Pipe Dreams: Thief

Greetings.

As someone who was around to see the disappointment when SE talked about Thief never being a thing in FFXIV, I've poked at the idea of how to implement the job despite of the current design paradigms. A good while ago there was a thread with some suggestions on how to make THF work. I've made my own spin on some of the concepts in that thread, but have to credit it for giving me the inspiration for this.

This has not undergone the numerous iterations as seen with my chemist and red mage write up and is, for intents and purposes, a rough draft. As always, opinions and feedback are welcome.

FFXIV: Thief

The reason why they don't want to implement "Thief" is because they want the WoL to only be associated with moral and upstanding dealings. That is why you don't get to play as a Thief but instead get to join the Rogue's Guild, which is comprised of former thieves. Even Black Mage and Summoner, whom both use forbidden arts tow the line but are given the pass as you are using the arts to prevent others from misusing them. Thieves by their very nature steal, it's eponymous to its name. Even if you're a "good" Thief, it still means you are stealing, which is criminal and not something they want the WoL to do for story reasons. We have "Thief" in the game as a job, and it's called Rogue. They historically had several skills associated with Thief, such as Sneak Attack and Trick Attack, Gust Slash, and Mug. Rogue even upgrades to Ninja much like how Thief upgrades to Ninja in FF1.


The Rogue equipment in the game even closely resembles the typical FF1 Thief archetype https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/m...oncept_art.png

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

The reason why they don't want to implement "Thief" is because they want the WoL to only be associated with moral and upstanding dealings. That is why you don't get to play as a Thief but instead get to join the Rogue's Guild, which is comprised of former thieves. Even Black Mage and Summoner, whom both use forbidden arts tow the line but are given the pass as you are using the arts to prevent others from misusing them. Thieves by their very nature steal, it's eponymous to its name. Even if you're a "good" Thief, it still means you are stealing, which is criminal and not something they want the WoL to do for story reasons. We have "Thief" in the game as a job, and it's called Rogue. They historically had several skills associated with Thief, such as Sneak Attack and Trick Attack, Gust Slash, and Mug. Rogue even upgrades to Ninja much like how Thief upgrades to Ninja in FF1.

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I think most of us know this, especially OP. The class design and surrounding discussion is just for fun, not something I expect he seriously thinks might get implemented.

That aside though, the excuse about the WoL and stealing is pretty rubbish anyway. Rogues are Thieves, I don't mean in a coy 'Rogue is actually Thief job renamed' way either, I mean as in they actually steal from people and are thought of by many as common criminals.

Lurking in the shadows, adhering to no laws but their own, they punish the wicked, pilfering their ill-gotten gains and delivering them to the downtrodden masses. Thought by many to be mere common criminals, some would say they play an unseen hand in maintaining order in the buccaneer's haven of Limsa Lominsa.

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

The reason why they don't want to implement "Thief" is because they want the WoL to only be associated with moral and upstanding dealings. That is why you don't get to play as a Thief but instead get to join the Rogue's Guild, which is comprised of former thieves. Even Black Mage and Summoner, whom both use forbidden arts tow the line but are given the pass as you are using the arts to prevent others from misusing them.

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That's incredibly flimsy reasoning, seeing that in terms of storyline Thief could be tied to stealing and treasure hunting (the latter being something heavily pushed by Locke and could easily become the topic of a story arc for the job). As for fear of the WoL being tied to illegal things, we've already crossed that line with DRK being apostate knights acting well outside the law, as seen in pieces of the 30-50 questline and the entirety of the 51-60 questline. Assuming the writers were to consider how THF could be placed in-game, you could treat them as a barely recognized presence like DRK has been.

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We have "Thief" in the game as a job, and it's called Rogue.

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What we have is a class that is phased out and doesn't have a presence after lv30. That's a poor consolation for people that wanted to main a THF. Attempting to excuse it by using similarities with FF1 job upgrades (the only time it has been invoked) does not help matters, either.

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Originally Posted by Jandor

I think most of us know this, especially OP. The class design and surrounding discussion is just for fun, not something I expect he seriously thinks might get implemented.

