Last Stand On THF

I'd use the same weapon skill set I use for Evisceration on Ranger.

Jesus christ Austar, feed your avatar.

I'd love to hear back about how this set performs if anyone tries it, especially in if it's in Legion.

I can pretty much guarantee you would miss the majority of your last stands in legion on THF. I can only see it being useful against crappy mobs.

I wouldn't write it off so quickly. Obviously you'd need sushi, but some damage is better than no damage, as long as you aren't compromising your ability to TH, Feint when needed and possibly Box Step.

Edit: Assuming the 576 target mentioned in the WAR forums is accurate, this setup is still ~70acc short of capping in Mul. You could adjust Austar's set but the damage will be even shittier. If your shell doesn't want to risk you using Steps, some accuracy could be picked up via subjob as well.

Anyway, I know it's not going to be amazing and probably not even decent, but it could give a THF slightly more usefulness in there.

Could just use dagger WSs.

I'm pretty confident you will land only one hit most of the time even with sushi, not to mention the lack of war sub and chaos roll would make this ws even more lackluster. There's no way it can perform better than Mercy imho.

The point is that, since THF isn't receiving Perfect Defense or otherwise being looked after to the same extent as the main DD party, it's a liability for the THF to be meleeing those mobs since they will probably just die and then you lose your TH(possibly)/Feint/whatever. I mean, unless it's being stunlocked, it's already dangerous for them to run in just for Feint.

So rather than twiddling thumbs between performing the above actions, you could be shooting.

I'm starting to consider it for Legion lol Just go in for Feint and fight with Markmanship lol

It's gonna take full Marksmanship merits, sushi and a ton of R.acc gear but you should be able to dink them for something at least. And if your LS doesn't want you to /DNC for steps, you could either /RNG and then use less r.acc gear/more dmg or /WAR.

I'm not really in a position to test this out but if you do I want to know how it goes!

The only way you lose TH is if the mob goes idle, which won't happen because they all have alliance hate.

And I would never do legion as anything other than /nin. Pulling each HNM and fighting/tanking it close to your real DDs to provide a smooth transition between mobs would be worlds more beneficial to your group than increasing your parse results from 1% to 1.1%.

not that, I mean if you end up dead, the logistics of getting up and out of range safely without dying again may prevent you from being able to apply TH to a subsequent mob (saw it happen).

I'm confused. What's keeping your THF from getting up between mobs?

Probably still better range attacker than COR >.>.

It's kind of pointless to nitpick this specific comment since, if you were feeling generous, I'm sure you could easily contrive a circumstance where getting up would be dangerous and most likely get you killed again. Unless you're really telling me that you've never seen someone get up only to die again (which would easily result in enough dead time to miss a TH application when mobs are zerged down rapidly).

I haven't once advocated that a THF shouldn't perform their role-- whatever your group may require-- but for some reason, suggesting this, which could provide a small percentage of improvement (which, after all, is all we're doing in the countless hair-splitting gear comparisons here), seems to be met with knee-jerk opposition.

If it's still not clear, when I wrote:
I meant that you could possibly lose your ability to TH stuff although not necessarily since you will probably be able to get up and continue to TH from a safe distance.

It's late and I'm getting grumpy but I seriously don't see what's up with all the objections to trying to perform your job slightly better. Maybe performing better means not using Last Stand. Maybe it means trying to stick Acid Bolts or finding safe timing for dagger weaponskills. But in the end aren't we always trying to improve? Everything's on the table.

No, I can't. I really can't. Maybe we just do legion differently. If that's the case, you need to rethink how your group does legion.

PLD kites the mobs.

THF(usually) pulls a mob.

DD take it down.

Mob dies. Other mobs are still being kited by the PLD. There are no mobs within 30+ of the group.

Now, supposedly, you claim that something happens here that prevents the THF from getting up safely. What is it?

---
I really don't see why you won't just /nin and use dagger WSs. It's way more damage than anything you can do that involves Last Stand and it's 99.9% as safe if your stuns are in order. The only thing that could be considered a threat would be nerve gas from tier2 Hydra, but that should never kill you. It's nice that you're trying to find ways to improve your contribution, but all you're doing is improving on a bad idea.

Plus, you get the added benefit of being able to pull before the mob dies, allowing for a smooth transition from mob to mob, without putting yourself at risk, without forcing your group to wait for you to bring the next mob(wasting time/buffs wearing), without forcing a mage to go pull, in exchange for a miniscule increase in damage that's already irrelevant to begin with.

