NINJA and ROGUE confirmed

[Nalien]

rikku? uve got to be joking with me.... , a good example of thief would be Tantalus Theater Troupe.

Sorry, but Zidane is a terrible example of a Thief, for a MMO at least. Single player he is great.

Rikku on the other hand, works perfectly (primarily because she combined several Jobs). You can put Thief like that into a MMO fairly easily;

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.

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.

[Monsalvato]

If "abundance of DPS roles" is the issue here (and I agree it's a valid concern), it's gonna be a problem wether these "DPS in abundance" come from additional classes or from multiple jobs within the same class. The result is the same.
I think they might have to consider pulling away from the oversimplified trinity system that Yoshi-P adopted (Healer, Tank, DD) and try to move to a more complex model which also include support or hybrid jobs.
Support jobs actually would be out of place in a game like FFXIV, but hybrid (with more emphasis on the "support" at the cost of reducing their damage output) is something doable.

Many MMOs (WoW and FFXIV itself) moved away from very complex implementations of the trinity system (it's easier for them to balance with an oversimplified one), but personally I'd love to see a change in this direction, in the future. More than "I'd like it" I think it's going to become a "necessity" the more new classes/jobs they're going to add.

[Umisame]

i hope soldiery/allagan sets from mnk can be used by ninjas. But maybe is brd and nin. i want to know!!!

Edit:
I think nin will share with mnk. Nin could be str and if SE adds thief to rogue then thf could be dex(brd) D;

[ereskigal]

One thing not sure if anyone brought this up yet but notice how ninja holds the weapon different from its so call class? They even move/run different!! Some ppl say that the weapon ninja is holding is it's relic is reason why it's diffrent from ninja but I don't think this is the case, I'm thinking SE is going to drop a bomb today on a second job branching off this class.

[Monsalvato]

One thing not sure if anyone brought this up yet but notice how ninja holds the weapon different from its so call class?

Huh? I noticed the pretty different animations, but holding them differently?
Ninja holds Katana the "traditional" FF way. That is with the blade coming out from the lower part of the hand (not from, the side where the thumb is)
Daggers are traditionally held the opposite way, with the blade coming out from the side with the Thumb.
Rogue instead holds daggers just like you'd hold Katanas, just like Thancred does in the Leviathan cut-scenes.
That's the same exact way of holding Katanas though.
Where do you see the difference?

[Adrian74]

Oh, cool! FINALLY some class-jobs using two weapons... When I started playing the symbol of the gladiators (two swords) called my attention too much, then for discovering it was just one sword...

So I'm happy to see it coming, a shame it is for 2.4 ... Pfft... When will we see them? December?... :/

About the super thief fight... AREN'T ROGUE AND THIEF THE DAMN *** THING?....

With all respect, where's the difference?...It it is that you want to have one ninja job and one agile two swords-weapons wielder job, then say it like that, but in my opinion thief and rogue are...The same?

(I hope they'll add a tank and healer too... Because else the world will be even more filled of DPS... who wouldn't like to use or try the new classes?!) The lack of healers and tanks will be even more pronnunciated in 2.4

Maybe they are for 2.4 because they need time yet for preparing the other secret classes-jobs...

[Nalien]

With all respect, where's the difference?...

Thief, as a Job, would be used at endgame (or just post-30). Rouge, as a Class, would not.

Is this really a difficult concept to understand? People want Thief as a Job, because it's one of the more iconic Jobs in the franchise, which is why Yoshida even implemented Jobs in the first place. Literally his first order of business after taking over XIV was to implement iconic Final Fantasy Jobs...

Honestly, the reasoning of "What's the difference?" makes very little sense to me. What's the difference between Gladiator and Paladin? Literally the only iconic thing Paladin adds is Cover, and I very rarely see people using that. Lancer and Dragoon? All they added was Jumps. Why exactly is it so unreasonable to expect Rouge => Thief as a second Job when it would really be no different than what every other Job is?

People keep making this argument that Rouge might as well be Thief, because Jobs only add 5 abilities. Isn't that just an argument to add Thief though? Jobs only add AF/Relics and 5 abilities, so why not make Rouge => Thief? Most Job abilities aren't strictly related to the FF canon, for the most part they're just generic MMO moves. I really do not understand the rejection of a Thief Job possibility...

[Kinseykinz]

Thief, as a Job, would be used at endgame (or just post-30). Rouge, as a Class, would not.

Is this really a difficult concept to understand? People want Thief as a Job, because it's one of the more iconic Jobs in the franchise, which is why Yoshida even implemented Jobs in the first place. Literally his first order of business after taking over XIV was to implement iconic Final Fantasy Jobs...

Honestly, the reasoning of "What's the difference?" makes very little sense to me. What's the difference between Gladiator and Paladin? Literally the only iconic thing Paladin adds is Cover, and I very rarely see people using that. Lancer and Dragoon? All they added was Jumps. Why exactly is it so unreasonable to expect Rouge => Thief as a second Job when it would really be no different than what every other Job is?

