Screwed again: Proposed THF job adjustments.

[Economizer]

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.

The main Thief that has me convinced otherwise is pretty amazing to be honest. The guy is the freaking NM whisperer... I've seen him walk into a zone just passing by, and the rarest NM will walk up to him, and stab itself to death on his daggers, until it bursts open, revealing a perfectly wrapped drop item, and a tip.

A few months before the change to the HNM pop conditions we even killed Fafnir/Nidhogg a few times for some Black Belt items. Never got a Ridill for him, unfortunately, but keeping the hate off the Red Mage and White Mage and making sure it stayed on the Ninja while we lazily killed the thing was some of the most fun I've had - not counting waiting for it to spawn of course.

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

Even the before-mentioned Thief has complained about some of the job changes. Thief has a lot of room to complain, although I think a lot of jobs have room to complain about various things, regardless of if others deem their job useful or not.

Personally, I hope that SE makes sure to boost Thief's enmity control abilities a bit, and encourages situations where Thieves close skillchains more. My Thief friend's main suggestion was to break timers from sharing as much as they do.

[Manque]

Now now Byrth, If they told us that, Their magical Life-raft of mediocrity that keeps THF Afloat in terms of semi-relevance would pop and 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.

Bully was like throwing us a Life jacket made of Lead :O!

Actually, I'd love to just put it to them. Put the cards on the table! haha

Doubt they would ever say anything though.

[SpankWustler]

Stuff the Development Team Said

Thanks for keeping in touch, bros, but I don't think the issue is Thief's abilities compared to similar abilities. The issue is Thief's abilities compared to functional abilities that can serve an intended purpose. Functional abilities that serve an unintended purpose would be okay too, I guess.

Five minutes is an eternity to wait for an ability that dispels an effect, even if it has a chance to place that buff on the player. I can count on one hand the number of times that I have used Voracious Trunk or Osmosis to take a buff from an enemy, and this isn't because of their success rate. It's just not that useful an effect.

Trick Attack is insufficient to control enmity to a reasonable degree, and I suspect Decoy Shot will be as well. The primary purpose of Trick Attack is currently damage, and the primary purpose of Decoy Shot will be to reduce the enmity of the Ranger itself. Even combined with Accomplice and Collaborator, this sort of ability just isn't as effective as it's envisioned to be.

The additional information about Treasure Hunter is good to know.

[Yinnyth]

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.

If the enemy is highly resistant to buff absorbtion, blu has dispel options, and if absorb-attri follows the pattern of other DRK magic, it would be really unfair for thf to complain about because it'll likely suck in its own right.

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.

If the steal succeeds. The steal can always miss (yes, I've had cases of stealing nothing off yags who had just used parry in Dynamis, so it's not just that some effects are immune to being stolen). As such, it's my opinion that aura steal is largely worthless anyways, and not something worth focusing on for thf. There are several jobs that are good at removing status effects, I don't think thf needs to be one of them.

But I DO think the new rng thing is pretty bogus. Not that rng doesn't deserve some love of their own, but a trick attack substitute that can be used from outside an enemy's AoE? Yeah, that's stripping thf of one of its last remaining bastions of usefulness, but at least now there will be another job that will feel the frustration of fidgeting tanks. Then again, trick attack wears off if the tank moves and TA fails. The new RNG ability stays on even if the tank moves for one shot.

[Nebo]

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.

This is simply not true. There is nothing superior about Aurasteal. Aurasteal, as an ability, is SEVERELY underpowered. This is just further proof that no one on the developement team that had any hand in designing this ability has ever played THF and tried to use it in all the various situations where it is functionally useless.

Most of the enhancement effects you would like to use it on....you can't (Turul Shock Spikes...etc). Most of the things that are usually stolen with Aurasteal (Blaze spikes, Protect)...are useless to a THF. ANd we usuelly get those when we are TRYING to steal something else (like Beast coins or Dynamis Currency)

Aurasteal most certainly is not worth 5 merits. Most career THFs will put one merit into it just to have a utility Dispel...not because the ability to steal enhancement effects once every 5 minutes is even remotely close to being useful....

...only being able to use this ability once every 5 minutes IS NOT USEFUL! I don't care what you do with steal and despoil...those two are even more useless than Aurasteal. For some reason you saw fit to mash these three useless abilities together and restrict them further still by making them share a recast timer.

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.

No. Just no. Aurasteal is not as strong as you think it is. How many times do you need to be told this? A 5 minute dispel that is tied to the success rate of Steal is useless.

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.

Why? We keep repeating ourselves and you consistantly don't listen.

Aurasteal is NOT worth a 5 minute recast timer or a shared timer with Steal and Despoil.

Aurasteal is NOT worth a 5 minute recast timer or a shared timer with Steal and Despoil.

Aurasteal is NOT worth a 5 minute recast timer or a shared timer with Steal and Despoil.

Aurasteal is NOT worth a 5 minute recast timer or a shared timer with Steal and Despoil.

Aurasteal is NOT worth a 5 minute recast timer or a shared timer with Steal and Despoil.

Aurasteal is NOT worth a 5 minute recast timer or a shared timer with Steal and Despoil.

Aurasteal is NOT worth a 5 minute recast timer or a shared timer with Steal and Despoil.

