Mercy Stroke

Okay I was imprecise; but in WoW/DnD, when a Rogue attacks from behind every attack becomes a sneak attack and gets bonus damage as a result.

Obviously we'd have to adjust the formulas if we made every back attack a sneak attack or it would be imbalanced; which is why Ihina recommended it keep its current bonuses but apply only to WS.

Essentially the idea is that so long as you are behind a mob, every WS you do will have sneak attack bonuses. So long as you are behind a party member, every WS you do will have trick attack bonuses.

This would go a great deal in making us true hate control in ways that Accomplice/Collaborator never could and would help fix PLD's enmity generation issues quite a bit.

Additionally it would force ppl to stop being HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE with positioning.

SA/TA were initially mechanisms for Thief to compensate for low base damage by converting secondary stats into damage. This allowed Thief to be a competitive/premiere DD as the game was initially designed as it generally took a whole cooldown cycle for ANYONE to WS.

However as weapon frequency has increased, SA/TA has stayed the same. SE fixed this at 75 by adding Assassin, allowing us to split the timers to have two stacks per minute instead of one. But nowadays two stacks per minute still holds us back comparative to other DDs who can WS at full strength over 5 times a minute at least. Converting from time based JAs to permanent JTs alleviates this issue.

Dream on, this will never happen :P

But yeah, sounds like a good improvement, but I'm pretty sure something that good would never ever be accepted by SE on thf.
Aura steal as its own JA on a 10min timer is unbalanced, etc! >_> ;_;

The whole positioning aspect of SA/TA, and the far too high timers are just extremely aggravating. Is it even worth using SA/TA for the small gains they give while under double marches(Assuming you are full time meleeing something and not doing it for TH or starting a fight with it)? You probably lose like 3 attack rounds due to JA delay and whatnot. THF is certainly one of those jobs that could really use some revamping. SA/TA was a great addition before people had enough haste to be WSing multiple times before your timers are even up. The whole steal/despoil/aurasteal/mug thing are just beyond HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE. The long timers, the shared timers,and the extreme uselessness of steal and despoil in general besides aura steal are probably my biggest pet peeves with the dev team over thf. Sure, they don't really matter or anything, but isn't steal supposed to be a fairly important signature THF move?

Why. Doesn't. Mug. Deal. Damage?

Should make Mug stun everyone and then also take gil from Beastmen.

they kinda tried to help SA with Bully, but in doing so they really should have made the timer on Bully equal to that of SA. I find it silly that Bully is a 3 min timer. They are going the right way with it but the time should mirror or be close to the timer SA has. At least that way tho still not ideal, would go some way in helping.

^This

If you got mugged in real life, im pretty sure youd meet your good ole friend pain in the process :P lol

Jokes aside tho, steal and despoil rarely proc, i find myslf stealing aura far more than anything from a mob. Collab is a 2.5 min recast but is never enough to take the hate off someone dying, im reverting to accomplice and thats a 5 min recast which in it self defeats its purpose :s.

THF needs to be revised, the timers that it currently embodies are dated for the state the game is in today, saying that tho i still love my THF and am pretty happy to be able to main it almost full time :P

THF is a gimp dancer as far as damage and defense goes, its only main asset is the fact that in can provide an extremely minor increase in drop rates over /thf. I loved this job, but they seriously need to revise its role as a DD, or at least give a serious buff to TH beyond TH2. Sorry for further derailing the mercy stroke thread, just ranting about how THF is terribly neglected.

Thief is far superior to Dancer from a damage perspective; a Dancer can keep up, but that would be at the cost of neglecting its other party roles as a support.

Although we should really get equal or superior dual wield comparatively.

Careful what you wish for. SE, is notorious, and would give everyone what they wanted. With one catch of course. . . They would then probably nerf SA/TA, Ws DMG, accuracy and so on.

You do know that they get th3 at 90 right? Therefore your point is invalid.

not when THIII is a silly trait that only does the same of a TH+1 equip or melee boost. THI and THII behave differently by adding rerolls, which usually affects drop rate more.

