Pipe Dreams: Thief

[MyakotApelsia]

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.

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.

[Duelle]

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

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.

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).

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.

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).

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.

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]).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Noted and will add it to the ability description.

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)

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

Thanks for the feedback!

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.

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.

[Saefinn]

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.

[VenKitsune]

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.

[Duelle]

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

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

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

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.

[Brannagh]

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.

[Duelle]

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

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!).