For the Shinies! A Guide for Thief

For the Shinies! A Guide for Thief

Last updated Sep 2024!

Introduction

Hiya! So I noticed people are posting guides for jobs, and I was like ME TOO :3 I ended up creating this back in March 2013, and although it's been a long, bumpy ride, I learned a ton about THF. Hopefully you will too!

I stopped playing around 2014, and this guide straight up died :(

But I'm kinda back? I at least want this guide to be better than useless. I can't be a THF authority - I haven't played in 10 years and I don't know claw from tail anymore. But I need to write down how to return to competent THFness, so I might as well do it here! So this will now be a THF's Returner's Guide, compiling multiple sources to streamline the path to endgame.

Sources!

BG Wiki Community THF Guide: a merge of the old Rogue's Gallery guide that is now defunct, and several author contributions. I would stick to the Equipment Sets - these are objective DPS calculations instead of opinion writing.
A Rogue's Guide to the Precious: last updated in late 2020
Endgame Progression Guide: not specific to THF, but a valuable source of information on what happens at 99.

OK, let's get started!

Section I. Thief Basics

Traits and Abilities

Job Traits

Gilfinder
Gets you 50% more gil on gil-dropping monsters. It's enhanced by your relic legs, but this has never been a relevant source of gil.

Evasion Bonus
Increases your evasion, up to +72 by level 99. This, coupled with your best-in-Vana'diel evasion skill, and naturally high AGI, makes evading attacks a viable form of damage mitigation.

Treasure Hunter
So important, it has its own section in the guide! See section IV.

Resist Gravity
You have up to 30% resist against gaining Weight. Sometimes you can use Flee to remove it as well. Just like in real life!

Triple Attack
You have a base 6% chance to triple attack at 99. With merits, it goes up to 11! With job gifts, up to 19!! We stack this as much as we can on TP gear.

Assassin
Guarantees that a correctly lined up Trick Attack will crit. This is a standard feature of Sneak Attack. While mainjob THFs have no more reason to ever think about this job trait, if you're /THF this means your Trick Attacks are not guaranteed crits.

Ambush (Merited)
Adds accuracy and ranged accuracy when behind a monster, 3 per merit. Relic chest augments give +1% triple attack per merit.

Aura Steal (Merited)
Adds a dispel effect to your Steal ability, IF you didn't steal anything. Extra merits increase the possibility by ~20% per merit that you GAIN the dispelled buff, but beware: you never quite get a 100% absorb rate, and repeated usage of this ability against a single enemy will greatly reduce its effectiveness.

Relic head augments make it dispel+steal two effects instead of one. (ty Calamity)

Crit Attack Bonus
+14% Critical Hit Damage, kapow!

Dual Wield
Gives you up to 25% dual wield delay reduction, which is the same as subbing Ninja! Back when level 75 was the cap and we didn't have this job trait, /NIN was the subjob of choice for the dual wield trait, but now that is no longer a factor. Note that there is a delay cap - your combined actual weapon delay, modified by Dual Wield and Haste, cannot be less than 20% of your base weapon delay, so there is a limit on how much of this you can stack under heavy buff conditions.

Job Abilities

Perfect Dodge
This allows you to dodge all melee attacks for 30 seconds. It does NOT affect ranged attacks or spell damage. It may save your life! But pay attention to your target's attack types before you find yourself dead and without your 1-hour.

Augmented relic hands will give you another 10 seconds.

Larceny
Dispels one buff from the enemy and gives it to you, like Aura Steal. What makes it interesting is if the enemy is using a 1-hour ability (original 1-hours, not new ones) you will automatically steal that 1-hour ability. Works great with Mighty Strikes, Hundred Fists, Blood Weapon, or even defensive abilities like Invincible or Perfect Dodge.

Steal
Mostly used these days for Aura Steal, which we recommend you merit at least once.

This is one of your few Job Abilities (besides Mug, Bully, and Despoil) that actively targets an enemy, making it a possible proc against Job Ability-proc monsters.

It does have niche use for actually stealing items, so you can theoretically get up to +38% success rate! Realistically you won't have Rogue's Bonnet (because you upgraded it) or Gorney Ring +1 (because there are much better choices for that quest), so a total of +34.
ItemSet 394782

Sneak Attack
Makes your next melee attack a guaranteed critical hit, and adds your total DEX to the base weapon damage for that hit (/THF does not add the DEX to base weapon damage, only guarantees the crit). You must be behind the target unless you have Hide or Bully up. If you miss, it's because you weren't behind the target. Empyrean gloves increases the DEX bonus to damage, but you will generally use SA only with weaponskills, so you'll focus on weaponskill-damage gloves. The likelihood of Treasure Hunter increasing is also greater on a Sneak Attack: this is the best reason to solo SA and you'll want to use TH gear then.

