For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

The only thing (I think) jumps cant do naturally is crit or make use of empy AMs, STP/MA/OaT all work on it fine

Why does this community guide seem to be saying Aeneas/Twash is the ideal THF weapon combo? Very suspect! I have a R15 Aeneas (I must max out everything lol), and IMO it's really hard to justify using on THF over Twash MH, or even Tauret MH. I thought that was general consensus here too?

Other quibbles with that guide:
* Barely even mentions Centovente (only spoken of in the description for Ternion +1, unless I'm overlooking something)
* Encourages a total glass cannon set as ideal TP gear, which is just plain dumb for most current content (and they also suggest /WAR for BERSERK if not attack capped, I assume so that you'll die if a mob so much as breathes in your direction in your fragile TP set). Admittedly, there are a few more reasonable sets under "DT sets" using Malignance, but even those are a bit suspect.
* Doesn't include any post-Odyssey gear, nor does it appear from a quick scan to have any augmented Unity gear.

Maybe needs some work...

First of all doing Jumps for dps/tpgain is only really useful for lower buff scenario. With capped haste its just pointless, because usually TP round is barely longer than 1sec JA delay (thats assuming you do jumps right before WS to lower JA delay from 2 to 1 sec), but normal TP round will take advantage of things like AM (Twashatar or Vajra), TA damage+, etc.

Jumps can come in handy as a pulling/claiming tool, FWIW. But yeah, if well buffed, you're pretty much only using them for enmity shedding purposes.

So the THF guide does need a freshening for sure. Spicy hasn't updated it in a minute. (may 21' with no nyame other than one set change this month)

As far as the weapons, I think his rationale was Aeonic is the best "overall" weapon. The one you would use if you're not "just spamming rudra" Like you wouldn't main twashtar if you were closing light/radiance. But I don't know.

save yourself some time and gil and just use the tauret

Is it really? Assuming you have buffs, Rudra will do like 30+k and I'm assuming you are talking about 4step Umbra Exenterator > Rudra > Evisceration > Rudra. In that case I'm almost sure Double Darkness at the end will do the same damage as Umbra, because both will be caped at 99k.

EDIT: I guess you might be right for parties when you don't have accuracy to use Centovente with Twashtar.

That sounds a bit vague, kusaragedo =/

Also with the gear options we have today, wouldn't Vajra + OH of choice be a nice option for DD, especially if you're not overbuffed?
Mandalic Stab with max rank Vajra is not THAT far behind Rudra if I recall, and the att bonus it has might help it get ahead in situations where you need lots of attack, no?

I don't have Vajra myself nor I plan to build one, but it sounds the sort of situation where it could be nice?


I can agree it's a more expensive and more "specific" setup though. Whereas with Aeneas MH / Twashtar OH you just turn off your brain and simply spam Rudra like there's no tomorrow I guess, plus Aeonic is basically free and you don't exactely need R15 for it to shine sooo... yeah.

Vajra could rival Aeneas/Twashtar only in really low buffs scenario. It would kinda depend also how fast you pull/kill, because with slower tempo SA and TA bonus from Vajra (30% crit damage bonus on each) would have bigger impact on DPS. SA and TA Rudra with Vajra/Twashtar can actually be stronger than with Twashtar/Gleti. It also depends a lot on what job is the other DD and what skillchain you want to do (Mandalic is obvious winner if you want to make light and need Fusion) or if you solo skillchain. It also depends if you wear Malignance for safety and debuff resists.

Well yeah, I guess Vajra's AM3 greatly favors Malignance, so in such a scenario you would get an edge over other options, I suppose, hmmm...

It would really need to be both Malignance and low buff scenario (like really low) for Vajra to win and that's still assuming you are not doing self skillchains, because then Mandalic Stab can only be used for 2-3 step light with Evisceration > Shark Bite > Mandalic Stab, so not really as good like Darkness/umbra options with other 2 daggers. On the other hand I dont have much experience with Promyvion mobs, but I think mobs there has those elemental orbs in them right? Does that mean sometimes darkness sc wont work on them? If you would need to change between Light and Darkness, then Vajra seems like a good option, because it can still do strong Darkness too.

On the other hand if you're doing gears in Alzadaal, those are resistant to light so you should spam Darkness only, I guess?

I dunno I'm talking from past gears, I haven't personally tried them myself.

Spicyryan maintains that guide, and as far as I'm aware he doesn't post in this thread. He's always been partial to aeneas despite both the spreadsheets and the in game parses siding with twashter as the better overall main hand. The guide is a reflection of how he advocates playing thief, and his playstyle differs significantly from what we've advocated in this thread over the years so that's why some of the sets look off. He advocates a store tp/multi attack glass cannon build over the crit rate white damage build we've theorycrafted here for example.

