Thief & Ninja ideas!

[Maldalewyn]

Okay so I was having a conversation with a friend about how we'd design classes and jobs being brought into FFXIV when Thief and Ninja were brought up. I realize this probably will never be seen by a FFXIV dev but I felt like sharing anyway, so why not?

So first off, I'd make Thief the class. I'm sure a lot of people who played FFXI will probably scream and cry about that, but let me show you why first!

First off, the Thieves unique weapons would be the knife obviously, but not just one! TWO! They would come as a set, so there would be no need for dual-wielding or any cause for worry of having two weapons slowing your attack rate. Much like Monk, the Thief would attack twice with every strike and attack at a faster rate as well.
At higher levels, stuff like Katana would make an appearance.

Thief Abilities:

• LVL 1 - Debilitating Cut [250TP] [:02 CD]: Deliver a debilitating cut to your enemies face, causing severe bleeding damage. Further weapon skills increase bleeding damage up to a stack of 3.
• LVL 2 - Enhanced Physical Evasion [Passive Trait]: Increases Physical Evasion by +24.
• LVL 4 - Sneak Attack [1:00 CD]: Ensures your next weapon skill deals critical damage to your opponent. Damage is further enhanced if you do not currently hold the highest enmity. Unlike FFXI, I wouldn't require this to be done from behind.
• LVL 6 - Dangerous Edge [1000TP] [:10 CD]: Deliver a damaging strike to the rear of your opponent. Damage is enhanced the closer to death the target currently is. This would be a simple calculation like, 20% DMG increase if the mob is 25% or lower Max HP.
• LVL 8 - Enhanced Physical Critical Potency [Passive Trait]: Increases Physical Critical Potency by +16.
• LVL 10 - Artery Slice [1000TP] [:10 CD] [Combo - Debilitating Cut]: Deliver a painstaking slice through an artery belonging to your opponent. Combo Bonus: Doubles any bleeding damage they're currently taking.
• LVL 12 - Enhanced Physical Critical Rate [Passive Trait]: Increases Physical Critical Rate by +16.
• LVL 14 - Backfire [1:30 CD]: Deftly ensure the next weapon skill your opponent uses will backfire on them, disabling it and causing them damage instead. This would basically make their weapon skill hit him them instead of you, however, enemies generally have higher defense and HP so don't expect a Backfire on Darnus' Beam attack to be all that devastating.
• LVL 16 - Deft Footing [3:00 DR] [1:00 CD]: Ensure the steps of your party go unnoticed by monsters that detect by sound, granting a veil over their movements. This would basically allow you to run past sound aggro mobs so you wouldn't be forced to walk.
• LVL 18 -Time Bomb [1:00 CD]: Plant a bomb on your opponent, ensuring their death will cause them to explode violently, damaging their surviving allies and causing a burn effect. Think of Flare, but not as powerful.
• LVL 20 - Enhanced Sneak Attack [Passive Trait]: Reduces the cool down on Sneak Attack by 30 seconds and increases its critical attack potency.
• LVL 22 - Gambler's Dirge [1000TP] [:30 CD] [Combo - Dangerous Edge]: Deliver a blow to your opponent's rear with a greatly increased chance of critical. If the strike does not critical, you gain increased enmity. Combo Bonus: Increased critical damage.
• LVL 24 - Trick Attack [1:00 CD]: Target an ally for a transfer of enmity dealt by your next weapon skill.
• LVL 26 - Enhanced Trick Attack [Passive Trait]: Doubles the enmity transferred to ally and reduces cool down by 30 seconds.
• LVL 28 - Stalker's Cover [3:00 DR] [1:00 CD]: Cloud your allies appearance in shadow, making detection by sight impossible. Basically Invisible for the entire party.
• LVL 30 - Cutthroat [2000TP] [1:00 CD] [Combo - Artery Slice]: Deliver devastating damage to your opponent with an increased critical hit potency. Combo Bonus: Enhances the bleeding effect on the enemy to prevent any Regen or Curative effects.
• LVL 32 - Enhanced Physical Critical Rate II [Passive Trait]: Increases Physical Critical Rate by +24.
• LVL 34 - Serrated Blade [1:00 DR] [3:00 CD]: Your normal attacks cause a bleeding effect or renew an existing one on your target ensuring your opponent never stops bleeding.
• LVL 36 - Flat Fragrance [3:00 DR] [1:00 CD]: Deodorizes your allies, enabling them to bypass scent detecting monsters without raising suspicion. Before people call this pointless, there are scent detecting monsters. Boars, Wolves, and Hippogryphs, all detect by scent.
• LVL 38 - Falconer's Dive [2000 TP] [1:00 CD] [Combo - Gambler's Dirge]: Deal devastating damage to your opponent by leaping atop them before providing a killing blow. Combo Bonus: Doubles Critical Damage. It's important to note that you can only combo off Gambler's Dirge if it criticaled successfully.
• LVL 40 - Thousand Cuts [3000 TP] [5:00 CD] [Combo - Dangerous Edge]: Deliver One Thousand Cuts upon your opponents in a frontal attack with low accuracy. Combo Bonus: Attack a single target instead of multiple with slightly increased accuracy. Basically this would deal 1000 damage (1 per hit) to an opponent (or opponents) with incredibly terrible accuracy, so the individual hits would be filtered out and most would miss even with a combo bonus.
• LVL 42 - Enhanced Time Bomb [Passive Trait]: Enemies hit with Time Bomb are now also inflicted with the Time Bomb.
• LVL 44 - Rogue's Rancor [3:00 CD]: Pass your entire enmity to target ally.
• LVL 46 -Blood Booze [1000 TP] [:30 CD] Cut into your opponent sharply stealing your opponent's life essence and renewing your own. Basically a drain attack Thieves could spam every 30 secs.
• LVL 48 - Unseen [Passive Trait]: Enemies within 10 levels of the Thief can no longer aggro them.
• LVL 50 - Treasure Hunter [Passive Trait]: Causes Gil to drop from all enemies for all members of the party and ensures a greater chance at obtaining valuable items from chests and enemies.

