For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

Thief's go to sub job has been /dragoon for like.... 5 or 6 years now.

Also here

ItemSet 342123

That's my default tp set. Gletis is R30. I think it's the only job I still use orb instead of coiste bodhar in the ammo slot. But I think it's correct to do so since we have so much triple attack the DA rate on coiste is diminished dramatically.

Oh nice Melliny! So happy for you that you got a THF+2 earring! <3

I like this one
ItemSet 359678

Can't decide on the legs though. Gleti's are offensively better, but Skulker's activates empy bonus and nothing is better to see than AM3+Empy proc :D Whole set is also very high on PDL (even more if you switch Hetairoi to Ephremad's }:>), so PDL on Gleti's legs could be wasted. Skulker's also balance a little glassines of this build.

Btw I was playing with Izanami's sim yesterday and DPS im getting on THF is just crazy, to the point Im wondering if it's calculated right (I think I was able to push it to almost 30k with SV and Savagery, which seems impossible), but I don't have time to debug that atm.

What is the best sub job of you're using evisceration?

/drg every day.

Always /drg. No exceptions.

I have about 10 +2 earrings.
I have gotten MULTIPLE +1s for literally every job, at least 4 for every single job...except thf. Thf is the singular job for which I have no +1 earring.

The computing power necessary to identify exactly which job I enjoy playing the most out of every single job I have geared and leveled (all of them) and to deny me such item is beyond belief. The SE computing algorithms are the envy of NORAD and will undoubtedly
be studied by future civilizations as my own fossilized remains lay surrounded by remnants of mountains of +2 scholar earrings and pieces of eikondrite.

That's my experience too, but in my case it's +1 DNC

Look I know everyone says /DRG, but it depends on what content you're doing and who you're doing it with.

/DRG is going to be your best option if you're in a party and you want strong enmity management with High Jump / Super Jump and Collaborator. But it'll only be your strongest damage choice if you're attack capped. Even if it isn't the highest damage, the enmity management may be the greater benefit to your group.

/WAR or /DRK will give more damage if you're below the attack cap, but no extra enmity tools.

If you're solo, /DNC has tremendous utility, and /NIN and /RUN both give you survival options.

10% extra weaponskill damage 100% of the time versus 25% extra attack 60% of the time. You'd have to be really really attack starved for /war to win out. So much so that you'd have to be in a party situation fighting strong mobs to cross the threshold, and at that point you should expect bard and cor support. /dnc is fine for solo though. Nothing wrong with that.


What content can this possibly be relevant for nowadays with the gear we have? You can't bring sub jobs into gaol, and anything from seg farm down is /drg territory. Dynamis is /drg, farming swarts solo is /drg because trusts are plenty to keep you alive. Hell, any solo content where you can summon trusts is /drg actually. Any escha fight is /drg. What do we need shadows for in this era?

What content can this possibly be relevant for nowadays with the gear we have? You can't bring sub jobs into gaol, and anything from seg farm down is /drg territory. Dynamis is /drg, farming swarts solo is /drg because trusts are plenty to keep you alive. Hell, any solo content where you can summon trusts is /drg actually. Any escha fight is /drg. What do we need shadows for in this era?[/quote]

The best example I could give would be HTB's. Being able to put up some measure of elemental defense for avatars, being able to put up light defenses for caitsith. Mind you, this is when soloing if you have anyone with support capabilities you can skip those options. that being said, there are still certain circumstances where shadows are just required for all dds (ambuscade), and I believe one of the master trials.

I think what I'm trying to get across is that some of us are a lot, lot newer to the game than you and play with equally new people. /NIN was incredibly useful for me in a V1 Normal Ambuscade where we would have otherwise wiped. None of us were master level and we didn't have any BRD or COR. I'm terribly geared but THF/NIN was still my best option.

/RUN is amazing for me for soloing Normal difficulty HTBF avatars. Again, this is really low end content, but it keeps me alive.

I get that we're on a slippery slope of "just how much should we care about how bad you are" but I want people to know why they're choosing their subjobs.

All valid reasons. Point well made. It's better to say that as you get to a point where your gear is closer to the current end game levels that /drg becomes the go to. I can't argue anything you said. If you're still running with adhemar, herculean, and relic gear then things will be much different for you. As you play more and get better equipment you'll find that over time you'll be switching to /drg more and more often. But until you reach that point then yes, the other sub jobs are perfectly fine. Possibly even better because you don't get 10% WSD from /drg until Mlvl 30. I will never belittle someone for being newer at the game. We all have to start somewhere. Keep working at it though. There's so much to strive for and the growth process is highly rewarding.

