Can Post-60 Thief achieve 100% TP within 30 seconds discussion

[Muu Yi]

This is carried over from the White Mage tips thread believe it or not. I didn't want to keep on spamming it with topic posts that are much more geared toward Thief job anyways so I decided to move it to this forum. Basically, this started with the discussion of the Haste spell. I made the following major statements:

After level 60, Thief has Assassin job trait which lets them split up Trick Attack and Sneak Attack. Doing this will allow them to do sneak attack or trick attack with weaponskill around every 30 seconds which is much more efficient for speeding through exp chains if skillchain and magic burst are your biggest forms of damage. And it is entirely possible for Thief to have over 100% TP within 30 seconds if they're given Haste.

And another poster thought I was making these statements up.

Now I would like to emphasize a couple key points before I describe the discussion further because I tried to word my initial statements carefully before posting them... I honestly was very surprised that someone didn't believe me.

Key point one... anything goes within the bounds of possibility. Nowhere did I make mention of not considering all the tools available to Thief post-60 to gain extra TP like Triple Attack, Double Attack (If sub Warrior), Dual Wield II, +Haste equipment, using ranged weapons, low delay dagger like Hornet's Needle, equipment which increases activation of Triple Attack or Double Attack, Merits in Triple Attack, or just plain getting hit in order to achieve 100% TP because there are many variety of ways of gaining TP for Thief. And I admit that at times there is quite a bit of luck involved in some of those particular extra TP being obtained such as Double Attack and Triple Attack activation, but I specifically wrote that 100TP in 30 seconds is entirely possible... which does not mean that I said it happens all the time without fail. That would imply that 100% accuracy is possible all the time, and I'm not implying that at all although Thief does have good accuracy compared to most jobs. At best, I believe accuracy to be around 95%... I mean while farming you can miss TWTBW mobs 30 levels lower than you with +40 accuracy.

Key point two... 100 TP gain in around 30 seconds which is not exactly 30 seconds. It is in that general time. The time spent just alerting party members to your readiness to skillchain can eat up a few seconds before you actually do your part of the skillchain. And if other members are behind you in TP you'll have to wait a few seconds for them as well. And unless you are cheating skillchains will more likely than not be performed exactly 30 seconds after the last one.

Okay, now that I've hopefully made that clear. Here are some of the contentions that have been made.

How much delay is 1 second actually equal to? I believe it to be 100 delay = 1 second, but Rones says it is actually 60 delay. I contended that if 60 delay = 1 second then Dark Knight's 600 delay weapons would take them 10 seconds to swing and Ranger's 500 delay bow would take over 8 seconds to fire. For clarity I count seconds in the following manner: "1 and 2 and 3 and" etc. As you watch job abilities like Sneak Attack tic down in the job menu they seem to match that speed at least in my mind. They claim that Ranged weapons react differently in delay, but I still don't see Dark Knight swinging only once every 10 second at the speed that I count. Also it is known that the maximum delay a weapon can have is 999 delay such as the infamous Relic Knuckles which allowed Monk to spam Asuran Fists. Based on 60 delay = 1 second Relic Knuckles would have a speed of 16.5 seconds which seems like a strange number to be the maximum delay and just to wait that long to strike twice seems just a bit too long.

Does there exist a base delay cap that no weapon can go under? The other poster, Rones, posted that 150 is the minimum delay when wielding one single weapon only. And that 300 is the minimum when dual-wielding. I don't believe this to be true personally, but I admit I could be wrong because I haven't done a whole lot of testing of this claim. But if it were true that means that Monk's Hundred Fist ability greatly breaks the minimum base delay cap as they are hitting at least once per second no matter what weapon they are wielding Club or Staff and what the regular delay was. With hand-to-hand it's at least twice per second since hand-to-hand normally hits twice per attack. I did the Boy's festival quest where you had to hit Samurai mobs with Spirit Great Katana weapons as Monk just so I could Hundred Fist with the Wooden Katana. Including misses, I made just around 26 strikes at the mob, a few swings were probably lost due to running towards it and it running away near the end of the 2-hour. Another thing that would be true if this minimum cap existed is that additional Haste wouldn't really help Thief attack faster if they're already using a 150 delay dagger as they would already be at the base delay.

I also had posted a link to a video of Thief/Warrior who gained 100%TP within 30 seconds to prove that my statement of the feat being possible was true. But Rones claims it proves nothing even though I had never denied luck can play a part in it happening. :sweat: I'll copy the url here for the video here for those interested.

http://www.bacchusrestaurant.biz/steefun/speed.zip

A few things I do want to point out about this video is that Double Attack or Triple Attack activated about 4 times. (So Thief are apparently Bonnet/Cap wearing Leprechauns given that kind of luck. ) There were also around 4 normal hits that didn't link with them in-between. And Haste wore off near the end which is probably why Ayakosan ended with Dancing Edge soon after the Haste had worn off. Also, she does not evade any hits by the mob so gains some TP from just being hit with attacks. I have another somewhat older Thief speed video by Stanislav where they don't get 100 TP, but probably would have had if the target mob had not died before-hand. The factor of getting hit is taken out for that one as he evades or parries every hit by the mob. Haste is also kept up for the entire fight and there are even fewer regular hits in-between activations of Double/Triple Attack.

