THFs rejoice! Native DW for you in September update!Follow

SE gonna give native Dual Wield to THF Job!

http://www.playonline.com/pcd/topics/ff11us/detail/5757/detail.html

Let's celebrate!

Eh, we're probably still going to have to sub nin for most things anyway. A THF without shadows can be a dead THF real quick. We'll have to wait and see what tier they give us I guess.

This was a welcome surprise to me as well. If they hold true to the buffing method's they've been using for the past several updates then yeah, we'll probably get get a good dual wield rating here. I'm hoping so for sure. That changes a lot of things to consider.

Auric Dagger -- This could very well become the dagger of choice.

New Sub Job considerations

/Warrior -- Offensive benefits include attack bonus I (10 attack), Double Attack, Berserk, Warcry and at level 90 Aggresssor. Defensive benefits include defender. Interesting note is provoke also makes a nice fast claim tool as well for hunting nm's. Thief/war with natural dual wield would have some serious power behind it. I don't know where and when it would be most viable but I'll be playing around with it at least a little bit.

/Samurai -- Offensive Benefits include store tp II (sTP + 15), Meditate, and Zanshin + Sekkanoki while defensive benefits include 3rd eye. I've seen a lot of dancer's subbing /nin but they operate differently than us and their tp is their life blood whereas ours relies more on our DoT . This would be a much weaker sub offensively than /warrior without question.

The old sub job considerations haven't changed other than adding in whatever natural dual wield we would get. Of course if we do get something like Dual Wield IV then we could still sub /nin and have some extreme attack speed with the safety of shadows. I'm wondering how big of an issue losing our protection from shadows will turn out to be, and where it can and can not be overcome.

EDIT: Edited out Zanshin in accordance with the info posted by Veggeto below. Also this deserves a quote

Seriha Wrote:


DAMN that's nice O.o. Interestingly enough

Acuben's Helm
Wyvern Earring
Homam (hands)
speed/v belt
skadi's chausses
homam (feet)

is 25% haste without the bullwhip belt and if I threw in bullwhip it would raise it to 26% which is the true gear haste cap according to rounding. While the acuben's helm drops accuracy by 10 the sub job counters this with accuracy bonus 1. And of course there's always homam/acp legs and ocelot's trousers to consider with a turban build. That's pretty wicked!

Edited, Aug 25th 2010 11:06am by Melphina

To quote Tychus Findlay (Marine in cinematic announcing Starcraft 2 after 12 years since Starcraft 1)

"Hell, it's about time"

In other news.....Guess i better level my war sub >_>. I havent been /war in so long i was planning on just not leveling it. Between thf and drg, I only need /sam, /nin, /dnc, and /blu. Guess i better get /war back in the mix.

Edited, Aug 25th 2010 10:28am by Banalaty

/DRG would probably be my big group sub of choice with native Dual Wield. First being I'd swap out my Brutal for Wyvern (Suppa in other slot). Sub itself brings and ATK and ACC bonus. Jumps can provide additional TP, as well as being able to Triple Attack. The hate shedding properties of Jumps also allow us to yank someone else's enmity and then get rid of it without us eventually having to be careful if we're meleeing, too. If you can get your hands on a Speed or Bullwhip belt, 25% equipment Haste opens up, too.

THF/DRG? SATA+Assassin's Charge+Jump with 2 multi hit weapons? I wonder what that will do...

I've been thinking about Thief/dragoon for the past hour and I don't think I like it as much as I do thief/war for general group setups. The reason /war is dangerous comes more from lacking shadows than it does from the inability to shed hate. If you're geared and buffed well you can take hate with normal melee swings. I don't think thief/dragoon will be any less in the line of fire than thief/war. High Jump is on a timer and if you're looking to sub /drg for an attempt at hitting the haste cap you're GOING to be getting struck. 25% gear haste + 13% dual wield (auric mirke and suppa) will attract just as much attention as the benefits /war affords. Regular jump actually increases enmity whereas High Jump only reduces enmity by 50% once every 3 minutes. That's not enough to protect you any more than /war defender is. Honestly if you sub /dragoon you're getting an offensive sub with higher haste whereas if you sub /war you're getting an offensive sub with raw power. BOTH combos are equally capable of getting plowed due to the DoT.

