Is Vajra Worth Making Anymore?

I think this month's mobs have some sort of damage buff yeah. From what I observed it certainly felt that way. And I usually don't have that full buff lineup either. We just wanted to make ambuscade this month as painless as possible because it's a royal pain as is. My typical buffs are a lot more random and dependent on who and what jobs we have available for stuff. Although we do always ensure there's at least some form of reasonable attack buff to keep things fairly consistent. I'm also not hating on Vajra because it's a great dagger. Just saying that Twash and/or Aeneas would be time and money better spent on a first REMA acquisition as per the thread title.

Point is, I'm switching between the REMA daggers this month and it seems to go fastest and most painless with the Vajra. OP is asking if there is value in the Vajra, and there it is. He already has the other three daggers, by the way.

I thought you were hitting 80-99k casually, which is why I asked you for your buffs this month.

If the mob dies to a SARudra and TARudra and there's time to let the JA timers come back, I'm finding myself using the Vajra more often. Otherwise, I'm going with one of the other 2 daggers (gg mandau)

Oh, well if he has the other 3 daggers already and wants to build Vajra then sure, why not. I agree Vajra has value, just not nearly as much as the other two, and I did admit that earlier. I'm working on a few mage jobs now so I have to split my resources more than I'm used to, so an extra REMA is frivolous when I need several new pieces of relic/artifact +3. I thought that was the point of the thread and I apologize if I misinterpreted it. It was never specified he was doing a fourth legendary weapon as a side project just because.

Also what difficulty level are you doing, out of curiosity? Difficult or Very Difficult? I was hitting 80-99k closer to 2k TP than 3k in ambuscade. That may not be the most casual, but I didn't need to wait for full 3k territory either. I do acknowledge I had heavy buffs though, and I still suspect there's a minor form of damage increase (can't prove it but it really feels like it's there), and if that's true it's also affecting numbers. I wouldn't be surprised either, since they scaled mobs HP up in triplicate a while back they may also have scaled damage taken up in a universal fashion on a smaller level to compensate. The screenshots from dynamis were around 3k but that was a different event with a different setup. That was just to emphasize the point I was trying to make about future growth hurdles Vajra would face if they continue scaling our stats in the same fashion as we're seeing now.

Why would you bring thf to this months ambu if you want it to be painless lol?

Because thf is an incredible dd played properly (not on paper). And it's their only job.

I was doing D. Closing third step with Rudra for distortion, I could get closer to 2k since the SC window is wider, but closing 5th step with Rudra for double dark, it was usually around 1000-1500 since the window is much smaller. Of course, I didn't have 3000TP aftermath up for every mob.

Did you know that if you kill the drg before it spirit surges, sometimes the wyvern hangs around and you can tp off it, waiting for the next drg to pop. When that happens, you can pop sekk and your distortion/rudra will hit for 99,999+99,999 distortion guaranteed.

And you're right, this month's amb's mobs does have +damage taken. I'm sure most people can hit high numbers with enough buffs and saving 3000TP. But the point I wanted to make was that, for this month's amb, you can reach these numbers casually in a 5-step skillchain for a quick kill without saving 3000TP or anywhere close to there.

For another month maybe - Dnc Mnk War Sam Drk for this month really if you want it to go smoothly... But if that's the only thing you got then sure by all means... Really doesn't warrant making Varja tho to do this months Ambu on D mode...

Never argued that it was the best, merely that it had a place and purpose. It's strong point is not spamming WS's at 1K but rather working with other DD's to execute a multi-step SC with the THF being the "big closer". THF is one of the best, if not the best (DNC is the other) SC closer in the game and Vajra enhanced that roll.

It's not necessarily only this month's amb. Just anything where you need high, burst damage fast, Vajra excels there. Say, you want to skip Tenzen's 2 SP phases, or you want to farm caturae in escha ru'aun and don't want to deal with any of their gimmicks, or farming T1 reisen. These things to come mind because I've had to do them recently, but the list goes on. It's not the best for everything, or even a majority of things, but there are a handful of instances where fights that will go faster if you have it rather than not.

And I think I need to repeat that because we keep going back to it. It doesn't compare to other daggers in most situations. But for a handful of situations, it does excel.

I'm not the most skilled or the most knowledgeable player but I play THF more or less all the time and dare say I have a basic understanding of the job and unlike many people who responded I do have a R15 Vajra.

I won't go into to much detail since quite frankly it isn't worth it but if you really consider making Vajra feel free to send me a message, I'm willing to elaborate.

Vajra is a mighty weapon and in my experience can put out more or less the same or more damage than Twashtar. Having said this I feel you need R15 more than you do on Twashtar, which I usually offhand. For Twashtar to pull ahead of Vajra you need to make the darkness skill chains happen, If I do not then I do more damage spamming Mandalic stab. Which is the better dagger? I'd say that depends on the fight(s) and the party/alliance setup. Both daggers have great potential.

