For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

So I gave the aeolian edge cleave thing another try and this time -- success. Mostly anyway.

I went with far bigger pulls this time as per my usual style. On the first floor I pulled a total of 13 mobs in my inital pull and you can see just how powerful the evasion hybrid is here. In the split second I was in my weaponskill set my HP went from around 1700 to single digits. I went from 8-10 consecutive evades and getting hit for 60-80 damage to nearly 8-10 consecutive hits for 100-150 damage. That was a bit much but it shows off just how large a pull you can really handle doing the AoE strategy. Floor two went down in under 2 minutes. I was up to floor 3 by the 7 minute mark. And the rabbit, lizard, and bird camps all went off pretty smoothly with entire camp pulls.

Total run time -- 28 minutes: 30 seconds
Time left on the clok at the very end -- 21 minutes, 30 seconds

And I easily lost about 5 minutes at the mandragora, ladybug, and porxie camps with hate bouncing and switching things up. I'm pretty sure 20 minute runs are possible with full optimization. I need to make sure I don't miss ferrorous and king of hears next time they're available. I won't post any more vidoes from here on out. This is plenty to show off aeolian cleaving's potential. It's definately way faster than strict melee if you can get a good groove going. I like it.

So, I totally agree with this take on Gandring... but what about the Su4 version for a much more reasonable cost? I see your server prices sit at 15~20k for Plunderer's Knife, then you'll have to bring it into Dyna farming a bit to level it up (assuming no desire to actually use or pay for upgrade mats). Since it still fulfills the same sort of role, maybe worth that much for this weird niche toy? For those big pulls I could still see the TP/evade being useful enough to speed things up and outweigh one Malevolence.

Guess it comes down to how often you plan to use it, since it's still spending money to do this kind of farming just a bit faster than the Malevolence x2 option.

Thanks for posting your AoE farming adventures, Melphina!

This is what I usually do, and most of the time goes like this; with the occasional wipe because I WS at the wrong time (like with the rabbits + mandies).
I used Grandring path C during the AOE part, then switched to Vajra for AM3 and stay in Eva gear, and /run is really good for hate control.

If your total damage (dagger + WSC + fSTR) is ~500, and your WSD is at 36%, adding 4 WSC (5 DEX) will give you the same benefit as 1 WSD. You're thief is probably a bit below 500 total damage (384 DEX = 283 WSC, R15 Twash = 128, fSTR caps at 22).

Based on the assumption that you get the maximum benefit from the str (aka, fSTR isn't already capped), you would need a total damage increase of +28 from DEX and STR to match a +9 WSD herc foot with no other stats.

At best, the stats on Lust feet add 18 WSC, and 8 fSTR, so I'd say it's very very close. I'm going to reassess and say, the margin probably swings toward herc unless you need the acc.

And this is exactly what I expected how it should look like. Bravo.

Nono, you misunderstand. That's just the dex I have in gear. When I stack rudra's with sneak/trick attack my total dex is 468, and my total str is 309. When I use rudra's without sneak or trick attack my dex is 478 (because cath palug stone instead of yetshila +1)

My total damage (dagger + wsc + fstr) should be closer to 520-525. So even if I can cap fSTR without Lustratio I'd still be in the damage range you're referring to.



Brllliant. I love it. Thanks for sharing that. Looks like I have something to strive for. My bonnet's off to you sir for a job well done.



It definitely appears to be worth it. Baidos took my clear time and shaved off close to an additional 10 minutes with Gandring main hand. You can literally see how much TP he's getting from all the evade. He was at 3000 tp in the first room just from pulling everything, and when he got to the third floor it enabled him to do double camp pulls. If I had been getting all that extra tp it would have sped up things far more than the extra malevolence's MaB was worth. He was dealing roughly 9500 aeolian damage at 3K tp to my 12,000 at 3K and everything still went down in two swipes. The TP flood gandring provides is just an insane weaponskill battery and it also shows that there's a fair amount of leeway you have with your aeolian edge set. I'm definitely going to have to pick up a plunderer's dagger for this. At 15-20 mil is totally worth it to enable 20 minute runs. It would take less than a dozen omen farms to reimburse the cost.


Cookie for you Baidos. LoH too.

Its not about cost really. Its about having fun while farming, which Gandring provides.

Fun and omen farming dont mix unless your taking shots for each s crystal you get...

At what WSD % can Herculean armors beat out the agreed upon BiS pieces for unstacked Rudra's?

Looking at the armor I struggle to see how Head, Hands, and Legs could ever win even at 10% unless the other augments on them were insane.

@Melphina: I use Gandring myself, and a big plus for me while farming non-trivial things is the TH+3 on it, for a baseline of TH6. It's really nice being able to maintain TH8+ with just a single armor swap keeping you capped on tag while cleaving, which leaves more room for gear that actually impacts combat.

They can't, really. Body and feet are arguably BiS with solid augments for unstacked, the other slots have better.

Yeah, I have a couple good DM WSD Herc pieces:




I don't use that helm for Rudra's; I do use it for other stuff like Aeolian Edge, Trueflight, Wildfire, Savage Blade.

