For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

I think your math is off here unless I'm misunderstanding how you're reporting data.

You expected 41% Crit in Wave2, but the 41% you're reporting is muddied with Wave1 data still, correct?

Crits: 1453 (W1+W2) - 729 (W1 Only) = 724 (W2 Only)
Same logic gets you to 1994 hits in W2. 724/1994 = 36.3%

So you'll be riding cap very closely in W2 if you swap back to Adhemar, possibly still being under cap against high AGI jobs.

You're right. The wave 2 crit rate numbers I collected before the boss were only 36.3%. I didn't separate the wave 2 data from the wave 1 data and I probably should have, but there was also a complication that I didn't mention. We had a bad pull by the auction house and I was forced to swap to my -dt set because things got really ugly during that wave. That's going to affect the numbers, and I have no way of knowing how much time I spent in full -dt versus my dps build. So while the numbers I have for wave 1 and wave 3 are clean, the data for wave 2 is going to be off by a small margin. I wasn't able to stay in my dps gear full time that wave, which means crit rate would have been higher if I had. In my head I think I assumed the two had averaged out, but in hindsight that may not have been the case.

It is possible dDEX wasn't capped on everything in wave 2, but it was close enough that it doesn't detract much from what I was trying to find out; which is mainly the point where gearing for max DPS with critical accessories starts to drop off in effectiveness. Even if my dDEX wasn't capped on every wave 2 mob, it was capped on enough of them to the point that it doesn't change how I would want to gear for that wave. The difference between the full 41% versus a slightly lower 37-39% isn't too significant, and the data suggests that the crit build with yetshila +1, crit rate cape, and odr earring holds up very well on mobs with stats up to around wave 2 levels, but beyond that point I think a more hybrid build becomes more effective; either swapping those three accessories for their store tp alternatives, or going into a stronger -dt hybrid with malignance gear depending on content and group composition.

Adhemar set: 4%
Ring: 1%
Yetshila: 2%
Cape: 10%
Odr: 5%

22%

Yup wasn't disagreeing with the gist of your analysis, mostly just adding for readers that dDEX is going to be close/not a given in W2, and that small concessions in gear could add up quickly much like your choice of hands did.

I really should have just slept after posting my numbers. Forget I mentioned that 1% difference.

For THF, how does WSD stack against other stats? Trying to figure out if this augment is worth using.

The short answer is: it depends on the rest of your gear.

The slightly less short answer is: Think of your damage modifiers (WSD, Dex/Str, Critical Hit Damage for stacked/Evisceration, etc.) as a kind of seesaw. As you continue to increase one side of the multiplication, you'll see diminishing returns on further increases to that aspect, and this will cause other stats to have a larger impact as you increase them instead.

Without knowing anything else, I'd personally value ~3-5 DEX : 1 WSD : ~1 Critical Hit Damage (if applicable). I am by no means one of our resident math experts, and this is going to heavily change based on how much Stat/WSD/Crit you already have, and whether or not your WS is stacked or unstacked. Then Evisceration shows up and triple attack rate/damage and critical hit rate become more relevant than they are for the single hit ws...

What’s the dealio with AE in dynamis???

Tried doing it in bastok with Geo buffs and a decent ws set and wasn’t getting anywhere close to Rudra’s dmg.

Is it actually good in dyna? What numbers can you expect to see?

Herc Boots with augments: VIT+9, Acc+17, Atk+18, WSD+8% vs. Lustratio +1, path D. Thinking for stacked and unstacked WSs like Mandalic Stab (Vajra) and Rudra's Storm. Thinking of them as isolated pieces because just as much as my overall gear loadout is specific, so is the enemy's.

In bastok mobs are aligned to either light or dark element. If the pull was dark aligned mobs your damage will be terrible. With mab buffs and malaise you should easily be able to do 20k or more on appropriate mobs.

