For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

several job point bonuses like kicks, double attack, and zanshin check like that as well, so it isn't too surprising

So I gave a quick look for hard evidence from SE on a JP Wiki located here, and they seem to suggest that the augments to Conspirator from the vest are Attack and Store TP.

I went out and did some very bare bones testing on Blanched Mandragoras using just August and myself, and there is definitely Store TP on the augment.

Using a 200 delay weapon without any other gear or buffs, I was getting the expected TP return of 65 per hit.

I then unequipped/re-equipped my weapon to reset TP, put Skulker's Vest on, and activated Conspirator, and my TP per hit went to 66.

However it seems to function like Tantra Cyclas with Impetus, wherein you need the body equipped to gain the Store TP effect, because when I took the vest off and reset TP again, I was only getting 65 per hit even though I still had the buff active.

The Store TP seemed fairly weak, so I suspected it might vary with the size of the hate list, like the JP Wiki suggests the accuracy and subtle blow bonuses do. I called Koru-Moru and Joachim and performed the same test once all 3 trusts were on the hate list. This time, my tp per hit was 68.

I would try to narrow down some more exact numbers using higher delay weapons and a more varied amount on the hate list, but I am too tired for that tonight.

So it sounds like "Augments Conspirator" is specific to having the body equipped then. That means only the thief gets the store tp and attack increases, and they have to maintain the piece fulltime? Bummer. That completely ruins it for the time being. There's no reason to keep the skulker's vest +1 on in its current state. Pillager's +3 just dominates it. But it is very useful information for the future. Whenever the +3 version comes out if the stats are good enough it'll merit further discussion then. Trying to narrow down the sTP values so they're known now though is also still worthwhile. Testing for attack values is pretty much impossible, but I'm willing to take bgwiki at face value and just run with attack buff == accuracy buff while the thing is equipped.

from those couple of values, it matches at 2 STP per party member

Is there any piece of gear that says "Augments [ability]" where you don't have to keep the gear equipped to gain the effect? I've seen "Enhances [ability]" go both ways, but have never seen any instance of an "Augment" piece of gear where you could get the effect from activation wearing and then change to something else to retain the effect. The only instance of that I have ever seen is an empyrean set bonus, specifically with something like songs.

It appears they intended for it empyrean pieces to be worn as a set or fulltime individually, and not macro pieces like Relic/AF. In this case, it's unlikely they would change the behavior of empyrean JA augments to be activation in the future updates to come.

You're right. I'm pretty sure all of the empyrean enhancements work that way, not necessarily just the augments. You can't just macro in the black mage emprean feet before using mana wall and unequip them afterward, for example. You have to KEEP them equipped for mana wall to continue recieving their benefits. The text on wicce sabots isn't an augment, it just reads "Mana wall + 15%". Accompolice and collaborater are instant abilities, so the bonnet serves as a macro piece. But like mana wall, conspirator is a persistent efect, so the vest can't be macroed in and out so easily.

The thing about the empyrean vest augment is that nobody ever knew what it did up until now. If you go back through the bg wiki page history it was updated July 5, 2019. The previous versions on bgwiki match the description listed on oldwiki, and I think that effect (applies conspirator to the person the monster is targeting) was just a guess that someone came up with because nobody could figure out what the augment actually did. There must have been a Japanese interview where the devs told players how the ability worked, and due to the language barrier it took some additional time filtering our way. It's kind of ironic that for all we know about the game, we just learned what the empyrean vest's augment effect really is.... five years later.

Right, I meant duration JAs instead of macro/instant abilities. I guess I never really thought about it until now, but would mean empyrean +3 might not be as great as some of us are anticipating. Some pieces will clearly be broken for their intended purpose (if they choose to improve them), but I can't see anybody going 3/5-5/5 empy+2/3 when it gets released besides BRD for songs.

i can see quite a few jobs doing 3/5 or more

Does that scale up to +34 STP with a whole alliance on the hate list?

Okay so there is actually something very bizarre about the Conspirator augment...

I went out to get a few data points using trusts again, starting with 3 total (giving a hate list size of 4). Using a 200 delay weapon I was getting 65 tp per hit without conspirator or any gear other than Skulker's Vest on. Using Conspirator, my tp pet hit once again jumped to 68. So this should be between +5 and +6 store TP from the augment.

