Thief Job Ability Synergy: This is not 2005

[Nebo]

Thief/Rogue Has never been a pure heavy DD in final fantasy games. They have always been lighter DDs who you brought along for extra utility. The exception to this is probably Zidane in FF9 but he had to be pretty powerful as he was the main character and you couldn't swap him out.

Not true. Locke was pretty powerful in FF6. Zidane also as you mentioned in FF9. There was no Thief in quite a few of the FF titles. In all the customizabe ones (like tactics) Thief can be leveld up with weapons and armor to be very powerful DD's.

Ignoring that, think about this utility you are talking about for a second. In almost every other FF game with a thief class or steal ability, stealing was a way to get the most powerful weapons and armor in the entire game. If we could steal D rings from KB, abjurations from Fafhog and a completed Mandau from Dynamis Lord this argument will be valid.

Every specific "Thief" ability in Final Fantasy 11 is a joke. I'm not sure how you can argue that. They have tried and failed to give us more relevant steal stuff. Aurasteal, Despoil, Accomplice etc. Collaborator is useful for THF tanking but is someting we aren't designed or intended to do.

The FFXI develepment team has made a pretty clear statement on this with their updates over the years. They took everything that was valuable out of chests and coffers THF could lock pick (and haven't added anything for lock picking since). They nerfed the stealing of beastcoins from beastmen. Mug steals like 3 gil on a 15 minute recast (That's ok though. They just STOPPED giving gil to NMs for us to Mug). Aurasteal, for some wierd reason, was just arbitrarily attached to (item)Steal (this should have never happened). Despoil is a heaping pile of failure that, just to add insult to ridiculousness, also shares a recast timer with steal. Accomplice and Collaborator share the same recast timer....its just absurd.

A thread on this page said it best. We are not Thieves. Our steal abilities are trash. All the other incarnations of Thief in past FF games are laughing their asses off at FFXI Thief.

Clearly Square Enix thought that powerful Thief utility like this is over powered in FFXI. That's probably why they decided to go more the route of DD with FFXI THF instead.

Obligatory FF11 is not any other FF game and is really not comparable in the way you are attempting to do.

I don't know why you think thief is purely a DD and should be able to keep up in DD potential with the other pure DD jobs. Thief style jobs have almost always followed the trend of a lighter DD, trading off pure power for speed and utility. FFXI is no exception.

I find it fascinating that you think that there is such a mythical creature as a pure DD job. Or that such a thing would be a reason to purposefully make thief a gimped damage dealer. No job is purely a DD. Every DD job has support and job specific utility abilities.

If you just look at all of our DD specific abilites compared to everything else, I don't see how one can conclude that we are not designed as a DD job.

[noodles355]

Not true. Locke was pretty powerful in FF6. Zidane also as you mentioned in FF9. There was no Thief in quite a few of the FF titles. In all the customizabe ones (like tactics) Thief can be leveld up with weapons and armor to be very powerful DD's.

That doesn't change the fact that the purpose of the thief, with their base stats and abilities always follow the same pattern: They are fast attackers, with less physical strength, who also have utility abilities like steal and flee. This is always the case. Even excptions like Zidane and Locke still have those utility abilities. The only reason they are made physically strong is because they are the main character and you have to use them. Although in the case of Zidane, Amarant, Freya and Steiner are still more powerful. And more useful.

Ignoring that, think about this utility you are talking about for a second. In almost every other FF game with a thief class or steal ability, stealing was a way to get the most powerful weapons and armor in the entire game. If we could steal D rings from KB, abjurations from Fafhog and a completed Mandau from Dynamis Lord this argument will be valid.

Congratulations, you've pin-pointed bad game design. Steal is useless, well done sherlock. That doesn't change the fact that that is still how thief was designed for this game. And actually as far as utility goes, the argument is valid. What is treasure hunter? You may not be able to steal an abjuration from fafhogg, but your Treasure Hunter makes it significantly easier to get those drops.

