For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

It's very strong, but you also can run the risk of over TPing (especially if you're waiting on SC), so you will lose some of Aeneas's appeal with the 500 TP bonus.

I agree with Crossbones, I think they all have a use, some better than others. Would argue dagger versatility is one useful strength, particularly for THF. For example, I like how Ternion+1 has that chunk of evasion on it.

Subbing dragoon doesn't benefit any one weapon or weaponskill more than another. Every one of your weaponskills just deals 7% more damage, period. It's an associative property that applies equally to everything.

Slight nitpick aside, aeneas is still a really strong dagger. The best offhand for it is either ternion +1 or twashtar, although if you have twashter you're probably better off getting it to R 15 and mainhanding it instead. Tauret's prowess has already been touched upon well enough, as has vajra. All of them are excellent daggers. It's pretty crazy just how good tauret is for what it takes to get it, but it really is as good as everyone says.

Thanks, good note on /DRG to make my meaning more clear. My intent was to be sure people who may have thought "oh, WSD won't help Evisceration very much since it's a 5-hit WS" understood that /DRG's bonus does not work like normal WSD that only applies to first hit. Particularly for people who took a break and missed that DRG job update, I could see them overlooking the uniqueness of DRG's new-ish "WS Damage Boost" trait.

Agreed that it's equally great for all WS though, to the point where THF/DRG is almost always my subjob now, outside of limited cases where /NIN for shadows is especially important.

Returning player againg just cathing up

curerntly rocking twashstar R15 aenas r1 tami saring (mid aguments) and a centovent.

if im getting above right twashstar & ternion+1 should be my go to weapons setup ?

Twashtar/Tauret

Correct. Twashter/Ternion +1 is the go to combo for situations where you need the offhand accuracy, and Twashter/Cento is still ideal for low level farming where you don't. Additionally, Twashter/Taming sari is still useful because it enables a convenient TH 8 setup with just the relic gloves +3 added in. Any other offhand dagger is less than ideal for a twashter build.



If you're mainhanding Twashter then tauret offhand is weighted just by its stats. And ternion +1 has a small edge over tauret here. Not only is Ternion +1 slightly faster than Tauret, but 5% wsd is also a bit stronger than 15 dex and 30 attack. Ternion +1 also has 4% triple attack rate and higher accuracy too, which pushes it ahead in the melee phase as well. It's a pretty close comparison, but Twashter/ternion +1 is slightly better than Twashter/tauret.

From some early tests on the spreadsheet I can only confirm what Melphina said.
Twashtar R15/Tauret was pretty close to Twashtar R15/Tauret, but always behind.

Sari is behind both (very very close to Tauret) but is a nice compromise when you want another source of TH+1.

For what it's worth, there's also Augmented Sandung. It's inferior to what has been mentioned so far, but if someone doesn't have Perfect Taming Sari, it's still a nice compromise to equip OH for situations where you want to cap TH with just Relic+3 hands.


I think I made a post about it recently.
I was surprised by how good Aeneas/Twashtar performed for me, despite the fact that my Aeneas is only R1, it was actually pulling ahead of R15 Twash for me, in that setup.
It was a setup with an excess of Regain/STP, so much that it was very hard to benefit from Centovente.
That, paired with the fact I could lower the Acc in my TP set, is probably the reason why Aeneas was performing so good.

But still, my point was not "omg Aenas is the best!1one!!", more like "Wow, Aeneas is not as bad as I thought it would be".

Vajra

Mandau

No, that isn't relevant anymore. In the December update they added the Perfect Lucky Egg as a reward for doing the current voracious resurgence storyline missions. It's an ammo slot item that gives you treasure hunter +1. If your goal is to pair our relic gloves +3 with another source of treasure hunter +1 for a TH +8 build you only have two reasonable options now. Either perfect taming sari, or perfect lucky egg. Sandung's damage stats are too far gone and all of the more recent daggers just beat it summarily. It's better to make a sacrifice in your ammo slot than to make sandung your offhand weapon choice.


Here's the BG wiki link for reference. Perfect Lucky Egg

I’ve been playing a ton of THF lately.

100% agree With the above.

Twash/terion for when White damage matters or when a second WS is over kill.

Aeneas/Twash for WS spam or SCs.

Twash/cent is fine when buffed heavily but it’s not as broken as say BLU with Tizona/tib.

(All r15)

What about us scrubs without REMA, is Tauret/Terion, Tauret/Cent, or some other combo the go to?