People keep making this argument that Rouge might as well be Thief, because Jobs only add 5 abilities. Isn't that just an argument to add Thief though? Jobs only add AF/Relics and 5 abilities, so why not make Rouge => Thief? Most Job abilities aren't strictly related to the FF canon, for the most part they're just generic MMO moves. I really do not understand the rejection of a Thief Job possibility...

1. Thief is no more or less iconic in the FF series as Ninja. Both roles appear in more or less the same amount over time. If anything, it could be argued that Ninja's represent worldwide more 'beloved' FF characters than Thiefs.
2. Originally, Thief was the starting role, that get this....upgraded to NINJA....meaning endgame, you didn't see your little 16bit THF...but a 16bit NIN.
3. People are saying Rogue is another word for Thief, and that SE explained that they decided not to call it Thief (which btw implies that in their minds Rogue IS=THF and therefore the role/place for THF in this game is filled) is due to their personal feelings about what the term 'Thief' means and if it should belong in this world as a guild.

- The whole 'but come on...this game has a pirate town!' counter doesn't work well either because it's NOT the pirates who this story will be branching from. The Rogue(THF) character has been in this game from day 1 of the original 1.0 Storyline. He's a key figure in the main story, a scion and just point blank someone who has too much power and influence to be consider a 'petty' thief. But his womanizing ways, swagger and fighting style does feel very Rogue

They made a naming/lore decision. Deal with it.
The actual playstyle of THF however, they added. Who cares what the call it...or even what pixels they choose to represent it's imaginary gear?

4. The 'but it still could be a job down the road' people:
-Again, when SE explained why they are calling the class Rogue and not THF, they basically also implied that in their development minds, Rogue=another name for Thief. If this is true, then at least at this point, there is no future plan to include Thief as a potential job split off from Rogue.
-You run into a 'why would we need Thief as a job if we have Ninja' problem. You have 5 skills at the current level cap to make Ninja and Thief serve different party functions. They more or less would both have to attack the same (as SCH/SMN shows, your weapon and animations don't change, rather the additional 5 key skills do). So what could a Thief bring to a group that makes it shine AND different enough from Ninja. Also, in a DD saturated game, do we need yet another DD. If they did somehow develop Thief into a Support/Tank/Healer role, would it be enough to make the role seem fun and entice people to play....or would it be a chore? How many who want Thief for example, would really be happy if it was introduced in game....as a tank. And how many tank main-type people would be happy having to level the DD-role of Rogue for 30+ levels just so they could tank. (SCH suffers from this a little now...not all who enjoy healing enjoyed leveling ACN for 30 levels until they could actually heal). Maybe it could make a decent support-type role in game...but currently, that's not a 'queuing' option. And down the road when SUPPORT is a queuing option, is a Thief Support role really better than some of the other potential support roles that could (and probably should) be added to the game.


So the reason for the 'rejection' is this:
1. The 'stealth type'/fast attacker/ dual-wielding class/job IS being added -so people who enjoy this playstyle/role are getting what they want
2. It had to be named something...no matter what name they picked, someone would be sad. They could have named Ninja Thief, given it the SAME skills/ability and look and less of you would be complaining....but NIN people would be upset then most likely
3. When a dev team says more or less 'we decided not to name it x and named it y instead because....' it implies they developed it as x. Refer to it as x. Believe it fullfills the role of x. So there is no reason in their world to add another x. x already exists.
4. Logic. The jobs are simply too similar....at least in what is typically expected of them. Can SE go out on a limb and be creative. Sure. Is that what THF people want? Not really.
5. Its. A. Name.

PS: Paladin gets: Shield Oath/Sword Oath/Cover/Spirits Within/Hallowed Ground ( old name Invincible)
So it gets more than 'cover' and more than 1 iconic Skill....as Invincible is also iconic....also, level 50 is not level cap.

[Monsalvato]

With all respect, where's the difference?

It would be like saying "hey you don't need RDM, want a debuffer? You got Arcanist! What's the difference between Arcanist and RDM?!" I'm stretching it of course, it's just an example.

The main differences would be that:
1) Nobody would use Rogue past level 30 (if things stay as they are now)
2) Rogue would have nothing "unique" compared to NIN (aside from larger customizability from cross-actions)
3) Rogue would have no AF (iconic aspect of FF games)
4) Rogue would have no Relic
5) Rogue would be called... Rogue, and not Thief. (which is one of the many reasons why Yoshi-P introduced Jobs instead of just tweaking the already existing Classes back in 1.0)

So basically, while it's not my case, if you were a player willing to play the Thief job, you'd be left with no options but Ninja, because clearly you don't expect people to play Rogue at level 50 and do content as Rogue?

[Jandor]

Thief speculation is pretty pointless until we know how the Rogue plays, but it's definitely not impossible.
A thief with steal and mug being used to fuel mix (which could open up a pet style hotbar with different potion options on it) could be both useful and fun.