For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

The thf is me playing DD of course >.>. Maybe I shouldn't have assumed that to be obvious. My other jobs are mages and support, so unless I'm on cor blm or whm I'm playing thf as a dd. Pld blu blu whm geo cor is the other favored party setup on asura, and you can easily swap indi haste for fury and add chaos roll, but that's usually reserved for specific mobs and under those circumstances people would be reluctant to take a thf in place of one of the 2 blus. sTP would win out without question, but I never see that party setup on thf so it's largely irrelevant (for me at least).

This is why I started this discussion btw. It's interesting to see what kinds of groups other people are used to. There are always differences in playstyle from person to person or server to server. I've moved servers twice since I started playing and each time I saw a noticeable culture shift. Tank + 3 DD's + a buffer and a whm is a pretty common thing in shouts I see for non-mage specific events.

The thing is the blus can keep full magic haste on themselves. they gives themselves haste 2 and swap off using Diffusion for full time mighty guard. So it's going to be sub optimal for you, which sucks, never fun being the odd man out.

Anyway in situations like that what determines what you should put on your cape is not exactly simple. Lots of different things come into play like what other gear you have and specifically the delay of your two daggers. Lower delay daggers are effected less by the tp loss from dual wield because of the way tp per hit changes below 180 delay.

As it is now there is already lots of gear that give DW without sacrificing too much of other things like accuracy, STP, and Triple attack. Adhemar Jacket, Floral Gauntlets, Patentia Sash, Eabani Earring, and Suppanomimi.

Yeah, this is a slightly different issue than what was originally presented because you have two DDs capping haste and one not. The end result is that you're going to fall behind in damage output, and with 3 DD you're probably getting more interrupted skillchains and/or wasted TP as well. Another buffer (either COR with some combination of WAR/SAM/DRK rolls or a second GEO) or maybe even a BLM would make more sense in that setup.

It's unfortunate that Haste II has such limited availability (RDM/SMN/self target BLU). Makes it difficult to give everyone the buffs they want sometimes.

Just ftr, unenhanced 900 skill Indi-Haste supposedly gives about +30% Haste, is AoE, and stacks with Haste spell. For Ambuscade at the moment, I entrust Indi-Haste and cast Haste on my dancer and use Indi-Fury/JA'd Geo-Frailty on my mule.

The tank 3dd buffer healer works just fine for me and I've been able to synergize very well with the other DD's. Being the odd man out (as Ulthakptah puts it) isn't necessarily a bad thing, nor does it necessarily mean damage output will suffer. While blu can cap magic haste on their own, thf gets its own unique boons. This is my tp set

ItemSet 342123

Just this past Sunday I auged the herculean boots with 4% TA, 29 accuracy and 18 attack. So with my gifts and traits I have 43% triple attack rate. That synergizes fantastically with the toutatis's TA damage btw...

We've been discussing toutatis's cape's "best aug sets" for a few pages now, and weaponskill and evisceration are easy. Up to now we've generally agreed that store TP is the better mantelpiece, but nobody has even given the dual wield option so much as a consideration. I'm trying to evaluate it and I do feel like it's not only a viable option, but in most practical setups the better option. Obviously individual circumstance changes things, but I believe that not only is the 10% dual wield a viable TP option on the toutatis's cape, I think it's actually the better option in most practical party setups.

32% from gear + 8% from Gifts + 6% from traits + 5% from merits = 51% TA rate

Maybe one day I'll look into farming the other herculean pieces so I can get a max TA rate like you byrth. That's drool worthy.

I still need to upgrade my Samnuha Tights and Taming Sari (+1% TA), but these extreme levels of TA are why Vajra's AM3 isn't as useful as it once was.

Wouldn't you want Skinflayer in the offhand for a total of 5 TA? You could also drop Lissome for Defiant and Brutal for Raider for an additional 2 TA, but I doubt they're better

Wish they would have changed mythic aftermaths when they were changing the relic ones. Could have turned it to +20% triple attack and +40% double attack, and it would have been useful again.