Rones if you want to add your numbers and opinions below, please do. Discuss!

[Rones]

Re: Can Post-60 Thief achieve 100% TP within 30 seconds discussion

The claim is a thf could get over 100 tp every 30 seconds with the aid of haste in an exp situation. This is just not realiably possible in an exp setting as I will explain. Ruic has shown some excellent data on Delay calcuations and attack speed. Here is a sample:

Originally Posted by Ruic
THF/NIN using 200 delay daggers = 400 delay "pseudo-weapon"

Pre 50/25 (Ninja DW2 at 25 you will receive a 10% haste

Haste Calculation: 400 * (1/1.1) = 363.6 delay "pseudo-weapon"

Post 50/25 THF/NIN

Haste calculation: 400 * (1/1.15) = 347.8 delay "pseudo-weapon"

Even if you were to change the dagger speeds to 150, you'd still be receiving only a 15% haste from ninja post 50, and 10% before then. Just paste whatever combined delay you want into the place where I have 400.

This means you will be able to get TP on -average- 10% or 15% faster. But if double attack kicks in once every 8-10 swings or so, it is equalling the number of attacks given from the boost of ninja haste. Now, this argument can be taken further by considering accuracy.

Let's set dagger speed at 200. There are 60 frames (60 delay points) in a second. This equals 3600 frames a minute.

A THF/WAR attacks 18 times in a minute. (3600/200)
A THF/RNG attacks 18 times in a minute. (3600/200)
A THF/NIN attacks 20.5 times in a minute post 50. ((3600/347.8)*2 for two weapons.)

For a thf example, take the fastest dagger you want, let's say Beestinger with 150 delay. As Ruic has shown in his thread here and supported by many other forum members, 150 delay is the smallest you can get. Thus we work from the basic forumulea 60 delay = 1 sec. 150/60 = 2.5 secs delay between each attack. In 30 seconds that gives you time for 12 attacks. At 5 tp per hit, that's 60% tp max assuming 100% accu and no triple or double attacks. If you want to claim 4-5 extra attacks per 30 seconds from triple or double, that is fine because you still won't have 100tp and you are not going to have 100% accu against IT mobs.

Yes, triple/double attack might kick in an insane number of times once, but it is not something that will happen regularly. If you want to argue it is possible, I'll also argue a whm could solo Kirin (assuming Kirin misses every attack and the whm criticals every attack). Anything is possible if you take it to the extreme and control the dice of luck. However, we don't thus trying to argue chance will rule in your favor to support your argument is a crutch for an otherwise weak argument.

Key point two... 100 TP gain in around 30 seconds which is not exactly 30 seconds. It is in that general time. The time spent just alerting party members to your readiness to skillchain can eat up a few seconds before you actually do your part of the skillchain. And if other members are behind you in TP you'll have to wait a few seconds for them as well. And unless you are cheating skillchains will more likely than not be performed exactly 30 seconds after the last one.

What does any of that matter unless you trying to stall for more time to get 100tp? I never said you had to sc with someone every 30 seconds or even ws at all. I'm just pointing out that you will not be able to reach 100tp rate gain every 30 seconds.

How much delay is 1 second actually equal to? I believe it to be 100 delay = 1 second, but Rones says it is actually 60 delay. I contended that if 60 delay = 1 second then Dark Knight's 600 delay weapons would take them 10 seconds to swing and Ranger's 500 delay bow would take over 8 seconds to fire. For clarity I count seconds in the following manner: "1 and 2 and 3 and" etc. As you watch job abilities like Sneak Attack tic down in the job menu they seem to match that speed at least in my mind. They claim that Ranged weapons react differently in delay, but I still don't see Dark Knight swinging only once every 10 second at the speed that I count. Also it is known that the maximum delay a weapon can have is 999 delay such as the infamous Relic Knuckles which allowed Monk to spam Asuran Fists. Based on 60 delay = 1 second Relic Knuckles would have a speed of 16.5 seconds which seems like a strange number to be the maximum delay and just to wait that long to strike twice seems just a bit too long.

As I said in the other thread. Please get a stop watch or digital watch. Go time how many attacks you do in a min, 2 mins, heck 5 mins if you want. See which formulea works. The one stipulation I will say is ranged attacks work on the 100delay=1 sec system, melee weapons however do not. Your argument here is just anecdotal evidence. Don't just say what it looks like, actually go time it with a watch.

As for relic knucles, they do attack that slow although mnks get some martial art traits to speed it up. The reason they got to spam Asuran's fist was the old tp bug, not because they attacked fast. If you remember before the tp nerf (that dragon's hated), mnk's could spam multi hit ws and with 999 delay and high accu that would get you back nearly 100 tp (maybe 100+, I never got to see this firsthand as I was ~50 whm when it happened).

