For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

If you do that exact same thing with Vajra, you'd get the same results. Even better, you can do (as Ihina mentioned) Mandalic > Evis > Rudra's > Rudra's for more damage. You can even make an equally devastating Light doing Mandalic > Evis > Shark Bite > Mandalic.

It wouldn't be "better". It's arguable if it would be "equal". Mandalic is only superior to Rudra's if you have Vajra and have uncapped attack by a decent margin. In your example there's no Vajra buff to the evisc or shark bite, Aeneas helps every WS (except exenterator which is lol but only starts in the darkness version). For a THF doing every step of the SC you're going to be WSing at 1-1.4k TP, which makes the Aeneas have every WS hit that sexy fTP curve at 2k. This isn't the case for Vajra.

1) Exenterator is a garbage WS
2) The 99999 damage under those circumstances will happen with Vajra, whether it's Mandalic Light or Rudra's Darkness

hold

Right, but more damage happens before you get to that 99999, which was my point.

What's Exenterator set looking like nowadays?

Anyways, about an hour's worth of math and testing later.

I'll concede that in the exact situation you described, you can do more damage, but you've, again, also locked yourself into more inflexibilities.

Are you fighting something that stomp/stuns you? You're going to spend the fight mostly spamming Exen or Exen>Rudra. (Or, you can do what I said and mindlessly spam Rudra>Rudra, which is where Aeneas would excel at.)

Do you need to take off some triple attack gear and put on accuracy or pdt? Your entire strategy goes out the window since you can't skillchain anymore, especially pass the second WS if you make it that far.

If you ever have 1 other DD, how are you going to pull this off? Will you ask them to hold off WS'ing so you can 4-step?

High def mob? How about enemies who are not weak to darkness skillchain? You need all of these things to line up just right for the Aeneas is come out ahead.

Vajra, for whatever reason, has an answer to all of these issues.

I have both, and I use both, but I'm going to stick with my original premise that Vajra is a better dagger most of the time because it is more flexible. It allows you both a strong dark and light skillchain closer option, which also allows you the ability to pair off with most other DD and still have respectable damage. It gives you a WS to use against high def mobs. Best of all, you don't have to use Exenterator on a regular basis.

Darkness to Umbra is x3, btw.
Darkness to Double Dark is x2.3

I also had to concede the damage when I realized that at <1250 tp, SARudra with the Aeneas does more damage than with the Vajra

Or at all!

All you need is the first Exen to aftermath and then all you need is Evisc > Rudra > Rudra if you're in one of those rare situations where you get stunned non stop. I mean seriously, how many fights cause you to have issues gaining tp on an absolutely regular basis? How far are you reaching to add this as a basis for why a dagger is inferior?

I managed to 3-step on Maju, only didn't make it to tp on the 4th WS, I can still skillchain even putting on some more accuracy gear. And Maju is kind of the peak condition for what you can melee and how much you need to swap into accuracy gear.

If I have one other DD I toss them into it. For example I'd go:

Exenterator > Rudra > Leaden Salute > Rudra

Or:

Exenterator > Rudra > Last Stand > Exenterator > Exenterator

Or let's get fancy:

Exenterator > Rudra > Last stand > Evisceration > Rudra > Wildfire > Rudra

You're basing your argument on "Skillchaining is hard and gets interrupted" and that it is astounding to me that some of the most established members of this forum are upvoting your post on that basis. Skillchaining is the bread and butter of melee damage in current FFXI and an immense increase in damage. THF is one of the best jobs in the game solely for that reason as we can make any skillchain connection needed (and even get to extend light...with Aeneas). The job is so much more than a big stacked WS twice a minute, I can't believe I have to make that point on the THF forums in 2016.

I've already spent too much time with this. I'll agree to disagree.

How do you expect to possibly validate this? Why do you think Aeneas needs to 4 step to pull ahead of Vajra? Do you insist that while using Aeneas, you must use Exenterator? How many different situations did you consider in your analysis?

I feel like like you're asserting that with Aeneas you can only play Thief one way or that it's somehow less flexible because of your own preconceived notions about the weapon. I don't believe it. Your argument seems more like self-validation for your original assessment of Vajra vs Aeneas than objective analysis.

