For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

Not really unless you're willing to change the hands or daggers. Perhaps get a letalis mantle for situations where the acc is required.

she has letalis for delve content, access to mars's ring aswell if im not on dd, she mainly does dyna/old content on it tho so atheling should still cover the bases, was kind of hoping to steal a bit of attack back from af3 hands, a while back i had understood haste to not matter much for thf after 23% on general content

edit: is coruscanti still strong enough of an option to cover till relic? or possibly try to switch to the skirmish one?

Ah good then i am on the right path. i have had a THF knife since i could wear it. as for the TH gear have Xarc access. . .just really bad luck, and in the process of farming the items for the +2 boots.

So besides the Raiders boomerang and +2 Armors, it looks like very little Abby gear is relevant. i suppose that's good XD

Well, off the top of my head, Twilight belt, Epona's ring, and atheling mantle are still really good, so there's still other stuff for you to get in there :)

Aluh, STR Thokcha and Pugi are all better offhands. Not sure on the skirmish dagger but I don't see how it wouldn't be. Coruscanti has always been really overhyped. If she is generally doing old content and doesn't want to make Thokcha, Aluh is really close last I checked.

Edit: Once she makes a relic, probably best to go Mandau/Aphotic (assuming the Mandau is 95+ obviously).

So, I was playing around with spreadsheet, and this came up which surprised me.

Setup was: Chapuli (Lv100), /Nin, RCB, 22.5% Def down, Haste.

I'd been assuming for ages that it was better to main Aphotic Kukri and offhand Mandau, but the spreadsheet is telling me differently.
As expected, Aphotic mainhand has higher WS damage (2784 vs 2642) due to the higher DMG rating and Mandau mainhand has higher TP DPS due to the +40 Attack (237.451 vs 227.993). However, it seems the increased TP DPS is enough to offset the lower WS damage. Mandau mainhand didn't come out ahead by much (0.3%) but it's still ahead.

The thing is this didn't account for the 13%OTD when mainhanding Mandau. Entering 18%ODD (roughly equivalent, but lowballing to favour aphotic) puts Mandau/Aphotic about 4.1% ahead of Aphotic/Mandau for total DPS.

I still have Izhiikoh/Aphotic about 17% better than Mandau/Izhiikoh, so no surprises there.
I can't imagine the conclusion would be much different on harder targets either.


Am I late to the party and everyone already knew it was better to offhand Aphotic with Mandau? Or is this a surprise to others too?
Does it hold true for other 1h relics like Kikokou too?

Abit late for the party. Mainly due to Mercy though, stacked mercy is too good, and besides the fact that Mandau offers nothing at all in the sub

It offers the third best DPS after Aphotic and Izhi. It's DPS alone put it ahead of things like Aluh/Coru/Thokcha as an offhand option if you were mainhanding Aphotic. The only thing better to offhand with Aphotic was Twashtar because of it's +20Dex.

The point is that Mandau/Aphotic was coming out better than Aphotic/Mandau even before you considered access to Mercy Stroke. Hell, even before you considered the 13%OTD (though only by a miniscule amount). That really surprised me,

Hi. Thanks to the forgotten stuffs spike here, i will need to farm those in dynamis to upgrade my cor af, with DC mobs.
So i would like some help. This guide lacks RACC sets. More specificly, i would like a 0Q and NQ sets so i can land most of my bolts in DC mobs in dynamis to deff down.
Supposing markmanship capped and merited, how much +RACC do i need to rely in my bolts in these mobs? Or i need to use some RACC food (what probably would backfire me as def down wouldnt make up for a Dd food i could use).
Thanks.

On stuff that isn't ridiculously evasive, am I right in thinking the delve sword is best offhand to Aphotic? Been using it since I don't have a mandau and shark win continues to be elusive.

Even with a D rating in sword?

Dagger Skill Rnk A : 417 (433 with merit)
Sword Skill Rnk D : 334 (350)

Dagger base accuracy : 395 (409)
Sword base accuracy : 320 (335)

Means that you'll loose 60-89 Accuracy on your off-hand. At this point, use an Oynos Knife since you're targeting solo & easy content.

Sword has +24 acc on it w/ R1 dex path augments. and if you think people used mandau/str dagger for DC dyna mobs and were capped acc, now w/ R10 Path:A kukri and R2 dex (or better R10 str) path sword, your off hand is only 25~ acc behind previous sets, and I find it hard to believe that 25~ acc in gear swaps (if not capped) won't beat 50-60base dmg on off hand unless the slightly higher delay does something dismal to TP gain speed.

Sword DEX path max rank can offer up to +36 acc (counting dex as 0.5 will change with next patch but only to +38).
If you have merit on both skill, that's still 74 acc loss and with that sword you lower this number to only 38... and yes that's still huge (counting other acc gear isn't right because it affect also your other off-hand dagger).

And above that, I think that is particularly difficult and expensive to get (unless you're in strong ls doing all 5NMs in fracture and/or have an other job that require it) only to do easy and/or solo content.
At this point, the Leisilonu is much more easy to get (6man event vs 18man), offer a lot more and the upcoming addition to Skirmish make it even more interesting.