Furthermore while jumps may give you tp double attack is going to do that better. /war sub with brutal versus /dragoon sub with wyvern is a difference of 15% double attack rate versus 5% haste and I can't say for sure that the 5% haste automatically wins. Furthermore /war has berserk and warcry and very soon it will have aggressor whereas /dragoon will only have haste and conserve tp going for it. /war sub's double attacks can activate during weaponskill as well and berserk/aggressor will do far more for weaponskills than /dragoon's acc bonus. I have said for a long time that thief/war is a very dangerous job combo if you're talking about a TP burn scenario. When /dancer got dual wield last update I restated this point. Now it's our turn to get dual wield (at last!!) but I'd advise you to be careful because it packs a load of power with it and soaks up damage when it gets struck just as easily.

With that out of the way I'll say this. YES! I will be trying out thief/war!! Thief DOES have a natural defense against damage other than our shadows and that's our A+ Evasion rating. My evasion set is pretty damn good and if I'm pulling hate I will swap to it to shield me. I can foresee us in the near future discussing the need for a good evasion build and trying to make /war sub work so I'll start with mine.

Optical Hat --- Ritter Gorget -- Elusive Earring -- Elusive Earring
Aurore Doublet -- War Gloves +1 -- Breeze Ring -- Jelly Ring
Boxer's mantle, Scouter's Rope, Raven Hose, Aurore Gaiters

Now here's an interesting thought. The raven set has a large amount of -enmity which aides in enmity decay and can be coupled with novia.
Raven Jupon -- Evasion +9, Enmity -9
Raven Bracers -- Evasion +6, enmity -5
Raven Hose -- Evasion + 6, enmity - 6
Raven Gaiters -- Evasion +5, enmity -5
Novia Earring -- Evasion +1, enmity - 7

That adds a large amount of evasion while silmultaneously reducing enmity by a whopping 32%. It's a fun thought and one I'd like to discuss further with everyone elses input.

Edited, Aug 25th 2010 12:48pm by Melphina

Just curious why you would make a hybrid type evasion set and not just go all out. You could replace the jelly ring with an alert ring (which is duoable) (+6), aurore gaiters with dance shoes+1 (+2), ritter gorget with evasion torque (+1 assuming 1 skill = 0.9 evasion), aurore doublet with SH+1 (+2), and one elusive with novia (+2) (since you are talking about it as a possibility). That would get you 13 more evasion from things which are relatively easily obtainable.

No it wasn't, if I recall. The job they said they were giving Dual Wield to was BLU, who got only DW1.

I want to believe, but man I know the pattern says DW1 or 2, tops. ; ;

Please DW3 or higher, please!


EDIT: @ Melphina -enmity gear won't assist in enmity decay, only hinder it's production. For instance, all melee strikes will generate less enmity than they would, but the decay of enmity would still be the same if I recall, according to Kanican's LJ.

Edited, Aug 25th 2010 1:55pm by ElvaanTHF

THF DW should be on par with DNC DW, only seems right. The reason BLU have DW1 is because all BLU traits are level one traits. Hopefully we will get more in the future, but its a start.

There is a point where evasion caps and adding more no longer works. Since we're dealing with an 80% evasion rate anyway you're going to get hit 1/5 times no matter what you do so I adjusted a few pieces to accomodate that. What I listed was my current build but I may consider altering it a bit.

Aurore Gaiters-- you trade 2 evasion for 2% haste and 5 dex. Haste lowers utsusemi recast as well and up until now my builds have focused mostly on /nin play. The DoT and dex were worth the trade imo.

Ritter Gorget -- The most an eva torque will give you is 7 evasion but at level 75 I always got 6 from it because I lost a point to rounding. The Ritter adds to the max hp count which the eva torque does not. Up until now I preferred extra enmity so I didn't mind it increasing enmity. To be fair I also forgot about that little fact because I wasn't concerned.