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I'm one of those people that's open to implementing jobs I've seen people want in the game. As I said, I was around when Rogues were implemented and saw the disappointment at THF simply not being in the cards. Some hoped that since ACN had split into SCH and SMN, ROG would get a similar treatment (only for the devs to give up on that because they never figured out how to tie job traits and skill adjustments to the job crystals).

Perhaps they should have made Rogue> Thief and Ninja it's own job to begin with.
Glad they no longer do classes but that was not planned out too well i think.

Question is could they turn passed classes into jobs? I know there would be more involved into this.
Not saying i would want this, just putting the idea out there.

So after going through the whole thing, I admit I quite like the rendition you've made of this class, you should maybe emphasize more the similarities between Upper Hand and Gunbreaker's cartridge as they're basically the same for me, except you don't obtain them the same way.
I'm trying to figure out the way you could use the job gauge of the job now, the only two things that could be worth tracking are Upper Hand and Obfuscation levels so two different thing, which is what most job gauge have nowadays so it's all good.
As for the accomplice procs, I think the proc chances may be a little high tbh, although I quite like the increased chances in case of missed proc, but this could lead to wasted ressources as well, which is a thing that Square is really carefull about. Wasting ressource is always a bad thing but you always have the option of avoiding it if you play well enough, so if you don't have a way to "waste" an upper hand proc off gcd, I don't think that the 100% proc chance can be a good thing.

I quite like the fact that you only buff the damage from your accomplice and not your own damage as well, and the stealing spell is really well thought. Although from a technical standpoint, you gotta figure out a way to make True North work with it.
As for the 10% determination buff, this is imo a bit of an arbitrary choice, I'd like to know why you chose this stat to be enhanced, by 10% for 20sec. I fail to see how big of a damage buff this could be, but I always sucked at math and stats. :D

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Originally Posted by Eliadil

So after going through the whole thing, I admit I quite like the rendition you've made of this class, you should maybe emphasize more the similarities between Upper Hand and Gunbreaker's cartridge as they're basically the same for me, except you don't obtain them the same way.

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This is a fair comparison, though I was thinking more along the lines of stacking Bloodletter procs. >.>

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I'm trying to figure out the way you could use the job gauge of the job now, the only two things that could be worth tracking are Upper Hand and Obfuscation levels so two different thing, which is what most job gauge have nowadays so it's all good.

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The gauges I imagine would be a big eye that closes more the higher your stealth level, and maybe coins or little daggers below it per charge of Upper Hand.

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As for the accomplice procs, I think the proc chances may be a little high tbh, although I quite like the increased chances in case of missed proc, but this could lead to wasted resources as well, which is a thing that Square is really careful about.

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Hmm...I guess I could cap the Accomplice proc chance to 50%. Like have it start at 10% proc chance and have it increase by 10% on subsequent attacks/spells until you get a proc.

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Wasting resource is always a bad thing but you always have the option of avoiding it if you play well enough, so if you don't have a way to "waste" an upper hand proc off gcd, I don't think that the 100% proc chance can be a good thing.

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Noted. People usually like consistent things with mechanics, but yeah I'll make adjustments to the proc rate.

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I quite like the fact that you only buff the damage from your accomplice and not your own damage as well, and the stealing spell is really well thought. Although from a technical standpoint, you gotta figure out a way to make True North work with it.

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Yikes, I completely forgot about True North. Since the rear bonus is supposed to be the one the player wants to prioritize, I guess I could have True North grant Steal the rear bonus regardless of where you're standing while the effect is active.

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As for the 10% determination buff, this is imo a bit of an arbitrary choice, I'd like to know why you chose this stat to be enhanced, by 10% for 20sec. I fail to see how big of a damage buff this could be, but I always sucked at math and stats. :D

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Well, I wanted something that increased damage dealt while at the same time not falling into the trap of having it do something that affects anyone else in the group. For example, I could have called it "Steal Attack Power", but that means I'd have to apply a Damage Down effect on the target (which in turn means I'd have to increase the cooldown on Steal and we might end up with another Trick Attack situation). I guess an alternative would be changing the effect to Steal DEX, though that could cause problems because of how powerful main stats are. An alternative would be to buff the Determination increase.