Hmm! Well first, you're likely right about using sushi, in that it will be less effective because your melee'ing will suffer.

But to answer your RACC question:
The spreadsheet says a DC Nightmare mob has 405 evasion.
Capped and merited marksmanship gives you 378+16=394 skill. That's 200 + (.9 * 194) = 374 accuracy.
THF/WAR has 96 AGI, which means 48 more accuracy.
To get a 95% hit rate on 405 evasion, you need 405 + 40 - (374 + 48) = 23 racc from gear.

... hmm, is that right? That's not a lot at all. But if that is right, I feel like I really don't need to make you any sets :p just put on some Thurandaut tights and start shooting things!

Hey Mal, for your regen set, Consider this! http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/Lycopodium_Sash

It adds Regen+3 During the Daytime, Good option when above 50% HP compared to Muscle Belt!

Consider it considered!

Someting that confuses me is... why would you SA/TA in anything other than TH Hands/Feet at all? Reason i ask is because im looking at some of the HQ SA/TA sets and it's not amaking much sense to me.

It maximizes the output of SA and TA, while only penalizing you slightly for the lost haste.

right but dont you want to try and upgrade TH everytime you SA/TA vs. trying to do more dmg?

Depends on what you're fighting. For fodder mobs (eg: all the Salvage mobs on the way up, except possibly gears), who cares?

Pretty much this. No reason to try and Upgrade TH on a lot of fodder mobs, Pointless, Even in places like Dynamis and so forth where killing it faster is almost assuredly better than the difference between TH7 and TH8.

For an HQ "TH Upgrade Set", Just swap out whatever hands/Feet the Main page shows for your TH gear, and presto.

There's a lot of situations where you'd not care about upgrading TH, for those you do, Just use the HQ Set+TH equip.

I can see your point well said

I consider it a matter of patience. On an NM, TH7 is good enough for me. On fodder, I won't bother with anything higher than TH6. Put it on, take it off. Get in, get out, kill. If you are constantly trying to proc additional TH on everything you fight, not only will you find yourself disappointed, but you'll become massively frustrated. Like others have said, you'll do yourself more favors by saving time and maximizing your kill speed. There is a reason that using Thief's Knife for farming dynamis is dumb.

Now, there is an exception to every rule. I helped a buddy of mine with Adamantoise, and we had a total of three thieves single-wielding Thief's Knife in TH gear. When its hp got low enough, we ended up only going in for SA and TA. We were able to take it up to TH12. It was both hilarious and disappointing when after all that, nothing good dropped. Still, if your pops are limited and you want to make the most of them, go ahead.

Just use your best judgment. When it's up to me, I just slap on TH and go back to dps gear, especially if it's something like abyssea where you can fight as many of a monster as you damn well please. I might make an exception for KS99 pops, since those are much more limited, but at the end of the day the result will very likely be the same no matter what. It isn't worth losing sleep over.

tl;dr: Gauge each target and act accordingly.

On a completely unrelated topic, any point in making Skadi body +1? I have just about enough plans to finish hands and feet (movement speed for DNC), and head is already done. Would be just swell if I could say, "Yeah, I'm done with Umbrage plans. One of you guys is doing BST right? You lot them."

It's a nice piece but the existence of Thaumas Coat and delve body leave me wondering what possible use it can even have. I've been punching numbers and I'm just not seeing anything. If it hasn't found a place by now, I'm wondering if it's possible it could find a place in future content? Emphasis on possible.

Thanks for helping with the racc. Helped a lot.
Changing a little the topic, can i ask about the comment you did in the op about exenterator sets?
You said that its better to increase agi in set. But, looking only at formula, isnt it better to boost just str as it has factor 1 and agi is .85 (though the recent change seems to increase the agi factor but suppose agis factor .85)?

Str doesn't have a factor of 1. If you put it in terms of WSC, it would have a factor of about 30% (compared to 5/5 Exen's 100% Agi) along with an upper limit from capping.

For a different perspective on scale, 4 Str would be 1 fStr = 1 base damage (~0.4% damage), plus 2 attack (~0.5% damage), for about 0.9% total damage increase. [Note: After the 1-handed update, that will be 0.75% damage for the main hand from attack, for an average boost of ~1.025% between both weapons.]

4 Agi would be 3.4 base damage, for about 1.35% total damage increase.

Note: this assumes ~250 total base weaponskill damage and a mob defense around 400. The scale will shift in different scenarios, but there's a large enough gap that Agi should always be the better choice.

Thanks. I got it.

where you get your spreadsheet I like to use it to help with my sets. thx for the guide its great

https://drive.google.com/#folders/0B0A0wGYYRRdaZjdlNTdkNTEtMDMyYy00OTVmLWI4N2ItNDMwMDI1N2VkYWZk

Is it worth using the thfs new cape to replace the atheling mantle, in tp or exenterator set?
I mean, in tp, can 2% ta be better than 3% da? And is 5 agi better than 20 attack for exenterator (supposing you arent attack caped)?
To me seems unfair the thf cape seems so so while corsair had such a perfect cape for them. I mean, for fighting purposes. I guess for soloing, the high eva stats can be life saver, but still i prefer more offensive pieces.