Thief>Ninja/Dancer Class/Job

[Mimilu]

How about a new a class called rouge and that could going into thief or dancer and then with the pug going into monk or ninja. There problem solved

I like the Rouge/Thief/Dancer idea, they can use dual daggers that are weak but attack twice and/or fast and have debuffs on them. Rouge can have some tricky stuff like Sneak Attack, Hide, and Flee, Thieves can have even more tricky moves and moves to help with getting loot. Dancer, on the other-hand, could be like a close-quarters healer, using AoE dances, that heal and buff those around them.

The Monk/Ninja idea though...Not so much. :B

[Exstal]

and FF1 Warrior becomes Paladin.

Except;

1) They were called Fighters
2) There is no such thing as Paladin in FF1

We can argue semantics all day but in the end, there really isn't anything a Thief could bring that a Ninja shouldn't already have. We can bring FFXI but that abomination of a game isn't something we should base our opinions on lest we revisit things like Ninja tank.

Due to post limit:

As I said prior, FFXI works as a basis, a proof-of-concept for how Thief and Ninja can be done differently. Thief doesn't have to be "a worse NIN" and Ninja doesn't have to be "a better THF"; they can be thematically and mechanically different.

Although I do agree that Ninja should not be a tank. Utsusemi was hilariously broken for a tanking skill and anything even remotely similar to that in XIV would destroy any chance of PLD or WAR tanks being taken seriously (or be so unreliable, NIN would be laughed out of every party).

What will probably end up happening is Yoshida trying to appeal to the most amount of people and make Thief a job of some random class whereas Ninja and Dancer will branch from Kitru's idea.

Ninja tank seems reasonable to me or Even a thief tank. Heavy armored pounding types have been clearly covered why not try to attract someone else to the role?

Why though? Ninja is supposed to be a stealthy assassin. What's the point in being out in the open? A known assassin is a dead assassin. If you want an evasion tank type, think Trickster (which is from FFTA2).

[Nahara]

We can bring FFXI but that abomination of a game isn't something we should base our opinions on lest we revisit things like Ninja tank.

As I said prior, FFXI works as a basis, a proof-of-concept for how Thief and Ninja can be done differently. Thief doesn't have to be "a worse NIN" and Ninja doesn't have to be "a better THF"; they can be thematically and mechanically different.

Although I do agree that Ninja should not be a tank. Utsusemi was hilariously broken for a tanking skill and anything even remotely similar to that in XIV would destroy any chance of PLD or WAR tanks being taken seriously (or be so unreliable, NIN would be laughed out of every party).

[jomoru]

Except;

1) They were called Fighters
2) There is no such thing as Paladin in FF1

We can argue semantics all day but in the end, there really isn't anything a Thief could bring that a Ninja shouldn't already have. We can bring FFXI but that abomination of a game isn't something we should base our opinions on lest we revisit things like Ninja tank.

Ninja tank seems reasonable to me or Even a thief tank. Heavy armored pounding types have been clearly covered why not try to attract someone else to the role?

[Nahara]

Ninja tank seems reasonable to me or Even a thief tank. Heavy armored pounding types have been clearly covered why not try to attract someone else to the role?

Dodge tanking is, while a cool idea, unreliable at best. It's either so good that it makes every other tank irrelevant (NIN did this to PLD for a while in XI) or so bad that it makes the class virtually unplayable in it's role. The problem is because you really don't have any direct control over when you Dodge and when you Parry. It's all based on the RNG, which everyone knows can be mercilessly cruel. If your "RNG armor", as someone in a previous thread about dodge tanks called it, failed you when you needed it, you basically got turned into a stain.

Dodge tanking worked in XI, much to SE's chagrin, because of the Utsusemi spells which made the next few attacks directed at you (regardless of what that attack might be) miss. For every dodged attack, it used up a "shadow" and when you ran out of shadows, you were vulnerable again. However, there were two ranks of Utsusemi, the second with more charges than the first, so if you were good with your timing, you could never be hit. By anything. Ever. You see why this almost destroyed the PLD's position as a desired tank. FFXI players figured this out, at a time when PLD was the only other viable tank, and shoved NIN into a tanking role from which it was never able to recover. Only in the past few years did SE finally give up and make NIN an official tank (ie. they finally gave NIN gear with +Enmity on it).

