For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

Evisc has its place, but I just get lower numbers out of it than Rudra's (or mandalic with vajra if attack is lower). It is useful for skillchains and I obviously still use it, but using Rudra's to activate AM is not a burden.

Also, Twash/Mandau would likely be better than Mandau/Twash. You exchange 60 attack and whatever Mandau's AM is worth to you for another ~25% triple damage rate on mainhand melee swings.

Mandau is crit iirc

It's 5% crit damage / rate for 60~180 seconds but you have to use Mercy Stroke to activate it and MS doesn't scale with TP and is probably our worst WS option. However you feel about the usefulness of that exchange is how much Mandau's aftermath is worth.

@snaps, Crit still adds 1 to pdif though i get why you say it makes crits less of a deal since it makes the percent increase smaller since the max pdif is just higher. There's 2 posters in a row though saying rudra spam < evisceration spam and to use rudra or mandalic stacked. That I have seen Rudra is really only good if you have a lot of TP or force a crit. I mean, I'm just never seeing rudra do higher than evisc unless one or both those conditions are true and it seems I am not the only one. If I'm wrong I'd love to see evidence of it but it's not just my THF I see this on but all of them as long as their evisceration set has some investment in it. Because as it stands now my evisc spam can net me at least 50% more damage while job abilities are down than if I used Rudra at 1k instead. Mandalic I feel is mostly an option for Mythic owners so I can't comment on that much. Edit: if I'm only one skillchaining, I'd like to add I usually do Rudra -> evisc -> Rudra just to get that much higher damage on the second skillchain.

He's not even taking a stance in the argument, he's pointing out that the higher your pDIF is, the less valuable critical hits are, and now that our pDIF caps higher, it's even less valuable when you are capped. Saying "if your attack is high enough, Evis wins" is counter to the accepted models we use to estimate damage. Even in the days of Exen, Evis still won when your pDIF was low, so if you want to make an argument for it, that's the one to make.

Further, the number of people who agree with you or do this-and-that has never been a good defense, and neither is any of your testimony. Also realize this may be a difference in gear. There's a few of us here that I'm rather certain are not looking at sets that don't include HQ Adhemar and Lustratio pieces.

My point however was that evisc won before, and that higher caps result in higher damage. While crit meaning less the higher your pdif goes is true, it's not nealry enough to overtake rudra and simple testing does nothing but support that. I'm also really surprised if peoples gear is as good as you say why they have not come to similar conclusions or provide support for why they disagree. If my testimony means nothing, neither does yours, and neither does gear you have really, seeing as how I've seen people with a mythic and lack both understanding or gear or both to back it up and so still lose in scoreboard over many iterations. I have yet to see anyone posting numbers even as testimony, in fact other than hostility, I don't really get anything from your post :(

One of the major reasons for discrepancies between dagger or WS performance that I think people forget about. Generally, as we get newer gear to help with WS frequency/damage, it helps Vajra, Aeneas, Rudra's, and Mandalic. As we get more stuff like triple attack, it helps Twashtar, Mandau, and Evisceration.

That makes sense jean and totally understandable, however when setting up my spreadsheet with a lot of HQ gear, 1k evisc wins there over 1k rudra as well, I haven't put in new cratio caps but nothing I've done in game shown me that it's not true still. I mean, I'm not gonna ride some horse or beat it to death, but if I can improve my own play because I learn something then I like that, one of the major reasons to share stuff isn't to gloat or feel superior, but as they say teachers learn also from those they teach, and here we all are both I'd think.

Higher cap results in higher damage for all weaponskills, not just Evis. If you're actually hitting that cap, it helps Rudra's the most and Evis the least. If you're not hitting that cap, it helps Mandalic the most. The statement that "high attack" favors Evis is blatantly wrong.

I didn't post any testimony. And if you're going to bring up people who owns Mythics, yet lack understanding/gear, then why do you support your argument with testimony of yourself and watching other people play? Why should we assume that these people play perfectly, with perfect gear, in a controlled situation? Because you think so?

This is why we use spreadsheets. Snaps is right that spreadsheets are often misinterpreted, because people fail to consider variables like pDIF, but they do provide a valid point of reference and comparison. Far more so than assuming that you or I are competent players.

Might you provide the sets you are using for comparison? Mine are public.

So doing some quick math:

Rudra's is 125~ dagger dmg + 320~ dex mod + 60 fSTR so roughly 500 base damage, at 1k TP lets just say it's around a 7 fTP (which is around 1400 TP) so 3500 x pDIF.

