Thf without TH, would you still be Thf?Follow

i love challenging heavy dds to a parse, and then offering to offhand my TK so they can keep up ... honestly if you play thf seriously, they margin of +/- damage compared to other jobs is minimal enough to come down to player skill in pretty much every situation besides zergs...and i love this job regardless of the fact that people are lame about it.

A DD is a DD is a DD is a DD. Every job that has the capability to equip a weapon and respectable DD gear can be a heavy dd. I define a "heavy" dd by total damage output and what they're capable of doing overall rather than by individual swings. A samurai or dark knight or ranger or monk is no more of a "heavy" dd than a thief or a paladin, and no less either. Each DD job has one purpose, and that's to cause damage. They just do it in different ways.

Rangers get attacks that heavily ignore defense and winders, monks get DoT that never stops and asuran that compound this, Paladins get good swords plus homam and heca and more, samurais get a neverending stream of tp and weaponskills with chains, and warrior are just warriors. Dragoon gets their pet and penta thrust, and darks get emo rage with their scythe and abilities/spells, which really hurts O.o. Hell even corsairs and bards can chalk up high damage, and they have a support role to boot (hint, bard gets WIKED damage gear, such as blau and all the homam and heca and much much more O.O). And while we''re on the subject, scholars and black mages are heavy *** DD's in the right situations too. With refresh and hMP gear plus an attack that ignores the melee defensive formula all together and the ability to strike many targets at once with this power anyone that would argue otherwise is a fool. Damage is damage, and it doesn't matter if it comes from melee or magic, the numbers mean the same irregardless. Then you have the thief. We rely on more than going in and just attacking, and we don't hit hard on normal melee nor do we attack with magic. We have less per hit strike power on gods, but we have speed and criticals. When played right, those criticals and the rate at which the swings and weaponskills happen adds up.

"Heavy" DD? A heavy DD is nothing more than someone who is good at their job. Any and every melee can be a "heavy" dd, the person playing just has to not suck and have taken the time to gear their job right and know how to use it. I wanted to turn my thief into a heavy dd, and I did just that. No job will ever be the best DD on EVERYTHING, and if they were that would be totally unfair to all the other jobs. So I don't even try, and I play to my strengths. That being masive damage in a burn style setup from speed of DoT and weaponskill production, and powerful weaponskills in a god scenario that skillchain hard for the mages to burst on with added hate manipulation of accomp/collab (of course THOSE two abilities apply to burn scenarios as well as everything else we do ANYWAY). There really isn't anything more that could be asked of me.



This is the correct answer.

Edited, Jun 11th 2009 1:57am by Melphina

*Warning! WOT incoming! Warning!*

Eh, i still use the term "heavy" DD on occasion, but to me its simply based on the low end of the jobs potential. Basically how hard it is to ***** up a job. Obviously on the one hand, ANY DD can suck in the hands of a crappy, poorly geared player, but a mnk in str rings, af and sushi will put out more than a thf in garulous rings/af/sushi and /nin sitting on timers and missing SATAs without gear swaps wondering why his DE suck.

The "heavy" DDs are the bandwagon jobs that have some powerful trait that makes them do damage even if you suck. Like sams in str gear eating sushi will still get TP at a "respectable" since 2hander+hasso+sushi=high or capped acc if they just have a haub, even if no 6 hit and bust out respectable WS due to the nature of y/g/k. A thf/pld/bst/nin/Dnc/cor/pup/insert "light" DD here will suck WORSE with the same general quality of gear/player. These jobs either require either excessive gear or are very busy to play well and generally have low atk/acc scores a la 1 handers with now self bufs like zerk/focus/hasso/aggressor etc.

Due to that and their primary DD ws being multi hits, they require much more gear tweaking to make work. Add the busy and gear intensive aspects, and a sucky player will fail MISERABLY at these jobs as a DD. Put the same guy on sam and it wont be "as bad." I mean really? Just how bad can a War do if you give them a GAxe and they eat SOME food and hit zerk/aggressor/WS at some kind of regular interval. Ill tell you its a HELL of a lot more than a ****** pup , thf or Bst/whm in chr rings and MP hairpin.

Of course on the one hand, i wouldnt want to party with a sucky player on ANY job, but i will cry myself to sleep less if they are on a "heavy" DD job.