What is the best offhand Dagger for Mandau? (Not counting Twashtar if it should be a decent offhand for Mandau, beside that my Twashtar would never get pass lv 90, cause if i ever get 1500 plates my Ukkon will get them)

so whats best offhand dagger? The STR Magian or would Lux be a good option or any other? dont have any luck in VW, i still never got a really Rare gear like a body so i probably never see Coruscanti :(

I would presume STR Kila, due to the STR mod/even more attack, along with Mandau's.

Someone is bound to come in and clarify which is best though with all the math stuff, I'm terrible with math stuff. :<

(I apologize ahead of time if I'm incorrect.) ..sleepy time now~

i would think str magian aswell, but dont want to start it when a dagger i currently have already will be better :)

Using Motenten's spreadsheet, I compared identical sets using Twashtar 90 and Thokchar STR path, using Bukhis as target (so a higher lvl target). Thokchar edged it out, I'd give specific numbers but I don't have them on this PC.

That Bukhis is kinda weak now. Or did you set it to a higher level with also higher def, eva, vit and agi? If you need the dex for extra crit (and acc) i don't think twash would lose, after all, it could give up to 10% crit rate.

I didn't change any stats on Bukhis, but I left off all atmas and cruor buffs fwiw. I don't think there's a better offhand for Mandau at this point.

Sorry if this is an old post, Should check some of the Testing on the Official Forums. (Shocking! I know >_> but its kinda useful)0

Its not that TH3 Acts differently, Its that TH Kinda works like this:

TH1 Adds about 80% more Drop rate
TH2 Adds about 40%
TH3 Adds about 20%
TH4 Adds about 10%
TH5 adds about 5%

(All made up numbers to get the point across)

and so on, So TH2+1 and TH3 are the same thing. TH1+4 From a level 15TH Who Upgraded is the same as a TH3+2 THF at level ~90.

Its basically that TH After a certain Point adds much less drop rate than TH1/2 Add. The best "increase" comes from TH1/2/3. the more TH you have the less and less "Effect" each next tear holds.

-i think this is what was determined, I'll Have to reread

hmmm i can't remember anything about that. And i thought i was up to date before my break. I'll check it out then.

Well Karb i didn't find it.

The thread i knew about
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/12798-Treasure-Hunter-Testing/page17
finished with the reroll theory. And one thing i know it was proven was that THIII is not a reroll. And the same goes to procs/equipment.

But it does still mean there is moBut it still is a boost lol... >.<

Quick! Everyone stand back and watch the THF solo the NM for TH to not upgrade!

Hmmm, I read through it, got bored, and decided to try and bump it to make him Summarize it...

But then i wasn't logged on and too lazy to get Token

In terms of stacked of course, would Heca hands + 1 with +crit augment be worth using over AF3 +2 hands? I'm assuming not, but I personally do not know the math exactly to do it myself. Just checking you guys before I change my sets

*Totally bumped the wrong thread... Sorry guys...*

No, Raider's +2 should still win. By the spreadsheet I'm using it's a small margin, but Raider's +2 come out on top.

My heca hands

any Thaumas good for mercy? maybe legs? less STR than whirlwind but more ATK

I was looking into starting a Mandau, and was researching gear for the WS. After some careful thinking I came up with 2 different sets. But not exactly sure which one would be optimal.

These sets are just considering unstacked Mercy Stroke, I figured I should try to narrow that set down, and than I can tweak from there when I build a stacked set.

Set 1:


This set here focuses more about stacking mostly STR/Attack for the WS.

Set 2:


This set here sacrifices a bit of STR/Attack for a decent chunk of Double Attack.

Set 2 adds about 21% Double attack at the cost of 12 STR and 20 Attack from Set 1.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, Prosilio Belt looks like an amazing piece for Mercy Stroke, but that -5% Double Attack makes me wonder just how valuable putting DA on the other slots of that set would be, it feels counter-productive.

Honestly, don't use it unstacked. You should use a STR thokcha off hand, but I'm lazy. My spreadsheet tells me Atheling, but I see a lot of Cerb +1.

w/ Sneak Attack:


swap in augmented Hecatomb Mittens +1 (crit dmg) for TA