For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

only asked in like four of them so far. But i have extra merits so i mine as well use then on jobs since they are all leveled. And no point in using them randomly; mine as well use them on things that could be worth while.
Sorry if doing things annoys you'

If the sky is the limit what is the perfect dagger duo?

Main: Vajra 119 III ?
Off: Twashtar 119 III ?

Aeneas/Twashtar.

Triple attack for group 1. Your choice Trick or Sneak for the rest. I generally prefer Trick because it's a lot easier to have someone to trick attack than be sure the mob isn't going to turn.

Second group I use 5/5 Ambush, 4 Feint, 1 Aura Steal. *** Charge isn't worth it with how gear/stats scale these days and the absorb effect of Aura Steal isn't very common either, so more points isn't worth it.

What would a good Mercy Stroke set look like these days?

There's likely an evisceration set posted semi-recently.

Why is Aeneas better than mythic?

It really depends on the situation you are in and your style of play. Both dagger are great and have their uses. But I disagree in saying one is better than the other because they both have their strengths over eachother in different situations.

Because I'm at 45-50% TA rate through gear/merits/traits already. The TP bonus is almost equal to the bonus to Mandalic from Mythic and it makes Rudra spam absolutely amazing. It also has higher DMG and STP+10.

There are a few fights Mythic can be considered better, but as an overall weapon I don't think mythic keeps up at all.

It's not.

Well there you have it. One person using reasoning, and one person not. Take your pick!

I ship the Aeneas/Twashtar combo as well or Twash/taming if accs still a issue

Are these still the most up to date sets?

Toss in Regal Ring over Ramuh/Garuda+1 in those sets and basically. Only thing missing would be a higher ACC tp set, which I'd consider something like this:

ItemSet 350088

I spent some time beating on Melo Melo and here's some data regarding aeonic vs mythic am3. These are purely number of swings over the span of 3 minutes. I used their respective AM3 to keep time, disengaged when AM3 wore off and checked for number of swings. I'm at 2QA, 47TA, 6DA in my standard set.

547 aeneas
615 vajra
553 aeneas
593 vajra
538 aeneas
595 vajra

Or

Aeneas = 538, 547, 553
Vajra AM3 = 593, 595, 615

Or, AM3 gives about a 10% increase in swings. That's actually lower than I expected, to be honest, because the difference in tp gain between the two daggers is very noticeable when I'm doing normal zerging.

For fun, I slapped on Twashtar/Judo+1 and I was on pace for 705 before it died and I didn't bother to go at it again.

Vajra Mandalics are stronger than Aeneas Rudra's, and any SA/TA WS is stronger than Aeneas. It sucks for spamming Rudra's as much as Aeneas sucks for spamming Mandalic. The aftermath vs higher DMG and Store TP trade-off is pretty even, in terms of TP gain and white damage.

So I'm the opposite of you. I only see one situation where Aeneas is better than Vajra: farming dynamis, or any type of situation where you need an Aeolian edge dagger. Malevolence might even be better for those situations. But hey, Aeneas is easier to get.

Edit: Aeneas is also better for brewing Warder of Courage. I wouldn't try that with Vajra.

...and Rudra's is a stronger WS than Mandalic, so the dagger that enhances spamming our stronger WS kinda has the advantage.

I don't really see the logic in all this vajhra am3 hype you guys must never use samurai roll when you do anything.

Aeneas/twashtar is -generally- the best combo

Vajhra/twash would win in situations where:
-you're dmg is coming almost completely from stacked ws a/o sc. Erinys and unity fafnir come to mind.
-situations where you're doing a coordinated sc that is closed by mandalic.
-It will also win in low buff situations where am3 can be a difference in self scing or not.


Twashtar/jugo+1 is the best for weak fodder mobs that die before you can get a 2nd ws off and situations where you are prevented from WSing for long periods. Amnesia mobs & merit fight Tenzen come to mind. You could also argue for switching to mandau/jugo for tenzen if Am3 isn't up when he goes into the phase.

