For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

jillian bumperie

It's been months since I last worked on my spreadsheet, which I think had some minor things to iron out, but was mostly up to date. Maybe I can get a certain Dragoon to finish it up for me, cuz I'm way too busy to even play the game right now.

Would you mind posting it ? I would like to see it and get to know and understand it. something better than nothing

Spreadsheet
Spreadsheet Download

I cross referenced it with another THF poster a long while back and found errors in both and fixed mine and gave them what I found was wrong in theirs, and I also updated mine a lot from the original sheets based even in part on help from Jean.

I have added several Job points to the setup page, as well as the cratio cap. I haven't put in alllll the gears. Like I only put in meghanada +1 body and hands if you want more in you can add it yourself :D Also haven't put in mache earrings yet.

I think the spreadsheet pretty clearly shows how competitive Aeneas and Vajra are as main hands and how great Twash is as an offhand. If you're closing a huge skillchain Vajra should win and if you're doing multi step skillchains solo, Aeneas should win... which means they work as intended. Vajra gets the benefits of a fusion ws and aeneas a light, but Vajra's ws is good stacked where as Aeneas is not. Aeneas gets more mileage out of unstacked and Vajra out of stacked.

Anyway, have fun I'm sure there's improvements that can be made to the setups I put. I also didn't put in AG mandau b/c I don't really have any interest in it. The spreadsheets are as good as the community wants to make them so just like I took the original and added and updated and corrected it I'm sure you can do that with mine. There's some things I know I need to do like add Vajra 119 III to the relic bonus fields on the data sheet (row 263). So if mandalic or mercy are less than you expected that is why.

Thanks for this. this is great because I can also use it as a reference for gear!

Question for you all. Since the main guide is outdated what are the priority stats in order we should be working on?

I ask because gear and augments are all over the place and rather than try and follow some guide I rather learn how it all works for once since getting end-game pieces is a reality now. Anyone able to give me some numbers I should be aiming for?

As i dont know what point you are in progression, gonna supose you dont have progress in escha at all.

I would recomend:

TP set:
Head: Meghanada NQ -> Meghanada HQ -> Adhemar (acc path) -> Dampenign Tam
Body: Meghanada NQ -> Meghanada HQ -> Rawhide -> Adhemar (acc path)
Hands: Meghanada NQ -> Meghanada HQ -> Adhemar (acc path)
Legs: Meghanada NQ -> Meghanada HQ -> Herculean -> Samhua Tights (maxed)
Feet: Meghanada NQ -> Meghanada HQ -> Adhemar (acc path)-> Herculean

If Meghanada isnt available (i dont think its this month), taeon with acc augments and 2 TA or DW till you reach the cap. Most of time, Herc will beat all the other options with the illusory "perfect augment". In theory its the strongest gear if you consider dark matter augments exist but in reality none is tossing dark matter outside of campaign. So, you should always aim for high accuracy and TA+3 or STP+5.

For WS, probably i would work for a stacked rudra set something like:

Adhemar head, Meghanada HQ or Abnoba kaftan, herculean hands (wsd + DEX) or adhemar or meghanada HQ, Herculean legs (wsd +DEX) or lustration legs, Thereoid Greaves.

This set makes for decent chant du cygne also.

THF can't use Thereoid.

Interesting and thanks for this. Could you elaborate why Herc beets Meghananda HQ for legs ?

Reisenjima pieces are a big surprise box with their augment system, and that surprise box can be more surprising if considering in theory you can use dark matter and make BiS piece (though none will do that because dark matter are expensive and the random system is too random to bet).

But even with normal stones, you can aim for more acc than meghanada (with acc+DEX) and same triple attack with fern stones, making the legs better than meghanada as herc has native stp and more haste.

But the augment system is pretty crap, i would try for samnhua tights maxed that should beat both of those if acc isnt lacking, and you can even get taming saris while farming for the legs and dampening tam.

Sinister Reign can be a huge time sink though. I think i spend over 2 weeks just doing that and never got a maxed taming sari or dampening tam, though i had mules that capped all of that. Also, have some bayld to spare when spamming SR, i think i spend over 2 millions while farming.

Thanks. Yeah I know about the Aug and I am not talking about dark matter stones. But specifically for megahanda and herculean legs. We would have to roll perfect acc on Accuracy dex and TA% correct?