As far as sub job goes though, just sub dragoon. Thf/war is behind the times and really isn't worth it. /dragoon just gives you a flat 7% damage increase to your weaponskills, regardless of attack, and now that we get super jump it seems silly to sub war. Ninja and dancer subs are also extremely niche, basically reserved for qubtrub ambuscade or soloing stuff you can't call trusts for.

shock alert, he's banned on ffxiah

This is kinda interesting, and I'm always curious about places where Aeneas may actually be worth using on THF (as I find precious few of them, maybe sometimes I can justify it on DNC but not THF)... but do you think that it's really true that Twash/Gleti (if Centovente is not viable due to acc) wouldn't still beat Aeneas/Twash?

I get that Aeneas can put out some flashy WS numbers, but you lose a lot of white damage from Twash MH, as well as significant extra DEX from both MH Twash augments and Gleti's stats, and a big chunk of acc/atk/ta/crit from Gleti.

I'm skeptical that Aeneas is really a better choice. Unless you're really needing light SCs, where Aeneas might end up better than Twash MH - though IDK about that either due to the worse required WS (Exenterator, Mandalic without a Mythic), and in any case Vajra would be preferable to either one for that particular use case.

Also, what exactly does Kusaregedo mean for targets when saying "soloing mobs" in mastery parties? Adoulin Apex mobs? A THF as the only DD for Promy/Alzadaal Apex? Something else?

He probably means the type of party where the party fights 3+ mobs at a time, with a DD each taking their own.

I wasn't aware this was a thing for mastery parties, haven't CPed in a while and haven't gone nuts on ML leveling yet. Which mobs do people do that on? Like... older Apex stuff in the Gates zones, or the new ones?

(and regardless, would be interested to see people with any good data-based conclusions supporting Aeneas/Twash over Twash/???, since that surprised me)

I've been given leeway to solo my own mobs at the promy party's I've gone to and Twash mainhand still kicks ***. Aeneas mainhand gets a tp bonus, but twash/gleti's combo has higher dex, higher attack, and gets the 10% rudra's bonus. When your doing rudra's --> evisceration --> rudra's the closing skillchain is pretty huge, and if you can trick attack off someone for the closing skillchain or stack sneak attack with bully on it you should hit 99k darkness on anything but the mobs with dark element cores more often than not. At that point it's kind of a six of one and half a dozen of the other comparison since either way you're hitting the damage cap.


One of the more popular camps for tp burn oriented dd setups is the new promyvion camps. The wanderer mobs are Ilvl 139-142 I believe, and you can get the mastery chain up to 40 mobs pretty reliably if your dds are worth their salt. The only thing to keep in mind is that the empty mobs have an elemental affinity denoted by the color of the orb in their core. Lightning and dark look somewhat similar, but I'm pretty good at telling them apart. The dark aligned mobs would be better dealt with using evisceration --> shark bite --> mandalic stab to make light, but honestly it's easier to just let one of the other melees deal with those mobs if they're doing light. When I went last time we had a tizona blu making light while I made darkness, so whenever one of the mobs showed up that went against what we wanted to do we'd just let the other handle that one while we soloed the mobs that were friendly to our own skillchain combos.

Using Malignance to TP at uncapped attack, both have almost identical DPS. If you self skillchaining, Aeneas's Aftermath and ability to make Umbra are some advantages over Twashtar. Also white damage is less important then too, because split of damage is even more on side of WS+SC and Aeneas has slightly higher WS damage. So overall I think Aeneas could beat Twashtar for self skillchain in such scenario, but it will also depends what skillchain exactly you are using. I'm pretty sure 3step Evis > Rudra > Rudra is not enough to kill promyvion Apex mobs without attack cap (unless maybe with SA Rudra at the end) and you need 4step Exenterator > Rudra > Evis > Rudra.

If that 4step would be killing your target with both Daggers, then Twashtar would probably be marginally better, because it has slightly better WS frequency I think. If it kills only with Aeneas and Twashtar would need another WS, then Aeneas would be significantly ahead.

So generally its not something I can check in sheet, but sheet numbers can tell me that there is potential for Aeneas to be better in such scenario. Ultimately it would require a practical test.

I spent a few hours farming tonight and recorded a short clip to show off the camp. With sufficient buffs just a 4th weaponskill should be enough to finish a non sneak or trick attacked mob. There wouldn't have been any practical difference between aeneas 4 stepping and me just doing 4 weaponskills with twashtar. So as long as you're getting proper buffs the two daggers should be about equal. Maybe if your attack is heavily starved I might see aeneas gaining favor at this camp, but I doubt it. Also for reference I clocked the mobs at having approximately 300K hp each. With such significant HP pools most of the skillchain damage goes toward actual damage rather than overkill numbers.

