For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

How much white damage do you think THF does? I would hazard to guess that it's < 10% of overall damage. Increasing WS frequency will impact 90% of your damage, increasing while damage will increase probably 9% of your damage.

Twashtar with AM3 & Samnuha/Adhemar:
311m white damage (21.2%)
1,153m WSD (78.8%)

Twashtar with AM3 & Gleti:
346m white damage (22.7%)
1,179m WSD (77.3%)

Aeneas with Samnuha/Adhemar:
178m white damage (15.1%)
1,001 WSD (84.9%)

Aeneas with Gleti:
200m white damage (16.3%)
1,027 WSD (83.7%)

Turns out it's closer than I thought, but still...depending on the scenario it's not a given that white damage is the answer. Also have to consider on non-dummy targets if they're dying in X WS (1, 2, 3) then the fact that you did a little more white damage between those WS is most likely totally irrelevant. If you kill an Apex mob with a 3-step SC with either TP set, the one that increases the rate at which you WS will kill faster. The random white damage you did between those WS will not help (unless you're excited about overkills).

For the record, I don't wear Samnuha in any sets and I only wear Adhemar wrists in my glass cannon sets. I'm not advocating for this gear, just trying to engage in a discussion about white/WSD.

Unsurprised Gleti's is better. What does Meghanda or AF+3 show?

what offhand did you use there maletaru?

These were all hyper-buffed (BRD COR GEO) against Apex mobs, offhand was TP bonus for all 3.

I think saying "Gleti wins" is kinda missing the forest for the trees too. It only "wins" in total damage if you have a target with 1.5 billion health. It really depends on the situation and I think nuance is more complicated than people are willing to give credit for.

Whatever, wear whatever you wanna wear; it's close enough and this game isn't fine-tuned that you need to hyper-optimize your DPS by 1% to make sure you clear a fight, if we're being honest here.

I wear AF+3 because my Gleti is only R25.

Shijo should be a REMA, or give the flee proc to one of them instead. Something so simple yet fun, wish there were more like this.

Looking for a full evasion set that doesnt sacrifice to much of acc to be used in Omen Farm, i know the SU5 dagger path C is awesome for it, just wondering what else to get/upgrade to make a usefull build

Empy +2/3 set, and/or malig are high evasion pieces that also sport high acc, you shouldnt need to worry about accessories for omen trash

Malignance

Usually a mix set of malignance/nyame/gleti/empy, so today’s meta. Keep high DT, phalanx, get AAEV on a trans so trust can heal. There’s a few accessories that are nice, I like Bathy for 25 Eva + regen. But the main secret is the ability to kill most pull in 2 WS. Start slow, 1/2 a group, see how it goes and build from there. Next thing you know you will do 2-3 group at once, or if in a rush, 80% of floor 3 using PD+flee. Good run are 15 min, great run are 12, rush job is 10-11 min. Avg drop is around 12-14, my lowest is 3(!!!) highest is 36 (!!!) but peeps doubt my record, definitely had 2 above 30 and just last week a 25 drop. Peeps also said back to back has less drop, i disagree but whatever, keep farming, 3 is better than 0. I have R15 most weapon since last year for free but the 15 min of my daily life. I encourage you or anyone to do so as well.

Holy smokes! Never seen over 30. My record is 26. The th gods were with you that run lol

To the OP, as was said, take your time and get used to it. Once you feel good about it, pulling all of floors 1 & 2 is child's play. Thf evasion is amazing in the content, especially with su5 dagger. Just be mindful of the ferries, proxies and eyes on the 3rd floor. Ferries take like no dmg from AE so you will be holding them longer doing single ws and they will dispell you. Pigs too though they will take some dmg and don't hit quite as hard. The eyes will sit out of range nuking you which can be annoying and dangerous if you healer trust drops (or momber kills himself with cover....]. The rest are easy and i take two groups at a time, somtimes 3..

I do everything, but pixies with AE and I use barstone for eyes for extra protection. I also usually don't finish Transcendent mobs, but let them tag along for next groups and they eventually die.

