Thief Treasure Hunter

[Stompa]

I'm not THF main job at all its just a utility-job for helping LS ppl get their stuff, so I for example didn't even know about the TH ticks being main hand / first hit only.

What I do know is I routinely hit th10 wearing TH0 gear, having landed TH7 on the opening hit. I'm not arguing with anyone or saying SE lied about about the TH gear spikes the %chance of further TH ticks, just saying you can use your regular melee/ws set and still build 10~ it happens to me all the time. If as I believe the TH ticks are percentile base chance, then haste gear gives you more hits including mainhand/first hits in shorter time, so I will stick with my haste set for THF and just use the TH macro at the start.
To be honest, rogue class, thief job, etc. were always about sleight of hand and deft touches, same as how on Earth a pickpocket will brush against you in the street, you wont see them and you wont feel anything except the merest nudge as they pass you, but when you get home your purse/wallet is gone. That always chimed for me with the TH gear that you swap in for one hit, it just seems more like the real world where truly pro thiefs will touch you just once briefly.

[OmnysValefor]

There are only a few other uses I can think of for thf, and none are about damage.

TA/SATA = But honestly, this isn't going to help tanks tank for more than few second more. At hate cap, all a TA might benefit a player is one more single swing at the tank.

Accomplice/Collaborator on a white mage. I can't tell you the number of times at WKR I've wished there was a thief present so he could join and Collab my whm on cooldown. His hate should dissipate enough that he'd never actually pull with collabs, and if he were to and were to die, it's better for the group if a dps died vs the tank or tank-healer.

It's not a great damage dealer, it just isn't. Solo it's even worse, because you have SA once every 3 minutes and no TA (unless you're dualboxing/have an npc, but neither is technically solo). Of course, in dynamis, you can proc and run around behind and SA, but that doesn't apply anywhere else really, since thf/dnc's red proc options are very few for aby.

There's no such thing as hate management anymore so the biggest utility thf had is almost useless.

Yeah, yeah, I'm not a THF main, but I am a PLD main, so I know what it's like when SE has carved us down to niche purposes. Please don't be offended.

[Nebo]

Honestly, this whole "Upgrade Thief's Knife" thing is pointless in the greater landscape. Adjusting Thief's knife to be the strongest dagger in the game (or any other combination of TH gear/KI upgrade) is still going to leave Thief in a useless spot.

The real issue with Thief is that Treasure Hunter is the only thing of value that the Thief job offers to a group.

That's a problem - Treasure Hunter is not particularly valuable...certainly not enough for it to be a "job role."

I don't believe SE intended it to be this way. They just designed the job very badly, took lots of good things away, and never adjusted THF to keep up with the times because they were mad at RMTs. (They fear the past)

Anything else that the Thief job can do, another job can do much better - without retarded positional restrictions and devoid of unreasonable timer bottlenecks.

Having said that, I agree that it is pretty ridiculous that TH is still tied to this stupid knife...but at this point...of all the things that really NEED to be fixed about THF....having the devs spend limited update resources on making it more convenient to get 0.01% more TH placebo effect is not one of them.

But most likely, meaningless things like separation of despoil/steal + some new mediocre (but not quite as horrid as Thief Knife) dagger or some such TH gear band aid will be all the "fixing" Thief gets.

TLDR: /Toss the useless dagger and don't look back. The only thing it has been relevant for in he past few years is to single wield while killing Kings. That time has passed. It is not worth the inventory it costs to carry around. Anyone that insists you use it is most likely uninformed about what raising TH past a certain point actually accomplishes, about the Thief job in general , or both.

[Stompa]

I don't believe SE intended it to be this way. They just designed the job very badly

They didn't design the job anyway. They lifted AD&D "Rogue" class which has existed since 1980~ it was a decades-old job before SE copied it. The steal and backstab and general flightyness of rogues was copied 100% and so were their favoured weapons. SE also borrowed more from Ad&d ; other job classes like pld, attributes like Str Vit etc. and random dice-rolls on to-hit and everything else that is /random in ffxi which is most of it. Many Ad&d players like myself (I been a d&d fan since 1981~) saw Stormreach Online (fail) was an attempt by Ad&d to respond to FFxi, but honestly the last good Ad&d games were the Baldur's Gate series which rocked hard, and were pre FFxi anyway.