Does there exist a base delay cap that no weapon can go under? The other poster, Rones, posted that 150 is the minimum delay when wielding one single weapon only. And that 300 is the minimum when dual-wielding.

The 150 has been proven by Ruic and others. The 300 is theorized. Ruic didn't think he could break it, but wasn't sure. However, no one has yet provided evidence to break the theory either. If you want to test this, I would be happy to know the outcome either way. Just get 2 150 delay (or close to that) weapons and stack on loads of haste to make it clear you are breaking the 300 delay base. Then time how many attacks you do in a min or two. However, this would need to be done as a nin so triple and double attack do not throw off the calculations. Below is a copy of some of my old testing I've done for discussions of this in other threads:

I got bored yesterday and found a nice too weak elemental to experiment on. I pulled out my 400 delay staff and began auto attacking. I cast no spells during the fight. After the 2nd attack I started my timer for 2 min and counted the number of attacks.
If 100delay = 1 sec, I should be able to get an attack every 4 seconds. So 120 sec/4 = 30 swings with my staff.
If 60 delay = 1 sec, it would be 400/60 = 6.67, meaning one attack every 6.67 seconds. So 120/6.67= 18 attacks. That's a difference of 12 swings between the 2 formulas.

Well, when my timer beeped after 2 min I had performed 17 attacks (18th was about to go). There was no detectable lag during that and no cures cast on me to slow down my attacks. There is no way I could be short 13 attacks unless the 100delay = 1 sec formula is wrong.

I will agree Hundred Fists does break that rule. However, that is something of a special case in itself and doesn't support your theory of 100delay = 1 sec either.

For your reference here is a tp gain chart and how long it takes to reach 100tp with that delay:
[code]Delay Tp/Hit(%) 100%TP
999 18.4 92.0%+1hit=110.4% ( 6hits=99.90sec)
888 17.1 85.5%+1hit=102.6% ( 6hits=74.00sec)
666 14.3 85.8%+1hit=100.1% ( 7hits=77.70sec)
528 12.6 88.2%+1hit=100.8% ( 8hits=70.40sec)
513 12.4 99.2%+1hit=111.6% ( 9hits=76.95sec)
502 12.2 97.6%+1hit=109.8% ( 9hits=74.70sec)
498 12.2 97.6%+1hit=109.8% ( 9hits=74.70sec)
495 12.1 96.8%+1hit=108.9% ( 9hits=73.35sec)
489 12.1 96.8%+1hit=108.9% ( 9hits=73.35sec)
480 12.0 96.0%+1hit=108.0% ( 9hits=72.00sec)
475 11.9 95.2%+1hit=107.1% ( 9hits=71.25sec)
470 11.7 93.6%+1hit=105.3% ( 9hits=69.90sec)
466 11.7 93.6%+1hit=105.3% ( 9hits=69.90sec)
465 11.6 92.8%+1hit=104.4% ( 9hits=69.75sec)
458 11.5 92.0%+1hit=103.5% ( 9hits=68.70sec)
456 11.4 91.2%+1hit=102.7% ( 9hits=68.40sec)
444 11.1 99.9%+1hit=112.0% (10hits=74.00sec)
443 11.1 99.9%+1hit=112.0% (10hits=74.00sec)
431 10.8 97.2%+1hit=108.0% (10hits=71.83sec)
418 10.5 94.5%+1hit=105.0% (10hits=69.66sec)
405 10.2 91.8%+1hit=102.0% (10htis=67.50sec)
-------------------------------------------
* 1%TP for every around 40 weapon delay
* delay 60 = 1 sec[/code]
Table courtesy of Alontier. You can read more on it here.

Bottom line is you exagerrated a great deal and someone called you on it. We all do it at times. You are just digging your hole deeper the longer you support your statement.

[Rones]

Re: Can Post-60 Thief achieve 100% TP within 30 seconds discussion

Trying to move this discussion out of whm forums.

Let's take a look again at what exactly were my statements since it sounds as if maybe my key points were just overlooked.

After level 60, Thief has Assassin job trait which lets them split up Trick Attack and Sneak Attack. Doing this will allow them to do sneak attack or trick attack with weaponskill around every 30 seconds which is much more efficient for speeding through exp chains if skillchain and magic burst are your biggest forms of damage. And it is entirely possible for Thief to have over 100% TP within 30 seconds if they're given Haste.

