THF main hand, damage or delay?

[Balfree]

I have a kingdom dagger (D14, Delay 171) and marauder's knife (D15, Delay 194), im at lv40.

What should i use on main hand? some folks say KD, others say MK... is it a matter of preference? Less delay = faster TP, amirite?

[LadyKiKi]

Re: THF main hand, damage or delay?

m.Knife

Afterall, at the end of the day, I believe your delay is combined when you dual-wield.

[Balfree]

Re: THF main hand, damage or delay?

I'm somewhat new to DD, hence the newbism. Thanks.

[Luna]

Re: THF main hand, damage or delay?

I would have to Say a little of both you want a pretty fast delay since your main goal is not to deal damage, but you want a pretty decent DMG as well for when SA and TA are used (depending on your lvl) followed by a WS to proc more DMG. When you are not using SA+WS or TA+WS or SATA+WS your main focus is not going to be doing dmg, Like I said before it will be to gain more TP Faster =] So sorry if I repeat myself sometimes lol I think too fast for my little hands to type and keep up.

I hope that made Sense, just find a balance between both. You will want w/e gives you more TP faster, a THF is not good just using daggers I am sure you know, they get their name from combining SATA+WS, SA+WS, TA+WS. You should never WS unless behind one of those JA's (lvl dependant) so if there is a dagger that has D15 ACC+3, and D14 ATT+3 you will go for D14 ATT+3 on main hand and D15 ACC+3 on offhand, just b/c of its proc when WS'ing. I really hope this all makes sense to you I am not very good at explaining things lol.

But I"d say main hand M, offhand K, You will want the greater dmg > lesser dmg dagger to be main handed for SA+WS or TA+WS depending on weather or not you are high enough to have TA be a crit.

Here are some things that an old friend once told me (about 3 Years ago LOL) That really improved my THF skills, Just something I never forgot lol. Hope it helps you out at least a little.

1. Make a seperate Macro for SA should look like this.
Quote:

Line 1. /ja "Sneak attack" <me>

2. Next you need to make a SATA Macro looking like this
Quote:

Line 1. /ja "Sneak attack" <me>
Line 2. /ja "Trick attack" <me>

(You will want to use this macro right before you pull a mob, or right after just use it before you get to camp, and if you are having someone els pull use it right when you see their fishing macro)

3. Now this is what you use right after you lineup to use SATA, (that is the second macro I told you to make) once you have SATA charged up, line up and use this one.
Quote:

Line 1. /attack
Line 2. /wait 2.
Line 3. /ws "Fast blade" <t>

(or you can use w/e ws you are currently using just replace Fast blade with its name)

Now the first macro I told you to make is so you can build tp, you can use 2 SA's per fight usually, but DO NOT use a ws with the extra SA you use, save that for when you use SATA.

[Armando]

Re: THF main hand, damage or delay?

The answer is always simple: you pick the two weapons with the best DPS. In the case where you've got several weapons with similar DPS's (and by similar I mean the ratio of one to the other only has like a 2-3% difference) then you pick the two with the best +stats. Now that you've decided on your two weapons, you put the one with the highest DMG in the main hand and bam! You're done. Which hand has which Delay doesn't matter; like LadyKiki said, the Delays are added together. Let's do this.

Using FFXIAH's power search, I searched for daggers between 30 and 40 that are THF-equippable, and sorted them by DPS. These were the top ones:
1) Corrosive Baselard | 4.97 DPS, weakens defese (20k)
2) Federation Kukri | 4.95 DPS, Acc+3, Outside Nation Control: Atk+7 (50k)
3) Kingdom Dagger | 4.91 DPS, Acc+3, Outside Nation Control: AGI+2 (140k)
---
4) Corrosive Kukri | 4.64 DPS, weakens defense (50k)
5) Mythril Kukri +1 | 4.64 DPS (12k)
6) Spark/Fine Baselard | 4.64 DPS, (Spark: thunder damage with battery) (12k/12k)
7) Marauder's Knife | 4.62 DPS, DEX+2, AGI+2

These are Midgard prices by the way. The top three daggers all have +stats, but they're relatively close in DPS (Corrosive Baselard only has 1.2% more DPS than Kingdom Dagger.) Below Kingdom Dagger, there's a drop in DPS: Kingdom Dagger has 5.8% more DPS than the dagger below it. None of these lower-DPS daggers have any truly compelling stat bonuses, so we turn our attention to the top 3.