This is one of those situations where I really wish the devs didn't hide how secondary stats scale.

Thanks for the feedback!

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Originally Posted by Maero

Perhaps they should have made Rogue> Thief and Ninja it's own job to begin with.
Glad they no longer do classes but that was not planned out too well i think.

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Well, this could go either way. As I mentioned before, tying traits and job adjustments to the job crystals instead of the job crystal doing nothing but adding 5 (or 10 during Heavensward) abilities would have made enough of a difference. I once wrote a thing on how you could hypothetically apply that to Archer to let it specialize as Bard or Ranger, and I'm of the belief that approach would have worked for ROG splitting into THF and NIN.

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Question is could they turn passed classes into jobs? I know there would be more involved into this.
Not saying i would want this, just putting the idea out there.

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Storywise they'd have to establish that the classes we know are diluted or bastardized versions of jobs that existed before but are not the current jobs we have. Like GLA would have to be established as a watered down version of something other than PLD and go from there. Then you'd have to create gameplay while keeping overlap with the existing jobs at a minimum. I mean, it is possible but would take a bit more work than SE seems to be willing to do.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

Hmm...I guess I could cap the Accomplice proc chance to 50%. Like have it start at 10% proc chance and have it increase by 10% on subsequent attacks/spells until you get a proc.
Noted. People usually like consistent things with mechanics, but yeah I'll make adjustments to the proc rate.

Well, I wanted something that increased damage dealt while at the same time not falling into the trap of having it do something that affects anyone else in the group. For example, I could have called it "Steal Attack Power", but that means I'd have to apply a Damage Down effect on the target (which in turn means I'd have to increase the cooldown on Steal and we might end up with another Trick Attack situation). I guess an alternative would be changing the effect to Steal DEX, though that could cause problems because of how powerful main stats are. An alternative would be to buff the Determination increase.

This is one of those situations where I really wish the devs didn't hide how secondary stats scale.

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For Upper Hand, the hard part is finding a sweet spot between getting a decent number of procs, and having them tied to something balanced. If you tie too much proc rate to a single "waste" ability then this ability might become overpowered, or if it isn't (or you cannot spam it) you can lose ressources, well damage in that case. Maybe start with a 25% proc chance from your accomplice that doesn't go up with time, but increase it later to a 50% proc chance. This way, upper hand procs stays "meaningfull" (you enjoy having a proc and do not want to waste it immediately because you'll overcap soon) and you don't have to tie 2 billions abilities to Upper Hand. I think the amount you have is fair, but you had too much proc chances in order to be both meaningfull and leaving a bit of choice to the player. But that's just my opinion :p

As for the DET increase, why not use a more generalized damage increase ? The issue is that every stat curve gets changed when you level up and when there's an expac released. So that would be a nightmare to balance, as the spell would need a change at every expansion at least in order to stay somewhat relevant at every level which is something really important. I would suggest going for the more straightforward route of "increase your damage dealt by 2%" maybe more, maybe less, depending on what you want. Most damage class do not stack DET that much too, so depending on the BiS this buff can be both amazing or completely useless.

Hope this helped ;) Keep up the good work :D

No, because the WOL is not a criminal

I very much agree to your response from what i had posted :)

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Originally Posted by Eliadil

For Upper Hand, the hard part is finding a sweet spot between getting a decent number of procs, and having them tied to something balanced. If you tie too much proc rate to a single "waste" ability then this ability might become overpowered, or if it isn't (or you cannot spam it) you can lose resources, well damage in that case. Maybe start with a 25% proc chance from your accomplice that doesn't go up with time, but increase it later to a 50% proc chance. This way, upper hand procs stays "meaningful" (you enjoy having a proc and do not want to waste it immediately because you'll overcap soon) and you don't have to tie 2 billions abilities to Upper Hand. I think the amount you have is fair, but you had too much proc chances in order to be both meaningful and leaving a bit of choice to the player. But that's just my opinion

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I think we have a misunderstanding here. Accomplice's procs increase your Stealth level, not generate Upper Hand charges. The idea is that your accomplice is keeping the target busy, making it easier for the target to lose track of you. Stealth level isn't about being invisible so much as the enemy not being able to track you in the chaos of battle.

