For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

I would have liked to see more equip set theory in the gear section, posting only an entry level set and a goal set leaves a lot to the imagination, even if the most obvious sidegrades are listed. Teach the proverbial man to fish, if you're going to write him a guide.


Thief is one of the four melee that have any business being in abyssea. It is an adequate tank and damage dealer, with the bonus of landing higher level TH to get the most out of your pops. As such, a decent Evis set, or at least getting the most out of what you already own/carry, can be a significant performance gain.

While by no means ideal or perfected, I go with the below for my Abyssea Eviscerations. Significant Critical Hit Damage boosts from Razed Ruins (and Sanguine Scythe if you intend to tank anything hard, or want big SA/TAWS) and Cruor+Atma boosted DEX mean that the most effective stats to augment are Critical Hit Rate and Attack.

Current evis :



Goal evis, out of abys :


A possible evis for abys :



Edit: I dont think it matters how good the opening post is necessarily, if people posting below have good information, anyone looking for a thf guide would read other peoples posts in the thread too.

Moonshade >> ghille tp bonus augment for all sets, possibly in the last set as no set bonus with the visor+1 could use thaumas hat.

A few more notes because sleep is overrated.

1. I don't recall anyone providing theoretical math that Vajra can out damage Mandau. Its terrible delay makes it obviously not even worthy to consider for offhand, reducing TP phase dps from either slot, and its terrible weapon skill isn't even close to making up for it. Last time I tried to come up with an ideal Mandalic Stab build, I could only get to about 2/3rd if the damage from an ideal Mercy, even with the 30% bonus from SA damage. The only redeeming quality of the weapon, like most Mythics, is the OA2-3 aftermath, which a job like THF really was not built to maintain, unlike a SAM or DRG. It also doesn't generally follow the applications of the job, which is places like Dynamis and Salvage with several short fights and running in between that will waste your aftermath. And since we are still stuck with SA/TA timers, the extra TP gain from aftermath will really just mean more Exens, which isn't an impressive WS.

I recall, however, Byrth mentioning that the level correction update could possibly help Mandalic Stab because of its attack modifier, but we can't know this until it happens or we are provided more details on what the developers have in mind. And I don't see this as being enough to make Vajra a better choice of weapon.

2. Fast Cast and Haste sets for Utsu, because fun >:3

3. I also just read the post of you challenging Wanion belt suggestion. That's fine and all, but it would be a lot easier for you to just get a dps spreadsheet yourself rather than have people prove what is easy to find yourself. To be blunt, if you want the responsibility of having created a guide for the job, you should do your part of the research. Anyone can compile and regurgitate information on these forums, but that doesn't mean you're actually giving the best advice. Many people will only report what's best for them, and not realize that something as small as a race change can affect the results, so you are working with a pretty limited source of information that often fails to explain the conditions, an understanding of why the results happened this way, and all the alternatives considered and ranked.

If you download the spreadsheet, you will notice that it's pretty hard to not cap attack in a Mercy set, making Wanion an obvious choice over Prosilio. IIRC, Prosilio will still win when pdif is low but most of a THF's dps application will not be in such a situation anyway.

4. In a way related to the above, I agree with Stani. Providing a good explanation of what each set should cover will help people to be able to decide what kind of stats to look for. The actual sets provided should be more like a good place to start and the ideal is a good place to end, but there's plenty of stuff in between with no ranking and, if I didn't know better myself, I wouldn't know what to do with that information.

5. Athos's Tabard is an excellent suggestion for SA and TA Mercy. It's nearly a side grade to Toci's on SA and Tessera will beat both options on both sets.

Guess I'll toss in some comments.

1. Coruscanti's actually one of the best offhands you can be using if you only have a single REM weapon. It's often very useful if you're an Elvaan, but obviously we need to know what monster we're talking about. The capped ratio add effect is also really nice but since we're talking about offhand it loses the value it'd have from capping ratios on your WSs, assuming it can do that at all.

2. It might be worth emphasizing that Oynos knife's add effect is so good solo that it can actually outpace having a Twashtar 99 in your offhand. It's always worth keeping around in your satchel or something, and if you're really a perfectionist I guess you can swap it out after a WS when it procs.

