For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

NIN was announced in the digest youtube video. http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/55545

Nothing outside of a raw guess as to when THF will be up. But at best THF will get timers split like DNC/DRG and that's about it.

maybe tweaks to Collabo/Accomplice cause they're kind of useless. DISTANCE would be nice.

Splitting them and letting hide just wipe hate would be great to me

What could they possibly do to adjust our job abilities aside from separating accomplice and collaborater anyway? Thief's job abilities are either pivotal to the job or pretty useless. Sneak and trick attack, feint, flee, perfect dodge/larceny, bully, and steal (Aura Steal) make up close to all of our ability uses, and they're all fine as is. Meanwhile mug, despoil, and conspirator are all but useless, hide is very niche, accomplice/collaborater are only necessary in very rare cases, and assassin's charge has scaled really poorly. An extra triple attack every 5 minutes is pretty bland now that we can hit upwards of 58% triple attack rate in our tp sets, and a stacked rudra's doesn't benefit overly much from extra hits so it's easily the weakest of the category 2 merits now. Changing any of these won't affect our performance much if at all.

Whenever S-E tries to balance our job they end up trying to do it around our enmity control role, but the meta threw that out the window ages ago. Thief's identity now is just a strong DD with higher treasure hunter capability than anyone else. Whether it was their intent or not, the massive rudra's storm upscaling in 2014, the 2 hander str/dex to attack/accuracy update in 2013, and the high quality gear options they've made available to us in the past few years have done more for the job than any balance pass they've ever implemented in the game's entire history. That's not to say I wouldn't like some more toys, but after the black mage update this month I'm not getting my hopes up for anything grand.



I concur. This would actually be all it would take to make me a very happy cat. If this ended up being the extent of our balance pass I couldn't even complain.

I would really like them to drop the "steal consumable type things" from despoil and just make it a pure TP theft ja, maybe with a slightly higher % or lower recast.

And... making steal actually work again I wouldn't be opposed to. It'd be nice to actually be able to ya know BE A THIEF ... Long gone are the days of going to dynamis and stealing a coin every 5 minutes.

I could gets down with a "5~10x gil multiplier to mug" too. I think the most you can mug is like 12k. That really hasn't scaled well.

id be fine if they just turned steal/mug into basic hp/tp/dex/etc type drains like the jps already do, just change those to increase the effect, steal/despoil+ increase potency or something. Make despoil either do multiple ailments or a single one. All in all just remove the whole stealing mechanic of it since that never saw the light of day after SE saw it as broken to let thf actually steal anything of value.

Honestly i just want hide to wokr, collad/accomp to be split, and maybe make TA transfer a portion of thfs hate ontop of dmg. SE wanted to make the job this "master of handling enmity", actually do it

Maybe they will bring back Yokodama

When ambuscade weapons can drop 50k ws every 3 seconds, 10 second sa/ta really isn't even broken anymore.

What would a high end rudra's set look like? I'm pretty unfamiliar with how I would gear for that weaponskill. I'd be running around pretty stacked on buffs(Honor March, Minuets where allowed, Frailty, Fury, Chaos) at almost everything I use my THF at.

https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Community_Thief_Guide#WS_Sets

pretty cetain these sets are still up to date

Pretty much this

ItemSet 348287

Geared to the max a 3,000 TP rudra's will do roughly 50-70K on most things with good attack ratio. With full buffs I've had spikes as high as 95K on dynamis mobs, although my bard was singing Dexterous Etude for me as well as the usual buffs on that particular run, which was enough to push the numbers into silly territory.

Does anyone have an EVA set they wouldn't mind sharing?

sets.defense.Evasion = {ammo="Yamarang",
head="Turms Cap +1", --agi43 eva94
neck="Combatant's Torque",
ear1="Eabani Earring",ear2="Infused Earring",
body="Ashera Harness", --agi30 eva90
hands="Turms Mittens +1", --agi5 eva80
ring1="Ilabrat Ring",ring2="Regal Ring",
back={ name="Toutatis's Cape", augments={'AGI+20','Eva.+20 /Mag. Eva.+20','Evasion+10','"Fast Cast"+10',}},
waist="Sveltesse gouriz +1",
legs="Volte Tights", --agi47 eva74 (can do turms+1)
feet="Turms Leggings +1", --agi53 eva119
}

I never use this and haven't touched it in a while.
Obviously better cape aug thank FC, and could throw the last slot aug (I'm just gonna do sird on that one)
. Body is slightly wrose than Turms but prob worth it over.

Generally Volte Harness / Turms+1 set stuff.
volte usually about 5 eva less, except for head where turms clearly wins.
Ashera harness slightly less but worth for DT.

Isn't the JSE neck better for evasion? There's a good hunk of AGI and evasion on there, assuming it's augmented.

