For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

This is wrong and biased by your pov and situation you plan in.

It's the only strong Fusion WS on THF and it shines for closing skillchains with SA or TA with Vajra (50% damage bonus to Mandalic and 30% crit damage to SA and TA)

My thoughts on Varja weren't looking at it's aftermath. If I use it generally spam at 2k anwyho. Im not a professional. Just figured the main stats on the wep and the bonus to mandalic might make it a contender.

What does the spreadsheet say about the comparisons? Curious.

Spreadsheet wont tell you anything here, or will tell you that Vajra+Mandalic is worse than Twashtar+Rudra, because it is, but that's not a usecase scenario for Vajra.

1. Vajra would be used as very powerful skillchain closer with Fusion property. Doing WS with SA or TA.
2. Vajra would be also used in situation with very few buffs resulting in very low attack ratio, because Mandalic has +75% attack bonus.

Both points don't require spreadsheet to prove them, both are facts.

Hello Thieves.

After a long period of neglect I am working on my thief sets. I was using the BG wiki guide to start a need list. It looks pretty up to date, would that be a correct assumption? Is there anything that I should consider that may be missing that jumps out?

Cheers

bg guide is good.

Hi all,

Been away for a few years now, and just opened the BG site out of curiosity. Why does the new THF JSE neck have Macc?

So gravity from Rudra can land without resists :)

Aura Steal

Pairs really well if the other DD is using Savage or Resolution

Which is really specific. I find myself playing more with a WAR (Upheaval with Chango, so Fusion/Light property) or a DRK using Torcleaver (distortion/light). So if I was going to focus on skillchains there I'd...be using shark bite?

Mandau has basically 0 fights where it's situationally best. Vajra has a very few specific fights where it works out to be the best, but they are extremely niche, and using a Vajra is still only a marginal improvement. I still beat the Vajra THF I played against using Twashtar on Erinys, which is literally the strongest fight for a Vajra over other daggers.

Basically the point I was trying to get across. The overall utility of vajra vs. Twashtar or Aeneas is very limited. There are a few fights that vajra is suited to, but in those same fights Twashtar and Aeneas still perform comparably. Meanwhile on the rest of the content Twash or Aeneas are just better, for the reasons I stated. Yes, skillchains are a thing. Yes, I know how Mandalic stab works and in what scenarios it's good in. But if you need to use Mandalic stab you can still do that with Twashtar or Aeneas. The only weaponskill that's weapon locked is Mercy Stroke, and that's not relevant to anything. So If you already have vajra then by all means upgrade and use it. My original comment was specifically in response to these two statements


Unless I'm mistaken the question seemed to be asking whether or not it was worth it to build a vajra and take it to rank 15, if you didn't already have one. For the purposes of practicality, investing in vajra from scratch is much less resource effecient than investing in either aeneas or twashter from scratch. The amount of effort is comparable and the results give you a weapon with a much narrower utility. It's not a bad weapon, and certainly not hot garbage, but it is a niche weapon. And unless you really need the attack, or unless you're in a situation where you need a very specific skillchain setup you're better off with one of the other two daggers. There's a LOT of content you can do, and most of that content is going to favor the other two daggers over Vajra.

So if you already have the other daggers and just want a goal to set, or if you have vajra and just need to get it to rank 15 that's fine. But if you don't own any REMA for thief and are trying to decide which one you want to build as your first REMA, I can't recommend Vajra over Twashter or Aeneas. Both of them are just so much stronger across the whole of content you'll end up doing on thief than Vajra is.

If i would have all daggers at r0 I would r15 Vajra over Aeneas for sure. What Aeneas gain from R15 is hot garbage. 6 damage and boost to WS you only use for SC chain and its damage is bad anyway. Twashtar first tho.

No disagreement there. Vajra is a better use of Astral Detrus than Aeneas. But most people don't have all daggers, let alone at I 119 R0. It's expensive building a weapon from scratch, both in time and money. The forms host questions from a lot of people who are either new to or still picking up the job and looking for advice. Most people aren't kitted out to the max; that's the exception rather than the rule. Many of them don't have an REMA at all. And it feels bad to invest a lot of resources into "shiny thing X" without fully understanding all of the implications of it only to find out later that "shiney thing Y" would have been a much better investment after the fact.