I use something like this:

ItemSet 396973

*Note* I went with Nyame over Malignance because it's more defensively weighted, except for in the evasion department, which is a minor difference. The HP/DEF disparity is where I chose to go with Nyame since Eva has diminishing returns. This is just my preference. By the way, I wouldn't go out of my way for the accessories I have in the set above; it's simply what I had lying around and I wouldn't bother collecting them for this small farming run. I also use HQ1 neck since I never bought HQ2 neck long ago and capped it, so stayed gimp xD, but I wanted to list out better alternative for you

Personally, I don't like "full" or "MAX" evasion sets, because mobs will still hit you and at some point you could be gaining a better stat vs a few more points of evasion. Example would be Moonlight Rings or R15 Gelatinous +1 provides a hefty amount of HP for when you're healed vs the few points of evasion that ring slots provide. Also don't need movement speed for when you're not moving.

Dagger get a little more interesting, as you can experiment. Actually, Kaffy mentioned a very cool dagger offhand above in Shijo. You can pull one trans mob, activate flee, then pull the rest in evasion set, which allows you to drop movement speed feet/ring. I like to Mainhand Twashtar, because eventually AM3 and crit build lets me chunk through mobs that dont AE well. You could also use a Gandring Path C (I don't have one), as that would give you a ton of TP to just constantly spam AE. Tauret is fine too if you don't have the pockets for Gandring. It would only be a toy for me swart farming, which is why I opted not to get one, but YMMV and it's a pheomenal dagger for that purpose.

ItemSet 396327

This is my full evasion tank build, I use it as standard for anything from dyna tanking to ohcrap hate pulled on zerg. As shown my pdt is capped and I carry well over 1600 evasion.

Only adjustment for omen fodder would be to mainhand gandring and offhand the SR dagger for magical damage.

You'd be insane not to wear malignance. It's got pdt AND massive evasion.

You'd also be insane not to wear empy+3 feet. Massive evasion AND massive pdt AND TH capped (with gandring).

The ring shirks off 13% of magic damage, which is pretty impressive. For omen I swap that with Gere and the belt is just overkill, you can wear your yotai and still be capped without svelt.

......also Gandring..

It is certainly a good toy for omen farming, but what it opens elsewhere is also pretty wild. Few things can hit me these days.

For example, I can tank through w2 in dyna while still capped on evasion keeping pretty good hate using damage, collaborator, and /run for flash, valiance, and foil(which sadly I don't have just yet).

@Sahzi. That's the exact set I use save for the earrings, shadow ring, off hand and belt. Keep all those slots with just normal tp options and have zero issue evading amd staying alive in omem.(missed the dyanamis part. Would definitely use your set completely if evade tanking there).

Eabani earring is pretty critical as being below the dual wield cap is a mess for tp gain. With yotai in place ya, sherida takes that spot nicely.

Thanks for the tip tho, I'll trade out that Infused for dedition for omen. I never really bothered with it since tp is such a given with gandring, but it'll help for the damn fairies and eyeballs.

I know we all have bottomless gil at this point, but I just want to point out that investing over 200 million gil (70 mil in Gandring, 40 mil in Neck+2 and 51 stacks of Heroism at 1.8 mil each) just to farm Swarts in Omen for an average of 11 per run (thats what I'm seeing from my logs in September, 50 runs, 561 swarts) might not be a wise decision for someone buying these items just for this purpose. If you have the items already, this doesnt apply to you. Also if you're on a server without a steady supply of swarts, and you're farming for use, not to sell, this wont apply (only Fenrir had < 10 stacks on AH at this time though). But at 9 mil per stack of swarts, 11 swarts is 1 million gil, it will take you over 200 omen runs JUST to recoup the cost of your investment on those two items.

Once again, if you already have auged Gandring C and Neck+2, or you have billions of gil and your problem is swarts supply, the above wont apply. If you're doing this for money reasons, you may fare just as well with Gleti's and Bathy+1 in place of those items without needing 7 months just to recoup the gil, and it will likely have a very minimal impact on your Omen farming.

I'm looking at this from the perspective of someone who doesnt play thf often and Omen's only purpose is for Swarts, not cards or bosses.

