For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

lol. Yes. To all of it.

That was just off the top of my head. There are more items that could go on that list.

Multiple jobs/inventory concerns can be an issue. That's the the main reason not to have one imo. But to say that it's not actually useful is simply not correct in any sense of the word.

seriously no...
back in the day, ok, it was something to make because you needed specific evasion gear and it did matter then. and defence wasnt doing much.
in today's high level content with the ilv gear we have, you should never gimp your Defence, PDT, Acc and overall everything for the sake of a little bit more evasion stat that will prove useless, or even harmfull.
what counts is the amount of dmg that get reduced. and droping your defence and DT for some cheap evasion stat increase. unless you are especially lucky, you'll definitively die more often than not.

If you look back, I said maximizing evasion (read: capping evasion, not evasion in every slot), and specifically listed DT sets mixed in.

But just to counter your point, lots of the best evasion pieces are also ilevel and are not just cheap evasion stat increases.


*High level soloing in a pure DT set not always net you better damage reduction than capping evasion. Like using /nin and shadows. And specific evasion sets have much more evasion than a DT set. But the issue is capping evade rate and how much you need to cap. Situations vary. Weak ***you don't need much but he specifically listed i124 +.

*Oshit - Take something like hard mode battle where you need /nin. You pull hate, the mob turns to you. Swapping to an evasion set so that melee attacks miss so that A: Shadows don't get insta raped and B and are down for the next tp move, and/or mixing in enough evasion to cap with your fastcast set to get ichi back up is very useful. A pure DT set will do none of that.

And none of this should be "Pure DT OVER Pure evasion set" or vice versa. Both are useful in different situations, but most often some type of hybrid is optimal.

What you are saying about AE cleaving leads me to believe that you don't do it. But again, we aren't talking about every piece of evasion you can wear, we are talking about capping evasion (and I mentioned DT/movement mixed in)

Lets not pretend like anyone said that you should full time every gear piece super max evasion set and just sit in it for every situation. There are reactionary situations where having one is useful though.

Still no. Never equip a piece of gear specifically for it's evasion stat. Not in the current game anyway.

If it happens to have evasion on it, cool.

lol. Still yes. Still wrong.

Valli, you recently posted a max mug set, lmao. You mean to tell me that you somehow find value in having a macro for a weakish cure3 on a 5 minute timer but you really don't understand the value of an instacap evade rate button in certain situations?

lol

Of course, I actually use Mug, since I have 10/10 I wouldn't ever, even slightly consider using an evasion set. ever.

"I wouldn't use it" =/= it's not useful.

I would never specifically build a max mug set at 10/10 to cure a few hundred hp. Ever. It's even less useful than an evasion set.

Neither would I. It's all ***I already have, because it uses STATS. Not lolevasion. That's the difference, you're just too dumb to understand it.

Going out of your way to acquire evasion gear. That's fail.

That's interesting.

For what purpose do you go out and get Imp hairpin other than Mug?

It's certainly not its *GASP evasion?

Dex/Agi, it just happens to have evasion. Like I said, it's like you don't even have a clue.

STR/ATT/iGarbage don't have any relevance on old (capped) content, but modifiers do.

lol. riiiiiiiight. So its worth while to camp pieces, in an attempt to stack stats to one shot EP dyna mobs a fraction of a % harder (apparently critical hit damage isn't a thing?), but gearing for evasion is completely worthless in all situations. Got it, lmao.

It's obvious you're a retard. You have no clue at all. Exenterator totally uses critical hit damage +, right.

So I mean, you go ahead, and continue wasting your time wearing evasion, I promise you no one cares. Srsly.

lol That's adorable.


lol APPARENTLY you care...quite a lot. I'd wager the guy that posted the set probably cares a little bit too.

Nah, what am I saying? You're probably right. The entirety of everyone everywhere feels the way you do.

I shold have put things in a different way:

in hard mode battle, specifically equipping evasion gear to gain what, 100 evasion, over the evasion value you would have in your DT set, what does it gives you?
less defence => you get hit harder if the hit connect
less DT => you get hit harder if the hit connect.
more chance to evade => you get no dmg if you evade.

now the question is :
how many more % of evasion chance do you get with a maxed out evasion set over your optimized DT set using ilv 119 gear?
what % of evasion do you get adding 6-30 evasion over 1-10% DT? be it from earring, ring, or body gear?
i know it's kind of a gamble but i just cant see when you'dd bet your life on it.