There are 3 separate statements here, and they don't aren't necessarily inclusive. I worded these statements as carefully as I could, so I was very surprised when you essentially said I'm lying. Okay firstly there's the "around 30 seconds" I keep telling you I typed from the beginning. I only stated 30 seconds because that's the optimal rotation for switching between using SA and TA. And I admit I perhaps was trying to make Thief sound a little bit more attractive by saying 30 seconds, but I swear it is in that general time frame + - 10 seconds. I did not say that doing sneak attack or trick attack with weaponskill around every 30 seconds was due to Haste specifically either. What if Thief is pulling and takes 2 shots and lands them prior to tank engaging? If they're using the crossbow that I am that's 24% TP to start with on top of whatever TP was left over from the previous fight (Even if Thief was the skillchain closer the weaponskill itself will return TP, Dancing Edge gives back quite a bit of TP if all 5 hits connected), and please don't protest that you don't believe Thief can get 2 shots off on a mob during a pull prior to everyone else engaging because you can. Entirely possible means within the realm of possibility. If it's outside the realm of your possibility to gain 100 TP within around 30 seconds, do not assume it's outside other's realm of possibility. 100% TP in 30 seconds given Haste... but what kind of Haste? Equipment gives +Haste, so does the other methods I had initially considered in their own fashion. I worded it this way because I was not only talking about the White Mage's Haste spell. If I was, I would say Whm's Haste. You probably did not realize it but I was actually considering several other methods of Haste besides.

Besides, unless you are cheating and can see your teammate's TP percentages you have at all times you'll have to do TP announce to let your party members know when you have 100% and if they're slower in TP gain you have to wait on them. So it's more like skillchain every 40 seconds anyways as skillchain is not performed on the dot at 30 seconds.

I did say 40 seconds, go back 2 pages. If you actually read every word I wrote instead of skimming my paragraphs and then picking apart choice bits you'd realize this. I think we just had a basic misunderstanding because you didn't realize I was including outside variables other than pure weapon delay and TP over time. If I edit all my posts to skillchain every 40 seconds will that make it easier for you to stomach? Otherwise it looks like you just refuse to acknowledge my examples no matter what. :sweat: The reason that jobs like Thief have abilities, traits, and equipment that greatly increase their attack rate is to break down the delay further. Ignoring those variables is tantamount to White Mage that neglects Flash completely. I'm not trying to be condescending at all by the way, I really enjoy figuring out the facts with people but you need to be a lot more open-minded here.

I'm not all that close to level 75 yet guys, so the mobs I fight don't have that crazy of an evasion yet. Besides, aren't most exp mobs at 75 Very Tough anyways? It should be easier to get a decent accuracy rating on VTs I'd think. I don't really like fighting IT + high defense mobs anyways, exp is good per mob but there's usually quite a bit of down-time after chain 4. VTs give good exp as long as party member's levels are kept no more than 1 level apart and can be speedkilled much faster with much less downtime. Parsers won't show I have 95% accuracy at any rate because there are times I will hit for 0 while eating sushi... not enough attack and will cause me to do no damage and gain 0 TP on those. I never said I have perfect attack or accuracy all I can tell you is that for some strange reason when I was eating sushi for 2 hours last night every single mob in that area of Boyahda Tree was conning as Low Evasion to me. And in that entire time of partying I missed only 15 hits with melee attacks. Ranged accuracy was a completely different story, however. Maybe it sounds crazy to you, but that's what happened and my party didn't have any melee damage dealer except for Paladin and I so I had quite a good chance of missing lots but somehow I was on a roll in terms of accuracy. You don't have to believe me if you don't want to, but that is what actually happened. There was a Bard and Summoner in the party actually, but the Bard was giving me Double Minuet and Summoner did not have Fenrir. Sorry guys, apparently according to you I do not operate under realistic circumstances. /sigh Would you believe me if I said that I can activate 3 TA and 2 SA in about 80 seconds? Pre-charging and being puller is key of course.

To Icemage, I agree that Kraken Club and Ridill should not be dual-wielded by Thief. They should be off-handed at best and only used to help increase the TP gain of the main hand and not for dealing damage. I have no illusions of doing good damage with a club with single digit base damage that probably won't hit most of the time due to E rating. I have used hand-to-hand which is also E rating before in exp party. (Fighting VT and low IT) mobs would con as regular evasion with Focus + lots of accuracy gear + sushi at the same time. Apparently Focus adds +20 accuracy which is quite a considerable amount but it still wasn't enough to make the mobs low evasion. That was an interesting experience, but sticking to daggers at least in main hand is still really the way to go post-50.

Double Post Edited:

I think we just had a basic misunderstanding because you didn't realize I was including outside variables other than pure weapon delay and TP over time. If I edit all my posts to skillchain every 40 seconds will that make it easier for you to stomach? Otherwise it looks like you just refuse to acknowledge my examples no matter what.

Your outside variables you are trying to use to justify your case are rediculous. Kraken club, getting beat upon by the mob, Ridill. :sweat: Those are really not relevent to normal exp situations. Even if you extend it to 40 you wouldn't be able too as I pointed out. You have yet to provide any examples relevent to an exp situation which was the origonal situation. Your statement was thf can reach 100 tp gain per 30 seconds, but now you are trying to use strange occurences to reach that 100.

I swear it is in that general time frame + - 10

Uh no. You are not getting 100 tp in 20 seconds nor 40 (although that is slightly closer to the realm of possible with enough triple attacks and high enough accu). As icemage said in the other thread you are lucky to get 100tp in one min. In a min, you can get 120% tp from 100% accu and no triple attacks with a 150 delay weapon. If you want to claim you can get it in 50 seconds reliably, ok.