Evisceration is 125~ dagger DMG + 160~ dex mod + 50 fSTR so 330 base damage. It's 6 hits so that's almost 2k, then fTP is 1.45 with double fotia and across all hits, so that's 3k x pDIF, or 500 per hit x pDIF

I have +33% crit rate in gear, going with the fTP mod of around 15% and our base/merits/dDEX we'd have something like a 70% crit rate? Maybe round down to 66% so 4 hits crit and 2 don't.

So say we have 2.0 pDIF:

Rudra = 3500 x 2 = 7000

Evisceration = 500 x 3 pDIF = 1500 x 1.22dmg x 4 = 7320 + 500 x 2pDIF x2 = 8320

Now say we're at 3 pDIF, that gives us:

Rudra = 3500 x 3 = 10500

Evisceration = 500 x 4 pDIF = 2k x 1.22 x 4 = 9760 + 500 x 3 pDIF x 2 = 12760

This puts us at 2.0 pDIF Evisc is in theory 19% stronger and at 3.0 pDIF Evisc is 21.5% stronger.

The reason many people don't see this difference is not going through the trouble of gearing it. Though I certainly don't have a finished evisceration set, missing abnoba kaftan and my herc hands are only crit+1%

Oh and just realized I didn't include WSD with Rudra's, my unstacked set has like 15% in it, which would mostly close the gap. But I guess this further echoes my earlier statement, if you only gear for Rudra's it'll win for you, if you gear for both Evisc will win for you, but it's unstable (one miss or bad crit roll etc.) Of course if you just wait another attack round or two Rudra's will overtake because of fTP as well.

My general playstyle involves 3-5 ws level 2 sc bounces + ending with light or dark now, so it really doesn't matter to me exactly which does a little more damage.

One of my points in a prior post was that it has higher damage for all weaponskills. I've also said that higher pdif helps crit ws less. I've not stated ever that high attack favors evis, I said higher caps I have seen higher evis. I can see how you might think that implies other things, which I didn't say, but that's pretty assumptious to assume that I'm saying that, when I just left out other info since the post itself was about evisc damage at 1k.


No, you didn't post testimony, but if mine doesn't matter and you don't believe me what reason do I have to believe you or anyone elses either? If you don't believe me you are free to either see for yourself and confirm or deny, or leave it alone. Posting vitriol does no one any good whatsoever, nor as has been done here in the past on this forum especially for some reason, teaming up against those you just don't want to agree with in an aggressive and hostile manner. It's very hard to even get info on thf out there because of that and the reason I stated at one time this thread is a clubhouse more than a resource. We got more ppl in here now with differing associations so thankfully, it's nice to post, sort of, this has been unpleasant.



I use spreadsheets, and said I did, and pDIF is an important variable that you can end up on either end of. That is why I mentioned using one, because the first place I found out about evisceration doing more dmg at low TP was a post made in the bard forum of all places. Then I confirmed on spreadsheet and then in the game. And it hasn't steered me wrong yet, though I know each fight is different and situational, which is something I find others forgetting a lot more than I do.

I can provide my sets for comparison, though I'm not seeing where yours are public. I am also as I stated earlier not stating my sets are superior to anyone or stating these are optimal or perfect or that I am perfect either. But Evisc does perform a lot better than unstacked rudra at low tp, and my stacked rudra hurts pretty darn well. There is also a possibility of something like confirmation bias, because since other posts and spreadsheets made clear to me, evisc unstacked something worth investing in as are stacked rudra so my unstacked rudra mostly used for skillchains. Though to be honest your earlier comments make me feel like you want to see them more to pick something out and try to make fun of me, because that's just the feel you give off but I'll bite, please prove me wrong.

For some reason, you're leaving out Rudra's offhand even though you're including Evisceration's. Against 7fTP, that's +14% damage you're ignoring (or 12.5%, after you include your 15% WSD). After you fix that, your own numbers will put Rudra's ahead. Also, unless I've missed an update and BG is outdated, fSTR still caps. At 125 DMG, fSTR will cap at 21.

You didn't post your sets, so I can't say if it's better/worse than mine, so I'm comparing my Rudra (303 mod, 19% WSD) to your Evis (160 mod, 66% crit rate, 22% crit damage (which is around 14.5% at 66% rate)).

