For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

Epamonidas +1 is better than meta ring +1 by a malm. Also perfectly augmented malevolences are technically the best weapons for max damage. If you're cleaving a whole bunch of mobs most of the damage will be coming from aeolian edge, so the difference in dps will be paltry compared to the rather large difference in INT/MaB the daggers afford.

In the community guide there's DT% set and then a DD evasion set. What's the functional difference between a DT% set and this evasion set (the +572)? Granted, the latter isn't PDT capped but that could be easily fixed with rings. Is there a reason not to use the Malignance set in favor of the DT% set?

The sets are clearly defined.

"the best DD output while still wearing full DT"

The difference(s) being malignance is great but not "the optimal" dps option.

You decide what to use based on a sliding scale between Glass Cannon - Some survival - Cap DT but still do damage - Full turtle

Tauret/Naegling win in my experience due to higher magic damage stat.

I could see the magic damage stat being better for the mainhand, but then you would want to use Tauret/Malevolence. The magic damage stat on the offhand dagger has no relevance whatsoever to aeolian edge's damage because it's a weapon specific attribute and only affects that particular weapon, and only the mainhand calculates into aeolian edge's base damage. It's the same as how the offhand's dagger skill is weapon specific and doesn't tie into the accuracy/attack value of the main hand. The only stats that affect aeolian edge's performance from the offhand weapon are int, dex, magic accuracy and magic attack, so a perfect auged malevolence IS best for the offhand hands down.

that is not true

He probably got mixed up with "Magic Accuracy Skill", which only works on MH.

You are definitely wrong here like Austar wrote. Just wanted to add that Magic Damage stat is not multiplied by WS's fTP, so it will be very potent for WSs with low fTP and much less potent for WSs with high fTP, so there is no easy way to compare it to other stats. You simply need to calculate it for each specific WS and each specific fTP threshold you plan to use.

I assume you guys already discussed this in the past but I wonder what was the outcome.

Adhemar+1 (B) vs Plunderer's Bonnet +3.
They have similar stats.
My impression is that for pure damage Adhemar wins, at the cost of accuracy, and vice-versa Plunderer's is a nice alternative when you want more acc.


Plunderer's Vest +3 vs Pillager's Vest +3
Leaving the Ambush bonus aside, which would be better for Evisceration and stacked Rudra? (granted Herculean with 10% WSD would be better, but I'm comparing these two atm).

I dunno, I'm confused.
TA should work very nice for a WS with FTP transfer like Evisceration, likewise for the 6% crit dmg, making Pillager a really nice option. It also has lotsa acc.

Plunderer on the other hand has 1% less Critdmg and no TA, but has Crit Rate+6, better stats, more att (but we could say att is less relevant for a crit WS than it is for a non-crit one).
There's also the Trick+10 stat, but I think that's gonna be pretty inconsequential. And The Enmity+30 which is, uh... mixed feelings.

So I dunno, what do you guys use? Overall Plunderer's Vest+3 doesn't seem like a noticeable upgrade over Pillager's but more like a sidegrade, if one at all.

Adhemar +1 for damage, and plunderer's +3 for accuracy. The relic cap is an all around well balanced piece and it's our best TP hat if you can put the accuracy to use. But Adhemar does get a slight edge in damage output even without the set bonus, and with the bonus active it's definitely ahead by a small margin. I usually wear relic hat +3 with my th setup on wave 2 mobs since I'm already using taming sari and plunderer's armlets +3 for that, and also since we don't switch over to heavier accuracy buffs until wave 3. The difference isn't that big though and the larger part of our damage comes from weaponskill output.

Note that that's with twashter main hand. If you're main handing tauret the difference is bigger because of tauret's silly crit rate.




Relic +3. It's not even a close comparison. The crit rate makes the relic far better than the artifact when you're using evisceration, and the relic also has higher stat mods for rudra's storm. Rudra's storm pumps all of it's damage into the first hit and triple attack doesn't do very much for it. Multiple hits add almost insignificant amounts of damage to the total numbers because of how the dex and tp scaling work.

Well for stacked rudra it's slightly higher mods/att vs 1% more damage and 7% TA.
TA is a really small bonus for Rudra, but it still counts, likewise for the 1% more WS damage (crit dmg is almost like WS damage during Ssneak/Trick)

For Evisceration it's unlikely to be at 100% base crit rate, so I can see how 6% crit rate can be a really good boost. But 7% TA is no joke for WS with replicating FTP like Evis, no? And, again, it's 1% more Crit damage on Pillager's.

I dunno, they seem to be so close in my mind. Are you sure the difference is so big? I should check on the spreadsheet I guess, right?

