Screwed again: Proposed THF job adjustments.

[Insaniac]

There's no way 0.0. Vacuum math maybe it's possible but in situations where TP gets held because SA and TA aren't always available and TP dump situations there's simply just no way.

[Alaik]

I call BS. The spreadsheet and/or your usage is wrong. I'll have to grab it and look at it but there is no THF who is going to match a buffed Ukon WAR/SAM on content that's rated VT-IT for our level. Against trash sure but that's nothing new, we could solo a mob in 6 seconds versus a warrior's 8.

Not meaning that as an insult, but you REALLY might want to double check it. A WAR has NEVER had an issue with floored crit rate. THF however does, and in DD aspects in general just because of how much SE stacks the game mechanics against us. A+ skill vs A-, 160 STR being 120 attack for 2H, but only 80 for 1H, vastly superior WS mods, fSTR capping MUCH lower for 1H weapons, severe lack of attack boosting traits/abilities/gear. The list goes on. Some of those are very noticable, must are marginal, however add all of them together and we have the clusterfuck we do today.

THF is also one of the worst jobs to "pure math" about as all of our abilities can be messed up by anyone, really. We're not like a WAR who knows that a berserk WS is a berserked WS. We have a SAWS, but if that WAR DOES berserk WS right before us, we could get screwed.

[Laphine]

well, i trust Kinematics as one of the most knowledgeable math wizzes out there. But he is human anyway. And this is math too, not the real world.

I really doubt anyone can reach crit cap outside abyssea as easily as us right now. I, for one, melee in 152 dex iirc. War will never reach this amount without some serious trade-off . For WS also, meleeing with capped dex crit is simply impossible for them.

edit: and when i say i beat this simulated war, i don't say i completely crushed him lol. It was just around 7.5% more, 140 dps vs 130.

[Insaniac]

I don't disagree with the idea that THF would have a higher crit rate. SE gave us a lot more DEX to TP in compared to level 75 (love torque and rajas depending on the situation). When haidate used to be the norm we got out critted by anyone who could equip it. That's no longer the case.

[DebbieGibson]

Something like this:


SE: Fish should not dream on flying


SE: there you have it DRKs, your dreams are coming true!


SE: we care about THF, wait and believe, that’s a promise!

While I see the plight of the thf job as illuminated to me by the posters here, I don't think this fits as one of the reasons. Perhaps SE wants drk to be stronger than thf, and therefore they do not feel it is overpowered for drk but it would be on thf. Though sadly watch SE fuck it up and make the cast time too long to be worth using.

[Laphine]

This magic will be as useful as aura steal anyway. So even if the cast is long, you will cast if the bonus is good. And there are a few of those. (Chances are) DRK has two things in advantage tho: higher chance to steal goodies by getting 2 effects and shortened recast. Oh of course, if they use absorb-atb they won't have the other absorb locked, nor will they steal some junk and not get the effect. THF only has the instant cast as advantage. So yay we can steal ufo boosts and DRK can't...meh.

Anyway, it's pretty reasonable that they get this. What i don't think is reasonble is that we get a pile of junk JAs.

[Insaniac]

While I see the plight of the thf job as illuminated to me by the posters here, I don't think this fits as one of the reasons. Perhaps SE wants drk to be stronger than thf, and therefore they do not feel it is overpowered for drk but it would be on thf. Though sadly watch SE fuck it up and make the cast time too long to be worth using.

The thing about this is that there really aren't that many damage boosting buffs to steal. The mega hastes are nice and attack bonus is cool but that's about it. It's more utility than it is a damage boost and if SE want's THF to be more utility than damage then they have no ground to stand on with aura steal. There's just no real justification for not putting it on at least a 3 minute timer.

[SpankWustler]

I'm sure this has come and gone before, but I'm really curious. Plus, this discussion actually seems intelligent which isn't terribly comment on the internet.

Let's say SE decided to competently move Thief in a direction that wasn't straight-up damage. The key word being "competently". The job abilities given wouldn't be oriented around damage, but they also wouldn't be absolute junk in the vein of Despoil. The timers would not be two to five times longer than they should be.

What kind of abilities and recasts would be needed for that to work? Furthermore, would that even be a job you guys would want to play?

[Nebo]

The 5/15 minute recast timer has been killing the job for a long time. SE loves to give ridiculously....needlessly long recast timers to THF job abilities. After they do that, they implement these abilities in ways that are overly restricted or do not function in a way that makes any logical sense (to anyone but them I guess).

I hate being as pessimistic as I am about THF's future but if you look at all the things the developement team has been saying....it is very clear that they are very very very out of touch when it comes to THF.