I did say 40 seconds, go back 2 pages. If you actually read every word I wrote instead of skimming my paragraphs and then picking apart choice bits you'd realize this.

Oh I'm not skimming, but I also can not respond to your entire posts as they are fairly lengthy and would make mine excessively lengthy. You also tend to repeat yourself a lot without adding new content. You did say 40 seconds later, but that is not your origonal statement which I was discussing, and like I have explained you couldn't do it in 40 seconds either, so the point is mute.

The reason that jobs like Thief have abilities, traits, and equipment that greatly increase their attack rate is to break down the delay further. Ignoring those variables is tantamount to White Mage that neglects Flash completely.

Yes you have abilities, and I have addressed them in the calculations by pointing out your minimum delay is capped at 150, so they are not relevent here. Thus, they are like a variable multipled by zero in a math equation, they fall out of the picture.

And in that entire time of partying I missed only 15 hits with melee attacks.

Unless you used a parser or only partied for 30 mins, I highly doubt this. Even against VT in your example, you are not going to be reaching above 90% accu, especially with the brd giving you double minuet and no madrigal. This is what is called anecdotal evidence.

Icemage sums it up best:

If your point was to prove that it's "possible" for THF to get 100TP in 30 seconds, I will concede that it's "possible"...

For practical purposes, it is NOT possible for a thief to get 100% TP in 30 seconds consistently. And without that, there is no point in them splitting SA and TA for separate weaponskills, which is why thieves almost always fall to the bottom of my priority list for Haste.

It is possible under a bluemoon, but it is not something you could do realibly time after time. Maybe once or twice an exp party, but not regularly.

[Muu Yi]

Re: Can Post-60 Thief achieve 100% TP within 30 seconds discussion

Before I reply, I would like to bring up another question that I've been considering that relates to the 150 minimum delay assumption. If Hornet's Needle or Beestinger already are at 150 delay, then Haste from spell or equipment should not be speeding attack speed since the wielder is already at the base delay. Unless you admit that Haste can break the minimum delay. In the speed video, Ayakosan's Haste wears off near the end and she appears to attack slower for the last couple of hits. Does this not support the idea that you can go under 150 delay? If it really is 150 delay minimum then it should be true that Thief should need less Haste than most other melee jobs. As Thief uses the weapons with the least delay and thus can reach the 150 base or 300 base much easier than other melee jobs with just good equipment.

Alright I'll try to relate my most recent exp party experience. I just want everyone to know that I'm not trying to be overly boastful here, but if what you say is completely true, somehow I do run into these blue moon occurrences while in a experience party. I will state right now that I believe the party I had 2 nights ago was indeed a major fluke of accuracy because I don't think I ever had such good accuracy before and we were fighting ITs not VTs due to the party being 2 level ranges apart (In fact due to unfortunate accident in the beginning someone de-leveled and it became a 3 level difference) I think the days that we were in when I was eating Sushi was Iceday - Lightsday, although I doubt that the weather had anything to do with it. Party setup was like this: Paladin, Thief, Red Mage, White Mage, Black Mage, and Summoner with a Bard replacing the Red Mage about a half hour after I began eating Sushi. I actually started off eating mithkabobs but found myself missing ranged attacks a lot and my TP gain was slow. (Nobody was Hasting me at that time either... heh) so I switched to Squid Sushi for the Ranged Accuracy bonuses. With no other melee damage dealer except for Paladin and I, I was actually skillchaining with the Summoner and was rotating Sneak Attack or Trick Attack as quickly as I could even when I didn't have 100%TP so that I could do as much damage as I could as quickly as I could.

Around the time when the Bard came, I asked the White Mage nicely if they could Haste me to help with my TP gain because up to that point they had been Hasting the Paladin only. I then suddenly found myself often waiting on the Summoner's Blood Pact Timer more often than not and I thought that Blood Pact is on a 1 minute timer... I'll have to check. But they were saying things like @ 42 on BP (It is unlikely it was exactly 42 seconds when they checked their timers) when I was announcing {Ready to start skillchain!} so I would solo weaponskill and then build TP backup for when they were ready. There are a couple other reasons why I was probably was ahead of them in skillchain readiness.

Firstly the ridiculous accuracy I had. The only thing that I think might be able to explain it in a weird way is that I was somehow Sneak Attacking or Trick Attacking right before the moments which I was supposed to miss and the resulting criticals caused me to not miss when I should have... I don't know if that makes any sense at all. Otherwise I can't explain my accuracy except outstanding luck.

Secondly, I almost always managed to have at least 15% TP prior to pulling as with Haste on I would sneak in 2 hits on top of TP from weaponskill on the mob just barely before the Black Mage's Magic burst finished it off. I shoot twice during pulls... once to pull the mob, and a second time before the Paladin provokes, and at least one of the shots landed nearly every time. So I started each battle with 27% TP most of the time while the Summoner was still in the middle of summoning their Avatar.