In addition, the recent fiasco with WAR tanks and the massive round of buffs they're getting is a pretty clear indication that the current fight mechanics really favor passive mitigation tanking. In fights where the damage comes fast and in big hits, that's not the kind of fight you want to bring a dodge tank to.

[Deusteele]

Thief doesn't have to be "a worse NIN" and Ninja doesn't have to be "a better THF"; they can be thematically and mechanically different.

Underlined: No, they can't. They share the exact same methodology of attack. Fast, low damage, high critical chance striking.

They have only been a few games within the meta series that Thieves are not combined with Ninja's or replaced by them out right.
FF5: Thieves retain viability due to Thief's Cuffs item that only they and Suppin can equip.
FF6: Locke and Shadow have very similar stat growth and share a majority of gear.
FFT (series): Thieves are given an entire suite of Steal schticks that allow them to separate them from Ninja's

For thieves to be their own class, they would have to give over most or all of the respective job skills to various stealing abilities that could lead to thief being non-viable from a dps perspective.

[Nahara]

Underlined: No, they can't. They share the exact same methodology of attack. Fast, low damage, high critical chance striking.

So they attack stuff in a similar manner, big deal. Isn't that essentially how Monk deals damage (willing to admit I'm wrong here if I am)? It's what the job does outside of how it attacks that makes the big difference, the mechanics of their combat style and the utility abilities they have to help do their job.

Maybe you just don't like FFXI, and that's fine, but it's still a thing, it still exists as a proof-of-concept of how NIN and THF can be done differently. THF got the abilities that steal items, money, and buffs from enemies, they got the abilities that made them spike damage masters, they had the abilities that helped manage a party's threat. NIN, which was originally designed as a damage dealer, got a whole host of ninja magic that covered the entire elemental wheel, while others provided a decent assortment of debuffs.

It can be done.

[Kitru]

THF got the abilities that steal items, money, and buffs from enemies, they got the abilities that made them spike damage masters, they had the abilities that helped manage a party's threat.

Stealing items isn't going to happen with a THF in ARR because combat classes aren't supposed to gain gear/consumables outside of running content, stealing gil isn't going to be implemented in any way that allows you to gain more money than you'd get out of fighting normally because combat classes aren't supposed to provide explicit economic advantages over others (and DoH/L classes are supposed to be the real economic powerhouses), and too few enemies have buffs that could be feasibly stolen in order to make buffs stealing even remotely useful (MNK has the buff purge and that sees next to no use). The only real implementation of a "steal" based mechanic that isn't completely worthless (like the pickpocket ability that rogues get in WoW) is similar to one that I went with, wherein it becomes a resource for the class.

Spike damage isn't really something that is going to ever be unique to a THF since BLM and BRD both have *incredible* burst damage capability (throw out a Thundercloud Thunder III followed by a Firestarter Fire III in Astral Fire III and you'll see what I'm talking about; for BRD, just blow all of your CDs at once and throw in some Bloodletters with procs to boot), not to mention that single instances of burst damage (which is what THF in FFXI got) aren't really all that useful since high damage phases are long enough that you have to sustain the burst. The only time single instances of burst damage are useful are in PvP because it allows you to drop someone before they can be healed back up.

Enmity management for a party isn't something that's even remotely needed in ARR either. Tanks generate all of the enmity they need natively and DPS/Healers generate so little in comparison to a tank that it would be pointless utility. It was needed/useful in FFXI because tanks had horrible enmity generation so moving it around actually served a real purpose.

Historically, THF brought 2 useful benefits to a party: the ability to steal items from enemies, which allowed you to gain items that couldn't be gained in any other way (or get them earlier than you could otherwise), and out of combat utility, like being able to avoid traps, combat, increased overland movement speed, etc. As stated before, the only way a Steal ability is going to be usefully implemented in a manner that's balanced is as a combat resource, and out of combat utility is basically just QoL stuff that means next to nothing (look at Swiftsong).