Cut the name-calling, you morons.

Just in response to the defense issue and referencing his set:

*Qaaxo pieces have higher defense rating than Iuitl +1
*Kabaanax have 11 less defense but can be augmented with -DT and more evasion
*Slither +1 have higher defense rating than Iuitl +1

So the only piece in his set that is suspect for defense is the Hairpin. If this is a large concern for the fight, you can get completely serviceable amounts of evasion (and defense) from a piece most Thief will already have in Pillager's Bonnet +1, or an evasion augment Qaaxo Mask.

Now in terms of -DT sets always being superior and evasion sets getting you killed, I consider this for melee attacks:

A mob hits you for an average of 500 damage over 50 attacks. At an evade rate of 50% with -50% PDT, you would take 6250 damage (500*50*.5*.5). Now, if you were to increase your evade rate to 80% on that NM and completely removed all your -DT gear(which you likely wouldn't need to), even eating all of them to the face without shadows, you'd only take 5000(500*50*.2).

Unquantified considerations from a miss vs a -50% melee hit:
*Enemy TP generation (likely insignificant unless soloing something high level)
*Changes in cure frequency requirements
*Changes in enemy critical hite rate due changes in AGI in evasion sets
*Keeping shadows up more easily in /nin battles => Changes in overal Shadow casting time.

How viable is it to cap evasion on high level stuff? I'd love for someone more well versed than I am to comment. But If my math is correct (and I think I read that they removed level correction for post SoA stuff), 2 evasion should be -1% hitrate. If that is correct (though admitedly I'm not sure it is), then that 100 evasion you referenced could take you from something you had a 30% evade rate to 80%. Using the example above, 30% evade rate at -50% PDT is 8750 total damage, 80% evade rate and no -PDT is still 5000.

All that said, I'd love to have a conversation about the math, and be corrected where it's needed. But this is the mathematical basis for my advocacy of Evasion and Hyprid sets. They are not always more beneficial, but I feel they certainly do have uses.

I'm pretty disappointed in the amount of evasion bonuses THF is getting through Gifts. We really need a much bigger bonus in order to evade current era mobs as we should.

Personally what I would love to see added, on top of fully evading attacks, partial evades, where you may negate some of the damage you would have taken through evasion, I would explain it as, you tried to evade the attack but got nicked so you still take damage but not at the full force of a completely connected attack. Sort of like PDT from your evasion.

I'd like to see a Job Ability where damage a THF takes is converted into Enmity, kinda like how Sublimation works. Then when it's ready to be discharged, it can stack with Trick Attack or be applied by itself.

1000 damage would be converted to 1000 VE, with a recast timer of 1 minute. Increase in Job Points or what have you could raise the amount stored, or raise a multiplier, etc. etc.

^ It's a nice idea. They could simply develop a JA opposite to Accomplice/Collaborator to shed a THF's own enmity (perhaps using the same recast and/or timer). This way a THF could redistribute enmity within the party.

Actually more like magic resists/magic evasion than PDT: tiers of damage evaded. Say, full evade 0 is a miss, then have tiers for 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 100% damage taken just like magic resists. At any rate, not a bad idea! I wouldn't really expect to see it because it would result in massive rebalancing across all jobs at all levels, but a clever approach no less.

Personally, for job changes I'd like something like changing TA to a stance where you divert enmity to the player standing between you and the mob (say, 5min recast and 2min duration?). Or if not changing TA, making a new ability that does this. Basically decoy shot from melee range.

As for the evasion topic in general, gotta say I'm on the side of team "Evasion WTF?". Don't really understand why people would need an eva set these days on THF.

1) Don't need to gear for Eva on easy content because you can cap it anyway with standard TP gear

2) On hard content, even using a lot of eva you still won't be able to pump it up high enough to evade reliably (even more so on non-Adoulin mobs where level correction comes into play). If you need an o-shi set, DT- is a higher priority.

3) Why the heck would you be tanking hard content on THF in the first place? And even if you are, if you have other party members how are you keeping hate (especially given that you're using worse DD equipment in order to gear for evasion)?

Maybe there's some goofy solo/duo for the fun of it where you get a mob that can be evaded reliably enough that evasion helps, but that mob is an extremely rare case, and I sure can't think of what it would be.

