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:

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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.)

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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:

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.