For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

How do you figure that?

3.35 -> 4.35 is a, roughly, 23% increase. 10% of that is 2.3.

2.3*6 is 13.8.

Admittedly, this ignores relative decreasing returns from higher crit rate.

Don't do math half asleep in bed, kids.

4.35 / 3.35 = 29.9%, so it would be around a 3% increase before any crit damage and diminishing utility.

You also don't multiply by every hit.

In sheet crit cape has 4% dmg advantage over WSD cape, which is pretty significant. Its also on target with capped dDEX, so would be even more on something with uncapped dDEX.

As you get better gear your crits will each deal more damage, which increases the potency of the crit rate cape. This is what a high end evisceration build looks like.

ItemSet 348286

Even if you ignore the artifact legs completely, substitute yetshila +1 for normal quality (which only costs 80k btw), and use meghanada cuirie +2 in place of our relic body, and use normal quality adhemar hat instead of the HQ version, you still have 16% crit damage. Thief also natively has the highest critical attack bonus job trait (14%), and there's an additional 8% critical damage to be had from job points via the gifts tree. So you start with crits dealing 30% extra damage in a basic set, but as you improve it evisceration's critical hits deals upwards of 44% extra damage and its consistency stabilizes with around an average 80% critical hit rate.

So yes, the 10% critical hit rate cape is going to be a significant damage increase over the weaponskill damage cape. And remember that there's no rush to get everything at once. It's fine for a new character to not have everything right out the gate. But building the crit rate cape when you have a chance is definitely a good idea.

So, AF1+3 Hands. It says it adds +20 to Trick Attack. What exactly is that, and does its utility scale if used in tandem with Vajra?

20% agility added to the damage, aka nothing (I mean, if you were doing TA without ws'ing then sure)

Does it stack with vajra, maybe, it's kinda pointless

I utilize Trick Attack Set at start of battle in conjunction with Plunderer's Vest +3 to stack that +30 emnity onto tank, its a nice way to start off a fight against creatures like Odyssey NM's. You get some nice numbers from the Vajra, and if timed right you can precook TA onto Tank >> SA WS Mob >> TA WS Tank and help steer the emnity flow of battle.

Is that the current bis thief evisceration set? I only used it on dancer so I hadn't actually optimized one for thief. If you have twash, any real reasons to use evis besides to 3 step?

Why not simply TAWS on the start? Its not like making 1000TP is hard. Unless you TA 40 sec before the fight and start with TA hit, followed by TAWS. Anyway TA hit damage is low, even with Vajra. Its OKish if you get triple attack proc (with full damage tp set) with Triple Damage on Twashtar, but its not something that you can make sure will happen (You have ~25% chance with AM3).

For low attack scenario maybe. With Tauret its actually competitive to Twashtar for just spamming Evis vs Rudra.

that's the set I use verbatim except I use moonshade just cuz I'm used to it I guess

As for twash, I have one and I never use it :x. Tauret is just too good, and the only time I would ever want to use twashtar over it would be in a super buffed helm zerg or something, at which point I would be playing war, run, brd, or geo instead of thf, so I have no real experience with any attack capped twashtar vs tauret situations

Using sheet (I optimised crit rate gain from Tauret).

- Excluding skillchain damage and SA/TA
- Assuming max damage TP set
- Sam roll, capped att/acc

Tauret/Twashtar dps (8447) is between AM3Twashtar/Cento dps (8855) and *AM3Twashtar/Ternion dps (8108).

*Assuming holding TP for 2000TP Rudra to increase dps

Ofc using Rudra with Twashtar has benefit of self skillchaining if you only spam Rudra and SARudra and TARudra will also be stronger. Advantage of Tauret on the other hand is that you dont need to keep AM3 (Tho even with AM1, Twashtar/Cento is slightly ahead (8550))

Yes, that is a fully optimized evisceration build. Tauret is obviously better in the main hand. I just use Twashter/ternion +1 as the defacto daggers whenever I create new gear sets on ffxiah out of habit. I modified that one to Tauret/twashter though since that actually IS the BiS evisceration set, and the one I use whenever I spam it.


