For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

Out of curiosity with choice of cape, does the 8 dex really beat 3% crit damage for a stacked rudra's?

Oh ***, just seen it's a WKR drop, so I assume you get the 2% crit damage augment?

Having the absolute best ws in the game gives thf a real boost. I wouldn't quite call it better than a ryu drg. Positional dependence is still a DPS killer.

It depends on the target, and the breaking point. Trivial ***, Cavaros. Something that matters, HT fights, Delve, Kayapa. The difference is small enough that I would just use Kayapa, unless I had an Aug'd Canny, but *** incursion.

It does not get the augment. A canny cap with Crit Damage augment would be hot though.

You can't augment the wkr capes. That would be sweet though.

Rudra storm is best ws now? Better then fudo or Mandalic stab?

I'd recommend Meanagh Cape+1 over Kayapa for Rudra's. You lose 1 pt of dex but you gain 7 agi, which is obviously nice for TA.

While you are correct, AGI does surprisingly little for TA...

It's actually 1 DEX = 6 AGI for TARudra. (roughly)

The difference between Kayapa and Meanagh is 14 damage. When doing 14000 damage, 14 more damage is well, yeah.

My recommendation is based on inventory use more than anything else to be honest, same deal with swapping Dawn Earring for Jupiter's pearl. Small hit to dex, gain to agi, and its ready for part of regen/idle set.

I play too many jobs so I'm forever struggling for space... every bit helps :D

Was thinking the same thing for Dawn Earring. Kayapa Cape is cheap and pretty easy to get if none are up, and I assume more common than the Meanagh +1. Jupiter Pearls... yeah, I'll just stick with Dawn Earring.

Well, I mean I run around with 8 heads, 8 Bodies (should be 11) etc. i'd be way over 80/80 w/o wardrobe.
Bodies:
Kheper Skadi Pillager Dread Plunderer Manibozho Iuitl Emit Wayfarer/Sombra+1 Mekosu Raider

Sometimes it's ok to use other than BiS if it covers more than one role. Like the Dawn earring, perfect example. Meanagh has double role as a Mug back.

"on paper" only gets you so far.

As far as the light earrings, I've never seen a crit damage+ but you can be the one to go obtain 50,000,000 of them and prove it, cause I'm not gonna lol.

The hecatomb comment, errum. You forget that the shear amount of Ilvl DEX is staggering. It would take like... +15% augment to top them.

Dex is still the mod of the ws, and there is never a point of too much dex.

The pillager hands just happen to have Crit+ on them as well.

Do you have a set for non SA'd rudra?
I changed one of my earring slots to Zennaroi earring just cause on hard stuff you can miss rudras.
Also with such high ftp the usefulness of gorgets has been called into question and again, for non forced crit rudra set maybe rancor collar is good?

Rudra's cannot chance crit. So using crit rate gear would do nothing.

As far as Kleos/Stab/Rhime > Rudra unstacked... Situations. Buffs. Targets. Amount of TP.

Basically there's no definitive best. Have to be, flexible.

well I can put out extra ws faster than my JAs allow me to self skillchain (reverse flourish every 30 sec) or (forced critical rudra every 90sec) so i've been throwing out unstacked rudras for the THF to close on when they have 1k tp and their SATA timers arent up.

I was under the impression you have some reasonable number of rudras ws opportunities where your timers dont afford you a forced crit and you can still miss because SA isnt up or whatever.

Yeah i'm just mainly trying to learn how to synergize well with my new dd partner in crime heh.

You have the DNC mythic... so Kleos unstacked should beat Rudras.

I'm not a DNC though... You'd be better served asking Byrth directly when to Kleos and when to Storm.

Kleos also replicates FTP now, so, gorget/belt go.

i wasnt asking about me(dnc) I was asking in the context of thf and rudra sets for thf. Sorry if that wasnt clear.

I'm mainly trying to optimize my own rudra set but also interested in thf rudra sets to guide some of my friends to playing thf a bit better.
I have a few well intentioned people that play thf that don't have a ton of experience with it beyond loldynamis.

I'm looking at this from the DNC angle trying to understand how to work together with THF to maximize damage and pair up our ws spam better.

edit:
Right now every 30seconds my opener for a THF is Kleos->Evisceration (Darkness) and then the THF can close rudra on that to double dark and that seems pretty much perfect at the moment.
Every 90 seconds I can forcecrit my own rudra and the THF can close on that.

Between those timers I can throw out some other random ws if the THF can close on it unless they wanna build more tp.

A few questions. Why wanion over chiners +1? It's only 1 less dex, but on average wouldn't the triple attack chance and damage make up for it? Also when dealing with stacked Rudra's how important is attack?

I can't say anything about the DNC mythic cuz I don't play that job, but on weaker enemies (Dynamis, Salvage), unstacked Rudra's should come ahead of unstacked Mandalic Stab, even with Vajra, at any TP level. As your target's defense goes up, unstacked Mandalic Stab begins to catch up to unstacked Rudra's. However, I think Rudra's fTP is so high that without Vajra, Mandalic might not really stand a chance to catch up, even with it's attack boost.

It's possible I'm screwing up my calculations, but it seems that Mandalic just can't compete with Rudra's without having Vajra (though still has practical uses for things like SC). With Vajra, however, because of the WS damage boost and Mandalic's less significant fTP jump from 1000% to 2000%, your unstacked WS of choice would be Mandalic Stab on enemies when your attack is short.

Short Version: Without Vajra, unstacked Mandalic isn't going to compete with unstacked Rudra's. With Vajra, it varies by enemy's defense and your attack.

Oh, my misunderstanding.

To be perfectly honest. The 3 sets for Rudra: unstacked/SA/TA the changes are really small.

I haven't missed a Rudra yet, but on high-end ***between Feint/steps/songs/rolls/aggressor likely capped acc.
Unstacked:
Ukcap(dex) > plunderer > pillager
Dread > plunderer > pillager
Buremte(Dex) > Aeto+1 > Nilas
Mani > Plunderer > Quia(dex)
PLunderer feet are just spectacular.


Cause STR matters. On junk mobs, Artful > Chiner
Value of ATT varies by target.

I said this 6 months ago. The things THF does, vary WILDLY. When you ask questions. I don't know what you're asking for.

A dynamis farming thf asking WHATS BEST GUIZ is COMPLETELY different than a serious I TAKE THF TO ENDGAME! thf.

Where do Nomkahpa +1 fit in for Rudra's? 1 less dex but a bonus DA and some STR. Or is the dex mod so exorbitantly powerful that the extra dex outweighs the benefits?

Nomka belong in someone else's inventory cause it'd be stupid to pay what people think they're worth. And if you get the drop, sell.
(But they're still 3rd or 4th best)
I don't consider every single piece of gear, If I did, I'd be the one who took over the guide. I'm not.

I take thf to endgame thf.

is atoyac ever reliable for anything beyond delve 1? Don't you need to sacrifice too much to make use of that 40 oat considering the huge accuracy loss on your sub hand?