Hecatomb Or Antares For Thief SATA/WS?

Hecatomb Harness

HP+16 STR+12 Accuracy+10 Slow +13%

Antares Harness

HP+15 DEX+8 AGI+8 Accuracy+8 Evasion+8

This question is for a thief without Mandau, using a high damage dagger mainhand (Harpe, Azoth or X's Knife.) I have heard some thieves say that they love the Hecatomb for the extra 2 accuracy and strength to raise the damage cap, but the Antares seems to have a great deal of dexterity and agility for sneak attack and trick attack while still having 8 accuracy on it. So, undecided myself, I have come here to ask the opinions of other players. Thank you for your time and advice.

So far from my limited experience:

DE/Evis: Heca
SB/M.Stab: Antares (or in my case, dragon harness)

Is it the extra strength or the accuracy that seems to make dancing edge and evisceration perform better with a Hecatomb?

^This

I've used a friends Antares and wasn't that impressed with it. Granted I didn't parse or do in depth testing with it, just didn't notice much of a difference in damage between that and my dragon harness.

Both, the ACC to actually land the hits and the STR to make them hit harder.

The DEX/AGI boost will only apply to the first hit of a multi hit WS when stacked with TA or SA if I remember correctly.

OK, Thank you both for your advice. I'll just hold out for a neptunal abjuration.

Ant Harness has more acc than Heca dont' forget 8 Dex on Ant = 4 more acc.
Ant 12 acc vs Heca 10 acc.

The logic that I use:

SA/TA: First hit is guaranteed. Load up on +DEX/+AGI/+Attack gear.

DE/Evis: Multi-hit, first hit guaranteed (if using SA/TA), gets the SA/TA bonus on first hit, the crit on first hit, etc. Remaining hits are unmodified by SA/TA, so +STR/ACC is now important. Hecatomb.

SB/M.Stab: Two-hit (One? for M.Stab). Since there are fewer hits happening, I load up gear exactly as i would for a SA/TA. ACC is a null factor as long as your SA/TA don't get screwed up. Dragon Harness.

If I'm correct, Evis can also Crit on any of the hits, so is the STR on Heca better than the Dex on Ant?

DE is dex primary mod and chr lol2ndry mod? I forget, so I may be wrong here.

I'm not sure about EV (can't look it up at work) but unless it says something about crits in the description it can't naturally crit.

DE mods are DEX and CHR and again can't look up the % of each.

I'm fairly sure that Evis is a crit based WS and that is why X's is so sick on it. It would seem to me looking at all things considered if you had to choose only 1, that Ant would be a bit better.

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Evisceration

- Delivers a fivefold attack. Chance of critical hit varies with TP.

And yes, it really only shines with X's or if you're closing Darkness.

Also, OP, work towards Blau/Sirocco.

I use Denali for solo TA and Mirke w/ 10ATT10ACC for everything else. Works great until I can get one of those elusive Omega Hearts for TP.

I believe that's how it works, but, I believe that holds true for DE as well. I don't have an Antares to test with (or 4m gil to buy one for that matter), so I'll leave it to someone that does.

As a matter of opinion, I'm more comfortable with the +STR (extra attack) than I am with the two extra ACC/8 extra dex from Antares, and definitely much better off than using Dragon Harness for DE/Evis.

Setting all that aside, has anyone Built out Mirke with ACC/ATTK? Dragon/Heca/Antares lite? Worthwhile to go this route, or no?

Ok so there's my answer. Would have done that myself but the firewall at work doesn't give me access to wiki.



Nope, I'm going Dual Wield +3%/ACC +10 route.

That seems to be the most popular opinion for THF that I've heard. Though I am tempted to swap DW+ for DA+.

It depends what you're going for. I don't do much meriting on thf but if you're maxing out a meat TP build on birds, for example, DW+Acc is a godsend. As you know, however, it takes a ton of accuracy gear (3/5 homam, Cuchulain's Mantle, maybe Toreador's) to get there, so I don't know if I'd recommend DW+Acc to just anyone.

That said, Mirke with acc+att is an very solid WS piece (hence my choice) that will keep me until i decide to go for things like Skadi, DH+1, etc.

From what I understand Acc/DW is the best by FAR

Situational. What thf with half a brain would go /nin to gods?

Subs don't effec

Sub job doesn't affect TH silly

I'll be going the Acc/Atk route when I get around to finishing off ACP in the next week or two. While the Acc/DW Mirke is our best TP piece when /NIN, the Hauby Mirke is an excellent all-around bodypiece for THF. It's not the best for anything, but it's not far behind the top bodypieces for nearly everything we do (the exceptions being Evasion, Utsusemi casts, and Ranged Accuracy).

I don't have a good bodypiece for weaponskills and I also don't do Salvage (for Skadi body), so my personal gearsets will see the best improvement from a Hauby Mirke.

This was actually my line of thought. But, I suppose I'll be using Heca on Gods anyway (don't get to go THF on gods normally anyway).

How does Hecatomb Harness have more ACC than Antares? 8DEX 8ACC on Antare's Harness, would be a cumulative 12 acc including the ACC from the +DEX.

Also ince SATA WS Damage is calculated, WD = ( D + fSTR + WSC) * fTP + DEX + AGI, you are basically adding +16 w/ Antares into that formula vs a chance for a ~3 fSTR increase w/ Hecatomb Harness. Which should make Antares come out on top in all situations where you SATA -> WS. Even doing rough numbers on SA->WS it looks like Antares again comes out ahead.

My gear set that I used for general numbers was http://ffxigear.com/?ref=2966

I'll give it a bit for someone who does these base damage calculations more frequently a chance to correct me if I'm wrong here though.

Edit: Lot more posts came since I was number crunching it seems.

Antares owns, u can full time that ***, good for eva build, tp build, and WS. not to mention it TA, SA, and SATA alone.

I would only use heca if i had mandau..

Assuming I had Heca and Antares (and that I regularly fought Sky Gods plus I could convince people to let me go THF over BRD), I'd use Antares for one main reason. I wouldn't be using Dancing Edge on Sky Gods. I'd be using Shark Bite or Mandalic Stab, and both of those weaponskills would benefit the most from the DEX on Antares (along with the AGI if the weaponskills were stacked with SA/TA). Of course, this goes out the window if you have Mandau and are using Mercy Stroke, in which case you'd use Heca.

So yeah, I basically agree with Bungie on that point.

...And I agree that it's kinda dumb to /NIN on Sky Gods. /WAR or /DRK are better options.

Hmm.. The recent posts seem to have swayed my opinion. I guess I'll go ahead and buy an Antares.. at least it is something I can reconsider and sell if and when I get a Hecatomb. Mandau isn't something that I'm going to have anytime soon.. if ever. My main job is black mage and I still need to pour a bit more gil into it. Thank you all for the input.

Its the acc. All thf ws and plz, if your a thief and you don't know this. Go run off the nearest cliff. But ALL thf ws except DE are dex and agi modified, DE is dex and CHR modified. Its the acc that helps DE because its a multihit. As with all mulithits with SA added it makes the first hit a critical, if you want more dmg out of your DE, stack plenty of acc and dex and agi and pop in a chr if you can slip it in it will help. My record on last character which was 75 thf elvaan when soloing amemet was near 2.5k dmg with DE no SA or TA used because i stacked acc, dex, and agi but i didnt' have uber gear, just rocked blau, sirocco, and dragon harness (love dragon harness).