Though I agree that /drg is almost if not always the better dps choice, both /drk and /dnc are great for trust parties to help cap haste.

/drk is also great to help aoe tag with TH though, you could just AE spam.

I'm currently under the ML threshold for the next wsd boost from /drg so maybe that will change once there.

Perhaps you meant in a general sense but /drk doesnt provide thf any additional haste, 2 hander only

Oh I prefer /rdm for that by far. Being able to cast Phalanx myself instead of forcing trusts to do it is by itself worth /rdm over anything else. /DRG has no benefits at all there, because trash mobs dies in 2x AE anyway and pushing to kill them in one AE isn't beneficial, because you still need to kill transcendent mobs, so you want trash to fuel tp via Gandring, instead of dying from first WS. Another big factor is diaga helps a lot to pull mobs, especially sight aggro ones (trying to run in front of some mobs, when they move, is annoying af) or ladybugs when they don't aggro at all. On first two floors it also let you pull before mobs start to aggro (it takes several seconds after they load until they can aggro).

Every other use case of THF, that requires physical damage is indeed /DRG though (for me).

Never heard of /drg for thief, I’ll definitely try that. Most of those sets are at best -25 PDT -0MDT (or 29 with shell) is that enough?

Really situational, depends how dangerous whatever you're fighting is. That's why I posted my glass cannon set and the safer malignance one. You can mix in Gleti pieces too if you're after PDT/MDB and the mob isn't really doing any debuffs you need meva for.

Deciding which TP set to use is part of the fun of the game and nobody can answer what "enough" DT is, because it depends.

That said, THF isn't commonly used in a lot of highly dangerous content IMO, because THF isn't commonly used in a lot of content at all. If you're fighting low level trash, you won't need to worry about DT at all.

My set is more for fun. It focus very strong on white damage and big fat white numbers with Twashtar. It's for sure glassy, but with Skulker's legs giving you 13%DT, gleti's hands 7%PDT and back either 5%DT or 10%PDT you can reach solid 25~30%PDT and 44~49%MDT (with Shell V).

You can definitely build more hybrid set that will easily have tons more survivability, that focus more on WS damage and probably even has higher overall DPS (especially with Prime main and Centovente offhand).

Something like that for example:
ItemSet 368511

I have 18k alexandrite remaining on Vajra mythic with other requirements complete, but I heard Twashtar is better in the end. Should I stop working on Vajra or start Twashtar even though I don't have any progress on that Magian weapon? I don't have Mandau, Centovente, Mpu Gandring, Gleti's Knife, etc. yet. I am still using Odium (Plouton dagger) and Taming Sari since I am a returning player.

When will the OP TP sets on the first page be updated? They seem kind of outdated. For example, the TP+Acc one at http://www.ffxiah.com/item-sets/394737 They don't mention a lot of Skulker's gear for example.

If I were you, I would put alexandrite into the qiqirn as I found it, but not buy any.

Immediately do the trials for Centovente, it's really easy and the dagger is insanely strong

Mandau is utter trash for THF, don't bother unless you want a lockstyle or are a collector

Mpu Gandring is a pie in the sky, "maybe some year" project, don't even sweat it

Don't sleep on Ternion Dagger, Sandung, and Gleti's knife. If you can get access to these, go for them, they'll be good holdovers.

Work on the Twashtar trials right away, then gauge how difficult it will be to make the $$$. To get it to 119 AG will take a lot of gil but it's worth it in the end because it's irreplaceable for most times you want to do damage on THF.

Also consider that nobody will want your THF for most endgame content, so weigh that when deciding how much time and gil to put into the job. Have a backup job or 3 for actually doing content, and make sure they get reasonably well-geared too.

Thank you for the reply. I also have Sandung, I forgot to mention, but I don't use it in offhand currently.

I have been trying to do Arrapago Remnants II runs daily but they take me like an hour to do if I do all of the NMs. It seems difficult time-wise considering the amount of daily content (Sortie, Odyssey, Omen, Ambuscade) they have now. Yes, they still have the one Earth day limit on Arrapago Remnants even though it is a very old event.

