Quote Originally Posted by Duelle View Post
That's something I'm hoping they'll realize is a bad idea to force on all melee at some point down the road. Hell, the pos reqs are the main reason you get either super awesome MNKs and DRGs and ones that barely pull their weight. You can try to get all e-peen about it but should also realize the performance difference shouldn't be as huge as it is.
The entire point is that there *should* be some aspect of skill to playing a class properly. Half of the reason why the average person looks at a BRD as being the best DPS is because it's ridiculously hard to *not* play a BRD well given how ridiculously simple they are. If you look at what the devs have changed in 2.1, they actually want the flank/back aspect to matter *more*. It's not like DRG even has all that stringent positional requirements anyways: Impulse Drive requires back and Heavy Swing requires flank; everything else simply doesn't care. MNK is the only one that really has complicated positional requirements. Having a single positional requirement is effectively the same as having no positional requirements because it still allows the player to just stand still for the entire fight if they don't have anything to explicitly dodge.

I mentioned some examples in the notes. I would want it to be random, as otherwise you'd have to divide it by mob type or species or something along those lines. Problem with doing so is that the ability becomes "useless" or very situational. I hate playing to the skinner's box model, but if say Dusty Brew gave you +attack, or +skill speed or restored some TP you'd at least have to find a way to squeeze Steal into your rotation to get that Dusty Brew. Even if you don't, getting a Dusty Grenade or Potion is not much of a loss.
Steal is the single most defining feature of the THF, no matter what game it's coming from. As a job, since jobs don't have to cover the same breadth of functionality as a class does, you can focus on that one attribute rather than spreading it thin. A more interesting variation on what you plan here might be a variation upon what I'm did with Pilfer/Ill-Gotten Gains, wherein the stolen items become a resource to fuel your other abilities. Furthermore, because jobs have the benefit of being able to add additional effects to existing abilities, you can add "Mug" style procs to combo finishers (since "Mug" has always been pretty token as well) where you are either guaranteed to gain a steal resource or just have a change at it. You could even allow for the accumulation of multiple stacks (I'd cap it at 3 at most) so that you can save up to spend on burst or have some abilities consume multiple stacks.

By doing so, you can provide multiple ways to consume the stolen resources that the player can actually choose: one ability could recover hp/tp (possibly hp with 1 stack; hp and tp with 2 stacks), another act as an AoE, and another act as a damage buff (poss req 3 stacks and consume all of them). Fill it out with one CD that deals a bit of damage and provides you with a stolen resources guaranteed so that players can have direct control if they so choose, and you just have to add a fifth ability to round out the entire job.

The point of Accomplice is to act as a substitute to an aggro dump. I will admit that if I were to design THF I would want a Tricks of the Trade-type of ability. It's inclusion would also play on people's FFXI nostalgia because most do remember it for being able to transfer aggro.
I think it's less important to play to someone's nostalgia than it is to ensure functional performance. Enmity transference/utility *really* isn't all that useful and you're already providing Quelling Strikes as an enmity drop via ARC. It's redundant as a personal enmity tool and unneeded as an group enmity tool (and, once again, eminently trollable). You would only be including it as an artifactual ability from a single game within the series.

Dispelling at some point will enter the field of mechanics the devs use for boss fights. I am anticipating that. The goal here was playing into dispels without actually giving THF a dispel. Not to mention I'm sure someone out there wished to be able to steal stuff like King's Will or Celerity.
I'm doubtful. Silence is *already* limited to only 2 classes (MNK *can* silence, but it's expensive and requires a specific form) which forces stringent requirements on group composition for any content requiring regular silencing. As it stands, the only class with any kind of purging capability is MNK and *that* requires a specific form. The more "required mechanics" that they add to content, the less real choice players have in setting up compositions. If the devs add purging as a requisite mechanic, they're going to need to give it to a lot more classes. Even then, the ability to steal buffs is a pretty worthless gimmick, given how rare NPC buffs are.

