THF In Todays FFXI

So is the new THF special ability the same as Aura Steal, or is there something I am overlooking?

The benefit of additional +TH from gear/procs is so weak that it takes 1000+ kills to see a measurable, small % increase.

Any worthwhile NM, go right ahead and tp in your TH gear.
Better yet SA/TA it to death for better results.

On trash/farm mobs, a simple /ra gear-swap of hands and feet will suffice.
Full-timing TH and/or utilizing Thf.Knife will only slow your kill speed considerably, hindering your overall productivity.

Feint is actually the biggest reason. You can bring a back line job to /thf for essentially the same TH. However, a thf/dnc can do quickstep and feint which can be particularly useful for a few things.

Just some more numbers for your pot: Did that same loop with me and my WHM mule tonight, 393 currency, 131 kills, 3.0 currency per mob on the nose with TH6 swapped into my acid bolt pulls.

Here are all the TH procs, including the two mistake ones for the run:

I'll add pulling (with acids!) to the list, when applicable it can really shave some time off whatever you're up to. ADL tome farming is mainly what comes to mind in terms of pulling these days, the melee Demons have some decent defense.


I'm not sure an accusation of regurgitation and dissemination of pseudo intellectual nonsense counts if the accusation itself also uses pseudo intellectual buzzwords.

Which one's a buzzword?

If you have to ask which ones are buzzwords, maybe you shouldn't be throwing those words around.

Im bored so yea

Thanks for the ninja edit there.

Anyways, if you don't wanna tell, I won't make ya.

I'd still contest the notion that stringing together a sentence made mostly of words longer than 6 letters = buzz word.

Good players can't always get the gear they need... I play on and off so I don't have a LS to run with (and can't get one). So I'm limited to gear I can get solo or with VW pugs.

It's a complex issue.

Some good points but from what im reading and gathering from the general jist of whats been said, TH is mainly utilized for TH. The potential VW proc and then everything else is just forgotten.

Well the inputs have been much appreciated. I do have other jobs i am well versed in such as WHM, SAM, SMN, and BLM, just i really love my THF.

Once again thanks for the constructive input and sorry for the lack of responses! Only just managed to log back on to the site since i originally posted the thread :(

You got the gist of it, THF Is only really wanted for TH At this point.

The way i see it though, If I'm there to be a Treasure Hunter ***, I'd very much like to at least do the best i can to contribute outside of being a TH ***, despite the logic of some... just because you're only there for one thing, doesn't mean you shouldn't try to do anything else. THF Has some basic DD Capabilities, While it will absolutely never outshine a true DD, It can contribute while being a TH ***... The two actually compliment eachother.

So i still try to play the job the best I can, accommodating any situation. If you like THF, no reason to deter from it. Fallback on your other jobs when THF Isn't needed, But try to sneak in on THF When you can.

I'll still do THF in Legion, Voidwatch, and Neo-Salvage because 1) Its my favorite job and i own a 99 Mandau, and 2) F**k you thats why. :D

I wouldn't go that far, sounds like you're despairing. THF still has some nice utility (I know Ihina at least pulls with THF in Legion which is cool) and the comments about THF's damage are looking at vacuum DPS.

I've got VW parses of my THF beating all kinds of pimped DDs. I'm not saying THF is actually a great DD but if you do a good job, you'll easily beat the majority of people in VW who don't give a ***. I was even offering 500k wagers to people if I didn't make top3.

It's not like you'll do absolute crap damage if you put effort into it. Even if you do 20% less total damage than the highest DD, that's still probably enough to be #2 in most VW groups.

T H F
Treasure Hunter, Feint

In all seriousness though, I do enjoy playing thief (it was my main job back in the day).

Not so much despairing, just when I last played despite putting out good enough damage to make top 5 (generally being beaten by SAM's) I was still frowned at when going THF. I'm not all for high numbers but back then I had faith in holding my own. My main reason for this thread was simply to see if the utility use of THF had improved. Yes I wholeheartedly agree that THF can do great damage if played right, just ask Chikamatsu, and he will confer the same. Just getting asked everytime "do you have a useful job?" Can get irritating. But I guess ill come back and see how things have changed. Back then my average MS+SA was 3k+ I believe. Occasionally going as high as 4.5k-5k which is nice. Just wish they lowered the times for sa and ta or at least reduce the time for bully.

I haven't read the rest of the thread, but I thought I'd respond to this since it stood out in your post.



In most current content that matters, yes, it is a requirement. You said it yourself, relating to voidwatch (which really isn't "current content" anymore).

You aren't going to be bringing a non-Aegis/Ochain PLD to anything and you aren't going to be bringing a non-Relic/Empyrean DD to anything. Why? Because other people do have a Relic or Empyrean and they're readily available. You don't have to have the absolute best, that's why you're doing the content in the first place... but you do need sensible gear.

Mages don't really need Relics or Empyreans for the most part because the weapons aren't actually used. That being said, it isn't like you can prance around in full AF3, you do actually need gear.

THF doesn't need a Relic or Empyrean only because it's used for so little and most of those uses don't include doing damage. If you're using THF as a DD then it's a different story, but most people really don't. The only uses I currently can think of for THF are TH (of course...) and possibly pulling in Legion if you're bringing one at all.

If your argument is stating that people can go out and do terribly at a certain job, then sure. I guess you'd consider doing anything at all "playing" that job. There are also people who play this for the social aspect of the game, and that's perfectly fine. Forgive me if that's what you're arguing... but for what most of us consider "endgame," you do have to have gear and at least somewhat understand game mechanics.

