Thief: Is it a DD or just a "tool"?

[Solymir]

Seems like everyone I know thinks Thief isn't much of a Damage Dealer. That it's role is mostly Treasure Hunter and to put extra hate on a Tank. I tend to disagree and tell them that it's because leaders make Thiefs go /nin even though it should never need to. A good Thief should not be getting to the top of the hate list (unless asked to kite or be an evasion tank).

So basicly I want to know what y'all think as far as what Support Job makes thief a better DD.

My opinion is double attack > duel wield.

Also, there are some decent shields out there that Thf can wear to add stats.

I mostly want to keep the conversation narrowed to Thief's role in the Sky, Sea, and HNM areas, but you can include farming runs. I want to stay away from the Merit party discussion.

[Takelli]

Re: Thief: Is it a DD or just a "tool"?

Al most all thfs I have seen are /nin, and everyone that I ask why, I get the same answer: Utsusemi.

Utsusemi does have its uses for pulling and incase you pull hate but thats why Thf gets eva bonus and can use eva gear for pulling.

Thfs can deal some good dmg, I have seen a few. Thf/Drg might be a good combo as well. You get attack bonus with it, and jump for free tp.

Thf/Rng. A Thf using Barrage then unleashing a strong WS with Trick Attack attached to it can dish out some very strong damage as well. They even get accuracy bonus which will help them hit fairly often as well.

Thf/War gets attack bonus and def bonus with double attack. And when you get triple attack, you will dish out even more damage.

I'm surprised thfs dont try other subs than just /nin.

[Neverslip]

Re: Thief: Is it a DD or just a "tool"?

Also, there are some decent shields out there that Thf can wear to add stats.

The Airy Buckler... though I've never seen it on Hades. I've wanted it for DNC/SAM forever and knew it was able to be used as PUP but I just caught that it was listed THF/PUP/DNC so... I'm wondering if that was a recent change or have I been spacing. I want that shield but I have very lil hope Hades will ever see one.

Anyway... I like THF DD's. I usually NM hunted with one and I was DNC and could barely take the hate off the bugger. Usually had to Curing Waltz bomb him in yellow to "provoke" the mob. Then he'd SA more hate upon me. When geared right, I've seen some incredible output from THF. I may be mistaken but having Triple Attack proc like THF does when duo-wielding /NIN is pretty epic dmg compared to Double Attack on a single weapon. Doesn't even look like they stop swinging sometimes with Triple Attack going. When thinking of Dyna, I would think its a nightmare for their SA's and TA's they have to kinda set up properly for with hate being tossed all over the place.

Though I'm not speaking from experience.. I'm curious where this thread goes cuz THF is proly gonna be my next to 75.

[Madjo]

Re: Thief: Is it a DD or just a "tool"?

THFs are sexy. Bottom line.

[Mog]

Re: Thief: Is it a DD or just a "tool"?

For just about anything endgame, you'll get to come thief for two things: pulling and TH3(4). If you have anything else that's DD'ish, you'll probably get asked to come that if your group is lacking DD.

It's sad but true.

[Icemage]

Re: Thief: Is it a DD or just a "tool"?

With the way enmity works these days (and how relatively well it is understood), it's a shame that no one really needs Thieves for what they were originally designed to do in a party setting, which is to plant hate on a tank.

Not to say that Thieves can't put up decent numbers - they most certainly can, especially if you're fighting things that are weak to piercing damage. But lots of jobs can put up decent damage without monkeying with party formation every ~30 seconds, so no one really brings thieves for damage if they have other options available.

As Mog mentioned above, this generally means that they're only really brought in for pulling (Flee + high evasion + natural synergy with /NIN on top of Utsusemi), or for their multiple Treasure Hunter traits when hunting Notorious Monsters that don't have consistent drops.


Icemage

[Malacite]

Re: Thief: Is it a DD or just a "tool"?

THF is very akward as a DD pre-60.