Upper Hand charges are only generated from your attacks (at lv80 its 10% chance for all weaponskills, 15% chance if executed from the rear of the target), Runaround, Underhanded Tactics, and Sneak Attack (provided you use it while under the effect of Minor, Major or Complete Obfuscation). You do bring up some good points on the frequency of Upper Hand proccing at a reasonable rate, so I'll look into raising the proc rate or doing something like allowing auto-attacks to also proc charges of Upper Hand.

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As for the DET increase, why not use a more generalized damage increase ? The issue is that every stat curve gets changed when you level up and when there's an expac released. So that would be a nightmare to balance, as the spell would need a change at every expansion at least in order to stay somewhat relevant at every level which is something really important. I would suggest going for the more straightforward route of "increase your damage dealt by 2%" maybe more, maybe less, depending on what you want. Most damage class do not stack DET that much too, so depending on the BiS this buff can be both amazing or completely useless.

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True. I guess I could just allow suspension of disbelief to come into play. I was concerned that if I did something like "Steal Attack Power", someone would be bound to ask why the mob doesn't have a penalty to damage dealt for the duration to show the THF stole that target's attack power to boost themselves.

Once again, thank you for the feedback.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

I think we have a misunderstanding here. Accomplice's procs increase your Stealth level, not generate Upper Hand charges. The idea is that your accomplice is keeping the target busy, making it easier for the target to lose track of you. Stealth level isn't about being invisible so much as the enemy not being able to track you in the chaos of battle.

Upper Hand charges are only generated from your attacks (at lv80 its 10% chance for all weaponskills, 15% chance if executed from the rear of the target), Runaround, Underhanded Tactics, and Sneak Attack (provided you use it while under the effect of Minor, Major or Complete Obfuscation). You do bring up some good points on the frequency of Upper Hand proccing at a reasonable rate, so I'll look into raising the proc rate or doing something like allowing auto-attacks to also proc charges of Upper Hand.

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you're right, I got confused between two tooltips, my bad ! Well in that case tbh I don't see much else to say, I'm sorry for all the confusion ;D

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Originally Posted by Duelle

I think we have a misunderstanding here. Accomplice's procs increase your Stealth level, not generate Upper Hand charges. The idea is that your accomplice is keeping the target busy, making it easier for the target to lose track of you. Stealth level isn't about being invisible so much as the enemy not being able to track you in the chaos of battle.

Upper Hand charges are only generated from your attacks (at lv80 its 10% chance for all weaponskills, 15% chance if executed from the rear of the target), Runaround, Underhanded Tactics, and Sneak Attack (provided you use it while under the effect of Minor, Major or Complete Obfuscation). You do bring up some good points on the frequency of Upper Hand proccing at a reasonable rate, so I'll look into raising the proc rate or doing something like allowing auto-attacks to also proc charges of Upper Hand.
True. I guess I could just allow suspension of disbelief to come into play. I was concerned that if I did something like "Steal Attack Power", someone would be bound to ask why the mob doesn't have a penalty to damage dealt for the duration to show the THF stole that target's attack power to boost themselves.

Once again, thank you for the feedback.

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I'd probably be that someone.

Though, as long as the theft were, say, item-based -- where the numerous flavor texts and icons for an effect each show an easily understood symbol in common (for Attack Power Up, etc) -- no one would likely question how you managed to literally steal an enemy's muscle mass or why that theft didn't cost the enemy anything at present. Only problem would then be the old "But, but, items are for Chemist alone!" (since Machinist has certainly never used, say, a grenade)...

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I'd probably be that someone.

Though, as long as the theft were, say, item-based -- where the numerous flavor texts and icons for an effect each show an easily understood symbol in common (for Attack Power Up, etc) -- no one would likely question how you managed to literally steal an enemy's muscle mass or why that theft didn't cost the enemy anything at present. Only problem would then be the old "But, but, items are for Chemist alone!" (since Machinist has certainly never used, say, a grenade)...

