For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

Honestly tier 1 merits can be summed up as: 5/5 triple attack and some combination of sneak and trick attack recast. Ignore flee and hide recast. And tier 2 is a mix between Feint, Aura Steal, and Ambush, with at least 1 in Feint required. Aside from the 5/5 TA and 1/5 minimum Feint the rest of the spec build is just personal flavor. There really isn't a wrong choice, and the difference between the options is pretty small. Thief is pretty easy to select merits for compared to some of the other jobs.

I'm guessing that last line just means, "TH works the same in Dyna-D as it does outside of it."

Have we ever had any reason to believe that it didn't?

No, but I'm assuming the person asked a question about that (as there's ALWAYS conspiracy theories) and that's why there was a response from SE.

How feasible is to actually hit TH14?

Highly unreasonable. You can get ~12 relatively reasonably. Unless you use CORs to reset and/or revits for the high proc feints. But you kinda have to burn SA/TA without weaponskills to go for procs.

I have never seen a 14 (once in a screenshot)

Is there any truth to loading up on TH gear to increase TH up proc rate?

Seems to be true. I was farming an Empy up, and if I full timed my TH gear I'd often hit TH10-11. If all I did was melee it in normal TP set, I'd be hard pressed to get TH9, much less TH10. And this is also not using WS's, using feint and unstacked SA and TA in each encounter.

I was thinking more along the lines of going beyond TH8 in gear/jobtraits/atma if that had any value in increasing TH procs towards that TH14 cap even though your initial hit is capped at TH8 (outside of kupower and domain invasion blessing I think).

That is precisely what I mean. Full timing my TH gear (+9 in gear) gave me TH10-11 almost every time. THing in only +3 in gear gave me only TH8-9.

For what it's worth. I fulltime relic hands+3 and chaac belt now. I honestly dont notice much of a DPS difference if you build your engaged sets around them.

Imo the easiest but not really cheap way when you really want to go for high TH without much dps sacrifice is probably +3 relic hands and Gandering offhand.

Has anyone tested THF/DRG since the update?

7% WSD for all hits sounds pretty useful. Not to mention the other beneficial traits combined with access to jump/high jump. The ability to dump someone's enmity with accomplice/collaborator + high jump could be situationally useful as well.

Just curious.

Fulltiming Treasure Hunter 8 has a significantly higher chance to proc treasure hunter than equipping it for only the first hit and swapping back to regular gear. But there is no evidence that sugggests wearing gear that goes beyond that has any impact on proc rate. If you're wearing more than TH 8 in gear you're only doing yourself a disservice.



Plunderer's armlets 3 and perfect taming sari offhand is better actually. Gandring's augments don't work in the offhand, and sari's stats beat out gandring's slight DPS difference. I fulltime Plunderer's Armlets +3 with sari offhand in dynamis and yeah, it has very minimal DPS losses.


I've thought about it, and several people have posted on other job forms about it. I don't think it's a bad idea, but I also don't think it's too practical. Thief's most common sub jobs are dancer, ninja, and warrior, with rune fencer filling a niche for mobs where better magic protection is needed. Dancer is our general utility sub, ninja is our defensive sub, and warrior is our offensive sub. I tried out Thief/dragoon yesterday when I soloed Lillith a few times. It wasn't bad, but thf/war easily outperformed it in pure damage. Berserk, Warcry, Double Attack, and Aggressor are more potent than 7% WSD. The ability to accompolator and shed hate is nifty, but it's also pretty niche. I don't think it's a bad sub, but I do think it's less viable than our usual options.

Thf/drg is more of a full buff scenario deal. Sub war offers essentially nothing so it comes down to sub sam or sub drg.

All 3 war drg and sam are all going to be aboutish the same. Sub drg evis spams though maybe. Sub sam is still probably highest output but if enmity is a concern you don't really lose much.