Every specific "Thief" ability in Final Fantasy 11 is a joke. I'm not sure how you can argue that. They have tried and failed to give us more relevant steal stuff. Aurasteal, Despoil, Accomplice etc. Collaborator is useful for THF tanking but is someting we aren't designed or intended to do.

I'm not sure I ever argued against that.

The FFXI develepment team has made a pretty clear statement on this with their updates over the years. They took everything that was valuable out of chests and coffers THF could lock pick (and haven't added anything for lock picking since). They nerfed the stealing of beastcoins from beastmen. Mug steals like 3 gil on a 15 minute recast (That's ok though. They just STOPPED giving gil to NMs for us to Mug). Aurasteal, for some wierd reason, was just arbitrarily attached to (item)Steal (this should have never happened). Despoil is a heaping pile of failure that, just to add insult to ridiculousness, also shares a recast timer with steal. Accomplice and Collaborator share the same recast timer....its just absurd.

You do realise that nerfing coffers, lockpicking and steal wasn't because they wanted to move thief in a different direction right? You do realise they were anti-RMT measures? And the coffer nerf was to make getting your AF easier without some thief taking your coffer every 30 minutes.

A thread on this page said it best. We are not Thieves. Our steal abilities are trash. All the other incarnations of Thief in past FF games are laughing their asses off at FFXI Thief.

What's your point? Se designed us as a utility job and light DD. Yes they designed us badly, but that's how they designed us. We are not heavy DDs. Stop thinking we should be.

Clearly Square Enix thought that powerful Thief utility like this is over powered in FFXI. That's probably why they decided to go more the route of DD with FFXI THF instead.

Obligatory FF11 is not any other FF game and is really not comparable in the way you are attempting to do.

DD route? What DD route? Everything they've added for thief has been more utility than DD after Lv76 with the sole exception of Dual Wield.

I find it fascinating that you think that there is such a mythical creature as a pure DD job. Or that such a thing would be a reason to purposefully make thief a gimped damage dealer. No job is purely a DD. Every DD job has support and job specific utility abilities.

There are jobs that were designed to be primarilly a DD. There are jobs that were designed to be less of a DD whilst adding more utility. Thief is the latter. Maybe my use of "pure" was wrong, but "primarilly" works.

If you just look at all of our DD specific abilites compared to everything else, I don't see how one can conclude that we are not designed as a DD job.

[/quote]
Warrior
DD specific abilites: Berserk, Warcry, Agressor, Restraint, Blood Rage, Warriors Charge
Utility abilities: Retalliation, Provoke, Defender, Tomahawk
More DD abilities than utility.
Monk:
DD spefici: Boost, Focus, Chi Blast, Footwork, Formless Strikes, Impetus
Utility: Dodge, Chakra, Countersstance, Mantra, Perfect counter
More DD than utility
Dark Knight:
DD specific: Last Resort, Souleater, Dark Seal, Diabolic Eye, Nether Void
Utility: Arcane Circle, Arcane Crest
More DD than utility.

Thief!:
Pure DD: Sneak Attack, Assassin's Charge,
Utility: Trick Attack, Flee, Mug, Hide, Acocmplice, Collabarator, Feint, Despoil, Conspirator.
Significantly more utility than DD abilities. I don't know how you can argue our primary role was obviously that of a DD. We have much more (theoretically) utility than DD potential. The fact that most of it is irrelevant is down to poor game design doesn't change the fact that that is how thief was designed.

[Nebo]

Congratulations, you've pin-pointed bad game design. Steal is useless, well done sherlock.

Thanks . I'd like to think it was obvious but some people just like to keep arguing that this "utility" is somehow a good reason for keeping THF as some kind of weak Damage Dealer.

And actually as far as utility goes, the argument is valid. What is treasure hunter? You may not be able to steal an abjuration from fafhogg, but your Treasure Hunter makes it significantly easier to get those drops.

You are really getting the hang of these overstatements. I'm proud of you . What is Bounty shot? Did that fix RNG?

Should THF just be happy and secure in their "utility" now that the Developement Team just gave Treasure Hunter (The ONE thing that groups actually WANT us for) to RNG and BST as well? And just gave RNG the ability to enhance it without feeding TP and safely out of AOE range?