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THF being able to steal the intangible is something I wanted to put on display with Steal's design. X-2's THF had something along those lines (Pilfer HP, Pilfer MP, Steal Will), as did Tactics' THF (Steal Exp, Steal Heart). One of XI's Ambuscade fights is also against a THF Qiqirn that does things like Steal HP, Steal MP, Steal Ability (he'll put a random ability on cooldown; imagine how that would mess up a tank here to discover a THF mob just put Hallowed Ground or another mitigation ability on cooldown without having to even use it) and so on.

That all said, if it comes down to it, I could change the rear effect to Steal Power Drink/Hero's Drink, giving the THF 15 seconds to consume it and boost their attack power by 7%. On the upside this would give THF a little leeway in when they get the attack boost, and I'm sure someone would find it easier to align with other group cooldowns.

...Well, there is another option. Make Steal item-based, and introduce a skill much later (with the current write-up, it'd probably be the lv90 skill) called Larceny that applies a stat debuff on the target while increasing the THF's own stats. Like Steal, make its effects vary depending on where they're standing relative to the mob.

I didnt have much time to read and analyse whole writeup yet, but i have question regarding Steal, since i didnt see anything about it. It gives you different effect upon using it from different sides of the enemy.
How such skill will act in position-less instances and situations, such as PoTD, HoH, Eureka and, since if its a melee dps (if i didnt misunderstand anything) - True North.
Will the skill give you all effects at once? Will it give you only one effect? Which one then?

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Originally Posted by MyakotApelsia

I didnt have much time to read and analyse whole writeup yet, but i have question regarding Steal, since i didnt see anything about it. It gives you different effect upon using it from different sides of the enemy.
How such skill will act in position-less instances and situations, such as PoTD, HoH, Eureka and, since if its a melee dps (if i didnt misunderstand anything) - True North.
Will the skill give you all effects at once? Will it give you only one effect? Which one then?

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True North makes Steal default to the rear effect. I was considering all effects at once, but that would lead to THF always using Steal with True North.

This can be extended to other systems, though I guess Steal being a DPS buff in PotD/HoH and Eureka would stick out like a sore thumb.

Some notes, purely my opinion, but thats what comes to my mind at least right now. If i misunderstood something about design then please explain it, since ideas are awesome:

Energy Steal - should probably change it to something like "Reduces weaponskill recast time and auto-attack delay by 6%" unless direct stat influencing is by design

Steal - I dont really either see the reason for it to have several positional skills. You mostly will sit behind the enemy for stealing, since potion and grenade are pretty much useless. Why would you use a heal instead of 7% if healers are not dead. Not even 500 potency, like second wind. I dont see the reason to use Grenade either, 200 potency is nothing compared to 7% damage up you get from stealing from behind (on single target that is, which currently is 90% of high end content). And since you will run around the boss for mechanics a lot, you will just either need to find a moment to use steal from behind to actually benefit from steal, or just use true north and dont bother.
Probably something like GW2 steal would work better in this scenario. You steal, get random effect. Although to make potion and grenade more viable, they would need to have some damage bonus as well (like potion 400 pot heal and 4% damage up, grenade 200 potency and 3% damage up).

Flash Powder doesnt need stun. Singletarget stun that is. Aoe stun would be one thing, but here i feel like giving blind effect to the enemy would make more sense (at least if blind still affects enemies [or bosses lul]).

Aoe combo is being cone -> circle is a bit weird but i guess it works. Although Soul Swipes on 64 is a bit too high for second aoe skill (yeah dragoons get it 61-70 range too, but they dont get any mechanic that pushes blood of the dragon beyond jumping and more st combo skills until later on). Ninja gets its second aoe hit at 52, which does exactly the same thing as soul swipes. Better if it goes down to 50-60 range too.

Escape Plan - interesting idea, but for it to be usable you will need to do pretty much 2 mudras before excecuting, bit too much for a disengage. If its just used when you need to disengage for boss, idk if using 2 abilities -> disengage gonna be easier then just running away. Both abilities are melee ranged as well, so to be able to use disengage successfully, you will need to know beforehand that such situation will occur. Also if its used as emergency, player will most likely just clip gcd to use it, instead of using gcd and running away normally.