3. I haven't checked the math myself, but Solo SA and TA sets generally should not be trading out Haste/DW/Multihit to cap DEX or AGI as much as possible. A bunch of DEX/AGI/CritDamage will push that single hit really high for a nice screenshot but usually that hurts your DPS in the long run. For the most part, I think just swapping in Raider's Armlets+2/Rogue's Armlets+1 is all that's needed to be in your solo SATA macros, and some other slots that obviously arn't helping at all when you're SATAing like neck (Rancor/Nefarious).

4. I believe Khepri Jacket is better-er than Athos for Rudra's, of course most of the people that own Hexed-1 gear are probably criminally insane.

This is news to me on Coruscanti. Is it strictly when you're hitting dDEX sweet spot?

I also highly suggest, if using XML, to have a rule that switches Oynos on/off based on haste status when TP is less than x amount. I'm sure someone can chime in with the actual rule written out before I can get home to my computer.

Also, didn't really think too much about the SA and TA sets, so it slipped my mind, but Khepri Bonnet and Khepri Kecks for SA as well as what I mentioned earlier.

Yeah. That actually happens pretty often on THF with the popular targets so it's worth bringing up, though.

Yeah, it's a good mention given the context most THFs are probably using the guide for, but I just wanted to make sure that was clarified.

Also, I think you are criminally insane for that Nagi!

OK, lots of stuff to cover!

I will add the following ASAP:
* Pugiunculous notes
* basic theory for each set, and why they are geared that way
* notes on SA/TA about using haste/multiattack
* a goal evisceration set
* evasion hybrid and regen sets
* a link to where I found Vajra information, and a note about how it only really makes sense if you can figure out how to keep AM3 up

I will look at a spreadsheet, which means I probably won't add all the gear swap notes until I get to verify them myself :) Thank you all for providing constructive feedback so far!

No one ever mentions Asteria ;; it's the prettiest dagger ever!

Holy *** a real Nagi?!

I remember a discussion about Solo SA/TA sets has lower dps compared to using tp set duo to losing haste and waiting for the slow swing afterwards. Any input on that?

Probably has be looked at on a piece-by-piece basis, but since almost every TP slot a THF has Haste/DW/Multihit involved I'm skeptical that the amount of DEX/AGI/Critdamage you can regularly get in those same slots would push that single hit enough to make up for the extra attacks you're missing out on.

I actually mentioned above that it might be worth swapping out Rancor Collar/Nefarious Collar for Moepapa medal or something, but there's the possibility that the crit rate would actually affect potential extra attacks during the SA/TA round enough so that the extra base damage from the DEX/AGI is outpaced (THF has a pretty high multiattack rate, espeically /WAR, after all).

tl;dr personally I think, when in doubt, just swap the hand slot and check later.


for the record i own a Hexed-1 piece :-P

There's a spelling error on the first post under the "ambush" section.

didnt read all yet, and not all replies but there is alot of stuff i dissagree and this will be probably because of your sight on thf.
It mostly comes back to that you dont see thf as a class who CAN do dmg. You wont be war, you wont be a sam, but thf is way better then you make it.

in short: Your Merit selection (group2), your subjob order and what you write about them, solo SA and TA sets. Your whole guide screams "I am a TH Wore and nothing else" you even write it in the start that this is what you see in thf.. TH. Thf has alot more then TH, and thf can do dmg, but thf is a class that needs alot of work and good gear to do dmg. Mainly: a mandau (or empy i guess)

There are even situations where THF out-DD other DD's! Yes there are!

Inc LOL:
good thfs can hold up to lazy DD's in Voidwatch np, if they ever get into an allaince and into a PT with buffs. Not saying thf is great there :P

most off your weapon explanation is really weak atm, Coruscanti you totally ignore, and making strange statements like "until you get one you could have made mandau" sure.. but coruscanti is a very solid off hand weapon for mandau. There are situation where it beats a STR Thokcha, and situations where it looses to STR. It will be allways weaker then 99 Twash for sure, but its not a bad offhand dagger for mandau, one of the 4~worth to mention. (Twash,STR Thok/Alu,Coru,Pugi)

Thokcha you dont even mention the different paths, while STR is normally the way to go a guide should also point out some of the other favorite Thokcha choises. AGI is a great evasion dagger, for whenever one thinks he needs it. (should not be the 1st choice to make one, but sometimes you can find a niche use for it) dex is um... well THF should never need it, but its still often considered by starter-thfs because they think dex is cool.