That's a tough call, honestly... You're effectively trading 31STR and 24 DEX for 6% more WSD. I want to say the Herc Boots in this case. Although I can say with certainty that you will definitely be safer if you get hit during WS in the Herc Boots though.

We were pulling blue eyes for Leaden so that makes sense

So I wanna hear how you guys swap in/out TH gear in dyna...

I personally have just been using gandring offhand with chaac belt locked in the waist. Aka being supremely lazy.

I’m debating swapping to kclub or tp bonus offhand and using relic hands in my rudras set for TH. I get to ws just about every mob so it should be practical enough.

Kclub on THF is a fail imo. You have way too much Triple attack and not enough accuracy. the most practical way was already explained few pages ago. Relic+3 hands and Per. Lucky Egg.

Does more Treasure Hunter over +8 increase the proc rate? I feel like I never see any TH procs unless I bloat out my TH past 8.

But some guys in LS started rolling their eyes at me like I’m an idiot for wearing more than TH8 on THF...

This question has popped in this thread like 20 times in 2020 and the truth it that none really knows. Some people tried to do tests, but i dont think that sample size was big enough with such small base % chance. SE wrote something about it, but from translation its hard to actually conclude anything. I have also seen theory, that its better to equip crit rate, because TH seems to proc better on crits.

Crits for sure make the rate go up. If I'm trying to get th up high I always main hand tauret for that reason. Also open up with feint + sneak attack for almost guaranteed first proc.

I've been testing out some different Evisceration WS sets and noticed something kind of odd when WSing at 1k TP. Using Tauret and Ternion +1 R15.

I did 30 WSs at 1k TP to VT Drusy Twitherym in Woh Gates and at random decided to switch to ONLY gear pieces with Critical Hit Rate + on it rather than some with Critical Hit Damage+

The average WS damage actually went up a LOT! When I stacked on maybe 2-3 pieces with Crit Hit Damage it went down.

I wonder why? I'm guessing Critical Hit Damage+ gear just isn't worthwhile vs these weaker mobs unless you get at least 2k TP (it definitely did then).

The results totally change when I move to Apex Raptors. I tried maybe every WS combination I could find and my parses are the best with this one:

https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/36654/for-the-shinies-a-guide-for-thief/216/#3489693

I think the average with it vs raptors was about 10k at 1k TP.

It seems that a mix of Critical Hit Rate and Critical Hit Damage gear helps the most.

Is there a situation where you would want to use Moonshade over Mache +1?

I wonder why Moonshade seems to give a critical hit bonus? Or is this not true?

Were you overkilling butterflies

Mache could potentially give a crit rate bonus of 8% if you're in the magical sweet spot of dDex which you'd never be able to guarantee from mob to mob. The most likely scenario is basically what Eiryl was talking about where your crit damage was just barely killing something, then you swapped it for crit rate and got an extra hit due to the decrease in per hit damage.

I'm glad there's finally some discussion about white damage setups in the THF thread, because I've been using mine for well over a year and it's even more satisfying than playing an Impetus Vere MNK.

With that said, I've had some really good results with this setup:

ItemSet 367744

Even though DW isn't fully capped, the extra chunk of DEX from Shijo D and Chiner's +1 are quite good for dDEX and Rudra's (in Shijo's case). Adding to that, the Crit Rate/Dmg/TA dmg make for some very spicy attack rounds. As I haven't been playing much since Sheol B came out, I haven't run the numbers through the spreadsheet yet to compare it to R15 Ternion+1/Reiki Yotai, though I'd hope the lack of capped DW isn't make-or-break in comparison.

In any case, the near-permanent Flee is also really nice to have for repositioning or moving around in content like Omen/Dyna. Really helps with uptime when fighting trash mobs.

Also, not sure if it's been discussed yet, but since the massive TA devalues /WAR DA so much, I've also been using /DRK for even higher white damage with LR, Attack Bonus II and Damage Limit+ II for high buff situations as THF doesn't get that trait natively. Poisonga is also nice for TH tagging.

