Gearing Rudra's At 99

Two notes to start:

1. I did not see a current topic that would have appropriate post-99 updated gearsets.

2. I play thief a ton anymore due to being in Dynamis every day, but it is a utility job to me; I have other jobs tying up my meritted weapon skills and I will not be getting Exenterator.

Looking for room for improvement that isn't Neptunal Abjuration-related. My current commitments in-game demand the vast majority of my available playtime. These are potential options in the future but for now I'm looking to tweek things without them.

I do have NQ hecatomb cap/harness/gloves/leggings from the old days when HQs weren't realistic, but I can't justify wasting tatters on the NQ at this point.

Additionally, ACP/MKD/AST gear tied up in other jobs.

That said, my current kit:



I have Toci's Harness. Not sure how it maths out vs. Loki's w/ the crit damage+ and I'm working on the theory that Loki's wins out.

Most of the time I'm pretty good at working out what's going to be best for my DDs, but I'm not good without outright game math/spreadsheets and my gear sets largely evolve through trial and error. Looking to speed up this process, as thief has always been a TH resource for me and that's pretty much it. Not clear on how the crit boosts on various pieces of gear with weigh in vs. straight stat/attack boosting when stacked with SA/TA.

Suggestions welcome. Preferably with some sort of statement as to how much of a boost the change would provide.

Thanks.

Easiest thing I can see is Athos's body over Loki's. Nothing really screams out omgnoobblahblah

Athos's body as mentioned.

AH items would include an Ocelomeh(+1) headpiece, a second Thundersoul ring, and a Jupiter's pearl earring. Of those three things, I'd expect upgrading the headpiece (even to the NQ) would have the most effect on damage vs cost.

Ocelomeh Headpiece +1
Moepapa Medal on neck.

And I've read somewhere Justiciar's Torque is good for it too because of the Attack+. I'm not one of those math guys so I wouldn't know!

On another note, I thought Rudra's didn't crit? If u use SA/TA on it, will crit, but does that kind of gear affect the damage on it?

Working on Athos's body ASAP due to it also being highly useful for one of my preferred jobs (Corsair) as well.

Will probably snag Justicar’s Torque and Ocelomeh Headpiece in the near future, though probably only Ocelomeh NQ given the cost of HQ vs. other things on which I should really be spending gil. I should have a torque already for Samurai, but I’ve been mad cheap lately. Not sure what the clear winner is on Justicar's vs. Love atm, though.

Moepapa hasn't been readily available on Bismark and I question its boost vs. Love Torque, 1 DEX vs. dagger skill.

I only use Rudra’s stacked with SA/TA. Otherwise Evisceration or Dancing Edge depending what I’m doing.

Thanks for the responses. Mostly wanted to make sure I’m not missing anything glaringly obvious.

Love>medal and i think rancor own both on stacked.

Yes, Rancor's Collar >>>> everything else for Rudra. Most definitely.

I'm going to be the one to point out the obvious here. Rudra's cannot crit natively, so no amount of crit rate+ is going to make it do so without it being stacked with SA or TA.

Rancor Collar's effect is +5% crit rate.

The two are not going to play together. Not no way, not no how.

You're not helping your case here.

Just out of curiousity, how does a well augmented Heca cap +1 hold against Oce. +1?

Oops crit dmg was in my mind.

This is my stacked rudra's anwig has crit dmg/ws dmg, attack thokcha.
Couple of questions.

Should I upgrade to HQ Oce?

How do I write in SC so that if SA is not up then it equips toci's during ws?

Any suggestions on gear other than athos?

Would Dex Thokcha be a good replacement for Lux? or would Lux still be better for DoT because of +crit. Would STR Thokcha be a good choice too?

Str Thokcha.

STR Thokcha is the best choice. Lux is probably pretty competitive (maybe better) in Abyssea, but that's about it.

For my dagger setup I run with Twashtar/Fusetto+3. And I will say my numbers are higher then whats been posted here. I'll try to add my pics on my profile but this netbook freaking sucks. And pics are coming from xbox> cell phone> netbook.

i dont' know why so many recommend the str. dagger offhand when the tp bonus one clearly(in my mind) beefs up rudra's the most. maybe for melee dmg, idk, but increasing the tp dmg bonus by an entire integer is something difficult to compare to even a decent boost in str/attk. you can even finish the tp bonus dagger to lvl. 99 like me because you'll be so pleased with the outcome.

i might be wrong with all of this due to the fact that twashtar owners seem to offhand the str. dagger 9:1 compared to tp bonus dagger on my server (bahamut).

but i do realize that most people tend to gear their sets based solely on what they see other people using and not on their own experimentation.

flame geodes are fairly expensive on my server, so i am happy with the boost provided by the "free" tp bonus dagger.

