Thief Merits

With regular Feint applied, even a PLD decked out in full Outrider gear and Eminent Scimitar (with no other buffs) has about enough accuracy to cap an enemy with as much evasion as around 1350. The extra -50 evasion from the relic pants augment with 5/5 Feint will raise that to around 1400. By all means, TH is a perfect reason to go for 5/5 Feint, but nobody is suffering if you ditch the relic pants.

The way I see Feint, it's for Treasure Hunter, and the evasion is just a bonus. Using the legs to boost the bonus further isn't hurting anyone. Unless you really need to save that 0.01 second? I don't know. Might as well have it 5/5 so you can have the best of both worlds.

Also, you never know what SE are going to release next. The next line of battlefields could require an army of THFs rotating Feint along with needing Hunter's, Madrigals, Sushi, Conspirator, Geo-Torpor, and every other accuracy option you can find. Feint is just one of the options available to you, and the enhanced Evasion Down is noticeable.

I meant useless because you won't be behind the target.

I guess all you ever do is solo and/or play with gimp DD. Like I already explained, I run with Mythic SAMs, and they have the buffs not me, therefore I am BEHIND the mobs most of the time. Do you ever run Incursion on THF??

Its time for your thf goes to the main DD party.

Also thf is very capable to play in a pld setup. 2 Trick attack rudra to spike pld hate, and you are good to keep mob staring the pld full fight, so benefiting mobs back.

I would love to do that but it's not up to me :)

What, I don't even. Do you only TA Rudras and never WS outside of that?

Or maybe the hate cap doesn't apply to you and you never bleed hate and never party with other thfs or DDs as fantastic as you.
Also your a gimp thf because the way you play, always having hate, mean you can't utilize SA outside of bully. And in doing so lose a huge amount of DPS.
All while still staying above all other DDs.
Amazing.

With 4 rangers dumping decoy on a PLD on DM all it takes is 1 SARudra and I'm instantly tanking, until I TArudra back on the pld. That gives him hate back for about 3 seconds. (Burtgang pld).

funny thing when you read TARUdra XD

I wasn't really talking about high tier battlefields. I was talking about high tier Incursion against the NMs, Gramk Droog, and Wanted NM like Largantua with high evasion. I made the post above to explain the situations when I would like Ambush and the incresing devalue of Assassin's Charge.

And yeah, who doesn't do Sneak Attack + Rudra's Storm? It's so broken it's hilarious. Please don't assume things.

I have decided to go 5/5 Feint, 3/5 Ambush, 1/1 Aura Steal and 1/1 Assassin's Charge. If it doesn't work, then no biggie, I ain't got anything else to spend merits on.

Apart from the lolbonus you get from Feint (eva down) over writes Frzzel wasting the JA Frazzle 2 the RDM did ~

Plus as any DD Set up worth their Salt does 5 steps~6 step skillchains, you doing Rudra's Storm with SA just pisses said SAM's off by killing any SC they're doing.

Incursion THF/DNC is for steps and TH, granted you can do a 1 nice ws every now and again, and if you were closing some 4 step w.e for darkness with rudra and you did 70k sc w.e yeah justified sorta until you factor in mob not facing SAM's losing overwhelm bonus and lowering overall Party DPS.

Minus the sheer increase in TP feed daggers provides to any target specially with dual wield which increases pressures on stunners / whm / supports.

It's kinda hard to do much of anything. Am I just expected to let my TP hang on 3000 for the whole run? :(

No more just pointing out that worrying about doing a WS on a NM when your role within said event is to not take hate (Take that up with SE) and act as a support for TH/steps and thereby not killing the groups DPS because SE gave you a shiny toy.

Plus as TH is a thing, SA should be used for TH not WS'ing but you're in a seperate Party so w.e~

SE needs to make TA work from alliance not party, that would be a reasonable update, niche but useable.

You'd be better off SA + steping or Feinting for tH and TA + Wsing to plant hate at start but after that let the SAM's 6 step it to hell (its hard to argue with 80k light skillchains every few seconds).

Steps and TH are my first priority. You know that. I do it all the time. I try not to take hate, but it happens. I thought I was doing just fine, balancing the TH and Steps, and doing damage when I can. I don't mean to screw up anyone else's damage. Tagging TH gets very boring. I play the game to be a DD.

It's not anything you're doing wrong~

The issue is the mechanics there are not super friendly to numerous DD's hence I run with 2 heavy DD and a THF but like 9 supports, this is maily because skillchain damage is stupendous.

At ilvl 128 it's hardly a thing, but we're getting into the realms of where a 3rd GEO is needed to Languor boss for Schs to land debuffs / sleeps etc so stun walls inc shortly.

It's at this level we have to focus on serious business and SC's and where really You'd probably be best not using rudra's until after you see the 6step finish itself.