Assassin changes the job dramatically IMO, since you no longer need someone to take the attention of the mob at the beginning of a fight. Beyond that though, unless you put a lot of effort into your THF (Mandau for instance transforms THF into an absolute monster where as most of the other relics are just a nice little performance boost) you really are just there for the following;

Treasure Hunter
Enmity Control (not always an issue either)
Pulling
Feint (this is a biggie actually, and quite vital to "zerg" tactics)

People will usually pass you up in a merit party due to the fast nature of it. It's sad, but THF's dependence on SA & TA hinder it despite the piercing bonus. That's not to say you shouldn't make the most of it, but I've found most THF tend to get the short end of the stick unless they are seriously pimped out. I'm honestly not sure who's more to blame for this, but my money's on the community more than SE.

[Icemage]

Re: Thief: Is it a DD or just a "tool"?

I'm honestly not sure who's more to blame for this, but my money's on the community more than SE.

I blame SE just as much as the community. Most people are like water - they take the path of least resistance whenever it's offered. The fact that party dynamics have broken to the point of being nearly pointless ("a skillchain, what's THAT??") is a testament to Square-Enix's failure in designing their game. You can not expect the majority of players to do what's "right" when they have no incentive to do so. Including a thief in an XP party offers no tangible benefits in many common party configurations. So they don't get many invites, except in a "we can't find anyone else but you'll do" situation.

Old-timer reminiscing: FFXI used to be a game where you had to cooperate very carefully with other players or you wouldn't do very well. That's no longer true, and in the process it has broken many of the fundamental game mechanics upon which it was founded.

Now, I'm not saying that things were better back when the game first launched - FFXI is certainly a more approachable game today than it was several years ago. But I think where Square-Enix went wrong was creating a skillchain/magic burst system that was horribly restrictive; instead of making every melee job combination be viable for a skillchain, they forced players to pair specific jobs together at certain ranges. There's far too many job combinations that simply can not produce a workable skillchain at many level ranges, and that's something that should have been addressed during beta testing. Instead of fixing this, Square-Enix opted to throw the whole skillchain system away instead of making it work.


Icemage

[cidbahamut]

Re: Thief: Is it a DD or just a "tool"?

Instead of fixing this, Square-Enix opted to throw the whole skillchain system away instead of making it work.

I think I'm missing something here.

[Malacite]

Re: Thief: Is it a DD or just a "tool"?

Old-timer reminiscing: FFXI used to be a game where you had to cooperate very carefully with other players or you wouldn't do very well. That's no longer true, and in the process it has broken many of the fundamental game mechanics upon which it was founded.

I remember seeing people kicked from parties for not being able to skillchain. I miss those days (or at least the level of skill & cooperation that was prevalent at the time)

[Karinya]

Re: Thief: Is it a DD or just a "tool"?

I blame SE just as much as the community. Most people are like water - they take the path of least resistance whenever it's offered. The fact that party dynamics have broken to the point of being nearly pointless ("a skillchain, what's THAT??") is a testament to Square-Enix's failure in designing their game. You can not expect the majority of players to do what's "right" when they have no incentive to do so. Including a thief in an XP party offers no tangible benefits in many common party configurations. So they don't get many invites, except in a "we can't find anyone else but you'll do" situation.

Old-timer reminiscing: FFXI used to be a game where you had to cooperate very carefully with other players or you wouldn't do very well. That's no longer true, and in the process it has broken many of the fundamental game mechanics upon which it was founded.

So far, I agree. Thief's old role just plain doesn't exist anymore in most situations. As a DD/puller they can't choose their gear, SJ or tactics for straight-up damage (thf/war with DA and berserk does much better damage than thf/nin, but pulling with it wastes MP or can actually kill you), but because of that, they're not respected as DDs. A DRK or SAM that had to readjust their gear and tactics to pull would come up short in damage too, but people don't think of that.

