Thief's knife upgrade

[Zhronne]

This is a pretty elegant solution but, it doesn't actually fix the problem unless you remove Thief's Knife which they don't seem to want to do

Simply make so other form of TH+ do not work if you have an ilevel weapon equipped mainhand, or just remove the TH+ from all the items that have it. They're not many, not like it would take them that long, and aside the new 109/119 reforged relic hands it's all old pieces so I doubt there would be an overload of complaints from people (especially because they would get an equal amount of +TH simply by a ilevel weapon in mainhand)

It seems the same as the macc thing, altough this should apply exclusively to THF only.
If anything, the only classes hurt by this change would be those going /THF to reach TH3 with the La'theine sash.
And again, doubt it would matter THAT much.



I mean, this is the only possible way to solve the solution completely. If they don't this, the problem will raise up again in the future. Today it's the turn of Thief's Knife and, to a lesser degree, AF3+2 feet. Tomorrow it will be the turn of Reforged Relic Hands 119, when the ilevel will be 149 and people will feel "forced" to use an ilevel 119 item.
This is a *crucial* aspect.
We do not level anymore past 99.
Our "levelup" comes from items.
If you're "forced" to equip an item lower the level of what you could equip, it would be like capping your level at 73 when the cap was 75. It's just an example, but a powerful one to convey the right concept.
They cannot possibly think to release new items, and new items, and new items, and updated ones, and new updates. They don't have the manpower to address stuff like this that affects a single job.
Just remove the problem at the root and make it scale with your average ilevel or weapon ilevel or whatever else, problem solved.

[Zhronne]

The only issue I see in this solution is, again, how do they handle the "tiers" or the "conversion rate"?
Because if they put a conversion that makes "119 = TH+4" then what's gonna happen when there will be 139 ilevel weapons? Could become TH5 or TH6 I guess, like if in the old model they had added a TH+1 legs, for instance.

And TH past that has such a minimal impact that's more a placebo than real noticeable differences, so I guess it wouldn't impact too much the game's balance in a negative way (and not like ilevel cap raise are going to happen every month anyway)

[Catmato]

The development team was looking into a higher-tier version of Thief’s Knife; however, they felt it would result in thieves equipping both the new knife and the original which would further limit their weapon selection. In order to solve this issue, they are currently looking into placing a cap on treasure hunter from equipment in the future.

This is an acceptable solution, but Camate, please pass on our suggestion for an accessory (ring, earring, etc.) with a Latent effect: Treasure hunter +x, activated by not having a Thief's knife equipped. I and many others feel that this is the best solution.

[Stify]

Greetings,

First off, I would like to apologize for making any English speaking players feel that their requests and feedback were not answered. I can assure you that this was not the case and that threads that are unanswered are communicated to the development team. Unfortunately, sometimes we are unable to answer certain topics, and there are cases where when the team decides to answer, it is first on the Japanese side as that is their native language.

Now then, on to the actual topic at hand.

Though Karbuncle has summarized and posted a translation of what was communicated I would like to give a slightly more official response about this.

The response from Lomloon, as pointed out, contained incorrect information about the way treasure hunter works. It was mentioned in his first post that once you reach a certain level of treasure hunter, the drop rate would not be affected much even if you continue to stack more treasure hunter. This, however, is only talking about common drops, and continuing to add treasure hunter will boost the drop rate for rare items, though it will be a very slight increase.

We’ve informed the development team again about the feedback mentioning that it’s hard to let go of Thief’s Knife while playing in a party as players want to increase the treasure hunter effect to 12.

The development team was looking into a higher-tier version of Thief’s Knife; however, they felt it would result in thieves equipping both the new knife and the original which would further limit their weapon selection. In order to solve this issue, they are currently looking into placing a cap on treasure hunter from equipment in the future.

With this as well as the addition of other equipment with treasure hunter, we are aiming to make it so you can reach the equipment cap and no longer need to use Thief’s Knife. Please also know that we will not be reducing the value of treasure hunter obtainable with current equipment.

While I can’t make any promises as to when this adjustment will take place, we will be sure to keep you updated as there is progress!

Camate, Is it okay to ask is there any plans in the future to assist in increasing Thiefs damage output in possibly increasing SA/TA damage or reducing timers on them since the battle speed in fights now a days has increase so much more and Thiefs are not able to keep up with said abilities?