The upper limit on the jobs varies, but you can get 25K/hour with good people on any DD jobs, so I dont care about the upper register. My drg performs better than my thf. But my thf is certainly a stronger DD than most everyone else. My drg is just broken is all :P But My thf is actually better for parties that arent the upper crust of the player base as My drg tanks to much for siegan to keep up, while Thf can tank anything forever and balance hate better with TA and actually RAISE exp/hour more than drg through MP saved etc. A good DD is what the party need,s "heavy" or not.
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On topic

If thf had no TH, id still play it, but my drg would see more action as it DDs a bit better on a number of asctivities that I go thf to primarily for TH. The biggest change would be a choice when i go farming. I could farm the hell outta things on Drg/Mage for ever on autopilot as I never need to worry about tools/casting and mitigating damage or death in general. Ethereal+wyrm helm= impossible to gauge. Toss in a nice HP set that puts me at almost 1650 HP for HB (820ish trigger) and some wyvern HP gear making HB top 540 with the wyvern exp bonus AND still be sick damage......Drg has been growing on me for years. Hasnt passed up Thf yet, but if TH got killed....i dunno. its about 52-48 in favor of thf as my true "main". Drg might edge it out if you took away TH.

The power of drg is just so alluring now that im seeing the upper end of it. The used to be pretty close, but as my gear grows, my thf is starting to cap out. Everythign is such a piddly upgrade these days on thf. My drg has not had the same slow down. Still havw some significant upgrades left to push it even farther.

People that level thf for TH usually go to 37 and thats it. when i started leveling thf i could care a less about TH. essentially its a 4% chance on a drop. how many times have you seen no TH get a drop in 1 try and you go 0/10. **** TH.


i play thf cuz its one of the TRUE solo jobs in the game. DRG, BST, SMN, PUP all have pets to help. other jobs have to rely on other peoples MP or killing a mob fast before it kills you. I just have some shadows and some bolts and some evasion. And i tell ya what, after soloing that T-VT mob i dont have to rest my health like the war or mnk that just got clobbered to 200 HP. WE DONT GET HIT and that my friends is ******* sexy.


i also play THF to just try and make people shut up and prove them wrong by doing things they think thf has no business doing.

I also like going to campaign and taking hate off all the uber geared PLDS, wars, drks, whatevers and saying lolthf as I tank the mob the entire time cuz they suck. its awesome to watch plds flash and voke and these DDs WSing and the mob just doesnt move the mobs still on me and i didnt even get to SAWS. plenty of times i can just get DoT hate before i even WS and i think they should be embarrassed since we thfs suck at DDing(wink wink)

completely off topic and not about thf but this is great! some of the best ways i kept hate while leveling PLD was just totally going DD PLD/NIN. especially when you get to imps and turtle gear is useless against a 1500 gekko but flash, voke and an 800 vorpal blade and yer golden. why would i ever turtle up and use spirits within on xp mobs? thats ridiculous. especially when it comes to tp burn pts. lower levels yes, you def need tutrle power.

man i dont know i really just think 90% of the people in this game suck at everything and i am in no way saying i am great or anything but i just dont understand where these ppl get this stuff from.

all DDs in this game have the potential to do the same type of dmg on mobs. SE would not make one job capable of more dmg than the other. people base this crap off seeing a retardedly geared sam still do 1k gekkos in an xp and see the even more retardedly geared thf do 400 DE. i mean really, any ****** can lvl war or sam or drg and seem to be doing ok dmg but if you gimp your thf you are gimped beyond belief. it is a job of finesse and technique and takes MANY gear swap macros to make it the best it can be. thats one thing i hate about the macro bars in FFXI. i dont have enough room for even just the gear macros i would want.

i blame this on ppl who wait for TP to SAWS instead of realizing that if you do them separately they all add up to the same amount of dmg. for gods sake it doesnt take a genius to figure out. properly geared you can do 1k dmg(give or take depends on gear/mob) every 60 seconds just on SA and TA solo PLUS whatever your DOT dmg is PLUS whatever your WS dmg is. people dont do that though, they do 1 SAWS every 60 seconds and in a parser they get blown away so people see that and say thf is gimp.