THF was never a *combat* class so much as a utility class and, in ARR, every DoW/DoM class has to be a fully functional combat class, which means that, unless you look at THF as a springboard to NIN (which has always *been* a combat class), it doesn't make sense to be a combat class. If you want to be all about stealing items and out of combat utility, it makes more sense for them to be a DoL class (which already get stealth and are about acquiring items, which people want THF to do) than a DoW class.

NIN, which was originally designed as a damage dealer, got a whole host of ninja magic that covered the entire elemental wheel, while others provided a decent assortment of debuffs.

The whole "ninja magic" thing made Ninja act more like a caster than a melee damage dealer and debuffs don't really play a major role in ARR so a class built around them isn't really going to happen. FFXI's implementation of NIN is probably one of the biggest design blunders in any major MMO.

It's *possible* to make THF and NIN completely different classes, but it requires a lot more work and deviation from convention in order to get there (while also limiting further class development by forcing them to cover drastically different mechanics to justify both of them being around). If you want them both to have the aspects of the class that people *expect* out of them (fast, stealthy/sneaky combat), the most elegant/simple implementation has them behave as a class and a job, respectively.

[Duelle]

I'll echo the sentiment that THF should be a job with its own crystal.

As always, here's a concept:

Rogue:

Highwaymen, assassins and thugs all fall under the label of the rogue. Where the upright gladiators, marauders and fencers of Eorzea can battle their opponents face to face, rogues prefer to remain inconspicuous during fights until they find an opportunity to deliver deadly and effective blows to their enemies.

To the untrained eye, this may seem as a random and unrefined combat style. In reality, there is a method to the madness created by the rogue, from swiftly sidestepping around enemies' attacks to disabling them with quick tricks before landing a critical blow to the enemy's weak point. And while some individuals have moved on to more honest fields of work, the training undergone to master this style seldom fades and even proves useful where a direct approach may be prone to failure.

Concept: Front line combatant that relies on guile and agility to outmaneuver their foes. Capable of staggering and disabling their enemies for short periods of time.

Mechanics: Rogue's primary weapon is the stiletto knife and kunai. They can dual wield and rely on flanking their opponents to maximize their damage.

Abilities
01 Quick Strike: Deals melee damage to enemy.
02 Puncture: Delivers an attack with a potency of 100. Places a DoT for 15 seconds on the target.
04 Shark Bite: Stab and slice the enemy. Combo => Quick Strike: Increases Skill Speed for 20 seconds.
06 Blindside: Delivers an attack with a potency of 225. Can only be used when behind the target. 60 cooldown.
08 Shiv: Delivers an off-hand attack with a potency of 90. Combo => Quick Strike: Recover X TP.
10 Knife Throw: Delivers a ranged attack for 80 potency. 15 yalm range.
12 Dirty Kick: Stuns enemy for 4 seconds.
15 Dodge: Increases your evasion chance by 40% for 10 seconds.
18 Whirling Blades: Delivers an attack to all enemies within 8 yalms with a potency of 100.
22 Sucker Punch: Silences target for 3 seconds. 45 second cooldown.
26 Coup de grace: Delivers an attack with a potency of 150 (200 if used behind the target). Can only be used when the target has less than 20% HP. 45 second cooldown.
30 Evisceration: 5-hit weapon skill. Combo => Shark Bite: +X% critical hit chance for 15 seconds.
34 Sneak Attack: All attacks performed from behind the target for the next 10 seconds will critically hit.
38 Flee: Increases movement speed by 50% for 8 seconds. 90-second cooldown.
42 Mutilate: Delivers an attack with a potency of 120. Extends the duration of Puncture by 20 seconds.
46 Stagger: Pacifies target for 3 seconds. 45 second cooldown.
50 Draw-Cut: Delivers an attack for 150 potency and repositions you on the opposite side of the target.

