Screwed again: Proposed THF job adjustments.

[Laphine]

i actually only do use aura steal for its buff steal aspect lol. Many jobs have way more reliable dispel than us, so i think i wouldn't want it to turn into a dispel only thing.

I still believe Aura steal is really limited because it is only able to dispel buffs we can steal. Our dispel list is much smaller then. Plus, we can only dispel if we can't steal something from the mob. This pretty much removes the best mobs to absorb buffs out of the equation (beastman).

I don't get the devs' proposition as well. Making aura steal its own JA while still making it share the recast with steal is essentially what we currently have right now. Well, not so much. We would be able to aura steal beastman.

[Karbuncle]

also since Despoil doesnt work on 99% of mobs, could you at least make it have a chance to inflict an Ailment even if nothing is stolen?

I mean a good chance, like 80% or higher? I mean, Unless they think a THF being able to inflict a minimum yield Slow 1 on a mob once every 5 minutes is far too broken because it ignores resistances. (Which i hope its not...)

Its bad enough this epitome of useless abilities shares timers with our one moderately useful steal ability (Aura Steal), But its made worse by the fact Despoil misses 60% of the time and most if no all endgame enemies have No despoil pool.

can't despoil in Salvage, Dynamis, Einherjar, Abyssea NMs, etc. Why give us an ability that only works on Normal non-event enemies...?

[Karbuncle]

i actually only do use aura steal for its buff steal aspect lol. Many jobs have way more reliable dispel than us, so i think i wouldn't want it to turn into a dispel only thing.

I use it to dispel something quickly, and if i manage to steal the bonus its just that, a bonus.

Also, We can dispel things we cant absorb. the Haste from Wamoura can be dispelled by us but we can not absorb it.

[Laphine]

Hmm, indeed. I wasn't remembering counter example when i wrote that.

Copy pasting this here because i think this is the most important issue with our "Steal" stuff right now.

Its bad enough this epitome of useless abilities shares timers with our one moderately useful steal ability (Aura Steal), But its made worse by the fact Despoil misses 60% of the time and most if no all endgame enemies have No despoil pool.

can't despoil in Salvage, Dynamis, Einherjar, Abyssea NMs, etc. Why give us an ability that only works on Normal non-event enemies...?

[Zirael]

As there have been a lot of concerns and comments cropping up about thief lately, here is some additional feedback from the development team.

Regarding the Efficacy of Aura Steal
When compared to Voracious Trunk, Osmosis, and Absorb-Attri, Aura Steal’s superiority really shines due to the fact that it is possible to elicit a dispel effect regardless of an enemy’s inherent resistances. Also, depending on how many merit points you’ve used to upgrade it, when you consider that you can reach a 100% rate of absorption, despite the recast timer being slightly long, the effects of Aura Steal are by no means weak.

While this is only one example, it might be possible to make Aura Steal its own ability and keep its recast timer shared with Steal. However, there is a high possibility that we will need to balance this by reducing the absorption rate as a trade-off, and I don’t think this would be very desirable.

We will be carefully looking into things for the revamps to the merit point effects, so we would like to take a good amount of time and hear all of your feedback.

Thank you for an update.
I assume you've read 64 pages of this thread and similar ones. Can I ask you how many Thieves have you seen talking about absorbing enemy attributes and using this trait as a viable battle strategy? I've seen none. There are Thieves that use this for fun on Jailer of Love Fluorescence to see a 999 Attack for once, but, as everyone repeats, it's used more for fun and nice screenshots. People who use Aura Steal (if you read carefully) mention dispelling effects at best. This ability is already broken and is not used as per developer's design, because that design was flawed, there is no need to nerf it any more.

In order to absorb something good:
- Steal (5min recast) must fail to obtain an item
- 1 to 5 merit points need to be spent for a 20-100% chance of absorbing an effect
- monster/NM can not be immune to Aura Steal (try stealing Blazing Eruca's Blaze Spikes, any Stoneskin effect, etc, there are surprisingly many examples)
- if lucky, one, randomly chosen of monster's effects will be dispelled or absorbed and will remain active on you for a minute or two (unless you make a trip to Sky and absorb Mother Globe's Shock Spikes, I give you that)
That's a lot of IFs and BUTs for THF for a chance to get something random, whilst, for comparison, anyone can use Elemental Seal + some dispelling spell for pretty much the same result. Hell, DRK will be able to Absorb-Arrb+Nether Void+Dark Seal (assuming fully merited) every 5min for almost guaranteed absorbtion of 2 effects and if Dark Seal is not merited, every 10min with Elemental Seal. Where's that Aura Steal's superiority you've talked about?

