NINJA and ROGUE confirmed

[Firepower]

Personally I think Thief is a junk job anyway. Only ever used it to steal unique items from bosses in single player FF games and in FFXI all you took it along for was Treasure Hunter.

If they want to add Thief they should just make a job that stands around and does nothing but Mug or Steal until you get the rare item the boss drops and then goes and sits in the corner until the fight is over so more loot drops or use Flee when the boss is too hard to return to start of dungeon. But since almost everything in the game except for the furnishing items and mounts is in a treasure chest and not dropped by the boss, not even much point for Treasure Hunter either.

In the very first Final Fantasy, Thief upgraded into Ninja too.

[Viridiana]

Thank you for explaining that you are trolling.

So, "I'm arguing with you because I'm bored and I think your point is wrong" is now equivalent to "I'm trolling"?

Okay. . .

[LoLo]

So, "I'm arguing with you because I'm bored and I think your point is wrong" is now equivalent to "I'm trolling"?

Okay. . .

Because you have no interest in the topic you are basically in here arguing for entertainment. That is the total definition of a troll and you are now going to have a nice place on my block list so that you have to find someone else to entertain you.

[Exstal]

Knight and Paladin are the exact same thing... In Japanese Paladin is called Knight, Paladin just came about on western shores with FFIVs localization for some reason, and it just stuck ever since. So... The "logical" counter, is exactly what I said? Thanks for backing me up there.

Exactly. You're fighting for a name.

However, this whole argument is foolish.

There isn't a single good reason from a *developmental* standpoint for THF to be its own class if NIN is also implemented.

The reverse is also true if Naoki decided to go ahead with Thief instead of Ninja. Think about it logically. You'll need a LOT of different skill to differentiate Thief from Ninja. 5 isn't enough. If they continue the current trend of 1 job skill every 5 levels, it'll be L80~L100 before Thief could be sufficiently different from Ninja to justify its existence.

I also notice that Kitru posted a challenge for Thief advocates to make a Thief job that isn't overpowered or worthless and there was only one challenger. Why is this?

[Nalien]

In the very first Final Fantasy, Thief upgraded into Ninja too.

Better demote White Mage, Black Mage, Red Mage and Monk to Classes, and delete Marauder/Warrior and change Gladiator to Warrior while we're at it, then.

I also notice that Kitru posted a challenge for Thief advocates to make a Thief job that isn't overpowered or worthless and there was only one challenger. Why is this?

Well, I posted a concept for a Rikku inspired Thief ages ago, but as a whole we're not payed developers, nor is there much point coming up with anything until we know Rogues move set. I'm certainly not going to fully balance and flesh out a concept just to "win" an argument on the internet.

And yes, the whole argument for Thief is effectively fighting for a name, as I have said ad nauseum though; the whole reason we have Jobs in FFXIV at all is because people wanted the named Jobs.

Seriously, how often do I need to repeat that simple point? Jobs were only introduced because they're iconic to the series. Thief is a Job iconic to the series since its inception. Please put two and two together or stop posting. There is absolutely no reason, with the Job system literally doing nothing but adding a name, gear, and a few iconic skills, that Thief cannot come of Rogue. Ninja is already set to be distinctive from Rogue with its combinations of hand signs to produce Ninjitus anyway, that can give it a much bigger skill pool than 5. If it only gets 3 hand signs, then that's already plenty of different Ninjitsu skills it could have. But again, we'd need the specifics on the Class/Job to say for certain.

Seriously, the only reason we have Paladin and White Mage and Black Mage, is because "from a *developmental* standpoint" people demanded FFXIV have classic Jobs in it. That's it. The whole reason we have Jobs is so people can go "Look, White Mage! This must be a Final Fantasy game!". That. Is. It.

