Old player back for adviceFollow

Hey guys I've returned after a long time, its been about two years. I've been looking around at some of the gear available and daggers and stuff, but since theres some pretty hardcore theorists/mathematicians in here I figured I'd ask. What is currently the best standard for daggers? I'll take any info really, since I just registered Abbyssea today and I'd like to get things underway. I've also looked into the Empyrean dagger, is that any good? Also how is it that people are easily capping haste these days? Check my gear links below so you get an idea of the time period I'm from lol. Thanks again guys as always :)

Michi

edit: also is MistressMelphina still around here? :D

Edited, May 27th 2011 4:19pm by Michimeow

I just read SirEagleStrike's entire thread a few down so that answered most of my questions but I still have a few of my own. This new Twashtar dagger (besides being insanely hideous) does it have any other drawbacks? Does it perform the same outside of Abbyssea or is it an excellent weapon only in that zone? I've come back with the interest of being a casual player, but I'm hearing alot of "this is easy, but its time consuming". Which is no different than grinding away levels to 75 in the first place. On the upside alot more items are available to people who arent sporting huge shells.

The Raider's attire set +2 still only has 16% total haste, with the twilight belt its still only 23%. With the Sax dagger its 24 shy 1 of the cap. So how is it people can avoid using sax and still cap? I'm hugely uninformed of the current gear so bear with me lol. Also, the sax dagger seems like a great offhand, better than Sirocco kukri, has anyone actually run a parse with identical sets of gear except using lets say Twilight/Sax vs. Twilight/Triplus? I would imagine that dps would be better with the /sax

I do have quite a few friends who have multiple high level jobs so I'm sure forming parties to get somethings done wont be very difficult. I read up on the stagger and it seems like I have alot of stuff to learn lol. I'm sure I can learn that from friends and such. As far as getting on the road with THF is there any gear I should be focusing on getting soon? I'm still 75, what about sj? Is /nin still the best for dps now that thf has dual wield or is /war the way to go? So many questions and I'm still on the first day back to FFXI. Thanks for all the advice and help ahead of time :)

edit: after reading SES's thread I realize that there isnt so much of an emphasis on dps or trying to deal massive amounts of damage. So forgive me, I feel rather lost. Before, I always tried to play at the best of my ability. I got the some of the best gear that I could reach at that time. And THF was considered a trash DD, particularly because of all the christmas thfs running around (rogue's pants and scorpion harness). So alot of my emphasis of THF went to being the best that I could be to prove to others that THF was actually worth a damn. If all that past has been finally laid to rest, and theres not so much emphasis on being effective and what not... what is there to do besides just sit and grind for gear? I feel so lost lol. Thanks for any and all responses :)

Michi

Edited, May 28th 2011 2:11am by Michimeow

Thanks for your reply Wolf it was super helpful in putting things into perspective. I'd rate you up if I could but I've never figured out how. As far as essential gear I pretty much have 99% of it already, you can check my linkies in the sig to get an idea. I've been reading up on Synergy but I'm still a tad confused by the idea of a joint crafting effort. Can someone explain Synergy to me in layman's terms and how it relates upgrading gear like salvage sets, and hecatomb? While I'm extremely disappointed that the cursed items I had sitting on me on my return are worth nothing now, I'm considering that I may use that to my advantage to get myself a full heca+1 set (since i have bc 100+3), but only if its upgradable somehow. How are the upgrades determined? Is there a list somewhere of available upgrades similar to the 3 bulls*** expansions that had the 3 items with 2 selectable buffs each from a list.

I'm definitely liking the Twilight knife for sure. If there was an equivalent to the damage output of the Blau/Sir combo scaled to today which two daggers would that be non relic. So would include kilas if necessary. I'm sure you guys have had this question come up before. Thanks again as always :)

Thanks for going into more detail about it. For now since I'm still 75ish I'm gonna focus on getting all the Abbyssea stuff setup. Once I'm more acclimated with the recent changes and I'm 90 I'll start looking into the synergy stuff, since until then I really have no way to re-obtain n. abjurations.