Rudra's is only really useful when stacked, or to put on aftermath. Outside of Aby most would use Exen for unstacked and Evis inside Aby. This is why the Str > TP bonus. If you are solely saving TP to stack Rudras and have a tank so you can stay behind a mob, by all means use TP bonus dagger, I got my own for when I can do this, but otherwise you'll see me with Str dagger.

what i gather from this is that for "gearing rudra's at 99" you wanna make the tp bonus dagger.

Even so, you don't want to keep swapping out your sub and clearing aftermath and TP after a Rudra, so still better to just use Str dagger. Sure the thread is about gearing for it, but no point suggesting something that will gimp after the usage of Rudra.

i don't see how you would be gimp with a tp bonus dagger.

Abyssea: evisceration and aeolian are the most used ws's, with rudra's smashing both when stacked. tp bonus dagger has a great effect with these ws's in abyssea.

VW: i have gone thf and it is not hard to stack every ws. tp bonus dagger wins again.

Legion: have yet to do this event, but looks a lot like vw where you could stack all ws's.

* if you solo namis on thf, i could see a use for exenterator and off handing the str. dagger, but with the ease and speed of proc/kill as bst, i would only go to namis as thf if i was in a duo, in which case, i can stack most of my ws's.

* farming - who really farms outside of abyssea for profit anymore...

As the OP says, the thread was made with the intention of never having Exenterator and using Evis or DE when not stacked. I was mostly worried about making sure I wasn't missing anything glaring (at the time) for my Rudra's set.

I know I've got Lux up there offhand, but honestly, if I'm even on thief anymore, Thief's Knife is the only offhand dagger for me.

If TH isn't needed, I'm on something else.

In a pure damage situation, however, I would never gear anything just for the weapon skill's damage boost to the point you're hurting your white damage or other weapon skills you may be using unless it's going to really boost that weapon skill damage.

Despite the hefty boost to Rudra's with TP Bonus, I'm pretty sure that the math favors the conclusion that if you're going with only one, offhand the strength Thokcha.

Edit: all taken with a grain of salt, of course, because as I'm using Daka+2 and not even Twashtar, clearly thief is not a serious investment to me.

i totally understand if a lot of people fight for the conclusion that the str. trial dagger is the optimal dagger due to it's irritating/expensive trials (i've made a lot of "experimental" IRRITATING-TO-ACCOMPLISH trial weapons that turned out to be underwhelming)

but i still see tp bonus dagger as being the best use overall and especially when gearing for rudra's... just trying to answer the OP question the best while trying to show other instances where tp bonus excels.

tp bonus dagger really does boost rudra's quite a bit btw...to the point where i could see its use unstacked outweighing "other" ws's IF you have a twashtar. seeing that OP has the WoE version, it's actually probably better to just buy the highest dmg dagger and forget about rudra's if you're going for your "pure damage situation".

Anecdotal speculation with regard to comparing and contrasting equipment has long since ceased to be the modus operandi in this game. If you believe that STP is ultimately the best choice, substantiate it mathematically.

you really need math to see that a +1.0 to tp dmg multiplier is better than 11STR, 22ATTk??? lol

i don't even think math is ever 100% correct in this game until SE provides their values for ws's/spells/gear

Have you ever heard of melee phase damage?

(Or TP phase damage, or white damage, or whatever you want to call it)


ITT: Math isn't corect, but anecdotal guessing is a credible way to corroborate a claim.

i'm trying not to stray from "gearing rudra's @ 99" so i will assume all comments are talking about "gearing rudra's @ 99", BUT, melee dmg inbetween huge ws's (i'm assuming being able to stack my ws's because in most events you can now) is not going to be affected much by 11str, 22attk. i guess i am believing that doing 6k ws's vs. 3-4k ws's justifies missing out on 11str + 22atk. for my melee hits...

+1.0 ftp on a 4.25+ ftp weapon skill is not the difference between 6k and 3-4k.