You can steal 25% and then jump off 30% it buys you and another dd (and the whm) a few seconds breathing room

I'd consider dragoon in a full buff scenario, for what it's worth. If you know you're going to be accuracy and attack capped then /drg is probably the way to go. The 7% WSD is a separate multiplier from regular WSD, and it affects all hits of a weaponskill. It behaves exactly the same as the R 15 REMA weaponskill bonuses and Tauret's evisceration bonus. Your weaponskills just flat out do 7% more damage. It's probably worth using in that case, and the enmity shed would even be relevant to boot. Our weaponskill spikes can go really freakin high with full buffs, and if you throw in empyrean aftermath you're almost guaranteed to pull hate at some point in the fight. Even with Malignance available to us the enmity shed would be very welcome under those circumstances.

Thf/drg is a viable boss fight or zerging sub. Outside of that I'd still stick with the other alternatives though.

I did my wave 3 clears THF/DRG, leading the parse the whole way. The trait would just make it easier to repeat that. That's generally the only situation I'd use it, though. What I would typically do is lock in my PDT set, collab the other DD in the party, then high jump. Worked pretty well for hate control.

The point is that afaik wearing more TH increase the chance to get TH proc above 8. Gandering has th+3. Taming only th+1. Also i was thinking more about things like htbf or single NM farming (for pulse weapon for example), not event like dynamis D. In dyna you need to balance your th and dps betterz because less dps means less enemies cleared and you might end up getting less stuff, because higher th will lose with effectivness of just having higher kill score.

I understand simon, and I'm saying I don't believe it works that way. I've heard the idea proposed before. The concept is that If you wear TH 8 fulltime, you're far more likely to get TH procs than if you only equip TH 8 for the first hit and then swap out of TH gear completely. This is because TH procs become rarer as the procced level goes higher than the amount of TH you're wearing. If you wear TH 8 fulltime, the first TH 9 proc happens pretty quickly, the second and third proc to 10 and 11 happen in a reasonable time, the proc to 12 can take an extremely long time, and anything beyond that will probably never happen before the mob runs out of HP even if you dedicate an effort to proccing TH 13+.

What your proposing is that higher worn levels of TH gear beyond TH 8 will still only proc TH 9 on the first hit, but counts toward the "gap" difference between worn TH values and actual procced TH values. This is something you can test though, and I'm saying I believe this is a fallacy. I've tried testing this before with the following gear set.


Thief's Knife -- TH +1
White rarab cap +1 - TH +1
Plunderer's Armlets +3 - TH +4
Chaac Belt -- TH +1
Skulker's Poulaines +1 -- TH +3

If the theory that higher worn TH values affect the gap between procced TH and actual TH, then wearing this set should be able to proc higher TH values up to and including TH 14 much faster than wearing just TH 8. This would be an effective TH level of TH 13 for proccing purposes.

I took this set to Dho Gates and called a few white mage trusts and pulled an Apex crap and went afk for a while. After about 10 minutes I had only raised TH levels to TH 11. Now granted I didn't try to actively proc TH with sneak or trick attack, but still. If higher TH in gear beyond level 8 affected proc rate, I would think 10 minutes should be enough to raise TH higher than that. From what I can see, TH 8 appears to be the cap in gear, PERIOD and anything beyond that is ignored for the purposes of proccing higher levels of TH.

Feel free to repeat my test. The reason I used thief's knife was just because the low base damage allowed me to afk and not end up killing the mob. I could honestly have probably added taming sari to it since these were apex crabs, but I have little reason to believe my test was invalid. My melee hits were doing damage. Granted not a lot of damage, but they weren't hitting for zero. Feel free to try a repeat of my test and see if your results differ any.

That's a terrible test.

Beat on dozens of mobs with TH8 in gear, and then TH14 in gear, and then see if there is a statistical different using a sample size that's larger then just one.

Between stuff like that, judging gear based on a eyeballing numbers, and throwing out WS numbers without stating buffs/debuffs and mob, the THF thread has really gone down the pooper for years now.

I can do that you know....

Would you say ten mobs at TH 8 via gear for 15 minute runs apiece, versus ten mobs at TH 14 in gear for 15 minutes apiece would be statistically significant? 15 minutes is easily enough time to get in well over 1000 swings per sample run. With haste it should be around 1500. The timestamp plugin would show us how long the intervals are between procs as well. Or I could just use ThTracker plugin.

wiki page and SE basically confirm what Simon is saying, that additional TH gear does increase the rate of [additional procs [beyond the initial 8]. There is a little double talk in the quote, but I believe the first part of his comment is talking about initial value (no gear beyond 8 will matter). But it does appear that additional TH gear after initial proc does indeed affect proc up values.


http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/27974-TH-Procing?p=377001#post377001

However, what isn't mentioned is the method of proc that is affected by additional TH gear. Is he talking about normal melee swings, Feint/SA/TA proc rates, or both? It would seem that the most reasonable way to improve TH rate is to use Feint and stagger SA/TA with as much TH gear as you can fit, along with the +23% increase bonus from gifts.