You do realise that nerfing coffers, lockpicking and steal wasn't because they wanted to move thief in a different direction right? You do realise they were anti-RMT measures?

The fact that Square Enix has SAID themselves that they are looking to increase our damage dealing potential and looking for ways to allow us to take control on the front line is what makes me think they are moving THF in a different direction.

Everyone realises that those nerfs were anti RMT measures. RMT were able to exploit them and SE concluded that the level at which these abilities could be exploited by FFXI THF was OVERPOWERED. Does this somehow make those things NOT a direct and significant nerf to Thief utility? Or does it just make it ok that they took those things away without compensating?

What's your point? Se designed us as a utility job and light DD. Yes they designed us badly, but that's how they designed us. We are not heavy DDs. Stop thinking we should be.

"Thief is designed badly but it is not a heavy DD! Stop thinking we should be!" lmao.

I find this wildly amusing that you think you are an authority on the subject such that your oppinion is fact and you should be able to tell people how they should think (or not think) about it.

I don't recall anyone in this thread asking for THF to be a "heavy DD" either. The sugestions that I made wouldn't even increase our damage potential by .0000001%. They would simply allow us more opportunites to fulfil our current DD potential when the situation calls for it (which is still lower than your so-called "heavy DD's").

DD route? What DD route? Everything they've added for thief has been more utility than DD after Lv76 with the sole exception of Dual Wield.

So quick to try and prove me wrong that you forget simple things. Critical Attack Bonus? Need I mention the awesome DD stats on our Empyrian Armor? Powerful Magian daggers? Enhances critical hit damage armor? THF specific Dual Wield gear? Increases triple attack damage gear? And native dual wield.

Dual Wield and Critical Attack bonus alone are significant steps in the DD direction.

There are jobs that were designed to be primarilly a DD. There are jobs that were designed to be less of a DD whilst adding more utility. Thief is the latter. Maybe my use of "pure" was wrong, but "primarilly" works.

This should be fun.

Warrior
DD specific abilites: Berserk, Warcry, Agressor, Restraint, Blood Rage, Warriors Charge
Utility abilities: Retalliation, Provoke, Defender, Tomahawk
More DD abilities than utility

Thief!:
Pure DD: Sneak Attack, Assassin's Charge,
Utility: Trick Attack, Flee, Mug, Hide, Acocmplice, Collabarator, Feint, Despoil, Conspirator.

.
Lets try to make your lists a little more accurate shall we? Let us compare WAR and THF:

Warrior

• WAR DD: Berserk, Aggressor, Restraint, Warriors Charge, Double Attack, Critical Attack Bonus, Fencer (DO WAR's use this? Lets count it anyway)
  
  
• WAR Support/Utility:Blood Rage, Warcy, (can't put conspirator here unless we put these here), provoke, defender, retaliation, Tomohawk

WAR DD: 8 Vs WAR Support/Utility: 6

Thief:

• THF DD: Sneak Attack, Trick Attack (We list Trick Attack here because it deals direct damage and its utility depends soley on the DAMAGE that it does), Triple Attack, Assassin, Critical Attack Bonus, Dual Wield, Ambush, Assassin's Charge.
  
  
• THF Support/Utility: Treasure Hunter, Flee, Hide, {Aurasteal/Steal/Despoil}(Count as one because they have the same timer), Feint, Accomplorator (Accomplorator counts as one because they share a recast timer), Conspirator, mug, gilfinder.

THF DD: 8 VS THF Support/Utility: 9

Significantly more utility than DD abilities.

Unfortunately this is not the case (in theory OR in practice). And the fact that most of THF utility stuff is either useless or extremely limited in use compared to EVERYTHNG WAR gets for support/utility being quite useful should tell you something about what the true spread is between DD and utility for Thief.

The fact is, that in practice, we are more DD than utility. You say we should be utility and gimp DD. I say a slight DD tweak to SA and TA or stances to enhance them makes more sense. We disagree and that's fine.

I don't know how you can argue our primary role was obviously that of a DD.

That is because you are trying make a one sided argument that intentionally ignores the big picture. Not to mention grossly understating THF specific DD abilities to make it.

We have much more (theoretically) utility than DD potential. The fact that most of it is irrelevant is down to poor game design doesn't change the fact that that is how thief was designed.

We don't have more theoretical anything. Even Warrior has more ACTUAL utility than Thief does. You can cry to the heavens about the fact that we have more utility-like abilities and ignore the fact that they are useless if you want. That doesn't make your point valid.

Poor game design....Poor Thief design is the very definition of a good reason to want job adjustments for change.

[noodles355]

It's not an overstatement. And the fact that you think it is shows your lack of knowlage about how Treasure Hunter used to work. There were conclusive tests done years ago that showed the old Treasure hunter traits both added a 50% increase in drop rates, whilst the +1 items (gloves, dagger) added 1%. Two traits: 50% + 50% = 100%. Adding treasure hunter would double the chance at drops. I would call double pretty significant. Wouldn't you?

The fact that Square Enix has SAID themselves that they are looking to increase our damage dealing potential and looking for ways to allow us to take control on the front line is what makes me think they are moving THF in a different direction.

Link please

Regarding the RMT nerfs: Did I ever state my opinion on the nerfing of those abilities? Did I ever make clear my position? Did I ever say it was OK? No I fucking didn't. Stop inferring such absolute horseshit from my posts. I made statements. I did not give my opinions on those statements.

Fair enough I missed off Critical Attack Bonus. But ability/trait only the majority of what we recieved were utility abilities.
And Thief is still not a heavy DD, even with all these buffs. Equally geared and played it will not put out the same numbers as an equivilent War, Mnk, Drg etc inside abyssea, and those + Sam and Drk outside.

I love how in your attempt to "balance" my list of DD vs Support abilities, you've taken it down from significantly more utility than DD abilities to just "more. As hard as you tried, Thief still has more utility abilities. What does that say?

Yes, in practice, due to bad game design, we are more DD than utility. But that is purely because of poor game design and doesn't change the fact that theoretically we are meant to be more utility based. Are you new to FFXI? If so you may not have realised yet how SE works, and that they will be ignoring the fact the utility side of our job is stupid, and continue to try and buff us in this way. They will never say "screw this" and just focus on more DD abilities. Yes of course we want them too, but they won't. But hey, maybe I'm being unfair, maybe the new dev team will realise the problems. But I would still wager money on them instead of trying to make us shift more to the DD side, that they will keep trying to buff the utility side to achieve their original goal of a light DD and utility job.

[Nebo]

Link Please

[...]Thief will instead be able to direct the flow party through the use of its techniques. This will include new ways to manage Enmity, allowing the player to more freely raise and lower Enmity and avoid dangerous situations. For endgame content, the Thief may also be improved to deal out more damage[...]

http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=21769

This one was part of the whole plan they outlined for all the jobs when they first announced the level cap increase.

I'm sure you are right in that that they have no intentions of shifting their vision of our fundamental purpose or giving up on giving us more crappy utility/enmity stuff that doesn't work. Maybe they aren't aware that we find it so useless? Maybe they think its good?

I came to terms with that part of THF being what it is years ago. I don't make suggestions to fix it, not because I wouldn't like to see them become useful, but because it would take a MAJOR overhaul of the THF job to do that...I don't think we are going to see that kind of love. I would just like something along the lines of the slight DD tweak in the OP so that we can make use of SA and TA more often.

Whether or not SE will see it my way? You're probably right. They probably won't. But like the man said "If you don't ask you don't get." I would rather try and bring suggestion/discussion here where at least I know they read from time to time, rather than just complain about it elswhere but do nothing.

Looking at this thread, one can see that lots of players have very different oppinions of what Thief's identity is. "Its a utility job, no its a support job, no its a hate manager, no its a damage dealer, no its a Tank, no its a Hybrid" etc etc.

My oppinion as to why this is happening is that the game keeps changing, as it must, and the updates that SE has given us don't address the problems that come with that natural evolution of the game. So as a job we have a lot of things that aren't so useful and a lot of things we can sort of do that we aren't very good at.

Even our prized Treasure Hunter crutch that we could always count on to be wanted is being given away.

My issue with Sneak Attack and Trick Attack is just a result of the way that I play. I solo and Duo as much high level content as I can. On my own time. To make gil, to get gear, to finish Empyrian Armor, work on Twashtar etc. So to me, the "party only limitations" are in my face every day.

It is definitely easier to land them if you have a steady group that you run with, but my time is not always spent with a steady group. I join/create Pickup groups a lot for exp, Nms, and to meet new people from time to time. The limitations of the constant chaos in big groups is really apparent there.

This is where I feel those limitations hold us back as a DD (and as a TH enhancer) more than reasonable (reasonable being subjective of course). I feel like, even being able to land them once a minute, we would still be a "light DD" in the eyes of most of the playerbase. But as A THF, I think I would personally find it less frustrating.

I'm all for being a job that enhances the party or is enhanced by working together with a group. It's the whole "Nearly useless without a group" limitation of these abilities that never made sense to me.

[noodles355]

Ok、いくぞ！

http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=21769

This one was part of the whole plan they outlined for all the jobs when they first announced the level cap increase.

I believe you stated SE said "they are looking to increase our damage dealing potential and looking for ways to allow us to take control on the front line". Now, I will concede yes they do state this, however it is a very small section of the thief Subheading and more of the paragraph is dedicated to the other support aspects of thief. This supports my point about SE's view and intent of thief, being a light DD with support abilities.

Even our prized Treasure Hunter crutch that we could always count on to be wanted is being given away.

Hardly. Ranger is a replacement for Thief (Treasure Hunter) in the same way that a Blm/Whm is a replacement for a Whm (Cures).

It seems there wasnt a lot to reply to here afterall, only really your innitial claim about SEs statement.

Please realise in this topic I have only ever stated what I believe SEs intent was with the job, and how versions of the job in other FFs have also followed this pattern for the majority. I never stated whether or not I want to change the role of thief to a stronger DD from this light DD/utility hybrid. Stop thinking I'm saying I want us to be a utility/light DD job.

No I wouldn't. Because while a 100% increase sure does sound like a significant increase. On things with single digit drop rates, it isn't.

Lrn2math. You're looking at it as: "going from 2% drop rate to 4% drop rate is only increasing drop rate by 2%. 2% is not very much". Instead you should concider "going from 2% drop rate to 4% drop rate is an increase of 100%. 100% is a lot". Furthmore you should also concider that it is the single biggest boost (by virtue of being the only thing to affect it) to increase that 2%. That is significant.

That would actually include more than 50% of the player base imho.

I have no problem stating that at least 50% of the playerbase are shitty players. They are.

[Nebo]

Ok、いくぞ！
I believe you stated SE said "they are looking to increase our damage dealing potential and looking for ways to allow us to take control on the front line". Now, I will concede yes they do state this, however it is a very small section of the thief Subheading and more of the paragraph is dedicated to the other support aspects of thief. This supports my point about SE's view and intent of thief, being a light DD with support abilities.

Thief employs a unique set of Abilities, but also relies on the party to bring out its full potential. This is the form Thief will retain, but expect new variations where instead of matching the pace of the party, the Thief will instead be able to direct the flow party through the use of its techniques. This will include new ways to manage Enmity, allowing the player to more freely raise and lower Enmity and avoid dangerous situations. For endgame content, the Thief may also be improved to deal out more damage. The Community Team Twitter also indicated an enhancement to Treasure Hunter and a new Steal Ability could be in the works.

THis is the whole article. You are right, they mention enmity abilities and a new steal ability (which, as it turns out was lolDespoil). They never said anything about THF being a "light DD." Only being dependant on the party to fulfil its potential. Which is why this thread exists: To attempt to start conversations as to WHY being dependant on the party rather than enhanced by the party doesn't make sense to me, in the (small) hope that we might have a conversation with them about this for once.

Hardly. Ranger is a replacement for Thief (Treasure Hunter) in the same way that a Blm/Whm is a replacement for a Whm (Cures).

