For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

Damn lol. I got my first piece in about 50 runs. My second piece came about 300ish runs after. The third piece came about a month and a half later. The last 2 pieces both dropped within the last 60 runs.

I did all on thf, a mix of VE and E, tagging in max TH and then just killing. All of the drops dropped in VE.

I stopped counting at 1000ish runs all on E with TH9-10. Never seen legs. 3 mules and my main are 4/5 all missing legs.

Legs was the last piece for me as well (and the most important because it's necessary to compensate for the lower haste value in the other slots, which is the result of the new haste distribution paradygm SE is using as of late).

Got them in a few VD zerg runs thanks to a friend.

Drop rate with TH8+ on VD runs (no spitewardens) is somewhat around 75%.
You'd have to go with people who have zero drops to see statistically relevant numbers though, otherwise it would be moot because you could fall in a situation where a piece you already own "drops" and, as such, it won't appear in the treasure pool making you believe no item at all was generated by the RNGs.

I've done about 200 VD Lilith runs with at least one person not having any of the items, and from my experience the drop rate with TH8-9 is closer to 50% with no spitewardens (possibly the Common loot type on SE's treasure hunter table).

sorry to hear about all the bad luck, those are some depressing extremes :(

What's the strategy for VD Lilith? Just a straight-up burn?

Also, as a THF main, which Adoulin ring would you select?

While I'm at it: I don't have a Pulse weapon (I must've thrown my Coruscanti away a few years ago...). I'm using a Kaja knife mainhand currently. Should I bother finishing my Mandau with 10,000 Plutons? The gil isn't really a problem. It would delay my upgrades by 1-step but not terribly.

Either karieyah or gorney ring, depending on taste.

--The best standard TP rings are Gere, Hetaroi, Illabrat, and Regal, and moonlight fits into a -dt hybrid.

--The best weaponskill rings are karieyah, illabrat, regal, epamondas's, and mummu depending on whether you're using rudra's or evisceration.

None of the adoulin rings are ideal for TP, but karieyah fits into a rudra's build pretty well and gorney has a niche purpose of fitting into a treasure hunter build. Personally I took the gorney ring and just use epamonidas/illabrat for rudra's, and illabrat/mummu for evisceration.

Hi! Picking back up THF on a mule and was curious, is Chiner's Belt +1 still good for the Triple Attack damage+? I'm assuming it's limited to Assassin's Charge use only but figured I'd ask.

Don't merit assassin's charge.

Could you please elaborate why? Haven't played THF in a long, long time.

Because 1sec delay from activating it, is more damage loss, than damage gain you get from it.

Assassin's charge was created during the level 75 cap era and scales to that time period. Back then it was impossible for us to cap haste in gear. We could only reach 22% haste via homam feet, hands, legs, rapparee harness, turban, and swift belt (or 24% with speed belt for the elite few). Weaponskills hit for a little above 1k damage, or if you were super decked out and fighting greater colibris... almost 2k. And there was no triple attack gear whatsoever. We were limited to just 10% from our basic trait and merits.



And this sums it up. The way gear and buffs have scaled since then means we lose more damage just activating the ability than we gain from its use. Most TP sets will have 50% or more triple attack rate natively, rudra's storm pumps all its damage into the first hit and extra attacks do very little for its overall damage, and a multi attack on evsiecration just isn't worth the activation. Assassin's charge just isn't relevant anymore.

Should Pillager's Armlets +X be used for TA+WS or Meg+2?

Meg+2

The TA +20 from the armlets doesn't affect the whole weaponskill, just part of the first hit, not even the whole first hit.

Some day they will change the way Sa/Ta bonuses work. From garbage modifier bonus to just damage bonus. And on that day, it will be glorious... until they realize it's broken an hour later.

I mean like "yay 50 extra AGI" pretty worthless.

Sorry for the litany of questions. I'm getting back into the game and rebuilding my understanding of some stuff.

What would you all suggest for a defensive JSE cape for evasion tanking something at-level or a little stronger? Something to blink-tank with maybe one or two other non-tanks in tow. I was thinking:

AGI+20, EVA+30, Counter+10%, Enmity+10

or

AGI+20, EVA+45, Store TP+10

Counter is after shadows if you plan on using shadows its not very useful for that.

I would also consider pdt.

Yeah, it's a last contingency after evasion, shadow, and parry. But it'd be another threshold to protect an Utsu cast. Unless you can't counter while casting. This would be for things like Omen or Sheol, or lower level NMs though where I'm likely to evade. If people think +45 EVA and +10% PDT is best I'll roll with that though.

with 5/5 malignance you're going to be very evasivve already, at least for things like sheol a and b. then you could do a meva -dt cape if you wanted

I'm currently 0/5 Malignance! :D So that's a bit of a ways off yet. A MEVA cape isn't a bad idea but I'd probably want that set first.

You can't do both, resin shares the PDT slot with the 15 evasion slot

Dust - 20
Dye - 10
Resin - 15

Personally, I just made an evasion/waltz cape with pdt on it to go with my eva/meva set. it helps in Odyssey with Malignance set (around 1380 evasion). but there's multiple ways to go about doing it. I would take 10 PDT over 15 eva though, especially if it helps you cap PDT in an evasion set.

Assuming all max augs and take out any DM augs is there anything big I am missing here?

ItemSet 375811

thanks

herc body and hands would beat samnuha and leyline with a good set of augments.

Even with mid-tier augments. You need to look out a little tho. Having 5 herculean pieces, you probably need to keep an eye on how much macc you have there. It shouldnt be a problem for some CP cleaving or Omen, but if you want to AoE in dynamis, it might be a problem if you focus all 5 herc pieces only at pure damage augments with no magic accuracy.

Isn't there a threshold of +mab total past which you'd get more damage from a 10% WSD piece, compared to a +25 mab item?
I mean I'm sure it works like this, I just don't know where exactely this threshold is and if THF can reasonably reach it or not.

OK thx for the input. I'll work the herc augs then. I am not looking to fight anything super hard here just some omen and CP fodder mobs so I doubt MACC will be an issue.

Going from +150MAB to +175MAB is 10% gain, so +150MAB is your threshold. Problem is this threshold will change if you alreayd have WSD, because WSD also has diminishing returns. For example if you have 20%WSD already, then 10%WSD is a 8.33% gain. That bump the mab threshold to +200.

It depends on all the rest of your gear.
Best way to compare is to evaluate your effective MAB by simply multiplying your total MAB by your total WSdmg.
You're generally not going to get perfect equal gear stats, so one would need to evaluate things like the stat mod and dSTAT terms for the WS in question... but looking at just WSdmg v MAB, effective MAB is a good way to compare two individual pieces of gear for your magic WS.