[Kincard]

I posted that translation of the JP dev post on BlueGartr as some of you probably know (Sorry for stealing your job Camate!). When I read it I actually thought it was a great solution to the problem myself, although I guess I wouldn't mind the latent: TH when no Thief's Knife thing if it wasn't too hard to implement. I was under the impression though, that when they referenced how haste has changed in recent gear design they were basically implying that in the future, Thief gear may be largely filled with TH enough so that in most situations you can cap on gear TH without sacrificing a huge amount of stats (Assassin's Armlets and Raider's Poulaines arn't exactly good pieces themselves, and Plunderer's Armlets still pales compared to Pillager's). This would make an accessory that carries a latent boost a bit superfluous.

[Karbuncle]

I have to think you could be on to something with the haste/TH comparison, But I'm going to file it next to "Pet treasure hunter" until theres more conclusive information on it. Still, as I said, Capping it is a good solution... one we came up with nearly 3 years ago... and I'm glad its making its way into the game, though I imagine its going to cause more backlash from people who don't fundamentally understand how very little they're losing, and if they're capping TH from gear, it negates the possibility of having a higher tier TH in the future, we'll be forever glued at TH6 as a base, instead of possibly TH8 or so in the future if they add more TH+ gear, or even give Raiders-Reforged +2 TH.

This is unless they raise the cap of TH gear to go along with each new addition, which seems like a lot of work.

So, Its a double edged sword adding in a cap, because it stalls the jobs only real use in the eyes of the community. It fixes the immediate problem of THF knife sucking, but as a long term solution it might not serve the better good, which is why I still think an accessory type option that completely replaces Thief Knife would instead be good.

Otherwise, again, they're stunting the growth of TH through gear if they impose a cap, solving one problem and creating another, where as an armor-based replacement solution creates no new problems.

This is an acceptable solution, but Camate, please pass on our suggestion for an accessory (ring, earring, etc.) with a Latent effect: Treasure hunter +x, activated by not having a Thief's knife equipped. I and many others feel that this is the best solution.

and I double this so, pretty please.

[Kincard]

In my humble opinion, Treasure Hunter should've just been abolished entirely and Thief have its development focus changed (The combat control/DPS idea works pretty well, part of me thinks they should've given SCH's SP2 to THF, possibly even as a 10-minute ability or something). Having a job solely dedicated to making items drop is really dumb for an MMO. It's a works fine for like, a single player game (which is basically how they were designing it in the early days, as a "Final Fantasy, Except Online" for real), but nowadays I really wouldn't mind if they just removed it entirely.

[Karbuncle]

I have a thread dedicated to the idea of THF becoming a master of Enmity control, the jist of my ideas are something like.

Separating Collaborator/Accomplice timers. Reducing Accomplice to 3 minutes, and adding new abilities to fit the theme.

Blame - 1 minute timer
Puts 25% of your current enmity onto a target.

Frame - 3 Minute timer
Puts 50% of your current enmity onto a target.

Plead = 3 minute timer
remove 25% of your enmity.

Innocent - 5 minute timer
Dumps 99% of your enmity into nothingnes.

(All named in theme with the Collaborate/accomplice style of naming). This gives THF multiple options of enmity control. Take 50% of the WHMs enmity, dump it onto the PLD. Or take 25% of a DDs enmity and dump it into nothigness, so on, and so forth. This will give enmity control a real value, and THF would likely find its way welcomed into some of the "If you get hate as a DD, you die" fights, like Ark Angels. Well, at least good geared Thieves.

I think at least 1 "Give Enmity" and "Shed Enmity" Ability should be given to THF.

[Raydeus]

Personally I'd rather have stances over having more JAs. Where one stance was all about Enmity transfer and another was about enhancing evasion and others with things like counter on evaded hits.

Stance 1 (Enmity)

Reduces recast times for Collaborator and Accomplice.
Adds a 25% of Enmity transfer to Trick Attack.
Allows Hide to shed all Enmity for a slightly longer time and also work on sound aggro mobs.
Grants an additional 25% Enmity transfer to Trick Attack when used with Sneak Attack (SATA)

Stance 2 (Evasion)

Adds a chance to counter hits after evading.
Enhances Triple Attack rate and evasion for a short time after using Sneak Attack or Trick attack.
Enhances success rate of Steal abilities while under the effect of Hide.


And things like that.

[Karbuncle]

Could see that working, in facts it not a bad idea.. I do recall SE wanting to not add a lot more stances to the game, but i do feel those would be interesting.