Pipe Dreams: Thief

[Duelle]

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

[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.


The Rogue equipment in the game even closely resembles the typical FF1 Thief archetype

[Jandor]

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.

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.

[Duelle]

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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).

[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.

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.

[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.
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.

[Duelle]

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Eliadil]

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.

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

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

[deadman1204]

No, because the WOL is not a criminal

[Maero]

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