Assuming Ruic's data is correct, I caclulated my delay with Dual Wield II, Haste, and the daggers with total of 390 combined delay I was wielding to put me at a bit under 332 delay. That's right around 5.5 seconds for every 2 swings based on the 60 delay = 1 second equation. That is 10 TP gained from regular hits every 5.5 seconds and 70 TP gained in 40 seconds... 27TP + 70 TP = 97 TP in roughly 40 seconds. If this doesn't look like a reasonable calculation please let me know where I might have made an error. All it takes is for me to get hit by an area attack that ignores Utsusemi, land both crossbow hits, or get one Triple Attack activation to have 100%+ TP. If I miss once or hit for 0, then I won't get it unless I landed my second crossbow attack. This is using Ruic's numbers and my own example which at the time I was partying seemed within the realm of possiblity and was occuring more often than it was not. And like I said, for some bizarre reason I was missing very very little except ranged accuracy which was a bit over 50% accuracy possibly because I had no Ranged accuracy gear equipped save for a bunch of pieces with + Agility.

Triple Attack is still a possibility as Thief/Ninja as it's a native Thief job trait. Not counting its possibility however remote is like saying Dark Knight/Thief does about the same damage as Warrior/Thief because they don't have Double Attack when Thief is subjob. (Believe it or not A White Mage actually made that statement to a Warrior friend of mine and we had a good chuckle over that.) True that Triple Attack's activation chance is lower than Double Attack but it does happen every so often as Thief/Ninja. Otherwise it wouldn't be possible to do the infamous 6 hits when it activates on both hands.

The reason I often repeated my statements was because I was trying to emphasize what I considered were my key statements which I felt were being ignored.

Ridill and Kraken Club aren't completely ridiculous. It might take me forever to get those things but I'm not going to give up on trying to get them if I can. As I said I have a Warrior friend who obtained Ridill not too long ago from Fafnir. (They're in the middle of trying to camp for Joyeuse now... they're crazy like that but that's one of the reasons I enjoy their company.) They're now considering actually leveling their Thief subjob because they want to see what it's like off-handing Ridill. Besides they've already accomplished most of their level 75 Warrior goals and could use a change of pace.

That is a good point about Martial Arts, and it really also is a form of Haste. Ruic didn't bother to include them in their list however, but it should be pretty easy to calculate separately from the Haste equation since Martial Arts is a straight-forward subtraction of base delay anyways. Monk/Warrior has pretty impressive TP gain at times too when they get Double Attacks off their regular double hit or throw a random Kick.

I'm going on a camping trip tomorrow, part of the reason why I haven't been able to logon the past few days. When I come back I'll make a point of timing my next party experience and maybe finding a parser which actually counts 0 damage as hits rather than misses... I doubt if I'll have as good of Accuracy in the future.

P.S. Moot is not spelled Mute... methinks you've been spamming Silence spells too long.

[Rones]

Re: Can Post-60 Thief achieve 100% TP within 30 seconds discussion

Crap man, write more decisively. This is becoming tedious to work through it is so long.

In the speed video, Ayakosan's Haste wears off near the end and she appears to attack slower for the last couple of hits. Does this not support the idea that you can go under 150 delay?

I can not see it with the naked eye and all the double/triple attacks that are going off and neither can anyone accurately. Haste is not that strong of effect especially when dealing with such a low delay weapon that you can see it clearly. Like I keep saying, if you want to accurately measure it, time how many attacks you do in 1-2 mins and find the average time. Be sure to use a job without triple/double attack. Until you do that and prove you can break the 150 delay barrier, all the old evidence will still stand. The fact that it does bottom out at 150 also supports why you can not get less than 5 tp per hit.

27TP + 70 TP = 97 TP in roughly 40 seconds. If this doesn't look like a reasonable calculation please let me know where I might have made an error

Your error is in that the 27tp is not from within the time span of the 40 seconds. You got that outside the time span. That's just like if I were to tp up to 90 and then say I can get 100tp in 10 seconds. Also, this is assuming 100% accu (which you can argue is balanced by triple attack). The time spent getting that 27 can't be ignored because you aren't always pulling and it isn't always there if you do a second ws in the same fight. In addition some of your hits will likely be for 0 (very common against crabs).

Your example is nice, but scientists do not try to prove/disprove hypothesis with everyday circumstances they encounter. You create controlled experiments where all the variables are closely watched. We need data and statistics to determine the truth, not anecdotal evidence that was not closely measured.

Triple Attack is still a possibility as Thief/Ninja as it's a native Thief job trait. Not counting its possibility however remote is like saying Dark Knight/Thief does about the same damage as Warrior/Thief because they don't have Double Attack when Thief is subjob.

What are you talking about? Of course triple attack will occur for a thief with any sub. It isn't often though, thus it can not be relied to go off 4 times in the 30 seconds in combination with 100% accu to reach 100tp in 30 seconds. For 40 seconds you would have 80 tp from normal attacks and need it to go off twice with 100% accu. This is possible, but given the lacking of 100% accu and hits for 0 you would likely need it to go off 3-4 times in the 40 second time span (which is a rare occurence I believe considering how rare double attack goes off for my war).