Assuming that Omen bodies are their own slot and affected by TH, and that TH14 would be 1.5% drop rate (1 in 67 drop rate), do you think I could solo Kin on THF+(insert 2nd job 2boxed)?

I have killed it hundreds of times as WAR/DRG DRK/DRG DRG/WAR MNK/DRG SAM/DRG etc using ArkHM and a 2boxed BRD doing Sirvente on HM and Dirge on DD. I don't think it would work the same way though, with hate sharing, so not sure what to do - if I got more hate than planned I would need /DRG but if I wasn't getting enough then /WAR for voke might help.

2nd job can be BRD WHM RDM w/e. Only terror and interference are concerning.

Just about any job capable of DDing can do Kin, for thf if you ever need to steal hate back you got accomp/collab to fall back on, then you can just HJ the hate away

I'm not sure if I would get hate though? No Twashtar so thinking maybe SB could be my best bet? Maybe SA+WS as often as I can would ensure I get hate. I was thinking I'd have to sub DRG.

If you're worried about having enough hate, accomplice will absolutely steal hate from whatever's tanking it. /dnc for animated flourish wouldn't be necessary, but is something to fall back on. Trick attacking weaponskill should absolutely put the tank back at the top of the hate list and if not, turning your back until hate is reestablished won't take long as long as you've trick attacked some enmity back.

THF excels at hate management, hate shouldn't be an issue.

I cant see you having so little hate collab wouldnt pull it of the tank, and even if that were the case accomplice should be a near garuntee since its 50% hate stolen at minimum and i assume you have emp hat of some level to increase that

I have a lot of pity for folks who can't bring their jobs to dynamis to rank up their necks/weapons, JFC this ***is expensive.

Side note though: you can use +1 neck and/or Su4 weapon to dramatically reduce the costs of these things. If you do that and rank them up in dynamis, your cost to get this equipment goes to like...5m or so.

This is precisely why I didn't add Gandring to my set (and why I never bought one), and I mentioned my THF has +1 neck and not +2. I built my THF a very long time ago, and the only thing I use it for now is Swart farming, which it now doesn't make sense to dump gil into just to make gil back. I also mentioned not to waste time gathering the accessories either, even a Bathy Choker +1 (which you would R15 to get the extra stats, but its still pricy).

Swart farming is quite simple once you get the hang of it, and it's more of a 10 minute chore than anything. Gearing to be BIS just for a quick Merit refill/swart run imo is kind of silly, unless you're going to use the swarts. Honestly, you can swart farm just fine in a standard Nyame/Malignance set and use your trusts as damage sponges, and save yourself tons of gil.

I guess I have completely different motivation, but for me equipping THF with Gandering etc. was to make the daily grind more fun. I simply like to optimize for grind and feel the improvement when I play. I don't really care if the investment is actually paying off in gils at the end. What's on the end of the road in FFXI is usually just start of another road, so I prefer to make walking them more enjoyable.

Yeah, doubt someone will spend 200M for “swarts farming bragging rights”, SU4 should be just fine, Gandring is just better and 80M. No need of neck as Bathy better, and you don’t have to buy heroism if you participate in content. So 20/80M should give you access to swarts farming AoE style.

On a side note, THF should be gear for farming, need sparkling stone, dyna currencies… an Eva gear is what you need, there’s no other content really for THF, it’s here to make you money/rss, so hear it for it

I like making thf work (well!) in places people don't expect. Eva tanking dyna d and not losing hate on bosses is fun when everyone starts checking you. Gandring helps make that happen.

BTW, don't use accomplice, use collaborator. It's got a 60s recast and with empy head pulls over 60% hate. Accomplice shares the timer, so it's a waste.

If you aren't interested in Gandring because of cost, no reason not to come another job at that point. TH4 in gear and a cleave puts you at 95% capability of a thf main (not exact percent, but you get the idea). Half the fun is getting to use that gil you earn and nothing says you need to dump it all on THF for swart farming, but you will run out of things to buy eventually. I never tried an SU4 dagger to compare but the tp gain rate with Gandring is absurdly fun.