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THF has higher evasion, hate management abilities, by far the most potent treasure hunter, and the best spike damage of any job(with or without rudra's buff) which results in best skillchain potential.

It doesn't make sense for it to also deal the most raw damage. Anyone who didn't see this coming is an idiot. They aren't going to make it completely useless, it wasn't that far behind prior to rudra's buff if you used skillchain effectively. The buff just got people to do it more frequently.

Did the hate management and higher evasion really matter when many players tend to optimize their strats toward killing as fast as possible while stunning? How do you SA when your target spins every few seconds? And why use Collaborator on a DD when they can get hate back in seconds? Does TA really manage hate when everyone, including the THF, is at or near hate cap?

And while the spike damage and SC were nice, when did the optimal strat before the buff include a THF? It was far enough behind that the only reason you invited one was for the TH or if it was a friend.

And how has the THF buff weakened other DDs? As far as I can tell, they can still all do everything they did before. More choices and variety seem better in my eyes.

Evasion: Irrelevant. Getting off the floor on anything worth while is HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE. For soloing everyone has trusts.

Hate Management: Irrelevant. To call it hate management is silly. Enmity system being busted aside, none of THF abilites have the ability to "manage" enmity in any sense of the word. Their effects are far too weak and have recast timers that are too long to do anything meaningful.

Treasure Hunter: Beyond level 2 (which every job can get without sub): Irrelevant.

Prior to this buff THF was never the best spike damage job. Stacked weapon skills were barely on par with regular WS numbers by other DDs that were spammable at delay reduction cap while we were waiting ever ~30 seconds and trying to get into position to make them happen.

What doesnt make sense is for a DD job to be purposefully weak because of all the irrelevant *** you just listed. Especially one that has all these extra bottlenecks with positional requirements and recast timers. There should be reward for that additional work.

Yes, and I said that Geo (even without Idris, but especially with) crushes Rdm in or outside of a party lol.

Haste II, Distract II, and Frazzle II just aren't a big deal, especially compared to what a job like Geo can bring. Geo doesn't have to rely upon Macc in order to land their geomancy debuffs, and they can't be erased by some mobs like you'd see with Wopket or the Shark. Not having to worry about the mobs's natural resistance to certain elements like Ice or Earth can also be a huge benefit for geomancy over Rdm's debuffs.

If a Geo needs Macc for Enfeebling or Nukes, they can vastly exceed any amount of Macc that a Rdm could get through geomancy like Focus and/or Languor, barring Stymie. Without Geo support, a Rdm can really get screwed because of this on high-level content. Adding in abilities like Entrust/Bolster/Glory/Ecliptic just makes Geo even better.

Ardor I think will help Rdm's desirability, but we need more info on the spell itself. Does it wear after one skillchain, does it stack with skillchain bonus gear/traits, how potent is it, and does it vary upon Enhancing magic skill at all?

Unless Ardor is incredibly potent, then no one is really going to care, similar to how uneventful Haste/Distract/Frazzle II are.

What people seem to forget is that thieves weren't asking for higher rudra damage when SE gave it. They wanted to be invited for more than just TH. SE could have fixed hate control, lowered SA/TA timers, made thf buffs and debuffs last longer, but no. They chose to increase the ftp of dagger weaponskill and are now reneging on it.

Once the damage boost came out no one on thf cared about the previous problems because they were happy with being able to do good damage. If they don't want us to be on par or surpass sams then they have to fix the other problems they swept under the rug. Only you just know that isn't going to happen.

Going by the post, they seem to be totally fine with people destroying Unity NMs and other similar content with just preparing 3000% for a big *** skillchain. It's the longer fights where they feel like THF shouldn't have that kind of impact, just because they can close such strong skillchains repeatedly. I guess if the problem is skillchain damage (isn't it? since it only came up when talking about the addition of Ardor), maybe they oughta put more thought into how SC damage is figured out. Perhaps have SC damage from a weaponskill be temporarily reduced if that same WS is used too much, which would probably encourage using more weapon types and SC combinations.

sad day for thfs :(

You'd be accurate in saying that hate management and evasion don't matter for most current strategies. That doesn't mean they aren't benefits, potentially useful in solo/duo, etc. Every job isn't optimized for every situation, and that's been FFXI's viewpoint since it was first released.

