For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

Yeah, drink few beers and turn on some good relaxing music while you farm. That should make it easier :)

EDIT: On serious note.. Farm Amber light (dont get any ruby or azure) on worms and Bhumi and AoE mobs on the wat from one NM to another. With some luck you will get some KIs from big gold chests. With even bigger luck you wont get many duplicates of KIs you already have.

A buddy and I farmed 100 chloris buds over the course of a weekend and we got so many glavoid pops in the process I ended up making twash as well. And I assure you that drinking was involved. And now that sob wants to do it again to make veres. (We both made the scythe the first time.)

BLU aoe cleave is by far the best way I’ve found to make an empyrean. I do not bother even popping NMs for KIs. Key is to have a buddy or and alt or two on hand to take any duplicate KIs.

If you only cleave I doubt it will be the fastest in Tahrongi. There is too many KIs and I once tried this and couldnt get last needed KI for 2h of cleaving. I got like 20 duplicates of each KI I got already, but never saw the last one I needed and its not like it cant drop, because it can (it dropped on other runs), but its just too much lucky based. Since then I just go do NMs, but I first cap amber and then AoE everything I can on the way from one NM spot to another.

it's still good and (maybe) worth making if you play thf a lot. especially if you solo or low man. mandalic sc's with mordant rime and savage blade and has the attack bonus as well. when you're capped buffs rudra with twashtar and cento will still deal something like 30% more per ws than mandalic with a r15 vajra but if you can make use of the extra sc damage or attack buffs then vajra becomes the best weapon to use on thf imo

I agree with you about not wanting to trust the luck but Cleaving really is much faster than targeting NMs individually, especially for Chloris/Glavoid. The best by far is if you have a buddy working with you; One of you Cleaves while the other closes up any missing KI Gaps. Very helpful when a box gets you a free KI that would otherwise be on a Timed Spawn because it just sucks to have to wait for the thing. Also you sometimes get lucky and just get a full sweep right away which is awesome.

Yeah mixing is best and ita what I meant in my laat post, but im talking for aolo. Its obviously better if you have people/mules to help you, but thats true for any farming tactic. Imo if you are solo you should just target NMs and cleave on the way between camps or cleave for 10 minutes, then run to NMs you are missing. When farming solo, you will get tons of duplicates while cleaving

ya i definitely noticed the drop rate for gold chest ki's is not even. some i saw all the time, and others not at all. i was just hoping i wouldnt have to do all those darned NMs lol. i mean, i just made a calad with isgebind being the last NM, so.. ya. it's totally different this time. xD

There has to be a better way to do this than rummaging through 223 pages looking for up to date gear sets.

There is, the bg guide

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

The only thing it's really missing is why/when/how to use which weapons, and that's of constant contention. (and lacks Odr Earring in an evis set, it should be universally better than a moonshade)

Excellent, thank you. Do you still consider most of those sets fairly accurate for non-acc TP, WS, etc.? For example I'm trying to build a Rudra's set, and most items I've picked up so far seem to move fairly quickly on the AH. The belt, however, doesn't move too fast, leading me to think that perhaps there's something better.

Referring to Artful Belt +1.

Appreciate it!

The no defense tp set is up to date, except for Gere Ring over epona's (It's like 1 dps difference)

The belt... the price came down considerably since last time I cared to look. Grunfeld chiners+1 wanion they're all minimal differences if you don't want to spend 4m on artful+1

Kentarch belt+1 could possibly take over as BiS tomorrow though, so there's that, slapping +10 dex on it wouldn't be unexpected at all

Would also note that with the introduction of Maligance gear thf has much better dt sets and in my opinion makes vajra more viable.

Am3 + stp + dt/meva is yummy for thf.

I confirm that as far as Evisceration is concerned, Odr earring outperforms Moonshade, unsurprisingly.

For the weapons there's a discussion that's still ongoing, you can check the previous pages.
There's lots of different points of view and the best combination of MH and OH is gonna depend on many factors.
I'll try to sum up the main point that have been discussed:

1) While there are better OH options for pure DPS, Perfect Taming Sari (secondarily Augmented Sandung too) grant a lot of freedom in the other equipment slots if you wanna bind yourself in TH8 gear. With such an option OH you only need Relic+3 hands and you're free to use whatever you want in the other slots. Furthermore, while Perf Sari is not the best as I already said, it's not a bad option per sé, not at all. I wouldn't go as far as to suggest to farm one on purpose (good luck with that...) but if you already own one, consider this possibility

2) The max DPS option for THF atm is R15 Twashtar MH and Centovente OH. This is by far the best combination for damage, even though if the "real" difference between this option and what comes next is not as large as the spreadsheet may suggest at first. Also, it's not viable in every possible scenario, sometimes the acc requirements of Centovente demand too many sacrifices in the other slots.

