For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

Are you implying that someone out there is riding AM2 to get ~90 extra attack?

I'm saying mandalic stab has a 1.75 atk modifier on it natively, which can push you to cap or to PDL cap potentially, with vajra's WS boost added on top.

Interesting! Never noticed/thought of this. I might try switching between the two in various situations, though TBH the number of times I'm on THF trying to push the envelope of my damage is not very high.

I don't know what kind of content you're up to these days, but I can say for something like dyna-d Jeuno where you're just killing for 2 hours straight, it competes with anything that's not a hybrid. For context, most I've done in there for a full run (w3 boss kill and all) on NIN/Chi or SAM/Jinpu is roughly 30m damage, while on THF I think it's somewhere around 22m-23m.

Well I'd say it's Mpu Gandring that kinda changed the picture.
Before that Vajra was also pretty nice in situations where for whatever reason you wanted to close SCs with Light instead of your typical Rudra leading into dark.
Mandalic Stab with fully aug Vajra is pretty close to Rudra and situationally can be better because of the att bonus. Given all the PDL nice options THF has today, it's nice!
Or for situations where you're not att capped in general.

For the AM3 there's the thing you guys said, but it's not really that bad. I feel personally what makes or break AM3 is the typical AM3 thing. I mean if you're able or not to get TP before engaging something, or if the fight lasts long enough to make going for AM3 worth it.

Of course, like Melliny said, Mpu Gandring is much better, but realistically getting a Stage 5 Mpu Gandring is quite a grind, whereas Mythics can be tackled in a more relaxed way.

My feelings on Vajra is that it gets often underestimated. I think it's a slightly inferior alternative to Twashtar, that can situationally be slightly better in some specific situations.
It's not really THAT bad imho.

"Not that bad" aka "not best" aka "literal trash"

Now now, there's no need for that. Nobody here thinks vajra is trash and nobody was saying it is. It's still a rema and it's still one of the top daggers available. The discussions were about the pros and cons of one weapon versus another and what gives the better payout for the time invested. Vajra still performs very well and there's a ton of utility in it. And outside oddy V25 it really doesn't matter much because older content gets facerolled by modern gear creep. The arguments for making vajra are all valid and the use cases are there. Its personal preference in the end. I think everything mentioned over the last couple pages was pretty on point.

This isnt thf mandau

I'd assume this is why I'm hitting capped SATAMS and not capped SATAR. Great observation.

I've returned to FFXI, and that means it's time to update the guide. Obviously that means I know nothing about current endgame, and so I could use some expert help!

First - is there a more current spreadsheet than Valefor.Madranta's 2018 version available at https://www.ffxiah.com/node/316? More importantly, is that 2018 version compatible with today's FFXI as long as I add new equipment?

Second - here's my plan for gear tiers. Please let me know if you think content should be moved to a different tier.

tyty!

Finally, if you're wondering "why?", the current endgame guide https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Rogues%27_Gallery does a pretty solid job at endgame, but is very brief about the long road to get there. That's the part I'm hoping to cover in more depth. I won't cover end-endgame at all - so REMA weapons are out, and that will save me a ton of time and prevent me from duplicating Spicyryan's work.

Also, it would be nice if my existing guide was good for something.

I’m gonna be honest. So much has changed about the game since you left that the meta is nothing like it was in 2017 or 18. Modern gear creep has made it so almost all the dd jobs are on similar footing, but recent events have implemented damage resistances on mobs. This mainly applies to odyssey Gaol and segment farms, but there are a few other places it’s relevant. However I can appreciate your efforts to modernize the sticky and I approve of the new formatting. It looks good. I’ll add a few thoughts for you

On treasure hunter, while the testing in the tread is still ongoing, I suspect the end results will support treasure hunter +5 in gear bring the most we need to wear. If that ends up being the case then our empyrean boots +3 fill that role fine. I think it’s likely anything beyond that has no effect. Time and more data will hopefully tell.

I would mention that because of a recent battlefield addition, peach power, our steal ability is relevant. The fight rewards a lot of exemplar points, and the entry item is stolen via steal off apex imps. The most important thing about steal is your level versus the mobs level. Ever try to steal a quadav stew off garnet quads for our artifact quest when you were under leveled? Then you’d know how painful that could be. Go try stealing from one now that your ilvl 119. I bet you get it the first try. This is easily observable. I personally don’t recommend using non ilvl steal daggers because of that. The accessories are fine, though I question how much they really help. Ilvl matters a lot though.

As for general gearing, it’s hard to advise a modern guide list sets starting with sparks gear. Brand new players are nonexistent in 2023/2024, and most players who pick up a new job already have a fair amount of stuff they carry over to it from other jobs they play. It’s pretty straightforward for someone to unlock gletis gear, which is reasonable even at rank zero, and omitting REMAs from the guide cuts out the meat and potatoes of our best stuff. I know you said you weren’t going to cover endgame at all, but in the current state of the game “endgame” is just about the only content people participate in. There are different tiers of end game, with v25 oddy nms being the hardest, sortie being a big grind, and other stuff like Dynamis or omen or currency farming to occupy our time, but that’s how people spend pretty much all their time nowadays.