Aurore Doublet -- Just like the feet I'm sacrificing 2 evasion for more DoT friendly stats. The blend of 2% double attack, 4 str, 4 dex, 4 agi (if you consider lowering enemy crit rate), with 10 eva/r acc/ and acc appealed to me more than simply adding 12 eva/acc and 20 hp.

Novia Earring -- Coupled with not caring about enmity and the fact that evasion caps at 80% I didn't deem it a necessary upgrade and never bought it to save gil.

Jelly Ring-- I figured 5% pDT would benefit me during the 1/5 hits landed more than a few more eva since I had a reliable set already and risked not maxing out 80% eva rate on a few higher end mobs.



I forgot it tacked that on. I merited maximum enmity increase 4 times though. I honestly wonder if worrying about enmity gear is worth it when we're talking about dual wielding /war. I'm so decked out I don't think it would help me much. I just mentioned it to see what others thought.



Yeah, I worded that poorly. I was thinking of overall enmity in relation to that of your party members since they'll be building enmity at full rates. I don't know if it would be worth considering though since this is /war we're dealing with and it's just... well dual wielded speed + berserk + 15% double attack is extremely potent when you're geared right. In my case after I pull hate I'd probably only lose main hate to another melee's weaponskill or a trick attacked version of my own on another person.

Edited, Aug 25th 2010 3:39pm by Melphina

Right, but how can you be sure you are hitting that point unless you have fought a specific mob and parsed it out and/or know its accuracy already? Evasion builds are already going to gimp your damage output in favor of survival, so why not go all out? I've never even looked into a -PDT build on THF since I generally played /NIN and used my evasion build to get up Ichi. /WAR is going to make me have to rethink things.

A valid point. I'll look into adding the eva torque and scp harness +1 back into my eva set. I no longer have my dance shoes +1 and those are a pain to find on the auction house, but I'll see what I can do with it.



I think there are instances where a PDT piece is a good choice. Denali Hands, Jelly ring, and the recently added fugacity beret for starters. You can build the desultor tassets with 7 evasion and 4% -PDT as well. I augmented my tassets with 3% haste and critical hit damage + 3% to make them a hybrid speed/damage option for my sa/ta macroes. I could redo the fight but I really don't want to. I'm rather fond of my tassets choice and I added aurore gaiters and skadi's mask into my SA build giving my sa a total of 9% haste and my TA a total of 7%. I have suppa in my ta build as well but I'm reluctant to pass up hollow for suppa in my trick attack macro. I use this for my standard setup and I'm pleased with the results.

Edited, Aug 25th 2010 4:35pm by Melphina

SA + Mercy Stroke

TA + Mercy Stroke

Skillchain: Darkness



This.



This basically, only change it to "TP Floor removal" "2H buff" "Astral Ring change" ect.



Edited, Aug 25th 2010 7:33pm by Lobivopis

Maybe its just me...but I can't see myself subbing /war for anything other than tanked fights (HNMs etc), which I am fine with.

In events like limbus, dyna, Abysea, meripo etc, anything other than a TAWS will probably get you killed unless you are swapping out to a max evasion set, holding damage, TP or all of the above. Any one of which would really chew into the damage bonus /war gives anyway. Plus we all know how much tp burn DD's love to be trick attacked amirite?

/goodbye to using collaborator or accomplice at all.

Whereas if I am /nin, I can still idle in my regular TP gear and maybe cast a Ni before another DD grabs hate.

I am still not convinced that THF will get a significant DW trait, although I am hopeful. IF its not AT LEAST 3+, its useless. But SE loves to give us useless crap (Hai2u Despoil) so I am quite skeptical.

I don't think our old way of thinking during old events will be applicable for too long. We're going to be level 85 soon and lvl 90 before years end meaning older mobs will miss us more often and hit for less damage as they become lower and lower on the relative scale. Meanwhile we can crank up the DD stats with no concern of accuracy and tear them apart. Subbing /war in limbus may be safe by level 90 with stuff dying before it gets off many attacks. Healers and support classes are growing just as fast as we are with stronger gear and spells. The ability to recover from and mitigate damage dealt by level 75 events should be child's play by the end of the grind. We're talking about a group of level 85-90 (and one day higher) players taking on decent challenge level mobs with level 90+ abilities, gear, and spells. Much of the NEW content is stripping us of our utsusemi dependency. Abyssea experience alliances... you get more exp per individual whilst having a freaking alliance to cover your butt. 18 people versus a few mobs means you don't NEED utsusemi if your group is balanced. New Notorious Mobs, many of which completely bypass utsusemi have been added. There are NM's where utsusemi is required (Megantereon anyone?) and NM's where utsusemi won't do crap as the nm's that use -ga's attacks use a lot of them (almost exclusively in some instances).

