For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

So dare I ask the question. Some fashion of malignance gearset with Vajra?

Seems survivability will be nice on harder things now.

This would be a very strong version of things. Not worth me making a Vajra for, but it does help Vajra more than it helps the other daggers.

It's definitely going to favor vajra more than the other daggers. I honestly don't know how much the store TP will impact things, but it's really solid for higher level content. Survivability will be a lot nicer no matter what dagger you're using, but offensively it caters more toward Vajra's strengths than anything else. I'm pretty sure it still doesn't change anything in the overall dagger hierarchy (Twash/Aeneas first should still be true), but if you do build a Vajra then it'll be a real boon whenever you use it. Then again maybe I'm wrong and it may do more for vajra than I think. Vajra gets a lot out of the rank 15 upgrade, and I haven't actually tried to run any numbers on it. Maybe someone would care to try to do some comparisons with Vajra using 5/5 Malignance against Twash or Aeneas using our usual TP stuff? I'd be curious to see what the basic data showed.

Full Malignance set would still have 31%TA and 7%DA, so Vajra/Cento would only have ~15% more attacks per round than Twashtar/Cento (~13% if sub WAR and 17%DA).

This wont make up for loss of melee damage from Twashtar AM, Rudra being significantly better WS and potentially making 2 or 3 step Darkness and 70DEX adding more accuracy for Cento, than 30 accuracy from Vajra.

Now Vajra will shine even more in 2 scenarios:
1. Fighting much below attack cap (around 2.0 pdif for example). Mandalic Stab having + 75% attack modifier will beat Rudra then. Even more if you can't use Cento.
2. You want to make Light skillchain (like for example to damage first phase of Lilith). Mandalic Stab is the only Fusion WS for THF. You can obviously use Twashtar and make Mandalic Stab too, but +49.5% modifier on R15 Vajra will work much better, especially if you plan to stack it with SA or TA (Vajra has 30% critical damage bonus for both).

Can mythic AM3 proc on offhand hits? If it can then Vajra/Cento would have ~28% more attacks per round than Twash/Cento w/ those stats (~24% /WAR).

Nope. AM3 on 1hand mythics only works for main hand. Same for 1hand Empy. Sadly it's the same for H2H mythics and even worse for Verethragna, which can only triple damage on first hit on one hand (like relics).

I'm pretty sure you're right and I know that's the case for relic/empy procs but I've never actually seen any hard evidence/discussion on whether it's true for mythic oa2/oa3.

I've been trying to search for it but I haven't found any testing specifically on whether offhand hits benefit from am3's oa2/oa3.

It kinda doesn't require testing. With 20% chance for TA and 40% for DA, it's obvious after few rounds.

I have them r15 and i typically see better results on vaj/twash than anything else. Unless its easy content; in which I twash/tauret. Also probably the teammates i have with me it seems easier to Skillchain with mandalic.

Take this for face value because i haven't parsed. It's just watching WS numbers.

Because people will mostly see and remember WS numbers. When you are unbuffed and use both TA and SA on cooldown, then you will see much higher numbers with Mandalic, because of 30% crit damage bonus on TA and SA and 75% attack bonus on Mandalic. Especially that you don't use Cento offhand and Rudra's advantage rises a lot with more TP.

I personally don't think it's "obvious," unless you have almost no multi-attack from traits/gear and are staring at your damage numbers while using an offhand with much lower damage than your main hand.
Back on topic though:
I agree. Twash/Cento has about a 7% faster attack round due to lower delay, and Twash/Cento is only 2 base tp/hit less than Vajra/Twash due to flooring. Therefore Vajra/Cento gains tp ~7% faster than Twash/Cento in this setup.

Giving up empyrean aftermath, +10% Rudra dmg and all that DEX is almost certainly not worth it for just 7% faster tp gain, unless you are really making use of Mandalic Stab and the +30% Crit dmg bonus to SA/TA, and don't care about your auto attack damage. And again this is using the new lilith armor which is much more favorable to vajra than other setups.

I mean it is obvious for many years now. I knew about AM3 not working for offhand hits for so long, that I don't even know when I first heard it. It's a fact that wasn't discussed much, because it was easy to test (like you did) and results were obvious.

ALL Aftermath only works on the main hand. This isn't mythic specific. Empyrean's triple damage bonus works this way too. Twashter's offhand will never get an aftermath proc (which is probably for the best, because it would be even more busted than it is now. And that's saying a LOT.)

Thanks for the overview analysis Simon. I had little doubt the dagger heirarchy wouldn't change for this. Full malignance just makes Vajra even better in instances where you already prefer to use it, but overall content still favors Twashter or Aeneas. It makes sense. With 5/5 malignanace you can cap -dt with just two moonlight rings or one defending ring and 10 -pDT on your ambuscade cape, and yetshila is already a magic evasion/accuracy TP piece. So we can swap in Reiki Yotai, assassin's gorget +2, and sherida/telos with it for a pretty darn optimal tp buildup even in -dt/Meva setup. The extra oomph will still give Twash and Aeneas a power boost on end game content too, and more weaponskills is always more damage.