Very interesting set!
Vs Ternion its:
- same triple attack rate
- 1.5% slower swinging
- 5% more critical hit damage
- 4% more critical hit rate
- 14 less damage and 20 more delay on offhand
- WS damage is slightly higher (around 1.5%) with Ternion

Doing fast math Ternion actually pulls head in white damage by 8.5% without AM and by 3% during AM3. Perma flee sounds nice tho :D

I actually using /DRG since WSD update. Its only damage limit I and 12 less attack, but +7% WSD without diminishing returns (its unique multiplier). +0.1 Pdif cap is potentially +3% damage for both white and WS, so could potentially even out that 7%WSD. Last Resort sounds too risky on THF tho. One bad TP move during WS or even while wearing this super squishy white damage set and you are dead.

I figured as much, thanks for mathing it! It was quite nice before Ternion got its augment, but it was clear it would get replaced eventually if the Flee wasn't useful in a particular situation.

Oh, just wondering--did you take the Crit Dmg bonus for SA & TA WS into account?


Yeah, /DRG is definitely the gold standard, but this /DRK setup was generally doing quite well in certain situations and I didn't die too horribly lol. I definitely had to play it safe from time to time, though.

The DPS advantage I mentioned for Ternion is only for white damage. I havent actually checked in sheet for overall dps.

Check in sheet now. Under AM3, Ternion has 3.7% lead in white damage and 3.3% overall lead, but im not sure how sheet actually calculate usage of Sneak and Trick Attack. Without using SA and TA, Ternion has 3.7% overall lead.

So the new Oddy update is live and it looks like we get a tanking dagger. The ammo isn't very useful since our triple attack trivializes its benefits, and beithir ring is a flat out downgrade from our existing rudra's storm options, but I'm curious to know how acrontica stacks up against ternion +1 offhand in the dps department. It's clearly weaker, but I can't quantify how much without a spreadsheet. Anyone care to run the numbers to put the difference in perspective? I'm sure I'll pick one up and play around with it from time to time for its intended use, I'm just curious to know what we're looking at numbers wise between it and our dps oriented options.

I know your question is more focused on DPS, but when I saw the new dagger the first thing that came to mind was it is perfect for a defensive key thf build.

The thing about incorporating acrontica into a melee dps build to make it more defensive is that we already have other pieces that do the same thing. Malignance tights for example is only 1% less damage taken reduction, and swapping our artifact legs for them gives a significantly larger boost to evasion and magic evasion than swapping ternion +1 for acrontica does. By equipping acrontica you're sacrificing damage output for survivability, which is the very definition of a hybrid build. The only difference between malignance and acrontica is the other pieces are armor slots whereas this is a weapon, but fundamentally it's the exact same concept. By equipping acrontica you're designing a hybrid build. And while the defensive stats on it are really nice, in and of itself it's just one piece out of many we could equip to achieve that purpose. If you swapped just the offhand dagger for acrontica it's not that much different from swapping just one of our other pieces for malignance gear instead of going all in on the 5/5 set.

Technically, wearing anything short of "maximum dps glass cannon" is a hybrid build, and there are many different levels of hybrid. You could hybrid with just 2 or 3 pieces of malignance instead of all 5 for example, and hybrids do have their place. Acrontica is good for what it does, it's just not the type of weapon you would want for your glass cannon build. I'm curious to know how much of a dps difference there is between it and our other options though.

OK, cool.

I am also interested in Shijo. I was thinking of using the +5 DW on it for a non-DW built. Can you check if it's any better?

In full glass canon build TernionR15 has 7.83% advantage over Acrontica.

To put that into perspective:
- Ternion R15 has 4.92% advantage over Tauret
- Perfect Taming has 0.7% advantage over Acrontica
- TernionR15 with Malignance Legs in both TP in WS set is break even with Acrontica
- TernionR15 with Malignance Legs just in TP set has 4.46% advantage over Acrontica

(Keep in mind that comparison was at attack cap enough for Malignance to use it's PDL)