Aurasteal is NOT worth a 5 minute recast timer or a shared timer with Steal and Despoil.

Aurasteal is NOT worth a 5 minute recast timer or a shared timer with Steal and Despoil.

See? It's still not sinking in. Neither Steal, nor Aurasteal, nor Despoil are worth their OWN 5 minute timers, let alone having all three tied to the same needlessly long 5 minute recast timer. The fact that you are considering NERFING Aurasteal for the prospect of seperation while STILL having it share a recast timer with Steal? Are you serious? lol. This is absurd.

What....The F*CK....DOES AURASTEAL HAVE TO DO WITH STEALING ITEMS!?

Let’s take a look at the below comparison:

• Decoy Shot
Recast: 5 minutes
A set amount of enmity can be diverted to another player and any excess enmity will remain on the ranger.

• Trick Attack
Recast: 1 minute
All of the enmity generated at that time can be diverted to another player.

As others have said, Decoy shot is set to last 3 minutes and Trick Attack is dependant on the DAMAGE dealing capabilities you are so against giving us. IF you can't see that decoy shot is going to be more powerful for the purpose of enmity transfer, there is NO hope for THF lol.

In regards to determining the stacking of the Treasure Hunter effect via TA WS, SA WS, and SATA WS
The reason why you cannot tell if the effect is increasing is due to the fact that it is difficult to make the log display the Treasure Hunter enhancement effect during a weapon skill.

If we try to make the increase display in the log during a weapon skill, the amount of work would be on par with multiple job adjustments, so we do not have any plans of making this particular adjustment. However, the fact that it is difficult to tell when the Treasure Hunter effect increases, means that we will be looking into other adjustments.

This really doesn't mean anything when Treasure Hunter beyond Treasure Hunter II doesn't really seem to do much of anything.

[Vold]

The main Thief that has me convinced otherwise is pretty amazing to be honest. The guy is the freaking NM whisperer... I've seen him walk into a zone just passing by, and the rarest NM will walk up to him, and stab itself to death on his daggers, until it bursts open, revealing a perfectly wrapped drop item, and a tip.

That makes him pretty much me then. It is why I don't know what to make of my successful farming with my THF right now... I don't know if it's my luck factor or stuff is working as intended. I should run around as /thf for a bit and see what I come up with. If stuff is still dropping left and right then I can safely assume drop rates were bumped up...I think..

[Alhanelem]

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.

I do not see why a "trade off" would be needed here. Making these seperate abilities is a very minor enhancement- Considering players feel an improvement is needed, I don't think a change like this would necessitate a decrease in the effectiveness of the ability, which would negate the improvement.

Nebo: What Camate is trying to point out, which you might be missing, is that Aura Steal can work even when all other methods of dispelling effects would fail. The Devs apparently feel that this advantage is worthy of a long recast time. That being said, he does make it sound as if Aura Steal is 100% effective, when it's really not, because, as you said, it's tied to the success (or not) of Steal.

I do think making it its own ability with a shared recast is fine, because that would eliminate the faliure rate. Because of how vehemently you spoke out against this, I ask you: how many (primarily non-normal) monsters could you think of needing to dispel that can also be stolen from? Usually, I would think you'd only want one effect or the other. So what's the problem with a shared recast?

[Byrth]

Whatever... you whiners can steal MG's Shock Spikes and have Shock Spikes for 3 hours at the cost of one measily 5 minute JA. It'd be totally broken if you could steal those shock spikes AND fail to steal items from any of the monsters in Sky within the same 5 minute window.

[Vold]

Thf stuffs

But see, if the devs are thinking about balance then they should consider starting by actually making steal and the stuff that revolves around it worth it's programming space. Why, for example, does the programming tend to follow the 'challenging encounter' ideal where each job does whatever for said encounter to make it useful, yet most of them have like nothing whatsoever for a THF to steal? Was it so terribly bad to throw a bone and have the incredibly crappy steal rate keep balance in check?

Look at Bladewhatshisface. Dude was a perfect solution. It required a THF to steal the Bucc knife to get the killing blow. And you had to resteal more often than not when there's a quest right there to motivate you to throw away the bucc knife for the other one. Why not have more of those around? Make steal more useful in the end game setting, something more than a beastcoin producer. For the love of game design, make these things useful, and stop worrying so much about balance. Toss toys at mobs for us to steal. It doesn't have to be kraken clubs. It just needs to be something worth the effort that may take many kills to succeed. Like a new THF earring. Or neck. Or ring. Or whatever. It doesn't need to be something so great it will disrupt the balance of the force. And even if it is something THAT great, why not? Why not make THFs obtain some of their best gear via steal? It makes 110% sense.

If after wards you see stuff that you don't like and I'm sure you have all those fancy gadgets to know things one way or another, you can swing the nerf bat at it.

In regards to aura steal and steal: Why must we have three trade offs for a lone aura steal JA? Shared timer, can't steal both items and buffs, AND absorb rate less than 100%? 3 for 1 is a pretty high number, but I guess it sounds about right looking at 3 for 1 for seal exchange...

[Economizer]

Trick Attack is insufficient to control enmity to a reasonable degree

What if Trick Attack stacked somewhere between 10~25% of a Thief's enmity onto the party member if a Thief was to stack it with a weapon skill, or if that's not enough for SE, as part of a skillchain?