You don't need to be top DD to be useful, and THF has never been at the bottom of the ranks despite what the whiners want to think. If THF is falling 5-10% behind other similarly geared DD in exchange for it's other benefits, I find it extremely difficult to see how that's unacceptable.

Anyone with a brain would take a 10% damage hit on one DPS for TH in merit BCs or incursion. Any intelligent player would realize gear can put a good THF ahead of an average [insert-DD-here] in other events. The problem is with people's mentality, you don't need every job to do equal damage for them to all be viable and you certainly don't need the job with the most side benefits to also be the job that deals the greatest damage.

THF didn't need to be invited 'just for TH' prior to that. It was already a competitive DD when played effectively utilizing skillchains. Rudra's put emphasis on skillchains, and even when they take it back, I think you'll find that people remain willing to let you close darkness. It's not out of the question that you'll still top parse doing so, either.

I would be fine with that. There was actually a time when I thought that the same weaponskill couldn't skillchain with itself.

average person doesnt have armor or training. dont bring RL martial arts into a video game.

SATA, and crits already cover this. yes it suddenly increases the damage but its not 1shot kills. think if a battle axe hit the same eye with proper force. instead of just taking out the eye, it would take out part of the skull and brain. stop trying to justify a little knife doing more damage than a huge weapon being used by a large man instead of a person who is suppose to be weak and quick.


Hell no, I hate war. just using it as an example. Also lol do you listen to that commend, war up to thf standards. thf is a poker and a stealer, not a dd. 2handers are dd's, rudra's being broken brought thf up to war's standard, not the other way around.

Every season has a flavor, thf's is going to be over. a rdm spell isnt going to do ***when it comes to bridging the gap. Its not a sam buff. Next up, pup and bst do more damage then thf since you know their pets are 1handers and can skill chain.

Also you all are missing something important here.

Everything that they give small amounts of, are tests. Like this Ardor spell. They are going to see how people use it and if they use it. Then we will be seeing spells like, effect is increased each time you get hit, cast a cure spell, miss an attack etc...

Same goes with events. Delve + Incursion = tests for Vagancy or whatever its called. Its going to be like delve but with increasing levels so there is always a challenge instead of mindless spamming like delve.

They haven't mattered for relevant content in over a decade. That quite literally DOES mean they aren't benefits.



Trusts, etc.


We aren't talking being optimized for every piece of conent. we are talking that the only thing of real value a Thief can bring to most events is damage.




Anyone with a brain would tell you that you don't need a THF to get relevant levels of TH. And the DPS gap was not 5-10%. Especially with the bottlenecks THF damage faces at the delay reduction cap.


I'm not sure how you can argue honestly that THF wasn't (mostly) only invited for TH prior to that?

Depending on the severity of the nerf Rudra's/Sam nerf, we will likely see Mythic Dancer be the best job (since Pyrrhic isn't getting nerfed) and Blue Mage second. But yes this is my problem, they are nerfing a job on the assumption that the Rdm buff is going to make Thf good enough to use after being nerfed, I have no trust that SE could possibly pull this off and even if they did do we really want to make it so that for Thf to be good you have to bring a Rdm? Isn't one of the main reasons to balance jobs to bring about greater job diversity? If you think that SCing is the problem, address SCing.

This incoming nerf reminds me of the August 2007 update when SE adjusted 2H attributes to be a straight 1:1 ratio. There was a lot of anger from 1H's and 2H's were enjoying capped acc and attack in the Mire. SAMs tossed their Hagun's in favor of Polearm for ridiculous Penta Thrusts which would damn near one shot the flies. After much complaining they adjusted the ratio down to it's current level.

