For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

It appears that it is better than brutal or DEX+4 earring in all cases I tried. Usually about 4-10 dmg ahead of DEX+4 and about 5-15 ahead of brutal.


edit: i wrote this yesterday and forgot to submit, then i somehow click submit 15 hours later when i come back.. i feel like I was in a time warp.

Do it Jean, he said yeah!!!

I'm not really sure how to react to that kind of giant post, other than to say that I'm only posting in these threads because as a group, we can examine our collective strategies and methods and expand upon them. THF is one of the two jobs I love most in this game and really only play these days (the other being RUN). I think I got into it for the same reasons many of you did as well, and this is something that is critical to me as not only a THF, but just as someone who very much enjoys this game still (*** the haters and the doomsday sayers). Remembering why you looked at the list of jobs and said "Oh yeah, THF is definitely what I want to play", remembering what the game was like when you were first fighting rabbits and worms and bees.

Anyway, expect to see more of this guy

This sounds amazing, I will love to see it when you finish. I've been updating my spreadsheets manually by plugging in the gifts either in the gear section for sets or trying to put it into the base stats and such. You are planning to make completely new tabs for things like Gifts? If you found the stats for new monsters it would also benefit basically every other class as far as spreadsheeting goes and would be absolutely amazing considering the best option we have right now is Tojil and comparing Tojil to something like Sinister is just pretty tough. Have you found the stats of anything newish yet?

So far the only thing I can really figure out is a close gauge of evasion levels, which is really just a matter of assuming by parses. Because I'm usually tanking high level crap on RUN, I'll have a hard time getting values like defense.

Nq are very good.

My explanation might have been confusing, I agree completely that capping delay reduction is the priority. I just meant that while THF *can* cap delay with no magical haste at all, it's ideal to avoid having to use that much DW gear. It's common that you'll only need a relatively small amount of DW to hit cap (frequently that means DW+11, if you have capped magical & gear haste).

There are plenty of ways to hit that DW+11, I just put forth the idea that Boomerang is not that bad of a spot to help hit that DW+11. Losing other stats from ammo slot is certainly less of a hit to overall DPS than swapping out something REALLY strong like a non-DW head (Dampening or Skulker+1), legs (Samnuha), or waist (Windbuffet+1).

DW slots that are clearly great:
(1) Feet (Taeon DW+4% base stats while still using TA+2% augs)
(2) Hands (Floral DW+5% with augs up to TA+3%).

To hit that remaining 2% DW (or more if you aren't using Taeon and/or Floral), I think the best options are from the fairly limited selection below:
Back: Canny Cape (w/ augs from DW+1~5), Vellaunus+1 (DW+2)
Ammo/Ranged: Raider's Boomerang (DW+3)
Ring 2: Epona/Haverton (DW+5) is a reasonable pair, if you happen to have Haverton (I love it as a RNG COR for best Racc/Snapshot ring, and occasionally get use of it on my DW jobs)
Earrings: Suppa (+5), DW set (+7), Eabani (DW+4). Personally, I'm often pretty reluctant to give up my other earrings though.

Excluding the very hard to obtain Adhemar Jacket +1, I think the current *perfect* DW+11 setup is Floral Gauntlets, Taeon Boots, and a DW+2% Canny Cape. But if you don't have those, Boomerang is not that bad of an alternative.

Of course it's ideal to not have much excess DW, but if you're just *slightly* over cap (say, a couple DW) it's an insignificant effect on tp/hit. Obviously don't TP in something like DW+15 over cap though.

The NM that drops it is a unicorn that absorbs elements based on what it has most recently cast. It switches each WS, and also has Meteor which covers all non-elemental damage, including physical. Overall it's not bad, probably the easiest Escha sky NM I've seen so far (especially with a GEO or a RUN). It also drops the Ishvara Earring so you'll probably fight it a bunch anyway.

Yeah, for Rudra's/Mandalic, that + Moonshade are best.

Pretty minor difference between a variety of earrings, but I'd go with Brutal for the extra hit chance. DEX earrings or something with accuracy/attack are fine too, they're all good. Moonshade too of course.

Okay I'm sure I'm making things needlessly complicated but should I be using the elemental obis when skillchaining?

The recent testing on the Threnodies II got me thinking. I have a brd, the whm goes /sch with some planing ahead we could make the mob super weak to the element of the day and then have the whm give me the corresponding weather and then this together would make for a much larger skillchain damage. Any thoughts?