Don't forget that the relic vest has no attack of its own. Plunderer's vest +3 has 72 more attack than pillager's +3. I think I mentioned to you earlier in this thread why rudra's storm's damage is weighted so heavily on that one hit, but basically it takes a pile of stats and converts them it a massive base damage attack, then multiplies that via a critical hit pDIF, which is then multiplied again with critical hit damage mod, which is then multiplied another time by weaponskill damage mod. None of the extra swings benefit from that. So when rudra's storm gets a triple attack what you have is something akin to a 6000-7000 base damage attack that gets criticaled and that critcal damage multiplied several times over.... followed by a 400-500 base damage attack with no further multipliers. That first hit critical can deal 50-70k damage with any triple attacks adding about 1k damage each. It's better to make that first hit critical deal as much as possible than it is to worry about getting extra swings. And for that reason yes, the relic vest is just better than the artifact for rudra's storm.


5% crit rate is just better than 1% crit damage, period. And while evisceration does have replicating fTP, it's also a 5 hit weaponskill that gets a swing from the offhand, effectively making it 6 hits. Furthermore, evisceration has an very low fTP mod at 1.25, and even with fotia gorget and belt it only goes up to 1.45 f TP. It's the inverse of monk weaponskills.

Monk weaponskills -- High fTP mod but few swings
Evisceration -- Low fTP mod but many swings that can all crit

Tornado kick for example is only 3 hits, but with a 4.5 fTP mod at 3k TP a triple attack would almost double the damage. Evisceration's triple attacks are much less impactful. Also when the main hand procs a triple attack you're already up to 8 swings so the offhand doesn't get a chance to proc, so there's a slight loss of potential there, but it's not a very big deal. Main point is that evisceration wants more critical power before it does multi attacks. And again, the relic vest has 72 attack more than the artifact, which only further puts it ahead when you consider the crit differences as well.

Long story short, relic vest +3 is the strongest weaponskill body we have for both evisceration and rudra's storm, although meghanada +2 is extremely comparable for the purposes of a stacked rudra's and comes with the benefit of not having +30 enmity tacked on if you want to avoid tanking when you stack rudra's with sneak attack. Trick attack rudra's and evisceration though are relic +3 all the way.

You convinced me, gonna upgrade it lol

The vest is the cheapest upgrade anyway. Trust me, it's well worth it.

You mix right and wrong here. Like you noticed, base number of hits in fTP replicating WS is super important to how good multi attack is for that WS. Now fTP being low or high has no connection at all with how good multi attack is for that WS or any other stat.


You can have 3hit ws with 30 fTP on each hit and 80%dex mod, then 3hit WS with 1fTP on each hit and 80%dex mod and both will have exactly the same relative increase from 20%TA or 10%WSD or 30DEX.

You're right in a sense. The fTP bonus has no correlation on the percentage increase a weaponskill gets from a triple attack. Only the base number of swings factors here. If each evisceration swing has an average damage of 5k, then 6 swings would average to 30k, and 8 swings would average to 40k. That's a 33% increase. If an average dragon kick swing did 8k, then 3 swings would average to 24k, and 5 swings on a triple attack would average to 40k. That's a 66% increase. The reason evisceration gets a 33% increase versus dragon kick's 66% is entirely due to evisceration starting with 6 swings to dragon kick's 3. The more hits a weaponskill has to begin with, the less of a percentage increase a triple attack will give.

The fTP bonus does affect the total damage though, and that's where I was going with the fTP discussion. In my previous example, evisceration only had a 5k average base damage, whereas dragon kick had 8k. A triple attack adds 2 hits to the weaponskill, so two extra swings of evisceration is 10k damage, but 2 swings on dragon kick is 16k damage. So 2 extra swings on dragon kick is 6k more damage than 2 extra swings on evisceration, because each individual swing of dragon kick deals more damage than each individual swing of evisceration.

These are just theoretical numbers to show off mathmatical concepts of course. The gist though is that

--When a weaponskill has a high base number of swings, a triple attack provides a smaller percentile increase to that weaponskill than it would if it had fewer swings, and..

--The higher the damage you get out of a single weaponskill swing, the more actual damage you get from a triple attack proc

--Rudra's storm plays by its own set of rules. Rather than dividing its damage equally across a series of swings, rudra's uses its dex mod and TP bonus to create one very large base damage hit, which then gets multiplied several times, and that multiplication of a multiplication is how the damage snowballs to such large numbers. Multi swings in rudra's storm have very little impact on the overall damage because of that.

So how does this stack up as an offhand?

Air Knife:

DMG:103 Delay:150 AGI+30
Accuracy+40 Evasion+40
Dagger skill +269
Parrying skill +269
Magic Accuracy skill +269
Haste+10% Weapon skill AGI +10%
Occasionally absorbs wind damage
Additional effect: Wind damage
Lvl. 99 THF/DNC

I wonder if the 10% will ignore the haste cap the way the magic damage reduced on Aegis ignores the cap for magic damage received? 10% haste would be pretty useless if it doesn't.

