Adjustments of the Job Persuasion! (06/17/2010)Follow

You left out Dancer getting DW at level 20 with various improvements at stages. If they get DW 2 @ 40 I will be very tempted to use THF/DNC in lieu of THF/NIN in a lot of instances due to Acc Bonus and some useful DEF- steps and stuff.

Also, crit damage up makes Evisceration much more attractive for solo WS. Depending on the degree that it increases critical damage. If it starts with at least 5%, I would say we could probably rule out DE as a solo WS in most instances for thf.

Edited, Jun 17th 2010 8:24am by Meldi

Happy with the update. We got a few niche tools that may prove to be good but nothing that balances out the DD equilibrium of Thf to be where it was before the TP floor nerf and 2 handed adjustments. Wasn't expecting that to happen, and if it did, SE would probably just nerf us again later. Better to stay under the radar.

Maybe for DNC with /war (that's @ lv 90 to sub Fencer trait...), but it's going to be X's Knife for THF so no worries.

THF/DNC will get dual wield, and at 90 Haste Samba (5%, but its something). Plus @80 reverse flourish, for a psuedo meditate.

Doesn't this mean that depending on DNC dual wield traits, its /NIN or /DNC only?

I wouldn't give up hope yet. Depending on how potent this critical bonus is, THF might be a contender. THF can guarantee critical hits on SA and TA, which opens up possibilities.

Reverse Flourish when subbed is not like Meditate at all -- it requires 5 FM to gain a positive TP return, which requires (10% x 5) TP to get in the first place, and that's assuming you don't miss. The Reverse Flourish offers 60% TP return at 5 FM. Using 6 job abilities is a lot of added delay, and you're probably breaking even, at best, due to the added delay from JA use.

Edited, Jun 17th 2010 2:47pm by Calessa

I'm gonna try to remain optimistic here and hope that despoil will be able to land some really good debuffs on the mob (hoping for paralyze) but the fact that it's another steal with a horrible recast (seriously SE make it at most 2 to 3 minutes) kinda kills that optimism.

While Im trying to be optimistic I am really hoping either they increase the crit formula or give us more daggers that will give us crit bonuses like X's does to compliment the crit JT. I am however looking forward to my new SA numbers tho.



Now...back to my euphoric state as I dream about my dnc updates XD

I wonder if Aura Steal will stack with it. A two and a half minute dispel timer beats our current, I suppose.

PS: I hope the new NMs don't have treasure chests and can be mugged. I know, I have very low standards for THF updates now.

Yeah, I think Banalty has got it right on /war vs /nin. /nin will get proportionally stronger than /war, even if /war is indeed getting stronger. Per that, eventually there will probably be even more situations where we would choose to use /nin where we otherwise would have chosen /war. I'm thinking /dnc will have use in the situations where /dnc has use now. And the seldom used /sam (like when you can't even attack the HNM other than WS, ie Khimaira) will have the same kinds of uses that it too has now.

If things continue like this, that they keep updating 2h with new DD capabilities and just give us utility stuff, I suppose the current relationship between us and 2h will remain the same even after the next level of dual-wield. However, that is assuming they also re-scale A- combat skill vs A+ and the 2h attribute advantage over 1h. If they don't, that will create an even bigger disparity than DW3 would, I think. It will be a huge difference after 24 more levels.

So unless everything is super weak at 99, or unless they keep the attack cap at 999 (which they will probably change) , this attribute/combat-skill disparity would become a big problem. But I have a feeling they will change something to allow for balance.


Meanwhile, also as Banalty mentioned, when talking about future plans for Thief, SE was quoted saying things like "we want to make Thief stronger versus very high level monsters" and "we want to continue to add more ways for Thief to control hate fluidly within the party and help control its pace." Though that's me just paraphrasing. I have a feeling they'll follow through to some extent, but if 6+ years of this game hasn't taught us to not get our hopes up, we're probably fools, lol.

Yes, but /war or /sam might be putting parity in situations where the HNM LS wants a Thf there but doesn't want anyone but a Strong couple skillchainers or weaponskillers on it (Nid, Faf, Khim and the Nids/Fafs of the future). Looking at the possibilities, it appears /nin possibly /dnc would be merit party or endgame lite subjobs of choice, while /war and /sam would add some nice boosts to our spike damage ability.



I agree that this is the likely path. Nothing wrong with it IMO (unlike the way I used to think) if the utility stuff is useful. If not, well...we don't use Thf for much as it is now so I'll just keep having fun on it in my own way (Campaign Battle as /dnc and farming if I get low on gil).

I was wondering whether or not this was the case too. Is Despoil just going to be an upgraded form of Steal available to THF mains? Is it going to share a timer with Steal much like Collaborator and Accomplice do? I'm wondering if I'll get an extra Steal style ability or if this is just an upgrade that essentially makes the standard Steal obsolete for upper end THFs.

Is the status effect static or is it a reversal of what was stolen? If it's a reversal, in cases where stolen buffs have no counter debuffs would it be a default debuff instead (i.e. stealing an Enspell, Boost, Hasso, Refresh, etc.)?



I'm agreeing with this point, the only thing I can add in addition to your point is possible proof that they seem to change the skill progression scaling every ten levels. So we may still see the +5 skill added for every level on A- and A+ skills up to level 80 (meaning that we may not see much help until the patch after this one).

Here's what I'm basing it on...

If you'll take a look at the skill progression that is currently set in place, you'll notice that there are several tiers of progression.

01-50 - Starting levels to 50. No differentiation between + and - skills.
50-60 - AF levels to 60. Progression differences start to show with the addition of the + and - branches of each full letter grade.
60-70 - First endgame progression. Originally when 70 was the level cap, this was the final progression stage.
70-75 - Current final progression. Upper tier skills (A+ and A-) get 5 skill per level. I believe this skill progression will take hold until 80, following the 10 level progression from the two earlier changes.

With that in mind, a stock unbuffed dagger skill will probably cap out at 294 at level 80. Add in the current +8 Merit steppings (which I think need an update to at least +10 steppings) and a Love Torque and you'll see a dagger skill at 317 (this is what you'll see if you've got a current 292 now).

Current merit steppings stop at 8. They come into effect at the following levels:

10
20
30
40
50
55
60
65

They've not announced anything regarding merits, so it's a total shot in the dark at a guess on whether or not they'll add the 70 and 75 steppings (for +10 mods/+20 skill).



I was looking for something like that too, but I had noticed that none of the old traits seemed to get a mention. I'm wondering if those were not included in the prelim trait/ja teaser because they were not new. I think they probably will continue to add onto old traits and probably increase their tiers as well.

I'm hoping the current traits are updated along the same tiered progression that they followed before.