When does thf finally come into play?

[Maeghant de`Mue]

I am a post60 thf. I see nothing valuable coming from this job in the near future, yet I see an abundance of post60 JN thf's. I would like to know what is it that they know that I do not.

For example, any given day I can do a /sea all 65-70 thf and get, say, 13 finds. Followed by a /sea all 65-60 and get 140 hits. Something on the order of 10% of the population are thf's.

Is there a strong end-game role for the thf? In a raiding aspect, I can easily imagine a value behind a thf's hate control, but have seen no evidence that this is the case, it's purely hypothetical.

Many other classes seem to be able to sit tight with the knowledge that they provide a valuable asset to a party. Mana regen, healing, or high dmg output. A thf provides... none of these, but an imaginary 'hate control' aspect, which more often than not tends to balance out with increased risk to the PT as a whole or mana dumping on the 2ndary tank.

Unfortunately, creative use of jobs seem to have elimated any need for additional hate control. I have pt'd w/ nin's who have no need for ta/sa. I have pt'd w/ war/sam's who have no need for ta/sa. And of course, paladins completely eliminate our value in the same pt. Is our only purpose to supplement the poor aggro control of incompetant 'tanks'? Or do we actually have a value in this game.

Why do I continually feel as if the ta/sa nerf upon NA release still hinges entirely on the fact that paladins are utterly overpowered? Y'know, if S-E wants paladins to be the only functional tank in the game, they should really just get off the can and make it utterly apparent by now. Enough with this supposed hate control bs, warriors 'sufficing,' and a broken ninjitsu blink device.

S-E has the same decision to make that EQ did years and years ago, pre-evade, pre-sneak hide. They need to decide if rogues in this game are to provide support or melee and find a balance. The ta/sa nerf eliminated nearly all of our support capabilities and did not return any melee into our pocket.

Are thf's in this game really intended to be nothing more than gil machines? I certainly hope not. Day One upon subscribing to this I considered th, gil finder etc to be nothing more than gimicks. After all, anyone with the time to spend can overcome any mediocre percentile advantage in drops or gold.

When I bought this game, it seemed we had a fairly apparent value. We did little dmg, we had questionable ws's, we lack soloability, low hp, yet... we kept the hate on the MT. Seemed a fairly simply concept to me. I wonder how it's the job's fault that paladins are massively overpowered in their defense and ability to generate hate.

Maybe I complain too much. I do see an analogy to clerics in EQ in recent past who found themselves rather outdone by druids and shaman in small AA producing groups. If multiple classes can heal essentially as well and produce other beneficial results in an exp group, then there is no need for a cleric. On the other hand, many many clerics were still required end-game. Which again, brings me to my original question:

What am I missing?

Md'M

[Pandar]

lol I ask the same thing whats so great about thief >.>
besides making money i have enough

[SlipA]

" We did little dmg, we had questionable ws's, we lack soloability, low hp, yet... we kept the hate on the MT"

Thieves do great damage, even into the 60's. They are probably the most damaging melee from 15-50~ imo. As for questionable WS....are you really a thief? Thief gets the best WS up to the mid 60's for party play (combined with SATA of course) Distortion is the most wanted skillchain, and guess who finishes it best, without a doubt.

"What am I missing?"

Well, thieves did, in a sense get shafted. But really, they are the most selfish class in the game, I mean c'mon, they're thieves. Ever try to go coffer hunt in castle oztroja as a non-thf? After spending 19 hours hunting my coffer key, not even counting the time spent begging in jeuno (which theives dont have to do), I spent another 4 hours trying to find a freaking coffer because half the spawn points had a thief sitting there. I check the price history of astral rings and guess whose names i see...
I'm considering bringing my thief from 39 up to 60 just to camp those damn coffers.

The more party friendly, the less solo capable, thats the fair way to do things imo. Look at bards, whms, blms, they are all very slow gil makers solo, but always wanted in parties. Melees are much faster gil makers, but suck for invites. Rdm is lucky both ways i guess, but still take forever to kill stuff. Thieves get unique solo skills. Why take it for granted and have such a need to be THE needed melee class at all stages in the game?

I can't tell if your main issue is that paladins are too strong or thieves are too weak? Post 60, plds really have a hard time holding hate imo. I'd say trick attack is really needed or else monks and drks get hit, and hit a lot.