I'd use Erudition over Lissome, and certainly over Defiant. For THF the best TP necks are probably Ainia/Erudition/Combatant's depending on acc needs. 1% DA is negligible given high base TA; I don't see 1% TA beating 4-6 STP unless you're constantly holding TP for Exenterator.

Likewise I could easily see Telos surpassing Brutal if it's available.

Hence why you wouldn't want them >.>. I'm pretty content with my tp set as is tbh. I'll probably try and farm centurio for his belt one day though, and I think I will go dual wield on my second toutatis's cape. Other than that I'm pretty content, save for the 700 heavy metals I still need to dig up..... *sigh*


Ooooh, I missed that one. Thank you for mentioning that! When was this quest line added? I just looked it up on wiki. I'm gonna have to start that tonight.

June 2015, not a lot of people know or care about it because it's just 3 jobs rng, thf, nin.

Combatant really isn't that hard to farm. It just takes a little time.

Also said it before and spreadsheets support it, if you have AM3 up you should really have a set just for AM3 on Vajra. Replacing Samnuha legs with herc STP, using telos, dedition earrings, Erudite or Ainia, are all improvements. Some things like Windbuffet and Eponas are still best to use though. All this helps make the most of AM3, Triple is still a net gain no matter what, but it's less of a net gain than other options if you have am3 up. I did that on the spreadsheet and got another nearly 200 dps out of am3. You can also demerit triple attack and put it into reduced recast for TA or SA too, which would show gains if you are skillchaining. Relic weapons are much cheaper and easier to obtain, if SE makes a Relic beat out either empy or mythic in dps in anything but a niche situation they did something terribly wrong.

This puts you at Dw +12 without using dw cape, assuming 550 gift. In the situation you described where you are functioning with haste1+MG you need +21.

general for thf wondering on dw options:
Some items depend on availibilty, kirin belt is awesome but not all groups can kill him. Eabani earring can be a pain if your server desn't kill that domain invasion often. There are several other dw belts availible however that are relatively easy to get.

Also depending on how good your 2nd Taming Sari is, the Dw5 Shijo might actually be one of your best improvements placed in the offhand slot.

Floral hands are also an option, but even at perfect aug floral, adhemar(or ta4 herc) to floral is a bigger loss than the above options.

Adhemar body 5 + kirin belt 7 + eabani 4 + supponami 5 = 21
Depending on what you replace in this calc other dw belt are +5 or 6, shijo 5, floral 5.
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The question here is wether stp-10 dw+10 at the cape slot is better than the loss of switching one of the above options. Also it can open up Herculean body ta4 as an option. The issue here honestly is wether its worth doing for such a niche pt setup haste situation. And also items like grunfeld as opposed to wid0ndbuffet+1 at the waist slot make that a much less apealing slot to avoid losing for dw.
The way i see it if you have availibilty to better gear eabani/reiko it's not worth it. The dw cape for thf even in this situation would be temprary until better overall options are feasable.
Also I would suggest flipping the green earrings to suppo + something else in the line of brutal/cessance/dignitary ect. 1dw short + stats from one of those earrings is better than 1dw over.

You should always be haste capped but there's always ppl that for some reason think casting haste is too much a pain. What Boshi said is right about the belt and earrings. The thing is, delay cap is amazing to have. But getting it through DW instead of haste means you face a penalty to the amount of TP you get per hit, where as with haste you don't. Haste is always the better option and frees you up to put more multihit/STP/crit/acc and attack in your gear instead.

https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Attack_speed

THF gets 30% DW with gifts.
(1 - 30% Dual Wield)×(1024 - 256 Equipment Haste - 448 Magic Haste) = 224
224 / 1024 = .21875 so you aren't yet to the delay cap of 80% (1 - .21875 = .78125) unless you add more DW with haste from gear. What it comes out to is you need 36 DW on THF with haste cap. So if you have gifts that's 6 DW which means all you need is the HQ Adhemar jacket and you're done on DW. If you don't have gifts, you need 11 DW. So that jacket + 5 more somewhere else. If you don't have haste cap, because it's multiplicative instead of additive you have to start literally throwing DW at it and not only do you hit for less but you get less and less better tp set gear:

Haste II (307/1024) + gear haste: (1024 - 256 - 307) = 461, 204.8 is the target here. So
461 * X = 204.8
X = 204.8 / 461 = .44425
DW needed is 1 - .44425 = 56 DW, 25-30 in traits.
Haste II DW needed: 26 DW with gifts 31 DW needed without gifts

Now me and others have mathed this out before so here is what they are:

And technically if a dnc is giving haste samba in the party there's even another level past "caphaste" because that is job ability haste. If they merit'd it:
(1 - 30% Dual Wield)×(1024 - 256 Equipment Haste - 448 Magic Haste -101 Job Ability Haste) = 153.3 which means you're actually losing TP per hit for no benefit, with no DW equipped at all.

And if they didnt merit it:
(1 - 30% Dual Wield)×(1024 - 256 Equipment Haste - 448 Magic Haste -50 Job Ability Haste) = 189, which is less than 204.8 so you're still losing tp per hit and not attacking faster for it. So have any DNC you with do a different samba if you are already haste capped because as they know well you can't remove DW traits (and trust me they'd like to).

You're wasting your time.

The game has changed. You should always be walking around with max haste 95% of the time if you're going to melee something seriously. There are too many ways to cap haste, most of which you can get even from trusts. There's no point accumulating that much dual wield anymore.

Meh, I still have mine from doing skirmish, with Taeon augs. I mostly agree, but theres situations you don't have trusts and don't have haste cap either. I agree avoid them like the plague but they exist. Still, it is very low priority on my herc set stuff, and mostly just still use that taeon if I need that much. Not sure if you meant me or melphina, but we should answer questions, knowledge is a good thing.

I really really really wish we had a BRD trust that always used Marches. Can't stand Ulmia sometimes.

I'm not speaking to anyone specific. I'm addressing the notion that there's still more than a miniscule amount of worth in having a DW set. There's simply not. We're not pounding on salvage or dynamis mobs, while true solo, as quickly as we can anymore. There's more worth in preventing a new or returning THF from coming into this thread and being misled into thinking there is.

While no one will argue against knowledge being a good thing, I would argue that utilization of that knowledge and a well rounded view of the overall picture should be included in the discussion.

Hypothetically speaking, I can speak at length about maximizing attack in every slot to increase Rudra damage, and that discussion would have some worth, but when you take the larger picture into consideration: stat mods, WSDMG, Crit Damage, etc; real worth is diminished greatly.


I know it's a little bit of a waste, but you can always pop both BRD trusts.

And then you end up with double Paeon and double ballad \o/ :D

With that given set what would be the loss/gain of dps if you used chiner's +1 instead of windbuffet +1?

Chiner's +1 is not very good

Wouldn't Hetairoi also not be good, then?

Maybe not if you could pair a Windbuffet Ring +1 with that Epona's, but there's no such thing.

What is the hierarchy of daggers now? I have a 99 Mandau II but keep being told it sucks and taking it to its final form is a waste of time. I've came back to game a few weeks ago and I'm looking at a skinflayer or taming sari. Just wanted some opinions.

My current ranking is:

1) Aeonic - Best mainhand dagger in (almost) all situations.

2) Vajra - 2nd best mainhand

3) Twashtar - 3rd best mainhand (best in highest of acc situations) and best offhand.

4) Taming Sari

5) Skinflayer

6) Mandau 119-3

And I only have Twash/Mandau myself.

If you already have it after glowed might as well finish it off with the 301 ploutons, that's what? 3 million-ish, easy peasy for a thf. Then I say just use that until you make a mythic. Then make the empy for offhand.