For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

adhemar bonnet won't replace Skulker's Bonnet anytime; lower accuracy, lower TA.. Just keep aiming for Dampening tam and GL with augments (I haven't even gotten one so far, damn Fanatics gloves..).

adhemar jacket, on the other hand, is a very attractive alternative to Rawhide, especially where you can't cap haste (Dyna, Salvage etc..). The +1 version is a great option to reach the magical DW 6 value that's needed when maxed out on haste.

The only issue with Ta'lab trousers is their complete lack of accuracy without the right augments.

With higher haste values I switch Taeon boots (which have DW 5 Acc 21 WS Dmg 3) with Rawhide boots (D path), provided I am not desperate for even the slightest accuracy improvements.

I mean, like you implied, you're probably already going to be doing SR for other items. While Dampening might not be a massive gain on THF, it still is a gain should you happen upon one with max or near max augments.

Dunno bout your servers, but on Sylph, Defiant Sweat is pretty pricey. I feel like making the Skulker +1 isn't worthwhile since the Tam is so close as to not make much of a difference. Tam also has MDT and more jobs, so I feel it's much easier to justify.

Skulker's would make more sense if you were aiming for the set bonus, but it's not worth it since the set itself isn't exceptional.

@Verda, Other than skormoth mask, you don't get many headpieces with such a nice combination of Mdt, Multi-attack and stat vomit.

Survivability is a pretty big issue for thf in current events, unless you want to play the "run back and forth for TH" role.

Dampening tam may not be THE absolute top notch/must have headpiece for THF (although the only events where I would imagine fooling around set bonuses are not even worth considering), but it sure has a lot of other jobs that can benefit enormously from it.

Thanks to all for your input; great stuff. Defiant Sweat is damn expensive on Bismarck too, though I made my head piece from first time RoE completion or from LS bank (can't recall, either way I have it).

As for the Tam, this is a piece I was aiming for other jobs and simply wondering how it does with THF. Excellent feedback, many thanks again.

I didn't know Quadruple attack was bad. Well then, time to toss all my QA gear and go back to TA/DA gear instead. Kappa

With the sheer volume of augmented gear these days I'm starting to feel that gear guides are kinda impractical, redundant even.

Spamming stones for skirmish augments was one thing, but aiming for perfect augments on a SR piece really is like playing the slots.

First reel being the NM itself spawning, second being the desired piece dropping, and third and hardest you need to line up correct values across 4 parameter fields...

I know that there is some sort of weighting going on because perfect pieces (or at least close to perfect) aren't as insanely rare as a purely random process would dictate, but objectively its not something you can bank on, or even farm reliably.

I dunno. It just strikes me as funny when people casually suggest aiming for a perfect Taming Sari or Dampening Tam, when the real useful information is at what point do the key stats from their respective augments push them over their alternatives.

Which kind of leads me to the conclusion that unless you are going the whole hog and actually spreadsheeting and calcing out all your available build options, you may as well just straight up judge based on a handful of key stats only.

I'm not saying that the traditional format of listing out nq, hq, and qq sets is wrong or that they don't have any value, its just that I feel the game as it stands now maybe requires a new sort of paradigm for guiding people into getting the most out of their jobs.

You don't really need to 'line up correct values over 4 parameter fields', there's a ~10% roll that autocaps all of them. I've seen more pieces with all 4 slots capped than with some capped and some uncapped. It's still tedious, but it's honestly less time consuming than getting capped skirmish pieces would be.

You cannot be serious.

Even allowing for a 10% chance, you can cut that down further by the likelihood of the drop entering the loot-pool (~20-25% assuming even distribution) and the NM spawning in the first-place (33% flat).

This is on an event that takes (optimistically) 10-15 mins per cycle.

I've done a lot of SR, and yes I have got a few perfect pieces, but they tended to be the wrong ones, and there's not a damn thing that I could do to weight it more in my favour.

If 10-15 minutes is an optimistic run for you, I highly suggest you alter your strategy or recruit stronger group members. I can't remember the last run I did that went past 8 minutes.