Relic aftermaths don't only work on the main hand, neither do aeonics (they are static buffs on your character). It really is empy/mythic specific, not to mention I doubt that magic accuracy from some mythic aftermaths only applies to main hand on hit effects.

Personall
Personally I would go for something like this

ItemSet 368511

Can't add Malignance yet.

EDIT: Thats really an almost Turtle set tho. I would probably use Epona's over Dring in Hybrid.

Eh, I don't know about Aeonic. Weaponskills are technically performed with the main hand, even if the offhand does get a hit in the damage calculation formula. There's no way to know exactly how it's coded, but you're right about Mandau's crit bonus. So I do have to rescind my statement if but for that alone. Not all aftermath is main hand only. Empyrean and mythic is really easy to test though, and it's already been said but they definitely are main hand only.


Yeah, I was thinking defending + gere would be better than double moonlight. Pretty obvious choice there. It's amazing how spoiled for choice we're becoming now with genuinely good gear options in all scenarios though. Thief's gear quality has really seen a big uptic over past eras for comparable tier levels.

So the two dagger setups for endgame content are Twash/Aeneas and Vajra/Twash? Dark and light ? This question is specific to hard content. (Asking to see really if aeneas>tauret in offhand for twash)

Imo its few scenarios:
1. R15 Twashtar/Cento - when you have enough accuracy to support Cento and you want to take advantage of SA, TA and possibly Darkness
2. Tauret/Twashtar - Almost the same damage as Twashtar/Cento when you are not self skillchaining and just spam WS as fast as possible and obviously doesnt require much accuracy support
3. R15 Vajra/Cento or Vajra/Twashtar - When you want to specifically close light or you fight without buffs with high def mob
4. Aeneas/Twashtar - Something between 1. and 2. You still can spam Rudra for good damage, just not as good as with Twashtar/Cento, but doesn't require accuracy support and you can still pull nice numbers from self skillchains.

Aeneas's TP bonus doesn't work in the offhand. Twashter's best offhand options are Tauret or Perfect Taming sari if you need an Ilvl offhand, and centovente if you don't. EDIT: Aaaand that's my fault if there was a misunderstanding. I did write that content prefers Twaster/Aeneas didn't I? I meant Twashter or Aeneas mainhand. I just went back and edited that snippet for clarification.

Aeneas/Twash is still a perfectly viable end game dagger setup too. It still kicks so much tail. The rudra's storm bonus on Twashter's main hand is a lot, and comparatively aeneas's R15 bonuses are small so that that's what gives Twash a bit of an edge, but Aeneas is right up the two are still extremely comparable in power.

Also what Simon said about Tauret. When I farm junk mobs I usually prefer Tauret mainhand over Twash, and that's specificically because the mobs don't have enough HP for twash's aftermath to matter, so just tossing evisceration at 1k and moving to the next mob is more efficient. Granted that's the exact opposite of end game content, but still. Its a great dagger that scales absurdly well even into end game content for thief's who haven't gotten one of the REMA options yet (or don't prioritize playing thief enough over other jobs to do so).

Thanks, yep i was confused because you originally said Twash/Aeneas :P

I'm yet confused about TH+ and TH effectiveness. Guides say TH+ has a base limit of 8 but can reach up to 12 and 14. This vexes me. So in order to keep it simple, my total TH+ on gear for Master THF is:

Gandring x2 (TH+6)
Plunderer's Armlets +1 (TH+3)
Skulker's Poulaines +1 (TH+3)
Herc. Feet Dark matter (TH+1)

This totals gear TH+13. Is that an overkill/overcap? Because if so, I might as well sell one of my Gandrings.

did you even try looking it up?

Gandring x2 is useless

It's a fun tool for soloing fodder path C. that is all.

Initial TH on a mob starts at TH8, when you have higher TH gear equipped, there's a higher chance of the mob procing a TH increase. So if you continue to fight with TH12-14 equipped you're more likely to increase TH on the mob versus if you just wore TH initially then switched to TP gear with no TH.

https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Treasure_Hunter has some more detailed information/explanations for how it works.

I guess what I really want to know is am I hitting a cap that I can't exceed (like having 85% fast cast on RDM when the cap is 80%)?

It has never been tested whether having more than TH8 when you attack an enemy improves TH proc chance over having just TH8.

I think it's also important to add that SE "did" say that if you have more TH on than your current level, it does raise your chance to increment your TH. At that point, I believe we already had enough gear to cap out at 8, so I think it is relevant.

Edit: what they said was, switching out of TH gear lowers the rate of increase.


So the implication is, if you are at TH10, you need to be in TH10 or higher to have the maximum rate of upgrade.

That is what would actually need to me tested.

I don't think it is worth testing though. At best, you'd just want a max TH set for placebo building, and a regular set for tagging.

>.>



Ohhhh.

This guide makes it seem like BIS weapon set is Aeonic main hand and Twash off hand. Or am I reading incorrectly?

So a couple people say twash is better, but I don't see it tbh. Any numbers I look at I get aeonic still ahead. Unless you're using tpbonus offhand and prone to accidentally overtping.

(not that I would say go ahead and waste 100m on R15 aeneas...)

If it makes you feel better, I'm also going to spend another 100m-sh x3 to upgrade the other 3 daggers.