Official Theif Job Trait Is........

[Ixaera]

No. Assassin did not add any real damage to thf. However, it doubled thf's effectiveness in hate-control exp role, making a thf about twice as valuable for hate-control over sub thf.

Assassin = guaranteed crit hit on trick attack, thereby making trick attack work alone just as well as sneak attack works.

[guyincorporated]

It is a life-saver (so to speak...) in my static party. My trick partner was always a warrior with a haubergeon and no sense of self-preservation at all. So he'd always be getting mauled at the start of fights (evasion -20 hurts).

This lets me paste the hate onto the paladin without his opening provoke, by the mid-60's, pals really don't need help holding hate from xp mobs anyhow, so the difference between tricking 400 damage and tricking 200 and sneaking 200 doesn't matter.

[almighty_boof]

Well if it only helps with aggro control. Then wouldn't this still be a pointless ability? Making thief a pointless job past lv 60 still? A pld doesn't need the extra dmg with aggro control, right? I really hope someone has something to say to prove this theory wrong. Also, how about that thf/sam info?

All your replies are much appriciated!

[Ixaera]

No, it isn't pointless. Consider all the fights in which you can use fuidama twice, but the second has to go on another melee. Now, even if you continue to sata off the tank in the beginning, you can split up sata during the fight without tagging unnecessary hate onto a melee who probably already generates more than he needs. That's hardly pointless. Before, if you split up sata, you'd lose damage -- a lot of it. Now, post-60, you don't, and you can put the trick attack half of the sata damage on someone who could use the hate, and the sneak attack half isn't nearly enough to get *you* much hate, so...all's well.

A ???/thf cannot do this, and as far as hate control is concerned, is gimped compared to thf and merely uses sata as a method to avoid death from too much hate on renkeis.

As for thf/sam, it has its uses. If you have a party where you cannot renkei with anyone or you're partnered with a good, accurate rng or a samurai for renkei...it works pretty well. If there is no one to renkei with, having 100% tp every minute and using it with sata just any old time is very fine damage. However, if your tp partner is sorta just normal or even slow on the gaining (which is what is really common), thf/sam isn't so hot because aside from tp, it offers very little else. You can argue that you can solo tp every other 100%...but you don't always gain exactly 2x faster than your partner, and then *you're* the one holding back renkei, which blows. Also, on DE and SB, tp does help if you have more than 100% (damage on SB, accuracy on DE), but not nearly so much as more +attack or something like you would get from /war.

[almighty_boof]

I see... so if you were to stack SATA with Assassin, would you do more damage if you were to stack SATA without Assassin? Or would it be a bad idea to stack them with Assassin?

I'm sorry for all the questions, I just don't know if Thief would be a good idea past 60 Like with BCNM or HNM or stuff like that...

[guyincorporated]

SATA + assasin is no stronger than just SATA. Assasin's strength comes from its ability to split up SA and TA, as Ix so capably illustrated.

That being said, it is possible that against certain types of monsters (like EM or something) SA damage + TA(assasin) damage could be larger than SATA. I don't know for sure, SA, TA and SATA damage varies so much it is hard to draw overall conclusions.

[almighty_boof]

Well, it looks like I am pretty certain that I will be making Thief my main then. I really appriciate all of your replies. Even though this wasn't my starting forum