For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

Reminds me of 30 cap Ballista, my friend using Meikyo, but since I saw it coming, I used Shadowstitch and walked away.

Oh so rawhide body path d get +2% triple attack for a total of 4%, I take it this is the new best tp body for when you have haste.

It'll vary depending on a few things, primarily if you've got Aftermath going, but it's pretty much the top body piece. Relic body with 5/5 Ambush in effect will beat it, which is a little more reasonable with the enmity changes, but that falls behind on evasive content. I personally am aiming for path A since that's DEX+10 and STR+7, making it an exceptionally well rounded piece and ideal for unstacked WSs (and WSs on other jobs). Part of the reasoning for this is that I tend to rely on PDT gear (Emet) on anything evasive, and that I have Vajra. Not that it's a big deal, since you can just change paths for 3k slit, regardless of progress.

Well they aren't rare so if you aren't strapped for inventory space you could just get 2 and have one path A and one path D

You could, if you're the kind of person who is comfortable dropping an excessive amount of gil (at present) on basically a 1% difference in regular melee damage. The real power in this piece is not the augments, but the high native stats. This is what really separates the best Escha pieces from Alluvion pieces, where the reverse is true. In the case of the Rawhide body and gloves, they already come with massive amounts of useful stats, missing only things like triple attack, which is why taeon tights ***on rawhide trousers. Adding +10 DEX on a piece that is already at 41 makes it really incredible, and that's even while ignoring stuff like +20 accuracy.

Did anyone have any information on this?

Eh, doing silt farming I end up with stacks of NQ Eschalixir, I've tried selling them on AH, but I always get under cut and have them sent back to my box. So it's just nice to do something with them other than just having them take up space.

Can anyone post spread of mandau/jugo+1 vs ipetam/jugo+1? my (probably wrong) maths make first combo better unless for ws but better on total dmg (prolly due to high delay of ipetam compared to jugo+1). Currently have dmg+11 crit dmg+5% acc/att+10 on ipetam.

My spreadsheet is probably going to a bit different than what you have for gear and maybe JPs/gifts, but overall it comes out just as you expected: Mandau falls behind your Ipetam augments by about 50 total DPS (900ish to 850ish).

Mandau's weakness, in comparison to other knives, is that it doesn't offer nearly as much to WS damage. The WS updates over the past year have really made a huge difference. This is also why Vajra has taken a major leap forward and is undisputedly the best dagger.

So what dagger is currently the best offhand for Vajra?

Edit: just saw your edit about best offhand in a different thread

So would that be Ipetam with wsd from leaf, and str/dex from dusk?

Ipetam with STR/DEX+15, Acc/Att+15, WS Damage+4%. The exact difference between it and say, Odium or Izhiikoh will vary by content, but is pretty small overall (like 1% total DPS, not counting SC damage or free WSs from Fotia) and is quite a lot of effort to get such perfect stats. Odium and Izhiikoh perform better in terms of regular melee damage, but Ipetam offers such a boost to WS damage that even with the crappier delay, it'll still edge the other two out.

Also bear in mind that spreadsheets aren't accounting for things like being hit with statuses such as slow, stun, or amnesia. Traveling time, for instance, weakens the potential from Aftermath, but Vajra's SA/TA and Mandalic bonuses still keep it at a lead. If you have Vajra and not willing to spend millions on perfect Ipetam augments, you'll never notice the difference between it and Odium or Izhiikoh.

edit: Jugo +1 can keep up/sometimes surpass Izhiikoh or Odium, but generally on weaker enemies as it lacks DEX and accuracy.

In that case I might just save myself the headache and get Odium. Resistance against "Death"+13 seems like a nice perk.

Okay, so just for fun as I'm sure it would be easier to just get perfect augs on an Ipetam, but how does a 119 Twashtar do as an off hand for Vajra. It does have +20 dex.

A little worse than Izhiikoh. The extra DEX is nice but the other knives have bonuses like attack, acc, triple attack, etc. that give them an edge.

I don't think mandau has fallen that far behind in weaponskill damage. Mandau does still have a very low delay and is one of the fastest daggers around. Mandau/Jugo +1 is an extraordinarily fast combo, and the lower the delay the faster you accrue TP, meaning more frequent evisceration's and more powerful rudra's storms. Both daggers do suffer from lack of accuracy though, which is important on harder content. But even then, Mandau/Izhiikoh or Mandau/Ipetam is still notably faster than dual wielding Ipetams.

