Thief Treasure Hunter

[Falseliberty]

TH is one of the last problems I see with thf, Its more the fact we have to be on total point just to get close to the other DD + an other big problem facing thf is we are so goddam squishy as hell that A+ evasion is totally worthless against big targets we have no def, we have prob the lowest HP pool of any melee, our vit sucks.
Mobs just look at me in delve and I die (subbing /war and using berserk just compounds the squishy problem).

Perfect dodge is anything but perfect due to the fact that all the big NMs WS are AoE + magical. I have yet to face a NM in Delve where I came close to dying used perfect dodge and lived. Its a nonstop mess of magical AoE.

dnc and nin have far more survivability than thf atm. give all those dam bandwagon mnks the hp a thf has and lets see how long they last >.>

[Nebo]

This mindset is what is keeping THF out of Adoulin events

This certainly a part of it, but that perception is also based on real job limitations I listed above.

True statement: Job vs Job - MNK DRK WAR DD > THF DD. That's not a matter of mindset. It's probably not as large a gap as it was when SoA was first released, but the job is still lagging behind for reasons stated above.

It's also a supply and demand issue. Why would you take a more complicated, inferior DD job when lots of better DD jobs are waiting for invites?

[Calatilla]

It's also a supply and demand issue. Why would you take a more complicated, inferior DD job when lots of better DD jobs are waiting for invites?

Exactly, why would you take a THF unless you wanted treasure hunter over a real DD? No matter how good that THF was.

[Demon6324236]

Look how many threads there are of thieves saying they've out parsed real DD`s on THF, the response is always the same, "if you out parsed a DRK on THF then that DRK sucked" it's never, wow you're a good THF that knows how to DD, it's always the other DD`s suck.

While I know your right about this, and agree, I just want to point out that its not only a THF issue either, its a general issue with all jobs which are outside of the norm for DDing.

I have had the same issue with my RDM, though I had out DDed many people in VW, and out DD many people in Delve Plasm farms now, its always a group I have to either build myself or as a friend to let me join because its their group. At the same time, even though I do better than many other DDs, for instance, a DRK & MNK about a week ago I out DDed, I am always told this same excuse... 'RDM cant DD, if you out DDed that DRK & MNK they were just bad DDs, its impossible for RDM to come close to good DDs'.

I have seen the same from friends who play DRG, PUP, BST, and BLU in the past. Its a real community issue, and the sad part is even if they changed things around, it wouldn't matter, I mean even now, BLM, SCH, and RDM are the best DDs in Skirmish, easily better than any melee job, yet still, Oat MNK shouts left and right for it, offer a BLM or RDM & people only ignore you or down talk you. If all of a sudden THF was given changes that allowed it to DD 20% better than now, even if it were on par with DRK or MNK in DPS, I doubt it would be some massive turnaround for THF, people would probably be ignorant to it, and still ignore THFs just as much for a few months.

[OmnysValefor]

Outdd'ing people in VW doesn't count, especially on jobs with access to limited weapons. That rag war might be trying to get a staff proc while you're happily CDC/Req'ing away.

As for out'dding other jobs in content like Delve.. Just because they can't dd as well as their jobs should doesn't make rdm a better dd. You're obviously a very serious RDM, Demon, but the same percentage of people that half-bake monk will half-bake rdm. I have nearly the best possible DD set a pld can have at the moment, and I would still never try to take PLD as a DD, GS or Sword, because it simply isn't. I might outdd subpar dragoons and dancers. I might even outdd a bad/badly-geared monk. It still doesn't justify that a proper player, like you or me, does better on a job for the task.

IE, my warrior is an incomparably better DD than my paladin because I put the same effort into a solid DD set for him, he swaps for WS, I play war like I'm supposed to. No PLD or RDM is going to outdd my warrior.

There are other factors too, like how good the mages are and what kind of temps access DDs have. If mages in delve are leaving the DD slowed, while you can erase, haste, and barstone for chance to resist, that's a large factor. Now, if you're doing that as a melee-rdm, it's because you're taking the role seriously, which is good, but of course a lot of people wont.

[Demon6324236]

Outdd'ing people in VW doesn't count, especially on jobs with access to limited weapons. That rag war might be trying to get a staff proc while you're happily CDC/Req'ing away.

As for out'dding other jobs in content like Delve.. Just because they can't dd as well as their jobs should doesn't make rdm a better dd. You're obviously a very serious RDM, Demon, but the same percentage of people that half-bake monk will half-bake rdm. I have nearly the best possible DD set a pld can have at the moment, and I would still never try to take PLD as a DD, GS or Sword, because it simply isn't. I might outdd subpar dragoons and dancers. I might even outdd a bad/badly-geared monk. It still doesn't justify that a proper player, like you or me, does better on a job for the task.

IE, my warrior is an incomparably better DD than my paladin because I put the same effort into a solid DD set for him, he swaps for WS, I play war like I'm supposed to. No PLD or RDM is going to outdd my warrior.