Agreed


I understand that most people don't do it and don't want to waste inventory doing it, but I don't agree with this. There is a lot of ilevel equipment that has generous amounts of evasion for THF. It can be done (and without crippling your defense.)


I could be wrong, but the way I understood it was that the removal of cRatio was a blanket change for content created after Adoulin and not just for "only inside of Adoulin" content. Is this not correct?

At any rate I think that "DT is more important than evasion" is the wrong way to look at it. If the goal is to minimize damage taken, numerically, it would often involve some combination of both across an evade rate/-DT scale. At several points on that spectrum...say an evade rate of 70% and 20% -PDT would be less damage taken than 50% evade rate and -50%PDT.

A lot of people are making statments like this in this thread without any real numbers. I'd love to hear them. Not sarcastically either. I'm really interested to here specifically (numerically) why you hold this view point. I'm not so much interested in "being right" so much as I am in having a conversation about the math.

I would also love to see some numbers. I tend to agree with the "evasion is garbage" camp. Even stacking it you do not seem to evade enough to justify the gear. IMHO you are better suited with the DT gear or all out DD gear and killing it faster. DO you have evasion % on monsters that matter Nebo? You ask for numbers, you need to cough some up too!

~All the Evasionses~

Stilish

I touched on it in this post:
http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/36654/for-the-shinies-a-guide-for-thief/46/#2764639

In terms of evasion %'s of "high level stuff", it's not difficult to create a scenario where you have a very low evade rate, like 30% and then do the math for how much damage reduction you are getting by adding evasion and/or PDT beyond that point. All you need to know is how much -hit rate% you are getting per point of evasion.

As I mentioned in that linked post, the last time I remember having a conversation about this, that number was 2 evasion = -1% hit rate, adjusted for cRatio. It's my understanding that the addition of cRatio to post adoulin stuff was globally removed as a design philosphy. These are two points on which I'd like to be corrected if they are not accurate, but I think they are.

At any rate if they are off, the math would be simple to adjust. But assuming they are correct, 100 evasion would take you from a 30% evade rate to 80%.

You could visualize like this and see where you'd get gains (or not) from evasion at various values of evade rate and -PDT%:

Your example (@NeboJones) gives evasion the edge, because the higher your evasion, the more potent a constant increment of evasion becomes (going from 10% to 40% evasion is a 33% decrease in damage taken, but going from 40% to 70% evasion is a 50% decrease in damage taken). Your example:

50% evasion with 50% PDT is 50/2 = 25% damage taken
80% evasion with 0% PDT = 20% damage taken

but take it closer to floor

10% evasion with 50% PDT = 90/2 = 45% damage taken
40% evasion with 0% PDT = 60% damage taken

Same increase in evasion, but it favors PDT. And this situation is more likely than what you are suggesting.

For example, and I have no math to back this up without seeing what set he uses in the fight, but Josiah mentions above that "[109 content] would be death in seconds without an extreme evasion set." Based on this, I think you're being rather generous by implying that our evasion rate is not well below the floor (let alone as high as 50% in a PDT set). His video is a few months old, so his evasion probably isn't as high as the previous page (over +450 evasion, not including AGI), but assuming his set is as low as 350 evasion and that only just gets him to 80% evasion rate, you need something like +200 evasion just to start breaking the floor on a level 109 fight. That's fair enough when you expect to be able to reach, or near, the cap.

5% evasion with 50% PDT = 47.5% damage taken
80% evasion with 0% PDT = 20% damage taken

But something that you'd actually be doing with other players (Incursion, Delve) is 10-35 levels higher than that. So let's assume you're fighting something with 60 more accuracy, your evasion rate with a max set is now down to 50%.

5% evasion with 50% PDT = 47.5% damage taken
50% evasion with 0% PDT = 50% damage taken

About equal. Anything with more accuracy than that, PDT's edge will only grow. Given that we don't always know how much acc to expect on a monster, it's generally safer to go with PDT when you're doing something much higher than 109 content.

However, I have no information on the accuracy of monsters. If you want to go test, use a decent evasion set (one that neither floors nor caps) and go let something hit you. If you want to test specific levels to test incremental accuracy, use Incursion (it's okay to have someone there to cure you, they won't get hate unless they do something on themselves or a player other than the person who initiates aggro).

tl;dr Evasion set isn't worth using unless it's all-out evasion, and you can reasonably hit higher than a 50% evasion rate; and that takes a lot of evasion.