Bully: it's really bad.

[Fuidama]

I did a quick baseline test of the new bully on flamingos in sky. First off, Yokodama lives again! So much fun... Secondly, as EP monsters, I used bully 10 times. Here are the intimidation results.
2,2,2,3,0,2,1,1,2,2
In all, that averages to about 1.7 times the target is intimidated for every 30 seconds that bully is active while solo on an EP mob. In all honesty, I think this is still very close to the numbers I was getting with the original bully; I was intimidating the monster 2-3 times each bully before. So, if the intimidate aspect of bully was nerfed so little, there may be little we can expect out of it to begin with. IE if the rate wasn't changed much, then what we can do with it probably has.
You do the math for the % of the 30 seconds and the % for the 3 minutes for the ability. Again, this is a small sample, and may be closer to 1.5 or 2 in reality.

As Insaniac said he did not even see one proc for his 10 uses on an EP monster, the proc may be based on the type/family of monster. If there is not a killer trait for a job that relates to a certain monster, maybe the monster can't be intimidated at all? This may be very likely with NMs if so. Maybe it is determined by zone?
Insaniac, what did you fight for your test?

Has anyone tried a SA from /thf with a bully debuff on the mob, or a secondary thf's SA, if it works from any direction?

Thanks to a helpful JP THF this evening, I switched over to WAR/THF and tried it out. It does not appear that /THF's SA will work with Bully. This is quite unfortunate as it could have opened quite a few options for party tactics and created a greater reward for any /THF that coordinated with a main THF.

And unfortunately, at the time I did not think to try "sharing" SA and bully with us both as main THF.

Anyways, I still have not had a proper chance to test intimidate with a job with killer effects (I only killed two birds with BST and THF before my JP friend had to go for dinner, but proc rate didn't seem to change) but I plan to some time in the morning. Until then, could anyone recommend a method on establishing a baseline for Bird Killer? I've figured two would be to 1) Since bully was used to claim, and therefore used for the 1st 30 seconds of each fight, use a stopwatch and time the first 30 seconds of 10 fights with BST and see how many times the monster is intimidated. The end result would be under the same time frame and easily comparable once used together 2) perform 10 fights with only melee hits and obtain the average amount of times each target was intimidated for the entire fight. Using the same process when combined with bully, if bully makes a difference it will show in the average.

[Zirael]

[..Bully could be better, etc, etc]

Anyways, I still have not had a proper chance to test intimidate with a job with killer effects (I only killed two birds with BST and THF before my JP friend had to go for dinner, but proc rate didn't seem to change) but I plan to some time in the morning. Until then, could anyone recommend a method on establishing a baseline for Bird Killer? I've figured two would be to 1) Since bully was used to claim, and therefore used for the 1st 30 seconds of each fight, use a stopwatch and time the first 30 seconds of 10 fights with BST and see how many times the monster is intimidated. The end result would be under the same time frame and easily comparable once used together 2) perform 10 fights with only melee hits and obtain the average amount of times each target was intimidated for the entire fight. Using the same process when combined with bully, if bully makes a difference it will show in the average.

There's a whole dedicated forum for FFXI math, have a read here:
http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/103...=1#post4641701
According to Byrthnoth, lv1 Killer traits are 8% base intimidation rate, lv2 traits are 10%.

[Insaniac]

Insaniac, what did you fight for your test?

Thanks to a helpful JP THF this evening, I switched over to WAR/THF and tried it out. It does not appear that /THF's SA will work with Bully. This is quite unfortunate as it could have opened quite a few options for party tactics and created a greater reward for any /THF that coordinated with a main THF.

I was fighting various junk around the volbow OP so raptors lizards bunnys goblins and crabs.

That's really unfortunate about it not affecting /THF.

[Anathiel]

/sigh I was really hoping that /thf could make a comeback as a viable sub again ; ;

[Mightyg]

Now can another Thf main benefit from the bully effect for Sneak Attack?

It's really a shame they didn't allow others to SA as well. That would have been a great addition to thf for party usefulness.

[Fuidama]

Just did a quick test this morning, Myself and my friend Maori have confirmed that two main THF can indeed SA off of each others bully. Looks like limits on SA as /thf just keep stacking up.

Anyways, it's the weekend so I'm off to see friends. More testing to come at a later time.

Edit:
Thank you for the link Zirael

[noodles355]

6 Thf party with fulltime bully ftw.

[Economizer]

6 Thf party with fulltime bully ftw.

This is all the more reason that /THF should be allowed to SA with Bully, but perhaps there was a balance reason for this SE didn't mention.

Still, being able to use another THF main's bully is amazing - now you are encouraged to have more then one Thief in a party.

[Nala]

lol thats actually kinda good to hear that bully can affect other then the main user... and its a shame its not extended to /thf for so many reasons especially when you are talking about a hate control specialist, having 2-3 thfs available to throw bully so the heavy dd's can slam it down and keep the hate on the tank would do wonders for their whole hate control vision if you ask me.

[Nynja]

Well it sucks that /thf wont work...but whatever, good enough as is. Lets refrain from being drk's and emoing cuz our new toy is "WAAAAH IT SUCKSSSSSSSSSSS" because people lack the ability to use it properly.