Flee
Gives you 60% (capped) increased movement speed for 30 seconds, 45+ if activated with AF feet on (they only need to be on for activation). Works well for mass pulling / aggroing, or for crossing Jeuno REALLY QUICKLY.

Trick Attack
The same as Sneak Attack, except it adds your total AGI to the base weapon damage, and you need to be behind an ALLY. All enmity from the attack is transferred to said ally. /THF does not get the AGI bonus to damage, or the guaranteed critical hit, just the hate transfer. Allies include NPCs that are tied to you, such as trusts and pets, but not other people's pets/fellows. AF hands increase the AGI bonus to damage, but like with Sneak Attack you're saving this for weaponskills. There is no way to ignore the positioning requirement on this one.

Trick Attack does not remove any form of Invisible, including Hide.

Mug
You can take a generally pitiful amount of gil from an enemy that normally drops gil.

However, it is also a JA proc, it's a very quick, very low hate method of aggroing something (along with Steal), and with Job Points it becomes a self-cure! It gains a bonus from your relic head.

Hide
A widely misunderstood ability, this allows you to do three things:

Give yourself the Invisible effect for a short amount of time. This works in the same manner as the Invisible spell.
Allows you to remove yourself entirely from the enmity list of a monster if you are at the top. This generally works for sight AND sound-based monsters, but does not give you protection against scent. This means you can be fighting a monster, pop Hide, and the monster will stop attacking you. However, if it's aggressive and sound-based, you have a limited amount of time before it will re-aggro you if you are in its aggro radius, so run away! Great for removing unwanted aggro in solo situations.
While the Hide buff is on, Sneak Attacks can be used from any direction. However, activating Sneak Attack itself will remove Hide, so remember to use Sneak Attack first. Trick Attack doesn't remove Hide, but isn't affected by it either.

Your AF body increases the duration of Hide, but since the most common usages of Hide are #2 and 3 this is not a necessary macro swap.

Accomplice
The 5 minute cooldown, 50% hate stealing cousin of Collaborator. More about this in the next paragraph...

Collaborator
Allows you to steal 25% of the hate of an ally, as long as you're within 20 yalms of your mutual enemy. Only 1 minute cooldown, yet it shares the cooldown with Accomplice. This is GREAT for keeping your squishy mages alive, and if you're in hate-sensitive situations you should spam this ability on your mages. The only time I would ever use Accomplice over this is if your squishy mage would die if hate was not off him/her RIGHT NOW, and you're not expecting your mage to do anything dangerous in the next five minutes.

Another interesting way to use Collaborator is targeting whichever primary DD currently has the most hate. If this makes you the primary hate target, this can work to your advantage: the primary DD can DD harder and not die, while you can swap in some evasion gear and save your healers some MP. However, if for whatever reason you're not better than the DDs at tanking - for example, if your gear is not up to par - this is probably not a good strategic option. This can also horribly backfire if the new primary hate target, thanks to you reducing the melee hate by 25%, is a mage. It is also very bad for you if your mages do something hate-intensive in the minute that Collaborator is down. So, please, exercise caution using Collaborator this way.

Your Empyrean head piece increases hate stolen substantially, for both Accomplice and Collaborator.

Assassin's Charge (Merit)
Your next attack will be a triple attack. We TP too quick to use this for generation, and because we TP so quick we WS too often for this to have substantial DPS gain. Put merit points elsewhere!

Feint (Merit)
After using this ability, your next hit will apply a 30 second, 50% Evasion Down debuff to the target. Meriting this to 5/5 increases the chance of the Feint hit applying a Treasure Hunter increase by 100%, from a base 20% increase. This means your chance is doubled, NOT guaranteed. Best used with a Sneak Attack or a Trick Attack (but not with a weaponskill, it doesn't apply on weaponskills) to both guarantee the next hit landing and to greatly increase a Treasure Hunter increase.

Your relic pants will increase the evasion down by 10 per merit level.

Despoil
This does the same thing as Steal, but adds a random status debuff if you succeed and generally steals a different item. You'll basically never use this for stealing things.

But it's also a JA proc, and with job points, it becomes a TP drain, which is pretty fantastic!