I was working on Daurdabla (bard harp for additional song effects) and found it very difficult to get heavy metal plates. I will try different strategies later though like BLM/NIN solo for Voidwatch procs.

I am gearing up THF as a solo job mostly. I know it is not used end-game much. I also have BST as a solo job too that I like but it I don't think it is as good job-wise as THF at the moment, or maybe my gear just sucks, hah.

Not worth your time farming voidwatch unless the campaign is on, and when the campaign is on you shouldn't bother proccing. Go on the job you can kill the fastest and just spam them.

There are loads of salvages you can run hourly which are soloable by a decently geared THF (Ambu+2 maybe). There are YouTube videos going over some strats, IDR which one I did, the chairman one?

My advice is immediately abandon Vajra.

It was first queued up mythic but I kept it on backburner because there were so many other better mythics and then Twashtar came out and was so *** awesome it went to top of prioritization list. I now have 4 mythics (no Vajra), and Tizona is next on list.

Twashtar is better than Vajra, probably Aeonic dagger too. Its partly because Thief has such high Triple Attack.

Salvage runs on thief average 20 mins. Its been awhile since I did them because I think its like 300-400k every 30 min, been so long I dont remember. If your thief is not mastered yet, I'd do Odyssey living key runs. If your thief is mastered, hell no don't lose xp on those f'n mimics.

*Also, /rdm on Omen is what I've been doing for awhile so nice to see Simon confirming its an efficient play. Tying into that and as a major reflection on y'alls conversation, the quality of life and speed improvement on calling trusts and /rdm buffs is exponentially increased by a good Thief Fast Cast set.

Here's what I'm using. The important thing is just to get one in place, and then improve gradually every slot. Hell, a fast cast JSE back would be a fantastic start.

ItemSet 395136

I don't want to be this guy, but THF is not DNC, which means you have access to Naegling, which (I might check it later) most likely destroys all the dagger options from raw damage perspective (not from solo skillchain perspective). So unless you need piercing damage or play in WS wall event with other Savage users, you can simply use Naegling before you build Twashtar or Mpu Gandring (which again will be more for solo self skillchain, then to beat Naegling in raw damage). Tauret is also strong entry point dagger for THF.

make a tauret first as it will be a very significant upgrade to your thf with the least time/money investment, and is usable by many other jobs if you find yourself not wanting to pursue twashtar/vajra.

I use naegling/cento on Thf, actually amazed no one ever talk about that, my engaged set isn’t something that satisfies me (such a noob didn’t even bother +3 the head lol), nor did I find yet a posted set (love those relic feet but jeez the acc…).

Are you ready for it, as naegling/cento thf/dnc (I’ll try /drg soon) break the 10M dmg constantly on dyna D, even no bard I break the 7M, you will make DD upset and say you cheated with the naegling even if they used it as well, lmao. I don’t care what people think, I believe in numbers, if it’s a naegling then be it, I try, look around, ask questions. I tried that combo and yeah, nothing even come close, doesn’t work well on high acc though.

For omen I do /rdm, killing in 1WS does no good imo, the trans take 5 anyway. And pulling the third zone in 2 group without SPing is nice QoL

Probably because everyone knows Savage Blade is OP.
Naegling is REMA tier.
TP Bonus+1000 unbeatable on non-FTP transfer WS.

Pretty sure everyone talked about it many times, to the point people don't bother to bring it back, assuming its obvious. It's the same for Savage on NIN.

Also people bother more about Sortie and Odyssey and assuming you would bring THF to any of those, you either need piercing for specific v25 bosses or you will be walled quite a lot by BRD and COR also wanting to use Savage. Dynamis NMs also have a WS wall btw.


This honestly tells nothing to anyone, because Dynamis D can be done with 18ppl and 10 DD jobs sharing all the damage, or it can be done with 2 DDs. You can also clear whole wave 1 and 2 or not. Which zone is also important. In Sandoria I could probably tribox 10M damage on BLU in first 10minutes of wave 1, doing 250-500k damage per cast.

It’s readily available, all I’m saying, THF job is tagging, then killing. Why spend more time on killing because of personal grievances against a weapon? Tag, get your TP (originally what I asked as im looking for different TP ideas) and kill (SB usually 1 shot, forced a crit into it with SA/TA and it’s bonkers, 60-70-99k in D). And “Steal” the show