For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

I mean, you should have a Centovente anyway for specific content like Eyrinys or however you spell it. I don't buy that you can literally make Centovente work just by swapping 1 piece (Legs) in your TP set. For anything endgame you're looking at baseline 1200 acc to make your checks work, so 1077 is only 123 (-61% hitrate) too low.

1200 base accuracy without food is only needed for few things in end game, like wave 3 fomors. For almost everything else you don't need that much when you do it with proper buffs. AFAIK Even something like Albumen requires only like 1300 acc with food and vorseals (assuming you are getting SV honor and 2x madrigal) and with acc swaps I mentioned, you are easily above 1300 in Escha/Reisen with sushi.

So yeah Twashtar/Centovente might not be viable for wave 3 fomors (it is viable for wave 3 boss tho, because 1hr buffs/debuffs) but it's viable for almost everythign else and deifnitely viable for almost anything you do solo on THF.

Omen bosses need at least 1200, closer to 1300 pre brd buffs unless you sacrifice a roll or a bubble for hunter's/precision if you want to have a respectable hit rate.

I'd say ~1/2 of ambuscades need similar amounts to get good hitrates as well. So my question is, is does a 50-60% hit rate on a centovente overcome a 95% hitrate on a Twash or Sari in just WS damage? I have yet to see anything convincing to say so.

So doing some Neaks. Setup is:

Amchuchu
Ulmia (March x2)
King of hearts (Haste 2, Dia III)
THF/RUN
WHM/SCH (Boost-DEX)
GEO/RDM (Vex/Frailty, distract)

First Aeneas/Twash: 4079 DPS
First Twash/Raetic+1: 4416 DPS (whiffed 2nd TA because Amchuchu moved)

3rd test had him use Sleepga, then Breakga, then Discordant Note, then Voidsong...and didn't count for ***. And I have a terrible headache so I'm going to bed. I'll try to test more tomorrow, and maybe see if I can get a COR+BRD so I'm fully buffed.

Each of those tests were fairly clean and only real difference was missing the TA on the Twash/Raetic, but follows my standards I said above, the Twash/Raetic had 3800~ DPS without SC damage, where Aeneas/Twash was 3200 DPS without SC damage, so at least in Escha, Raetic+1 with the Twash is showing superior, can't figure out what a decent mob might be otherwise, maybe Hidhaegg? Hmm...

Before buffs you have ~1230+ accuracy with relic+3 head, regal ring and sublime sushi (can push it to ~1240+ with Chirch Ring +1). I have yet to see anything convincing that's not enough for omen bosses.

Says "before buffs":

Lists +100 accuracy buff

Edit: I did originally say pre brd buffs, I meant pre buffs in general though.

I don't think tests like those are a viable alternative to actually mathing it out. There are too many variables that could change from battle to battle that would alter your conclusions without you knowing about it. They would be more accurate if you were to do several dozen similar tests and take the average, but that would only narrow down the accuracy of those tests, rather than giving you precise results.

We know how damage is calculated in this game. We can just use that instead.

@SimonSes
You're shifting around gear, losing out on StoreTP/DA/TA and popping sushi, then also requiring buffs in order to use a lv99 dagger in the ilvl119 era. It's creative, I'll give you that, but I can't give much else.

R15 twash/ tp bonus is better..

Get with the times mate

In a way I agree with you, and in a way I think mathing it out is just as poor a test. Mathing it out often assumes perfect usage, which is why my arguments so far have been "when things aren't perfect..." because anything other than ideal TP usage favors Twash mainhand, and it's pretty common to not have ideal TP usage in a lot of fights.

You dont unless you use attack songs. Which isnt necessary.

HM/march/2 madrigal/fury/frailty/chaos/sam/dia4/ws def- should be standard buff for ilv 135+ content.

Gonna have to add to this, especially in THF’s case. There are lots of times where we have to hold TP for an upcoming SA/TA as well as general hate control because THF pulls hate FAST if allowed to run wild. And the simple truth is that THF is very squishy compared to other DDs so if we don’t yield, we may very likely kiss the floor so this job in particular is very touch and go.

In my opinion, this one won’t be quite as simple to math.

then you are simply wrong because you dont need that much before food for Omen bosses.



Where exactly I lose sTP/DA/TA etc. before accuracy swaps? But tbh, I won't really try to convince you for this combo, because I don't really care what you play. I can only say try it or math it out.

But if you start calculating it, please do it properly. Your calculations for Aeneas vs Twahstar with 119ilvl offhand is simply which one will WS for more, but you completely ignored white damage, which is a huge mistake.

