Help with off hand choice can i have it?Follow

Hello I will give you only my opinion, because iam in the same boat.

Fire Kila / Paraz OAT 2 - 3 times and fusseto ws 10% damage / paraz OAT 2 - 3 times. I got a massive increase in WS frecuenty with this combos. "But i lose a great Dot damage"

When i use Thief / Warrior in abbysea, if berserk is up or the tonic.

Auric dagger / Rapidus sax. The best DOT combo maybe the new "blau/sir". I Need check if blau/ Rapidux sax are faster than this combo. But maybe is the best atm. The best DOT and Good WS damage.


Fire kila / Fusseto WS 10% damage.

This is a delicious and powerlicious pure WS combo my damage jumped A LOT. And get even stronger, when berserk and the tonic is up. I love this set. But this combo lose some DOT and WS frencuenty.


Then if you want be a balanced thief, Auric / Rapidus sax. Have the best DOT and Good ws damage combo. Blau / Rapidux sax need to be checked but is a solid cheap and easy to get combo atm.

If you want WS spam and maybe your enemies are dying in 5 - 8 segs. Fusseto / Paraz OAT 2 - 3 times.

If you want STRONG WS. Fire kila / Fusseto is for you.

Best dot dagger combo outside of Mandau/Twashtar is Auric/Clement skean and it beats Auric/Rapidus at every DW level. Assuming 15% haste, DW2, supp earring and +3DW mirke:

+5%
clement skean/auric 21.79770519
clement skean/rapidus sax 21.60629078
auric/rapidus sax 21.56494694
kila+1/auric 21.55612789
clement skean/kila+1 21.42933676

+10%
clement skean/auric 23.55558464
auric/rapidus sax 23.30405556
kila+1/auric 23.2945253
clement skean/rapidus sax 23.21870054
clement skean/kila+1 23.028541

+15%
clement skean/auric 25.62186399
auric/rapidus sax 25.34827096
kila+1/auric 25.33790471
clement skean/rapidus sax 25.09117639
clement skean/kila+1 24.8856814


At Marchx2 and haste, the numbers are closer but the Clement skean/Auric still wins. Really no reason to use the rapidus since the dex/acc dagger exists.

edit: copy/paste fail. Changed some things around for accuracy and threw in a few more dagger combinations. Also note-worthy that the daka+1/auric tops all of these dagger combos as far as dps goes.

And yes, I accounted for the haste.




Edited, Sep 28th 2010 1:31pm by Jayjs

Cleaned it up a bit. Personally, I settled on dex Kila+1/Auric, but I may want to consider the Auric/Magnus combo. At best though, it'll just hold me over until Daka+1/Auric if getting those coins of birth was really as annoying as it was yesterday.

@Jay: Banalaty did however touch upon a relevant point regarding tp calculations. The tp gained by a dagger under 180 delay is different from a dagger with 180 delay and over.
It is best explained in this chart:
http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/File:Tpgain.jpg

As you can see in the chart the relative tp gain for a 150 delay dagger is higher then a dagger which has, lets say, 190 delay.

and minor nit pick: thunder kila +1/sax should be included in the list of dagger combo's since it is mentioned in this discussion.

And fair enough, I'll give him that. That automatically doesn't mean it should be used over other dagger combos. There are many aspects to choose a dagger combo than just that. If tp gain really is the end-all-be-all, I'd sport the Rapidus/Sirocco combo.

....now that you mention it though, I should probably get one so I can do this for kicks. Sounds fun.


Banalaty: Err, this probably will get lengthy and I really, really don't want to go through it, nor do I want to spend anymore time arguing about which dagger combo is .1% better than the other, which is true, more or less. They're all really, really close performance-wise. I've acknowledged some time earlier that as dps drops, you gain stats and it's up to the player where he/she is comfortable with the compromise between the two. You obviously found yours, I just don't happen to agree.

Out of contention.

I've seen some ppl use it to plant a big SATA WS at the start of a big fight.

Maybe if you had Atma of the razed ruin and wanted to see uber uber evisceration numbers it might be nice?