Registry mate I think what he is saying is just cause you don't have a relic or empy doesn't make you a bad player. Yeah it helps especially DMG wise but if your good at your job you can alleviate that. I agree, that having a relic or empy weapon (especially a empy weapon seeing as you can build a masa with fudo active in 2 days) does help loads and with so many around if you don't have either your limiting your availability. But at the same time not having one doesn't make you any worse than someone who has. Now to say that you have to 99 your weapons also is pushing it a bit. A 95 relic won't be far behind a 99 (unless things have changed since I last played). People play the game how they enjoy it. Lets just leave it at that I think before this gets out of hand :)

Well for a THF a Relic 95 is "far behind" a Relic 99 :) simply because we use mercy stroke hehe but yea, all relic weapons work very well at 95, but they for sure are better at 99.
For a job you want to DD and do dmg any emph weapon someone owns should be lv 90, same like any relic should be atleast 95. This alone shows some kind of dedication for the job. Those who suck at the job normally have the emph forever on lv 85 hehe

especially in shout groups a R/E/M weapon is required, but it doesnt mean those owning one are great players. Haveing those weapons opens the door for you into an alliance, but if the leader is any decent he will remember bad players (with E/R/M) and wont invite them again. Thats atleast how Cerberus VW works (those leaders who spam VW, not those who start 1 run every once in a while) I dont do any other shout events, since i have an event LS for anything else, so can only talk about that.

So yea if you want to play DD in more or less current events you need a E/R/M or accepted comparable weapons (like a OAT GS99) to even get invited. If you know the leader of the group np he probably will invite you witout those. Its not like the weapon is really "needed" its just you have so many DD's to choose from, aslong as you dont know the persons you will invite someone with E/R/M over someone who doesnt has one.

Sadly, it does.

As long as you aren't semi-HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE, being "good" at this game is mostly gear.

That being said, there are a lot of semi-HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE people who play this game.


Depends on the relic. Some (Amano for example) are downright useless unless they're 99.


I understand that and have no issue with it.

Certain people have fun in different ways, but I'm not taking someone to certain events if they're going to fulltime their full Perle while they use a Widowmaker. I'm definitely not going to let them label me a bad person because I won't let them come.

Do people even wear full perle today??

yes :P but those mostly dont step outside abyssea

Genuinely surprised about this.

They also dont step out of Dynamis either.

I had to log in just to +1 that lol

On topic, i'm stuck on blu and thf lately a lot for solo/low man and that's one of it's best roles imo.
Anyways as Suji says, if you focus enough is easy to perform better than the majority of random bandwagon DDs out there, and as someone said on some post, parsing on a higher position than what you are espected is funnier.

Back in the old day, THF = Treasure Hunter Four

Gonna ignore the "WE PLAY FOR FUNZ" comments being thrown at me because there's really no talking to them.

Anyways, if you wanna talk about THF DD; I'm pretty well geared, and I play my job pretty well, and I parse pretty much everything I do. I would say the pinnacle of THF DD is approximately 75% of the pinnacle of 'real' DDs, that being sam, war and drk.

Let me give some more perceptive so people don't randomly throw out how special they are.

I can pretty much beat almost everyone on my server, DD-wise. Doesn't matter if they have a 99rag, or a 99ukon, or a 99amano, or whatever. Approximately 98% of the time, I'll top them on the parse. However, there are always those nuts around, and there are only a few of them; I can name most of them off the top of my head and with both hands. They spend crazy amounts of time optimizing their set, both to pull out amazing WS numbers as well as an amazing amount of WS frequency.

Sometimes it's higher, sometimes it's lower, but if you take the average when I parse against that small group of people, I tend to do 75% of the damage they're doing.

The damage potential of jobs like WAR, SAM and DRK is quite high. It's actually frustratingly high to me simply because of how many people don't care enough and fall way short. If the top DDs were given a rating of 10, I would be approximately 7-8, and the average DD I parse against regularly would only be 4-6. People sitting on their 90emp or 95 relics tend to be closer to 4 while people with 99relic/emps tend to be closer to 6 or 7. To be clear, it's not the weapon that makes up for that gap, it's simply the fact that they generally care more.

The reason why it's frustrating for me to see this is because the ceiling for THF DD potential is sickeningly low, and it's low because we're bound to our SA and TA timers. We can only perform our 'strong' WS twice per minute and the rest of the time, we're stuck spamming Exenterator...and Exenterator sucks <_<

Throw a little more DA on your set and the entirety of most jobs would get stronger in respect of that extra level of DA and without bound. If a THF were to throw on DA, yes total melee and total WS damage would similarly increase, but we would still be bound by our SA/TA timers.

Ihina I think you pretty much summed it up nicely there.

On a separate issue, why is people playing for fun frowned upon?

It's not that people frown upon them playing for fun... It's that those people come into threads of this nature and when presented with perfectly legitimate arguments, they reply with things like "I only play for fun so I don't care". It's hard to have a serious discussion with people who can be so dismissive with absolutely no argument to back it up.

Relatively speaking, of course. We all play to have fun, but others have fun in varying ways!

On the topic of THF, would we even take one to most things if we didn't need TH? That in itself should summarise how much of a DD it is. I like THF as much as the next guy but if I was looking to do damage I'd jump on my Ranger... But whilst we're playing Thief we might as well be as strong as we can!

Failure is still failure even if you weren't really trying.

that makes sense, and agree that in this situation yes, such comments are not needed and to be fair for 99.9% of people the notion of having fun is implied...