With Twashtar/Taming you can have 56% triple attack (more with food), 30% crit rate, +39% critical hit damage and +41% triple attack damage. So with capped pdif avg hit with Twashtar is ~767. You will probably hit at least like 5 times with Twashtar between WS. With AM3 up, that's almost 3850 more white damage. 3850 damage in one TP/WS cycle is not something you can ignore.
Same as you can't ignore 42 more dex on Twashtar/Taming (which significantly beats 18 more base damage on Aeneas). Lastly you can ignore offhand and multihit fTP . Even if main hit fTP is so significant, offhand and multhit fTP is not nothing (especially for non SA/TA Rudra's).

According to the math, which I understand we hold different levels of value in, Aeneas should still come out on top even when things aren't perfect. It's the other way around actually. Certain factors have to be perfect in order for Twashtar to come out on top. Those conditions being, TP has to be around 2250+.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around where this extra damage would come from that would put Twashtar over Aeneas. Since it was claimed that Twashtar put out better rudra numbers, I showed that the math disagrees with that. If the math is wrong, then the way we've been calculating damage all this time is wrong, which I don't think is the case.

Where else could this damage come from? Aftermath bonus is 30% chance at double damage, or a 15% boost to tp damage. Things like that and the 10% boost to the offhand hit add up for sure, but 25-40% boost to rudra from aeneas is pretty huge to overcome.

Next time you do a couple of your tests, do you mind also taking note of WS frequency? I'm not familiar with exactly how the raetic+1 works. Maybe the extra DPS you're observing is coming from that?




Between asking me to elaborate on my statements and spilling your numbers immediately after, it feels like you care alot, to be honest.

But hey, if you don't care, then I shouldn't either.

Read again please.
I won't convince you to Centovente build.
Numbers I gave where for regular ilvl 119 build.

I don't think I will. I've humored you more than I should have already.

Actually it's 30% chance for triple damage, not double. And that's a level 1 aftermath. A level 3 aftermath has a 50% triple damage proc. Additionally, all empyrean aftermath levels grant an additional 5% critical hit rate during the melee phase, and triple damage melee crits aren't something you can just write off in your calculations. A level 3 Twashter aftermath can put out significant white damage between weaponskills because of this, especially when you're saving up for a stacked rudra's. I'm not going to argue which setup is more ideal, but I will say that if you're going to do maths at least use the proper figures when doing so.

Edit: My bad on the critical hit rate thing. I had forgotten that was a party aura.

no they don't. that is an effect that only applies to party members and it's overwritten by any level of their own aftermath.

like it was mentioned above, it's triple damage not double. and even if it were double, it'd be 30% not 15%.

edit: unless you consider offhand, then yeah 15%

In addition to what's already been said in the Twashtar vs Aeneas mainhand discussion I have something more to add. While it's true that the tp bonus from aeneas makes unstacked rudra's a lot stronger for that dagger than twashtar's, I think it's worth noting that a properly built evisceration setup may be the better rout to go for the twashter user for solo weaponskills. There hasn't been much recent discussion on evisceration around here, but when evisceration was buffed in the December 2014 patch it became a monster of a solo weaponskill, and since then there has been enough gear released to support it that it may be worth looking at. I think this is an example of a pretty optimized evisceration set

ItemSet 348286

The toutoutis has 10% critical hit rate instead of weaponskill damage in this set.


The meat and potatoes of Ihina's argument is that aeneas produces much stronger unstacked rudra's than twashtar, and the difference is enough to pull it ahead. But if Twashter's unstacked evisceration are stronger than its unstacked rudra's, then that swings things back around again somewhat. So my question is this. How would this twashtar evsiceration setup fare against the optimized twashtar rudra's set for unstacked weaponskills. I've tried to run some quick numbers but it's almost midnight and I have to be up for work early tomorrow and I did the math wrong so I'll have to come back to it tomorrow. I'm going to ask someone else to try mathing it out for now.... if they wouldn't mind that is.

EDIT: For reference, I initially forgot to add the 6% critical hit rate from the 3 piece adhemar HQ set bonus, but I wouldn't be surprised if I missed something else too in my haste.

I've got ~18518 on unstacked Evisceration vs Kouryu with that set. Not accounting for uncapped fSTR, though.

And what kind of numbers do you have in your ideal unstacked rudra's setup for twashter mainhand against Kouryu Veikur? I'm curious how that 18.5K figure stacks up against a rudra's build when tp values are closer to the 1300 - 1500 range. Is it higher or lower?