But pulling isn't the whole explanation. Part of THF's old role was SC closer -- because THF deals its normal damage in little bits, but has that big spike of damage once a minute, it could put up big WS numbers, and a big closing WS means a big chunk of SC damage, too. That increases the reward for having a THF in the party. So the demise of skillchains has to bear some blame for the decline of THF, IMO, and the decline of hate control likewise. THF's problems aren't really about THF, they're about the changes in the whole game over the years.

Actually, I think the first blow against THF was shortly after RoZ when the level caps went up -- daggers kind of got the shaft on 225+ WS, compared to the kind of damage a 2h/THF could do with *their* new WS. That was the heyday of DRK/THF and SAM/THF, which were better at SATAWS SC closing and the resulting hate shift than actual THFs were. (I even knew some MNK/THFs.) But that was partly compensated for by Assassin and the upgrade to high level dagger stats (and possibly now by Mandalic Stab); it wouldn't have been enough to cause the problems THF has today. DRK/THF and SAM/THF are all but dead today, but their role hasn't come home to THF, it's just gone.

Now, I'm not saying that things were better back when the game first launched - FFXI is certainly a more approachable game today than it was several years ago. But I think where Square-Enix went wrong was creating a skillchain/magic burst system that was horribly restrictive; instead of making every melee job combination be viable for a skillchain, they forced players to pair specific jobs together at certain ranges. There's far too many job combinations that simply can not produce a workable skillchain at many level ranges, and that's something that should have been addressed during beta testing. Instead of fixing this, Square-Enix opted to throw the whole skillchain system away instead of making it work.

This part I don't agree with. For one thing, it doesn't account for the timing of the problem: SC/MB went out the window, specifically, after ToAU. ToAU didn't make the skillchain system more restrictive, or change the way skillchains worked -- at least, not directly.

Also, I don't think it's true to begin with. Sometimes there is a tradeoff between using the highest damage WS, and the ones that produce the best SC. But there's nothing wrong with that, as long as the party is benefiting from the presence of the SC. It's only after the SC stopped adding value that it was reasonable to use your highest damage WS, regardless of SC-ability, and to regard that tradeoff as something wrong with all WS other than the highest damage one. (Multihits proved extra-overpowered on lower level mobs, but if trading off their damage for SC-ability produced better performance, good players would have done it.)

Three main things about ToAU changed exp in a way that no expansion before or since has done: camps with tons of fast respawning mobs, imps, and colibri.

Fast respawning mobs make it more profitable to hunt mobs that are lower level relative to the party. At classic camps if you try to hunt low level mobs, you'll run out, causing chain breaks and downtime, regardless of your ability to kill them or recover afterwards. This made it more profitable to hunt higher level mobs -- you couldn't kill anything faster than it spawned, but the higher level ones were worth more exp. So the higher level you could go without hurting your kill speed too much, the more exp/hr you got. This made it much more important to have a good tank and control hate well (since higher level mobs are much more dangerous, especially to non-tanks) and also made it more rewarding to have a BLM (nukes are less affected by mob level than melee) and a SC (partly because it increases damage itself, but also because the BLM can MB for an extra chunk of usually-unresisted damage). If you were exping on crabs or crawlers (because their TP moves are much less dangerous than many mob families), the benefits of a BLM were even higher.

With longer and longer chains on weaker and weaker mobs, that all changed. Tanks are unnecessary, just bounce hate around with shadows. With so much less damage taken, resting between fights is pointless -- there is no "between fights". Then you want a puller who isn't a DD, so you won't lose damage output to pulling. But at the same time you want as many DDs as possible, so all non-DD roles should be crammed into as few players as possible. Low level mobs favor physical DDs over BLM, and BLM's mp dependence makes it hard for them to fit into the continuous-fighting style, so ditch them. If you don't have BLM, there's no MB (or not one big enough to matter), so the SC starts to look questionable compared to getting in more WS at 100%. Multihit WS do more damage on low level targets, but most have crappy SC properties; if your SC isn't doing much anyway, why not just ditch it and rampage/penta/guillo/DE?