I just don't feel like melee swing testing is really a great method for any practical application of TH proc increase, since there are no real world scenarios where wailing on a monster for 15 straight minutes would be feasible. The test that needs to happen is with Feint 5/5, SA+TA with TH gear, and Feint 5/5, SA+TA without TH gear. That would give you a better observable proc rate while filtering out the nonsense (random) melee swings.

Absolutely none of that quote is referring to the TH8 cap. All they're saying is that removing TH after the initial proc will lower the rate you increase the mob's TH, which we already know.

Sure. Well regardless, it backs up what Simon stated above about gear improving the rate of an increase.

No one is debating that: the question is whether TH gear above 8 has any effect on the upgrade rate, which is not known for certain.

I'm aware of that thread from 2012. That was the point that S-E revealed to us that the gap between worn TH and mob's current Th actually affected proc rate. There's also this version update from March 18, 2014

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/40657


In it they state that Treasure Hunter in equipment caps at TH +8 for a thief main. They don't state anything about the differnce between the gap of current TH gear versus the mob's procced level, just that the proccing cap can only go to 12, but it's heavily implied that TH +8 is the maximum amount we can have effective at once. This update came out before gifts were added so the bonuses we have now that raise the maximum cap via procs from 12 to 14 didn't exist yet. This is also AFTER the post from 2012 where it was stated that the gap between current worn TH and mobs procced level affected proc rate. So there's a very real probability that things were changed and a hard cap was applied in 2014.


And at the heart of it you're right. Everything is boiled down to eyeballed numbers. Simon's observations are eyeballed numbers, my observations are eyeballed numbers, and each one of our interpretations to what S-E is trying to tell us is our personal opinion. There haven't be any conclusive tests to prove or disprove that wearing TH + 14 in equipment makes procs happen faster than TH +8. So, starting with what Buukki mentioned what would be a proper test then? I'm willing to spend some time with this if we can determine what would or would not be a viable way to go about testing it. I can reach TH +14 using Perfect taming, sandung, chaac, bunny cap + 1, empy feet +1, and relic gloves +3. And I can do a sample with just taming and gloves for TH +8. If we can determine what would constitute a viable test, I'm willing to procure some data in my spare time.

Ok fair enough. I misinterpreted Simon's suggestion of Gandring + Hands+3 as just a way of hitting that 8 cap and keeping them on for the duration of whatever event you're doing, to improve the odds of a rank up. I didn't think he was implying that using the highest rate of TH gear improves odds. I had to go back and add the TH, and realized you would hit 8 even with just Taming Sari. My mistake.

to Mel: wouldn't you need to establish a base rate for each level increase first to see if there is a discernible increase from gear beyond 8? Otherwise you're just using time/swings as your metric and you can't tell if 8->9 was faster/slower than 11->12, and by how much

i.e. what is the base rate of leveling up TH from 8>9, 9>10, etc etc
Once established, Add 8 max TH, level up from 8>9>10 etc
has the rate per level up increased?
add 8+ gear, level up from 8>9>10 etc
did this go up or stay the same?

Would think meleeing would produce a lot of stuff to sift through, SA/TA would be a cleaner test, but then again now you would have to establish a base increase rate on SA/TA TH level ups, so it's a mess no matter the way you look at it.

Yes, Simon is saying that if you were to wear TH 14 in gear, it would make procs happen more frequently then if you only wore TH 8. There is no conclusive evidence that supports this, and the March 2014 update actually implies the opposite. That gear hard caps at 8 and anything beyond that is ineffective, and that no matter what there will always be a gap between gear and current TH once procced level goes to 9 and beyond. There is no conclusive evidence suggesting otherwise, but it's also left to innerpretation and hasn't been proven true either. That's the grey area.