Thief's Time To Shine?

It's been well over a year since the complete disaster that was this developer response to our concerns

Camate, can we get an update as to the developers' plans and vision for THF to "shine":

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We are planning to make adjustments so that thieves are really able to shine.

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Because all I really see is the addition of events that marginalise Treasure Hunter (or just render it completely useless) and are very very difficult to get a pickup invite as a THF.

If no one needs THF for treasure hunter

No one uses THF to manipulate enmity

And no one looks for THF to Deal Damage because our DD is weaker than other DD's...

Where does that leave us?

It's obviously in reference to all of the glowing daggers they keep releasing for us to play with. I have kind of lost hope from them for a legit buff given that Subtle Blow and 5 minute recast Dispel and stealing notable items from monters are all overpowered!

Yeah I'm still waiting to shine. All the crap we do get in traits and JAs and even gear and we're still sub par at best for DPS output. Kind of sad, really, that daggers suck that badly. 2h weapons got massive DMG boosts with the level cap raise but uh, let's see here. Mandau went from 39 to 55. That's not actually bad. Til you look at Brav that went from 99 to 158. 39 vs 99 and 55 vs 158. 60 point difference vs um... 158 minus 58 is 100 so 58 already... um 55 to 100 is 45 soooo... um 58+45=103. 60(lv75) vs 103(lv99)


Yeah makes sense why dagger is so terribly bad right now. They're scared the universe will explode. Kiko is actually 64 @ 99 but even it was just 42 at 75, a whole 3 points higher than mandau. Excal is 49/69. Maybe I just fail here because I don't know the maths and scaling at 99. But as far as I care they shat on scaling dagger properly. It's off by 43. Could you imagine a mandau clocking in at 98 base dmg? And I know exactly what the excuse would be, TA haste stats blah blah blah but none of that stopped war and it's GA and DA and haste and stats.

I'm probably just failing here at math scaling and have better things to do than to know about it, but it's practically unarguable that what would go a long way in helping dagger jobs would be to increase the damn base dmg because right now it's extremely sad at lv99 vs what it was at 75. Might as well left it at 75 stats and tacked on a trollface icon on all daggers for lulz @ player base.

Weapon class damage increased with the level cap based on DPS which stayed similar to what it was at 75 cap. So, 55 damage with 176 delay at level 99 isn't that unreasonable. Unfortunately though Mandau not only lost it's #1 DPS spot among relics it dropped to 8th freaking place. Ahead of only Kikoku Amano Mjollnir and Claustrum. At the same time most of the weapons with now higher DPS are wielded by jobs with a slew of DPS increasing JAs and traits, much higher WS frequency and damage, and in some cases the 2h damage calculation bonus. I forgot what my point was but that's pretty lame.

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Originally Posted by Insaniac

Weapon class damage increased with the level cap based on DPS which stayed similar to what it was at 75 cap. So, 55 damage with 176 delay at level 99 isn't that unreasonable. Unfortunately though Mandau not only lost it's #1 DPS spot among relics it dropped to 8th freaking place. Ahead of only Kikoku Amano Mjollnir and Claustrum. At the same time most of the weapons with now higher DPS are wielded by jobs with a slew of DPS increasing JAs and traits, much higher WS frequency and damage, and in some cases the 2h damage calculation bonus. I forgot what my point was but that's pretty lame.

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Probably balanced with the fact that we got DW3 natively, an extra 1% Triple Attack (+ gear) and crit damage bonus.

But most other jobs with great damage weapons also got similar buffs, so that doesn't seem like a good reason.

Right. The new #1 Ragnarok is mainly used by DRKs who got an insane boost in DPS from the last resort revamp. The gap between "real DDs" and THF has grown since 75. There should have been no need to "balance" dagger DPS growth from 75.

They probably mean Bamboozle.

You mean the only 2 hour that was so bad it didn't even make it on to the test servers? :rolleyes:

i really agree with this thread, as far as i can see the only thing we got that was any good was bully as it allowed us use sa while soloing and even that's on a 5 minute timer.

I really believe we should not let this die and i hope every thf in the game posts here to show how annoyed we are

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Originally Posted by Nebo

It's been well over a year since the complete disaster that was this developer response to our concerns

Camate, can we get an update as to the developers' plans and vision for THF to "shine":



Because all I really see is the addition of events that marginalise Treasure Hunter (or just render it completely useless) and are very very difficult to get a pickup invite as a THF.