With this update RNG has been given a base of TH3 (with AF3+2 gloves) and I have seen testing where a RNG increased TH to level 8 solo. This, to me, is a very significant step on the toes of the THF job and our greatest utility. THF may have more chances and gear to increase it, but RNG can get it done without feeding TP and outside of AOE range.

New content outside of abyssea will determine the actual utility of being able to do this without feeding TP and outside of AOE range, but it is very possible that RNG could be more useful for TH procing on HNMs with powerful TP moves.

And if I was a RNG, I would be very unhappy about all these bounty shot updates. RNG is a powerful DD that is also dependant on positional limitations for dealing damage. 2 updates for bounty shot, a cancellation of the enmity update and no updates in sight to address these fundamental limitations that RNG face as DD's?....Yeah I wouldn't be happy if SE was spending time to make my job another TH whore without fixing the DD issues.

It seems there wasnt a lot to reply to here afterall, only really your innitial claim about SEs statement.

Please realise in this topic I have only ever stated what I believe SEs intent was with the job, and how versions of the job in other FFs have also followed this pattern for the majority. I never stated whether or not I want to change the role of thief to a stronger DD from this light DD/utility hybrid. Stop thinking I'm saying I want us to be a utility/light DD job.

It was from quotes like this that I interpreted your desires about THF. My apologies (truly) if they were misrepresented in my responses.

What's your point? Se designed us as a utility job and light DD. Yes they designed us badly, but that's how they designed us. We are not heavy DDs. Stop thinking we should be.

But also, I was not trying to say we should be heavy DD's either. However, I still assert that THF IS a DD job and as a DD job, asking for DD tweaks as minor (in the sense that they don't increase potential) as those in the OP is within reason.

You're looking at it as: "going from 2% drop rate to 4% drop rate is only increasing drop rate by 2%. 2% is not very much". Instead you should concider "going from 2% drop rate to 4% drop rate is an increase of 100%. 100% is a lot". Furthmore you should also concider that it is the single biggest boost (by virtue of being the only thing to affect it) to increase that 2%. That is significant

.

We disagree on this. I do see why you are coming to this conclusion, but we have different definitions of the term significant. A 2% increase in drop rate is no where near significant in my oppinion. A 100% increase doesn't mean anything without context. It is entirely relative to the origional droprate. So if the origional drop rate is trash, a 100% increase of a trash droprate is also going to be a trash increase.

But this, I believe is intentional and is how Treasure Hunter is balanced so that it is not overly powerful. This is also why I believe that having TH is not really a good reason to make us overly weak in other areas...like DD ability (not saying you are saying that, but I have heard many people make this argument).

[Nebo]

Two traits: 50% + 50% = 100%. Adding treasure hunter would double the chance at drops. I would call double pretty significant. Wouldn't you?

No I wouldn't. Because while a 100% increase sure does sound like a significant increase. On things with single digit drop rates, it isn't.

For example. A 100% increase in drop rate on something that has a 1% droprate is now.....2%. Would you call that a significant increase? I wouldn't.

Which is why Treasure Hunter makes behive chips rain from the sky but has less of an impact on things with low drop rates. Is it an increase? Definitely. Is it a significant increase for rare drop rates? Not really.

[Atomic_Skull]

Surprise Attack: Your next weaponskill will deal additional damage when attacking from outside the target's sight.

Works when used from outside the target's cone of sight.

Forces the next WS to be a critical attack.

Adds a weaponskill secondary modifier of STR 50%.

Adds an fTP bonus of 0.01 for each point of STR your have.

Adds a cRatio Bonus like Spinning Slash, YGK, etc.

Cooloff is 25 seconds, effect lasts for 5 minutes or until the next WS.

Can be queued up to a maximum of 3. Each WS used will remove one effect.

Does not stack with Sneak Attack or Trick Attack. SATA takes priority over Surprise Attack.


Scapegoat: Gives 30% of your enmity to a fellow party member.

Works like Collaborator in reverse.

Can exceed the enmity cap by 20%

1 minute cooloff.



There, THF is fixed.