Oynos is allways a knife to have in satchel if needed... not as your "main dagger" but as a weapon like in dynamis solo to get haste. You can even unequip it once you got the haste effect. you make it sound like a trash weapon.

Assasins charge might be not so great when evis is the only WS you can use (in this case.. someone mathed out months ago that here solo AC for Tp phase gives more dps then to boost the ws, but not sure), with excenterator it already becomes a nice WS boost, but for mandau its amazing. Someone who has mandau should, in my opinion, definitly choose 5/5 AC,1/5 Faint 1/5 Aura steal and the other 3 in either faint or aurasteal.

You should also point out how BAD Ambush is. And that one should feel bad for meriting it, and that also +2 augment relic dont make it any better.

whenever you have a healer, and you are not solo/lowmaning dynamis on nightmare mobs /war is the best subjob. give it more credit! /nin is like never used. when you tank in abyssea you probably have a mage aswell and then you /war or maybe /dnc when solo. the old solo /nin with drain bolts is not really used anymore.

If the only reason you play/use thf is to TH *** sure.. go for faint 5/5, equip your thf knife, fulltime your other TH gear (and you might even just equip gear so you have subtle blow 50 % :P when you TP on the mob, since you dont care for dmg anyways <.< ) In this case you dont need a guide. High TH is a lie. You wont notice a great difference between TH 6, 7, 8, not even 10, 12 w/e. Its such a minimal increase.


not sure what makes you think that, its since years that th 1 and 2 are "theorized" as reroll. and i wouldn't even think TH + is a linear 1% each level. the more TH you have the less the next step will add (thats what it seems to me)

you should start reading the other THF threads here alot of information is there which you seem to lack still.

One thing I'd like to see this guide include, if possible, is different sets: e.g. high def vs low def target mobs.

Too many THF's out there are under the impression that X item/gearset is universal. "***'s situational" as they say.

Also returning player sets would be nice, since I'm sure some old-school players are/will returning for SoA.

I agree with most of what Mindi said. What I like about most of the guides that are currently up is that they show players the road they should take to improve their gear & their overall performance with that job. Those guides are overly informative on how to maximize the potential of the job & go in depth into what is expected of your job(gear-wise & gameplay). I cant shake the feeling that this guide is more just a description of thf's abilities. Maybe it was just a rushed job & Im just expecting too much, but I feel like there should be a lot more information to convey to the many THF's out there.

Perfect Dodge saves me in about 90% of the time that I use it. Thanks for calling it useless. Timer can be extended with augmented af2+2 hands. If you mentioned the extended timer for flee, you might as well mention it for PD.

Mention that TA also works behind an NPC, but not behind a pet.

For Hide, mention that it only works on sight-only monsters.

If you're going to mention gear augment for Conspirator, you might as well mention gear augment for Accomplice/Collaborator.

/nin gives you most ninjutsu procs and allows you to have Blade: Ei and Tachi: Jinpu, given that you have enough merits and the right gear. Useful for lowmaning abyssea or VWNM.

THF has a unique proc in VWNM via Ambush, which isn't much, but it's more than nothing.


...

In Legion, your sole responsibility is to TH the mobs (and maybe pull). You keep that THF Knife on full-time. If they want you to DD Legion mobs, find another group. In Salvage, where you fight most NMs once per run, you need to keep that THF Knife on full-time against NMs. Only in situations, like Dynamis, where kill speed affects drop rate as much as TH, does the THF Knife stay in the satchel.

I don't exactly know why there are 12 people in an Abyssea group, consolidated into one spot.

There are two downsides to the Mandau. One, is trying to sleep things. Two, it makes it annoying to trying to proc water blm in VWNM. Should mention it.

I'm not going to get into the gear sets since I'm not much of a numbers guy, but Darksteel Cap+1 says hi. I'm not sure why you'd suggest a Jelly Ring, but not a Wiglen Gorget.

And owning Hexed-1 gear stopped being impressive months ago. Even my mules have 3 pieces.

I've actually been wondering about this for awhile, why is it no one posts optimal TP sets that include TH gear? Like for for both normal and neo Salvage where there's no rush and you want as many TH stacks as possible.

