FFXI: Thieves: Still Bad

So in the original Final Fantasy I played as a thief and was just abysmally bad compared to everyone else. Tom and I played a little on our thieves in Final Fantasy XI and it turns out they're not very good either! They actually have several game changing abilities which only thieves have but they don't have those abilities at low level so they just take a lot of damage, do not much damage, and have nothing to change combat at all. They do get to steal every five minutes, though! I look forward to FFVI where the thief is the best.