I'm up in the air on that one. No CD but with a big TP cost, or moderate TP cost but 45-second cooldown. Thoughts?
A lot of it depends upon whether it's on or off the GCD, how often the devs intend purge mechanics to be needed (the CD on stuns was set based on this), and what exact limitations are placed upon the stealing of the buffs. The ability to steal buffs opens up a whole can of worms that has to be tackled (and even adds to the de/buff database size since you need to label every buff as to whether it can be stolen or not; there's already a purge attribute on them because some debuffs can be cleansed while others can't).

I wanted Jutsu to be more about utility, and admit Katon is there as a damage Jutsu purely to keep someone from complaining that Jutsu is just utility and situational.
If the non-fire Jutsus don't deal damage, they'll be pretty much worthless, which means that NIN itself is going to be pretty much worthless since there isn't really anything else that you're giving NIN to increase its damage while giving THF some pretty impressive buffs. KB, weight, and Blind are all relatively mediocre as status effects so there's really not much that they're doing if they're not doing damage on top of it at the very least. They're even less useful given that you have to use 2+ abilities at a time in order to access the desired secondary effect.

It's right underneath the description. Jutsu Tokens.
You didn't really describe them. No durations/potencies/distances at all.

Fancier animation and better mobility.
Except that it's still the *exact* same ability. It does the same thing with a fancier animation, and you're *still* giving it to them at the exact same level as the ability you're cloning. Either give it to the class or give it to the job. Doubling up on an ability just because you want one job to have a fancier animation is just lazy design work.

The whole idea of NIN is mobility and having more ranged options than a DRG or MNK would. Or should I say, stronger ranged options.
Except you're not really providing additional ranged damage. The only improved ranged capability that you're providing is the fire jutsu which requires a full melee combo access it and a slightly extended range on an attack with a 60 sec CD. You didn't give NIN stronger ranged options. You gave them stronger options to keep them at range where they end up dealing negligible damage (their auto-attack will be melee and their entire ranged "rotation" is Fuuma>Fuuma, which is a monumental 120 potency/ GCD).

Ranged/melee fusion classes never work out well because they always end up being melee classes (if they need to be in melee to maximize damage) or ranged classes (if they can deal sufficient damage at range). It works out even worse when you're trying to staple it to an existing class that's already entirely melee based, which is what you're doing here.

Fighting a NIN would be difficult knowing they can give you the runaround or open a gap.
Which is only remotely useful in PvP. Since PvP gets its own bonus abilities, it would work out better to have the bouncy abilities that you seem to want NIN to specialize in be PvP abilities rather than actual class abilities that take the place of real functionality that they need.

As an added bonus, NIN would have the easier time LoSing spells.
NIN isn't a tank so...

If THF and NIN ended up doing exactly the same damage, NIN would overtake THF based on the ranged advantage both in PvE and PvP. NIN also has more utility and mobility, which in PvP alone are incredibly powerful. I'll admit this is a tough balancing act and sort of wish I had a better frame of reference for DPS in that regard.
If THF ends up doing more damage, since you're basing them off the same class, no one is going to bring a NIN because THF would just be more useful. At the same time, NIN becomes the de facto PvP job because you're providing so much annoyance/mobility that allows them to say "fuck you!" to the world. You're not creating 2 jobs so much as a PvE job and a PvP job.

*shrug* I hate evasion tanks and blink tanks, and from a concept standpoint I don't see THF and NIN working as anything other than DPS. That said, I also know there's a lot of THF fans (including those jaded by how badly it was treated in FFXI) that would balk at the idea of THF being a class.
As I said before, this is exactly why I see THF leading into NIN. The only reason that anyone can ever come up with for THF to not be a class is because they just decide by emotional fiat that it shouldn't be. There isn't a single good reason from a *developmental* standpoint for THF to be its own class if NIN is also implemented. There are *loads* of reasons that they *should* be. It's just kind of arbitrary stubbornness (generally by people that played THF in XI and want THF to be just as important as every other FFXI class in ARR no matter what).

as is always the case, something's gotta give.
And in pretty much all of the cases where people separate THF and NIN into separate jobs, the thing that gives is the quality of the developed class itself. I'd rather tell the people who are hung up on THF as a job to stuff it and make a class/job that's well designed and fun/interesting to play.