Underheaded Tactics should be locked to battle, like everything else in the game (anatman, meditate, aetherflow). Otherwise parse runs will most likely just start with sitting 2 minutes waiting for it to go off cd

I would unify Stealth effect names into one. Some skills give you "Obfuscation", some give "X stacks of stealth". Not like its a huge problem, but it does cause issues when trying to understand what skill does (at least for me)

I think it's not likely because, well, the core of the 'thief' job in contrast to say Ninja etc, is the signature steal ability. Getting extra items. We have mug but that's really the furthest you can go with that idea in FFXIV because the nature of the game is you're not really going to get anything super useful out of it. You're not going to get good weapons early or rare accessories etc like you might from stealing from a boss in a single player game for example.

The rogue class is the closest we're ever likely to get to 'thief.'

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

I think it's not likely because, well, the core of the 'thief' job in contrast to say Ninja etc, is the signature steal ability. Getting extra items. We have mug but that's really the furthest you can go with that idea in FFXIV because the nature of the game is you're not really going to get anything super useful out of it. You're not going to get good weapons early or rare accessories etc like you might from stealing from a boss in a single player game for example.

The rogue class is the closest we're ever likely to get to 'thief.'

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Have you even checked what "steal" does? You either steal Potion, Grenade or get damage up. Those are not ingame items and they shouldnt be such. In fact, if it was, it would be stupid.
Devs have already proven that you dont need to follow "muh lore" to make a job. "The rogue class is the closest we will get to thief" just because you think that steal gives you real items is just cringe tbh

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Originally Posted by MyakotApelsia

Have you even checked what "steal" does? You either steal Potion, Grenade or get damage up. Those are not ingame items and they shouldnt be such. In fact, if it was, it would be stupid.
Devs have already proven that you dont need to follow "muh lore" to make a job. "The rogue class is the closest we will get to thief" just because you think that steal gives you real items is just cringe tbh

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The cringe here is that you didn't realize I was talking about the classic thief job in the FF series when I said steal was all about getting extra items and that I don't think the classic Thief's identety based around stealing translates well. I was talking about the classic steal not the fan version in the OP.

To address that specifically, while it's a novel attempt to try and fit steal into FFXIV's combat system would it not be rather goofy to always be stealing those same couple things from every enemy no matter how much sense it makes for them to have potions or grenades on them? And if you're not actually stealing stuff from them and just 'stealing strength/attack power' or something vague like that, that's also stepping away from what a classic thief really is.

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

The cringe here is that you didn't realize I was talking about the classic thief job in the FF series when I said steal was all about getting extra items and that I don't think the classic Thief's identety based around stealing translates well. I was talking about the classic steal not the fan version in the OP.

To address that specifically, while it's a novel attempt to try and fit steal into FFXIV's combat system would it not be rather goofy to always be stealing those same couple things from every enemy no matter how much sense it makes for them to have potions or grenades on them? And if you're not actually stealing stuff from them and just 'stealing strength/attack power' or something vague like that, that's also stepping away from what a classic thief really is.

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I dont consider "stepping away" as a bad thing. As i said, ffxiv already has jobs that are not what you would expect from canon counterpart. For example - dark knights not having skills that use hp, like, well, dark knight cecil. Astrologian moving away more and more from time mage setting (now being anything but time mages).
Point is, you dont need job to be 1:1 replica of what it was in classic games. I do think that steal needs more stuff to work with, but its not gonna get thief any farther away from what it was before even if it stays the same.

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Originally Posted by MyakotApelsia

Energy Steal - should probably change it to something like "Reduces weaponskill recast time and auto-attack delay by 6%" unless direct stat influencing is by design

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Considering this is another one of those "THF stealing something intangible from the mob" type of thing, it could go either way. I guess for the sake of parity (and because we don't see exact numbers as far as how much a certain stat affects gameplay), I could change that to be like Futon and Shifu.

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Steal - I dont really either see the reason for it to have several positional skills. You mostly will sit behind the enemy for stealing, since potion and grenade are pretty much useless. Why would you use a heal instead of 7% if healers are not dead. Not even 500 potency, like second wind. I dont see the reason to use Grenade either, 200 potency is nothing compared to 7% damage up you get from stealing from behind (on single target that is, which currently is 90% of high end content).

