Respectable AHable/Mercable equipsets at lvl 80Follow

TP:
Weapons - Blau real cheap now and still one of our greatest daggers, acc+ kila, atk+ kila, sirocco are all good daggers
Neck - Peacock
Earrings - Brutal/Suppa
Body - Mirke/Raparree
Hands - Aurore are cheap, also dusk until you get homam
Rings - Rajas/Snipers
Back - Cuchulain is getting cheaper, or you could try getting an azure key from acp fei'yin mark of seed mission and hope for an acc +6-7 beak mantle
Waist - Swift (easy soloable now)
Legs - Aurore
Feet - Aurore until you get homam

WS
DE/Evis
Head - Heca is great
Neck - Sea gorget
Earrings - Brutal, Merman
Body - Heca, dragon harness
Hands - Heca, enkidu's
Rings - Rajas/ any dex5+
Back - use your tp back piece here
Waist - Virtuoso belt is fine
Legs - might want to look into tumblers trunks, or oily trousers, can even use aurore if you fell you need extra acc
Feet - Heca

SA/TA
for SA and TA use which ever piece has the most dex (SA) or agi (TA) for its slot

I would say save your money and stick to Mirke with this unless you have money to burn. Solo WS on Mirke are potentially more powerful, and are at least as powerful as Antares. SA or TA WS have a slight damage advantage to Antares, but not enough for the price.

All this is moot if you have the money to burn though. If you do, then I say Solo WS in Mirke, Stacked WS in Antares.

Edit: Talking about multi-hits, SB and Mandalic Stab definately go for Dragon/+1 imo.

Edited, Jul 13th 2010 9:55am by Meldi

I appreciate all (or most) of your replies, I'll probably work on that accuracy Dakini then.

On the accusation that I bought my account, I didn't. I just think gear choices were a lot easier on 1-74 (where it was Stack Dex/Agi as appropriate until you vomit) then 75+. On why I'm asking "basic" questions, I think THF is a lot more complicated than other DD where usually boils down to get this one weapon (Hagun, Perdu, blahblah), get X-hit, use this for WS. For example:

1) SA - How does Heca's +str balance out with it's +slow%? Is the additional damage (if any) worth the longer swing?
2) Weapons - sh*t was easy at 75. 95% of the time you'll have blau. The other knife would be X's, sirroco, augmented, etc depending on what you're willing to do. With Magians, I didn't know if a certain combo would be both easy and good. Ex: with the accuracy knife you might be able to swap the accuracy +12 mantle with the + atk mantle, etc.
3) Earrings - How does Brutal/Suppa compare to Pixie and Atk earrings for SA/TA?

Tizona wrote:



It doesn't matter if you bought your account or not, you still did it wrong from 1-75.

The concept for tp/ws on all melee jobs are pretty much the same, the only thing on thief that makes a slight difference is viper bite and SA/TA. Viper bite ends at 60 which pretty much makes gearing for thief like gearing for almost any other melee jobs.

For tp, having a good hit rate or haste is just as important on thief as any other job. It may require different amounts depending on if you are using a 1h or 2h weapon. Some jobs may shave off a hit by taking advantage of x-hit build but in the end, they still need the acc/haste/att to make it worthwhile.

For ws, if you understand the difference between multi hit ws and single hit ws as well as how they work on acc/att/mods then the rules apply to all jobs. If you know how SA and TA works in conjunction with a WS then you still apply the rules.

Thief is no different than any other job. It's just screwed up because people think it's a magical job that works by breaking the mathematical rules of FFXI.

Let us know what you don't understand about the game mechanics and we will help you. That way you shouldn't have much trouble at all deciding what gear helps you the most by yourself.

OP sounds like he has a good idea of what is going on. It's just that his main job isn't thief. That's why he's asking about 'wal-mart' (with a dash of merc) builds.

Really, even if 100% of the other people here, or anywhere for that matter, disagreed with the SA/TA analysis, I'd frown in worry but eventually have to stick by it. I have a lot of confidence in it and it's not 100% fleshed out, but I feel that the parts that aren't fleshed out compensate a bit with each other. It has a very slight bias towards haste so you might be able to downplay it very slightly. There are different values for haste in there, so you can pick the one you like. Also, it is a big deal that sometimes you sa/ta and don't follow up with another attack round (IE you kill the mob, or you run away). I'd say this pretty much balances out with the fact that the math doesn't even incorporate the extra TP you gain from faster attacks. You could also throw in 'missed' SA/TA's, which would obviously favor haste/dw/t.a./d.a. Those small details aside, the formula is pretty good. But it's complicated; if I had to guess on it, I'd say not a single other person has used the formula I posted there for their own purposes, or check its accuracy.