***** you i say!

treasure hunter to doesn't really make a thf a thf. as long as u still have sneak attack and all the assasin type abilitys then thf will always be a thf

This. I was moderately impressed when I partied with a thf back in the day and the drops poured forth, but when we disbanded and he did his Roadrunner impression.... it was true love XD

There is much more to a THF that just TH or damage. Hate control is my main reason for liking THF. It's like reverse tanking and you control who it's on to an extent. In stuff like Dynamis, TH is all that matters. If you can pull well, you're worth more than 95% of the other THF's. It's sad so many equate damage as the almighty yard stick for success. That kind of logic is just as bad as those who think THF is nothing but a TH *****.

I don't even have much to say about shacka's post other than ... lol??

I won't bother picking it apart much, just the last section




And once more... with FEELING




Well damn, I guess my thief must really suck because I sure as hell never bought a speed belt ; ;. But apparently I need it. Forget the fact that the peacock charm is a standard "awesome" item for any job that can wear it and that amemet mantle +1 exists too while I'm at it.... and that ALL jobs need decent rings (hint, any melee will appreciiate a stat +5 ring.... like flame/triumph in lieu of thunder). The funniest thing is that he says OTHER jobs will kick *** without this stuff, when any other job that equips a speed belt gets the exact same bonus to haste as us. Oh and one more thing




The hecatomb set of 5/5 cursed items costs about the same price as a blau dolch. The heca cap and subligar are cheap as hell for normal quality because of supply and demand issues, and the hands and feet are fought over by bonecrafters because they're tier 1. The only heca piece with a STABLE high price is the body.

Summary... Shacka doesn't know what he's talking about. Par for the course.

Edited, Jun 14th 2009 1:42am by Melphina

The thought that a newly level 75 auction house thief needs 20 mil in gear to be acceptable is simply laughable. We all start somewhere, and I could never expect anyone to START with 20 million gil in gear as soon as they hit level 75.

I critiqued that post so hard because of the way you stated that thieves need them to get by. They're very nice items, but they have comparable alternatives. I always tell budding young thieves to go for what grants the biggest gains for the effort invested first, essentially getting the best "bang for your buck". If you could choose between upgrading an amemet mantle +1 to a cuchulain's mantle, or upgrading a scorpion harness to a hecatomb harness I think the choice would be pretty clear which would be the higher priority. Similarly going from a woodsman ring to a toreadors doesn't hold NEARLY the kind of weight as getting sky hecatomb and a blau dolch. Also while a peacock charm is a GOOD upgrade (highly recommended), 2 mil can buy a dragon harness, two woodsman rings, two SPINEL rings, an amemet mantle +1, and a few normal quality dusk pieces with pocket change for food/meds/tools/reraise to spare. In comparison of the peacock in lieu of a pair of spectacles and the other pieces listed, the choice should be simple. It's the concept that everyone has to start somewhere. Anyone thinking the cuchu mantle and peacock and other such items are "necessary" when you first ding 75 is an elitist prick.... and don't you DARE even TOUCH speed belt and dusk hands +1 ffs!!! Even veteran thieves of years don't have THOSE.

I advocate GRADUAL slow and steady progress, building up each set you wear one piece at a time. The items you listed are GOOD upgrades, I am not saying they aren't. But there are better ways to go about it, and I HIGHLY DOUBT you can farm 50 mil for speed belt and dusk gloves +1 in any time frame of less than a year with hardcore effort. Plus I'll also add... good luck finding a speed belt, they don't go on sale much. The last one I saw on fenrir was 5 months ago. Blau dolch I will give you. That's the one item every career thief will want to get no matter what it takes. The blau dolch is one of the few items that under almost no normal circumstances would you ever let it leave your hands. It's just THAT big of a deal. The other things are not as serious. The antares harness is a nice upgrade, but it's still expensive as heck despite supply (very slowly) catching up to demand. A heca harness/ dragon harness combo can fill the gap of antares in a pinch, and dragon has been hammered into the ground recently from 350k to ~~ 100k. Cuchulain's mantle is good for all jobs that get it, all 10++ or w/e, but amemet +1 is an acceptable substitute meanwhile, and 4 million gil is a LOT for that. It's low priority. I already touched upon the rings and peacock and reasoning behind all jobs getting use, and why I prioritize as I do.

Slow and steady progress is the way to get ahead. It's taken me three years to get my thief gear sets together, and I worked at it every week. I went one piece at a time. A breeze ring and denali jacket for trick attack here, a swift belt and turban for tp there, and a warwolf belt and dragon harness for sneak attack to start... etc etc. Buying the most expensive items first just doesn't make sense.

Edited, Jun 14th 2009 2:30am by Melphina

I'm a guy.