Edited, Oct 7th 2010 3:42pm by ThiefKiller

i just got sax. i havent got to use it that much but i think when i upgrade my paz it might be better with 36dmg 40%OTA 211 delay. but i really dont know because the haste and acc for off hand plus low delay of sax

Oh nonono, you're way too low. Up until recently I've been eyeballing my numbers just because I already knew what gear I wanted but I decided to collect some data this past week and find out how I was really doing. I began with the Frigatebird camp in abyss-mis (almost all my data is in abyss mis). My tp setup was this

Thunder Kila +1/ Fire Kila , X-Bow and bolts
Turban, Love Torque, Brutal, Suppa
Mirke, Homam, Toreador's, Rajas
Belenos's, Swift, Raider's +1, Homam

Ignoring the dex components I have a boost of 52 accuracy directly

My baseline dexterity is now a whopping 90, my gear adds 30 more dexietrity. I had + 20 dexterity from cruor bonuses granting me 90 + 50 == 140 dexterity (nice isn't it) thus 140/2 == 70. My dagger skill is capped at 347 (this includes skill from love torque and 8 merits). The formula for accuracy after 200 skill has not changed thus 147 x 0.9 == 132.3 which is floored to 132. What we have is the following

200 + 132 + 70 + 52 == 454 accuracy

Now for the fun part. I parsed at approximately 90% hitrate, and when we popped manorha I parsed a smidge less. I gathered some more data today and I was parsing in the high 80% range against overking apkallu's. The results were similar against the other mobs in the zone. I was eating red curry buns and my weaponskill set has (literally) the same accuracy as my tp set so I know my weaponskills were hitting at the same rates as my melee. 350 accuracy is not near enough to get by in abyssea, you'll have that naked without meriting your dagger just because of the increased skill caps and lvl 85 dex bonuses + martello.

Now for the second fun part.... I'm glad I was eating meat. My weapon's base damage is 41 before I consider fSTR and my average damage per hit was in the vicinity of 50-55 on most mobs so I was roughly in the 1.0-1.2 pDIF range using red curry buns. If I was capped I would have seen approximately 90-100 damage averages so I was way way waaaay off (I am ignoring apkallu in these numbers because they cheat. Counter ruins all integrity of damage dealt to them). I've only collected very small samples at a few camps and I didn't bother saving anything because it was intended for my own personal use with gear selections, but I thought I should at least bring it up since the above was mentioned. Banalaty said that attack does not cap at 999, there just isn't a fourth digit in the interface to show your true rating. This is true, it may as well be a hidden stat just like accuracy and R.Acc R.Atk M.ACC, M.ATK etc etc after it goes over 999. I bet the same is also true of accuracy and evasion.

We are in an era where every mob we face is a new encounter and very little is known of our true ratings. This is an exciting time and it's fun because everyone is kind of a newbie again even if we know what we're doing since we're fighting never before seen monsters in a new world. Because of all that uncertainty I have reverted to gearing by the basic rules (IE 1 accuracy is always better than 1 attack. TP in accuracy rings at all times, balance out accuracy in weaponskill against damage stats on applicable pieces (belenos's mantle is a better multi hit ws piece than foragers for example, and jupiter's/rajas rings are king over toreador's etc etc (your accuracy has to be really low for this to not be true and by then all hope is lost)), and haste gives exponentially returning gains so the more the merrier). There is one exception I am making and that's food. Just as pizza runs on percentile gains so does meat, and red curry buns are more affordable than ever now that dragon meat is dropping from gold pyxides left and right. My base thf/nin attack is 402 and that's low in this new world. Red curry buns give my thf/nin 100 attack and my thf/war gains.... a lot of attack (approximately 115-120 attack when zerked) without outside buffs. By the time I'm level 99 I expect I'll be able to use the entire 150 attack red curry caps at all by myself based solely on the fact that we'll be inhereting an additional 84 dagger skill from leveling up alone at the rate's we're going. Marinara pizza +1 will always be 11% accuracy and 55 attack and the difference between 55 attack vs. 115-150 attack is pretty damn huge. At this stage in the game I want to try and make a meat build work.