[Infidi]

They didn't design the job anyway. They lifted AD&D "Rogue" class which has existed since 1980~ it was a decades-old job before SE copied it. The steal and backstab and general flightyness of rogues was copied 100% and so were their favoured weapons. SE also borrowed more from Ad&d ; other job classes like pld, attributes like Str Vit etc. and random dice-rolls on to-hit and everything else that is /random in ffxi which is most of it. Many Ad&d players like myself (I been a d&d fan since 1981~) saw Stormreach Online (fail) was an attempt by Ad&d to respond to FFxi, but honestly the last good Ad&d games were the Baldur's Gate series which rocked hard, and were pre FFxi anyway.

Planescape: Torment?

[Calatilla]

They didn't design the job anyway. They lifted AD&D "Rogue" class which has existed since 1980~ it was a decades-old job before SE copied it. The steal and backstab and general flightyness of rogues was copied 100% and so were their favoured weapons. SE also borrowed more from Ad&d ; other job classes like pld, attributes like Str Vit etc. and random dice-rolls on to-hit and everything else that is /random in ffxi which is most of it. Many Ad&d players like myself (I been a d&d fan since 1981~) saw Stormreach Online (fail) was an attempt by Ad&d to respond to FFxi, but honestly the last good Ad&d games were the Baldur's Gate series which rocked hard, and were pre FFxi anyway.

Except the rogue class in other AD+D games was a devastating damage dealer, hitting hard and very fast. The rogue in NVN-online is this kind of DD, fast and strong, and can also deal damage from distance.

All D+D rogue classes have had dual-wield from the onset, THF only got it because SE decided to give it to DNC.

I don't think SE based their THF design on Rogue, I think that's more ninja than thief.

[Daemon]

Except the rogue class in other AD+D games was a devastating damage dealer, hitting hard and very fast. The rogue in NVN-online is this kind of DD, fast and strong, and can also deal damage from distance.

All D+D rogue classes have had dual-wield from the onset, THF only got it because SE decided to give it to DNC.

I don't think SE based their THF design on Rogue, I think that's more ninja than thief.

I think the way the DEV team implements jobs, make it only useful for 1 or 2 things to prevent people hopping on to only 1 job the entire game.

Which I think if SE made all jobs useful, eventually it won't matter what job anyone plays because not everybody likes playing 1 job.

Personally I only play Thief for farming, good for doing favors for others when they need TH. Other than that I find the job boring.

[Calatilla]

That's because, thanks to poor design, Treasure Hunter is the only use THF has. If you don't need Treasure Hunter you don't need a THF. It isn't difficult to make THF into a DD, not on the scale of a 2-hander but not a million miles behind them, SE just doesn't want to.

[Stompa]

Actually the Rogue class from 1978 D&D all the way through the following 3 decades, was not a damage dealer at all. Originally Rogues in AD&D avoided the battle area entirely and stood in the shadows away from the fight, using slingshots minibows and occasional backstab. The rogue was a support-dd, to help nudge up a few extra hits on the mob while the real DD's tanked and smashed it. The rogue's actual real jobs were lockpicking, ranged attacks (with slings), persuasion/scamming, pickpocketting/pilfering etc. The Rogue had high INT & CHR so he could talk to NPC's on behalf the party and persuade them. This chimes with the original FFxi THF weaponskill - Dancing Edge, which is mainly CHR based.
In any case the poster I was replying to said SE designed THF badly as a DD, and my point really is they just lifted the AD&D Rogue class entirely so SE aren't really to blame if it isnt DD enough or w/e, they were just copying an existing class and hoping ppl would like it. Rogues were feeble DD, they stood in the shadows and watched other people fight while using slingshots shortbows etc. Not DD at all. But Rogue was a cool class, and so is FFxi THF, if you are a roleplayer its a fun job to flesh-out. Also Rogue was useful for lockpicking, backstab ("Sneak-attack" 20 years before FFxi used it) and pilfering ("Steal").
Re; dual-wield, FFxi has subjobs, and since THF wears light armors (same as rogues do) and dies fast, SE had intended you to play the job Thf/Nin with dual-wield and shadows which everyone did since forever. And they did give Thf native DW eventually too.
As for NWN online, I never said FFxi copied that. NWN and some of the other AD&D franchises are not true to the AD&D game that has existed for 30+ years, at all. They are arcade games with an AD&D feel, they are not true AD&D roleplaying games and the rogue class in those games has zero in common with the Rogue ppl played for decades, which was a weak DD.

[OmnysValefor]

It doesn't really matter where something is sourced from. The community perception now is that it needs to either heal well, stun well, dd well, or there's no point in bringing it. Since Delve bosses don't depend on TH to drop gear, there's not a lot of reason to bring thf.

Based on THAT alone, SE should tweak the job.