[dev1080] Job Adjustments: ThiefFollow

Looks like SE wants us to have 5/5 feint again. I wonder how it will work with multiple thfs attacking at once. Like will each thf have a 100% chance to increase TH once? Will all SA+TAs that hit durring feint increase TH? Maybe it only works for the THF that used the JA idk.

It will be fun to test out how it works when the change is made. I wonder if we will find a TH cap maybe or be able to jack drop rates of some items to 100%? Could lead to a really good understanding of how TH works if enough time is put into testing. I can see an army of THFs stabbing away at some abyssea nm to see what we can do with this.

As to Ass Charge... Why acc increase? 99.99999% of the time I use AC it is with a WS and With SA or TA. The triple is 100% acc already with JAs... Why not attack, or crit (esp crit that could crit non crit ws like dnc can do) or even str or ws damage or anything else except acc. Fail SE.

The accuracy bit on AssCharge is rather useless, because SA/AC already has excellent accuracy, only way it'll be that useful is for DE/Evisc, but an extra two hits isn't always that huge for those ws's (compared to Mercy and such). It's there because they kept AC and Warrior's Charge the same and warriors can use the accuracy.

Feint seems okay, I guess. But I don't play THF to be a TH whore, so I dunno if I'd ever actually put points there. I wish it was something like increased critical rate/damage while it's applied.

Just to clarify a point, the 100% accuracy on sa/ta multi procs only applies to melee swings. It has no effect on weaponskill accuracy. There was a lot of confusion on this subject years ago. If a standard attack round stacked with SA or TA procs a multi attack round all swings on the main and offhand will have perfect accuracy. However if you stack sneak attack with assassin's charge and throw out a weaponskill those extra swings can and will miss just as readily as if that weaponskill wasn't stacked with sneak attack at all. I found this out the hard way when I actually started paying attention to my tp returns when I stacked SA ass charge shark bite against Odin while doing einherjar, only to find I was only getting a 2 hit tp return (IE only the first hit of the main and offhand were guaranteed to hit. The extra ass charged swings were missing without accuracy from other sources). It's easy to understand how the confusion came about, but the extra accuracy only affects standard melee rounds, not weaponskill rounds. Since most thieves stack ass charge with a weaponskill the extra merits are actually very beneficial if you're fighting HNM.

With that said, I don't know how I would tweak my merits. This is clearly an improvement to my old setup though so no matter what it's a win. I used to go 5/5 feint 5/5 ass charge, but now that 1 point in each gives the same as 5 under the old system, I would definitely unlock and upgrade aura steal. My personal opinion of TH is that it's really hard to tell the difference between higher tiers, but I like the idea of 5 aura and a mix between ass charge and feint. Maybe 5 aura and 2/3 mix of the others (ambush is still crap in my book and always will be. Positioning requirements be damned). 5/5 feint is viable too. It's impossible to say any of those combos are bad. Also



The wording is ambiguous, but I'm pretty sure the bonus only applies to the swing that lands feint. There's no way in hell s-e would allow us to increase TH potency with every melee swing we land for 30 seconds. Rather I see it as a 100% chance to raise TH by a tier once every 2 minutes. S-E is hell bent on preserving balance and there's no way their conservative minds would ever consider TH 50+++ every 2 minutes "balanced". You know them just as well as I do. I'm sure it's just ambiguous translating. There is a 99.99% chance the bonus applies only to the swing that lands feint.

Edited, Feb 3rd 2012 11:53pm by Melphina

I don't have much more to say on this discussion for now, but Fynlar brought up a good point on the general board thread regarding my idea about th increases.

Fynlar wrote


Rather than respond to it again I'll just quote myself



Ambiguous wording is ambiguous. There's too much room for interpretation for me to speak any further on the matter.

Melphina: I hadn't had a chance to respond at the time, but that is how I viewed the increase too. It wouldn't be making it 100% proc, but it would make it double your regular chance to proc while active. The other option is, it does infact give you 100% chance to proc, but only does it 1 time. I think the first one is much more likely though, due to the mob holding comment above.

Pretty much what Melph said. The 100% AC acc got debunked.

I am really behind SE on all the merit changes for all the jobs. The timers set means you finally have a viable choice and let you customize instead of cookie cutter. Kudos to SE on that one. 1AC, 1AS, 1Feint. 7 wherever the hell you want. I like it.

Still the nuts and bolts to determine the exact effects and how they work, like does the AC 25% acc work like sushi? or does it just add a flat 25% on merits 2-5 making acc 100% at 5/5? That is kinda tempting for the twash/mandau owners since acc is never in those sets due to the sheer power of stats. But the simple fact that it may actually be viable to have points in ambush again alone shows how much they have opened the field up.

I love it.