Ridill and Kraken Club aren't completely ridiculous. It might take me forever to get those things but I'm not going to give up on trying to get them if I can

It is rediculous because, like Icemage already pointed out, they are near worthless in exp situations for thfs. Your skill cap is too low and kraken at least is well out of the price range for 99.9% of players (at least without gimping all your other gear).

Moot is not spelled Mute... methinks you've been spamming Silence spells too long.

Too much bad tv after summer classes and while waiting for fall classes. :sweat:

[Icemage]

Re: Can Post-60 Thief achieve 100% TP within 30 seconds discussion

27TP + 70 TP = 97 TP in roughly 40 seconds. If this doesn't look like a reasonable calculation please let me know where I might have made an error

As Rones stated, you didn't count the time it took you to get that 27 TP in your 40 second calculation. Not only that, even if your numbers are accurate (they aren't), unless you can consistently get 100TP+++ in 30 seconds or less (patently impossible), there is no practical difference between 31 seconds and 60 seconds, since you're better off stacking SA and TA at that point for WS (or alternately using TA for WS and doing a stand-alone SA).


Icemage

[Zempten]

Re: Can Post-60 Thief achieve 100% TP within 30 seconds discussion

Just wanted to state the RNGs get Rapid Shot ^^

[Muu Yi]

Re: Can Post-60 Thief achieve 100% TP within 30 seconds discussion

Haven't checked this thread in awhile so I guess I'll get to responding now.

Icemage, I had no choice but to separate Trick Attack and Sneak Attack in that particular party. For one thing nobody besides the Paladin had Provoke. For another I always pull because it is very vital I pull in order to pre-charge my abilities properly, in a party with a Ranger I pull along with them, this actually makes the pulling safer at times because we get two chances to sleep the mob with bolts/arrows and worst comes to worst I can perfect dodge and give the Ranger time to run to safety while I Instant Warp out. I've yet to pull along with a Summoner in those areas where its too risky to pull regularly but I'm sure I can work something out with them especially since they don't have mob radar.

I specifically said I wasn't counting the time spent to get the initial 27 TP... if this is not a valid number as I asked before, please do tell me what the accurate values should have been. It is an advantage that Thief have over other melee jobs which do not gain TP while pulling or do not swing fast enough to get extra TP prior to the Magic Burst killing the mob. Just as Meditate outside of battle gains Samurai 100 TP within 10 seconds is an advantage, Barrage gains Ranger lots of TP in nearly an instant, or all the multi-hit weaponskills that melee jobs can use to gain extra TP. You could cut out the 27 TP if you didn't consider these abilities and facets of other melee jobs. But you can't ignore them because they're very commonly used in an actual exp party. Similarly this is a tactic that I commonly use in a party and most other party members do not consider it as part of the actual battle itself. I'm not a scientist and I did not make this claim based on a hypothesis. I want to base it on actual in-game experiences where it would be used. If I wanted to isolate all these possible variables then I would have specifically said that Thief can get 100% TP in 30 seconds outside of regular exp party. But instead I specifically said this in the context of exp chains implying it happening within an exp party.

I have used a Video Editor to time to 0.01 second accuracy when Ayakosan's TP increased. Rather than looking at how often her hit animation occurs I gauged attack speed based on the TP bar although she was also gaining TP by being hit by the Weapon. But by using the TP Bar even if she Double Attacked or Triple Attacked, the TP is increased appropriately for Double Attack or Triple Attack at the time of attack regardless of animation. While she was hasted the delay between TP jump (I chose one where the Weapon managed to miss her) was around 2.20 seconds. The delay between TP change after Haste wore off I timed to be right around 3.00 seconds although she was hit with Whirl of Rage around the time that hit landed so that might have thrown off the timing by a few 0.1 seconds. This seems to indicate that there is a tiny bit of a difference between when there was Haste and there wasn't. But unfortunately there do exist many factors that can affect the timing in this video. The original Thief Speed Video by Stanislav is actually a bit easier to calculate how often he is hitting with Haste on because firstly the mob never hits him, secondly the video was made before +haste equipment was made available to Thief, and thirdly he had less lag. Haste doesn't wear off in that example however. It leaves me still unsure about the Base delay, but it does support the idea that sufficient Haste can create a delay lower than 150. :confused:

Again, see the previous paragraph for my reasoning in not including the time spent getting 27 TP to start. I would hit for 0s sometimes when I initially switched to sushi. However once Bard arrived they gave me the Attack up songs and it happened much less often.:cool_shad

Triple Attack doesn't happen often naturally, but I've found that with more Haste it does seems to happen more often. I have no concrete proof of this, but I can probably convince a friend to Haste me while I farm or something.