Now that I've got that out of the way, all the previous moves fit with the Ninja motif perfectly! (unless you're still stuck on FFXI and think they're a tank for some reason)

Here are some abilities I think Ninja could get to enhance Thief, especially if they're solo'ing.

• LVL 30 - Utsusemi [:30 CD]: Slightly reduces enmity and grants 2 shadows capable of absorbing 2 attacks directed at you, or a single AOE.
• LVL 35 - Kurayami [:10 CD]: Blinds an enemy.
• LVL 40 - Hojo [:10 CD]: Slows an enemy, reducing their attack speed.
• LVL 45 - Jubaku [:10 CD]: Paralyzes an enemy.
• LVL 50 - Enmaku (Smokescreen) [1:00 DR] [15:00 CD]: Reduces the enmity of all your allies to zero and disables enemies caught in the smokescreen's ability to aggro temporarily. Cooldown is reduced by 1 minute per enemy caught in the smokescreen.

Honestly, I'm not too sure about the abilities from NIN, but they would help a THF solo'ing for sure.

What do you guys think? Anything you'd do differently? Sorry for the wall of text.

[AceofRains]

I like your build. I think some of the ability names over do it a bit and look the final fantasy feel though.


Swift Stab
Preemptive Strike
Poison
Steal
Red Lotus
Disorient
Deep Stab
Vanish
Spinstroke
Blink
Blind
Vortex
Paralyze
Rain of Daggers
Killing Stroke

(I would put descriptions but I'm to lazy right now :/ If you wanna see my entire build my speculations are in my signature.)

These are the abilities I chose when making my build. I included debuffs like poison and paralyze to give the class that debilitating feel. The jobs I chose to branch off were Red Mage, Theif, and Ninja. Enfeebles are covered in the class for Red Mage and Ninja so I don't have to worry about using precious job abilities for those.

[Ashiee]

No you are wrong.

The only way to make ninja, is to add the ability throw, which lets you chuck any weapon you want at any mob you want.