Ruling out Thief is effectively the same as ruling out Red Mage, or Scholar, or any of the Jobs people could say are "too similar" or "don't bring enough". Why add new Tanks or Healers? They'll fundamentally be the same, just with a different name, look and flavour to their skills. Why add any new DPS? What is Samurai going to do that Lancer doesn't already? Wield a different weapon? Just give Lancer a Yari type weapon and save the development time, or will Gil Toss suddenly work in XIV? Why add Blue Mage? It'll just be doing magic damage like Black Mage. Blue Mage actually has more issues than Thief would, since the spell learning mechanic would require much more development time. Just slap some Blue Mage gear for Thaumaturge and tell everyone to pretend Fire is a generic Blue Mage skill. No need to add any new Jobs for that matter, just tell everyone to "pretend" that the existing Jobs are the ones they want. Want Geomancer? Pretend Conjurer is Geomancer. Want Ranger? Pretend Archer is Ranger. Want Beastmaster? Pretend Arcanist charms Squirrels. If these examples sound absurd, then good. They are. Just like telling people to pretend Ninja is Thief is.

[Alkar]

Exactly. You're fighting for a name.

However, this whole argument is foolish.



The reverse is also true if Naoki decided to go ahead with Thief instead of Ninja. Think about it logically. You'll need a LOT of different skill to differentiate Thief from Ninja. 5 isn't enough. If they continue the current trend of 1 job skill every 5 levels, it'll be L80~L100 before Thief could be sufficiently different from Ninja to justify its existence.

I also notice that Kitru posted a challenge for Thief advocates to make a Thief job that isn't overpowered or worthless and there was only one challenger. Why is this?

SCH manages to be quite different from SMN with only 5 skills.

[Exstal]

If Thief does come, it won't be from Rogue. It's as simple as that, really. You need a fundamentally different gameplay style so that it doesn't play the same as Ninja. It's really irrelevant how much one wants to say Thief (as a job) would play different from Ninja if it came from Rogue. Given how, for example, Gladiator / Paladin is 80% GLA/20% PLD and even that 20% is only for a few skills. The challenge is making that 20% so drastically different for two jobs.

Ruling out Thief is effectively the same as ruling out Red Mage, or Scholar, or any of the Jobs people could say are "too similar" or "don't bring enough".

This is simply not true. Look. Thief from Rogue would just be a DPS class. What is Ninja? A DPS class that is heavily invested in Rogue. So how would you make it different? Answer: You can't with the limited job skills we have now (50 cap).

Why add new Tanks or Healers? They'll fundamentally be the same, just with a different name, look and flavour to their skills.

For a different playstyle. That's the only reason you had new classes/jobs. Based on this logic, there is no reason to have Paladin and Warrior. You only need 1 person to take hits.

Why add any new DPS? What is Samurai going to do that Lancer doesn't already? Wield a different weapon? Just give Lancer a Yari type weapon and save the development time, or will Gil Toss suddenly work in XIV?

Again, play style difference. Samurai won't use jump, probably have a move set revolving around their iconic weapon type, probably. Then, it might even be our pseudo-evasion tank. This comparison is poor.

Why add Blue Mage? It'll just be doing magic damage like Black Mage. Blue Mage actually has more issues than Thief would, since the spell learning mechanic would require much more development time. Just slap some Blue Mage gear for Thaumaturge and tell everyone to pretend Fire is a generic Blue Mage skill.

You're right. Why add Blue Mage? There's no reason to add it aside from some people wanting it. Cool. There are classes that I want but unlikely to happen, just gotta deal with it.

No need to add any new Jobs for that matter, just tell everyone to "pretend" that the existing Jobs are the ones they want. Want Geomancer? Pretend Conjurer is Geomancer. Want Ranger? Pretend Archer is Ranger. Want Beastmaster? Pretend Arcanist charms Squirrels. If these examples sound absurd, then good. They are. Just like telling people to pretend Ninja is Thief is.