It doesn't matter that skill caps is low for Thief using Ridill or Kraken Club because they won't really be used for hitting. Thief/Ninja would wield it off-hand and let it affect the rate of the dagger that is main-handed to make those hits occur more often. Kraken Club is pretty steep in price agreed, but Ridill is Rare/Ex. So you would just need to be part of a a kind and competent HNMLS that can spare the time to claim and defeat the HNM over and over to obtain it. As I mentioned before I'm motivated to try because I've seen a few friends obtain these equipments. And it encourages me and makes it feel a bit more possible to obtain them.

I haven't had a chance to get into an exp party on my Thief lately, I've been helping LS members with coffer hunts, Missions, and random quests so haven't spent the time to form a party yet. I've installed the newer FFXI Parser and messed around with it a bit so I should be able to get results once I do get in a party... hopefully one that is not so overwhelmingly mage-oriented as the last. Heh, kidding.

[Icemage]

Re: Can Post-60 Thief achieve 100% TP within 30 seconds discussion

Your 27% TP calculation is wrong because:

If you count the time you are pulling, yes, you "generally" get both SA and TA recharged while pulling the next enemy. In a fast party, however, there is NOT enough time for this to happen. Mobs generally die very quickly after a SA/WS, and I've seen numerous occasions where we immediately engage a slept link, or simply get a nearby pop for chain 4+ and the THF's SA/WS timers are still at 45 seconds.

More to the point, if you say you are "coming back with 27%"... that's still 73TP+ that you need to earn before you can WS with TA or SA. Remember, the cardinal rule here is that unless you can earn 100TP each and every 30 seconds, you cannot do TA/WS + SA/WS.

Consider: You go, pull shoot something, and hit it twice on the way in. You've going to lose a minimum of 10 seconds to do this, usually far more. In our hypothetical SA/WS + TA/WS model, the largest amount of time left on both timers at this point would be 20 seconds for one, and 40 seconds for the other.

You have *20 seconds* left to earn that remaining 73TP. That's patently impossible.

Your entire argument is based around the idea that your "down time" between kills gives you "free" TP for this calculation, but you neglect to take into consideration that both your SA and TA counters are counting down while you're pulling.

Oh, and good luck with Ridill. I believe I've seen Ridill drop 4 times, in something like 70 kills on Fafnir. It's very, very, very rare.


Icemage

[Lmnop]

Re: Can Post-60 Thief achieve 100% TP within 30 seconds discussion

and the additional attacks on those weapons won't give your dagger extra swings.
i.e. you have a Kraken Club offhanded and it swings 5 times in one round, your dagger still only swings once unless triple attack kicks in. I'm very interested in the idea of end-game thieves with a Ridill and a strong dagger (like that new 150 delay Kukri) splitting up their SA and TA. Whether or not you can get tp that fast, if SA WS will kill the mob on the spot, then the TA might as well be saved and used to start the next fight.

And I really wish they'd up thieves' sword skill... offhanding an Ifrit's Blade or one of those latent ones (Dissector maybe? ones with latent more damage and +6% crit chance) would be terrific if their sword skill was even C+ though I'd prefer a B- of course. This D crap doesn't keep them from becoming overpowered... it keeps them from having fun.

[Rones]

Re: Can Post-60 Thief achieve 100% TP within 30 seconds discussion

Haste can create a delay lower than 150

I've lost count of the times I have said this. Do not try to use that video as proof. Go switch to nin/(not war or thf) and go time it yourself over a several minute period. Trying to time the individual delay between attacks is heavily affected by lag. However, this is greatly reduced by timing the number of attacks over a long period, but this requires you to not have double/triple attack kicking in and throwing off your attack count. It is also not difficult or uncommon for recorded videos to play at a different speed than they were recorded. This depends on the quality of the video recorder or whether they did any editing.

Triple Attack doesn't happen often naturally, but I've found that with more Haste it does seems to happen more often. I have no concrete proof of this, but I can probably convince a friend to Haste me while I farm or something.

Anecdotal evidence: non-scientific observations or studies, which do not provide proof
Examples:This chapter provides anecdotal evidence from personal interviews, public hearings, and surveys.

While it obviously should kick in more often over a given period of time with haste, that is because you are attacking more often over said period of time. If though you are arguing haste causes the kick rate to increase from some unknown reason, you would require hours (possibly days given the high variance) of attack data with and without hate to get a good percentage kick in rate for triple attack. You would also have great difficulty ruling out other outside variables that are just as likely to affect the rate as having haste (weather, day, enemy, lvl, subjob, weapon, what you ate for breakfast, etc) which nears on impossible unless you detect a very strong correlation.

If you really want to prove this, go get some dmg 1 or so daggers, find a moderate lvl enemy that doesn't hurt you instantly and see how realiably you can get 100tp every 30-40 seconds. Your 27 tp is really not a reliable factor. You won't always hit, you won't always get two shots. It also does not help you get the 100tp for the second ta or sa against the same mob. You would be better off arguing having tp left over from the previous fight.

However, these are outside factors to the fact that it is impossible to have straight up 100tp gain every 30 seconds against exp mobs without controlling the dice of luck. It might happen once a party (if you are lucky), but it is not something you could design party dynamics around and rely on. If it is possible, go do it in an exp party.