For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

not likely.

How does someone even comes up with the idea that too much of a stat hurts stuff related to that stat?
Isn't that like saying that equipping too much attack above the att cap is actually gonna lower your damage x hit?
Is there even something in this game that works like that?

I'm very skeptic about it and works honestly suggest to refrain from spreading such rumours.
Unless I'm completely wrong abs there's some evidence showing this?

SE says the opposite, actually. the video of his is just a bunch of SA and TA procs.


https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/27974-TH-Procing?p=377001#post377001

The precedent exists. (too much Dual Wield too much Martial Arts)

But, it's silly to think that:
If @ TH 11 it's better to wear TH 10 specifically, than TH 20, TH 11 or TH 8

I put nothing past Square devs... it COULD sway percentages. I wouldn't be shocked just that it's unlikely. Going below 8 does lower the rate.

I personally go the route of wearing lots of crit-hit rate gear (approximately +60% in gear with TH+5 in gear) and I've anecdotally, gotten:

Procs TH9-11 in 11 seconds.
Procs TH9-14 in 120 seconds.

I haven't tried what Austar is suggesting which is: wear TH8, proc TH9, wear TH9, proc TH10, wear TH10 ...etc etc.

I'm not suggesting that at all. SE doesn't outright say wearing max TH is detrimental, just going under is.

The question that no1 has tested is wether going past 8 matters.

Feelings or believing don't matter.

There is a detriment in going max th+ because those slots can be used for critical hit rate or multiattack/dualwield.

Until there is some evidence going past 8 matters. The goal would be to make a tp set that is th+5 with as much Critical Hit rate as possible.


ItemSet 375574
best option to prob toss in eabani for DW8 total.
+70% max.

ItemSet 375575
max TH+ set without ring: +14 (+20 with daggers)
head: th2 for cr-10%
body: th2 for cr-6% (body has 3% on base)
hands: th4 for cr-6%
waist: th1 for cr-4% (and dw4 pretty relevant)
legs: th2 for cr-8%
feet: th3 for cr-5%

If again going past th8 doesn't matter getting a pair of TH2 herc feet prob useful cause they're solid with the base ta2.
until empy+3 I guess

Going past 8 adds a little to the drop rates. There is a table near the bottom of the SE reply.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/56550-Development-Q-A-March-2020?p=624996&viewfull=1#post624996

It's not really the same.
Too much DW/Martial doesn't hurt those same stats, but it hurts dps because of the tp/delay calculations.

Here someone is saying (based on what, exactely?) that too much TH hurts your TH+ proc.
How do you even come up with an idea like this? Do you just wake up one day and start believing that?
Tomorrow I can wake up and say that I think using Frailty together with Languor on the same target will make the enemy immune to TH which will stay capped at TH0?
I mean you can't go around and make baseless claims like that, can you? >____>



@Boshi
SE gave us official drop rate % boost for all TH up to TH14, did they not?
I mean if you don't believe SE it's another story of course, but they gave us those numbers and if we are to believe them I'd say TH has more importance than we gave it credit for, for content where it actually works, of course.

What we know is that there's something more about TH level up procs.
We know the level up rate is ~6% chance per melee hit, as long as your TH level is as high as the current level applied to the target. The lower you go, the lower that number goes down.
This has been tested (small tests, not conclusive but good enough) for TH up to TH8 thanks to /THF, Feint, Bounty Shot and other means.

This is how it works up to TH9 and it's pretty widely accepted by the community afaik.
What's unknown is: what happens above that?
In theory TH8 is the "cap" that you can apply instantly on a target, meaning that equipping more TH than that, won't allow you to instantly apply an effect higher than TH8.
But does this limitation apply to the level up proc system as well?
Some tests (unconclusive, alas) seemed to hint that raising your TH slightly raises your chances of getting a level up proc.
Which makes sense, basically the same rule that applies for all the levels up to TH8, also applies past that. It makes more sense if you ask me, and the TH8 is "just" a limitation for the initial hit, not for the level up proc system.


The culprit that skews the data we gathered so far imho is another.
We know for instance that if you hit for 0 damage, you won't be able to get a level up proc.
I think there are similar limitations at play here.
Probably multihit attacks and offhand hits won't be able to proc level up, meaning that -likely- only main hit base hits are able to proc the level up.
So for a more relevant test, you would need to remove your offhand, remove all your multiattck gear (sadly you can't remove the TA from traits, which will make the gathered data a bit hard to handle) and then measure the rate.



I'm pretty confident that we would find out that TH above TH8 does indeed help with getting TH level up procs more frequently in theory.
In reality it won't be a big help because:
1) You're gonna have lotsa MA and OH hits, which won't proc
2) The level up rate is still very low (~6% under the best condition, for a single hit out of each of your attack rounds)
3) In the time it would take you to get TH up to TH14, you can probably kill the same NM 3 times with TH9, and three TH9 kills will probably produce a better overall drop rate than one TH14 kill.


So tl;dr imho yes, additional TH above TH8 probably does help with the level up rate, but because of what we said the increase is very minimal and highly unpractical, so don't bother with it.

Thats not always the case. Prime example is volte farming. You cant just reenter dynamis right away.