If no one needs THF for treasure hunter

No one uses THF to manipulate enmity

And no one looks for THF to Deal Damage because our DD is weaker than other DD's...

Where does that leave us?

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Wow, I almost forgot that giant list of stupid remarks from the devs.

Hopefully they have changed their mind about most of that stuff.

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Originally Posted by Camate

We believe making Aura Steal a separate ability would be over-powered.

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So...

...Uh...

You guys might want to consider abandoning all hope and wailing in lament as a plan of action. The belief system of the Development Bros is both harsher and more nihilistic than that of a clinically depressed Mennonite.

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Originally Posted by Camate

"There are no nifty items to steal on NMs. Plz fix."

That’s what Aura Steal is for! The effects stolen by Aura Steal are essentially the raw stats that the monster possesses.

"Can we make Aura Steal a separate ability?"

We believe making Aura Steal a separate ability would be over-powered. If we did do this, it’s likely that its use on notorious monsters would be removed and it would have even less of an effect than it does now.

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To me, this is an oxymoron. Nothing to steal on NMs? Use AuraSteal! Can't separate Aurasteal because it would be too powerful on NMs. Wut?

Honestly I dont know what to say, THF was my first job to 75, and for a long while my only 75... I've already voiced many things that could be done, many things that shouldn't be done as have most others here, its all been rejected or denied for the sake of barance.

As it stands despite the producer change over, a new leaf you have not turned as such, Basically i dare you to actually disprove my cynicism and actually fix things that are long since needing it.

The biggest problem right now with jobs across the board is that if you dont have one of the higher dps jobs, can heal, buff or proc than the job is rendered virtually obsolete. Its not just happening to thf but other jobs such as rdm and pld. The game has become a giant hold/proc/zerg fest and the things that do not need procing just get zerged. Instead of adding 2 new jobs they could widdle it down to around 6 again.

Until they change the game to reintroduce strategy we can talk til we are blue in the face but they will always have some excuse about balance or whatever crap key word they wanna use this week. But since SoA was said by the new producer to be more geared toward the current player and not to attract new or returning players I don't see hope for alot of those kinds of changes coming our way.

Sad when some of the best jobs get reduced to near worthlessness.

I'm a RDM, not a THF. You have it pretty bad.

you know its pretty bad when the rdms think your worse off than they are, still se does need to do some kind of boost for 1 handed jobs

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Originally Posted by Metaking

se does need to do some kind of boost for 1 handed jobs

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This.

When the devs are creating content to challenge even the best geared DDs, starting off with a 30+ acc/att deficit on 1h jobs is a killer.

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Originally Posted by Insaniac

This.

When the devs are creating content to challenge even the best geared DDs, starting off with a 30+ acc/att deficit on 1h jobs is a killer.

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^This.

Its also pretty whack that our WS are trash unstacked, and in many events with lots of DD's they are difficult to stack...solo they are difficult to stack....lowman they are difficult to stack.

hmmmmm.........

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Originally Posted by Mostfowl

Instead of adding 2 new jobs they could widdle it down to around 6 again.

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didnt they already do this? war mnk drk whm sch rng or gtfo?

i really do hope they have a plan to bring back pld rdm and thf, but even if they do it will take them 3 years to do it

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Originally Posted by Nebo

It's been well over a year since the complete disaster that was this developer response to our concerns

Camate, can we get an update as to the developers' plans and vision for THF to "shine":

Because all I really see is the addition of events that marginalise Treasure Hunter (or just render it completely useless) and are very very difficult to get a pickup invite as a THF.

If no one needs THF for treasure hunter

No one uses THF to manipulate enmity

And no one looks for THF to Deal Damage because our DD is weaker than other DD's...

Where does that leave us?

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SCH`s proposed new 2hr is taking enmity management away from THF as well, so if people did need it they`d still pick a SCH over a THF so all we`d really have left is TH, which the devs seem to like handing out to everyone else.

And I still call BS on Aura Steal being overpowered, its on a 5min timer, Absorb-Attribute is a spell on a 1min timer and isn't considered overpowered.

AuraSteal(5 minute recast)
Add a Dispel effect to Steal. Occasionally absorbs dispelled effect

Absorb-Attri(1 minute recast)
Steals an enemy's beneficial status effects.

So what would it take for THF to shine?