No, the system is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. However, the content is able to be cleared quickly and, at least in my opinion, is some of the best they've released in quite some time. I spend 5-8 minutes a run for 3 chances at a perfect item instead of 100-400k at the shot of getting a single perfect augment on one of three augment slots. I'll take Reign over Alluvion augments any day of the week.

Including collecting loot, acquiring new key-items, people taking breaks, and the inevitable waits sometimes due to overcrowding and I stand by my time estimate.

In that same time-frame as a single run I can buy and burn through multiple stacks of skirmish stones. A process only limited by my gil supply and AH availability.

Don't get me wrong, I like SR as an event, but it has an unusually large random component to it. And after awhile it gets grating to have run after run where the "wrong" NM's get selected, and when it eventually does pop up you either get boned by the wrong item dropping or it having a crappy augment on it.

Obviously there's a lot of luck involved, so people's mileage will inevitably vary. The point I was getting at though is that due to the random augments, its not such a binary system as just trying to score a "rare drop" like a DRing or whatever.

Currently I have a couple of moderately well-augmented Sari's for example, which makes picking the weaker of the two over my Shijo a bit of a puzzle.

@seltsamesterne

Feet to path D
Vajra is 50acc/100atk and multi-attack with aftermath up, and huge boost to SA, TA and Mandalic Stab. The most valuable part of all those benefits is the 50acc, which is the highest in slot by far, and much of the rest are all huge too. Yes it's worth it.

What's the Caturae neckpiece?

Thanks. Apparently, I slept through an entire update somehow

Just need to correct an earlier comment about Vajra:

Mythic weapons do not get ALL aftermath effects.

From 1000-1999 TP you get an ACC bonus.
From 2000-2999 TP you get an Attack bonus.
At 3k TP you get a multi-hit bonus.

You can only have one up at a time. Vajra only gives the best ACC in slot, or the best Attack in slot, or the best multi-attack in slot. I does not do all of the above.

Personally, I don't think it's worth it. There's no reason to even think Taming Sari will be best dagger in 2 months and I consider it better than Vajra. I'm outparsing most BLU's I meet most of the time I do content with them, and I'm pretty damn happy about that.

Doesn't even matter for my point. Even if on some other fight you end up edging me out, BLU is considered the end-all be-all of frontline DD's right now. If I'm close to you it makes my point that Taming Sari is awesome.

Though, I beat you what, 3/4 runs? Did we have double marches or only one?

Weird, I would take alluvion augments over reign any day. Sure I clear Reign in 5-8 minutes easily enough which usually ends up being 10+ minutes every run because of people talking to NPC, waiting on being allowed in, running out to load NPCs because they won't load, or random afking for any reason. Alluvion auging is a solo system, I do not have to worry about finding people, spending time shouting, and dealing with other people being slow. The only limitation to skirmish augs is what I want to spend time wise farming gil.

As far as 3 chances at a perfect item, I mean you are right, but in reality the amount of people that care about getting a perfect Divinity or Brutality is pretty low. For instance what I want from SR: Tam, Tights, Witching Robe. That's 3 items out of 36 I would actually even want perfect. The likelihood of getting 1 of 3 bosses, to give me 1 of 4 items, to give me whatever the chance of a good aug is, just doesn't seem good to me. Let's be serious here, most of the items from SR are trash and most people specialize in a few jobs or job types, I could not care less if I got a perfect Nobility because it sucks and I don't play Rng. If I want a good Taeon Chapeau for my Blu I can get one by spending my gil, getting a good Tam for my Blu is a much more difficult process.

You're a weird person that plays an MMO while hating people.

Sinister is more fun content, it involves actual fighting, not running around shooting butterflies or just killing trash for gil. It's the very essence of what "the game" is about. Moderate difficulty, variety of fights and some of the best drops in the game. It's wonderful content.

More like a warrior. Dude refuses to use spells as a BLU.

It's almost like there is different content in an MMO and you can enjoy some of it while disliking others. Sinister wouldn't be bad content if the drop system wasn't so absolutely horrid. Drop systems can and do wreck events, look at old sea.

I love that I bandwagon and I still am better at both your mythiced out mains.

NIN does better damage than THF and BLU combined. Best 1H job ever.