Gameplay
Quick Strike => Shark Bite => Evisceration
Quick Strike => Shiv
Keep Puncture up.
Use Mutilate to extend Puncture's duration.
Use Blindside.

Traits
08 Enhanced Dexterity I (Rogue): Increases DEX by 3.
14 Flank Bonus I: Increases damage caused by weapon skills used behind the target by 4%.
16 Enhanced Blindside: Reduces the cooldown of Blindside to 30 seconds.
20 Hemorrhage: Puncture now increases damage taken from your attacks by 10%.
24 Enhanced TP Regeneration: Increases the amount of TP recovered by X.
28 Pressing the Advantage: All your attacks deal an additional 10% damage when the target is below 25% HP.
32 Enhanced Dexterity II (Rogue): Increases DEX by 6.
36 Enhanced Dodge: Dodge now increases your evasion rate by 50%.
40 Flank Bonus II: Increases damage dealt by weapon skills used behind the target by an additional 4%.
44 Improvisation: Sneak Attack increases the critical chance of all attacks to 40% when not flanking the target.
48 Cunning Combat: Decreases the cooldowns of Sucker Punch and Stagger to 30 seconds.

Rogue Notes
- Rogue gameplay should obviously encourage the player to stay behind the enemy as much as possible.
- Between Dirty Kick, Sucket Punch and Stagger, Rogues would be the only class in the game that can reliably cover all modes of interrupting.
- Puncture and Mutilate are obvious key aspects of a Rogue's DPS rotation due to the damage increase, along with Shark Bite's skill speed increase.
- I originally wanted to combo Shaek Bite to Mutilate as a secondary combo to extend the skill speed buff's duration, but decided against it since it didn't seem to mesh well. Not to mention I would want Mutilate to be an off-GCD ability with a cooldown.
- Improvisation is there to deal with the expected issue all dagger classes run into, in that bosses with forced positional limitations (Demon Wall) and bosses that require you to stay to the sides and avoid their back (chimera, hydra) cost them a lot of DPS in the long this. This is also why only Blindside has a positional requirement.
- Draw-cut would be useful in PvE as well as PvP. In PvE because it might help them avoid an attack that is ground-targetted by quickly moving the rogue to the opposite side of the target, and in PvP by allowing them to reposition as a way to confuse their enemies.
- I'm iffy on whether Draw-Cut should be usable on mobs where you cannot get behind them (Demon Wall, possibly really big mobs like Ultima Weapon).
- Flee helps with mobility by being usable in-combat without costing the rogue all their TP by using Sprint.
- While not mentioned in this version, I was also considering giving rogues the ability to pause their own combos to allow weaving in of more abilities that are on the GCD. I think that approach was reaching a little too much, which is why I decided against it in the end.

---
Thief

The legendary Thieves' Guild has remained a topic of controversy within political circles in Eorzea and the authoritative entities under their employ. The guild's own existence is often called into question, as none within the Brass Blades, the Knights of the Barracuda or the Woodwailers have been able to delve into the web of intrigue and shadows cast by this organization in the last decade. Even today the guild's motives and goals are shrouded in mystery, but those unfortunate to find a calling card from the guild know the truth behind the individuals associated with it.

Some see these Thieves as folk heroes that will steal from wealthy despots and share the spoils with the downtrodden (which has made their legend that much more popular in places like Uldah). Others see them as daring treasure hunters that utilize their finely-honed skills to discover secrets lost to ages long past.

Regardless of their reputation, there is no question to the level of skill these individuals possess, exchanging durability and strength for nimbleness and quick hands. Of course, the sleight of hand that makes it easy to pick a pocket can also be used to inflict quick and deadly wounds, and woe to those who allow a Thief to get behind them.

Concept: Melee combatant that deals maximum damage from behind their target. Can Steal from enemies, ranging from items to "aspects" of the particular foe being fought.

Mechanics: Building on the burst damage windows native to the Rogue class, Thieves can steal temporary items for quick use from their enemies as well as one-use skills and buffs.