Thet say their vision for THF is that of a "stealthy pickpocket" while in the same breath saying that they don't want to add anything worth stealing and that our ONLY somewhat useful steal ability (Aurasteal) would be overpowered if they reversed the senseless way that they mashed it together with Steal.

It really is beyond me that they think Aurasteal is so powerful. The majority of things we fight don;t have enhancements worth stealing. Most of the effects you would want to steal or dispel....you just can't. Aurasteal can miss. The enhancement effect you steal cannot be specified if the monster has more than one. If the monster has an item, you can get the item instead of the dispel. AND IT IS ON A 5 MINUTE RECAST TIMER.

The very fact that they think an ability as restricted as Aurasteal is overpwered for THF should give you a pretty good idea of just how weak they want THF to stay because of lolTreasure Hunter placebo effects.

I won't even go into the heaping, rotting, pile of useless insulting garbage that is Despoil.

Essentially, they want us to be a "pickpocket" in gimick and name only...not in any kind of functionally useful way.

Then we have the absurd things they keep saying about our ability to "control" enmity. Trick Attack is a useless enmity tool. No tank needs help reaching the enmity cap.

Collaborator once a minute is not controlling enmity in any situation. Accomplice, being on a 5 minute recast, isn't worth using because it prevents collaborator use for 5 minutes.

We cired out for the range oc collaborator to be exteneded...and THEY LISTENED.....with one of the most epic troll updates I have seen in a while lol..... 4 FREAKING YALMS!!!?? 4 yalms is useless, but thanks for the kick in the nuts lol.

I forget where I was going with this...or even what I was responding to. Are we still offering feedback on this garbage like there is anyone actually listening to it? lol

[Insaniac]

Well... SE is clearly scarred to death of steal and for that matter anything about THF that might throw off the delicate balance that they seem to believe they have created. So, anything item based is off the table. As hard as it is for some to accept, TH3 is a looking like a scam. This leaves us with a few reasonable directions to explore that would make sense for THF.

The first and most obvious is enmity control. Karbuncle made a post that was exactly what would need to be done to make us control enmity instead of just kinda maybe doing something that might be marginally helpful for a few seconds.

The basic idea is that we need separated timers on the hate control abilities we already have and a way to put the enmity we steal onto other members of the alliance. Being able to dump enmity on the fly without planting it on someone else was another part of it. The enmity douse JA on a 10 minute timer would be fine with me.

One way to handle teh transfer of enmity that I think would be very interesting would be to store the enmity stolen in a way similar to sublimation and allow us the option to dump that when we do a TA or TAWS. If you wanna make me really happy add a damage boost based on how much enmity we have stored. Could include SA in this as well but instead add the enmity to the THFs if it's not stacked with TA. A 1-3 minute timer on this would make me happy.

The second option is amazingly the most under utilized facet of THF. Stealing... I don't know how this happened but somehow stealing things became the most neglected part of THF. It's mind boggling. There are so many possibilities in the JAs but all 3 or our steal type abilities do little to nothing. Steal can stay as it is.. 5 minutes.. whatever. I don't care i never use it to steal things anyway.

Aura steal on the other hand has an outrageously long recast. Anything over 3 minutes is just absurd. It's a glorified dispel and 90% of the time that's what it's used as. There are a few exceptions like wivre haste yovra boost and hippo boost but that's not a justification to gimp the ability.

Despoil is the absolute worst JA added since the level 75 cap and it's in the running for most useless ever. First and foremost it needs it's own timer. It's never used because aura steal is better. 2nd it needs targeted debuffs (despoil acc, despoil att, ect. ect.) and it needs to work on mobs that have nothing to steal. In fact remove the ability to steal an item at all in exchange for a huge increase to debuff accuracy. Put it on a 3 minute timer and call it a day.

Mug - Cut the gil stolen to 33% of what it was or remove it completely. Lower the recast to 5 minutes. Add a damage and stun effect. Mug fixed.

The 3rd option would be party enhancement. Some things of interest to me would be a JA that drastically raises crit and magic crit rates and adds a moderate crit damage boost against the target for a window of lets say 10 seconds. Long enough to pull off an SC + MB. Put it on a 3-5 minute timer.

A JA that forces a target player to crit on his next swing or WS would be amazing and people would absolutely love THF for it. It would really take cooperation and timing to make it go off without a hitch but when it did it would be glorious. Call it "Tip Off" and put it on a 3 minute timer.

An ability to transfer a buff you have stolen to all party members within range would be neat too.

I could stay up all night posting ideas as they pop into my head so I should stop now. Credit to Karbuncle Nebo and whoever else I stole idea's from.