FFXI is going through a revolutionary phase and I have a feeling that by level 99 the game will be nothing like it was at 75. S-E is releasing powerful buffs and spreading them across all the job classes while simultaneously taking the NM's to new levels. Sub jobbable convert, natural dual wield, an exp environment where black mages are highly sought after, "starting" gear that rivals old sets, and higher end weapons and armor with mouth watering enhancements, and new job abilities both high and mid level are a few of the things we've gotten that people never expected we'd ever see. We have four more updates before we hit level 99 and if each one is as revolutionary as the first we can't discredit anything yet. Thief/War may well be viable at level 99. S-E has a lot of freedom to work with and the old limitations to develop around have been broken on both player as well as the enemy side.

Edited, Aug 25th 2010 10:26pm by Melphina

And the case for Evisceration continues to increase.

I'm not sure if anyone has gotten the new crit body piece yet, but that combined with our newer crit dmg+ trait and now fencer, is making thf/war sound mighty beastly to me.
Edit: Oh yeah single weapon only -.-

I'm actually worried about how much damage I'll be taking. Thf will pretty much be on the same /nin status as Mnk.
Do they have any idea how beastly they just made DD thief in the right situations? You can often get away with /war in Abyssea parties and I know I should be able to /war in exp parties if I want to be cheeky and bring my PL.


DW IV is 30% delay. Since dancer got it, that's just what I'm expecting them to give to thief. I'll keep my fingers crossed so I won't be disappointed if it's something lower, but that's really what I expect.
Add current standard equip: Suppa, Mirke Wardecors and Auric Dagger, and that becomes 43%. Ridiculous.

For zerging, if so desired we can use Krabkatoa head, 1% haste neck, /drg w/ earring, dusk gloves +1, ocelot legs, and homam feet, for 23% haste while still able to wear something that might look intriguing, Nusku's Sash.

I don't know what the DW on that sash is, but if it's 5%, it could be situationally better for dmg than a belt with haste.
If we're starting off with 43% DW and if we have 26% equip haste and 15% haste spell, 5% DW would still be better than a 5% haste belt. That could be something to think about; I'd like to know how much DW is on that thing.



This could just be flat out ridiculous. I'm excited lol. I've been binging starcraft 2 and even started to play FFXIV beta, but thief getting treated right really restores my interest in XI again.

If they give us DW IV, 28->43% DW is an approximate 26% DPS increase. /war D.A. added, factoring in T.A., is a 6.5% increase. Compound that together for a 34% increase in DMG. And we haven't even factored in Berserk, fencer, native attack bonus, and eventually aggressor. Whatever the settings, I sure as hell have never been 34% behind in damage when competing with neither the best Apoc on my server, nor the best Mnk, nor the best War. If SE does things right, thief with or without mandau will be something to fear. As it should be.

Edited, Aug 26th 2010 10:01am by Shamaya

What would THFs do if they found out they get DWI at level 15, DWII at level 35, DWIII at level 55, DWIV at 75??? I know, SE is implementing the Job trait in the same update that takes us to level 85, but nothing prevents SE from making DWIV level 75.

Can anyone guess what could happen at level 95?

Speculation:

The introduction of dnc dual wield was such that someone at max level at the time of the update (lvl 75) would see an improvement over subbing /nin (ie: DW2 -> DW3), and make a further gain upon reaching the new cap (DW4 @ 80).

I would therefore expect the same pattern for thf. DW3 would be in place for lvl 80s, and DW4 at lvl 85. One could then extrapolate backwards and expect DW tiers at levels 25, 45, 65 and 85.

If the Parazoniums continue to improve I wonder if whether at some point /WAR and the +Double Attack version might become better than the OAT?