Edit: I'm gonna retract the weaponskill damage via tp gain comment. Just did the actual math and the difference in tp gain is less than 3% between mandau/jugo +1 and a pair of ipetams.

Lower delay helps for your regular melee damage, but in terms of WS frequency, it doesn't make much of a difference, since TP generation adjusts based on total delay. Mandau's strength is the bonus damage on regular hits, which under certain circumstances (such as Amnesia), this can give it an edge. However, other knives have the advantage overall from high DEX boosts and other bonuses.

Jugo +1 is definitely the best off-hand choice for a Mandau though (short of high evasion content), since you want smaller delay so you'll have more frequent triple damage procs.

This is probably going to open up another can, but I Judo+1/Judo on exp mobs personally. Unless you can kill a mob from 100% with tp damage to 1000tp + rudra, which you definitively can't without JAs, it really is better to race to 1000tp twice and kill it with a darkness skillchain doing rudra > rudra. It's just quick chain of auto target > WS > WS (since you don't see the melee animation) and auto target again. No positioning, no JA, no nothing.

For actual content, I Vajra/Ipetam though

Sidenote, anyone else noticing how much triple attack rate we have these days? I'm at +38% triple attack rate without daggers. That's just silly.

What are you usually fighting for CP? On bats and other flying crap, I tend to be able to do Mandalic at around 1000-1250ish, which after building that TP, the WS is enough to kill it. Using Vajra and Izhiikoh. I can definitely see an advantage to your way though, since it's effectively what I do when I CP on RUN.

I probably should have mentioned that too. I normally fight Soundsplitter bats. Those things have 16k hp so I'll be impressed if you can kill them from just 1 cycle of tp'ing to 1000TP~ and 1 Rudra without JAs. Normally, my melee damage will do 4-4.5k-ish and my WS will do 6-6.5k-ish, with the usual peaks and dip. I'll be surprised if your setup can squeeze in an extra 5-6k within those 18-ish swings and WS.

Out of curiosity, what do you guys aim for with your dusk augments on Taeon gear? I was happy to get Att + Acc +20, Triple Att +2 and Crit Dmg +3 on my Taeon head but then I wondered about the usefulness of the crit damage.

For tp phase stronger crit damage isn't all that so then it comes to WS where it's obviously great for stacked Rudra's but not much else, would WSD be better? Or maybe STR+DEX?

Alright, I'll aim for STR+DEX for dusk augments. As you say, meh to the WS related sets, maybe one day.

I don't actually do dual wield as I 99% of the time have my WHM mule with me who in the near future will be RDM geared too.

Of course upon mathing it out JUST NOW, I find you need 35% DW in gear (30 with job gift) to cap out delay so it's something to work on definitely. That's with Haste and Haste Samba btw.

EDIT: Also mathed out Haste 2 + Haste Samba and worked it out to be 19 DW needed (14 with 550 gift)

EDIT2: My figures are ever so slightly out as I factored in a merited Haste Samba which THF wouldn't have but it's only by about 1%.

Not with Rudra, but with Mandalic Stab. From what I've noticed in both playing and spreadsheets, with Vajra, Rudra's falls behind on enemies over like level 106-109ish unless I have massive attack boosts or like 2500+ TP. 1000 TP doesn't reliably kill unstacked (unless their HP got a little lower), so I tend to aim for 1250ish, which is really just an extra attack round. With SA or TA though, I can one shot them at 1000.

Going by spreadsheets, it would seem that STR/DEX is the best Dusk augment for THF on Taeon, both in melee and WS, except under certain situations (like say, having Rogue's Roll). The difference between any of the maxed augments is small though, so I wouldn't get bent outta shape over it.

Issue with Taeon is the base stats (STR, DEX) are a bit low on some of the pieces, so for stacked WS gear, you'll want to stick with pieces like AF 119 head and legs. Also, Rawhide body and hands, due to having good native melee bonuses, will easily trump Taeon body and hands (I recommend path A augment for DEX+10 and STR+7). For the feet slot, it really comes down to Taeon or Rawhide, and they're very similar in stats overall that you'd really only need to bother picking up one or the other.