I ran some testing a while back at apex raptor camp between moonshade earring and mache +1 and for that particular test mache +1 came out slightly ahead, so I just use that. Moonshade/odr is also perfectly fine and the difference is so small you're looking at maybe a 1-3% difference at best. The gear set adds 40% critical hit rate and evisceration already has a 10% crit rate modifier at 1,000 tp which scales to 25% at 2K TP, so with capped dDex you're looking at a minimum of 75% critical hit rate at 1K TP and closer to 80% with the usual tp overflow. The test was to compare a few more crit rate against higher base damage and higher base damage won out, but it was very close. So again, Moonshade and mache +1 are interchangeable. The rest of the build BiS is set in stone though.



Tauret and Twashter excel in different situations. Simon posted some good math just above. Tauret is exceptionally useful at farming lower tier mobs, like omen trash, dynamis wave 1, or reisinjima trash mobs. Twashter is more useful against higher level mobs, like everything in dynamis wave 3, Omen Catuare bosses, pretty much any gaea's fete Nms in any escha/reisinjima zone, hard or very difficuly ambuscade runs... etc. The difference boils down to whether or not the mob has enough HP to maintain some melee time with twashter to get value out of the aftermath. As a general rule of thumb, if the mobs die in one weaponskill and you have to switch targets immediately, go with Tauret evisceration spam. But if the mobs are HP sponges and you don't instantly swap to a new target after every weaponskill go with Twashter instead.

Evis earrings, should be Sherida/Odr, while they're all going to be literally 1 dps apart that should be best

I could totally see that being the case. The second earring slot is the only one where there's any form of competition, and the difference is insignificant between the options. I'll just swap sherida into my build and call it a day.

I don't want to hear this. I read in another thread where someone was asking for suggestions on which rema to make next, people said "why wasn't Twashtar made already?" This thing better have a use for all I dumped into it xD


Thanks for this. I recently finished Twashtar a few months ago and was only using that, but I mostly only use THF for Omen fodder/swart farms or Odyssey Segment groups, so good to have a clearer idea of where to use each. I have all the gears and sets, just felt like Twashtar was way ahead of Tauret. Good stuff.

Funny coincidence because I wanted to make video about the omen, but I'm super drunk now so might not be a best idea now

tauret is amazing for the work involved, but i'd still recommend every thf to aim for twashtar. it's definitely worth the effort.

I mean it's subjective but can't disagree on merit. If a person wholly enjoys thf, yeah. Or, effort is better placed elsewhere.

THF not being "important" makes nothing "worth the effort" for it. Especially glavoid and/or half a billion gil, when tauret is "free" and no trials, just insta good.

And then when the next wave of rema hit and twashtar is collecting dust because mandau is broken now etc

A THF who has 5 billion gil in gear and a naked THF have the same value to the playerbase. Zero. Until they need something from them.

I have a mastered/complete (non-mythic or SU5) dancer as well, so I figured I would make one just because it fills double duty. Half billion gil and Glavoid didn't really deter me since I just used ambu mats and spare time working to do trials. They are slowly devaluing gil anyhow, it's hard to say something is ever "worth" the price/time you put into it unless YOU feel it is. I just would have hated the math to say "Tauret is better than Twash and you wasted time/money" >.>

No, do it! Now is the perfect time! It will be like the show Drunken history only FFXI style. Drunk'n guides by Simon...

Twashtar is the single strongest dagger a thief can aquire. Even in the situations where Tauret is ideal, Twashter is hot on its heels. Tauret's edge over Twashter on trash mobs isn't that significant, but Twashter's utility on higher end content is unparalleled. Rank 15 Twashter is never a waste of money for a dedicated thief. Use it well and it will never let you down.

I mean you can say that, but 90% of my playtime from past 6 months is on THF and not because I don't have different jobs.

Idk, maybe. My project for now is make a tea.

Objectively speaking you want THF for TH and if THF is already there its better to be bis then trash.

I mean "if" there was only because im bad at english, should be "when".

EDIT: Its the same IF like in "you need tank, and if tank is there then its better to be good"

Or approaching this from different side. If THF can achieve 8000+ dps and be enough to kill a mob, why you different DD when you can have TH?