Thief/Assassin/Rogue/Ninja Class

[MartaDemireux]

Instead of giving each race their own cities, and their own background it feels like a copy of ffxi. .

FFXI sort of did the each race has its own city idea. San d'Oria was for Elvaans, Bastok for Humes and Windurst for Tarutaru. The Galka had their own place in the Altepa desert but were forced out by the Anticans and found their way through the mines to Bastok (which then enslaved them). The Mithra have their own place south of Kazham but the females migrated out of their homeland and "settled" in Windurst as they are the explorers and the males are the homebodies.

FFXIV sort of does the same thing too. IIRC it went something like: Ul'dah was founded by Midland Hyur, Gridania by Wildwood Elezen and Limsa Lominsa by Seawolf Roegadyn. Miqo'te come from their own place and migrated to each of the cities via the most recent ice age and the Lalafell I believe came over before then from their own place via ships.

So while they do feel like a copy of FFXI each race does have its own city in both games. FFXIV doesn't feel that way though because not only are we playing in a smaller overall landmass (it's just an island compared to the world as a whole and labeled as literally the smallest landmass in Hydaelyn) but it's also a land where the 3 city-states have formed alliances in the past, broke into wars amongst each other and now formed a new alliance. A lot of intermingling. The same way that ancient Rome and Greece saw large influxes of foreign races due to trade routes and whatnot.

As far as steal goes, I've been working on my own Scout (DPS) -> Thief (Tank)& Ninja (NIN) job idea where I change its general use between the two jobs. Scout gets it as a class action which any other class can equip to make it fair. THF and NIN get it in a different way each which they use for their own special job mechanics. My exact idea for steal:

8: Steal: (A) Offers a 50% chance to steal an item from the target's drop list. If stealing fails you gain a stack of "Despoil" (35s) in which each stack, up to a maximum of 5, will increase the odds of a successful theft by 10% and refresh the duration on Despoil. Ineffective on Bosses. Recast: 30s.

[BigBoss3237]

I want them to make a new class, new mechanics, and just go with it

[Wolf_Shay]

Ya know, if they introduce the Throw mechanic, we might start seeing off-hand throwing weapons. Darts, knives, grenades...though I'm not sure how to implement Steal, which is iconically a Thief ability. Maybe Steal could be used on enemies to obtain any item they might drop, and remove rewards from killing them, giving Thieves the ability to yoink choice material and run the hell away. The only limiting factor would have to be that you either can't Steal in succession, the enemies become resistant to pilfering, or that the rewards quickly diminish.

[BigBoss3237]

STEAL would be like a 2 minute cool down and steal only mob items

[Raestloz]

I really don't see the point of stealing loot here.

Every second you spend stealing is every second you spend not doing anything, which will quickly bless you scorn from everybody else in Stone Vigil. Even then, once you kill the mob they'll drop the loot. If you mean they can steal AND get dropped loot, the very idea is dripping with imbalance. FF tactics introduced Stats Steal, that could work. Allowing a certain class to be economically superior to everybody else encourages single-class play. it's horribly imbalanced to the point that unless you make it pointless or affects everybody else in the immediate area, it simply cannot be balanced

Stealth is another entirely pointless system in battle, and also horribly imbalanced. The choice of starting an engagement AND breaking the engagement should be the ability of both parties, not only one side. By granting visual invisibility, you effectively break 98% of skills in FFXIV, a game where you need to visually click on something to use a skill

"Well then just remove the body from the screen, but they still can click on the enemy list!" No, that won't work. Even if you are still targeting the thief, you lost immediate visual cues: their stance, their movement animations, everything.

In a game where nobody but the tank is supposed to have the enemy's attention, what purpose could stealth have?

[MartaDemireux]

Steal & Stealth

Well for my idea of Steal I had it so it was a class action that every other class could equip which evens the playing field a bit. In my actual idea Ninja doesn't use steal but instead gains the Mirage ability which builds them stacks to spend on ninjutsu and to make certain elemental attacks ranged (like Gust Slash). Thief gains uses of their Despoil for enmity actions since people hate people that steal from them.

As far as stealth goes, in my idea I use it as a mechanic to facilitate critical hits. It has only a 10s duration and a 40s recast. In PvP it can be nullified by being in range of an AoE or stepping into a field AoE like Burning Arrow.

[Raestloz]

"Everybody can use it" actually translates to "everybody but the tank and healer can use it". No, stealing loot encourages selfish behavior by giving economical advantage to the thief, and not to everybody else (which are actually preventing said thief from getting punched in the face and kicked in the nuts). Tank is busy keeping the monsters occupied, healer is busy keeping the tank alive, thief is busy... getting himself rich and being overall dbag?

Even if you are to assume "well thief will be the tank!" well then say goodbye to warrior and paladin. Why settle with tanking if you can tank AND get rich while doing it?

Stealth, now stealth is a matter of PvP. In PvE, the idea of stealth is only useful to DoL because they don't have a tank to keep the enemies busy. Now ninja, they're the guys that enter a dungeon together with an actual tank. Why would they need further invisibility? Just to tick off the healer trying to target them?

What I'm saying is, down to Steal and Stealth merely for the sake of Steal and Stealth. Look for the consequences. Make Thief and Ninja fun to play, but don't sacrifice every other class in the process.

[Darske]

Why not have "advanced" steals, that do something like steal (debuff) a stat? Steal dex, str, etc... Could be neat. Perhaps also stealing a buff? (Steel scales? More like STEAL scales, am I right?)

From what little was teased in the Leviathan questline, I think everybody is right in that both Thief and Ninja will be positional DPS. I also think that it teased the two major things that each will bring to the table- Ninja will have its jutsus, and Thief will be more mobile and have tricks to position themselves or avoid damage.

Interestingly enough, Yugiri did this AoE thing. So maybe Ninjas will get some good AoE dps, whereas Thief will be more single target?

[MartaDemireux]

Perhaps also stealing a buff?

I use this in my idea as well. Stole the name from FFXI (Aura Steal). Works with the Despoil mechanic I have going.

As for Ninja - Yeah that lightning AoE most definitely had to be Blitz. Coming from a dagger class I would expect them to bring over FFXI's Cyclone and/or Aeolean Edge as well for AoE attacks which would give THF as a tank the ability to hold AoE hate and NIN as a DPS the ability to reliably AoE things down.

[Maduro]

I'm pretty sure everyone agrees that either of these Jobs/Classes should be the masters of movement, so here is what I envision for some moves:

Dash - straight line aoe that has the character do a sprint in a straight line and slash all of the enemies
Backstab - automatically moves character behind enemy and inflicts critical damage
Steal/Throw combo - steal item from mob and throw it back at them or another target (damage is based off of the mob level that the item was stolen from) If you steal an item from a boss it does massive damage on an add, but if you steal from trash and throw it at a boss it does less. You could make damage multipliers based on range so it forces people to get close to steal and then back up for throw.
Stealth - I would probably make this more of an enmity dump instead of actually turning invisible (maybe even give increased health or tp regen while mode is active and then it's cancelled upon action or damage taken), but if it was more of an invisible move, make it cast able on party members
SA/TA - I just miss these from playing THF in FFXI for so long (maybe make them the follow up moves to Stealth like Fester is with Aetherflow but put it on a count-up timer, so the longer you stay in stealth mode the more damage it does, but you can't do anything else except auto attack while you are in stealth mode)
Poison bombs - Ground Mode AOE that inflicts poison on enemies that enter
Launch - jumping stab move, increased damage if there is a party member between you and the mob to launch off of