Do you have any data to back this up? Some SS of unstacked Mandalics in attack capped scenarios, maybe?

I have an attack capped Rudra's here with 6s worth of TP under it:



I'd be interested in seeing unstacked Mandalics that can beat that.

Edit: Just recalled that Rudra's was from a 1200 tp despoil, so it's probably nearly 2k native tp.

Don't need screenshots

I'm assuming TP bonus earring also, because of course.


At 1000TP, Rudra with Aeneas is much stronger than MStab with Vajra, disregarding attack bonus.

Even under situations where Aeneas' TP bonus goes to waste AND you use SAWS, it'll still win.


(I'm just using 1.3 for SA bonus even though it's not 100% accurate to simplify things, and it shows that giving this flawed bonus to MStab/Vajra will still show it as being behind)

It's not the Vajra is a weak dagger. It's that Rudra is monstrous in comparison.


For Vajra/Mstab to win, two things must happen: most/all of your WSs have to be paired up with SA/TA and it needs to be part of an effective skillchain. Higher TP will close the gap, but never eliminates it. Whatever benefit the attack bonus can offer will just be there for extra leverage. On the other hand, Aeneas's DMG is a good amount higher.

On the other-other hand, there is the issue with the effective +10% attack swing with Vajra's AM3. If it could push more 4-hit rounds to 3-hit rounds, or 3-hit rounds to 2-hit rounds, that could go some way towards evening things out again. There's also the minor bonus of more multi-hits going off during WSs. There's also the situation where gaining TP more quickly would make a huge difference. Once the math gets that complicated, I really lose interest in trying to figure it out.

Long story short, Vajra has its niche use in specific situations, and I didn't add anything to the conversation because people already knew that.

Isn't +10% swings on Vajra just mostly evening out with STP+10 on Aeneas? I know white damage isn't nothing, but in that SS I did 231k damage, 130k~ from Rudra's x3, 72k from Darkness and that leaves 29k~ to white damage, so WS damage is an extremely high portion of our damage.

Partly, I'm sure. Before I say anything further, there is another test I want to do first when I get home from work.

Any reason why it says Mid Acc set if its higher acc? Or do you have an even higher acc set?

I do but it's essentially useless these days since there's so many ACC buffs you can get to make up the gap. Higher sets sacrifice a significant amount of STP/TA to get small amounts more. It was necessary for Maju back in the day, not anymore.

Anecdotal evidence. Plus you said the same thing on this page and the last, and the general rhetoric has been that they're roughly equal and it depends on playstyle.


Maybe I am talking out of my own ***, but every time I've tried Aeneas my damage takes a huge dump. Going up to Quetz just now with no buffs/debuffs, my Vajra TA 3000TP Mandalic did 23418, Rudra did 23591, and Aeneas Rudra did 19842. That's the motif that I've always seen.

But I'll give Aeneas more tries the next times I'm in attack capped situations. If I'm really on the wrong side of the maths, than I can only get better. Right?

Uhh, the entire point of Aeneas is to WS below 3k TP. Of course the dagger seems weak if you're judging it based on 3k TP WS...your general Aeneas playstyle is to WS at 1250~ TP, so it allows you to spam 30k~ WS every few seconds.

In almost every situation under 2000tp, Aen/Rudra will have literally double the damage potential as anything/MStab.

At 2000TP, it falls to x1.9
At 2500TP, it falls to x1.8
At 3000TP, it falls to x1.55

What's keeping MStab in the game is its x1.75 attack modifier. In case anyone doesn't know what that means: if you have 1000 attack (and most of us have more at this point), you literally get a 750 attack bonus for MStab. That goes a long, long way if you're unbuffed.

The 3k TP was in response to this.

Which augment path is best for Lustratio? And are any of the pieces other than Legs and Feet worth going for?

Whatever gives the most DEX, and no.