Would think the set would need capped Gear haste and as much DW you can get before hitting the hard cap maybe?

AC was mathed out to be such a trivial DPS increase that I wouldn't ever bother putting more than 1 merit in it (if that even). Agreed on the weirdness of the TH section, legion is a situation where your DPS as thf is basically nonexistent. Try to land acid bolts and get TH upgrades.

this is missinformation aswell(outdated), 1/5 Merit gives you same duration like 5/5. More merits just increase the chance to raise your TH (and more evasion- when wearing augmented af2+2 legs)

Really grateful for all the hard work that has been put in here props for that.

But to be totally honest still don't think its ready to be sticked at this stage.

Thank you for the comments! I am totally accepting that this is not 100% yet and will need lots of feedback to make it the everything people want it to be. I'm not going to cover individual points because that would take forever, but I will be spending a lot of time on it this weekend to try to beef it up. I know it's disappointing that someone whose opinions disagree with your own and facts are often sketchy wrote a guide, but I can at least fix the facts and be convinced of a better opinion.

However, specifically for Legion, keep commenting about it, because I have never gone there as THF and I would appreciate solid advice.

Compared to what? Exenterator is our best unstacked weapon skill outside of Abyssea. Even stacked it puts out some pretty good numbers, its not omgresolution, but its still a solid weapon skill.

This is wrong, btw, the guide is actually correct on this point. You can hide from ahrimans, skeletons, elementals (as long as they aren't a pet), etc, has nothing to do with them being sight-only (or sound).

Regarding the Hide bit in the guide, I will say that Hide is by no means useless and THF in Dyna use Hide regularly to get TEs more efficiently and also to shed unwanted yag/gob aggro, in addition to using it as a way to get in a undirectional Sneak Attack.

Updated to reflect what everyone's said, EXCEPT for the equipment section.

Here's the changelist:
* Fixed Ambush spelling error.
* Feint merits no longer say they change the cooldown, because that was based on my faulty memory.
* Removed some negative opinions on Perfect Dodge.
* Merits have notes explaining their choices in life.
* Added notes and a link in Aura Steal about its effectiveness.
* Added notes about why Ambush is bad.
* Changed notes for Hide.
* Added notes to each Job Ability where gear enhances the ability, except normal Steal and Despoil.
* Trick Attack mentions NPCs and pets.
* I moved /WAR to the top of the subjob list, because the order totally matters.
* Heavily edited the TH section.
* Added more THF roles.

And again, daggers and equipment have not been changed, but only because it's late and I want to sleep. Daggers will be updated hopefully tomorrow. Equipment will most likely take longer because a) there are a LOT of suggestions to work through and b) I need to get myself a spreadsheet already.

Thanks! And keep up the critique <3

P.S. Flippant, no I'm not going to put Nomkahpa Mittens in the base TP list. I don't think an up-and-coming THF will accept advice to spend 10M on one piece of gear for one gear set. The idea for the base TP list is something like Abyssea + 1M or cheaper AH gear + common Voidwatch gear.

Nice job on updating. My main is a thief (not that great) so some of the armor is a good goal to look forward to.

I'm pretty sure he was referring to this post by Motenten:
http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/34755/thf-in-todays-ffxi/5/#2162733
It's not a straight additive 1%, it's multiplied.

It was discussed there and one other place (maybe RQT or maybe BG? I forget) with some samples sizes and what not but the basic implication is that, beyond the first couple of levels of TH, it seems to have this generic 1.01x multiplier per TH level.

Thanks for putting in all the effort to make a THF guide. I'm going to post a bunch of stuff since you've been so proactive about updating it!

I think one of the cool things about these guides is the opportunity to be thorough and consider everything.

While I agree that Gilfinder is an all-but-forgotten trait, I wouldn't say it's entirely useless, especially for newer players. A Lv99 THF with Bandolero Scarf could probably make 50k/hr at least murdering beastmen (have not tested gil/hr rates for this since like 2004). Also, I haven't see anyone test the bonus on assassin's culottes +2 so maybe it could be more (guess I just called myself out to test this-- will try to get a number later if no one beats me to it). Even if one could push 100k/hr from gilfinder, that's still pretty awful but as deflation continues maybe it would be a reasonable thing for extremely poor and/or bored thieves to utilize.

And I'm pretty sure this is like the TH proc system and just requires a 'tag' with the gear on (verification?).