Mechanics: The THF crystal gives Evisceration, Mutilate and Draw-cut the ability to place a debuff called Expose on the target mob. Expose stacks up to three, increasing the rogue's damage dealt to the mob by 1% with one stack, 2% with two stacks and 4% with three stacks.

Storyline: (WARNING: Fanfiction advisory is in effect) The THF storyline would focus on Nanaa the Knife, a fugitive who claims to be the last surviving member of the Thieves' Guild. In exchange for some help exacting revenge on those who killed her comrades and nearly destroyed the guild, she's willing to teach the player character the intricacies of Thievery.

Support Classes: PGL (Featherfoot, Internal Release, Haymaker, Second Wind), LNC (Feint, Keen Flurry, Invigorate)

Abilities
30 Steal Item: Steals a "dusty" item from the enemy. Is replaced by Use Spoils when successful. The stolen item is of poor quality and will break/vanish after 15 seconds. Success rate is determined by melee accuracy rating.
---Use Spoils: Use an item stolen from the enemy.
35 Accomplice: Increases target party member's attack power by 10% and transfers 50% of your total generated enmity to target party member for 10 seconds. 60-second cooldown.
40 Aura Steal: Steal a beneficial effect from target enemy. Success rate is determined by melee accuracy rating.
45 Viper Bite: Delivers an attack with a potency of 80 and poisons target for 15 seconds (poison potency: 10). Combo => Shiv: for every VB poison tick, you recover X TP.
50 Throat Stab: Delivers an attack with a potency of 120 (300 if behind the target). 2-minute cooldown

Thief Notes
- Steal Item came about when I looked at some interesting mobs from WoW. Mobs that could steal your weapon from you. While this was a clever way to disarm your character, I did like the concept enough. Of course, THF in FFXIV would fight more than enemies that used weapons, so the idea evolved into Steal Item. Examples of temporary items you'd get from Steal Item include Dusty Potions, Dusty Grenades, Dusty Poison Bombs, and Dusty Brew (random positive effect on you when used). The idea is you'd steal from the enemy and have to use the item right away or within the 15 seconds allowed before the item breaks/vanishes.
- Most of you who have played FFXI probably hate me for mentioning Aura Steal, as the ability was mostly useless and a waste of a merit ability. The main issue is that Aura Steal was tied to Steal, which in itself is horrible seeing how horribly low Steal accuracy was (not to mention the asinine conditions needed for Aura Steal to proc). If it worked more like a melee range Spellsteal with its own cooldown and determined by accuracy rating, you would have a very useful ability in hand. It would also mean that you could design bosses with buffs that can be dispelled or stolen to help the raid win.
- Accomplice is less the forced enmity transfer gimmick THF was saddled with in FFXI and more of a way for THF to assist the tank by transferring some of its enmity. Ideally Accomplice should be used alongside other DPS cooldowns to maximize the amount of threat transferred to the tank.

---
Ninja

It is said that the style employed by rogues and brigands is a bastardization of the bigger tradition known as Ninjutsu; the art of swift shadows and silent strikes. Indeed, there have been tales of common criminals who found a greater calling and trained in this shadowy art in order to serve their true purpose and shed the traces of their old lives. In some cases, former criminals became respected warriors to those who knew of their actions.

Unlike most melee fighters, Ninja do not shy away from the idea of opening distance with their enemies, and at times do so only to catch their enemy by surprise when they quickly close the gap and return to the offensive. Running from a ninja can be seen as futile between the shuriken and jutsu that can reach a foe where the precise strikes of their kunai cannot.

Concept: Melee and ranged fighter that can open and close gaps with foes. Where melee is not an option, the ninja employs throwing skills and jutsu to damage their foes.

Mechanics: Equipping the Ninja crystal renames and changes Blindside and Knife Throw into Satsu and Fuuma, respectively. The only key difference being increased range.

Using certain abilities and combos place a token on the Ninja, allowing them to use the ability Jutsu. Jutsu consumes all tokens and has a specific effect depending on what charges the NIN has stored on themselves. A NIN can have only one token stored at any time.