That being said, I think SE will just simply scale back the ftp on Rudras to something like 6/8/10 or 6/9/12.

You brought up the dragon analogy, not me. I just went along with it and provided a counterpoint to an analogy that doesn't work. The buff has helped THF get into parties and hasn't hurt other jobs, so I don't see the problem here.

making thf do more damage than any other job baring mythic sam in a very close margin, is not the way to get thfs into parties. It completely unbalances the dd scale and it kind of breaks the meta.

now if, sam, drk, war, drg, mnk, bst, pup and smn could do 30k ws\ja damage then sure, I would say its ok. However they cant without a mythic. thf can do it not only without a mythic but without and real gear or even using windower. thats just plain wrong. 20k maybe ok, 10k getting closer, 3k? thats where thf should be.

3K with our 50-60 second job ability, in an environment where you and every other job can gain tp and spam WS every 7-9 seconds.

I think there's a better middle ground between 3k and 30k.

6/8/10 is bad for thf 6/9/12 is still bad. ftp needs to scale with tp better, or they need to reduce the recast of sa/ta. They could also make one of the dagger weaponskills be good without being stacked, but clearly that isn't allowed.

Best not to listen to him. There is a reason he is a pariah.

Fun fact about skillchain mechanics: You have to WS 3-10 seconds after the previous WS in order to skillchain.

SAM is great for skillchains when solo, because it has a high TP gain (average of 5-6 seconds per WS with capped Haste) and has all the different Tier 2 properties for circular skillchains. However, SAM's time to 1000 TP is pretty variable. Between Hassanshin procs and DA/TA with a 2H weapon, actual WS delays vary from 1-3 rounds (3~7 seconds). So 1 SAM is fine, every 3-7 seconds you do the next step of your skillchain. 2 SAMs works, but you end up sitting on a lot of TP because their TP gain rates are so variable. It's like trying to mesh two gears that have randomly spaced teeth. They might have the same variance, but it just doesn't work as well as it could.

My DNC, on the other hand, gets 1000 TP about once every 7-8 seconds with capped Haste with pretty small variance. Pair me with another DD that has about the same WS frequency and compatible WS properties/TP gain (like THF or NIN), and we're two gears with perfectly meshing teeth.

Throw a SAM in with a DNC and typically one of two things happens:
1) The SAM spends all their time hoping for a lucky round to complete their Fudo -> Fudo -> Light skillchain and breaks essentially every other possible skillchain opportunity for the party.
2) The SAM sits on TP when necessary and skillchains (SAMs, this is by far the better option).

Now, when you go up to 3 DDs then you either all end up sitting on TP or you just skillchain opportunistically. The result (in my experience) is ultimately less damage than 2 DDs skillchaining well, but it depends how well acquainted everyone in your party is with skillchain properties.

People do realise that hate caps after like 1~2 ws's from THF WAR SAM BST DNC WHM (Yes Even WHM) GEO, anything hitting over 3k on a WS, will cap VERY QUICKLY.

Hate management is a joke, no THF can keep hate off any DD in this game for more than a second at best, this is why for PLD RNG strat you decoy shot him from behind so gets 99.99% of your hate, and you use coronach for its 75 esq days Fixed Emnity irrespective of the Damage output.

Note: WS damage isn't the only issue, Decoying Normal Attacks is Important because those are enough to pull hate from a PLD as that's all it takes to cap hate.

THF's "hate tools" have been useless for years since the 90 cap days.

SE can't fix the emnity issues, unless they giev spels like flash and JA like Procoke, a 3rd hate pool to cap that other abilities add a small amount to, and then make THF's abilities draw emnity from this pool (Make a WS say add +1 New Emnity which works like Volatile emnity) but remove the decay aspect from this pool, meaning you can cap as a DD, but makes a THF relevant in removing hate from a DD, I.E a THF removes half you hate, a Provoke adds ~ 45 NE (New Emnity) this every 30 seconds allows DD's to do say ~ 15 ws's, which is a healthy amount, you make the cap at around ~ 150 so after 2 minutes into a fight Hate mitigation is important.

