Rogue's Vest +1 (THF WS Gear)

to expand on this SA forces your first hit to crit but no other hit will. same with TA (THF onry Edit: 60+).

i did'na know dat. but cool, im guessing then my extremely high numbers come from a double or triple attack. however, just replace crit with acc in my sentence, and it is pretty much a good reason why dex will win out over str. good observation.

Idk Ive seen arguments to both effects and supposed testing... and wiki changes its answer every now and then lol

Theres nothing to argue about he's correct.

A) SA/TA
B) Mighty Strikes
C) Chance to crit varies w/ TP

A) X
B) X
C) X
= can't crit

Yeah thats really not constructive at all. Got any actually proof/argument with that?

I know it's not exactly proof, but you know whether or not a WS can crit if it has wildly fluctuating damage. For instance, on NIN, I can hit a 1200 Jin, then follow it up with 300, because not only do you have the double attacks you have to get lucky on, you now have crits too. Leads to more random numbers.

DE (And by extension, most WSs, provided you have enough ACC to keep them accurate) will always provide fairly consistent WS numbers, but Jin, Rampage, etc will not.

Well heres the thing... I have seen rather huge differences in DE... with same tp returns. Especially when there is no SA or TA

That's most likely bad luck with your Attack, giving you fairly low returns per hit. It's a common problem with THFs, they seem to think Attack does nothing at all.

Yeah attack does too much... silly attack

Yeah when I actually used Thf, my DE was in the same range for the most part.
But now as War with Raging Rush, I can hit anywhere between 200~800. >.>;

Go test it yourself its not a hard result to replicate. When you have 50 dex over the target's agi your crit rate is capped at 20%, + merits 24% + crit+6 weapon 30%.

Go fight like a lv 30 mob w/ some basic dex gear and melee for a bit to confirm your high crit rate.

Then use multihit ws (more hits more chances to crit) to confirm. When you see some crits in your ws, come back here and post your findings, but you'll be awake all night if you believe you'll get some to crit w/o following one of the 3 before mentioned conditions.

Lol lvl 30 mob? I wont even get half the hits off before it dies. Hell might not even get more then the first one

Not rly lv 30 mobs have more hp than that or i would have said lv 10 or 5. Hell you can do it w/ 50. I'm sure you can scrap up enough dex to have capped crit rate on a lv 50 mob and I know you won't be 1shotting them. Point is go test it for yourself and come show me when you can do a WS for as much dmg as SA w/o SA (on dd/thf so you don't get the added dex bonus to your DMG)

Actually a fairly reliable way to test this is to do it mobs that won't live past your first hit, takes out any questions about how many hits hit etc...

Any mob that low you're also more likely to have capped atk on too.

Yea, that would work too. Main point being that the results can be replicated.

Best way would probably be to go on sam/thf wearing 0 da in gear and do SA gekkos. Your crit rate should be capped. Using the same gear do a bunch of gekkos and see if you can get anything even in the same ballpark of your average SA gekko dmg.

20% crit rate from being capped and 4% from merits makes for a 24% crit rate, about 1 in 4.

Gigobugards are good test mobs. They usually survive my SADE unless I tripple attack

Edit: My SA set up

That's so mean ; ; I wuv my THF!

Something to keep mind too when cross comparing WS damages, is to pay attention to your TP returns. Assuming you are THF/NIN dauling daggers, a 6-hit Dancing Edge returns 13 TP. If you get 9-12 TP , you're missing hits and might want to focus a bit more on accuracy to help out with WS damage. A trip'd dual'd DE btw returns 15 TP, i.e a 14 TP return would be 7/8 hits landing.

Once you have a rough idea of what your WS's are doing with a 13 TP return, you'll be in a better position to evaluate what gear is needed.

Dancing Edge does NOT crit, nor does Shark Bite.

Evisceration DOES crit tho'. For example, let's assume your EV is doing roughly 900 damage for 5/5 hits. IF you suddenly do 1200 damage, look at your TP return. If it says 15 Tp .. the WS actually trip'd NOT crit. OR .. say did 1100 damage but the TP return was only normal 13 TP, then yes, that WS crit'd. Then again, if ya did 1500 and had a 15 TP return, the WS crit'd AND trip'd :D

Like I said earlier, understanding the returns will help you better understand how you could improve your gear!

P.S. This is with NO "Store TP" gear btw such as a Chiv. Chain / Rajas. Obviously these items will change certain calcs. SB has different TP returns. Just use it as a "guideline" and good luck.^^

of course with your gear you say that, man up and play a job how it was meant to be.

No thf is not only for treasure hunter mos the people agreeing with him are trolls. There are some situations where my thf out parses my drk >.>.

In response to the OP, by Jurai of Ifrit.

OK for Dancing Edge here is what your focus should be and in what order:

ACC - Highest priority.
(depending on your merits/gear/FOOD ACC could be secondary in priority) Seeing as how DA is a MH/WS your going to want as many hits to land and that's where Acc does it's thing.

Dex - Medium priority
(depending on your merits/gear/FOOD Dex could be Highest in priority) Focus as much as you can into Dex as you can while still keeping your ACC where you need it. Remember DA has a 30% Dex mod.

Str - Lowest Priority
(It is possible with the right merits/FOOD/GEAR to make this Medium priority with Dex @highest and Acc@lowest)
Even tho Str is not a modifier for DA it still does have a pretty decent sized effect on DA damage.

Hope i was of some help to you,