I think you get the reoccurring theme here; different play style.
-Want Geomancer? Wait for the development team to make a class that uses Geomancy.
-Want Ranger? Define it first because Archer currently has their main skills
-Want Beastmaster? See if development team even cares to put it in

No one is saying Ninja is Thief. No one even thinks like that. The argument is really, really simple. Thief, if implemented, can only come a long time down the road, when there are sufficient job skills to sufficiently differentiate jobs from each other so that the class isn't the driving force. However, if you choose to ignore this part then you have no place arguing in favour of two jobs stemming from same base class because you're being willfully ignorant of the FFXIV class system.

SCH manages to be quite different from SMN with only 5 skills.

ACN (DPS) => SMN (DPS) / SCH (Heal)

Different roles have different focuses. Compare SCH DPS to SMN DPS. What differences do they have? Fester and a DPS pet. What similarities? Everything else.

[Jandor]

I also notice that Kitru posted a challenge for Thief advocates to make a Thief job that isn't overpowered or worthless and there was only one challenger. Why is this?

Three Thief job ideas have been posted in this thread, that I've seen anyway.

Firstly, the Job gets access to a special inventory of reagents, which can be filled up with Steal and regular drops, each mob would have up to four possible reagents, ranging from common to very rare.
JA1: Use, uses a reagent.
JA2: Steal, steals a reagent from the target.
JA3: Treasure Hunt, Mercy Stroke, but increase drop rate if used as killing blow, rather than HP restore.
JA4: Mug, Steal with damage modifier, and lets you obtain reagents more often. Or Despoil, which inflicts damage/status effects based on a reagent while stealing another.
JA5: Mix, mixes two reagents for improved effects.3

That concept took me no time at all to come up with, and like that it certainly wouldn't work, but if someone puts some serious thought into it and balances it, it's certainly possible. It really wouldn't be much different to Bard in how useful the Job abilities are for the most part. You'd always be using three of them in order to keep your supply up though, and when you get to a boss you can use them fairly often and mix them for better effects, but for the most part you'd be relying on Rouge skills; just like Bard mostly relies on Archer skills.

1) Steal
Cast Instant, Recast 480, TP Cost 500
Can steal an Item, which would drop from the Treasure Chest, after defeating it. Chance of Success: 10%

2) Treasure Hunter
Cast Instant, Recast 720, TP Cost 250
Improves the successrate of Steal by 15%, lowers your defense by 15% in exchange.

3) Sneak Attack
Cast Instant, Recast 180, Duration 30 sec
Must be executed from behind, with PT member between you and the Target.
Increases your Atk by 15% if successfull, STR of the PT Member by 5%, lowers your defense by 15% if failed. Successrate: 70%

4) Trick Attack
Cast Instant, Recast 360, Duration 30 sec
Must be executed from flank, with PT member between you and the Target.
lowers your Atk by 15% if successfull, lowers Atk of the PT Member by 5%, increases Steal by 5% and next SA by 30%.

5) Gil Toss
Cast Instant, Recast 480, TP Cost 200
Does throw a random number of Gil out of the PT total pool ( max 50k ) at the Enemy and in exchange can incease the Droprate of rare Items. In example Mounts.

Lol.. i made those up in like what? 2 Minutes? The 5 Job Abilities can change the Class and its gameplayA LOT.

JA1: Steal. Steals a reagent from an enemy and a small amount of HP, MP & TP (can steal upto 10% of Thiefs maximum.)
JA2: Use. Uses a reagent to give any stolen HP, MP & TP beyond Thiefs maximum to an ally.
JA3: Trick Attack. Jumps behind target and does a high damage attack that stuns. Off GCD.
JA4: Mug. Steals a reagent from an enemy and does damage.
JA5: Mix. Uses 3 reagents and opens a bar similar to the pet hotbar with option to mix a MP restore potion, TP restore potion, Smoke Grenade (increases evasion of team mates in the AoE and gives sneak attack buff, damage on next 2 attacks increased.) or Invigorate potion (gives quick attack buff within AoE, improves spell and skill speed greatly for short duration.)

No exact numbers but the theory behind it is that Thief could use steal and mug to fuel various abilities to help the team out, however steal/mug are low damage abilities and working enough of them into play enough to be able to constantly mix potions would cause the Thiefs DPS to drop substantially.