Simplified: you need 26% to cap the gear haste+ (24 in aoulin zones with ionis)

Meghanda+1 5/5 only gives you 16.
Head, body, hands, legs, feet this spread is:
4, 2, 4, 4, 2

The typical thf armor set spread looks like
8, 4, 5, 6, 4
for a total of 27%. This applies to herculean, adhemar, rawhide, taeon. Empy set is same except body has 6%.

So basically this only gives you 1% of wiggle room without requiring to have to degrade an accessory slot for the sake of haste. Typically belt, but with 5/5'meg it's short such a large ammount you'd have to make a haste ambusacade cape.

Also Dampening Tam hat itself is 7% instead of 8 so that would give you no wiggle room.

As for hat, Empy119 should be in there it's competitive with adhemar and damp. Also adhemar is better than damp if you don't need the accuracy.

For TP sets this is an old tired thread but for head:
Adhemar B +1 > Adhemar B > Herculean Perfect TA > Skulker's Bonnet +1 > Skormoth Mask (less dex/acc than Skulk+1) > Dampening Perfect Aug

You can check it on the spreadsheet above yourself. There's literally zero reason to chase dampening on THF unless you want it for an MDT set or that 3.5 melee accuracy difference over skulker's +1 and don't want to deal with trying to get a high dex, ta and melee acc aug on herc. Running around in dampening on thf makes Nanaa Mihgo cry. That said, the difference between perfect augmented dampening and skulk +1 is less than 16 damage in a pdif capped situation, but you should have your empy head anyway for accomplice and collaborator and if you really wanna push white damage use adhemar you just have less accuracy. All three of those options and even skormoth will on average take you less time than getting a capped augmented tam anyway.

Honestly. I built GEO BLM and SCH and i was able to understand and build it right. I just cant understand what the hell am I suppose to get. Haste, Double attack, Triple attack.???

I usually use people's lua to see what they put for engage tp, ws bla bla. but EVERY single lua is different.

SO just to understand this. I need to get 26%. can you speak to me in layman term about this wiggle room. I mean if i have to build and ambuscade set fine. but i learnt from scholar, geo and BLM that i can cap FC with out need the cape. Thanks for taking the time to break it down.

Also Verda was asking you to look at the spread sheet. I can't working it yet. BUT it has MASSIVE amount of info it. Might help.

I currently use Adhma Head body path A, Herc hand with Triple attak +2 aug. meghanda legs and teaon boots. I just have no idea what to do with accessories. do i use my WB +1 belt or my crunt DA+2 belt.? earrings I wear the green set ? the red set> neck the clothrious neck with TA or asperity.?What should the Aug on my taming sari look like my shijo is path A.

Dunno i feel super lost and with no concrete info to build on (there is in the sheet. I cant work it.)

Heh, slowdown there man :D

Melee sets are complicated at first but you get used to them. There's simple rules to live by.
1) Always cap haste as much as possible before starting into dualwield. Delay cap is the holy grail of DPS and caps at 80% reduction, and it is something that should be maintained at all times.

Because of this many people have different sets for different levels of magical haste support. To learn more about it read here: https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Attack_Speed It explains it better than I can. There's magical haste, gear haste and job ability haste. THF is mostly concerned with Magical and Gear haste to help them get to the 80% cap, the rest they make up for with dualwield traits and gear.

2) Multihit and STP work together for TP generation and you want as much as both as possible in your TP set, if #1 is met and your accuracy is capped.

Multi attack comes in quad, triple, double, OAX and OAT varieties. That is also the order in which they are processed by FFXI. So if you have say 3% Quad attack and 100% Triple Attack, you will quad attack 3% of the time and Triple Attack 97% of the time. If you had 3% Quad and 50% TA (Something THF can actually get to or even supercede) then you'd quad 3% of the time and TA 48.5% of the time.

Store TP is a % increase in TP gain, but synergies with multiattack, meaning if you have both, their sum is greater than their parts.

3) Weaponskill sets should be optimized for the weaponskill.

Every weaponskill has different modifiers and different stats will work much better than others, per weaponskill. Rudra for instance gets a base damage boost from 80% of your dex, making DEX very good for it. It is a single hit, non replicating WS so multihit is bad for it. It has extremely high base fTP values, so Fotia is non optimal for it (though still decently good). It also cannot crit, so crit chance is useless for it, however Stacked with Sneak or Trick Attack a crit is forced, so then it also benefits from Crit Damage. Single hit Weaponskills love Weaponskill Damage, so that is also a powerful stat for Rudra. STR is less optimal than DEX but still helps because STR contributes to both attack and base damage through fSTR, where as every other stat will be basically useless for it. That's all confusing at first, but as you read and learn more you'll get the hang of it. Evisceraton for example like crit chance, crit damage, dex, str, and really like multi hit as well and fotia. But weaponskill damage isn't optimal for it and DEX plays less of a role. Things like that make you prefer Epona's for Evisceration and Ramuh +1 for Rudra.