I wouldn't say this is the best combo for sure. I personally dislike the Twilight because the tp drain hardly ever activates and with all the multi attacking we have going on it's difficult to say whether or not it's even saving you a round to weaponskill. The HP drain is ok but if you have good atmas you'll be putting out ridiculous damage and the en-drain effect is dwarfed to almost nothing. Going by the current understandings Twilight's 3% procs before tri attack so it's hard to say how that fits into everything. It's a good dagger but it's not necessarily the ultimate. I use a fire Kila +2/triplus knife combination myself. The fire Kila +2 has the highest DoT rating of any non empyrean weapon, and the extra 9 strength/24.5 attack is a lot. That said, I'm curious to know more about the oneiros knife. According to BG wiki Oneiros Knife comes from a Neo-Dynamia-Jeuno NM.

Oneiros knife intrigues me. It has no other distinguishing characteristics besides the 6 agi and the critical hit damage and it's DoT is slightly lower than Rapidus, but it's a high level weapon added last update. If that critical hit damage increase is 10% like x's knife I would say this is a very strong contender for the offhand slot. I'm curious to know what the crit damage ++ amount actually is, but I don't know of anyone who has one nor have I been able to find any testing data on it so for now the jury is out. I have a hunch we may be surprised by it though.

Edited, May 29th 2011 10:09am by Melphina

I never finished my Mandau and gave up on it once abyssea and the empyrean weapons came out. Consequently Twashter is better than Mandau at the current stage of the game so I'm not too upset. That's the weapon I'm working at but at a more leisurely pace than banalaty who finished his in a month or two timeframe. I'm sitting at 34 glav and 34 itza and I'll probably finish it to level 85 within another month or so.



A lot!! In order to hit level 85 twashter you have to do all the basic weapon trials and then the VNM's, 2 of which are monks, which takes you to the kartika phase. From there you need 50 glavoid shells to hit level 80, and then 50 itzaprotyl scales to hit level 85. Getting together Glavoid pop sets isn't hard but it's time consuming and if you choose to go the NM rout Adze and Minhaco are heavily camped . While the pop sets for the manticore and cockatrice can be bought off auction it'll cost you about 150k for both. Gold box farming is extremely random with 10 possible key items per KI box, 4 each for glavoid and chloris and 2 more for lacuvie so it's impossible to target one specific drop. No matter what you're spending time/money/resources. Since Rudra's Storm + aftermath is the goal you'll be spending a lot of time in atthwa farming gold boxes or trying to claim Tunga who is still an annoying ^%$#@ to proc red on because he spams so much magic and a lot of it is break-ga. The final tidbit is that each kill of glavoid/itza will reward you with 1 drop 100% of the time and a chance at a second drop. It appears that empyrean upgrade items are in their own class and weakness triggers have no effect on their drop rate so treasure hunter is the only way to boost your chances of 2 drops per kill. None of this is too difficult at level 90 with some competent friends, but it's a large time sink and if you try to zerg through it you risk some heavy burnout.

Elemental Kila +2 is fairly straightforward however and if you can get weather credit kills you can blow through them from your peeler to the finished kila +2 in roughly 6-10 hours. If you can get some friends to help you out you can cut that time down even more. I highly recommend trying to find weather appropriate mobs because you'll be getting 5 points per kill instead of one if weather is up, and it saves a lot of hassle if you're patient and can wait out appropriate game days.

I don't know how they figured it out but the in game weather forecast patterns have been mapped out by a group of individuals and posted here. That link is a comprehensive listing of the next three game day weather forecasts in every zone available. I don't know if it works like ffxiah.com and mines the info hourly or if they cracked the algorithm itself, but that chart is a huge help when doing weather trials.



The mobs must yield experience (easy prey or higher). Mobs inside abyssea DO count so if you can't find a suitable weather alternative there is always the option of waiting for appropriate game day and zerging an abyssea camp with your atmas to assist ya, but this is a lot more work because you only get 1 point per kill instead of 5 (or 6 if you're lucky enough to get both weather AND matching elemental game day outside abyssea).