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I think this boils down to the effects not being on par (or close enough) with each other, which means I need to look at potencies/numbers.

As for the potion/grenade bit, I was aiming to make Steal contextual. The DPS increase is supposed to be the desirable beneift from using it, but should also have uses for soloing or AoE. At least, that's the idea behind the ability.

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Probably something like GW2 steal would work better in this scenario. You steal, get random effect. Although to make potion and grenade more viable, they would need to have some damage bonus as well (like potion 400 pot heal and 4% damage up, grenade 200 potency and 3% damage up).

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I'm iffy on random buffs because the other THF analogue that used random buffs (WoW's Outlaw Rogue) saw DPS variances because Roll the Bones had some effects that were good, others that were not as good. That sort of thing would be an even bigger problem here if fights are tuned around tight DPS checks. By giving the player control over what they get from Steal, they can't blame RNG for not getting the effect they want from it.

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Flash Powder doesn't need stun. Single target stun that is. Aoe stun would be one thing, but here i feel like giving blind effect to the enemy would make more sense (at least if blind still affects enemies [or bosses lul]).

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I originally wanted it to be an AoE stun, but felt it would have been too powerful (AoE 6s stun). Guess I was wrong. >.>

The stun idea came from characters/enemies that tend to use similar abilities (The Griffin comes to mind), though a blind or damage resistance for the THF could also work.

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Aoe combo is being cone -> circle is a bit weird but i guess it works. Although Soul Swipes on 64 is a bit too high for second aoe skill (yeah dragoons get it 61-70 range too, but they dont get any mechanic that pushes blood of the dragon beyond jumping and more st combo skills until later on). Ninja gets its second aoe hit at 52, which does exactly the same thing as soul swipes. Better if it goes down to 50-60 range too.

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I'll admit the cone => AoE thing is something I copied from SAM. I originally wanted to do cone => cone, and I could go back to that design. As for the level, I'll see if I can shuffle stuff around so it can enter in that level range.

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Escape Plan - interesting idea, but for it to be usable you will need to do pretty much 2 mudras before executing, bit too much for a disengage. If its just used when you need to disengage for boss, idk if using 2 abilities -> disengage gonna be easier then just running away. Both abilities are melee ranged as well, so to be able to use disengage successfully, you will need to know beforehand that such situation will occur. Also if its used as emergency, player will most likely just clip gcd to use it, instead of using gcd and running away normally.

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This is a good point. I will admit Escape Plan exists largely to accommodate Cheap Shot into the Gambit system (picture the THF poking someone in the eye and then running away). The scenario I envisioned was Mail Breaker => Dual Edge => Cheap Shot => Shark's Bite => Sneak Attack => Rumble Rush => Escape Plan. As you say, in retrospect this would not be as useful in a real pinch.

One change I considered as I read this part of your post would be to turn Escape Plan into an ability that reduces your stealth level to 0 (joining Sneak Attack, Viper's Fang, Ambush and Shift Break as abilities that consume or reduce your stealth level). The hard part is coming up with a new Gambit to replace Escape Plan, which I'll have to work on.

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Underheaded Tactics should be locked to battle, like everything else in the game (anatman, meditate, aetherflow). Otherwise parse runs will most likely just start with sitting 2 minutes waiting for it to go off cd

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Noted and will add it to the ability description.

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I would unify Stealth effect names into one. Some skills give you "Obfuscation", some give "X stacks of stealth". Not like its a huge problem, but it does cause issues when trying to understand what skill does (at least for me)

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Noted and will make some edits to the write-up.

Thanks for the feedback!

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

To address that specifically, while it's a novel attempt to try and fit steal into FFXIV's combat system would it not be rather goofy to always be stealing those same couple things from every enemy no matter how much sense it makes for them to have potions or grenades on them? And if you're not actually stealing stuff from them and just 'stealing strength/attack power' or something vague like that, that's also stepping away from what a classic thief really is.