However, I wouldn't say a WSD+9~10% couldn't be a better unstacked Rudra piece. If I had 10~15 DEX on mine (Herc's base attributes are DEX-9 and STR-8 versus Pillager's +3), that would be a harder decision for unstacked Rudra's... would really come down more to whether you want the significantly higher Acc on AF+3, or extra 2% WSD from the 8% Helm (and usually, I think I'd lean toward the WSD). Obviously, stacked = AF+3 though since that's effectively a WSD+11%/DEX+37 piece with a boatload of acc.

I do use that vest for Rudra's though.

Known info, but confirmation


I do wonder if that's "wholly" true though. That would mean that TH5-14 give fractions of %, or if they all simply give 1% etc

So would Voluspa Tathlum now play any part in some WS sets? Like non-SATA rudras / Shark bite / DE / MS ? I did a quick browse and didn't see it mentioned

You haven't seen it mentioned because Aurgelmir Orb was added at the same time. Even NQ seems to beat Voluspa unless acc uncapped. Orb is also 2in1 TP and WS ammo. Ofc Orb is overpriced now, so you could use Voluspa as temporary solution, but is it worth it to lose 1000 Domain points for it? Not for me. At least not before I get everything else I want from DI and that may take more time, then for Orb price to go down.

Ah right, makes sense

I'm going to assume that the quote was just poorly worded. "Rate" specifically applies to the proc rate of the TH increase which decreases with the value of TH applied (i.e. TH increasing from 9 to 10 has a higher chance to occur than going from 10 to 11), and that "value" means the actual drop rate increase that each point of TH adds.

So, the rate (proc rate) of TH increasing lowers as the TH level applied to the mob is higher, but each increase adds a static "+1" to the drop rate.

Another interpretation is that the drop rate increasing from 1%-2% (a 100% increase in drop rate) is greater than 2% to 3% (50% increase in drop rate) even though the value added (1%) is the same.

It was in regards to actual drop rate, not proc rate. Though it is always entirely possible to be wrong.

Yeah, if that means the *item drop rate* at different levels of TH, seems pretty obviously true that the difference between TH1 to TH2 is more significant (as in, better % chance to get the drop) than the difference between... TH5 and TH6, or TH10 and TH11, etc.

I seem to remember some testing from when they first added all the TH "upgrading" stuff & TH12 cap, where player tests showed that the gap between TH0 and TH3 was significant, but the gap between like... TH3 and TH10~12 was VERY small. I suspect that's the case, and part of the reason SE won't ever reveal the actual mechanics would be that people would be mad that the utility of TH above TH3 or 4 is a tiny incremental improvement.

I mean, whatever, tag the stuff with max TH if you have a THF. If you're doing something like farming Dyna[D] for drops and it's no problem to add a THF, go for it. Or if you're trying to get a TH-affected drop from a difficult fight (or expensive, time consuming to build a pop, etc.)... A very small increase in drop rates is still better, so why not - especially when THF can more than hold its own as a DD contributor. But for most applications, I think a non-THF adding TH4 isn't really gimping things THAT much versus TH8+ from an actual THF. I don't sweat it much on things like even soloing Lilith for Malignance stuff (so much faster to do it on like MNK or SAM, and safer).

TH 1/2/3 show as specific traits for THF, so I'm betting they give set enhancements, and then TH 4-14 act more like a "gear" improvement. Like how say Inquartata improves by 2% per trait level, but +1 from gear is only 1% each.

Has there been a test of whether non-THF TH4 from gear acts the same as if a THF has +1 from gear?

They just need to troll again like

**TH EXPLANATION VIDEO!!**

Then just zoom in and out of chatlog like the old AV one.
Sit back, grab some popcorn and watch the playerbase lose their minds all over again

Question for the pro's.

Is there potential for thf (possibly eva/meva set) to resist omen boss spells?

For instance tanking KEI?

Actually yes, rather easily in fact. With 3 pieces of either Turms +1 or Malignance (Malignance being better) Kei shouldn’t be able to land hardly anything on you outside of the stupid Slow Aura.

Use 4 or 5 for extra safe measure but that’s been working well for me so far for Kei and Kin on MNK and SAM. ***EDIT*** Nukes will still damage you but you’ll take usually greatly reduced damage compared to say a WAR with limited MEVA.

Interesting thought, does Evasion Skill have any impact on Magic Evasion? I figure probably not but never hurts to ask if it’s been tested.

evasion skill is simply physical evasion, not at all magic related.

I have 5/5 malignance and was considering giving KEI a try with thf tank for funsies lol

How are the spikes with thf meleeing?

I haven’t tried with THF yet but on MNK the damage was very low, low enough that I didn’t pay them any mind. Iirc, somewhere between 12-20 per hit? Biggest thing is getting the hell out of the way of that damn Signature Move.

Dancing Fullers?

Yes, Fullers. Sorry, couldn’t remember the move for the life of me at the time and didn’t think to simply look it up lol

I see a couple Thiefs I remember from alla still posting. How's it going? Alla deleted our forum ><