Tauret/ternion +1 is an extremely strong alternative to a REMA mainhand. In lieu of a REMA mainhand that's the combo you want to be using. Centovente is only useful with Twashtar or Vajra mainhand. Tauret works on different mechanics and benefits far from ternion +1 offhand than anything else.

So the suggestion for Shijo path D with Tauret is outdated and I should just use Ternion +1?

They're gonna be really close and shijo is free.

If you can't decide which one you would rather use, you wouldn't notice the difference between them.

Well I already had Ternion+1 R15 for my offhand on Ninja with Kikoku. Then I made a Shijo when I finished Tauret lol

Already having r15 ternion, use that, it'll be better by a couple dps and saves you from building away from the standard set with shijos 5 dw over cap.

Cool thanks. I don't have the Dual-Wield gift from JPs yet would that favor Shijo until I'm there or no difference?

Going to favor the shijo, you want that dw capped. Since you already have the shijo made till you get the gift, use the shijo

Cool, as I suspected ty for the help

Tauret/shijo +1 is no more or less outdated than it was a year ago. It's really good. Shijo and ternion +1 are both pretty interchangeable here. Tauret's draw is its crit rate during melee phase and evisceration damage, both of which shijo has more synergy with than any other dagger. Shijo is an exceptional offhand for Tauret.



Before the job point gift when you have capped magic haste you still need 12 dual wield in gear to reach the delay cap, and after it you only need 7 dual wield. It does make a difference because of how you'll need to build your tp set to account for that. Use those values as a guideline and find the pieces that best fill the gap for your situation. Since Reiki yotai gives you exactly 7 dual wield it fits perfectly for a build after you get your 500 JP bonus. That's why Tauret/ternion+1 is the more desirable "final" build, but shijo is a much better fit before this point.

Just wanted to point out that white damage difference between full damage TP set (which is also probably best for tp gain) vs 5/5 Malignance set is SUPER BIG (for FFXI standards) with AM3 Twashtar/Ternion. Im also talking about only 5 main armor pieces.
Im talking about ~4720 white damage DPS vs ~2750 white damage dps (overall dps difference is less, around ~6430 to ~7960 when holding to 1750 for Rudra. Also I dont have PDL support in thief's sheet, so that Malignance could possibly be ~3300 if you can somehow cap attack with +20%PDL from 5/5 Malignance). To put 4720 white damage dps into perspective, AM3 Veret MNK under Impetus with 4/5 Kendatsuba+1 and Bhikku body +1 has ~5200. This is with Samurai/Chaos rolls. Fighter's roll will push MNKs white damage dps to like 5600, while Rogue's roll will push THFs to ~5520.

Probably the exact reason they curbed H2H AM to 1 hit. But As you stated Twash white damage is quite impressive.

I actually was curious about something. How good would be Twashtar white DPS if you would actually also buff around it. So haste samba, single wielding Twashtar, rogue's roll, feather step, blood rage. I'm getting almost 8000 DPS, which is probably around the same as Ukonvasara and slightly more than Farsha with buffs focused around them too (both of those having the highest white melee damage potential in the game. Veret MNK with right buffs and 50/50 Impetus stacks being somewhere around that too). It would be fun to see all those classes at once in white damage zerg one day lol.

I seem to recall back in the days, Byrth did some tests with Twashtar MH and single hand, and damage was impressive.

Back then we didn't have the R15 aug, I think we didn't have Aftermath either and Twashtar was "just" 242 skill pretty much like all weapons back then.



edit:
NVM, that test was on DNC, not THF.

Yeah single wielding Twahstar on DNC is nothing new. Its even in bg wiki guide for years now. Its because Haste Samba is needed to pull that off.

I have not kept up with the current storyline scenario, but that Perfect Lucky Egg item is pretty interesting. I find it funny that SE introduces an item to semi mock the ignorance/prevailing rumors* of players. They did the same with Refresh/Taisai. We joke a lot that SE is out of touch with their players, but it's kind of nice to see them throw the occasional retro 'head nod' to OG players.

*

You could have just asked "is Karieyh Ring +1 or Gere Ring" better for a non-sata mercy stroke build since that's literally the only change you made between the two sets. And I'd side with the Gere ring here. You should also upgrade your belt to Kentarch Belt +1. With a rank 15 augment it gets +10 dex and +10 strength, which makes it the best weaponskill belt we have for everything but evisceration.