In that regards, for a first time REMA builder for the job the general dagger heirarchy is

Twashter / Aeneas ------> Vajra ----------------------------------> Mandau

Twashtar is a dagger that you'd want to take to Rank 15, whereas Aeneas probably isn't unless you just have a lot of extra cash to blow and don't really care. Vajra is worth taking to rank 15, but due to the implications of how TA conflicts with its aftermath it shouldn't be a first pick over the other two because it's a niche weapon that the other two beat out handily on the bulk of content available to us. There are no situations where Mandau is ideal. Tauret outperforms Mandau, and it's far more affordable. I'd like to think we can at least both agree on that.

So how much more of a boost would Mercy Stroke need for it to compete with the big bois?

Not that it makes a difference, but I was looking at which is BiS mainhand @ rank 15. My question is posed from the p.o.v of already owning 3 weapons (no relic).

Thanks for all the feedback, this is a great discussion. My order of rank 15 is vajra then twash. Plan is to have both rank 15 for situational use cases. If that means anus wins some fights, ill take that rank 15 too.

More than we're likely to get at this point sadly. The problem with mercy stroke is that it has a flat 5.0 fTP Multiplier at all tp levels. A 1K mercy stroke will hit just as hard as a 3K Mercy stroke. There is no TP Bonus, so moonshade earring has no effect on it. Rudra's storm on the other hand, starts at 5.0 fTP at 1k, and scales to 10.0 at 2k, then up to 13 at 3k TP. Mercy stroke is also a strength weaponskill, with an 80% strength modifier, whereas rudra's storm is an 80% dex modifier. Our gear sets have a lot more dexterity than they do strength, and the best gear for stacking mercy stroke with SA or TA is largely going to overlap between both weaponskills, so we just just have a natural inclination towards Rudra's over mercy. The best mercy stroke main slots for example, are still Artifact +3 hat, Relic +3 body/Meg cuirie +2, Meg gloves +2, Relic legs +3, and Lustratio feet +1, and there's quite a bit more dex on those pieces than there is strength.

Now, a rank 15 Mandau does get a hidden 40% bonus to mercy stroke damage in addition to the 20% listed on the weapon's rank upgrades, so it does have that going for it. But the key difference is that mandau's aftermath is pretty crap. It gives 5% critical hit rate and 5% critical hit damage during the melee phase (affects the offhand too but doesn't affect weaponskills), and it will proc triple damage on itself 13% of the time on the first swing of an attack (A triple attack's second and 3rd swings cannot proc triple damage bonus with Mandau). The 10 damage a tic poison is completely irrelavant at this stage in the game. It's not even worth mentioning when trash mobs die in seconds and fights that go longer than a few minutes scale into the millions worth of damage.

Unlike mandau's hidden triple damage effect proccing 13% of the time on itself, Twashtar's aftermath procs triple damage 30/40/50% of the time on itself and its aftermath CAN proc on the second and third swings of a triple attack round. Plus it has 70 dexterity, which is a stupid big increase to Rudra's secondary mod in addition to the 10% bonus to rudra's on top of that. With moonshade earring and rudra's tp scaling Twashter Rudra's are just as good as Mandau's Mercy strokes because of that, and it has a much stronger aftermath to go with it.

Aeneas's thing is the TP bonus of course, and coupled with moonshade earring an Aeneas's Rudra's storm is already as potent as Mandau's mercy stroke because you're going into the weaponskill with an effective 1750 tp and rudra's powerful scaling makes that very potent. And its ultimate skillchain property is more than enough to push it far ahead of mandau.

TL;DR version. Mandau suffers from being tied to a weaponskill that doesn't scale based on TP, and a strength mod when we're kitted out to take advantage of dexterity, as well as an inferior aftermath. Twashter has a stronger aftermath and comes with a huge chunk of dex plus a bonus to an inherently superior weaponskill, and Aeneas's tp bonus makes said weaponskill hit so much harder at 1K it's on par with the bonuses mandau's mercy gets, but continues to scale further beyond that as you tp more. And it has ultimate skillchain, which is something mandau cannot do.



If you already own all three and have the resources to upgrade it, then sure. Twashter should be your first R15 though, as simon said.

Really don't see the need to make a mythic tho

If you have it great... but if you dont....

Why?

That's the long and short of it. Money is infinitely better spent on literally anything than Vajra. It's nothing but a disappointment. If you already had it, may as well. But it would be very silly to bother making it currently.

Mandau.. it's aftermath is great. The problem is Rudra's is imbalanced and Mandau does absolutely nothing for rudra. That could all change with one simple update. but for now just wasted money.

I got an Ullr to play aroud with on Ranger. Would it be useful with a Tauret Thief?