Future plans: I will be getting my rogue's bonnet +1 soon so I'm using my tp anwig as my standard piece fulltime for now. AF3 hat is the best of both worlds so it won't matter in another week or two anyway so I err on the side of safety (if I use the accuracy tp anwig >> turban). I also intend to add in the rapidus sax and consider re-evaluating my stance on ranged and ammo options as well as finish my rogue's culottes +2. At least for melee the sax + AF3 hat will keep me in contention even with curry but I want the Aias Bonnet instead of my heca cap +1 if I can get ahold of it. If I'm fighting something really evasive like the raptor NM itself I'll just go by the old tried and true. Use shark bite!! I dealt 1600-1700 damage shark bites thf/nin and slightly better thf/war and with feint the thing fell apart pretty well. I didn't need pizza on the regular raptors, but I definitely want the added boost of accuracy on sax and af3 to seal up some gaps.

Edited, Oct 9th 2010 9:33am by Melphina

I've had two tp sets for a while with the only change being the turban and I had been using my turban version to help some riends with trials earlier in the day so by default I had it on. I've been using the tp anwig more often than not inside abyssea but I had forgotten to swap when I entered and I figured I'd just run with it. The lesser mobs aren't hard so I used it for some data collection. It did help me to realize how we may have been underestimating these mobs stats because even though I could cap accuracy on Frigatebirds with a few minor tweaks it doesn't account for the more evasive mobs like raptors or the gnats in other areas like atthwa. They have a lot of defense too because my thf/nin is really hurting for attack (1.0-1.2 average pDIF is normal when I /nin). I've gotten into the habit of buying a stalwart's drink and champions drink for almost every NM I fight and that helps big time (this is also a reason I keep my turban build for abyssea, since stalwart's drink is really powerful). If I /nin and pop red curry + stalwart's I'll be over 700 attack and if I thf/war with stalwart's + berserk I can hit 850 *ish* attack which tears through that defense like a hot butter knife. But stalwart's drinks are only 3 minutes (I think) duration and sometimes the fights take longer if I'm 3-4 manning, and I always sub /nin when I go NM hunting with a few exceptions because I like to tank when I can. Just like bolts have returned with a vengence so has hate control!!, as when you only have 3-4 people fighting a NM you want that beast aimed at utsusemi or third eye as much as possible. I've had my evasion capped for weeks and I play upon that by /nin when I fight most nms (percy is an exception because the worm uses almost everything -ga), but it seriously impedes my DD by doing so. Manorha only procs his silence aura when damnation dive LANDS so I try and block it with my shadows as much as possible, thus canceling out a lot of silence. I HATE tanking Asanbosam because bat tp moves suck but I've done well so far, and funereal apkallu is a bastard with permanent 80 fists (not as bad as 2hr but damn close).

That was a bit off topic but my point is that while the mobs inside abyssea are easy to low man they DO have some pretty high stats. We just have more than enough max HP and healing capabilities to hold our own. If you want to truly excel against them however you're going to need to keep up in gear and buffs. Their defense and evasion are both sizable and it's difficult to gear for both at once. Since accuracy is first and foremost more important than attack I have chosen an accuracy heavy tp set, but if you go below 1.0 average pDIF your damage takes a nosedive and that's easy to do without buffs. I'm looking for both accuracy and attack and basing my selections on how large of an increase I get versus the sacrifice I would make on the opposing side.

after i get af3+1 hat finished, i plan on changing my anwig to evasion/haste. coupled with the subtle blow and minor hp boost already on the hat, the anwig becomes a solid defensive piece.

there have been a bunch of new (good) subtle blow options added lately. heed ring, asasaya's collar, nusku's sash (which will end up being the best tp belt as well if future gear allows us to cap haste without the waist slot), etc. with the addition of breeze kilas and eva bonus 5 as well as a natural higher level, the need for hardcore evasion set ups is almost nonexistant. subtle blow will continue to be more important as levels rise.