I think in a general sense I'd like to see:

Steal type abilities made to be completely battle related. Lowered and seperated timers. No more (worthless) items.

Mug adjusted to deal damage +stun. Lowered timer. No longer takes gil.

Native subtle blow to be added to THF.

Less abilities that are useless without party cooperation. More abilities that are enhanced by party play, but flexible without it.

More opportunities to make use of Sneak and Trick Attack, or other similar abilities added afer level 30. I think the timer bottleneck is restriction enough (especially in the mega haste era), and positional restrictions are unreasonable. I believe the positional nature of the job can be kept by simply changing the positional requirements to positional enhancements.

This could be achieved by adding any number of enhancements when positional conditions are met: increased increased chance for TH proc, Bonus to WS damage, various enmity properties, etc. This way, you'd still want to be positioned properly when you can, but when you can't they don't become useless.

Square Enix to tell us exactly how treasure hunter functions (and to be more transparent about stats in general). This way, we can move past it as a reason we can't have nice things, because beyond TH2, it really doesn't seem to do much of anything that can be quantified without large statistical samples.

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Originally Posted by Metaking

you know its pretty bad when the rdms think your worse off than they are, still se does need to do some kind of boost for 1 handed jobs

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The only 1H that has a real chance at damage is Axes because they are solid and have Ruinator. Everything else is ill-suited for any real consideration. It's been that way for awhile, but 76+ with everyone making prestige weapons made it extremely obvious. They said they were going to look into it, but I haven't seen them actually identifying it as a problem so an actual fix is probably a long way off.

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Originally Posted by Nebo

More opportunities to make use of Sneak and Trick Attack, or other similar abilities added afer level 30. I think the timer bottleneck is restriction enough (especially in the mega haste era), and positional restrictions are unreasonable. I believe the positional nature of the job can be kept by simply changing the positional requirements to positional enhancements.

This could be achieved by adding any number of enhancements when positional conditions are met: increased increased chance for TH proc, Bonus to WS damage, various enmity properties, etc. This way, you'd still want to be positioned properly when you can, but when you can't they don't become useless.

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Personally, I'd suggest sneak attack to be changed so that when used, it would always be a critical hit with 100% accuracy regardless of positioning (main thf only, tie it to the "Assassin" job trait), but if you did it from the sides of the enemy, you'd get 50% of the damage boost from dex, and from behind, 100% of the dex damage boost. Maybe also add a chance of forcing more than one critical hit when performed from the sides and behind (and of course anywhere with Bully). The chance of this could be increased further by the amount of merits put into SA recast, where 5 merits would grant a 100% critical hit rate on the second attack in your attack round as well. The base rate could be 50%, +10% per merit.

As for trick attack, sort of the same deal. Critical hit anywhere, but damage boost from agi would only take effect if used behind another player. Perhaps the 100% accuracy part should still require correct positioning, seeing as SA would already force 100% accuracy once a minute. As with SA, merits put in recast timer would increase the chance of multiple forced critical hits.

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Originally Posted by Mirage

Personally, I'd suggest sneak attack to be changed so that when used, it would always be a critical hit with 100% accuracy regardless of positioning (main thf only, tie it to the "Assassin" job trait), but if you did it from the sides of the enemy, you'd get 50% of the damage boost from dex, and from behind, 100% of the dex damage boost. Maybe also add a chance of forcing more than one critical hit when performed from the sides and behind (and of course anywhere with Bully). The chance of this could be increased further by the amount of merits put into SA recast, where 5 merits would grant a 100% critical hit rate on the second attack in your attack round as well. The base rate could be 50%, +10% per merit.

As for trick attack, sort of the same deal. Critical hit anywhere, but damage boost from agi would only take effect if used behind another player. Perhaps the 100% accuracy part should still require correct positioning, seeing as SA would already force 100% accuracy once a minute. As with SA, merits put in recast timer would increase the chance of multiple forced critical hits.

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Like! It would be nice to be able to use my hard earned Rudra's Storm when soloing more often than just when Bully is up.

Yep, and when you were in a party situation, it would be stronger as well, because of the chance of a second critical hit with your off-hand, as well as you would be less likely to miss out on a lot of damage because of Spinning Mob Syndrome, as the dex boost from SA would work from 75% of all possible directions instead of just behind, even if you did lose some damage from the sides.

This would be useful when the mob has cone-AoE attacks that you don't want your DDs to be within as well. They could stay outside the AoE, but even if they drew hate from their position on the sides of the mob, they'd never completely destroy your SAs, only halve the SA damage boost, and still get a guaranteed unmissable crit.

Of course, with my suggestion, TAs could still be entirely screwed up, but TAs generally aren't suffering from spinning mob syndrome, as you just need the player in front of you to not move.

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Originally Posted by Mirage

Personally, I'd suggest sneak attack to be changed so that when used, it would always be a critical hit with 100% accuracy regardless of positioning (main thf only, tie it to the "Assassin" job trait), but if you did it from the sides of the enemy, you'd get 50% of the damage boost from dex, and from behind, 100% of the dex damage boost. Maybe also add a chance of forcing more than one critical hit when performed from the sides and behind (and of course anywhere with Bully). The chance of this could be increased further by the amount of merits put into SA recast, where 5 merits would grant a 100% critical hit rate on the second attack in your attack round as well. The base rate could be 50%, +10% per merit.

As for trick attack, sort of the same deal. Critical hit anywhere, but damage boost from agi would only take effect if used behind another player. Perhaps the 100% accuracy part should still require correct positioning, seeing as SA would already force 100% accuracy once a minute. As with SA, merits put in recast timer would increase the chance of multiple forced critical hits.

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The major issue that I have with ideas like this, is that while it does solve the problem of "more opportunities to use SA and TA," what it actually does is lower our (already low) overal damage potential with SA and TA as a trade off....Which is a direction I personally would like to steer away from.

I would much rather they stay the same damage but "enhanced" in some other way by being positioanlly aligned.

The way I see it, this changes SA from a behind-only attack to a guaranteed damage boost that grows stronger the better your positioning is, and when your positioning is perfect, you get an even higher potential damage output than SA currently offers, by allowing a secondary hit to crit as well. The change also makes it a bit more worth it to get SA recast merits, as it would increase the damage output in addition to frequency.

I cannot see how my suggestion would lower potential damage output. If you perform this new SA like you performed your old SAs, the damage would be a bit higher at best, but never lower. In the cases where your old SAs would be completely ruined because of a suddenly turning mob, you would with the new SA still get a reasonable damage boost, because the critical hit and 100% hit rate is still guaranteed, and you still get 50% of your dex applied instead of 0%.

While I am sure no thief (me included) would mind having the full SA damage from any direction of the mob at any time, it goes against the idea of the attack being, well, a sneaky attack, and I'm not sure if SE would like an idea like that.

Therefore, I constructed an idea that would both keep the concept of the job ability in place (big damage when sneaky), but still make the ability worth the time spent activating it while solo (at least for certain WSes), as well as making it even stronger and safer (much lower risk of completely wasting it) than it currently is in party play.

What I'm going for here is (sorry for saying this, really) balance. I am hoping that my idea is moderate enough for SE to seriously consider it, and that it is still a noticable boost to thieves by making the abilities more versatile, safer, and also have a slightly higher max damage potential.

And of course, I do not think the adjustments to thief should stop at sneak/trick attack adjustments. Hopefully, we would get this in addition to other improvements.

It would lower damage potential because you are talking about lowered damage for the trade of flexibility of use.

IE full damage potential now would be riding SA TA timers with exact positional accuracy.

Your way would be riding timers and hiting from the front/side etc for less than full damage, so the damage potential for using SA TA anywhere other than perfect position would be lower. You are spending the same timer to do less damage.

I am saying that I don't feel that lowering damage potential as a trade off for flexibility is justified.

As for balance? Even if we could spam full powered SA/TA from any direction, any position at any time....we'd still be quite far behind other DD's full potential.

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Originally Posted by Nebo

It would lower damage potential because you are talking about lowered damage for the trade of flexibility of use.

IE full damage potential now would be riding SA TA timers with exact positional accuracy.

Your way would be riding timers and hiting from the front/side etc for less than full damage, so the damage potential for using SA TA anywhere other than perfect position would be lower. You are spending the same timer to do less damage.

I am saying that I don't feel that lowering damage potential as a trade off for flexibility is justified.

As for balance? Even if we could spam full powered SA/TA from any direction, any position at any time....we'd still be quite far behind other DD's full potential.