So um...no DW until we hit 83 and increases from there....so yeah DW1 it looks like >.>

Great. ;/ Well it is kind of silly to overpower us so ridiculously with a DWIV

I still wouldn't consider DWI to be useless, though, pre-90. Sacrifice 5% DW, aka more than 5% increased hits, in place of 10% d.a., aka less than 10% increased hits. Not to mention berserk, etc. So certainly not worthless.

They did also say "with further improvements to the traits to come." But at 99 we're probably looking at a 15% natural DWII vs a 25% DW3 ;/

I thought that native traits over-ride the same traits from sub jobs. If that is the case, we will lose DWII with nin sub once we ding 83 and lose the opportunity we had for DWIII at 90. Please tell me my recollection is wrong. If I'm right, this is a huge nerf.

If this turns out to be the case I think I really will quit FFXI. I'm serious.



Edited, Aug 27th 2010 9:38am by Lobivopis

Traits don't work that way. A BLU can get MAB 1 naively but if their /BLM or /RDM they still get the MAB2 from the sub. Don't worry you get to keep the DW from your jobs, but I seriously think SE is screwing the pooch here. THF should be getting DW at the same level that DNC gets it ... /sigh.

^ this. Same tier traits do not stack in any way. Multiple tier traits, only the highest takes effect. ie: Drg gets atk bonus 1. /war gives atk bonus 1. Drg/War has Atk bonus 1. /Drk has atk bonus 2 (lv 30). Drg/Drk =atk bonus 2. Same with Drg/Rng and acc bonuses, mages and MAB, HMP, MDB and everything else.

If there was some retarded thing where DW2 /nin doesnt overwrite DW1 from Thf main that would be completely unprecedented in the history of FFXI among all job traits in the game. Highly, highly unlikely.

That said, DW1 is friggin lame as hell. We will have a tiny window of thf/war with DW1 vs DW2 (10 vs 15%) till 85. Come level 90, it will likely be back to /nin all over again.

Lv 90 scenario: We stay with DW1 (DW1 at 83, almost no chance of DW2 by 90). Now its 10%DW /war vs 25% DW /nin. We already know how that turns out. We have been doing 15% DW2 vs /war comparisons for years. 10% vs 25% is the same but even worse because that 15% boost /nin would have over /war (10% vs 25%) will be exponentially better than the 0% DW vs 15% since DW has inreasing returns. Back to square 1 except that 15% boost from /nin is even better than the old 0-15% were working with now.

Post lv 90 We get DW2 (maybe). Now its 15%/war vs 25% /nin. It will still be in the same ballpark /war, but with /war having to hold back without all that much of a damage boost, i cant imagine it being very practical considering it wont be OMGBBQ more damage as it would if we were say DW4/war.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________

This is really frustrating. I would have been ecstatic with DW4 though thats honestly more than i realistically expected or feel we needed, but was honestly expecting DW2 now and 3 available by 99 matching /nin.

I was really expecting a larger boost considering in the same breath, they are 'adding hate manipulation spells'. As lol as hate control is these days, I liked the idea of spreading it around so overall hatecontrol for groups would go up. But with the expected result i have been pushing for in most of our thf update wishlist type threads. Either give us more tactical/support functions (obviously not with LOLdespoil and new hate control spells to others) OR push us back in the rat race with a significant DD boost and leave our support in the current rather subtle state. I was really hopeful that SE had gotten off the fence and chosen a direction and it was looking like a big boost in the DD direction via DW. After seeing the dnc update, i was actually very positive about the potential (like many here). This is just sad. SE still hasnt gotten off the fence about what they want thf to do.

since lv 75 we have gotten: Worst excuse for a support JA in existence (loldespoil), 5% crit boost, and now.....DW1. We havent made any ground in any direction. DDs are getting more DD boosts. Support jobs are still moving ahead in the support division. We hare just falling behind from every angle. When it comes to thf, SE needs to (in the words of my HS band director :P) its time to sh*t or get off the pot. Pick a path for thf and commit to it. Stop halfassing this sh*t and get off the fence. sh*t or get off the pot.