Ultimately, abundant fast respawning mobs produced the 4 DD/NIN, RDM, BRD/NIN party, which would absolutely get torn to pieces if it went to a pre-ToAU camp fighting ITs, but works great at massacring weak mobs. (It would do fine at first fighting low VTs in a pre-ToAU camp -- but then it would run out of mobs and have to wait for repops, so overall exp/hr would be lousy.)

Speaking of weak mobs, ToAU also introduced the 2 most unbalanced mob families in the game so far, imps and colibri. Both are direct attacks on the SC+MB party. Imps cause amnesia, which interrupts the skillchain, and silence, which can prevent the MB even if you manage to chain successfully; on top of that, players' attempt to avoid getting amnesia and being forced to sit on TP led them to WS instantly when they reached 100, or when a previous amnesia wore off. Colibri can steal a player's TP, which disrupts the skillchain; some mimic spells, which reduces the benefits of MB even if you get it; and all of them resist all magic heavily, so BLMs are unwanted even at a lesser colibri camp. But they're weak to physical damage and even weaker to piercing.

Fast chains, and especially fast chains involving imps and colibri, produce ludicrous amounts of exp/hr -- but only to the new, WS-spamming, melee-heavy parties, not to the old balanced parties with hate control and coordinated offense. So the players went where the exp was, and here we are. Ultimately, I agree that SE has to bear the blame for that.

THF fits into the old school party much better than it fits into the new school party. But because overall exp/hr is so imbalanced between the two styles, hardly anyone makes old school parties anymore; therefore, they don't invite THFs much either. I don't know whether SE intends to try to bring back hate control and skillchains to high level exp tactics, or whether they will succeed if they do try. But I doubt that THF will ever fit into a "spam your highest damage WS at 100% and the hell with everyone else" party.

[Takelli]

Re: Thief: Is it a DD or just a "tool"?

THF fits into the old school party much better than it fits into the new school party. But because overall exp/hr is so imbalanced between the two styles, hardly anyone makes old school parties anymore; therefore, they don't invite THFs much either. I don't know whether SE intends to try to bring back hate control and skillchains to high level exp tactics, or whether they will succeed if they do try. But I doubt that THF will ever fit into a "spam your highest damage WS at 100% and the hell with everyone else" party.

Well... SE should make it so that SCs will increase the Exp gained by the mobs death by about 15% of the damage+15% of the MB damage, as well as increase the time inbetween chains allowed. This may actually bring back the older parties as exp will be increased by SC+Mbing and will allow for longer time allowed between kills before a chain wears off allowing more exp/hour will a SC+Mb traditional party again.

It may not bring back thfs, but it will bring back more of the "traditional" parties we used to see around.

[Icemage]

Re: Thief: Is it a DD or just a "tool"?

THF's problems aren't really about THF, they're about the changes in the whole game over the years.
...
DRK/THF and SAM/THF are all but dead today, but their role hasn't come home to THF, it's just gone.

Yes, exactly. But the fault for that lies directly at the feet of Square-Enix and not the community at large, which is the point I was trying to make. The community can resist some of those changes out of sheer inertia, but there's simply not enough tangible advantages to having a thief in a typical party these days past maybe level 50.

This part I don't agree with. For one thing, it doesn't account for the timing of the problem: SC/MB went out the window, specifically, after ToAU. ToAU didn't make the skillchain system more restrictive, or change the way skillchains worked -- at least, not directly.

Actually SC started vanishing earlier than that to my recollection. Shortly before Chains of Promathia was released I started seing BRD RDM RNGx4 parties show up in the Celestial Nexus in Tu'Lia - one of the very few places that had enough high level enemies to support a fast killing party that had nearly unlimited spawns to work with.

It was a small isolated exception to the rule, but I'm pretty sure that was the first time I saw a party dynamic that threw tanking and hate control completely out the window in favor of absolute killing speed, and it was the precursor to the TP-burn parties we're all familiar with today.