Conspirator
Grants Subtle Blow and Accuracy to party members, except for the player highest on the hate list, for an amount scaling up relative to party size. Your Empyrean chestpiece makes this also grant attack bonus, but it's not worth swapping in - the effect is applied per hit, not when first activated. Great for lowering monster TP gain!

Bully
Applies an intimidation effect to the monster! Very cool, and it works as a monster enfeeble instead of a player buff, so the monster target doesn't matter. Even more cool is that it removes the positioning requirement for Sneak Attack, allowing you to use it when you are the monster target!

Merits and Job Points

Merits Group 1

Flee Recast Shorten recast time by 10 seconds.	Skip! Flee doesn't have enough utility to merit cooldown reduction.
Hide Recast Shorten recast time by 10 seconds.	Skip! Hide doesn't have enough utility to merit cooldown reduction.
Sneak Attack Recast Shorten recast time by 2 seconds.	0-5/5 Your remaining merits go between Sneak Attack and Trick Attack cooldown. Whatever works for you!
Trick Attack Recast Shorten recast time by 2 seconds.	0-5/5
Triple Attack Rate Increase triple attack rate by 1 percent.	5/5 We want as much triple attack as we can get! Takes us from 6% base to 11% before job gifts.

Merits Group 2

Assassin's Charge Triples your next attack. Recast: 5 min. Additional merits each increase chance of quadruple attack by 5%.	Skip! Assassin's Charge is out of favor since our TP generation is much quicker than it used to be. Getting a small weaponskill bonus isn't worthwhile when it's only every 5 minutes.
Feint Next attack greatly reduces enemy evasion. Recast: 2 min. Additional merits increase chance of TH level up by 25%.	5/5 More evasion reduction when used with relic pants, and better chance of TH gain! Both are extremely useful.
Aura Steal Adds a Dispel effect to Steal. Each merit increases chance of absorbing dispelled effect by 20%. Somehow does not add up to 100%.	1-5/5 At least one to get the Dispel effect. Add more at your leisure if you really like stealing effects!
Ambush Grants +3 accuracy bonus per merit to melee and ranged attacks from behind an enemy.	0-4/5 Put remaining merits here. I guess we have actual tanks these days, sounds nice! Back in my day bosses would spin constantly but I'm an old cat ;;

Job Points
you get all of these, but some are more useful than others
I've ordered them by general importance per sub-category
listed effect is after all 20 tiers are bought, divide by 20 for effect per tier

DPS Gain

Triple Attack	Increases physical attack of Triple Attack by 20.
Sneak Attack	Increases DEX bonus to Sneak Attack by 20%.
Trick Attack	Increases AGI bonus to Trick Attack by 20%.
Conspirator	Increases physical accuracy while under Conspirator by 20.

Party Utility

Despoil	Steals 40% of target's TP when using Despoil.
Bully	Increases intimidation chance of Bully by 20%.
Steal	Reduces recast time of Steal by 40 seconds.
Larceny	Increases duration of effects stolen with Larceny by 20 seconds.

Survival

Mug	Steals HP equal to 100% of DEX and AGI when using Mug. Does not work on undead.
Perfect Dodge	Increases magic evasion when using Perfect Dodge by 60.

Job Gifts
you also get all of these! Some important bonuses at:
80/405/980/1805 total Job Points: TH proc chance +5-7%
125/450/1050/1900 total Job Points: triple attack +2%
550 total Job Points: reduce Dual Wield attack delay by 5%
this changes equipment loadouts!
2100 total Job Points: you are now the shiny

Superior 5	Can equip items marked as Superior 5 (Su5).
Physical Defense Bonus	Increases physical defense by 28.
Physical Attack Bonus	Increases physical attack by 50.
Physical Evasion Bonus	Increases physical evasion by 70.
Physical Accuracy Bonus	Increases physical accuracy by 36.
Magic Evasion Bonus	Increases magic evasion by 36.
Magic Accuracy Bonus	Increases magic accuracy by 36.
Treasure Hunter Bonus	Increases chance of TH increasing on hit by 23%.
Max Treasure Hunter Value	Increases maximum TH value by 2, to a cap of 14.
Triple Attack Chance	Increases triple attack chance by 8%, for a total of 19% with merits.
Critical Damage Bonus	Increases critical damage dealt by 8%, for a total of 22%.
Dual Wield Effect	Reduces Dual Wield attack delay by 5%, for a total of 30%.

差出人:
へ:
件名:
本文: