Screwed again: Proposed THF job adjustments.

[Babekeke]

Bind, Gravity, Break SLeep don't work on most End game NMs. Stun, I will give you that. The point I am making is THF does have more than one role available besides TH whore, if you don't use that secondary role it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. I never use BLM to enfeeble when I have a RDM.

What everyone seems to have missed here are the 6 words: Burn, Choke, Frost, Drown, Rasp and Shock. Maybe because none of you are Taru, idk, but at level 75 I had a 150 INT build on my BLM which gave -13 to enemy's stat, and 5 hp/tick DoT damage, and you can stack 3 of them (sometimes only 2, depending on enemy's resistant elements). Now at 90 and inside abyssea I hit 250 INT (without food or buffs from any other players). I haven't seen any evidence of there being higher tiers of these spells, but if there are... I'm there.

THAT is a primary example of using a BLM to both nuke AND enfeeble, where a RDM, WHM, BRD, DRK etc don't get the same ability. 2 pages of arguing this, and everyone missed this?!

Sorry to bring it up again, it was 3-5 pages ago, but I was at work for that argument.

Also at Draylo - I really don't care about anything that you say in this thread after reading the comment "I haven't read this whole thread, deal with it".
If I come in to a thread on page ~12 or whatever, I'll at least read the first 2 and last 2 pages. Then, when I comment, I'll start with "I'm sorry if this has already been covered, but it's a long thread and it would take me forever to read it all".
Your comment was just rude, and insulting to everyone who posted here.

[Insaniac]

True enough. I wasn't trying to show you up, just summarize comments. What I meant to say was they weren't all out on increasing the direct damage stats on daggers. Most people seemed to want increases through abilities and conditions that make THF fun to play. Just turning it into "SuperThief - The Revenge" was not on their list of priorities.

Toriko, there's a Com.Rep. reply on the JP THF thread. If you could translate that for us it would be super amazing.

[Camate]

Howdy! We spoke to the development team about your feedback on thief and they provided some commentary. The below is a compilation of responses to both the English and Japanese suggestions/feedback. Hopefully it will give you a better idea of what is planned for thief in the future.

With the large amount of job adjustment discussion going on we have A LOT of feedback to sort through, so while this might not answer every single thing being discussed at the moment, we will try our best to update when we can. Likewise, we will be making our rounds to other job related threads as well!

So, without further ado…

Instead of increasing the chances of successfully executing Steal and Despoil, can you actually add some attractive items to monsters for us to target?

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), making this pretty difficult to implement. If there were a good countermeasure for this it could work, but currently revamping or adding items to monsters is quite difficult.

Steal has no effect on notorious monsters…

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

Make Aura Steal its own 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.

Add Aura Steal to Despoil as well.

Though we haven’t decided if it will be Aura Steal or not, we do have some rough plans for adding some kind of additional effect to Despoil.

Split up the recast timers for Steal and Despoil.

We are looking into separating the two. However, we are close to reaching a point where there are too many recast timers going on simultaneously, so this isn't something we can implement right away.

With ranger getting Treasure Hunter, dancer getting Triple Attack, and warrior having critical hits, I feel like all of thief’s big selling points have been taken away by other jobs.

While thieves possess superior stats for all of the above, we do understand your concerns. I apologize that I can’t go into detail about specific abilities, but we are planning to make adjustments so that thieves are really able to shine.

Add Subtle Blow to thief.

Due to the fact that normal attacks now increase the effects of Treasure Hunter, we chose to forgo the addition of Subtle Blow as a trade off.

I really hope that the new ability that complements Sneak Attack and Trick Attack is not on a shared recast timer with one of the two abilities.

Don’t worry, it will be separate!

[Insaniac]

Thank you for the translation, Camate! And thank you for stopping by the thread.

[Alaik]

Is it bad that I reread that, then reread it again, then checked to see if it was in a job forum, THEN got hit with shock?

I believe most players disagree with the idea that a dispel/low chance buff-steal on a 5 minute timer would be broken, but even if aura steal was a seperate ability on a 1 minute timer, it's not like it would fix us.

Otherwise vague, but way more specific than I had hoped.

I understand you guys can't give an exact "New JA/JT/etc" layout because stuff changes, hasn't been fully thought through yet, etc. However, I believe I can say without a doubt every THF that plays THF for anything more than "Tag TH, go read a book." thanks you immensely for at least acknowledging our feedback.

[Nebo]

I want to thank you, Camate, and the development team for taking the time to attempt to address our concerns.

I am really at a loss for words on some of these responses. I am very sorry that this is going to sound disrespectful because this is most certainly not my intention.

But it really does feel that the developement team is very out of touch with the difficulties that the job faces and the actual utility of the unique abilities that THF has left.

Due to the fact that normal attacks now increase the effects of Treasure Hunter, we chose to forgo the addition of Subtle Blow as a trade off.

This, specifically, worries me greatly. What the treasure hunter melee update has done is create a situation where the mechanics of how the THF job functions are in direct contradiction.

We are supposed to be engaging the monster to enhance treasure hunter? OK. But with A) the extremely low proc rate on Treasure Hunter for melee swings, and B) the sheer amount of TP we feed to high level Notorious Monsters, this has simply created a situation where THF will not be allowed to engage and forced simply to Sneak Attack and Trick Attack the Monster as timers allow while disengaged. Even with subtle blow gear, it is not worth it for a THF to engage for the purpose of Treasure hunter procs on normal attacks.

And quite honestly....I can see no visible difference between treasure hunter effectiveness level 6 and treasure hunter effectiveness level 13. How about throw us a bone and actually TELL us what it does? (I know, I know....what a crazy idea.)

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), making this pretty difficult to implement. If there were a good countermeasure for this it could work, but currently revamping or adding items to monsters is quite difficult.

This kind of reply makes me think that no one on the Dev Team has ever tested or played THF to know why this won;t work. The dev team removed the possibility for this tactic to work a very long time ago. For 1) Hide doesn't work on much of anything at all (thanks for that btw). 2) After this adjustment, you can only steal from a monster once and then you need to kill and respawn it to be able to steal again.

You must understand the frustration here. The developement team has taken so much from us in this area without giving anything to fill that void. The adjustment to steal to address the gold coin situation, the removal of valuable items from treasure coffers, the phasing out of Mug by refusing to give any new monsters any gil to steal, etc.

I understand this is a difficult issue, but the idea that seperating aurasteal from steal would be overpowered? Especially given that they are tied to a (needlessly long)5 minute recast timer? I don't understand that logic. They are completely seperate abilities with completely seperate functions that, because of the way they were combined, are often in contradiction with each other.

Seperating Aurasteal would not make it overpowered. The fact that it is tied to a 5 minute recast timer AND combined with Steal make it severely underpowered as a 75+ job ability. What seperating them would do is give us our very first steal ability that was acutally useful for its function.

I don't understand this need for the development team to sort of, kind of, almost give THF something that is useful. And then completely kill its relevance with either a needlessly long/shared recast timer or really messed up functionality. There is nothing about THF right now that is even remotely close to thinking about the possibility of being overpowered. Really? REALLY? It would be Overpowered!? THAT is your reason? Are you kidding me with this?

Though we haven’t decided if it will be Aura Steal or not, we do have some rough plans for adding some kind of additional effect to Despoil.

Adding things to Despoil is not going to fix Despoil. The ability itself really needs to be taken a look at and reconsidered. The items that despoil steals are of no use to anyone at this point in the game's lifespan. Adding Despoil as a post-75 level cap ability really accentuates the serious disconnect between the playerbase and the Developement team. I really don't think they understand how taxed our inventory is....that aurasteal and despoil both require you to have inventory space to even attempt to take advantage of their effects

But even the fact that Despoil attempts to steal an item as a requsite for its enfeebling effect to occur is useless at this stage in FFXI's lifespan. The variability of that enfeebling effect, should the steal be a success, is useless in any situation you would want to enfeeble any enemy. A variable enfeebling effect on a 5 minute timer is really quite useless. But most importantly, the fact that it takes away the ability to (aura)steal (the ONLY remotely useful steal we have) makes it exceptionally useless.

Again, I am sorry to sound disrespectful. I know what I knightmare it must be to address agnry and whiny players demading changes for their job.

But the disconnect between the playerbase and the Dev Team on these key issues really worries me. After seeing their vision for the job and hearing these responses, I find myself very discouraged for the future of my beloved THF.

You are so worried about making us "over powered" that almost everything you have given us has been "under powered" to the point of functional uselessness.

[Zyla420]

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), making this pretty difficult to implement. If there were a good countermeasure for this it could work, but currently revamping or adding items to monsters is quite difficult.

1. hide only works on mobs that are sight only tracking
2. Instead of steal giving actual items, make it steal AoE based temp items that can benefit the pt as a whole. you know? like the abyssea temp items. makes the above concerns invalid.
3. for the love of all that is good and holy.... 1... min... recast..........

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.

the fact that any mage job can cast dispel makes this point invalid, making this a separate ability on a 1 min timer as well wouldn't break the job or be overpowered. if anything it'd go a long way towards helping fix the job.

Due to the fact that normal attacks now increase the effects of Treasure Hunter, we chose to forgo the addition of Subtle Blow as a trade off.

i personally would rather have native subtle blow than a +.000000001% increase on an item that has a 5% drop rate. wonder if anyone else playing thf feels the same? (for the record yes i know that's not the actual % at which TH increases drop rates, but tell me it don't feel that way sometimes....)

[Nala]

I know your just relaying the information Camate, but i cant help but feel deeply disapointed... the information you have relayed has left me feeling that the dev team has no clue... this both deeply disturbs and sadens me.

honestly, since your worried about game balance in terms of steal/aura steal/despoil why are you so intent on improving upon it? your not going to add anything to make these abilities worth using, or increase their utility to a player, beyond the fact that these abilities are damn near useless, adjusting them will do nothing for a thief main.

the last good DD'esc buff you gave us was Assassin, a good 5? 6? years ago... thats just sad, when half our main DD ability is wrought with difficulty to utilize (sneak attack), you tell us to beat on mobs for TH but say no to subtle blow, you out source the abilities that make our job unique whats left?

If you want to take this back in the right direction keep the TH system as it is and start giving us abilities that encourage/enhance our DD capabilities, like subtle blow.

[Coldbrand]

So you don't want to add items worth stealing because then people might want to steal them?

[Alaik]

When you put it like that it sounds silly.