My actual evisceration set only differs from the one I listed by the regal and sherida, and sherida I can nab pretty easily. I just haven't done many omen boss runs and whenever I did I either didn't see the craver or it dropped one of the other 2 accessories instead. From my field testing I've gotten more consistent results with my eviscerations than I do with my rudra's when I'm not stacking weaponskills, but I haven't actually compiled any hard data so I'm basing that all just off what I see. But from my experience, without the aenea's tp bonus evsiecration is the stronger solo weaponskill for me. That might change when I get it to rank 15, but I'm doubtful. If I'm not misinterpreting the numbers that's a relevant point for the discussion.

20386, @1000 TP, using LadyofHonors set 2 pages back.

Higher DEX WSC is probably the big kicker here.

Fair enough. The two are pretty close and that also accounts for the rank 15 upgrade which I'm not seeing yet, but I can't argue with it. If rudra's is still stronger then that's that.


Yeah, evisceration actually has a higher fTP across all hits than rudra's does when you weaponskill closer to the 1000 mark, but the difference of 50% vs 80% dex is pretty huge with all the stat vomit we've seen. I thought the roughly 60% critical hit rate from that set coupled with the critical damage bonuses we get would be enough to push evisceration over the top. I guess I was mistaken.

EDIT: Accounting for what Simonsays added below and putting it in the same post to keep thing in one place.



This is a good point actually. Most of my field observations aren't going off attack capped situations. That makes sense as well. Since we're doing maths based off ideal buff situations that alters things a lot. For less optimized setups and solo putzing aroud though I'd go with an evisceration setup. That doesn't really factor into the current discussion as much, but still worth keeping note. Not ALL content you do is going to be end game raiding with max support.

If you are not attack capped, crit on Evisceration has bigger impact and thats why you might see even better result with it over rudra.

Yes, in my early days of Dynamis before I got to the buff stacking of attack, my evisceration was actually doing better than my unstacked Rudra's at times, because of the crit effect. But these days knowing the content I bring multiple sources of attack so Rudra's runs away with it.

As for the Aeneas vs Twashtar discussion, if you're TPing at low TP regularly, sure, go ahead, use Aeneas, I know I should be switching back to it for those fights. But anytime I'm going to see TP overflow, which is often, I now like utilizing AM3 and the much higher max damage boost from a Twashtar Rudra.

And I think our max damage is from this Twashtar. Especially with this Raetic+1 offhand. Been having my BRD give me a Ballad over a madrigal and my GEO refreshing me and it's wonderful. According to this comment on the Raetic Algol+1:


I have 431 MP in my general TP set, as for whatever reason our Relic hat and AF body have +MP. This means 5% MP is 21MP, meaning that until my MP is drained, I'm actually getting STP+10 if I don't get extra attack rounds. Granted, it drains quickly, but it's a great boon to start. I'm interested in playing around with some different subjobs going forward. Namely /BLU for Cocoon if I want to try tanking, /DRK for an extra PDL and some more attack, and trying to get a DNC to stick around me and use Aspir Samba II. But I'm also working on getting my tribox to be a RDM healer, and so Refresh III may soon be what I utilize in my playing around.

If you're only getting 10stp from raetic for the 10 seconds it takes to run out of mp may as well just use Aeneas offhand

You won't get the extra swing but youll get the full 10stp for more than 10 seconds

the store tp also only applies to the first hit of the raetic weapon's attacks, not every single hit.

That's fine, assuming multi-hits are happening on occasion, I'll need to better focus to see if battlemod shows me 7-8's in any regularity to see, though that'll be really hard to notice. Looking at my last Ambu I did have a 7 attack round, but it's nigh impossible to tell when I'm getting 5-6 hit rounds because of DA/TA procs and when is a raetic proc. Thinking it's more of a zerg weapon unless I can build around it with securing refresh/ballad/aspir samba. Though it still adds more than Aeneas offhand in almost all situations because of the added HP/DT/ACC.

I think I might start attempting Hidhaegg as a DPS test and see if that may be a workable test for daggers. If it doesn't have any mechanics ruining a test, may get people to fill out the alliance for longer tests and see how it goes. Though still want to find an Escha NM to test, since Refresh vorseal may give Raetic a really solid boost in there. Dynamis and Omen probably still ideal for taming offhand.

@Austar

Why don't you share the TP gain calculator in our PM here? I think it's incredibly useful to compare the TP gain of raetic in MP set v.s normal weapon in none MP set.

@LoH

Austar has a calculator written in Python that automatically calculates TP gain per round for raetic based on MP. Its also possible to compare tp speed with raetic and without.

Though I'm not sure if I should be the one sharing it here lol. But I think it's pretty useful for raetic builds discussion.

so let me get this straight. now that I'm finally about to get work on Anus dagger done its no longer the main option for main hand?

I should just go ahead and R15 my twatwasher?