Idea: differentiate more between thief and assassin classes

[Satsujin]

In ROK, they're literally the same class, just thieves have a couple extra goodies and don't hit as hard, so I have a couple suggestions to help make them a little more different and hopefully up the usefulness of thieves a bit.

Skill - Poison Dagger: Attacks the specified monster or player and applies a mid-level poison DOT (similar to the necromancer spell Vulari)
--- Assassin skill. Breaks hide, should not benefit from the backstab bonus, preferably should not stack. Assassins in most RPGs get the benefit of being able to poison their targets, why not the ones in Ember Online as well? Possibly make it a level 25 skill.

Skill - Find Secret: Attempts to find a secret door, item, or other such hidden thing that isn't a player
--- Thief skill. Instead of revealing doors with a basic search action, make them findable this way, giving thieves a PVE use. They still don't have much PVP use, but still.

Skill - Pick Lock: Attempts to pick the lock on a door or chest
--- Thief skill. Pretty self explanatory, thief attempts to pick the lock to get past a door or open a chest. Make it consume an item (lockpicks) on failure to keep people (me) from just spam trying instead of actually bothering to find the keys for things.


Anyone else have any thoughts on the subject?

[Rodeo]

I like the poison dagger type deal for thieves but the last two should stay passive for simplicity.

How about when a thief backstabs it has a chance to stun maybe? Half the damage of a slayers backstab but with a chance to stun for 1 or 2 secs. Might make them viable for pvp.

[Mujahideen]

A thief's backstab should also rob you or make you drop an unSB item.

[Zeroun]

I think the real problem is that we are comparing a thief to an assassin. Obviously an assassin is supposed to kill people, but a thief is someone who tries to steal and is very agile to get away, with tons of tricks in their sleeve. I think the thief needs to be more distinctive and introduced as a trickster. I think thieves should get more tools to aid in their shenanigans compared to kill power. I think some cool concepts would be...

Skill: Puncture - punctures enemy for X% base damage and causes a bleed that deals X amount of damage over time.

Skill: Booby Trap - Causes slight damage, while draining X amount of stamina from enemy

Skill: Trip Wire - Alerts the thief's when someone has hit a trap and from which direction.

I mean something along those lines. Unless CC is introduced into the game, then a Thief imo should be describe as an agile stealing buffoon with lots of trickery. Thought?

[Lateralus]

I feel like early game cycle thieves are maybe the best class in game. The ability to gain gold off monsters and people faster than anyone else is priceless.

That said I wouldnt mind seeing them have a passive poison ability (dot) or something.

Keep in mind they level extremely fast and in my mind shouldn't be near as powerful as an assassin.

[Satsujin]

Comparing the classes is inevitable though, because at their core they're the same class with a couple very minor in practice differences. Giving them different skill sets would go a long way towards eliminating the comparisons, even if they stay the same for a lot of their leveling path. Brigands beings useful for PVE if nothing else would be nice, the way they existed in ROK they were only useful for the occasional class mosh, or for crashing the server to go around and make some gold. Including CC would be a nice touch, but that's probably one of those things that can wait until we're sure everything else is stable.


I don't want them to be as powerful as assassins (in fact, keeping them useless in PVP would probably be for the best, even knowing I'll be taking my thieves to every event ever because I'm trash), I just want them to have a use for PVE things. Imagine going through OADs quicker because your party thief got lucky on a lockpick check and whoever's on your ass has to waste time either waiting on theirs to finally make the lock check or killing the mob for the key, for example. Or with the setting traps idea, being able to stop a party for a few seconds while you book it to the key or boss. That's the kind of useful I'd like to see.

[Rodeo]

I actually talked with Chris about items that could proc poison in SoE. So instead of altering the class let's just introduce a dagger around say level 20 that has a chance to proc poison or even have it as a endgame dagger but make it thief only. The way search worked was fine along with disarm trap. Seems that would fix the whole issue?

[Kawasaki]

It would have to be thief only dagger or the assassin would be way op

[Yue]

Without having to add so much complexity, I think thieves should be made more of a utility class and assassins more of a killing class, but have both be useful on PVP.

Thieves:

- Remove Backstab
- Add a double hit proc (perhaps 25%, around 1 hit per round)
- Make thieves dodgier than assassins
- Do not allow them to wield swords
- Higher HP compared to assassins

Assassin:

- Backstab
- Allow assassins to wield swords, and perhaps a backstab equivalent (not so strong but maybe slightly more accurate?)
- More accuracy compared to thieves