THF 10-30 Help

[Muu Yi]

Re: THF 10-30 Help

Thank you Taskmage, I'm not trying to win anything here. I just take affront that someone thinks I may have stated something falsely, because I try my best never to give out false information. And I cannot abide lying, period. It's in my personal nature. And I take great offense if anyone thinks that I am lying. As long as I'm not perceived as a liar, I don't care if you take my advice or not. Advice is free and you are free to follow it, or not. I think that my method is best, it was back when I began and when I tested it on my 2nd character. But it is possible in the past few updates that has changed. If that is the case, then I apologize.

[ClydeArrowny]

Re: THF 10-30 Help

I would just like to add....as has been stated before, grapples or sword have superior WSs to dagger until lv33 thf (100 skill.) If you never skill up dagger before you hit 30 that is fine. However, if you do choose this route, skill your dagger up to near cap solo before you go and use it in pt. Please do not skill up an underleveled dagger in an exp pt, your pt members will most likely hate you for it >.>

Personally I started thf before zilart, so only mnk and war subs were availiable. I personally preferred mnk sub after trying them both. As thf/mnk I used both sword and H2H, whichever the PT needed more. After each pt I would solo skill up till I hit the cap. Once I hit 30, I soloed dagger up from ~15 skill to the max (93 I believe?)

Anyway, this is just what I personally did, you dont have to be so complete with keeping everything skilled fully. The easiest route would probably be thf/nin with sword main and dagger sub. Keep in mind, until dancing edge (200 skill, lv60 thf), your best WSs for farming single mobs will be fast blade and raging fists.

As for equipment, if you just want 1 set of equipment for everything, I would say acc>attack>DEX>STR>AGI. Once you get higher lv you might want to look into equipment sets and macro in acc, attack and dex for TP gain, and DEX, AGI and attack for WS.

[Otovyoto]

Re: THF 10-30 Help

Im sorry, im new here. So if you flame me.......cool. I work behind a computer all day and a ton of free time. (Tech. Support). To my point. I am a Taru THF/NIN currently @ lvl.29, I am an absolute number freak for the most part. I would hope that people that read some of these threads would take EVERYTHING said with a grain of salt. Some things work better for peoples style. I for one go against the grain on all of this advice. I MAIN daggers after level 23 when the Acid dagger (dmg. 10, Dly. 183, add effect Weakens defense) became available, and thank you level 25!
(Federation Knife dmg. 13, dly. 180 Att. +5, acc. +2)
(Windurstian Knife dmg. 12, dly. 185, att + 3, acc. +2)

If i could have afforded 2 Federation knives.......i would have, however someone decided to flood the market in Mithkabobs and my sales have slowed.

Now you may argue with me that a sword would be a more viable option below 33. You have the flame sword (Dmg: 16 Dly: 218 Additional Effect: Fire Damage ) @ lvl. 18 $$$$ and a Gladiator (Dmg: 18 Dly: 222 ) @ lvl. 27 and then finally the Centurion Sword (Dmg: 19 Dly: 225 Accuracy: 3 Attack: 4 )

I semi-static with a WAR/MNK, SAM/WAR, WHM/BLM, SMN, WHM. And we usually pick up a BLM or another DD. Obviously without TA im going to pull hate, thats fine with utsesumi, but i pull hate without it as well. Yes we dont have a phenominal WS, but ill tell you we can still close Reverb. with a shadowstitch that DOES stack with SA, and we also close a Detonation with Gust Slash that Mandys tend to never resist on, and the Summoner has a blast MB with Shiva. I have had numerous JP/NA/EU veterans just say {All Right!}. Why not use your A+ weapon when one that does decent damage pops up?? We have almost as many SC's we can open and close!

A thiefs bread and butter is thier SA and WS. we all know this, Spike damage, no matter how it comes. You will build TP faster with a Dagger and hit more often, leading to faster TP. We may say that the 5,6,7 points of weapon skill dont matter to a C class sword at this level. Why would care so much about having that AGI +1 or that Attack +3 from our Head and Hands then? Ever point counts at EVERY level.

Just my 2 cents from a "newbie" that carries swords and daggers at all times to cap but mains daggers well before any of you suggest.

Oto

[Argenthart]

Re: THF 10-30 Help

I leveled to 25 with a monk sub, then I went NIN in the jungles. I switched from h2h, to dagger to sword. I was able to keep them leveled most of the way. Playing in the Promys also helped level some skills.

It was said before, but I want to stress this point, LEVEL MARKSMANSHIP.

Status bolts (Acid Bolts, Bloody Bolts, Blind Bolts, etc.) will save your life and make your parties better. I could solo mandys outside of Khazam at 30 with bloody bolts.

[Shadowofamn]

Re: THF 10-30 Help

Use sword for SA fastblade until 33 where you get viper bite, keep dagger cap every level and you will be good until 33.

[nanatsu]

Re: THF 10-30 Help

A thiefs bread and butter is thier SA and WS. we all know this, Spike damage, no matter how it comes. You will build TP faster with a Dagger and hit more often, leading to faster TP. We may say that the 5,6,7 points of weapon skill dont matter to a C class sword at this level. Why would care so much about having that AGI +1 or that Attack +3 from our Head and Hands then? Ever point counts at EVERY level.