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No, it's still the same damage potential. Mirage isn't saying make SA damage lower when from behind, just make it higher when hit from the sides. The potential to ride SATA timers with perfect accuracy is still there, but if the mob turns on you as you hit your 'assassin's charge > sneak attack > weaponskill' macro, there's nothing you can do as you can't move once that's initiated. This is where Mirage's idea would mean you didn't completely waste your 50-60 second JA as it still helped to add more damage than it currently would.

I would prefer that they make it do the same damage no matter where that you are standing in relation to other people and / or the monster but, give it an additional effect when done from the ideal position.

IE when sneak attack is landed from behind, the monster gets hit with a 3% crit rate increase for 30 seconds.
or
When Trick attack is landed from an an ideal position, the thief gains increased enmity decay or just loses a chunk of enmity (maybe half?).

The main difference between what you and mirage are asking for, is that Mirage is asking for a 'fix', since current game mechanics (hate cap so easy to hit so mobs constantly turns to face last person who hit it) mean SA is practically impossible to land with more than 2 melees on a mob 90% of the time.
What you are asking for is a 'boost'. While I like it, I don't see us ever getting another boost. Not while we have Treasure Hunter, anyway >.>

Perhaps it would be able to code in the Atonement enmity damage code with sneak attack. The more enmity you have, the further from the rear fo the mob you can successfully land SA :)

Again I doubt we'd get that either.

Sorry, what I meant is that mirage's fix would be lower damage potential for SA/TA when used form the front.

There's no question that Mirage's idea would add something to the job that isn't there now. But I feel that THF is plenty weak enough to warrant a 'fix' without lowered damge as a cost for flexibility.

I'm against the cost of lowering the potential damage when using SA, TA from the front/side etc in exchange for the ability to use them when not perfectly aligned. Our stacked WS barely even compare to a convential DD WS as it is now.

You are right. I'd much rather see a 'boost' for fulfilling positional requirements than a damage nerf for not being able to....if there ever were to be any kind of "fix" related to SA/TA etc.

It's still a damage boost compared to what we have now. I don't think Mirage's idea is that you don't bother to try and line up for proper SA, just that if you line up then a player or mob move, you at least still get some bonus and didn't waste it.

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Originally Posted by Nebo

Sorry, what I meant is that mirage's fix would be lower damage potential for SA/TA when used form the front.

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It was never my intention that you should use it from the front. Ideally, you should always use it from the rear, as long as this is possible. When you did this, the damage would also be higher than it currently is. From the sides, it would be slightly lower because you'd lose som dex-dmg, but still gain auto-crit on the two first hits. From the front, yeah, it wouldn't be very good, but this is no differenty from what it is now anyway.

If you absolutely have to WS from the front, there's always TA!

Besides, I'm still hoping for Group 3 job merits where we get stuff such as Bully recast and/or duration.

Daggers top out at 55 DMG at 176 delay. I bet you wish you could adjust Mandau to 200 delay and get scaled DMG. I'd want it. Keep Twashtar as the quick dagger since it can be offhanded. Part of your problem solved.

Now on to 1H < 2H ...... wait this was a 2 part-er and not multiple choice....

No but seriously, you have problems that are stacked on top of problems, much like the majority of 1H jobs. Dual Wield doesn't offer any real advantages over 2h and in fact is sloppier damage than 2H damage. There are very few optimal offhands, since most Relics, etc have lower delay. We have to default back to STR/Atk magians and devoid ourselves of any utility to come up short versus 2H weapons in the damage department.

Occasionally you'll get gems like Oirandori that at least attempt to give us some flavoring and options, but for the most part SE has furnished very few exceptional offhands.

In all seriousness, Asteria Main/Coruscanti Off is pretty awesome for not being Relic, etc. but it still doesn't put you anywhere near the big boys nor does it contribute anything meaningful to full alliance events....much like most jobs now. I guess that is why they are making more low man content.

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Originally Posted by Nebo

No one uses THF to manipulate enmity

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I'll be thoroughly frustrated if THF gets any more enmity manipulation tools until they fix enmity on more important jobs like PLD, and moreover, the enmity system as a whole.

Further still, I've said this in another thread: thieves steal items, not hate. Let's try and keep at least some sensible role playing aspects to the FFXI universe? Trick Attack fits with the lore because they are cunning/sly, but a point-click job ability that steals hate from another player is just absolutely stupid.

That said, I think your OP has some merit - specifically around making TH more useful in all events (including VW, etc).