The setup here was War, thf, Rdm, brd, cor, sch. I only had about 4200-4400 attack in my weaponskill sets in this recording. I ran a party earlier in the day with a summoner in place of the red mage, and with ifrit's attack buffs I was sitting more in the 5500-6k attack range in my weaponskill sets. That was enough to make any sneak or trick attacked closer finish a mob outright, and even some of the 3 steps without it would pretty much do the job. With enough buffs here twashtar is absolutely stronger, but even with middling buffs I still don't see aeneas in a favorable position where it's notably faster.

You hold tp a lot in this video tho. Most of you Rudras are 2000+ and some even 3000. Try doing all WSs asap next time.

I'm really not though. I build that tp in fractions of a second. Far more time is spent toggling between targets and repositioning than anything else. That's just how fast tp builds, and with the 1 second weaponskill animation delay it's actually more effecient to just run with it. Also there are some extenuating circumstances that resulted in a few high tp weaponskills

* After the first weaponskill set I went to pull more mobs but when I turned the corner I ran into two darkness elemental mobs. Those are garbage for rudras so I pulled them back to camp and went back for better targets. By the time I was back at camp with them I had 3k tp from auto attack. I was more concerned there with the pull and not being caught out of position than weaponskilling immediately.

* On the third weaponskill fotia belt's save TP effect kicked in during evisceration at the 2:10 mark. I had 1774 TP when I used evisceration and none of it was consumed, so the following rudra's was at 3k.

*I also spend a few moments re-targeting on that third mob because autotarget gave me one darkness mobs from earlier, and I still didn't want to skillchain off of it.

That TP overflow builds in fractions of a second, and in the case of the closing rudra's it happens while I'm waiting for the skillchain window to open up. I'm building tp so fast that if I burned it immediately it would be TOO SOON and the second darkness wouldn't happen because the window hadn't opened yet. It's better to weaponskill closer to 2k on the closing weaponskill anyway because it's a level 4 skillchain, and that extra weaponskill damage really amps up the closing skillchain amount. When you're closing a level 4 darkness you want to go off at around 2k TP, because the difference can literally be a 50k darkness versus a 99k one.

That's actually another reason I prefer twashter. Our tp gain is just so insanely high nowadays that it's way too easy to end up with heavy amounts of overflow naturally, and with the way rudra's storm scales its damage with excess tp so efficiently there isn't really any punish to it. When you're actually making self-skillchains like this that extra TP is beneficial and results in MORE overall damage in the same time frame, not less.

Im not critiquing your "style" of playing and I know some of those tp hold in video was a matter of Fotia proc or switching targets, but doesn't change the fact that normally it shouldnt be like that :) Also holding TP on Twashtar without Cento is probably a good thing, but the reason not to hold is to make a test. Aeneas wouldn't hold tp, so would WS faster, which means it would also kill faster, if Twashtar would need to hold TP.

Also you won't convince me that you make TP so fast, that you can't WS asap after going above 1000TP (assuming no Fotia proc or not switching target), because THF is not even that fast in TP gain as some other jobs and it's perfectly possible on them too :)
THF has TP round every 70+ delay at max haste, so slightly more than 1 sec.

Another important thing is what Rolls you are using there? I definitely don't believe Chaos AND Samurai are optimal. You can only really choose one, because Corsair's Roll is a must imo. +50% EP gain in EP party is just too good.

Did some doodling while being bored at work and came out with this flow chart regarding my optimal dagger usage.

I don't post much, but I've been playing thf forever, I have all REMA (and Tauret) all at r15. Vajra isn't quite r15 but it's close.

I also don't have windower or any upgrades,still totally vanilla. So min/maxing depends wholly on what I'm physically capable of.

What do you guys think of the chart? Generally, this is how I approach my daggers and swap often as the situation demands. This might help others that are wondering if they should go after XXXX dagger.

Notice many roads lead to twashtar and the simplest of thfs would just want Tauret and be done.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ajoa3FiLNWTwPum1cZHH1LW9uZx2YBHD/view?usp=sharing



ninjaedit:
hah. totally love the guide shout-out. definitely neglected to mention i was hard reaching for a purpose for my old beloved Mandau.

Vajra when buffed will never win over anything, unless you need Fusion WS or self Light, so your self-SC should have 2 arrows Light and Darkness.

Vajra could also be potentially better than Tauret for low buff. Depends how low pdif.

Tauret when buffed and skillchains not being a factor can easily rival and beat Aeneas and probably also Twashtar without Cento.

There is probably few more things, but no time to focus on it more now.