This too. I haven't bothered touching the eva set in a few months

What's the general consensus on

Gere/Hetaroi
vs
Gere/Epona's


I get Gere/Eponas winning on spreadsheet but Gere/Hetaroi crushing for white damage (i have a toggle that flips into white dmg mode if tp filled or amnesia)

Do you have an updated spreadsheet?

Gere/Heteroi was better by 10 overall on the sticky sheet

Boshi's spreadsheet is interesting. Here are a few things to consider.

Triple Attack - 1 less triple attack is always 2 less swings per 100 rounds, but as TA increases epona's DA returns diminish. At 50% TA the 3% DA is just 1.5 swings per 100 rounds.

Twashtar - Hetaroi's white damage and Twashter's aftermath multiply each other so the 5% damage becomes 15% when aftermath procs.

You know that "attack capped on literally everything" is a meme right? People here assume they're attack capped on literally everything. always. on every job.

The thing you need to realize most of all is that no matter what ring you use the difference is -literally- negligible. You're talking about such a minor difference in "actual" dps that it's well within the margin of error just by itself.

It doesn't actually matter if you use Heteroi/Gere/Epona/Moonlight/Ilabrat/Rajas/Chirich the end result is identical.

I'm aware, and I know you know better than that. You're a great player Eiryl and you know your stuff. I just said that to re-emphisize that illabrat has a lot going for it.

Edit:


Lol, point taken. Done and done. I think this is the most sensible thing any of us have said regarding the rings discussion. Well played sir. You win an internet cookie. I'm done with this discussion now.

I was doing an Aeneas build on that one btw.
No sam rool
I’m assuming with twash main het wins clear.


There might be an argument for epona as a low haste swap

Interestingly enough, I was just looking at the Gere/Hetairoi/Epona breakdown last night on Ninja in some detail (Odin just gave up the ring for me yesterday, yay). Obviously NIN and THF are different, but for the purposes of this comparison the logic should remain the same (and NIN THF ring selection has pretty much been the same for years now, aside from no Moonlight Ring on NIN).

I was seeing Epona still pretty consistently beating out Hetairoi for 2nd ring across a wide variety of target/buff situations. Super buffed on harder mobs, changing to a more restrained selection of buffs, varying ilevel targets, etc...

That included Empy crit/white damage focused TP builds that seem like they should be most favorable to Het (Kannagi, using either a 3/5 Kendatsuba +1 set and Adhemar+1 head/hands, or 5/5 Ken+1 set - both are heavy TA/crit oriented sets). However, the Epona > Het breakdown also stayed consistent when testing with other weapons (Relic, Aeonic).

I also played around with inflating TA value (added TA+20 to my TA+32~33% NIN sets) to more closely approximate the additional TA that THF gets from traits/gifts. Added some crit dmg+ to play with that. None of that changed the ring situation.

Take that for what you will, and I wouldn't be absolutely shocked to see Het beating Epona in some situations with Twash main. But I suspect Epona will be the better choice a lot of the time.

I've never been a big fan of heteroi tbh. The whole meta is ws damage and overflow is always more damage. Provided you ws like a bot and never go over 3000 effective tp. The more tp bonus you have and/or the slower you are or are forced to ws the better heteroi is.

If you're a real minmaxer you have an auto toggle to change rings when you go over 1k tp. The goal being get to maximum effective tp asap then If you pass it optimize wasted white damage.

What I really wish they would do is make more things that are high dps but have enmity- and/or dt. Too many glass canons don't understand that a dead dd has zero dps.

hi, wondering what people thoughts may be on ambuscade bow.
not to use per say but just for the added stats. would +15 to str agi and dex beat out yetshila +1 for stacked?

I humbly assume it blows jukukick feather completely out of water for unstacked.

also there is a factor of not being able to use Ginsen for tp.

assuming all max gears otherwise

It's not even a comparison. Yetshila +1 blows the ambuscade bow away when you're stacking rusdra's.

The bigger issue is losing access to all the various ammo we can utilize. Staunch Tathlum for DT, Yamarang for STP/Meva, etc. Technically the Bow would be better in a Rudra spamming scenario if you're looking at just Rudra, because Yetshila only activates on a stacked. We're stuck with like DEX+4 otherwise?

But you're giving up a LOT of variety and utility for that little bit. And I would basically never feel it's worth it.

It is interesting... Ullr is better, considering the amount of unstacked WS you would use

But yeah, you give up all ammo options to gain a couple dps. It's better to just keep that under wraps.

Could argue Ullr for longer fights I guess where your dmg is coming mostly from unstacked Rudra

This is all a wash if you're mixing in evis for SC reasons


Is there any consensus on around what rank Twash beats out Aeneas