tell. As long as there are 2 dispellable buffs up.

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The absorb rate is 100% but the success rate of the dispel is not. Several things start to resist Aurasteal (or just make it miss a lot more?) after multiple uses as well...which is wierd, because it's super duper awesome feature is that it's not subject to resistances.

So I'll admit right off the bat I don't know anything about the newer SoA content and how well Steal works (or doesn't as the case usually is) within it, but as far as Aura Steal goes the only problem I ever saw with it was it's recast timer. I always found Aura Steal to be pretty accurate and reliable (dispels about 95% of the time, actually steals the buff 80%), but with mobs being able to more or less spam their buffs it just ended up being pointless. Especially if the mob had multiple buffs or an item to steal. But if they just dropped Steal's recast to 1 minute or less, maybe via higher level trait so only Thief would get the lowered recast, Aura Steal would be a much more viable tool for thieves to use in battle.

Having Steal and Despoil be on separate timers is a nice start, but both abilities (heck all thief abilities) need to be severely overhauled. With Steal, and subsequently Aura Steal, a dramatically lowered recast time would more or less solve all it's problems. Even if you Aura Steal from a mob with an item, you can only steal an item once so every other attempt would go right to the removal of the buff. With Despoil though, it shouldn't be dependent on removing an item since, much like steal, you can only steal an item from a mob once iirc. Personally, I always felt it would be more in tune with Thief's playstyle (proper positioning in battle) if Despoil stole a stat (Att, Def, Eva) based on where the Thief stands in relation to the mob. Use Despoil from behind, you steal Def, use it from in front and you steal it's Eva etc.

As far as I'm concerned, Thief should be a class that works based on proper positioning and is best when it's weakening the mob while building up it's own big hits. Enmity control should just be a way for the Thief to ensure the mob isn't spinning like a top and is attacking the proper target, so it can drop it's big hits without gaining much of it's attention. All while keeping the mob in a slightly weakened state so it's smaller melee hits can do more damage. But then again, that's just my opinion.

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Originally Posted by Ziero

Personally, I always felt it would be more in tune with Thief's playstyle (proper positioning in battle) if Despoil stole a stat (Att, Def, Eva) based on where the Thief stands in relation to the mob. Use Despoil from behind, you steal Def, use it from in front and you steal it's Eva etc.

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So when solo you could only steal the buff that you get from in front of the mob (unless using sleep bolts and fighting something not resistant to sleep) and when in a party, it's still random due to the mob moving around so much...

I always thought it would be nice if Steal actually stole useful things -- like Temp items. In old FF games you could steal Elixirs, Potions, Ethers. In this game you can basically only steal feathers, meat, fangs etc. For mobs you can't steal treasure from, like NMs, give them Temp items that you can steal from. Temporary Hi Potions/Dusty Wings/Stalwart's Tonics/Lethe Waters/Mana Powders etc. Give these universally to all mobs in the game, or just generate one for the THF when the roll is successful for a steal when a regular item couldnt be given. Something like 25% chance at an item, if that fails, then 40% chance at a temp item, if that fails, then the steal 'misses'. At the very least do this for 'Mug' since that ability is only useful against mobs which have Gil. That only includes NMs and Beastmen. Mug has no use in BCNMs and such. Let Mug 'steal' temp items from mobs without gil.