The relavant stats are 15 strength, 15 dex, and 15 agility, at the expense of ammo swapping. It's still better to TP in Yamarang/Ginsen and weaponskill in yetshila (+1), but if you're rocking a tauret build it's certainly not the worst thing to play around with.


Exactly. That was why I said Vajra and Mandau were both trophy pieces. It's far better to build Twashter and/or Aeneas and just be done with it. There's no point in making either mythic or relic from scratch anymore. And unless they recieve some major buffs in future updates that won't change. The only reason we got on the subject of Vajra is because some people seemed to feel otherwise.

Yea. I was curious how tp'ing with bow vs the WS numbers would work out.

The numbers favor ammo builds over using the bow, but it's not a terribly big difference. Unless my math is wrong Yetshila (+1)'s crit rate and damage does offset the stat difference of the bow in weaponskills, and the bow lacks sTP so it obviously tp's slightly slower than ginsen/yamarang. So if you want to max your build the ammo builds are better, but like I said, it's not that big of a margin.

I use the bow (Ullr) but only because i solo and don't want to pull adds.
it may not be BIS according to spreadsheets but it works for me.

When I solo Omen I pull with an Exalted X-bow; our Su2 ranged weapon. It may be old school, but acid bolt's 12.5% defense down is still going to increase your dps more than any other option for that slot. Of course it's probably not relevant anyway since Tauret just insta-gibs any non Transcended mob in an instant. But it's got a lower delay than a bow so it's at the very least slightly faster to pull with.

And yes, when soloing omen I've found that Tauret mainhand shaves about 8-10 minutes off my clear time over Twashter mainhand. It's just more efficient to weaponskill at 1K and kill the mob and move on to the next mob than it is to bother trying to maintain a higher level aftermath, and I can still SA and TA a rudra's storm with my trusts when timers allow. Tauret is amazing in that kind of scenario. It's definitely a fantastic pickup for any serious thief who does a lot of soloing.

For Tauret mainhand... thoughts on swapping head piece from your above "standard" TP set to Adhemar Bonnet +1?

I would think that Adhemar's CHD+6% (plus set bonus crit rate +4% if also using Adhemar +1 hands) becomes significantly more appealing for Tauret users. And for stuff like Omen solo farming, you really shouldn't miss the additional accuracy from Plunderer's +3. Haven't mathed it out myself though, so I'm interested in opinions.

Of course adhemar bonnet +1 is going to be better, acc permitting. regardless of what you mainhand.

"that set" is more of a safety without losing much set, than a pure ddglasscannon set. higher meva/def/acc than adhemar/samnuha

Yes, I do swap to adhemar bonnet +1 in Omen, both for tp and evisceration. I use plunderer's bonnet +3 in dynamis because the accuracy is relevant and the relic hat has a ton of stats. You're correct that the adhemar's crit hit damage is better in omen, especially with tauret mainhand. I also use Ginsen instead of Yamarang for Omen soloing for the same reason.


Also correct. Accuracy, buffs, and content difficulty can change what's optimal. The head and ammo slots are easy adjustments for performance increases at lower content levels (see above), and if accuracy still needs to be higher for some reason, artifact hat +3 and ring swaps are also available. I don't think I'd swap many other pieces in my tp set situationally, but the head, ammo, and rings (and legs if you want to use samnuha) are easy swaps for performance increases at varying content difficulties.

I still maintain my personal view that plunderer's armlets +3 are fine to keep in the TP set fulltime during Dynamis D too, because like the bonnet they're also an effecient swap. With perfect taming sari's TH bonus the relic armlets +3 are enough to max out treasure hunter without needing the empy feet, and they have a solid stat line. I don't know what kind of dynamis runs other people go on, but in my dynamis runs the normal mobs only last a few seconds. Swapping sets to tag them would waste more time than it would save me, and I do want to TH everything I can. Some of the voidshards are worth 5-6 million gil, and synth mats can run 3-5 million apiece, so just 1 or 2 of those extra per run is worth it to me. I probably hit over 90% of the junk mobs, and it shows in our drop rates. We always parse our dynamis runs too, and my DPS output is still leagues ahead of the other DDs, so I'm fine with it. It's just a highly effecient swap in content where drops are very expensive. It's my personal playstyle, but if all the drops I see in a run is "wrong" then I don't know if I wanna be right.

Brah

My lua does it in a instant with th swaps...

Again... its better to sell the shards for gil then to actually make the armlets...

We just have thf come sub blm or brd to aoe tag stuff, obviously if you're trying to maximize DPS as thf having your set makes more sense. Although sub brd my damage is still fairly decent. I also just haven't taken the time to +3 my relic gloves.