There's potential, you're basically sacrificing damage bonus to the WS for a damage bonus (or rather, assuring a damage bonus) to the SC. The effect of this would be whether or not there's actually weather/day bonuses, and what step/level the SC is. You could rig a gearswap to only apply it when you've got weather/-storms going though, but I don't know of a way for it to recognize SC conditions.

Sounds like your crew is coordinated enough that you don't have to worry about someone screwing up the SC at least.

edit: Side note, the THF spreadsheet is coming along decently, I've implemented drop down lists for a few things like Cheers and Gifts, as well as Mighty Strikes. Haven't implemented Hundred Fists because I'm not sure how/if DW affects it in some way. Also, to neaten up the gear lists, I'm removing a lot of heavily dated gear options (mostly sub-99 stuff).

I just got back after missing the august update and began updating my thf.

I am trying to figure out the necessary upgrades (not counting the new cursed gear as I would probably go nuts over getting HQ). How does this fare to you?

ItemSet 337587

taming sari, dampening tam, floral gauntlets and samnuha tights seem all best in slot for TP now. Am I right?

Am I missing some gear for stuff like solo or solo+trusts events?

Pretty solid looking. Consider something like olseni belt or kentarch belt +1 if you need more accuracy in the waist, and Taeon in the legs (my only beef with Samnuha pants is no extra acc). For neck, you might prefer erudition necklace since 6 Store TP is pretty substantial.

I like Ginsen a lot too, but for an accuracy piece, you got some options, including ye olde honed tathlum, the falcon eye, and the new mantoptera eye (interesting since Amnesia is becoming more and more common).

What kind of solo and solo+trust events did you have in mind? Like, solo CP? Bearing in mind that with trust Haste + Marches, you can reduce the amount of DW gear and swap stuff like Suppanomimi out.

Aye, solo CP and just about anything that's reasonable to do solo with trusts. For those events I hardly have any issues hitting mobs, which is why I was planning on using the Samnuha Tights I just got lucky with. For extra accuracy needs I do have Falcon Eye and Nq Kentarch (which I will eventually hq too), along with some other few pieces (nothing dedicated yet, as I am still catching up). I will definitely work on erudition necklace. I've only seen it once and forgot about it before going on holidays. I'll also switch to Steelflash/Bladeborn (Wish I had gotten a Trux Earring when DM2 was still hot DX ). Thank you of the tips Jean :)

The 2% DW gain isn't always better than the 5% DA from Brutal, but I am not overly confident on the best scenarios for either to be used in (depending on the overall DW augments you have on your gear, the use of Haste/Marches and whatnot, as Jean hinted at)

For fine tuning your sets, it depends on your DW values and how much haste you're getting. You're looking at:

Suppa/Brutal: 5 DW, 5 DA, 1 Store TP
Delve DW earrings: 7 DW, 8 attack, 8 accuracy, 2 subtle blow

In Sheelay's set, depend on augments, there's anywhere from +14 to +24 DW. With capped haste, only +11 is needed (unless you've got the DW+5 gift, in which case only +6 DW) for THF to cap attack speed. In a situation like Dynamis/Salvage where you're not going to have capped haste, the extra DW is stronger, but if it's not necessary, the 5 DA will easily win.

With that set, Sheelay can actually ditch Suppanomimi provided trusts are giving them (him? her?) the right buffs (incidentally, the Oneiros Ring might cause Ulmia to switch to Ballad, though Refresh Vorseals can prevent that). In a situation like this, Steelflash/Bladeborn would be a good combo.

Anyone have any strategies for soloing PW? I kinda want to start collecting for afterglow but don't feel right dragging along people from my ls for which seems to me like a selfish goal.

Well, though you'd need +11 DW in gear if you have capped magic haste, using Haste Samba as /DNC gives enough so that you don't need any DW gear at all. You might find this to be needless if your regular equipment already carries enough DW (such as Taeon Boots and Canny Cape).

I'd recommend against doing it on THF since you have next to no protections against his final form. Bear in mind that his magic accuracy is surprisingly good for something so old, and you're dealing with 8 adds who are also nuking/debuffing you. I can't speak for all jobs on that, but regardless you'll likely want to bring at least 1 friend for potential raises or holding so you don't waste pops.