3) R15 Twashtar MH / Tauret OH is probably the next best option, ahead of R15 Aeneas MH / Twashtar OH. Speaking of which the difference between R0 and R15 Aeneas is not really that noticeable

4) Tauret MH / Twashtar OH is another really good option, when your buffs aren't capped it arguably jumps ahead and very close of R15 Twas/Centovente combination. With this setup you spam Evisceration and use Rudra when you have excess TP and/or want to stack it with SA/TA. If you don't have Twashtar then Shijo and perf Taming Sari are excellent options too.

5) Vajra MH hasn't been thoroughfully tested but it's a really nice option, especially in some specific scenarios and/or when you can make use of AM3 without too many sacrifices. Last but not least, it's possibly the best option when for whatever reason you need to use Mandalic Stab for Fusion properties. (With R15 Vajra Mandalic Stab is a really, really strong single hit WS, very similar to Rudra in terms of potential damage output)

This one also benefits when you are doing something where you can't keep up or don't want aftermaths up. Obviously for the random fight where you specifically need crits to break weapons or something it is especially great.

every piece of relic +3 is 25mil+ on asura, guess it's a really popular job to gear.

oh also, tauret/shijo is comparitively much easier to gear for to use evis over rudra as a new thf. can still do respectable damage while working on the rest of your gear.

25mil++

Vajra is also better if you mainly focus on SA and TA wsing to close SC or something. Vajra/Twashtar SA or TA Rudra is stronger than Twashtar/whatever SA or TA Rudra (assuming same effective TP of course)

I have them all r15. Im not a number cruncher. But I use vaj/twash and twash/tauret as my two combos. They both work very nicely.

Stupid question but is this a typo or can you use Twash in both hands if one is augmented and one is not?

Typo, was meant to be Tauret OH.
Fixed it above, sorry.

Tauret MH / Tauret OH would indeed be an incredibly powerful combination! But alas it's not possible to achieve it lol.

So I kinda NAILED that one. Like, exact.

Kentarch belt +1
str+10
dex+10

BiS Rudra

Well, you always try to nail like a hundred things each update.

Even a broken clock can be accurate two times a day you know?

Nah the only one I tried to guess preupdate was the belt (and it was just a random off the cuff remark, had dude not asked about Artful+1 Wouldn't even have thought about it)

BiS tie for Mug (regal and ilabrat)
cacoethic ring +1
DEX+10
AGI+10

So it looks like the best armor upgrades in Sheol B are Kentarch Belt +1 and Cacoethic Ring +1. Another interesting piece is Jute boots +1, not for the dex/agi and all attributes but the evasion, magic evasion and movement speed combo. Jute boots +1 is ideal for pulling and kiting large groups of things. So that puts the armor list at

---------Armor List------------
Kentarch Belt +1 - BiS Rudra's Storm belt, no questions asked
Cacoethic Ring +1 -- BiS Mug ring (we can HP drain close to 1,000 HP now with 20/20 job points in the category)
Jute Boots +1 -- Best 18% movement speed feet for kiting/pulling


As for the weapons, I'm highly disappointed that the Jugo Kukri +1 didn't get anything that would make it competitive offensively. But the Anathema harpe +1 isn't bad and the Ternion Dagger +1 looks even better.

Anathema Harpe +1 -- 134 Damage, 201 delay, 8 strength, 26 attack, 40 accuracy, 10% critical hit rate, 3% Double attack (Unity rank is 1-5 sTP)

Ternion Dagger +1 -- Damage 117, Delay 175, 67 accuracy, triple attack +4%, weaponskill damage + 5% (unity rank is 10-15 agility)

Both daggers have a base dagger skill rating of 228 because they're lower Ilvl options, but the increase of 40 accuracy more than makes up for the difference. Based off the difference in Ternion's delay versus perfect taming sari, my preliminary numbers say that Twashter mainhand/ ternion dagger +1 offhand actually outperforms Twashter/Perfect taming sari combo for offensive power. It's early morning though and I don't discredit that I may not be awake enough yet to not have overlooked something. Can anyone else run some numbers on the Twashter/ternion +1 versus Twashter/Perfect taming sari combo?