You can't be more mistaken. There was a huge (huge relative to playerbase ofc) wave of new players recently or players who left the game before ilvl. Its mostly FFXIV players inspired by new crossover event in addition with some bigger and smaller streamers/youtubers promoting FFXI.

I'm in linkshell created on Bahamut by MrHappy and daily I see many people talking about doing missions and limit break quests.

Oh, I know the meta's different, I left in 2014 and back then Delve and Legion were the big fish. It's so different that I'm starting fresh with a brand new character on a new server. Today I'm hunting a suppanomimi with my sparks gear. I have to agree with SimonSes, sparks gear is definitely relevant right now.

And yes, the REMA is our best stuff and is absolutely worth covering, but it's already been covered! Why would I step on Spicyryan's toes when I'm still a baby thf. BGWiki can cover the meta just fine, and I can write a guide for people like myself that need to figure out how to get there. If the only purpose this guide serves for endgame players is a link to BGWiki's THF guide, that's still better than leaving up the outdated 2014 version.

I love this and will add a note to include a Steal set.

Starter path i think is stil largely sparks > base ambu set. SE added some bayld+1 gear that is an easy path to 119, but assumes you have some 6k for the whole set. Would depend on how annoying V2 is to grind i guess.

Would also slide sortie somewhere into NQ tier, it's not got a high requirement for just farming muffins, can be done solo but more bodies is a huge help in getting more objectives cleared, also makes everything else a deal easier since the gear quality in +2/3 empyrean is better than just about everything else you can reasonably get apart from malignance set and odyssey armor sets(gleti's in THF case)

May also want to split your HTBF's as 5(?) got added later that have a bit of a difficulty increase compared to the previous ones, odin/alex/cait/lilith/shinryu

Updates to the THF spreadsheet and the guide! Everything is very much a work in progress.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LLUwkqKy9dQt4bLzOJx5DJtKPdapBKl7/edit?usp=sharing

Spreadsheet Changes:

• Updated dagger list to cover everything in Rogues' Gallery.
  

• Mainhand hit rate cap increased from 95% to 99%.
  

• The melee section of the "Gear" tab now lists cRatio, hit rate, dDex, and crit rate.
  

• Removed several unused columns from the gear list: S1, S2, S3, Att%, R. Acc, R. Atk, KA, Zan. I don't even know what KA is supposed to be.
  

• Rewrote weaponskill bonus from REMA weapons to be a listing on the Gear List instead of a hardcoded check.
  

• Kaja / Tauret evisceration bonuses are now included.
  

Spreadsheet todo:

• So much more gear
  

• Spreadsheet doesn't track physical damage limit bonus, both the THF trait and gear bonuses.
  

• JSE armor bonuses seem hardcoded. A lot of stuff seems hardcoded ;;
  

• I don't know how Tauret's crit rate bonus scales with TP (is it linear? A step function?). It's not implemented in the spreadsheet.
  

Guide changes: a BBQ tier section that I'm unhappy with. Even though Abyssea is pre-99 content it really isn't THF solo-friendly for procs.

Very cool! But I don't think it takes into account Tauret's crit rate bonus either :( It does seem to have other things like enemy data that could come in handy.

the tp sets it generates don't consider DPS, just average time to WS or TP phase damage. it doesn't give you an overall value like you're used to.
tauret crit rate is linear, and I've suggested a few times how to implement it in a spreadsheet. the formula would be -0.017x+50 to find your crit rate and since the sheet already gives you an average tp return and an average tp used for ws, it's very easy to find a crit rate from there. for example if your tp return cell shows like 118 and your cell for tp used on ws is like 1008, then your average tp for crit would be 563, -0.017(563)+50= would be an average 40.429 crit rate, since it also only applies to that weapon you'd divide by two. so you would get 20.2145 crit rate bonus on average. create a cell to calculate it, then on the TP set if tauret is selected from the combo box, in the set bonus section you can just add that number from that cell.

Anyone has link to test with Tauret. I was under the impression, that it was close to +0% at 1000tp, not 3000.

Thf is very solo friendly for abyssea proc.

Thf/war can do all but blade:ei and tachi:jinpu/ koki

I appreciate the note! I was not paying enough attention to red procs. Unfortunately, I still think we're not great on blue procs: we get about half of the piercing WS's if we /RNG, and very few of the slashing/blunt procs.

Though being able to use the red proc WS's still requires having said weapons. It'll take quite a while for a new player to collect a Great Sword, Scythe, and Polearm they can actually wield.

It reinforces the idea in my head that Abyssea in the BBQ tier is absolutely fine for pre-ilvl returners, but not for new players. And that new players (and my time spent on the guide) are better served by moving on to the next tier.

With ambu voucher replica, this isn't so much a problem anymore.

Scythe still is reliant on mog garden or login campaigns

Fair point but the Hoe is ~3 weeks of going into Mog Garden? I think you can get all 3 of these weapons in under a month's time with two months' worth of ambu + 3 weeks of going into Mog Garden for 5 seconds. Not too bad tbh.

I expect to get 10-18 when I AoE cleave. I just put my empyrean feet +3 in my aeolian edge set for the task, just as was mentioned above. And that's the results I normally see. Sometimes I get a few more, and sometimes a few less, but that'll be the average range. You just get unlucky from time to time. Just do it a few more times and you should see the numbers you're looking for.