I mostly main Vajra because it adds a lot of flexibility to your arsenal due to the significant boost to Sneak- and Trick Attack. This doesn't only adds a good chunk of damage that Twashtar usually can't beat with Rudra's when not spamming darkness skill chains, it also boosts DPS by quite a lot a mew style fight for example since you'll be able to stack a good number of your weapon skills. Next to reliable spike damage being fun to do it can also add a chunk of survive ability on a pesky mob that needs to die fast.

In the right hands and with the right gear THF can put a lot of actual DD jobs to shame. So if you are passionate about THF Vajra is very worth making. If you just want to be decent stick to Twashtar.

Do it for AH points.
It's a frickin weapon for cripes sakes.

yeah my 22k Garland of Bliss agrees with you. At least on the boss anyway. lol

fixed lol...

Is this true? I kicked around the idea of gearing thief on an alt, but the number of serious thieves on Asura is... like 3 people? Why don't people play thief as an actual DD?

Because it's too hard. Serious answer. It is, *** impossible, to make proper use of TA and SA pretty much 100% of the time. You can't be "good" at a positionally dependent job, when everyone else is HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE. Too many fights are with tanks in the corner. Too many ***dd can't survive getting ta'd. it's also generally impossible to get people to actually skillchain instead of spam, thfs "big" power is 150k-200k skillchain closers/linkers. "the meta" just doesn't afford opportunity for that vs spamming.

Also serious answer; it's not samurai or warrior, delete all DD that aren't sam or war

Also also serious answer; TH is largely irrelevant, and so goes the job that uses it when everyone has TH4 gear. and/or "the thf" is relegated to it in the 'left out' party.

Also also also serious answer; It's Asura

It's also pretty one-dimensionally boring. Zero useful JA (ta/sa already explained) steal mug despoil do next to nothing. Collab and accomplice range is ineffective and borderline useless as the target will recap in mere seconds. conspirator is essentially pointless. Feint is still VERY strong, but everything is adjusted down making it less useful. (not that war and sam aren't one dimensional too, but at least have some "options")

also also also also serious answer; if stuff doesn't already ***AoEs left and right they at least do cone attacks so when ever you position for SA/TA tanks and healers will fancy you really really hard.

...SAMs trying to take advantage of overwhelm probably receive a lot of love letters, too.

The thing with Thief being good is you need to be absolute top tier to really get it all together. Thief starts with a solid baseline of...Triple attack out the ***. It otherwise has poor STP and low attack. And the combination for good damage is multi-attack, STP and high attack. If you can reach the gear and buffs to flesh out STP and high attack, Thief is a monster with its high TA baseline. At proper gear Thief also has really high accuracy, which is also very relevant, but accuracy is nothing special baseline.


It can help keep hate on a tank in a zerg scenario, so it has less concern for a hybrid set (I have emergency sets but I rarely ride a 'true' hybrid set) and thus will be able to keep max DPS going longer than SAM and WAR can.

Rudra's is a rock solid WS. Not the absolute strongest, but it's at the top tier, benefits greatly from WSD, DEX mod makes it perfect for our gear options, and spammable to SC with itself. Not to mention if SC's are happening, a Thief is a DD that has access to all options and able to open/close anything (just please don't try to extend light in serious content).

Solid JSE, we have viable AF and Relic +3 sets, which can offer us high Meva while in a DPS focused set. This allows us to avoid more debuffs than most other DD's, and is almost comparable to RUN, simply because RUN's best melee sets are dated at this stage.

But as I said, you want to be at the top tier and with top tier buffs to make this all come together nicely. Most other DD's don't require quite as much to reach a high level (warrior for example has DA out the *** and berserk gives them solid attack) but our top tier gear puts us at super high levels of TA and Accuracy. But you'll also need to buff properly. DRK and WAR don't need attack so much, and they'll want madrigal, whereas a thief doesn't need madrigal, and will want minuet. Getting proper buffs for the party config is essential to reaching the max on any job, and Thief is slightly different than the "usual" top DD.

Yes, it's true. Thief can be one of the most powerful DD's in the game. There are very few people capable of outparsing me in a standard event, and those who can are as overgeared and obsessed with their jobs as I am with mine so it's always a genuine pleasure to meet them. But it requires a lot of work and effort. I've dedicated my time to collecting pretty much all the top tier gear thief has access to, and aside from the time spent farming rare/ex components I've also spent well over a billion gil in gear over the course of the past several years, be it for direct purchasables (all HQ's now, many in the "luxury" category), merc services for a few things I had issues with getting otherwise, or "McGuffins", and that one was significant. There are only a few jobs with dynamis shard/armors that cost as much as thief's and I bought most of mine directly. A full 5/5 set of relic +3 can set you back almost 250 mil. Twashter was another 3-400 mil's worth over the years (I started well before ambuscade when prices were much higher). Then add the artifact +3 and you've got a hefty price tag.