Support Classes: ARC (Raging Strikes, Quelling Strikes, Hawk's Eye), PGL (Internal Release, Featherfoot, Chakra)

Changed abilities
06 Blindside => Satsu: 8-yalm range.
10 Knife Throw => Fuuma: 120 potency. 18-yalm range. Builds one wind charge

Jutsu Tokens
Quick Strike => Shark Bite => Evisceration = Jutsu (Katon): Fire damage.
Fuuma x 2 = Jutsu (Fuuton): Knock back target enemy.
Satsu = Jutsu (Suiton): Applies weight to target enemy.
Quick Strike => Shiv = Jutsu (Kurayami): Inflicts target with Blindness.

Abilities

30 Jutsu: Consumes a Jutsu token to unleash an ability on the enemy. 10 yalm range.
35 Kaze to tomoni (風と共に): Teleport behind your target. 15 yalm range.
40 Utsusemi: Leap backwards 10 yalms from your current position, becoming invisible for 6 seconds, leaving a decoy that vanishes after 2 seconds and reducing enmity by 50%.
45 Tatsumaki: Delivers an attack with 120 potency to all enemies within 12 yalms. Animation note: The ninja spins very fast, causing shuriken and kunai to fly from the NIN in all directions.
50 Bunshin Sappou (分身殺法): Three-fold attack that deals heavy damage and repositions the ninja on the opposite side of the enemy.

Ninja Notes
- NIN as we can see is a ranged and melee job. It has abilities that also give it great mobility, allowing it to open and close distances.
- Those who saw my original idea may remember that I wanted to give NIN an elemental charge system not unlike combo points for Rift's Rogue classes or WoW's Rogue class. I decided against it seeing that elemental charges would conflict with the combo system and would require me removing all combo properties from rogue skills just to accomodate NIN.
- To give an example of how this works, if you do an Evisceration combo, you get a Katon token. If you decide to use Satsu because the mob is below 20% HP without using Jutsu, the Katon token is lost and replaced by a Suiton token.
- On a more subtle note, NIN scaling should be tuned down to balance out the amount of mobility and ranged capabilities it has. I would put it somewhere around 5% behind THF assuming equal gear and skill.
- Bunshin Sappou would have the NIN "split" into three, have all three images of the NIN rush at the enemy, with the two "fakes" vanishing and the NIN remaining on the opposite side of the mob.
- As always, Utsusemi is more an escape and gap opener. The invisibility is there to help it in PvP.

[Kitru]

- Improvisation is there to deal with the expected issue all dagger classes run into, in that bosses with forced positional limitations (Demon Wall) and bosses that require you to stay to the sides and avoid their back (chimera, hydra) cost them a lot of DPS in the long this. This is also why only Blindside has a positional requirement.

Flank and back are different positions. Flanking is attacking from either of the 90* arcs to the immediate left and right of a target; back refers exclusively to attacks from the back 90*. Right now, there are no fights where you can't flank a target and only one fight where you can't make back attacks (Demon Wall). Even those fights with bosses that use backside cones, mDPS still want to use their back attacks; the cones are simply there to force the mDPS to move around and dodge (and, on fights like Caduceus, you actually want to proc the Tail Swipe as much as possible because it stops Caduceus from attacks while it's performing it, which reduces the damage the tank takes).

The way the devs have set up mDPS, it's pretty obvious that they want to force a mixture of flank and backside attacks so that you're not just getting behind a target and spamming your rotation. You'll want to add in some flank attacks as such.

- I'm iffy on whether Draw-Cut should be usable on mobs where you cannot get behind them (Demon Wall, possibly really big mobs like Ultima Weapon).

You can get behind the Demon Wall (as a WAR, use Holmgang when you're right next to it; you'll be immobilized and immune to the repel so the Wall the moves right over you). As soon as you get behind it, it teleports you to the entrance of the room where the floor gets all poison-y (and, I believe it also stuns you; I'm not sure). Assuming that the game's engine allows for forced movement to different sectors of a target instead of just the closest location, Draw Cut presents no real problems, whether on large targets *or* Demon Wall: the Demon Wall for the reason above and large targets because you can't be moved to the area outside of a boss's arena area; if you try to use anything that could move you out of it, it stops you at the edge (or, in t5, just kills you).

Mechanics: The THF crystal gives Evisceration, Mutilate and Draw-cut the ability to place a debuff called Expose on the target mob. Expose stacks up to three, increasing the rogue's damage dealt to the mob by 5% with one stack, increasing everyone else's damage on the mob by 2% with two stacks and increasing everyone else's damage on the mob by 4% with three stacks.

That is a *huge* benefit. It would effectively force a THF to be part of every single group because, without it, you'd be shorting yourself of 20% of a DPS (4% of 4 DPS; tanks count as half of a DPS). Expose would work as a debuff they apply on their own an maintain to increase their own damage, but, as a group buff, it's hugely overpowered.

Use Spoils: Use an item stolen from the enemy.

You probably want to list some of the stuff you actually expect to use with this and whether it's completely random or actually dependent upon the target.

35 Accomplice: Increases enmity generated by your attacks by 10% and transfers 50% of your total generated enmity to target party member for 10 seconds. 60-second cooldown.

Even ignoring how pointless enmity assistance abilities are within ARR, I can assure you that 90% of the use for this will be in trolling people in your group.

40 Aura Steal: Steal a beneficial effect from target enemy. Success rate is determined by melee accuracy rating.

This is another one of those worthless abilities that just doesn't work the way that ARR is designed. There are not enough abilities that an enemy can use to buff themselves with to actually give this ability any real use (it'll be less than a gimmick ability since you wouldn't be able to use it on 99% of the enemies in game), and, if the devs did decide to include fights where buffs need to be removed, they would need to be so strong that the THF would never benefit from them. The buffs that bosses get have to be worried about because they're big increases. No one cares about the small ones that a player could actually benefit from.

Also, you didn't put a CD on this.

Fuuma x 2 = Jutsu (Fuuton): Knock back target enemy.

The way you'd implement this is having Fuuma combo with itself to provide the relevant Jutsu, though I'm not sure why you wouldn't just have it give the Jutsu as a non-combo benefit. Even if the Jutsu abilities are supposed to be especially strong, you could just as easily put something like a 7.5-10sec CD on it to prevent Fuuma>Jutsu spam (assuming that the Jutsu would actually do enough damage to make that viable).

30 Jutsu: Unleashes an ability on the enemy. 10 yalm range.

You haven't listed any of the abilities that would be used or if they're even attacks/debuffs/buffs/utility.

50 Bunshin Sappou (分身殺法): Three-fold attack that deals heavy damage and repositions the ninja on the opposite side of the enemy.

You're just doubling up on Draw Cut, which you *also* provide at level 50. Not entirely sure I see the point unless you just want to give NIN another use of it with a separate but fancier animation.

- On a more subtle note, NIN scaling should be tuned down to balance out the amount of mobility and ranged capabilities it has. I would put it somewhere around 5% behind THF assuming equal gear and skill.

The advantage of pseudo-ranged damage capability (it's hard to say exactly how much you're giving them since you didn't define Jutsu in the least) doesn't really outweigh a dramatic loss of DPS, especially since you're already giving THF a 5% increase in damage as a passive benefit along with 2 attacks that would directly increase it's end DPS (you're giving NIN 2 movement utilities, a pseudo-nuke copy of an existing attack which is presumably on a long CD to justify the high damage, and an AoE; none of which are really going to provide an appreciable increase in DPS).

On a more abstract note, you're providing 2 DPS jobs off of the same base class, which doesn't make any sense really. They're going to play pretty much identically with only tiny variations (THF is gonna use steal/stolen items on occasions which is pretty much what you're having NIN do with Jutsu), which really doesn't justify creating a second job. I *highly* doubt that the devs will *ever* double up roles on the some class for this very reason (and it's also another reason why I see THF being the base class for NIN thanks to all of the other similarities).