For me personally, it took ~30 consecutive runs of Dyna-Windy to farm the volte body. I managed ~6-7 runs where I got TH14 on the wave 2 boss and got nothing noteworthy. If you were just going by the treasure pool, sometimes I got an extra drop slot and sometimes I didn't. It took anywhere from 5 minutes to 40 minutes to get TH14 on the wave 2 boss and on the 30th run, it dropped and was in the 2nd slot (no extra drop slot, amazingly). So yes, I agree with you that TH12-14 does matter when farming volte pieces.

Volte Dynamis is quite a good example indeed.
Not denyin that, I'm sure there are others. I said "probably" in my previous post, not "absolutely".

Granted even for Dyna Volte it sorta depends if you're multibox solo farming (i.e. farming just for yourself) or if you're with other people.
Extremely raising the kill time of the Red Eyes (TH procs like there's no tomorrow) NMs would make for a different type of run, which would be more efficient for Volte Farming, but you would probably end up with less time to do anything else.

A lot of people seem to favor "mixed" runs that are optimized in nothing but give you a bit of everything. In those runs you won't see TH go above TH10 often I'm afraid.



Personal, irrelevant info:
been doing Divergence since release 2 times a week (aside from small xmas/summer breaks for holidays) and I still haven't seen a pair of Volte Legs from bastok.
Someone please do a good luck dance for your poor, unlucky Galka Sechs.

@Boshi I just wanted to say that Melphina did try to test TH8+ a while back, but due to various misconceptions and other things I think she stopped. She had provided a bit of data though at one point.

https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/36654/for-the-shinies-a-guide-for-thief/210/#3464221

Been running through all W2 Windy NMs for Volte farming for a while now, mainly without any TH more than TH4 (no THF). Drop rate for the non-body pieces seems to be around 60~70% chance of going to see any Volte at all in any given run of killing the 11 Red Eye NMs.

Was wondering if anyone running with THF consistently doing similar in Windy or other zones has noticed a markedly higher drop rate?

My feeling is despite what SE said a while back about it increasing "rare drop" appearance this still only applies to specific treasure slots being loaded. For Dynamis that would be the synth mats, extra cards, extra heroism, or offerings on the W2 bosses.

Edit: FWIW we saw our first body on our 13th run, so 1/26 on body drops from Fii Pexu the Eternal thus far.

On "ultra rare" items, the difference between TH0 and TH14 is negligible at best regardless.

Again, yes, it is 1400% higher... which sounds dramatic, except it's going from .1% to 1.5%

We get TH9 on all 11 NMs usually see a piece every 2nd run. Haven't seen a body ever or any drop other than ingredient from boss.

that's about our experience too.

Thanks, I've talked to a couple other people that run for Volte and the sentiment has been similar, similar and not a fantastic drop rate. Cements my feeling that sadly when it comes to Volte TH doesn't affect the rate :-(

Volte is not ultra rare drop tho. There is 11 commanders I think in Windurst and most people experience 1 drop per 2 runs with avg TH. This means it more like Very Rare or Rare (my personal bet is on very rare). That includes body, which obviously drops more like once per 20 runs, because there is only one boss per run.

For Very Rare, from th0 to th14, its 1% to 10%. Thats a lot.

I mean yeah, they don't identify what counts as what. ultra super etc

Those two said a piece every 2 runs, 1/22 puts it in the super rare category. could also be body specifically, as ultra rare.

4% with TH4 or TH 9-11 is not Super Rare but Very Rare. Body might be Super Rare, definitely not Ultra. People usually report 1 body per 20-30 bosses with various TH. Most LSs dont bother to go above TH10 or TH4 for bosses, because they just zerg it.

I should ask people from my LS who merc it. they should have higher sample size, but im not sure if they note it.

I think our numbers on average are similar.
Sometimes you go without a Volte for 2 runs, next run you see 2-3 pieces in the same run.


With or without TH, the drop rate is nowhere as low as stuff like Tartarus Platemail and the likes.

My guesstimates from personal experience are ~3-5%

Forgive me, but I assume this means, unless you're farming something like Volte, just tagging with TH8 is fine and I don't need TH in my TP set, right?

Depends on how badly you want said item. (and the category of said drop rare/super/ultra) Weigh the options.

Tag it and kill it slightly faster to get more kills per hour.

Or, full TH it to kill it slightly slower to get less kills per hour, but 3% higher drop rate.

If a mob takes 10 minutes to kill w/ tag, but 15 minutes with full TH you get 2 more kills per hour, which may translate to a better option.

4.75% @ 6 tries, vs 10% @ 4 tries

I agree with what Eiryl said, it depends on the content and several other things.

Either way stuff like TH9 is usually pretty easy to obtain with 1-2 uses of Feint (Feint has a much higher chance to proc a TH level up, so do SA and TA).

Thanks, Sechs and Eiryl. I'm currently most interested in Lilith drops, and considering it's only 10 merits per round, I think taggging and killing faster might be the better way to go.

When you had 20+ mins of queue to enter the BC I would've said things differently, but given how lines are pretty fast these days, I absolutely agree with your approach.

i did all my lilith with th8 tag on easy doing gyve method and got 5/5 in about 60 runs, which is pretty lucky from others i've heard.

Quick, you should make your getaway while the rest of them are getting the tar and feathers.