Some of the other weapons have some crazy stuff like the great axe that negates berserk defense reduction.

If the AGI bonus works like Utu grip, it would be best offhand dagger for Rudras dmg. 150 delay is great too.

Its competitive for the best offhand for THF and DNC outside of Centovente for Rudra. Weapon skill AGI +10% is slightly stronger for Rudra than 5%WSD on Ternion and slightly stronger than 50DEX on Twashtar offhand for Evisceration with Tauret main (but drop in dDEX might actually favor Twashtar in many cases). Ternion has probably better TP generation, since 4%TA should beat 25 less delay. Without knowing the potency of that wind damage on hit, its hard to tell which one has better white dps. Lastly Air is very slightly better than Nibiru Knife for full evasion.

The text is worded the same as Utu grip, which would mean Rudra's would pick up a 10% agility mod on top of the existing 80% dex mod. If that's the case it should be worth closer to a 10% increase in rudra's damage. Our rudra's sets have more dex than agility in them, but the agility we have is still significant and the fact that you're looking at a WSC adjustment means it holds more weight than a WSD increase. It also has a very strong damage/delay ratio and it's super fast. The 30 agility it carries is the icing on the cake. It should be the best non-centovente offhand dagger to pair with Twashter mainhand. Tauret/Twashter versus Tauret/Air Knife is a more questionable comparison, and I can't say for certain which leads there.

It's the sirocco kukri upgrade that jugo should've been!

No point getting a hardon for it, you will not win a mog bonanza. Multiple "someones" inevitably will, but yeah.

More like EDIT: +6.8% according to sheet (When checking Air Knife with 0% AGI Rudra vs 10% AGI Rudra)

Also from sheet (Holding TP for 1750TP Rudra, no SA or TA, capped Att):

Ternion +1
DPS: 7814.54
WSavg: 32867

Air Knife
DPS: 7931.67
WSavg: 33693

So yeah Air is better, but not by much (+1.5% dps). That is without wind damage tho, but unless its some crazy wind damage like 500 per hit, it shouldn't change much.

Yeah, I actually ran some numbers and they came up the same. The bonus comes out to roughly 7% overall weaponskill damage, which is a bit better than ternion +1. It's really not worth fussing over because it's locked behind mog bonanza though so yeah, whatever.

5% WSD on Ternion +1 is actually only like +3% overall weapon skill damage (slightly more on SA/TA Rudra), mostly because of WSD diminishing returns, so 7% overall on Air is actually much better, but like you said, its locked behind Bonanza for now, so they can GTFO with it.

I meant the fact that it's roughly 7% overall weasponskill damage puts the air knife ahead of ternion by a bit. I'm well aware of how rudra's formula works. WSD provides diminishing returns because it stacks with itself, and is a multiplier of a multiplier of a multiplier, so the fact that air knife adds its WSC effect at the beginning of the calculation means it holds significantly more weight than ternion's 5% WSD, which is applied at the end. But as you showed with numbers, the overall difference isn't terrificly big, and ternion has triple attack to help close the gap. The air knife is still better, but not by enough to really care when the mog bonanza is such a dumb thing to lock usable gear behind.

Another question is, does the 10% delay reduction break the haste cap the way the magic damage taken does on Aegis. If it doesn't it's basically a worthless stat because of how easy it is to get well over the haste cap (this is the reason why SE changed Aegis so it breaks the -mdt cap) Given that there will only be a tiny handful of these around I can see SE doing this.

no, don't even need the weapon to tell you that.

Trash compared to some other bonanza weapons then, if by some miracle you win the bonanza pick something else. e.g.this:

Drastic Axe
DMG:347 Delay:504 VIT+30
Accuracy+40 Great Axe skill +269
Parrying skill +269
Magic Accuracy skill +269
Negates "Berserk" defense reduction
"Berserk": Extends "Berserk" duration by 1 second during a skillchain
Lvl. 99 WAR

Given that WAR/SAM can spam double light SC back to back to back endlessly, and can already have zerk up with a 10 second gap this is very powerful.

Except you're giving up Chango's huuuuuge bonus' for small amounts of extra berserk uptime, which is definitely not worth it.

Two handed weapons get boned with these niche weapons, as usual, because RMEA options are almost universally better and they don't have offhand wiggle room.

Ice Brand and Air knife are probably the best ones available, unless Fast Blade II from Onion Sword III is absurdly good

Inb4 you can macro the GAX in for berserk and swap it out and keep the defense non-reduction effect.