For my THF, there's only one mob that I actively "tank" in this game (I don't consider killing stuff in Aby tanking since curebombs eliminate nearly all danger in Aby), the HQ Hydra in ZR2. To cap evasion on it, you need to wear a pretty heavy evasion set along with the AGI Thokcha.

In a section covering evasion this, it would flow pretty nicely to list sets for various tiers of evasion. There's some cool gear for evasion sets and less-evasive hybrid builds that can be easily overlooked, like alert ring for example.

This could be a decent place to elaborate on QA/TA/DA/OAx stacking and how that could impact gear theory for THF.

The relevant take-away here is that Trick Attack with a non-crit weaponskill will not crit for other jobs using /THF. I mention this because it was glitched for a while (recently fixed) so there may be some confusion now.

The discussion around DW on THF could be a useful spring board to discuss delay caps and whether or not you need to worry about them on THF. Recently, with more folks switching to Patentia Sash, THF should be aware of the delay cap and how it affects gearing choices. With Mandau+Pugi, gimpy /DNC Haste Samba, capped magical haste and around 25% gear haste, THF breaks the cap and pieces like the otherwise-horrible raider's earring might actually be a viable swap in for Suppanomimi if you get these sort of buffs enough carry it around (I tested this earring previously to be a DPS boost under the stated buffs, though I'm not sure if anyone has ever taken advantage of it).

Also, I can't think of a good reason to include the last two sentences in the quoted bit.

Moreover, you can proc JA Beastmen using Steal if it is successful.

Might as well just mention explicitly that AF3+2 hands offer 20%?


This is probably the natural place to mention gearing around AC. Many THF use layers in their THF gear sets to account for weaponskilling with AC up. I haven't seen AC sets posted very much but two obvious things to change in a WS set when AC is up is to not use Brutal Earring and Epona's Ring. Triple damage gear such as Demonry Ring and AF2+2 may be an upgrade depending on the WS.

A far less common use is to use AC to force a triple attack simply for the purposes of TP gain but the JA delay of using AC means this is perhaps only reasonable in such special circumstances as when ADL splits and everyone is unable to attack for a few moments. The timing is tight but I think you can use this technique to perform more reliable self-skillchains as /DNC with a 5-step Reverse Flourish.

I think this should actually be considered a required augment for any THF who is expected to use Feint in Legion. There are a couple of THF mobs in Salvage where it's useful too.

That's all for the line-by-line criticism but I have a few other general comments:

- All of the items mentioned could be changed to use the [item] ffxiah tag

- I think your "Thief Roles" section is a bit awkwardly organized as evidenced by the fact that you've had to add an "Others" category. Exploring THF's role across various game events would probably produce a better flow to information layout since roles vary widely across events. For example, in Voidwatch, there are several roles, each of which require context-specific elaborations:
-- VW procing: choose a subjob that gets you the most unique procs for your alliance (probably /DNC but some leaders may prefer you to do something weird).
-- VW TH: explain how TH works in VW and why THF are generally not wanted in VW for it (somewhat useful on something like Qilin where DDs sometimes thrash it before red is capped), along with how TH increases green light (crour yield) by 1% per TH level.
-- VW DD: discuss viable mobs to actually "DD" (THF can do quite well on piercing-weak mobs such as harpies, although a good thief with actual DD buffs will do just fine on most VW mobs) as well as which Atmacites a THF should use.

- A spellcast section would be useful considering how many spellcast questions come up on the forums

- Your TP goal set has Atheling Mantle in the back slot rather than Rancorous.

- A brief history section about THF in the intro, along with applicable lore,would be nice to see and balance out your preamble.

"Moreover, you can proc JA Beastmen using Steal if it is successful."

And not just beastmen, nightmare mobs too, 1800 attack from nightmare dhalmels etc.

You are a brave soul to make a dedicated Thf forum. Looks nice! let the math/spreadsheet user(who don't really get math)/elitist/nerd rage on the perfection of Thf begin.

General derp question i've been wondering forever:

Do you have to keep the SA/TA sets on when you hit, or does it apply the bonus when you use it and then you can take them off after?

Other stuff:

-You can SA/TA pets but they have to specifically be your pet.Same with adventuring fellows.
-Hide works for sight mobs only.