Also doies anyone have any thoughts on Tauret Mainhand with Anatahema Harpe +1 offhand. The harpe is clearly more synergistic with Tauret than Twashter, but I won't have any time to analyze it for a while.

Im not a number cruncher. But im suprised at the results of twash/tauret...

How is 50 DEX not synergistic with Tauret? Evisceration has 50% dex mod and dDEX can actually gives more than 10% crit rate.

EDIT: Nvm I missed your point. That being said what I wrote is still valid in regards to off hand for Tauret. Twashtar should imo easily win.

I didn't run any numbers against the Twashter/Tauret combo, but the consensus is that Twashter/Tauret versus Twashter/Perfect taming is so close the actual performance difference is within a single percentile difference or two. So if the new ternion +1 outperforms perfect sari offhand it should also outperform tauret offhand by extension.

Now as for the analysis: The reason the new ternion dagger +1 looks so competitive is because it has a much lower delay than sari. The difference between Ternion +1 and sari boils down to two factors. One is the secondary stats versus WSD, and the second is the delay.

Perfect Sari has 22 strength, 22 dex, 20 accuracy, 20 attack, 3% Triple attack rate

Ternion Dagger +1 has 4% Triple attack rate and 5% WSD, and it also wins in accuracy now.

Ternion +1 has 175 delay whereas Perfect Sari has 211 delay


Now as far as daggers go, 211 delay is massive. Taming sari is one of the slowest daggers in the game, but it's viable because it has a huge chunk of stats and a solid damage/delay ratio. Ternion +1 has an even stronger damage/delay ratio now and a 5 % WSD modifier is also comparable to the chunk of stats that taming sari has on it, although I think the secondary stat factors still slightly favor taming sari. 1% WSD is worth approximately 4-5 dex in most cases, but the cutoff is contingent on your actual gear level. That's a ballpark estimate there, but because of the strength sari should still have an edge here. However, ternion +1 has 4% triple attack to sari's 3%, and that 1% extra triple attack rate may be enough to wash out the strength factor.

But as for speed differential, the ternion +1 is miles ahead of sari and that's where ternion pulls ahead in my early estimates. The secondary stat chunk still favors sari slightly, but it's a marginal difference. However, Ternion +1's 170 delay versus sari's 211 puts Ternion +1's white damage and tp gain ahead of sari's, and I think it's enough to overcome the secondary stat difference and put ternion in the lead.

Like I said, I could be wrong. This isn't an easy determination and perfect taming may still be ahead of ternion +1 (but if it is it's not by a lot). I'm asking some other people to run some numbers and compare the two because like I said, it's early morning and I suck at doing this kind of stuff before lunch time (I am not a morning person at all) so I don't discredit that I may be off here.

I think you are right about Ternion vs Sari, but Sari as offhand is mainly used to have TH8 with Relic+3 gloves. In 90%+ of game if you dont need Sari for that, you would use Centovente with Twashtar and if you cant use Centovente because of accuracy issue, then you still have Tauret/Twashtar or Vajra/Twashtar, which imo both should be better than Twashtar without Cento especially if you are also not attack capped, which probably is very possible if you have accuracy problems with Cento.

It's probably the same concept as PLD right now. The shield changes will moreso affect non REMA.

I think having Vajra+Twash already as options make the dagger changes less potent?

I agree with you. I was hoping for something a bit more game shaking with the weapons, but I suppose that's a bit too much to ask for with this level of content. I was just curious to see how ternion +1 measured up against Sari. I knew Twash/Centovente's position wouldn't be affected by the new augs, and your point about sari's utility is spot on. It's nice to see another dagger in the mix though.

Also I'm not surprised with your assessment on the Anathema Harpe +1. Historically the harpe line of daggers has always been second rate ever since the first iterations came out in the 75 era. They always have a really high delay and attempt to throw in a stat bonus to make up for it, but it's never enough for them to outpace some other option that's better for the time. It's a decent offhand for tauret users though who don't own and don't want to go through the hoops of building twashter. I think it may actually be better than Tauret/taming or Tauret/shijo, or at the very least on par with them. It's never going to be ideal, but it's a strong option for people who aren't maining thief and want something for their tauret/XXX builds. And I like seeing more good options added to the lower to mid tiers of gear sets because it pushes the job's floor higher, even if it doesn't raise the celing any.