For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

With BLUs, I actually prefer something along these lines:

CDC > Mandalic > Evis > Savage > Mandalic > CDC
CDC > Mandalic > Evis > CDC > Rudra's

The top one is more worthwhile with Vajra, though. BLU is a tricky job to mix with THF simply because CDC and Rudra's don't mix well and a lot of people are reluctant to use weaker WSs. Whether it's worth going that way depends on the ability to SC and how good your "lesser" WSs are.

A long skillchain with another player has the drawbacks of wasted TP and possibly not having TP at the right time. You're also using weaker weaponskills. I'm not saying it's not worth it. It seems lucrative due to higher skillchain modifiers and having 5/6 of your WS close a skillchain instead of 1/2. It's hard to know without better models as to which is better though.

Not really, unless what you're fighting is resistant to magic damage entirely a 4-5-6 step skillchain is by far superior overall damage. Getting triple WS damage is absolutely huge.

Did you make any attempt to quantify this? I never said it's better or worse, I said it's hard to know which is better because there are serious practical drawbacks.

When I was triboxing Qilin I was killing him in one skillchain.

Evisceration > Savage Blade > Mandalic Stab > CDC.

The final CDC would do 20k~ and its light would do 80k~. There is nothing close to that damage difference in our WS selection.

That's an anecdote. I'm asking whether you made any attempt to model and compare different situations or if you're just going by what you feel might be better.

Tldr mojo is right about the cape

If you are making a tp cape and acc is not a concern, your best bet is 20str, 10stp, 20acc/atk. If you need acc, swap str for dex.

The reason to go dex/crit/acc/atk is just for evisceration. It can serve two purposes until you make a superior tp cape, but it is not the end.


Also, I was killing qilin in one skillchain as DNC+geo about half the time, so Terpsichore is the best dagger and dancer is the best playstyle. Tide comes in, tide goes out. You can't explain that.

Quick question, do you guys keep and use skulker's Armlet's +1 for use on SA+WS?

So I ready some pages here now, but I'm still a bit lost...

I quit after playing abyssea for a while.. I'm playing thief again now, but most my gear is from the abyssea era. I have some +2 and some +1 empy pieces. I am 99 and bought an Eminent dagger which I dual wield with (usually) a thief's knife. My question is, where do I start... There is so much gear at the moment and all have a different way to get them. I saw the sparks gear, but I am unsure if the gear is good enough? My goal at the moment is be able to solo in Escha Zi'Tah I guess to farm job points etc so I can make my thief stronger... This leads me to a question about job points. What is good to get with this? Also are the merit weapon skills any good?

Hope someone can point me in the right direction, because there is a lot to take in coming back!

SO, I think i might be able to kill some T1 Ru'aun NMs with trusts. My problem is the damage shields. I want to try for Caro necklace from Khon, but he puts up a shield right at the beginning that I can't take down with physical damage. I fought him without dying for ~7-8 minutes. But I never did a single point of damage to him.

1. How is the shield broken?
2. Could I do it with trusts?

The shields are the same as Pil. (A specific damage type can go past it Eg, slashing,piercing, ranged, h2h, blunt and you have to deal enough damage to break the shield)
Or just ignore it via requiscat or quick draw.

How much does HQ cursed gear usually go for? It's almost impossible to find a solid price to aim for since everything seems to be handled via PM nowadays.
On that note what would a Hexed jacket-1 go for?

Do you mean a Jinxed jacket or the hexed-1 you try to HQ into the jinxed jacket? I don't know the answer to the hexed question, but I'm almost to the 300m a guy on my server sells them for. I'd imagine the hexed-1 would sell for a decent bit, though.

The hexed-1 you try to hq into a Jinxed Jacket. I had a khepri Jacket for a while and finally got around to grabbing the abj to uncurse it.

I'd find the bonecrafter on your server and talk to them. It's a big *** risk though, still only an 8-10% chance at HQ off of that, but you have what is probably the single most expensive piece of gear if you manage it.

I know on my server (Rag) they go for about 10-20m, we have a shitload of adhemar+1 bodies though. I think there were only 2-3 when I made mine but now there is almost allways a jinxed or 2 up for 400-500m.

Thanks for all the advice. It looks like -1 had a severe price drop from it's old value so the only reasonable solution is to try for HQ instead of selling and grabbing other useful HQ items.

I solo'd most my job points on THF in Escah Sky, it doubles up as good silt and kills toward revit. However there are much faster ways to get just CP. Having a ton of people all kill stuff in Escha still isn't a bad way to get CP. Apex mobs or cleaving in Escha would be the next step up from that with cleaving in Escha being my favorite but you can't cleave well on THF. If you have a blm friend who can mana wall cleave then that is pretty amazing, otherwise it's fine to solo just takes longer.