There are other factors too, like how good the mages are and what kind of temps access DDs have. If mages in delve are leaving the DD slowed, while you can erase, haste, and barstone for chance to resist, that's a large factor. Now, if you're doing that as a melee-rdm, it's because you're taking the role seriously, which is good, but of course a lot of people wont.

I know, but THF is not much different in that fact, a good THF can do a good job at DDing, if you take an optimum THF and an optimum DRK side by side with equal skills, buffs, and mages, the DRK will be the stronger DD, the same can be said of RDM, but just because a THF does better than a DRK doesn't mean that the DRK sucked, it means the THF was good. Both may be contributing factors, but the fact everyone just says that the norm DD job sucked and that's why you did better, that degrades someone who puts the proper work and effort into their job that allowed them to do better in the first place. I am sure the MNK & DRK I out did in Delve were not the best, they were probably ok, but needed work, at the same time, I think I did exceptional as a RDM, that's why I did as well as I did, however if you ask people, 9 times out of 10, it seems like they would say I got lucky or had bad DDs, never complimenting my abilities themselves, but rather putting it on the other DDs simply being bad.

[Danita]

Google "ffxi dps spreadsheet" and compare a well-geared thief to a well-geared MNK (or DRK or SAM, etc); find out why THF is a wasted spot. Understand that if you care about Treasure Hunter, then THF needs to main hand TH knife, remove any multi-attack gear, off hand nothing, put TH hands and feet on, and fight like that until you cap TH12...

The above gear I listed is what thief is good for on a tiny few NM's (Behemoth, KB, etc), and otherwise THF is good for dynamis/limbus style farming - in other words, 99 and below content that offers no challenge. And that's it. It's a wasted spot everywhere else. Enmity control is meaningless because enmity is meaningless, TH is useless if you don't have the DPS to support it (or the battlefield drops items like in VW), and THF offers no way to deal element-less damage (Requiscat, Formless Strikes, Masamune, Twilight Scythe.. oops, nvm, DRK lost it's trick).

Good DD's don't exist. There are DD's who meet the level of DPS and flexibility to get the job done, and there are the ones who time out/die/fail to get the win. There is no middle ground. There is only: good enough to win, and not good enough to win. There is no good. (It's meaningless.)

If your RDM / THF / PUP / Insert weaker DD job here outdoes somebody's MNK or what have you, then the only thing you should take from that is that they simply aren't up to par. Since that result is flat-out mathematically impossible when both players are properly geared and played, don't take it to mean that your superior (whatever) can do the impossible, take it to mean what it implies: the guy playing his DD job next to you is substandard, and the proof is you out-did him.

[Nebo]

Google "ffxi dps spreadsheet" and compare a well-geared thief to a well-geared MNK (or DRK or SAM, etc); find out why THF is a wasted spot...


Good DD's don't exist. There are DD's who meet the level of DPS and flexibility to get the job done, and there are the ones who time out/die/fail to get the win.

This is the mentality that Karb is talking about. And it's false.

It's perfectly possible to bring many Thieves...scratch that, you could replace an entire DD party with only THFs and still kill Tojil.

The reason people don't do that is not because it's impossible to do content with THF, it's because other DD's can get it done better/faster/easier. That, coupled with the fact that there are a lot of better DD's around to choose from is why not many people bring a THF to DD.

Having said that, new gear + ability to dual wield Aphotics + stat changes + attack cap raise have all made significant steps forward for your Joe average THF since SoA release. Shark Dagger/Aphotics is pretty beastly atm.

A lot of scrubs walk around with their Oat MNK comparing that to a TH mule with some random combination of Magian + Thief's knife in delve and base these mindless opinions off of that. For those of us that DO use the spreadsheets and play THF competently, we know where we are behind and why. But the gap is not quite as large as it's being made out to be in this post anymore.

I'd be happy with a few tweaks to our DD job abilities (possibly some WS changes too, depending on how crap REM turn out to be in the end). It's not fair that THF has to be the only DD playing the position/timer restriction game when everyone else is playing "spam the TP every 100% and top the parse."

We can't be the only one playing that game and expect everyone else to help us play it. Especially when the damage payout is worth less than other DD's that don't have to play the position game.

The deck is just stacked against us.

[OmnysValefor]

Aye, you could do that now, but could you have done it before the 200 skill was added to weapons? That's really the point.

[Nebo]

Aye, you could do that now, but could you have done it before the 200 skill was added to weapons? That's really the point.

Yes.

What's that skill giving you? ACC? ATT? All that was being accounted for, Pre-ilevel buffs, with support using MNK (1-hander) strats when Tojil was actually hard to kill.

MNKs aren't any more accurate than a THF (quite a bit less actually if you account for the fact that a group of Thieves could use a feint/conspirator rotation).

All the major base stat disparities between DD's were adjusted with the attack cap raise and the STR/DEX=>ACC/ATT adjustments that also predated ilevel additions.

So yeah, given the same requirements of skill and gear (delve/Boss weapon), I'd say it was definitely possible before the ilevel adjustments.