Chuck all the Ifrit weapons at lvl 1 mobs. 9999 dmg.

[Maldalewyn]

I like your build. I think some of the ability names over do it a bit and look the final fantasy feel though.

Ya, that's part of the problem, FF names are so generic and boring. I guess I couldn't go that route lol

[Gokulo]

You didn't follow the skill/trait system of the game - that is every 2 levels you get a skill, then a trait, then a skill and so on.

Also ugh, no more Utsusemi. D:

[Duelle]

LVL 50 - Treasure Hunter [Passive Trait]: Causes Gil to drop from all enemies for all members of the party and ensures a greater chance at obtaining valuable items from chests and enemies.

You mean well with this, and I'm sure Yoshi-P has people on his class balance team that would never cave to the temptation of using treasure hunter as a means to justify a THF/NIN's spot in the party, but could we use something other than TH?

LVL 30 - Utsusemi [:30 CD]: Slightly reduces enmity and grants 2 shadows capable of absorbing 2 attacks directed at you, or a single AOE.

I like the cooldown, though I would add the caveat of the shadows lasting at the most 10 seconds, and each shadow lost causes further enmity loss for the NIN. It would make it an aggro drop ability but split into 3 pieces.

LVL 50 - Enmaku (Smokescreen) [1:00 DR] [15:00 CD]: Reduces the enmity of all your allies to zero and disables enemies caught in the smokescreen's ability to aggro temporarily. Cooldown is reduced by 1 minute per enemy caught in the smokescreen.

This is interesting, though the cooldown reduction would have to be calculated on hit rather than how many enemies run into the smoke screen.

[Maldalewyn]

You mean well with this, and I'm sure Yoshi-P has people on his class balance team that would never cave to the temptation of using treasure hunter as a means to justify a THF/NIN's spot in the party, but could we use something other than TH?

Ya, I know what you mean, but it seemed like a stable of the THF job so I included it. It might be better to only include the gil drop part. Would also help a ton with that impossible to get achievement lol

I like the cooldown, though I would add the caveat of the shadows lasting at the most 10 seconds, and each shadow lost causes further enmity loss for the NIN. It would make it an aggro drop ability but split into 3 pieces.

The idea was to make it a survival tool so they could join the fray against bosses. THF would have virtually no access to abilities to help them keep enmity for themselves, and with the cooldown, only 2 shadows, and loss of enmity, I don't think we have to fear that abilities abuse. Also, I didn't include this, but it would cost MP instead of ninja tools, so they'd be limited there as well.

This is interesting, though the cooldown reduction would have to be calculated on hit rather than how many enemies run into the smoke screen.

Ya, that was the idea, monsters that enter the smokescreen after it's deployment would remain unaffected and could attack players inside.

[Maldalewyn]

You didn't follow the skill/trait system of the game - that is every 2 levels you get a skill, then a trait, then a skill and so on.

Also ugh, no more Utsusemi. D:

Archer doesn't follow that system either, nor do any of them if I remember correctly. They are fairly more sorted than the order I set up on THF for sure, but keeping a proper order isn't necessary except to keep the number of actions equal across all jobs.

Looking it through, I'm only 2 traits off.

[Tibian]

I am not a fan of implementing thief or ninja into XIV. Neither class/job will add anything significant to XIV. Most of the criticism/wants of proponents stems from the treasure hunter trait of XI.

Instead, treasure hunter and many other thief abilities can be added to musketeer, corsair, gambler, or another class/job.

Just because they were in XI does not indicate or mandate they need to be in XIV.

[Impulse]

I am not a fan of implementing thief or ninja into XIV. Neither class/job will add anything significant to XIV. Most of the criticism/wants of proponents stems from the treasure hunter trait of XI.

Instead, treasure hunter and many other thief abilities can be added to musketeer, corsair, gambler, or another class/job.

Just because they were in XI does not indicate or mandate they need to be in XIV.

Thief and Ninja are staples dating back to the first FF. XI isn't the only other game in the series.

It's all about how they implement it, not what it's called.