Steal, Aurasteal, Despoil & Mug Discussion

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Originally Posted by 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.

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

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)

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.

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?

because omgohnoesstealisbroken lolz...

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

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.

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Originally Posted by Nebo

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

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.


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 re-purpose 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/th...ll=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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Kit_Katz

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.