Rudra:
DMG: 125
DEX: 109+337: 303
fSTR: 21

Base: 449
fTP: (7*1.19) + 1 = 9.33
pDIF: 2 ==> 8378
pDIF: 3 ==> 12567

Evis:
DMG: 125
DEX: 160
fSTR: 21

Base: 306
fTP: 1.45 x 6 = 8.7
pDIF: 2.66 ==> 7081 * 1.145 = 8107
pDIF: 3.66 ==> 9743 * 1.145 = 11156

But we should consider our TA rate, since that favors Evis. If we're around 33%, and two chances each WS, that's two extra hits every 3 WS.

Rudra's:
fTP: (7*1.19) + 1 + .66 = 10
pDIF: 2 ==> 8980
pDIF: 3 ==> 13470

Evis:
fTP: 1.45 * 6.66 = 9.65
pDIF: 2.66 ==> 7854 * 1.145 = 8993
pDIF: 3.66 ==> 10807 * 1.145 = 12374



The problem is that everyone here is making statements based on anonymous gear sets, which helps no one, because very few of us are going to have identical gear. I wanted to "politely" point out that Byrth and Ihina are likely only looking at HQ gear, and if you weren't, then that may be a reason for the disagreement. You seem to have taken this personally, but the truth is that even if something is better for you with your gear in your situation, it doesn't necessarily mean it's better for me with my gear in my situation.

If those are the sets you are using to compare, then it's not at all surprising that your unstacked Rudra's is doing so poorly; you're missing key pieces of gear—especially the single piece that recently spurred the idea of going back to unstacked Rudra's: Toutatis's Cape. And this is not a stab at you, it's just simply an objective statement.

Does the Rudra offhand hit get the fTP value? For some reason I didn't believe it did, which is part of why I didn't include it. I was doing enough rounding and without the fTP it wouldn't have been terribly significant.

I didn't give the offhand 7 http://fTP. Every offhand hit of a WS that doesn't have carried fTP is 1. With 15% WSD, 7fTP would be equivalent to 8.05, and another 1 fTP would be another 12.42% more damage.

Alright, only skimmed over the math. But my numbers also didn't utilize any more than our base + gifts for crit dmg bonus. I know there are bodies we can use for another 5%, Mandau aftermath (kinda relevant to the discussion at hand) for another 5%, yetshila for another 5-6%, etc.

Offhanding shijo A tends to do a lot for Evisc as well.


I appreciate some nicety in your posts, I don't like aggression or know many that do. I use HQ gear in spreadsheets to know what to aim for also, and if I do pick a mob with horrid defense it does close the gap a lot.

I agree the new cape can make a big difference and even be a game changer. I sort of regret not augmenting mine yet in favor of other jobs, but it is on my list for early next month. And it's not that I feel I took it personally it's that aggression makes it feel personal and maybe that's a flaw but I know a lot of people who feel that way.

Thank you for mathing it out and I enjoy this discussion a lot more and thank you for your time. I'm happy to be proven wrong or learn more because I better for it, however if I'm right and/or people just respond with teaming up nitpicking inane things, indirect responses, and nothing solid to really back up what they say, it's basically pure hostility and clubhousing at that point and very bad for everyone, especially random thf reading the forum who don't really know who to believe or just believe the people most agree with. I won't bring up specific examples b/c quite frankly, it was tired the first time. I will say though on those specific cases I ended up quite right.

FYI This is about the best evisc set I could come up with, though a few pieces might have better alternatives, and do if you consider perfect herc augs:


I feel there should be a better alternative to brutal specifically. One thing not really mentioned too that contributes to overall dps is multihit ws have more tp return, I believe it's a small 10 per extra hit, and I agree with Ladyofhonor saying that you often use both for chains, but it's still something to consider. To me the clear answer of this entire discussion is gear both well, and if you can't self chain because of other DD, consider your pDIF and sets and who you are partnering with DD wise.

I'd go path B on Lustratio+1 legs for evisc. And I think herc hands/feet can be augmented to be superior, but never tallied up my total crit before and adhemar's DEX might be superior actually, will have to consider my options there.

Maining a subpar weapon, offhanding another subpar weapon, and using a subpar WS for a subpar aftermath just to try to skew the argument is beyond silly. You'd be lowering your total DPS. Plus, I can just say "Let's use Aeneas main for Rudra," and that would be the end of the discussion.

I don't think anyone here suggested not gearing Evis or ever not using it, and the difference is bound to be minute for most people anyway. Byrth only brought it up to point out that Twashtar's AM1 is essentially free, even if you can't stack. I only chimed in because you said Rudra's/Mandalic were "bad" unstacked, and placed Evis as doing nearly twice as much damage (going off of your testimony of 17k vs. 10k). Now, if you can actually replicate a difference of that magnitude in spreadsheets...that would be another story.