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There's two things to take into account: Classic FFs (most RPGs, actually) always required suspension of disbelief, because otherwise we'd unironically expect this scenario in every game ever. The attack power thing is tied to several single-player FF interpretations of THF. As I mentioned, X-2's THF and Tactics' THF (honorary mention: the PTSD-inducing Qiqirn THF in FFXI) show you can do more with the Steal command and its derivatives beyond just stealing rare loot. Even going beyond FF lore, thieves and rogues stealing the intangible is often seen as either the stuff of legends or a sign of a true master thief, which is a nice feeling to give the player.

PS: Finished making the changes. If anyone else has more feedback to provide, I'm all ears.

Rogue was meant to be their implementation of Thief...but it becomes Ninja, I can understand why, but I am of the same mind preferring the Rogue/Thief appeal to a Naruto running, back flipping Ninja (which feels lame to me on a job I otherwise enjoy). Whilst I can glamour a Rogue look, the animations kill any kind of feel to it and taking off your Ninja stone is counterproductive.

To me the simple option would be to have the ability to turn off Ninja animations and if they retained more of the skills they had from Rogue. Poisons were a neat idea that could be applicable to both Rogue and Ninja. "Mug" is still a thing. Trick Attack/Sneak Attack were a thief thing in XI and we retained in XIV, though we are now reduced to a Trick Attack that no long requires directionals. And assassinate fits both Rogue and Ninja.

ROG/NIN already has a skill literally call "Mug" That increases items dropped of killed enemies. I'm pretty sure SE saying they renamed the job to Rogue for moral reasons was simply just PR speak. We have Theif, or atleast the essence of it, already.

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Originally Posted by VenKitsune

ROG/NIN already has a skill literally call "Mug" That increases items dropped of killed enemies.

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On its own the skill is borderline useful, which is why they had to make it generate Ninki.

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I'm pretty sure SE saying they renamed the job to Rogue for moral reasons was simply just PR speak.

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While I can sort of see this, I don't understand why they would even do something like that. I mean, was their thought process "we'll make up an excuse to not piss off Thief fans"? Even that comes off as strange.

Since SE's excuses were brought up, let's talk story for a bit:

As mentioned by some individuals, Thief is supposedly so immoral that tying the WoL to that job would be a very bad thing. I'd argue we've already crossed that line with DRK being what it is, largely thanks to the lv52-60 questline.

You know, the questline where you kill an inquisitor and the only reason there were no repercussions was because you killed any possible witnesses that could report it. Then again, this might explain why DRK goes back to dealing with imaginary friends in the 62-70 questline.

The reason I mention this is because vigilantism is several steps above petty thievery and pickpocketing, and since the WoL has already done the latter, the former shouldn't be much of a problem.

There's also the matter of context (i.e. who are the carriers of the THF job crystal in this world? How was the WoL convinced to work with them?). This is very important because you don't need to make the WoL a conventional criminal to unlock this job. A THF questline would be an actual robin hood story (instead of being told the Rogues of Limsa are robin hood analogues but their questline is about protecting a treasure and making the Yellowjackets look like idiots), or slide from thievery to treasure hunting. At least in my mind, THF could work as a mix of Robin Hood and Indiana Jones story-wise. This would in theory satisfy the people that think of Zidane and those that think of Locke.

I never got the impression that the Rogues of Limsa were being sold to me as Robin Hood types. The guild master is pretty upfront that they're knives in the dark set to enforce the Pirate's Code. They aren't there to rob pirates to benefit the poor of Limsa, they're there to assassinate fellow pirates for breaking the code. Keeping order through the fear of a knife in your back.

On the other hand, they decided to make the reference to thief upgrading into ninja in the original FF game, so that story progression was probly just fated to seem awkward and detached from actual thievery.

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Originally Posted by Brannagh

I never got the impression that the Rogues of Limsa were being sold to me as Robin Hood types.

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The class description for Rogue paints them as such ("Lurking in the shadows, adhering to no laws but their own, they punish the wicked, pilfering their ill-gotten gains and delivering them to the downtrodden masses."). Which is indeed weird because they act more like a secret police of sorts than heroes of the smallfolk. The whole thing rubs me the wrong way, but that's because if you want to make a Robin Hood analogue, Ul'dah is the no brainer for such a story (rich despots, a bunch of poor people in the back alleys and living in shacks outside the city walls; this story writes itself!).