Basically when you hit a mob you have a chance of increasing its level of treasure hunter just by meleeing it. This ability is specific to thief main ONLY, and it has a much higher chance of proccing when you use sneak or trick attack. When you melee you will occasionally get a message in your chat log indicative of the increase, and it happens much more when you land a sa or ta successfully. As for TH items our raider's poulaines +2 have TH +1 on them and at level 90 we got treasure hunter III base, so with TK + AA + AF3+2 feet we have base level TH 6 and our first proc will be TH7. The only way to reset treasure hunter is if the mob goes idle and regenerates a tic so getting KO'd in battle or mob going white but not losing aggro has no consequence at all. Treasure hunter is applied by any action you take on a mob (even shooting a bolt and missing) and AoEing a group of mobs with aeolian edge will silmultaneously apply TH to all mobs at once. The highest level of treasure hunter will overwrite any lower levels so treasure hunter gear only needs to be equipped for the FIRST hit and can be removed thereafter with no concequence, so when you're fighting NMs you only need your TK in offhand for the first strike. After that feel free to swap to a useful dagger combo and just use the TK offhand for the first hit of the next NM you pull and rinse/repeat.

I gave a full breakdown by example of TH proccing in great detail in this post Here

Edited, May 29th 2011 3:55pm by Melphina

Rudra's Storm is just as strong as Mercy Stroke. Both of them are one hit wonders focusing the brunt of their might into the first hit critical. With the level 90 Mandau tp boost you have

Mercy Stroke
60% strength Mod

100% TP-----200% tp-----300% tp
3.75 -------3.75-------3.75

Rudra's Storm
60% dexterity Mod

100% TP-----200% tp-----300% tp
3.25 -------4.25-------5.25


Since it runs off dexterity mod instead of strength mod it plays upon gear choices we're likely to be using anyway, and it has an increasing tp mod. At 100% tp Mercy Stroke is a little stronger than Rudra's but a 300% tp Rudra's is a lot better than Mercy stroke. The real difference between the two weapons is the aftermath though, whereas Mandau increases critical hit rate twashter "occasionally deals double damage", and it's a ridiculous increase to our DoT. Mandau, Vajra, and Twashter are all awesome weapons and tear up the field, but at the current phase of the game Twashter is in the lead. I've heard that s-e intends to boost mythic and relic again in a future update (it was mentioned on their official forms) to close the gap towards empyrean, but as far as I know they haven't released any specific details on how they intend to do that yet.



Old gear is outdated by auction alternatives and artifact 3 +2 as well as abyssea gear. A few pieces are still a pain to get (loki's kaftan) but most of them aren't too bad and upgrading is pretty cheap. So while you don't have the gil you used to, you won't have to pay much to get caught up either.

Edited, May 29th 2011 5:10pm by Melphina

Yes. After every qualifying kill you will receive a message that tells you how many kills are left in that trial. You can also buy a pair of magians spectacles from the moogle and look up your progress as well as the weather forecast in the field.

Edited, May 29th 2011 11:08pm by Melphina

Thank you guys! Thanks to you and some of my friends I've started the trials even though I'm only level 76 lol. Thank you Kalisa for that linky, and Melphina for the weather thing, its been SUPER helpful. Because of that I knocked down 2 trials in like 15 mins. <3 you guys

Since we're talking about ToTM daggers I have a question to ask. I'd like to know if anybody has experience with the fusetto +2, specifically the TP Bonus + 100 version. I'd like confirmation that you get the 100% TP bonus if you offhand it. Unlike martial knife which must be mainhanded the fusetto +2 makes a killer offhand weaponskill companion and has some pretty good DoT to it as well (D 38/delay 186 isn't bad at all). Since the store tp and weaponskill damage + 10% work in the offhand it's probably a given (and since it's tagged as rare I can only assume all versions work alike since you can only have one). This could even affect my atma choices because without twashter I like the GH/RR/SS combo but if I had a 100% tp bonus to evisceration's crit rate I'd probably choose RR/SS/AoA again since my weaponskill damage should be similar to the GH combo but with AoA I'd get more of them.

With that said, I may just start a Fusetto +2 this week myself. I think Twashter/Fusetto +2 (tp bonus + 100%) is my new dream dagger combo with RR/SS/AoA atmas. Whether stacked rudra's or solo evisceration it's wicked potent.

Edited, May 30th 2011 1:24pm by Melphina

Based on a quick look in my spreadsheet, if Oneiros is +5% crit damage it basically ties with Triplus. +10% would obviously be a bit better. I left it in the spreadsheet as 5% to be conservative.

Also went through and added TP Bonus in as a factor for weaponskills on thf (had only put it in 2h job spreadsheets before), and added the TP Bonus Fusetto (assuming it works in offhand, as rumored) and a TP Bonus Moonshade (with 4 att as the other augment).