The extra TP per hit from Evis isn't going to really do anything if all it's going towards is more Evis. Rarely will that extra 40TP be the difference between a WS or not, and any overflow will lean the favor towards Rudra's (which is typically why the spreadsheet will have it coming out ahead). I only did the quick math to correct some mistakes, but the spreadsheet takes far more into consideration, including the TP return from weaponskills.

Anyway, you should play according to your gear. If what you have access to favors Evis, use it. But that doesn't mean the situation is the same for everyone.

Like it or not I'd bet Mandau is going to be the most common 269 dagger any THF has and likely a common option without another e/m/a up there. And I never advocated for Mandau as a best option, just stated I have it and it has a use. Maybe once I get back to Qilin I'll spam Evisc vs Rudra's and see what I get as an average over time. Though this will heavily skew in favor of Rudra's unless I take my TP bonus atmacite off.

Again, play according to your gear. But considering this started with Byrth talking about his -own- Rudra's, why would we be using Mandau to challenge that?

I think we're reading slightly different conversations. My first involvement in this discussion was in response to Byrth's REMA assessment, of which I said Mandau has uses fighting trash mobs as they don't have the HP for WSing really.

I then also chimed in when people said evisceration gets owned by Rudra's, which is not generally my experience.

I also only mentioned Mandau and Evisceration together when adding up multiple sources of +crit damage, not made an entire case revolving around Mandau and evisceration usage.

I haven't been playing much THF besides Erinys fights, I hope to when I can get some better gear + JP for it. My original remark was aimed at questioning whether the RMEA hierarchy Byrth presented is justified. If unstacked Rudra's have usurped Evisceration (not hard to believe give WSD gear) then I don't think you can hand wave Aeneas. The fTP marginal gain from 1000(+250) to 1000+(750) is 41.2%. In reality you'll get less than that due to over TP and not going right away, but it is still a mammoth boost.

I like how everyone helps one another in the THF thread, not all threads are like this.

So now to my question, I read and saw gear sets in the last 10pages and all is well and dandy!

But I would like to ask, I am trying to brush off my THF again for Dynamis farming as I have most gear for it since I have MNK/NIN/RNG and can easily kill anything that I do not have yet, but my Question is this;

What would a good Dynamis farming set look like nowadays? Keep in mind, we would not need to kill fast due to trying to proc first. The last time I geared and played THF sufficiently was back when Delve2 gear was out and you could not call trusts out(last time was when Delve2 was out). So yeah, help would be appreciated.

I've been wondering about Aeneas/Twashtar a bit today. It seems like an interesting combination.

- Both weapons have the same base accuracy/attack meaning you don't need to over gear accuracy to cap off both hands
- TP Bonus +500 and 50 DEX is going to result in some heavy Rudra's even at 1000 TP.
- The attack speed/TP per strike ratio for 200/176 delay weapons is very good.

It's also interesting to note that with 36 or 37 dual wield, you should be getting 50 base TP per strike. This is an interesting number as even values of Store TP will be utilized 100% efficiently. If you're solo doing Evisceration -> Rudra's -> Rudra's or just spamming Rudra's, this seems like a very powerful weapon combination.

I gear for no acc and all attack/multihit, as long as it's ilvl. I find if I summon all the dancer trusts that do steps, ulmia, and a rdm trust I can kill very fast and proc almost every time. I just make sure to tag every kill with TH8 at the start and got 760 coins in a run, but I don't do it too much so maybe someone else can answer you better. Something like:
For TP set would work quite well.


@Snaps I agree it could be very good especially if you can make use of somehow the aftermath which makes the damage really high for the skillchain (200% for 2 step and 300% for 3 step that I have seen).


I started earlier in the thread as well talking about melph's post of just only using JA rudra and never wsing w/o.