Oto

Would you say the same about every point of damage then? SA + Fast Blade does a good deal more damage than SA + Shadowstich. Any DoT that you've lost through a C weapon is easily made up by this. Not to mention that the larger your ws damage is, if you're closing the skillchain the larger the skillchain damage will be. Now if every stat point counts then every damage point should count also, since it leads to you killing the mob faster as well. Not to mention that Fast Blade opens you up for Distortion, allowing ice MB rather than a weak water mb at that level. Shadowstich can be used for Frag, but the damage from Shadowtitch > Reverbation is too weak compared to Fast Blade > Distortion if both hits connect.

Daggers before 33 are fine and good. I've got nothing against them. They can get the job done if you're smart. Sword and hand2hand before 33 just perform somewhat better if you put the same amount of effort into it.

[wolfjorg]

Re: THF 10-30 Help

Alrighty then... I am leveling THF for sub on DRK. As much as I hated to lv THF, I am finally doing it. I come here to find out about weapons, and subs for the job, and WOW. I found everything I needed in this post lol.

I know now I can keep MNK up till 37, no plans to lv NIN, cause just do not want to waste all my hard earned gil on NIN. but who knows, one day I might pick it up and lv it, and take THF farther.

Thanks for the advice in this post.

[mostruash]

Re: THF 10-30 Help

Is ninja very expensive to play? I want to sub it for THF but i'm not a rich man lol. Now I'm 15nin should I stop and sub WAR or go on with NIN?

[Aeolus]

Re: THF 10-30 Help

Ninja isnt that expensive if your not spamming spells all the time but then you can loose hate. Never had a problem tho with hate while lving ninja to 37 for Thf sub. Maybe its after that hate gets harder to keep, dunno. Also depends on your own servers economy, how much a stack of shehei is basically. War and Nin are both very good subs for thf. If you can you should lv both but I'd go with nin if you dont wanna lv both as its more usefull solo.

[Taskmage]

Re: THF 10-30 Help

Nin isn't really useful until 20 or 24, and excusable not to have until you're 30, especially if thf is your main. Nin is very expensive if played right, but by the time you have war or thf to 30, you'll have some reasonable farming options to make money.

[Nappy]

Re: THF 10-30 Help

Should I switch to my future sub now, lvl that, and then go back to thief? Im playing a taru too so its exspecially hard to lvl and I know I wont be to good in a group like Kagarou said.

[Maju]

Re: THF 10-30 Help

If you have no plans of taking thief past 30 ever or for a very long time, I would definitely go with THF/MNK all the way. A skill chain that ends with a boosted SA+Combo will pretty much completely take out any enemy you fight at low levels if your equipment is good.

Also, at 30 you can expect to frequently break 300 damage with Boost+SATA+Combo. If you're closing Fusion you could get another 180 damage from the SC. That's 480 damage on a mob that probably has around 700 HP.

If you don't have MNK leveled, /WAR will also do a great job with Fast Blade. /NIN should only be subbed if you feel like there is considerable danger involved in your pulls. /NIN always loses to /WAR in both damage and TP gain and is really only a safety net sub.

If you're only leveling THF for sub, it is very easy to level your dagger with a higher level job so that you can continue thief past L33 if you feel like it later on.

[Spinnthrift]

Re: THF 10-30 Help

To throw a spanner in the works...

If you gear well - you can easily main hand a dagger or two post 20 and still put out respectable DoT and SC damage using SA Wasp Sting and SA Shadowstitch. This means decent dex up, eating food (like meat jerky), and keeping your daggers up to date. The lvl 25 Windurst HQ daggers are really strong at that level as well.

And while it's anecdotal in nature - the Pld who static'd with me from 18 - 35 said that prior to SATA, he had trouble holding hate off of me. Admittedly, my gear was fairly good for it's level then, but still - it's viable to use daggers and be a valuable member of the party.

[Tirocupidus]

Re: THF 10-30 Help

As THF/WAR, I had been using sword only, but around 20, I caught my dagger skill up as well. I started using dagger exclusively, except to cap my sword skill, and to fight pierce-resistant monsters. I have no doubt that I'm doing more damage with dagger than I am with sword. I haven't done /mnk any because it's stalled at level 11 as part of a static, but I have started catching up my h2h skill, as it's nice to have on skeletons.

Recently I've been in Yuhtunga Jungle fighting mandragoras. Using a Federation Knife, my SA commonly hits 150+. My small sword, same damage (though no +atk), never got close to doing that much). Even waiting 10 seconds before my first attack, the paladin couldn't keep aggro. Granted, I didn't find this particular paladin to be very good. Our next one was much better at keeping aggro, even when I timed SA and used it twice before he had time to provoke a second time.

I've also farmed some Crane Flies (weak to piercing) in Meriphataud recently for gausebit and some exp (20-33 per kill). My normal SA does up to 232 on them, taking them below 40% health in a single hit, making them easy kills.