LoH nailed the stat progression too. At it's base thief has access to one of the strongest weaponskills in the game. Rudras Storm is in the same tier as leaden salute, but it doesn't truly rock until you add dex, attack, crit damage, and wsd in copius amounts. And daggers attack so fast they're a DPS weapon by default, but a newly started thief without any job points begins with only around 20-25% triple attack with reasonable basics (adhemar etc), moderatly high accuracy and fairly low attack. And the incremental power increases add up slowly for a long time until you reach critical mass. There's a tremendous difference between ~1150 accuracy, 1000 ish* attack, ~25% Triple attack rate, and the ~1390 accuracy, 1280 attack, 58% triple attack rate, 41% triple attack damage bonus I'm working with now. And as far as weaponskill damage goes, a more basic rudra's set will only hit in the 20-35k damage range most of the time. It takes exceptional gear to make it average 55-60k and hit the 70-90k range spikes you see some of us talking about here. Also, the difference between a Rank 15 Twashter, Aeneas, or Vajra, main and someone using Tauret is pretty significant. That's true of every job of course, and many people would rather build a Chango, Masamune, Death Penalty, etc etc than one of the dagger options.

There's also ANOTHER obstacle to overcome. Thief is squishy as hell! Compared to War and Sam we don't have nearly as much defense in our standard "glass cannon" gear, and our max HP is several hundred points lower to boot, and unlike corsair, we can't choose to do our damage from a safe range. A proper hybrid set can be expensive, yet it's absolutely mandatory for higher tier content, and that's on top of the gear requirements to just be able to do a lot of damage in the first place.

Gearing thief to actually show it's true potential is a labor of love that takes more time and dedication than most of the other DD jobs, so people usually don't bother. The people who do are passionate about it. But if you DO put in the time and effort, the payouts you get are well worth it.

Like I said, the "McGuffins" for the job are backbreaking. Most relic +3 pieces are 50 million + if you buy everything via auction. But it's a really good set with premium stats. I'm actually thankful because thief has one of the better sets out there. Several jobs got shafted with several of their pieces. Between both relic and artifact sets only the artifact hands and feet are lackluster. Everything else can fit into a fully optimized build save for relic hands, which are just situationally convenient to easily run a fulltime TH+8 build for dynamis alongside perfect taming sari with minimal stat losses.

Assassin's Gorget +2 is another 80 mil (10 mil for the +1). There's also stuff like Epamidonias Ring, Moonlight rings, turms and adhemar +1, yetshila +1. At least the latter have dropped in price significanttly compared to a few years ago. And that doesn't even consider mercing options if you want to get something faster when your normal groups don't prioritize it (Wave 3 clears, Reiki Yotai, Telos Earring, Gere Ring, etc etc are all commonly offered in shout. I figure someone's gootta be buying em?). Stuff gets expensive really really fast....

As a pure DPS THF is solidly in the second tier next to DNCs, BLUs and DRG's. This isn't a bad place at all, they just aren't the murder machines that SAM / WAR / DRK are. As SC closers on the other hand THF's are one of the top two (DNC being the other). Nothing says "Die" like a stacked WS producing monstrous damage on demand. My only wish was that Shark Bite and Mandalic had better 2K TP anchor points so that average THF's would be more open to exploring SC options instead of trying to play THF like SAM or DRK.

Retards. Hundreds of retards. I check THF shards... religiously. You will never seen the people who bought them actually on THF. It's pretty irritating to be honest. Dipshits wasting money keeping the price up for literally no reason.

It's not just thf though. For as much as people despise MNK the leg and head shards (and moonbow belts) are sure as ***still bought as fast as they get put up.

I didn't think this question would purpose such debate. However, Thank you all for your opinions, though I find most posts are about this months Ambu over Vajra. Mythic weapons aren't that difficult to make, I will just make one and add it to the toolbox.

It is a strong weapon -

Better than other options?

Nope

When asking a question like this, if you really play the job, you should make the weapon and decide for yourself. Make a twash also. r15 both. make sets for both.

Always misinformation on the forums, mostly by ppl that probably don't have a r15 vajra.

The real answer is how often do you/your group lean on stacked ws as the predominant method of dealing damage.

Vajra is ideally suited for example to zero tp-feed situations (mew/tact-roll pairing) where literally no melee is required. The boost to Mandalic Stab is pretty useful too as its a nice complement to Rudra.

I use Vajra alot. I have both rank15. Anytime your focus is light based skillchains Vajra is nice. Dark based I swap to main hand Twash.

This is all great information. This is why i'm so pumped about Malignance. Making me abit less squishy is the ONLY downside to THF dps. We hit hard, and get hit hard.