Also, go check out the paladin board if you think they are the only tank class in the game. They are moaning about how paladins are just replacements if the other parties can't find a blink tank. They are also complaining that 2 thief and 2 ninja alternate trick attacking is more wanted for HNM than them, and take 0 dmg.
At least being wanted for certain HNM situations is not bad for a thief.

[PhoR]

Thieves get unique solo skills.

rofl. thf is probably THE single most worthless solo class in the game. coffer hunting, sure. but don't even attempt to try to kill anything, even 10 levels below you. And even then you'll be flirting with death very quickly. When soloing, we can only sneak attack once.. trick attack is worthless.. and our dmg is ABISMAL without sneak and trick. (and even then you have to fight something only sight aggro to even be able to get 1 sneak attack off)

As far as treasure hunter, sure people want that when they're searching for items for quests or missions, but they don't seem to want it when they're not (ie, exp parties) so how the heck are we supposed to level?


I agree totally with you on this one Maeghant de`Mue... In fact, I have sent square a couple suggestions on how they could make changes so that we could actually control hate again (such as making trick attack function like sneak.. in that it always hits and crits when used alone). The fact is, when they nerfed yokodama, they turned us into a half-ass dmg dealing class that has to have one of only a couple party setups to function properly. Not only that, but we have to rely on every single one of our party members to know exactly what they're doing, or else we automatically suck. (no matter how good you are, if the tanks are moving or a mage pulls aggro, not only are you not controlling hate, but you're doing less dmg than the pld.) And I think that sucks.

by the way, I asked a bunch of 65+ thf on my server, and almost 70% of them were already 60+ when yokodama was nerfed. What does that mean? It means that a hate controlling thf is good for party dynamics, and a half-ass dmg dealing thf isn't.

God I hope they do something soon, i'm tired of whining about it

[SlipA]

solo skills i was referring to didnt mean killing monsters. Who cares about killing it when u can steal, hide, flee, whatever . Anyways, I think thief is a great class, and in a good party, a lot more fun to play than most other melee jobs. Also, they are pretty much the only class that gets to dual wield and utsesumi effectively without being forced to tank. Dual wielding is pretty cool, u know it :p All in all, maybe not the best class, but definitely better than most melees. Maybe if they nerf plds hate building ability, and nerf SATA + spinslash, thieves will no longer have anything to complain about?

[sudo]

highly doubtful if SE cares at all for the thf job anymore. The recent patches are all concentrating on making other melees better.

drg is getting fixed in a HUGE way with the new patch
and what is all this subtle blow thing?? making nin and mnk buffer too...

Just seems like there's nothing new for the thieves...(well at least we didn't get nerfed even further...)

but in a way, if they make the other melees better then thieves would suck even more in comparison wouldn't we ?

so why get a thf when that mnk gets subtle blow!?

sooooo hard to get to 45.... I think I might just give up thf after TH2... wasting so much time lfg as it is...

[Stanislav]

I have a thief in 90% of my parties, Viper Bite, Dancing Edge and Shark Bite (very powerful) are very strong. Thief does the strong Light skillchain without getting killed (Ranger can do just as powerful but 50% of the time they experience death!)

Thief are for hate transfer and high WS dmg. Their normal hits may be low but thief probably has the first or second strongest WS (considering you use SATA)

Personally if I could stand the first 15 levels (my thief is 7) then I would level my thief to atleast 61 and get decent gear then use it to farm stuff faster.

[Taoist]

Every job has it's problems. But, I'd never think THF would get much trouble to LV because of their capability to end a renkei.

But, more importantly.

GIL GIL GIL GIL GIL GIL!!!

I am currently raising a THF right now because of my desire to buy things. Funny thing is, when I used my MNK to kill Lizzy, I got nothing but a lizard skin. But, right when I kill it with a LV12 THF (no TH) it drops. This has nothing to do with the topic but THF is lucky imo. Maybe the LV factor had something to do with it. Anyways money is almost never an issue for THF's especially my THF friend who already has TH3... lucky.

[Maeghant de`Mue]

First of all, I don't want to second guess the upcoming changes to the nin and mnk jobs w/ subtle blow. I don't think anyone knows what that will entail. I do find it strange that two dual wield classes are getting a change and thf's very often sub one, if not both, of them in the course of their careers. If the change is drastic, there could perhaps be a massive abandoning of /nin for thf's.

I've read it could be a potential hate nerf for nin's to a reduction of TP gain by mobs from getting hit by dual wield classes. It's extremely difficult to guess the outcome. I am in no way suggesting that this will hurt thf's, I don't think S-E would bother to do that at this point, but it's a matter of faith by now. If it hurts nin's, this can't be good for us, as they are the only tank class which seems popular and effective in a party with us at the moment (post60 pt's).