[Nalien]

No one is saying Ninja is Thief.

You're kidding, right? Plenty of people throughout this thread have been claiming that, since Ninja comes from Rogue, and Rogue "is" Thief, you can just play Ninja as Thief (with Glamours) and ignore the 5 Ninja skills. It's been a very common argument from team "No Thief!", actually...

Having Thief come off Rogue really isn't impossible either. We already know every Class will eventually have two Jobs, even if the developers don't drastically alter the system to allow that properly, something like Archer can have Bard and Ranger. Ranger would simply be pure DPS, while Bard throws in so support at the cost of DPS. Why could they not, for example, do the same thing with Ninja and Thief? Ninjitsu doesn't have to be offensive (in fact one of the most well known ones isn't), alternative you could take the old role Thief had very literally; stealing to help the party, and make Thief a semi-support Job. Instead of stealing gear, potions and items, it could simply work a different way, while still maintaining the steal motif. If you take Ninja as the semi-support role, then it's actually in a better position than Bard already; 3 Songs does not a Bard make, but 3 skills to make combinations to make Ninjitus? That's potential for a lot of Ninjitsu from just 3 skills.

You'll probably disagree with Archer getting Ranger though, since Archer already has Rangers skills. Because it's not like Conjurer has White Mages skills already; first skill that comes to mind when I think of White Mage is Cure, at least.

Best way I think though, is to make Ninja a pure DPS, and Thief a semi-support Job, and they can do that easily with a Steal/Use mechanic. First skill could be Steal, which provides you with a unique effect based on the rarity of what you stole, and the enemy, it could even be detrimental. Next skill is Use, which lets you give that effect to the target. Very similar to my earlier suggestion, but much simpler. The other skills, like Paladin and White Mage etc., could just be generic MMO skills. You could still give them a Thief style twist though; an ability that converts the status effect into "Gil" (you sell it) which you then throw at the enemy, seeing as Gil Toss can never decide if its a Thief or Samurai skill.

exept no, thief will never come out, pointless to talk of it for age... why? because steal is not doable into FF14. you can argue and say, yes but they can steal stats for help the team.... how it will work?
some example: you steal VIT from a boss, if is fixed number, on some fight it will be pointless, if it's a % it will be overpowered on monster with high hp pool. and who say steal means you have it. if you steal this VIT and the stats come back, the hp will still be lost... why steal more than one time?

I was thinking... Well, I've already posted how I'd think Steal could work in a MMO. Several times now.

Don't let that stop you strawmaning a pathetic VIT Steal mechanic in place of what I've suggested, though.

the example about ranger/archer, conjurer/white mage is soo silly.

How so? The majority of White Mages spell list comes from Conjurer, not White Mage. If you say Ranger can't come off Archer because Archer has Rangers skills, then the same should be true of Conjurer and White Mage. Fact of the matter is, even if the Class has it's skills, they can still add a Job to it, because once again and I am tired of saying this; Jobs literally only exist to provide the name and iconic imagery.

To quote Exstal;

-Want Ranger? Define it first because Archer currently has their main skills

Want White Mage? Define it first because Conjurer currently has their main skills.

[silentwindfr]

snips

exept no, thief will never come out, pointless to talk of it for age... why? because steal is not doable into FF14. you can argue and say, yes but they can steal stats for help the team.... how it will work?
some example: you steal VIT from a boss, if is fixed number, on some fight it will be pointless, if it's a % it will be overpowered on monster with high hp pool. and who say steal means you have it. if you steal this VIT and the stats come back, the hp will still be lost... why steal more than one time?

that the main trouble of the thief, it's nice in 1 player rpg... but the thief of FF series can't be used in mmorpg, because all they have is stealing! is not enough for make a jobs! a jobs need more deepth. indeed right now we only have 5 skill as jobs class, but what will happend when the level cap will be raised? maybe we will only get jobs skill.

the example about ranger/archer, conjurer/white mage is soo silly.