You said if I could show on spreadsheet it'd be something, so using what I find to be optimal gear for both sets, on a mob with 1090 defense:

0% def down
Rudra 6258
Evisc 10528

10% def down
Rudra 6916
Evisc 11221

20% def down
Rudra 7844
Evisc 12082

40% def down
Rudra 10775
Evisc 14252

80% def down
Rudra 11946
Evisc 14955

Switching to decent challenge Dynamis mob, chaos roll, and 95% defense down (and disregarding the fact that evisc wouldn't get all hits off cuz it dies first and that either one would one shot it either way):
Rudra 13095
Evisc 15820

I don't have my spreadsheet updated for pdif's new caps, but as you can see it is definitely closing in on evisc, and I think only at the very max pdif would the difference be miniscule, which if you are always in a party with buffs and debuffs to achieve that good for you. I think a lot of people don't though, and I still solo mobs with trusts on thf so spreadsheet is reporting my observations if not as extreme as I found them (8k vs 17k, but instead more like 8k vs 12k). I think it's good to know is why I am sharing, not in an effort to prove someone wrong on the internet. I tried updating my pdif but there's a lot of fields to consider, so gonna look at bg later and see how they did it. Anyone who has one can fill in for 4 pdif but I don't doubt it's pretty close. Buffs like boost-dex etc could change outcomes too, the stat mod on evisc a lot lower etc.

Here is what I put for rudra unstacked free to state if you know anything better to put in:

Melph's comments were in support of Byrth's statement that Twash should never have AM down. But I have misunderstood about to whom the comments were aimed at.

I'll assume you're using the default rabbit mob, no buffs other than accuracy and maybe haste. The numbers you're giving are putting yourself at 1 pDIF at start, which--as stated--favors Evis. But there is some discrepancy between our numbers. With 0 def down, it's only 6.7k vs. 8.4k for me, Rudra's begins to overtake at 1.9 pDIF (45% def down) at 12.7k/12.2k. And at 2.25 pDIF, 16.2k/11.9k in Rudra's favor. Similar results in Dynamis. Again, could be a matter of gear (PMing you my spreadsheet, you can go ahead and change gear as you wish).

Either way, perhaps clarification is needed: if you can demonstrate the situation you were speaking of (i.e. Qilin with buffs/debuffs) in the spreadsheets, that would be different.

As Thick as Thieves

I haven't revamped the THF sheet and made it work (and iirc it had somewhat dodgy logic even back when it "worked"), but for Dancer I know that 1000 TP is not the ideal TP to spam Rudra's Storm at when you have capped delay. There's actually a slight DPS gain when WSing at 2600 compared to 1000 because Rudra's scales so sharply and the 3 seconds of forced delay following WS sucks so much.


These are my sets so far:

Honestly, I like THF for theoretical party situations and did cap its JPs but rarely actually get to use it because my dancer does more damage than it in me+mule situations. I augmented BLM and DNC capes for this month's Ambuscade. THF is so far on the back burner that it might take me another 2 months to make a WSD cape for it.

Thank you Verda! Luckily I have all that gear so will be using that! :3

@Flippant I got some time to go over your spreadsheet vs mine and found errors in both of them, yours were very minor, and gear related unless they changed something recently that I wasn't aware of and isn't reflected on ffxiah or bg. Yours lists a different hit rate too, and I'm not quite sure on why that is. I matched races, subs and food too. Our mobs had diff agi and vit, so I added mine into yours and vica versa. Mine lists 99% and yours 95% for WS hit rate on evisceration, your base dw is also using the 25% as base and I made mine 30%, I still don't think any of those were big enough to make a difference that big though, so then I found it. The biggest issue I found with mine and I'm not going to downplay it, is one column was off for evisceration so it was using 25% crit rate at 1k tp instead of 10%. Our spreadsheets seem to mostly agree otherwise, and I am seeing them converge lower pdif after that. If I put on rogue's roll on yours I see numbers a lot more like the ones I posted above, so it seems to check out though I realize, most people would rather go with chaos + sam roll and unless you had overflow of cor's rogue's not usually worth it I think. The other part was I had used some perfect aug herc for dex and crit damage that I didn't mean to leave on before I posted and using lustratio head is a better choice than adhemar B for rudra. Now I see them nearly equal at 95% def down, 40% def down is about where I'm seeing evisc pull ahead by anything worth mentioning (more than 1k), which is about 1.9 pdif with that setup. The last thing was I was using AM3, and Vajra/Twash, and AM3 was adding a sizable amount to Evisc (about 700 dmg in the case I checked).

So I guess around 1.9 pdif, as long as the mob doesn't have very high agility or critical chance reduction makes sense. Solo with trusts I can rely on about 15% def down, and up to 25% increase in attack from cor, and might be fighting mobs with higher defense and in that case evisc still pretty favored, but if you stick geo-frailty on it, let along use fury and dia 2 I think it starts to really not matter, if optimal gear was chosen for both, which is pretty similar to before but with pdif moved quite a bit down.

Thank you for the discussion and help as well as sending me your spreadsheet, and most of all for not making it, idk, trolly for lack of a better word, it's appreciated :D