Plugging in weapons to make sure it works, it looks like Twashtar/Fusetto is slightly ahead of Twashtar/Oneiros which is barely ahead of Twashtar/Triplus. Usual caveats that that's not an exhaustive configuration check.

Fusetto is Rare so you can only have one of any line (it also implies all fusettos work the same way), and it would be completely effed up if the store tp + 15 version only worked in the mainhand. Likewise I'm almost certain I read the weaponskill version works in the offhand shortly after abyssea was released but i could never find that post again. By that logic the TP bonus fusetto should too. I don't know anyone who has one though so I have no way to verify, hence why I ask.

Edited, May 30th 2011 3:58pm by Melphina

Interesting, when i first read words about tp fusetto working on off-hand i tried to simulate it in the spread sheet. Basically, i just set rudras tp at 100 to 4.25 and at 200 to 5.35. I think it still lose to triplus with that. I guess i can't really model tp bonus+100 like that?



I've read somewhere that the aftermath is based on our real tp. Real shame :\

If you look at the big picture of combining atmas and abyssites and key items I'd say the most powerful combo we could get (provided the offhand bonus is confirmed) is this



The level of synergy between that is godly. You have apoc's triple attack/set bonus/tp gain maxed, STRONG DoT, and a weaponskill where everything works together in perfect harmony. AoA/RR/SS are ALL significant increases to rudras damage, and when you combine a 100% TP mod you're looking at an average sa/ta rudra's ws damage of 7-8k+ on a majority of standard attack ratio mobs (no joke, its that wicked). In most cases you have to sacrifice something to get something, but this combination sacrifices almost nothing to maximize your all around performance. The only REAL sacrifice you make is the DoT rating of the fusetto +2 versus other choices, but ya know what? Fusetto +2 actually has a pretty astounding DoT rating. Damage 38/delay 186 is a 12.258 base damage DPS rating and while this ignores fstr and haste and etc, it's a GOOD rating. This is officially my new dream combo, and the thought of it just makes me drool.

Edited, May 30th 2011 6:38pm by Melphina

I find this funny because I decided long ago to level bard as my second job but never got around to it. I always planned to make it a battle bard though, with my blau dolch and my hecatomb for ws. :3

Heh. I have always been intrigued by the idea of battlebrd. At 75 it never had any shortage of haste gear, got Evis, can gear like a war (dusk, heca, kitty pants) has exccellent dagger selections (blau, magians, twash/mandau etc), and permanently has 2 songs of YOUR choice xD. Not to mention a few gems like the relic body (8dex, 8str, 8agi, 8vit, 18atk).

I just never leveled it at 75 because i was terrified of brd4life considering my only other jobs were Thf and Drg (later pld and rng, but i havent done much wiht either lately).

But since i got a twash and leveling is a joke (went 30>84 in 1 day on brd lulz. 84>90 the next) i figured, why the hell not. But i have been struggling for a good offhand. I have just been using my OAT dagger which is nice, but just doesnt feel quit right. I tried brd/war for the fencer trait and every hit being aftermath and zerk. I was quite disabointed in the brd/war escapade. TP was REALLY slow after years of thf/nin (also because wearing 2x dusk SUUUUCKS). I have since got the zelus tiara so i can take 1 piece of dusk off at least. Now i can go back to /nin and do 200TP rudra spam and keep aftermath up and have it rival evis, while keeping DW up and running.

Anyway, tangent aside, I am now on the 3rd trial for tp bonus dagger (300 cyclones on bsts ><). I might finish the whole thing by next week if things go decent.

I'm using Plaguebringer, Persistent Predator, and AoA. It has a combined 40 sTP, 15% triple attack, and 10 hp/tic regen. Works for me.

Edited, May 31st 2011 10:00pm by Melphina

hmm, this combo does sound delicious. Especially with being able to use AoA, RR, and the new uncapped crit damage from SS to full effect, and maintaining a high crit rate on evisceration. Just lol-eyballing, it sounds like a significant boost over a standard RR, GH, SS setup, particularly with Twashtar, but how is the improvement for the... Twashless thieves.

So have we gotten anywhere with proving that it works in the offhand? A simple test could probably be done using energy drain or something. Or is everyone still trying to weapon skill enough times to get it, lol.