That was a year ago, but the basic principles behind the formula are yet to change (edit: mostly; see #4 below). The only things to look out for would be (1)I haven't updated it to our current knowledge of crit, but this is incredibly miniscule, (2)I haven't updated it for our current knowledge of pDif, which is grossly incomplete--and hey, that's almost ok, because 99% of FFXI calculations for the past years have relied on pDif information that was false (inaccurate) anyway. (3)It would have to be updated to deal with future trends in what we fight, and possible future changes in the game formulae.

(4)It doesn't account for the new crit trait. This is estimated by gobli to be 5%. But I've not seen any samples for this or any others, except for my friend's, which suggests its 10%. Still, hard to doubt gobli. I'd like to see more testing (as if we had lives.
Remedy: If you want, a mock-remedy for this would be to just multiply "spike damage stats" (dex, agi, str, atk) by 1.05 to accommodate a 5% boost from the trait. Not the perfect solution, but easy and better than nothing.

* * *

So for gearing sa/ta, I'd definitely go by my guide. Otherwise, the advice you've gotten here has been pretty good. I'll see what I can add though. Kupo head with 10acc/3haste is great for thieves that are very serious about the job, but if you're not you could just go with turban or the delicious brisk mask. Might have to change my kupo head if/when I get that. There's also the new heads with roughly 15acc/4atk on them, but they're r/ex and hard to get. I'd use your kupo head for multi-hit WS. But of course since thief isn't your main job you might have other uses for that. If you do want to use 3-mini-expansion gear for Thf though, then concerning Mirke I'd go w/ what Meldi said. I'd also get a sharpeye mantle. At this point you may want multiple builds. I mean, idk about other jobs but thief definitely should. Rapp/Forager's vs Sharpeye/Mirke for example. You can also take advantage of feint by using the low-acc build. Even as a non-main thief, you could probably make good use out of carrying Sharpeye, Cuchulain's, /and/ Forager's.

Dusk for hands prolly. I'd say aurore over dusk for feet. But really I'm sure it's a bit close. Merc as much heca and homam as you're willing/want to, really. Well, in the way of homam head and legs and body aren't very useful anymore. Legs and body have their uses. Heca body can be replaced. Heca head can be situationally (rarely? idk)be replaced by kupo head. On Asura, mercing heca head for 2-3m was definitely viable for a long time. But you have to go to Aery and talk to sellers often. For WS feet, might want to consider dragon leggings +1 or the new 6dex/6agi ones; can always try for heca. Might as well get a cuchulain's belt, but I can't really tell you to pick warwolf vs virtuoso. Depends on your WS, what you do, merits, etc. Might as well use sea gorgets for WS. I merced Love Torque for 5m but that looks to be out of your price range.

As far as newer gear, look over the 'best' thread and you should find some things. Like the new Agi neck, which is like 400k on my server atm. Not sure if it's in your price-range given that it's just for TA, but hey, it's wal-mart. Speaking of wal-mart, new rings shouldn't actually be that expensive. I recently bought an AGI ring for 1.8m--biggest financial mistake I've made in the game; dk what I was thinking. I made my second one for about 500k a week later, but of course I have synergy skill and had to look around for goldsmithers to invite to my party. My 6dex ring was only 600k as well, doing the same thing. Barely more than the 5-stat rings (str being one exception).

Ehh, lastly, if you want to know about new gear for SA/TA unstacked, just look at new gear and use the stat-by-stat analysis that I put in the guide. That's what it's there for. And use (#4) above to compensate for some of the stats if you want. Or check the 'best' thread.

Well, I can't give anything accurate right now. If I have some free time I could dig up the excel stuff and come up with something more solid. But imagine your average SA is doing 350Dmg, non-piercing. Let's pretend your pDif avg is at 1, so crit pDif is at 2. A point of dex would give you an average of 2 damage added. 352/350 is a ~0.57% increase. Crit Dmg +1% would add 3.5 dmg, 353.5/350 being 1% increase of course. Divide however you like, in this case Crit Dmg +1% is doing 1.75 times as much as 1dex. For TA, same conditions, a single point of agi is doing 2.3dmg per. 3.5/2.3 = ~1.52. So, using this napkin-guessing and applying it to what I've already got in my tables, this would suggest that,

DEX/AGI "Values"
For SA - 1DEX = 2.58d.a.
For TA - 1AGI = 3.35d.a.
Crit DMG+1 "Value"
For SA - +1%CritDmg = ~4.52d.a.
For TA - +1%CritDmg = ~5.09d.a.

Guess-work aside, this also doesn't account for potential crits that might occur on offhand rounds. But that is a really small contribution anyway.

Now if we want, we can loosely compare ASA to Tumbler Trunks for TA.

Edit: So this estimation would place Tumblers a decent bit above ASA for SA, but ASA significantly above Tumblers for TA.

Edited, Jul 15th 2010 8:19am by Shamaya