[HexGirlBestGirl]

I'll stick to wanting to keep three turn cooldowns for spells. If it were two, then if I go last then it's effectively 1 turn of a cooldown depending on how it works. So.You get enough potency out of the spells for minimal SP Investment and all that. Stolen Spells should keep their cooldown for now. Any cooldown reduction on that would make you opt to not have to think as much.

If we just increase the power of stolen spells, then we've got nothing more than "I have your spell but BETTER." primarily. Which, when you account for the CD, is perfectly fine. BUT.

What if it already has a cooldown? Then y'know. And while I don't have much to suggest or add to much that's already been said here. I can sure say what I do want and don't want.

What I want? Simple. Spellthieves to one way or another end up focusing on stealing spells or utilizing their spellthieves in unique way due to their limitations with it. I'm fine with fundamental changes due to honing their own stolen spells, maybe don't allow them to use other spells and rely HEAVILY on stealing spells or copying them mid-fight. Increase Spell Snatch range as a result or make them capable of nullifying/dampening the effects/damage. What if they got bigger AoE or more flexibility or more effects rather than more base power as an example? Anything really that's not "lol spell with more raw damij" would be fine by me. But i'm fine with Spellthieves being average if not fighting against someone to siphon spells from and pretty good at countering mages as a whole.

Dagger skills also should get looked at since. Outside of Goose Bite debuff stacking, you realistically won't see anything much other than flying dagger because "i have 1m and can use it" or "lol bye your barrier/morganite" and all that. They're all also pretty bad to use for damage overall. Final Flare is completely ignored despite how powerful it is solely because it's all or nothing. More of a finisher move that most don't consider worth it unless they know it'll kill. (That and most people just get status inflict skills or buff spells rather than actual damaging spells and 50% of spells just don't work on Final Flare)

HOWEVER. Offensive Potential for a Spellthief in my eyes should at the very minimum focus around their stolen spells overall and working with that in a unique way and making it clear that a Mage's Worst Enemy is potentially a Spellthief. After all, imagine knowing someone can just temporarily suppress your magical abilities down to the raw spell and then use that same stuff against you?

With that out of the way, here's what I don't want. Short list, really.

I don't want Spellthieves to be 'better' mages. I want them to be their own independent tricky counter to Mages that don't necessarily have to be garbage if they're not going up against one. If they get any level of flexibility or uniqueness as I mentioned above, I think they shouldn't mesh well with having overall normal, non-copy spells. Why? Since if anything of the sorts occurs, they'd become horrifying (and potentially mandatory) when tacked on with a Mage Tree Class or something. I don't know how i'd do that. But it's a general idea.

I also don't want any buffs to how copy spells function to simply be "more power" or "less cooldown" or "more status inflict potency" or anything as simple as that. There's a lot of potential here, and at the simple front then anything can do that. Is the simple route good for balance? Sure, makes it far easier while alleviating lots of problems, but Spellthief right now just feels like the most budget as all hell version of "Select Your Magic Loadout" featuring longer cooldowns for no real big gain or difference than some wandering chad with normal spells. Literal opting in to inferiority. They can remain inferior, sure. But I want them to be DIFFERENT, which is what i'm NOT feeling when I play Spellthief. The "difference" is the selection of spells granted to me from all the different classes. But they're individually usually not potent enough to really mean much.

So, hell. I'd take copy spells having LONGER cooldowns if I could fucking maybe manually change how the range functions or how it moves or fundamentally change it or something. I'd even take Spellthieves being able to jankly replicate SL1's Dreamcatcher and mix and matching spells to produce some amalgamation of a fucked result. Imagine if you could have spells that give different bonuses depending on how they're used in some jank formula or something so you could have like a Black Bubble infused Miu that can move in any direction up to five tiles but only has 50% Damage Potency and only Silences for 1-2 Rounds instead of 3 and creates a line of Dark Water tiles based on the tiles it moved over.

Sounds absolutely horrible, I know. But knowing a Spellthief could do shit like that at the cost of not meshing well with other mage classes and they have an entire combo of spells within the game to worth with and could custom tune it to their own liking? I'd fear that FAR more than what they are now.

tl;dr:
pls make spellthief more unique rather than necessarily potent and make them anti-mage focused and their offensive capabilities namely revolving around their stolen spells or anti-magic and pls preferably dont commit to just lowering cooldowns or increasing damage of spells/dagger skills as the 'fix' to their offensive struggles thx