Hell I'm sure we could fine a way add Rudra in, but we won't get around the whole capping hate issue and that's the real issue.

on a side note, THF was never a DD it was supposed to be Utility for Hate Management which is just a *** joke now.

I don't want to make this about our Incursion runs, more about how the dynamics of setups work and why SE needs to fix THF (give them a full hate shed ja reduces VE/CE to 1 so you can't depop mobs to stop it being broken).

Yeah I noticed that, and having me at the back taking hate all the time, as a DD myself, I can see why two SAMs wouldn't like that very much. I tried to be on your side more during Gramk Droog, don;t know if ya noticed. When I was behind it I didn't have hate, but once we totally capped hate I was on your side a lot more. I would still like to weapon skill, because you can't argue with the power of Rudra's, but yeah, I need to find the right timing if I want to use it. It sucks when I have all this TP to burn and can't use it without interrupting you guys.

And you know I would rather come on DRK anyway, if it was possible.

I know swords have some WS's with NO SC properties.... that would be interesting..

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Sanguine_Blade

for example won't ever interupt a SC.

When you outparse Matthious DRK sure!

Pfft, Matthious is better than me. I ain't afraid to admit that. Ragnarok sucks now anyway, Rudra's is better and I can't even use that ...

I'm afraid I would need to be a Mythic SAM to be a DD in Incursion, which is quite sad. I miss playing my DRK on anything challenging. I won't get a Liberator anytime soon, I just don't have the time or resources.

Hey we let Matthious Mythic DRK! Seriously not even an issue.(granted drk/sam sc combos lack hard).

If SE took Rudra's SC property away (I know some will complain this) and gave it static hate like Coronach it would facilitate THF's hate management issue and make them better additions to groups (give them a ja to use like SA to add a SC property would be a compromise)
Add the TA from Alliance and You'd have a winner, the hate reset ja probably not needed so much but something extra for a THF to add to their arsenal.

This would also see more THF using SATA on Tanks with Sharkbite (WS variance instead of spam one ws) making the game a little more diverse.

This basically. Apparently good thiefs only Auto-attack and TA Rudras, and don't own damage taken sets, and don't have rudra sets, or are in parties where content takes so long to die there is a huge fear that they will die if they are tanking vs another DD tanking. A bad thief will have said stuff and implement SA into their rotation and will do so much dmg that they will end up tanking, and this is really bad because then you can't use your ambush merits.........

Yeah, I would love to be a Mythic DRK, playing scythe again would be amazing, that's all I did for years. But yeah, I am stuck on a job which screws up your skillchains if I weaponskill, so there has to be a way I can weaponskill without doing that so I can contribute.

I mean 6 steps SC's are fine, we can jump in vent and you can listen to the co-ordination and when you see us close the SC or something WS it to hell then, only realistic method around I think...

SE should have added a Mic Chat option to the game but they didnt even add this to 14.

They should give thf 9000000 MAB and give them Sanguine Blade, and lets you just spam that alll day long (he resists but meh!)

Yeah it would mean you letting me know almost every time you close a skillchain on anything with HP, which I can imagine is just going to get tedious after a while. If you could give me a log example of how the 6 step SC phase goes, I can limit my chat filters and figure it out so you can focus on what you're doing.

I will probably get crucified for saying this but w/e

I disagree to all this sam only crap. First off a thf is going to close every sc when SA or TA is up with far higher numbers, so the crying sam's need to communicate with thf's.

Furthermore thf should be hitting at least 10k ws even without SA/TA. (Learn to hold tp til at least 150 w/moonshade, preferred 175) If a sam isn't facing the mob and missing out on overwhelm that is both the thf and the sam's fault. HOWEVER! Sam should know that a thf will pull hate off him when doing the SA Rudra and to learn to watch the chat log/animations just as much as you want the thf's to watch. Yeah I get sam can sc more often that thf, but 2 thf spamming rudra will do just as good if not better than 2 sam. Rudra does more dmg. When you can go into incursion 128 and walk out with 28k ws avg I think thf has a slot in the DD party now. People need to start looking outside the box for dmg. It isn't sam only anymore.

I hear what you're saying, and I'm not here about SAM, now granted we could do Darkness sc's instead and have the THF close SC and then take hate, but then that thf might very well have hate for the rest of the fight making repeated use of that unfeasible.

Now granted THF can do about 10k(eyeballing figure but I can't testify against/for) on Rudra, however my SAM does about 15~20k fudo's and with far greater frequency, SAM still owns THF in this respect.

Besides, there is supposed to be a 2handed WS update to address the lolRudra's imbalance at some point and we might see WAR only with Upheavel or something ~

My point was we don't have the thf in the main group due to the set up.

How many THFs though have perfect/great gear?

Not alot on Cerberus

Personally I would still like to see a drk def buff and a boost to their attk. I think that is long over due. War needs a real fix as well.

All this talk about Moonshade earring and rudras storm:

Whats your augments on the moonshade earring?