Thief>Ninja/Dancer Class/Job

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Originally Posted by Aethaeryn

I get your concern with that, but jobs do little more than add 5 new skills, boost your stats a bit, and severely limit your ability to cross-class.

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The new abilities and the bonus stats heavily outweigh the loss of some cross-class abilities. The bonus MND provided by the WHM soul crystal, Divine Seal, Regen, and Benediction (plus all the WHM exclusive gear) provide a huge jump in power over the base Conjurer that no amount of cross-class abilities can match.

So yeah, you could say that a NIN is still a THF but with a few new tricks, but I don't want to be a NIN. I don't want to be forced to be a NIN in order to do serious content. I want to be a THF. I want to have a THF soul crystal, and THF relic weapons and artifact armor.

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Originally Posted by Nahara

The new abilities and the bonus stats heavily outweigh the loss of some cross-class abilities.

So yeah, you could say that a NIN is still a THF but with a few new tricks, but I don't want to be a NIN. I don't want to be forced to be a NIN in order to do serious content. I want to be a THF. I want to have a THF soul crystal, and THF relic weapons and artifact armor.

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They definitely didn't always heavily outweigh the use of cross-class abilities. BLM, for example, has some super situational job skills that don't even really define the job at all. Flare is great for aoe, freeze is crap, convert's cooldown is too high and unnecessary for anything other than double flare, manawall has almost no situational use outside of dungeon grinding (tonberry in WP?), and don't even get me started on apocatastasis. Part of the nerf on summoners was made because ACN was ridiculously strong with allagan book and NOT using summoner's soul crystal. MRD can put out consistently much better dps than WAR. The gap is smaller since 2.1 nerfed bfb and internal release for cross-classing, but it still exists.

Regardless, my point was that it's still the same class, but becomes further specialized when you equip your soul crystal. I get that it ruins your immersion, and I'm sure you wouldn't be alone in feeling that way. I also really love your ideas for your post for a Performer class and THF/DNC. But what about ninja? Maybe they'll just never add it, but if they do add thief with similar bells and whistles to what you have in mind, what could they do with ninja without completely butchering its essence the way FFXI did? Before FFXI, thief mostly just came with the ability to use Steal/Mug. What could you do to set apart the abilities of both THF and NIN to make them both viable and not a rehash of the same mechanics? I don't think anyone wants more positional crap for future jobs the way DRG and MNK are already set up because they're unbelievably frustrating on a large number of encounters.

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Originally Posted by Aethaeryn

I usually replied in Japanese. :P (Wintermoon/Selenay/Lukien/Akinori... you probably don't remember me lol filthy carebear casual etc.)

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When I hit Great General, I was a filthy carebear casual..but when push came to shove, Assassin melts all (Except for Zikel's Shield).

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Originally Posted by Aethaeryn

Regardless, my point was that it's still the same class, but becomes further specialized when you equip your soul crystal. I get that it ruins your immersion, and I'm sure you wouldn't be alone in feeling that way. I also really love your ideas for your post for a Performer class and THF/DNC. But what about ninja? Maybe they'll just never add it, but if they do add thief with similar bells and whistles to what you have in mind, what could they do with ninja without completely butchering its essence the way FFXI did? Before FFXI, thief mostly just came with the ability to use Steal/Mug. What could you do to set apart the abilities of both THF and NIN to make them both viable and not a rehash of the same mechanics? I don't think anyone wants more positional crap for future jobs the way DRG and MNK are already set up because they're unbelievably frustrating on a large number of encounters.

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If melee doesn't have a positional requirement, you can expect all current melee to give up what they have and switch to that. Screw being on flank or behind for half your attacks. Attack from front! I'd much rather they butchered Thief (since all they have going for them was steal anyway) and make Ninja good (since it is historically better than Thief).

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Originally Posted by Exstal

When I hit Great General, I was a filthy carebear casual..but when push came to shove, Assassin melts all (Except for Zikel's Shield).

If melee doesn't have a positional requirement, you can expect all current melee to give up what they have and switch to that. Screw being on flank or behind for half your attacks. Attack from front! I'd much rather they butchered Thief (since all they have going for them was steal anyway) and make Ninja good (since it is historically better than Thief).

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I never made it higher than 1-star officer. :P But then I made new characters like once a month and quit repeatedly over a 3-year period. I was getting super into the game with 4.0 until FFXIV hit.

And yeah, I know, but the positional stuff is so stupid and irritating. :( Especially on monk, which I spend a great deal of time playing now.

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Originally Posted by Aethaeryn

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I'd like to think what'd really set NIN apart from THF is Ninjutsu, the NIN's exclusive "magic" school. I mentioned previously that one angle you could take it was a kind of "Batman's Utility Belt", using ninja tools (thematically) to get the edge over their opponents, like smoke bombs or poisons, or maybe also having the ninja's elemental wheel from XI (which I thought was a fun mechanic). I don't even pretend to be a good game designer, so I don't know if I could come up with something even remotely close to a balanced class based on it, but the actual XIV devs are people that are paid to do these kinds of things and could do it in a way that's true to the flavor of the NIN without being "just a better THF".

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Originally Posted by Nahara

I'd like to think what'd really set NIN apart from THF is Ninjutsu, the NIN's exclusive "magic" school. I mentioned previously that one angle you could take it was a kind of "Batman's Utility Belt", using ninja tools (thematically) to get the edge over their opponents, like smoke bombs or poisons, or maybe also having the ninja's elemental wheel from XI (which I thought was a fun mechanic). I don't even pretend to be a good game designer, so I don't know if I could come up with something even remotely close to a balanced class based on it, but the actual XIV devs are people that are paid to do these kinds of things and could do it in a way that's true to the flavor of the NIN without being "just a better THF".

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They could give them traits that reduce the cd's and increase the potency of food and potions, that way they can save iconic abilities for the skills. They could even have poiton/tools only usable by ninja.

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Originally Posted by Eohi

They could give them traits that reduce the cd's and increase the potency of food and potions, that way they can save iconic abilities for the skills. They could even have poiton/tools only usable by ninja.

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No class will ever use a consumable item resource in order to perform it's job. SE specifically removed the arrow market because they didn't want an entire class's worth tied to something you could legitimately run out of in the middle of a fight, thus making you useless.

When I say that NIN could have abilities that use ninja tools to replicate spell effects, I don't mean they should have actual items in their inventory that get consumed in order to use said ability. The tools are entirely thematic, shown in the ability icons and in the animations, with their only cost being TP.

In reality Thief is a Tier 1 job, Ninja is a Tier 2 job. That's pretty much how it's always been.

I meant that ninja's could make heightened use out of the potions/items we do have instead of instead of adding actual spells. Items we already have don't get enough use and it would make more sense for ninja to have its token ability to throw items/weapons a trait as its never been a spell caster perse and having abilities for tools would be weird considering we already have "tools" that don't get used much.

As as the main focus of ninja has never really been tools it would make sense to give it a trait to maximize use of what tools we do have (potion/debuff potions/etc). That way we could save more abilities for swordplay and ninjutsu as ninja as a class is really all over the place and it would be difficult to accurately capture that without getting creative.

It wouldn't revolve around consumables because, it would just be a way to squeeze more potential out of an incredibly versatile job

But you are still making items mandatory for job abilities. And the dev's have decided that won't be course they are taking.

That leaves the only other conclusion to your post. That NIN would get better timers on potions, which would be game breaking and make NIN the only melee that would ever be taken into group content.