Lately you have been fixing many annoying things in this game that have been lurking around and taking away fun from people without any reason. You've fixed Kirin room teleport, made so that BLU set spells remain saved after changing jobs, you will be fixing Quicksand Caves doors, etc etc etc. After 5 years of begging PUPs were promised you will 'look into' Scanner being bugged (casting Silence on crabs and immune monsters) and Damage Gauge prioritizing Blindna over Cure when master is in red HP, etc.

When you have 60+ pages of Thieves repeating over and over again that Aura Steal, Steal, Despoil, Mug, Accomplice and Treasure Hunter III+ (and our damage output outside Abyssea) are broken and useless, could you at least stop and reconsider that maybe, just maybe you are wrong in your presumptions and your design has failed or there's something wrong with the spaghetti code? Many of us play Thief maybe even every time we log in into your game. You see THF from perspective of game code, excel spreadsheets, equations etc, we put your theory into practice in Voidwatch, Abyssea and any other new content. This is our feedback. And from our first hand experience, we tell you that many of the tools we were given to our disposal do not apply to the realities we currently play in. We give you feedback, alot of serious feedback, sometimes with good ideas and numbers behind them. We do not bother doing this because we want be top overpowered DDs etc (we'd go play WAR, SAM, MNK etc instead), but because what we have now is in many cases a bunch of fail. So we look forward to something useful and good and make reasonable (I think) proposals.

Be honest with yourselves and ask yourselves this question: "What current endgame content an ability like Despoil can be used to turn the tide of battle from looming defeat into victory?" What for did you add it, many of us keep wondering... What about Steal, Aura Steal, Mug, Accomplice, Ambush? When I use Conspirator on my party, I can not see any difference (accuracy wise), so I think to myself, why did I even bother macroing it in and why did you bother adding it? Maybe you haven't realized it yet, but there's something wrong here, hence we speak up.

(sorry for boring wall of text )

[Economizer]

all the THF's would drown in an ocean of useless.

Right next to SCH and DNC, Drowning and hoping SE throws them a life-jacket, but alas, We drown.

It hasn't ceased to astound me that people consider SCH, DNC, or THF useless. Either my linkshell has the single best PR team for these jobs in it, or the worlds best players for these jobs...

[Atomic_Skull]

Can you present these questions to them too. You can leave out the anger.

I think this is a fairly accurate representation of how THFs are feeling right now.

http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/4208/angrythf.png

[Karbuncle]

It hasn't ceased to astound me that people consider SCH, DNC, or THF useless. Either my linkshell has the single best PR team for these jobs in it, or the worlds best players for these jobs...

I included DNC and SCH because those are the jobs i see on here complaining the loudest outside of THF... What with SCH and its jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none playstyle, and DNC with its universally shared waltz timers, and if i left them out, someone would inevitably bring it up.

Should add SMN in there too, maybe RDM for good Measure.

Second, If you Think THF is not useless outside abyssea? Yah, You got Snake Oil Salesman in your group if they convinced you it wasn't. You yourself i know keep up with recent TH Testing, There really is no reason not to just bring someone of little consequence in your group as /THF (A BRD perhaps? or hell a BST with Dipper Yully is more damage and productive than a THF).

SCH and DNC, Again, i Just see them complain a lot, But honest to god I've never been in a situation where I've heard someone utter the phrase "We can't do this fight without a DNC" or "We cant do this without a SCH", same can be said for THF too, THF is not needed to win anything, They randomly and uncontrolably occasionally cause more items to drop, and even now theres better methods of doing such in most events (Procs), and the difference between TH2 and TH20 is very very minimal, to where you're better off going for killspeed and excluding a THF and bringing some job /THF.

Need to face the facts and realize THF brings absolutely nothing of use to an Alliance fight. Collab/Accomp are the closest things we have to uses and even those are constricted thanks to timers and hindered due to a bad Enmity system in general.

Our best marketable skills are Suicide and Loot-bringing, And the second one we dont even do much better than others can /THF.


Edit: Sorry if i come off stingy or irritated... I'm a bit upset

[Francisco]

I'm not a THF (or a PLD) - but what about a stance ability?

Basically every hit is a "trick attack" if you're behind another player... except without the boosts from Assassin... just regular damage a THF would output, with the enmity stuck on someone else.

Such an ability would be a boon to paladins, and bring back a bit of the THF + PLD dynamic.

If the THFs here like it, maybe Camate can pass this on to the dev team.

Example: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...fxinmfight.jpg

[Laphine]

It's a nice idea, but they pretty much just gave that to ranger lol. The trick is maybe this stance would be much stronger? sounds good to me^^