SlipA, you made some good points, but there is one that I tried to make which may have been unclear. If any person intends to play this game for any length of time, gilfinder and treasure hunter abilities are meaningless. Any mild percentile gain in drop rates can be overcome with time spent and dedication. That is why those abilities are so useless.

Take, for example, the multitude of other jobs who can solo NM's far beyond the reach of a thf at a much earlier level. Yes, we might be able to force the drop, but we also require an additional 5+ levels on top of any paladin etc who happens to roam by. How does increased competition for what we can barely kill reward us? Yes, I can slaughter half the number of level 20 beastmen as any other job and get the same amount of gil, but the standard job can kill twice as many due to lessened downtime created by any number of methods.

The bottomline is, if you base thf balance upon the fact they obtain gil quicker, a thf will never fit into a decent balanced party system. All in all, I would give up all ability to solo if I was able to place massive hate once again upon a main tank, simple as that. I would give up all of my trash gilfinder and th abilities. I didn't create a thf to make money, I made it because it seemed to fit very well upon NA release inside a party.

I do not solo well. Low defense, low vitality, low hitpoints, low dmg output, no ability to self heal with a standard job. I figure this all balances fairly well with gilfinder and th which tosses me an extra pair of studded boots every now and then. Trading this off for low value to a party, or an extremely limited and specific party, simply isn't worth it. Th does work, it's nice, but I've already paid the price for having it.

All said and done, you have your tanks, you have your support, and you have your dmg dealers. A thf still fits in none of those catagories because, surprise surprise, we aren't proficient in any of them any longer. We already have major shortcomings as a solo class, shouldn't that equate into value as a party class? Apparently not, as I watch a rdm with the best debuffs in the game + refresh + dispell solo Ose.

Md`M

[PhoR]

Every job has it's problems. But, I'd never think THF would get much trouble to LV because of their capability to end a renkei.

Well you would be wrong. simply because of the stupid fact that for this to work with an ounce of reliability, you'd have to have two tanks in your party.. which seriously degrades party dynamics, and doesn't happen very often in practice at all.

why do i say it's unreliable without two tanks?
there are only 2 ways in which you can do a renkei AND put the hate on the tank. a) at the very beginning of the fight. b) if a melee standing opposite the tank pulls aggro with his ws.

neither of these ways can be done on a regular basis. Because if you hold your tp till the next fight as thf, you're wasting it, since thf ws do the same dmg with 100 or 300 tp. Secondly, the way hate works, there's no telling if the second melee will be able to turn the mob or not. It's almost a random chance. And even the idea of "turning the mob away from the tank on purpose" defeats the whole party dynamic of having a tank in the first place.

Square totally screwed up the way the thf class works when they nerfed sneak attack. I just hope they do something about it soon. I'm about to change jobs too.


(on a side note, today i did a /sea all thf 40-75 and got 57 hits. about half were not in parties, the other half were seeking. there were only 4 thf's above lvl 40 that were actually in an exp party.)

[SlipA]

So ok, assuming the class is indeed in need of a fix, whats the proposal? Returning to old yokodama is not the best way imo. Being able to yokodama sounds to me like every party would want a ninja tank and a thief doing blade:chi / rin > Viper bite with 4 mages. Maybe an exaggeration, but there's really no need for another melee, which is already a problem in the game with 4/5 of the lfg list being drg, sam, drk, monk.

If you picked the class pre-nerf, than i can certainly understand being angry and disappointed that it is no longer an indispensable party member. But really, thief parties do tend to go better than non-thief parties still. Provoke does almost nothing post-60 it seems >< .

Maybe boosting dagger WS so that they do good damage without sneak attack, so they can straight viper bite from behind the tank would help. At the same time, they'd have to nerf the amount of boost that SA adds to a WS, so there's no SA + TA stacking doing 2000 dmg dancing edges. This would help thieves solo also, since more WS damage without sneak attack.