To reply to your specific questions:
Windbuffet despite it affecting the return rate of your lower tier multi hits and diminishing it, just has a LOT of multihit, so it is the better use of your waist slot if you don't need dualwield. Gear has weights, simple ideas don't rule the day. If a piece of armor had 5% slow, but 100% quadruple attack rate for example, slow is bad yes but that much triple attack more than makes up for it. Typical gear comparisons are comparing a positive trait to a positive trait however, so it gets down to numbers and how much.

The delve earrings are outdated but a fine starting point. Definitely upgrade to some combination of cessance, brutal, telos and dedition over the double attack delve earrings at your first opportunity though and if you are in a dual wield set Eabani and Suppanomimi are superior to the delve dual wield earrings.

The wiggle room Boshi mentioned was typically light armor jobs like thf are overcapped by 1% on gear haste, the exception is ambuscade equipment.

Thank you for this. Really. very well written and this should be stickied into the guide. It is the kind of information I am looking for.

I managed to build in Cessance and brutal. Telos.. Heh that would be some time. Will read this again To really understand more but this is great help! Thank you.

Any up to date Rudra's Storm builds, Im talking cream of the crop endgame stuff gear!

Nothing has changed since Meghanada was added. Same set it was 10 pages ago. Probably change in 4 days though, that's when you should ask.

Head
DEF:121 HP+64 MP+33 STR+30 DEX+37 VIT+30 AGI+37 INT+30 MND+30 CHR+31 Accuracy+53 Ranged Accuracy+33 Evasion+84 Magic Evasion+83 "Magic Def. Bonus"+3 Haste+8% Critical hit damage +5% Weapon skill damage +6%

Body
DEF:151 HP+98 MP+54 STR+34 DEX+44 VIT+34 AGI+38 INT+33 MND+33 CHR+33 Accuracy+60 Evasion+79 Magic Evasion+94 "Magic Def. Bonus"+7 Haste+4% "Triple Attack"+7% "Hide" duration +100 Critical hit damage +6%

Hands
DEF:109 HP+47 STR+21 DEX+45 VIT+42 AGI+25 INT+22 MND+40 CHR+27 Accuracy+48 Evasion+54 Magic Evasion+67 "Magic Def. Bonus"+3 Haste+5% "Dual Wield"+5 "Trick Attack"+20 Critical hit damage +4%

Legs
DEF:133 HP+80 STR+39 DEX+15 VIT+26 AGI+30 INT+40 MND+27 CHR+21 Accuracy+54 Attack+30 Evasion+68 Magic Evasion+99 "Magic Def. Bonus"+6 Haste+6% "Triple Attack"+5% Critical hit damage +5%

Feet
DEF:91 HP+29 STR+22 DEX+34 VIT+22 AGI+47 MND+22 CHR+40 Accuracy+52 Ranged Accuracy+33 Evasion+102 Magic Evasion+99 "Magic Def. Bonus"+6 Haste+4% "Steal"+15 "Flee" duration +18 "Resist Gravity"+20 Movement speed +18%

Shiny

*** yeah Flee duration.

A little disappointing tbh, shitload of acc but, not a single point of attack+ except legs.

That head is kinda nifty though.

Can someone remind me why SE hates thf?

The Rudra scrubwagon ruined THF forever. =/

How anybody could possibly think this update was not ridiculously kind to THF is beyond me.

The Legs will replace samnuha tights for TP and the Head will be Rudra's, but the rest?

And the Ambuscade set has no attack either, so I don't think any of those pieces are going to replace anything in an evisceration set.

You do see the body with 7 triple attack, a THF's primary offensive stat, right? Or any of the fantastic accessories?

But you think anyone is going to stop wearing Adhemar jacket? Super high acc set, sure.

The accessories, yes they are phenominal

Reiki Yotai is a hell of a thing.

People should stop wearing Adhemar Jacket for this, yes. That DW can be made up without a thought these days.

Well, see how difficult it is to obtain before you cream your pants.

I'm pretty sure the windbuffet and adhemar > this jacket and reki, but who knows.