Gear wise some rawhide is good, adhemar and lustratio some of it is good, herculean is good some of it too. Really it's a very in depth to answer question, which is probably why no one replied. People will have different opinions too. Gear matters more than job points but both are important, better gear means faster job points too. I'd work on getting gear with parties you can organize after joining a LS. Get some rawhide, get some adhemar and lustratio, maybe even some herculean after a while and join with others for CP or solo it.

I earned mine in Reisenjima by being in a party with my brother's BLU; he cleaved while I fought toads with trusts. While my total kills were fewer, my kill speed was consistently fast enough to keep the chain between his waves, which is essential in these CP campaigns.

Ya blu is very good at cleaving too and you're right keeping up chains helps a lot.

CDC > MStab > Sav > CDC > Rudra

...looks like a good skillchain. The two sword WSs will give you a couple extra seconds to build towards that last Rudra finisher.

If you want to go nuts, you can do something like this

CDC > MStab > Req > Sav > CDC > MStab

won't work, that's fusion>light>light>rudra's

Wait, no, sorry, I misread.

It's

Chant du Cygne (E) > Mandalic Stab (M) > Requiescat (MM) > Chant du Cygne (E) > Rudra's Storm (E)

Why is it we decided sTP is the best tp option for toutatis's cape rather than dual wield btw? Lets discuss realistic party situations here rather than soloing with trusts. The most common buffs I get when I'm at events are fury/frailty, haste, boost-dex, and/or some form of magical defensive buff, and cor rolls. The utility of the dual wield option is going to depend on whether or not you can cap delay reduction without it. So how much magic haste you guys usually get at events?

I currently have 42 dual wield when I'm tping (native + gift + 12 in gear) so I'd need 41% magic haste beyond my gear to reach the cap. If I threw 10% dual wield on the cape I'd be at 52% DW and would still need 33% magic haste beyond my equipment to reach the delay cap. Haste II is almost enough to cover that, but I'd still need just a bit more. Is it practical to expect more than 33% magic haste when you're at events? If so, which? Obviously indi-haste plus the haste spell is enough to cap out, but entrust is only up 1/3 of the time, and there's no guarantee the geo won't entrust a situational defensive buff to counter a specific mob somehow.

Niche mechanics notwithstanding... If you're meleeing in a full party without appropriate magic haste buffs, let alone at an event, your party is probably terrible. It's 2016, proper haste buffs should be a given.

Besides you can always make a new cape next month. I made WSD, STP, and next month I'm doing DW for the countless hours I spend in salvage all by my lonesome.

I'll be perfectly honest here. I'm not very familiar with the mage's haste capabilities anymore. I took about a year and a half break from the game around early 2014 and when I came back last October a whole lot had changed. How do you define "appropriate" or "proper" magic haste buffs nowadays and how are they usually stacked?

Generally if you have a brd expect to have full magic haste. So something like 2 marches and haste 1 or 1 march and haste 2. Of course I've done ambuscades with some randos where I was lucky to get haste 1 from the whm. And people wonder why there are so many people using trusts.

I almost never party with a bard. By far the most common setup I end up grouped in is Pld, Blu, Blu, Thf, Geo, Whm.

Now, I understand that geo can entrust indi-haste, but that's on a limited timer and assumes he's not using entrust for some form of defensive or mage buff. I also know that blu can throw mighty guard up on the party, but that's still 15% haste on top of the 15% haste spell and again, it's on a timer. I can't remember the last time I've had a bard in party, it's been so long. I see cor buffs occasionally, but that won't add any haste. It feels to me like I would need either bard or rdm to cap haste, and I never see them in party (literally). I also rarely see indi-haste as a dedicated geo choice because the geo's tend to use frailty/fury on anything that doesn't need vex or attunement, and with the recent changes to max pDIF values that's such an insanely strong buff it's hard to argue against.

I'm not saying it isn't possible to cap haste, I just rarely see the jobs in my groups that I would need to make it happen. People seem to favor gearing for accuracy and using the support to maximize attack power over capping magic haste nowadays, and it's extremely effective. Attack speed is still high and damage is enormous. But under those circumstances it feels like the dual wield cape would win out over the sTP one. It's easy enough to change the piece, heck I can even reaug it for 1000 gallantry if I want. I just like to understand why something is a better choice rather than be told "this is the way to go" and blindly follow along.


Maybe there's a difference in preferred party composition and playstyle strategies here based on server. I've explained my most common party setup, and while it's certainly not weak, it's different from one that would include a rdm or a brd. That's the problem with situationality though. What works best in one scenario may or may not be ideal in another. Hence my wanting to discuss the most common buffs other people are seeing when they make their gear choices.

What is this party setup used for? Honestly more common for that thf slot to be a cor and/or the thf just being there for th

A 2nd buffer in place of a 3rd DD makes more sense. The DDs get more buffs and they can synergize better for making skillchains rather than mindlessly spamming WS if the situation calls for it