But then that takes away the fun of the class, which is to stack SA + TA to see those big numbers and watch the monster spin around looking real pissed. Sneak attack by itself is not that exciting :p

[Ljarin]

Originally posted by PhoR
why do i say it's unreliable without two tanks?
there are only 2 ways in which you can do a renkei AND put the hate on the tank. a) at the very beginning of the fight. b) if a melee standing opposite the tank pulls aggro with his ws.

neither of these ways can be done on a regular basis. Because if you hold your tp till the next fight as thf, you're wasting it, since thf ws do the same dmg with 100 or 300 tp.

a) happens every fight if you have a secondary tank that has any brains whatsoever. b) can be done frequently with careful planning.

a) can be done not on a regular basis but in every single fight. Sorry but you don't know what you are talking about if you believe otherwise.


All thf ws do not do the same damage with 100%-300% TP. Viper bite does, Dancing Edge and Shark Bite you will see better damage with higher TP (Dancing because you will see more hits with higher TP therefore higher dmg, wheras Shark Bite gets an insane amount damage bonus from 300% TP compared to 100%.


And using TP just because you have it is wasteful, saving your TP to renki at the start of the next pull is not wasteful.

[PhoR]

well assuming they will not return yokodama. which is pretty much a given.

I think there's only one real "idea" that could fix trick attack:

1) make it always hit like sneak attack. (I don't see any reason why this would overpower anything, you could still stack sneak and trick if you wanted to, and get the same results you get now)

But making it always hit would not be enough, because what kind of hate are you going to transfer by doing 80 dmg? (answer: hardly any) That's where 2 comes in.

2) make trick attack have some sort of built in provoke. What do I mean by that? I mean don't base the hate transfer on the dmg you do with it, but instead base it on a certain stat maybe.

not only would changing it this way make it possible for a thief to actually be a hate controller again, it would also pull us out of the "if your trick buddy messes up, or if your party doesn't line up correctly, you might as well be afk, because you're worthless" hell hole that square has dug for us.

And if you think about it, this is VERY feasible, and fairly easy for them to impliment. It would not overpower thief as a melee job, because if you wanted to do sneak and trick seperately, you'd be giving up damage in order to do so. However, if you wanted to see the big numbers your accustomed to, you'd be giving up the hate control. (whereas with yokodama, you could get both big numbers, AND put that hate on the tank at the same time) Pretty balanced in my opinion.


If you could think of any cons, I''d love to hear them.

what do you think?




p.s.

a) happens every fight if you have a secondary tank that has any brains whatsoever. b) can be done frequently with careful planning.

my arguement is that you HAVE to have a secondary tank in the first place. and not only that, but if he sucks, HE MAKES YOU SUCK.
And I think that is just absurd.
Ljarin, can you seriously tell me that you think square meant for thief to only be able to put hate on the tank at the beginning of the battle? I personally think that this phenomenon was an accidental side effect of their sneak attack nerf (which was a good nerf that needed to be done in my opinion). and that square just didn't think about the consequences of that nerf to hate control. But to each his own.
comments?

[SlipA]

The implementations you suggested are good, especially the built-in voke on trick attack. But I really think if thieves got it, they'd be unhappy with it. Why? They will still SATA +WS onto a subtank, and he gets even more hate than before with the new provoke effect. You might argue that there is no need to since now TA is guaranteed hit, but that's pretty much the case if you use viperbite or dancing edge anyway, at least some of the hits will connect. And no thief i've ever partied with does TA + Viperbite, with no SA. I suppose maybe they could just do SA + WS, then do TA separately, but I doubt they would like that much.

Another idea that I think would be cool, is to have a new Job Ability of Mirror Image, where you can form a false image of yourself projected directly opposite the place where you stand, with the axis of symmetry being the monster. Any actions you do are performed by the mirror. That way, you can trick from behind subtank and it looks as though it came from behind main tank. Maybe a 5 minute timer and a 15 second duration would work for this. Maybe a lv45 JA.

Too bad this ability really belongs to ninjas more than thieves.

[PhoR]

I also thought about a mirror image thing as well, but I think this would be hard for them to impliment. (changing a formula for hate placement based on a stat instead of dmg would be an easy fix, whereas putting in a whole new ability would be time consuming, and programming intensive.)
not to mention they'd have to be really careful in how they implimented it so that it could not be exploited while soloing.

This is why I think the "trick always hits and places hate based on a stat" idea is the best idea. Easy to impliment, and no overpowering/exploitable consequences.

I've already sent square a few suggestions about putting this "fix" in.. and i encourage everyone else to do the same.
To send a suggestion:
1) open up playonline
2) from the main menu go to service and support
3) from there goto support
4) then email support
5) and finally comments and suggestions.
If square can see that enough people desire a change like this, it would be very feasible for them to put it in.

/em crosses his fingers and waits.