Three main things about ToAU changed exp in a way that no expansion before or since has done: camps with tons of fast respawning mobs, imps, and colibri.

<snip excellent dissection on why TP burns are now favored>

Ultimately, I agree that SE has to bear the blame for that.

I agree, but I hold that Square-Enix could have opted instead to improve the potency of skillchains, improve many of the "throwaway" WS, and make it possible for any two weapons to chain together with "something" that could at least be marginally useful. They chose not to, and quite deliberately moved away from the whole skillchain dynamic into this free-for-all style of party play, and the fallout from that decision lies entirely on their shoulders - with Thief, Black Mage, White Mage, and Paladin being the primary jobs negatively impacted.


Icemage

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Thief: Is it a DD or just a &quot;tool&quot;?

I blame SE just as much as the community. Most people are like water - they take the path of least resistance whenever it's offered. The fact that party dynamics have broken to the point of being nearly pointless ("a skillchain, what's THAT??") is a testament to Square-Enix's failure in designing their game. You can not expect the majority of players to do what's "right" when they have no incentive to do so. Including a thief in an XP party offers no tangible benefits in many common party configurations. So they don't get many invites, except in a "we can't find anyone else but you'll do" situation.

At the same time, if SE did do what was right lots of people would up and quit because 55+ EXP wouldn't be so braindead easy anymore and skillchain and hate control would matter. SE made the same mistake with ToA mobs that they had the RNG job they nerfed previously, but suddenly it was just OK to burn things to death after RNG got broken in the completely opposite direction.

RNG and BLM burning - Bad
Everyone Burning - Good

This is what SE faced and it was largely due to easy access to these mobs from staging points that lead to it. That was a design flaw because technically the deeper in you get to the core of enemy territory, the more fearsome the mobs should be, but apparently the Mamool Ja and Undead Swarm post the 90 pound wuss for a guard.

Every other BeastmenToA and WotG fortress ever conceived is more frightening by contrast and they all should be. But apparently the ToA Beastmen are so damn stupid they allow the Empire to have a foothold in the heart of each of thier bases.

Old-timer reminiscing: FFXI used to be a game where you had to cooperate very carefully with other players or you wouldn't do very well. That's no longer true, and in the process it has broken many of the fundamental game mechanics upon which it was founded.

Now, I'm not saying that things were better back when the game first launched - FFXI is certainly a more approachable game today than it was several years ago. But I think where Square-Enix went wrong was creating a skillchain/magic burst system that was horribly restrictive; instead of making every melee job combination be viable for a skillchain, they forced players to pair specific jobs together at certain ranges. There's far too many job combinations that simply can not produce a workable skillchain at many level ranges, and that's something that should have been addressed during beta testing. Instead of fixing this, Square-Enix opted to throw the whole skillchain system away instead of making it work.


Icemage

I feel this happened because people cryed for SE to make it more like WoW. There you have a game that doesn't even require party mechanics to level up and just from what I've played levelling up only gets easier solo instead of harder.

In fact its to the point that WoW's solo combat just has no edge to it. Yet people still want FFXI solo to be that easy

Then again, MMO players these days seem to be whipped on novelties like that. Never mind the fact Aion has an EXP curve on par with Everquest and FFX pre-adjustment, I CAN FLY AND LOOK PRETTY!

[Armando]

Re: Thief: Is it a DD or just a &quot;tool&quot;?

SE made the same mistake with ToA mobs that they had the RNG job they nerfed previously, but suddenly it was just OK to burn things to death after RNG got broken in the completely opposite direction.

I am no way justifying the ridiculous and heavy-handed nerf RNG got or how long it took them to start making it up to RNGs. But it's not quite the same. RNG was OP compared to everyone else because of lack of level correction penalties against them, and being able to swing an axe between shots. I think this was also pre-sushi too? Nobody could come close to a RNG's damage. They obsoleted any regular DD. The more RNGs your party had, the better off you were.