Your obstinance about this is blowing my mind. I said you could possibly be unable to TH something. "Possibly" means a non-zero chance. One of the most minor points of my post yet we are arguing about it ad nauseum. And then you slipped in the caveat about Stuns needing to be executed safely. What if two stuns get missed at bad times? If everything goes well you won't run into problems, big surprise, but who's arguing with that?

The rest of your perspective is hinged your group choosing to use a THF as a puller, which is unusual from everything I've seen.

This group has now cleared four Wave3 mobs in Mul and they use a WHM puller:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acIBFSRf9VU

Mul clear with two PLD kiters, no THF:
http://nicoviewer.net/sm18346354 (1)
http://nicoviewer.net/sm18375354 (2)

Mul clear from a group on my server. Notice the THF derping around with boomerang at 2:15.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4KHQLuU-44

Dainslef winning Mul all the way back in June, no THF puller:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEc5H_DFlxY

And I'm pretty sure Kaerin's group uses a SMN puller but I can't find that video anymore.

If your shell's strategy enables you to pull and pew pew, that's cool and all, but it's clearly not what all successful legion groups are doing. Some groups prefer the THF to stand back as much as possible and not risk death. They could either play solo Thumb War or shoot. Not every group uses the same strategy as yours and it's arguably hubris to suggest that they should, when so many are successful with other strategies.

If you dont feel comfortable with your survivability based on your experience with your own group to be up close, then dont. If you are confident you wont drain unneccesary resoucres by bein up front, go right ahead. To pew or not to pew is entirely based on risk vs reward. The reward of an unbuffed thf is really, really, really small. If there is virtually any risk at all, then get your feint/TH whoreness on, pew pew it once or twice and go be ready to pull next mob (or whatever your role is in your group).

If you and your group can keep you upright without any problem, and have little to no risk of an ill timed death jacking up your TH/Feint/Pulling/Whatever duties you have, then by all means go stab it.

This isnt really about turning thf into some hybrid awesome side show DD. Fact is an unbuffed thf will have no perceivable impact with regards to damage in a 30min super buff zerg event. Period. So accomplish your duties as assigned, then gauge the risk vs minor reward of trying to do some additional poking/pewpew based on your group. Its not that complicated.

The item set above, that wont let me quote it, is the problem I look at when looking at Last Stand on THF. As a main COR, I love having Last Stand for those mobs that WF sucks on. I also have a Mandau THF though, and figured hey, I have a ranged WS, might as well build a set for it too, no? But this set above shows the problem that I am constantly faced with: What weapon do I use?

For Maximum Damage, my best bet would be:
and

The problem I find with this is the -12 r.acc on Culverin+1 means I have to add in more r.acc elsewhere and it messes with the set. Then the ammo only stacks to 12 so its an inventory hog, and it still doesnt come close to what RNG and COR can do with it.

An alternative could be:
and

Lower Damage than Culverin, but ammo stacks to 99 and there's no r.acc- issue. But again, the damage output wont be anything impressive at all.

The only practical set I could think of was:

Using Acid Bolts(DMG:21 Delay:192 "Additional Effect: Weakens Defense") or Venom Bolts (DMG:29 Delay:192 "Additional Effect: Poison" I'd add images as well but it wont let me add anymore in this post ;;

The Darkwing+1 and Acid bolt I usually have anyhow to weaken defense when pulling for lolexpparties. The venom bolt has slightly higher damage, though really this choice isnt gonna get you anything noticeable at all.

for /endrant purposes:
If you wanna get TH on a mob while staying away, just shoot it or throw your boomerang.. or hey run in and pop steal or despoil. I personally would rather just keep my boomerang on and save myself the embarassment of trying to maximize a set that SE clearly didnt make with THF in mind. SE didnt even give THF a gun/crossbow/ammo combo after 75 T.T hell.... our last "bolt" was given to us at like level 25...

Handgonne +1, Iron Bullet. Look em up.

hmm good to know thanks. I was just going off the sites browse feature, and that gun never popped up.

I've tested Handgonne/Iron vs Darkwing+1/Venom and if you assume you are able to apply the defense down from acid bolts using darkwing the difference between last stand damage ends up negligible.

The only time I have found last stand thf to be worth the time is on super trashy mobs (like less than level 75), in dynamis if you have a kraken club and are procing WS proc mobs, or on EP mobs and you don't have Rudras or Exenerator (Last stand tends to outperform evi on average). All of these situations are pretty rare :)

Why a Darkwingduck +1 over Ziska's? Ziska's has less delay with some ranged accuracy, didn't think less dmg on xbow matters if its use is to just debuff with a few shots. The cost of a Ziska's is too high to toy with this situational use?

This thread is about last stand. If you won't be using last stand Octant or Ziska's is your best bet for debuffing mobs. When using last stand Darkwing+1 is the obvious choice.