This is the only method I can see THF and "hate tools" being remotely useful, but would bring a PLD into events.

However, Samurai still suffers as alot of Attacks used by Monsters are conal and add amnesia or silence, which greatly dumps on a SAM using Overwhelm, but this could be considered balancing, as it means they either gimp their DPS output and fight from behind, or you take another job and SAM only gets to own face from the front where there are no conal attacks.

In 14 they have a "Threat Metre" on everyone in your party, introducing something like this on 11 might not be theasable, but the principle is there on server side data, and can be injected into client side data every 10~15 seconds for accurate ish information for the THF to Manage hate from the highest DD (This means THF hate tools don't take hate from another player, they add it to the PLD, alternative;y a THF has the ability to remove hate and then Shed their hate, Shedding hate from SA and TA - these abilities then have the impact of More Damage dealt = More Emnity Removed.

This won't ever happen, so until SE fixes Emnity, PLD in anything but RNG strat, and by extension THF as anything but TH or DD, is irrelevant unless THF has a Rather Decent Damage Output.

I am however in support of the rudra's Nerf, but do feel SE needs to Fix Emnity for any job to be remotely releveant.

Thoughts: You could give RDM a unique Buff that reduces a targets hate (the 3rd pool) over time, making it 100% unique and potentially useful with Flurry 2 and Haste 2 etc but this would depend on how severe you make the new pools Hate Mechanics.........

Anyways probs not the best thread for this, but long story short is THF for Hate control is irrelevant until a fix is in place.

just an addition byrth, each ws in chain reduces the tolerance by one second(not that it changes any of your points)

@conagh: you say what you like about hate management, if a mob dies in 2-3 skillchains then cementing it on a person through that damage is certainly a benefit(even if relatively small)

You can cry all day about how THF shouldn't be 5-10% behind, but not everyone sees that as the grave injustice you do. In a 3-dd event where 1/3 of the time is walking(like pug delve) you're only looking at a difference of 2.2% total speed.. your 15:00 run became 15:19.80. Add in your prep/reenter time and afks and it means essentially nothing as far as event efficiency goes.

The problem was players not accepting thief, not anything to do with it's prior/current/future capabilities. Buffing it then scaling it back might help with that, because people will likely still use it to close darkness.

oh no i am saying thats without it stacked. stacked maybe 9k is ok on a weak mob.

my brd does 9k easily in crappy gear. the ws itself is broken, thf just makes it worse, dnc too technically.

5-10% behind? thf and dnc are pretty much on par with blu and sam right now. That is after rudra's was increased by 60%, 160%, and 140% at 1000, 2000, and 3000 tp respectively. They are going to be a lot further behind than 10% if things go back to how they were.

But then again we don't know what is going to happen. They might just change rudra's from 6/15/19.5 to 4/15/19.5. They probably should have gave some numbers in their dev post. Unless their plan was to stir up trouble, in which case SE finally did something right.

*** thf. th *** only. get back in line and know your place.

if your party is managing skillchains properly, no job can come remotely close to THF's short term or long term burst capabilities. maybe dnc, dont know anything about that and how reasonable it is to stack onto rudra with DNC like THF does.

The game starts to show a little life. Then SE has to go and kill it yet again. I might as well leave the game for another 4 years. Here is deal. Storm helps to make up for the lack of active players in big fights. Made the game fun again. If SE nurfs it, they need to combind servers again, so we have more ATIVE players to pull from. In many cases storm filled that gap. Tbh they should have merged servers about a year ago. The board room at SE looks at log ins,alts and afk bazzars as part of the player base. But its not, and it makes up about 75% of most servers. Combind servers SE, or just pull the plug. So you can stop waisting ours and yours time.

yep rudra's storm definitely breathed life back into this game alright

Whm need a buff of new spells like, Hastega II, Distractega II, and Ardorga. Rdm getting too much love from SE.