Federation Kukri is clearly better than Kingdom Dagger. 7 Attack is more useful than 2 AGI, and it's a heck of a lot cheaper as well. Corrosive Baselard is...well, in an ideal situation you would be inflicting Defense Down with Acid Bolts, and unless you equip two baselards, you'll be halving how often you get a chance for a proc to dual wield it. Ideally, you would sell your Kingdom Dagger and use that to buy two Federation Kukri.

What about the AGI and DEX from Marauder's? I've done the math many times, it's never worth using a lower DPS weapon for DEX, AGI, or higher DMG in the main hand. You'll lose more damage during normal hits from the reduced DPS than what you'll gain during SA/TA/WS from the higher DEX/AGI/DMG.

TLDR version: DPS > All, and after DPS consider Acc > Attack > Everything else. AFTER you have made those considerations then put the higher DMG weapon in the main hand. This is a recipe for success for any job, not just THF.

Some other things to clear up:

Less delay = faster TP, amirite?

Yes and no. Less Delay = Faster TP only when your Delay sinks significantly below the 180 mark. This isn't possible with just DW1, and even with DW2, it's not worth using an inferior dagger just to lower your Delay. As above, you'll lose more DPS than what you gained back through your slightly higher WS frequency. This goes double since pre-merits you'll generally be combining your WS with SA/TA, so it's not like you'll be WS'ing ASAP all the time.

You should never WS unless behind one of those JA's (lvl dependant) so if there is a dagger that has D15 ACC+3, and D14 ATT+3 you will go for D14 ATT+3 on main hand and D15 ACC+3 on offhand, just b/c of its proc when WS'ing.

This is false. There is "nothing" that procs during WS. You'll have Attack+3 and Accuracy+3 on your WS regardless of which dagger goes in which hand, so you would want the D15 dagger in the main hand for any WS with more than 1 hit, since the offhand dagger only hits once.

[Balfree]

Re: THF main hand, damage or delay?

Thanks a lot Armando, very valuable info.

I guess I'll buy two Fed Kukris then.

However, I just dinged 43... (had an awesome PT when I started this thread, at that time I was 40), so I'll use your information to find which weapon i should use now.

[Armando]

Re: THF main hand, damage or delay?

No prob. You won't have to worry about new daggers 'til 46 when the awesome Bone Knife +1 comes into play.

Speaking of stats, always remember that two Acc adds 1% to your hit rate. As for Attack, you can approximate the boost in damage you'll receive by calculating by how much % your Attack will go up (e.g you have 200 Attack, +10 attack is a 210/200 = 5% gain.) However, Accuracy is the more important stat of the two. The reason isn't completely obvious; you would expect hitting 5% more often to have the same impact on your damage as hitting 5% harder. The difference is that hitting 5% harder doesn't make you get TP faster (and thus WS more often) while hitting 5% more often does.

Just don't hold on to a weapon with much less DPS than the competitors just for its stats. That's a big mistake WARs and BSTs make, holding on to their Viking Axes far longer than they should. The +5 Acc/Attack on Bone Knife +1 may seem tempting but the 12% more DPS on Hornetneedle is more significant.

[Luna]

Re: THF main hand, damage or delay?

Thanks a lot Armando, very valuable info.

I guess I'll buy two Fed Kukris then.

However, I just dinged 43... (had an awesome PT when I started this thread, at that time I was 40), so I'll use your information to find which weapon i should use now.

No thanks to me? pfft =/

[Balfree]

Re: THF main hand, damage or delay?

Hornetneedle *drrr0000lllll*

Sorry Saphiera lol, thanks to you too ^^

[Nuriko]

Re: THF main hand, damage or delay?

Suffice to say, if you're dualing non-matched weapons (as in the original question), always go with the higher damage weapon in your main hand if the WS for that weapon type is acceptable. That's the weapon that gets used for WS and determines which are available, the off-hand just gets a swing in.

[Wise Donkey]

Re: THF main hand, damage or delay?

What Armando said... >.>;

Low delay weapons haven't really been a factor for THF since they removed the %5/hit TP floor. Armando explained the intricacies of it better than I ever could.