Also, I apologize if this comes off as abrasive. I don't intend it to be. Every time someone asks which RMEA is better, this same discussion pops up with the same unsubstantiated claims. I find the notion that we can objectively compare these two weapons to be foolish because 1) player experience varies so widely and 2) we don't even have tools that can objectively analyze nearly any realistic situation.

Alright, so just make all four. got it! ;)

I'm just starting back up, and was wondering if there was anyone here dedicated enough to make a new OP? It is quite daunting to go through this whole thread trying to find individual gear sets that are current.

Unless someone could point me in the direction of a good place to find current gear sets categorized.

Thanks!

Picking up THF again for the first time in 5 years, anyone willing to post regular SA/TA sets without WS

Also I see lustratio feet used I have a weird dark matter aug on Herc with 9% WSD with 18acc/atk also wondering how those would stack up

ItemSet 346501

Even a ws set is situational, this is for max damage in a situation you have pdif capped or at least really high (if totally capped Jukaki feather can be better). Against mobs you are soloing or having hit cap for attack/def ratio yet, grunfeld rope for the waist, and herc dex/wsd/perfect attack win out over lustratio. Meghanada gloves +1 are pretty close to the herc ones so that'd be the last thing to replace.

Augs are all 10 dex 30 acc 30 attack 5 wsd.



They don't seem to win over HQ boots, as you'd lose 4% wsd to use them. If you went that route use herc legs or HQ lustratio head. What really hurts them tho is no dex aug. I'd still keep them around though, they'd be a lot better for WS with low stat modifiers.

I actually misread that. You get TP so fast now there's never a situation to use SA or TA without a WS unless you're intentionally trying to do bad damage and just proc TH, in which case just wear a TH set.

Makes total sense, thanks for the help

On BLU I know crit hit damage is the rage, just making sure WSD should be the goal on THF or can I multi-purpose my Crit hit Dmg+?

It's roughly equal to each other, so mostly yes.

Crit DMG is something you get in larger amounts so WSD is more valuable but it is pretty close. That said, if you use crit damage on unstacked rudra it will do exactly nothing, and will only increase damage if stacked with SA or TA, or you're doing a WS that naturally crits like Evisceration. WSD isn't good for Evisceration because WSD only applies to the first hit. So for Evisceration you want crit damage over WSD and on Rudra you want WSD over crit. But some slots, like the ammo for stacked rudra crit damage is your best option etc.

On the subject of items transferring between jobs, Yetshila +1 is the best for the stacked rudra ammo slot and about 60mil and BLU isn't even on it, so you can transfer some gear but if you really want to push jobs stuff like that make it really a chore in both augmenting for specific weaponskills like I said above, as well as different abjuration gear options and accessories, and any ultimate weapons you might have as well as augments for specific JA and Weaponskills or even differences in TP set options. Example for NIN I need Hi and Shun sets, Hi I need to aug AGI + crit damage, and thf has zero use for that and Shun I have to aug multi attack + Dex which... thf can use but I'd want to probably go for DEX 15 instead of 10 over TA 4 which isn't optimal for thf either.

Really looking forward to this.

I went back to page 128 and couldn't find an up to date Exenterator BiS - any help appreciated. Front page sets seem very dated.

Exenterator is just bad forget about it

Boo this man. It's a great option for aeonic with light. You can get in the range of at least 16k with it and it's a paging ws so there's worse out there.

If lady doesn't share their's later I'll spreadsheet one but you'll want to focus on AGI and multihit.

Fine i retract my statement!

Lol I wouldn't be asking if it wasn't for the fact it's the only way to close radiance....



Thanks Verda

Haven't played since 2012.
Can I still use acid bolts/bloody bolts? Are they still useful?
What xbow should I get?

ItemSet 346608

I posted this in another thread. Adhemar body might be a better replacement with a GEO fury/frailty, same with hands.

Can you dual wield taming sari?

Yes. With capped augments x2 it's one of the best Non-RMEA combinations.