I figured I could throw Brutal Earring on for +1 STP and if my tp per hit jumped to 69, that would be an indicator that the augment was giving +5 STP for a hate list size of 4. My tp per hit remained at 68, so I concluded that the augment only gave +5 and moved on to a new hate list size.

Using just August and Koru, I started getting 67 tp per hit. Because you need more than +3 STP and less than +5 STP to get this value considering a base of 65, I knew the augment had to be giving +4 STP, so I put Brutal Earring on to bump it up to +5 total and see if I would hit 68 tp per hit. I actually remained at 67 per hit. I figured my math was wrong, so I put on Cessance earring (+3 STP) instead of Brutal and STILL got 67 tp per hit. I put on Brutal along with Cessance and STILL got 67 tp per hit.

At this point I knew something was behaving weird, and had to wait on timers anyway, so I decided to put on way more STP to try to find out what was going on.

I called Joachim so I had a party size of 4 again. I put on 35 STP total in gear while still using Skulker's Vest and hit a target without Conspirator on. I got 87 tp per hit, as expected. When I used Conspirator, however, my tp per hit actually DROPPED to 68 -- the same as when I had exactly 0 STP from gear on. I unequipped the Vest and my tp per hit returned to 87. I put the Vest back on and my tp per hit dropped to 68. I then cancelled Conspirator and my tp per hit returned once more to 87 per hit.

TLDR -- The "Augments Conspirator" enhancement on Skulker's Vest appears to be overwriting any amount of Store TP you have on your gear. This might actually be the final nail in the coffin for it as even a macro piece...

I spy with my little eye, a '=' instead of a '+='.

I am honestly curious now if the base enhancement to subtle blow functions in the same "replaces any you might have on gear" manner, but I do not have a solid way of testing using just trusts.

About the only way I can think of involves subbing BST and using low enough level targets that wouldn't gain TP from hitting players, but would still survive a hit or two, or using shadows to avoid this entirely. Hit a target, charm it, use /echo <pettp> to see how much tp was given, and repeat using varying conditions and amounts of subtle blow, which sounds like a boring way to spend a Friday night...

Damn I thought my nukes were bad. I'll take my lumps and shut my damned mouth before they mess around change innin to -50% WSD.

Signed
NINJA

Bought a Raetic Kris +1 for lulzy last night cause I was bored. I couldn't find any information on it, so here's some stuff about it.

1) Store tp and chance of follow-up attack only works on the hand its on.
- I put it on my offhand and didn't get any store tp while killing lv0s. On the main hand, it did give me store tp. Same daggers.
- Killed a couple hundred apex mobs last night and never got an 8-swing attack round.
- No MP drains if only the non-Raetic Kris+1 hand swings.
*even if DA/TA goes off, only 5% of max mp will drain. Tested with Assassin's charge.
2) MP drain is based on 5% of max mp and the store tp/follow up attack does not work if your current mp is less than 5% of max mp.
3) Store TP is 50% of mp drained; ie, drain 10mp, get 5 store tp.
4) Follow up attack is 100% of mp drained; ie, drain 10mp, get 10% chance of follow up attack. Gave it to my rdm for awhile and got a follow up attack like 60% of the time.
5) For the average melee, a refresh3 should be enough to maintain you, assuming you're WS'ing regularly. For a mage, it's impractical because even with refresh3 and ballad x3, it was burning through mp in seconds.

re: wear at time of hit or time of equip

This is most likely a decision made from a programming perspective, not a balance perspective. A simple fixed stat gain can be applied at the time of ability use and tied to the buff easily enough. More complicated stuff, like the enmity check on conspirator, damage relative to hp on souleater, is coded as an on-swing event, on-hit event, etc. There's likely no system in place to go back and check if you were wearing the piece during the ability activation, so instead they check during the event trigger.

I wouldn't count on anything that currently needs to be fulltimed being changed to not.

Huh? Theres entire thread of testing and discussions for both weapons and bangles, as well as discussions on how to maintain MP.

https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/51571/raetic-weapons-testing-discussions

Just do google search it comes up on top of the list.

google searching before posting on ffxiah? Blasphemy

Yeah, that's funny.

I had to do a double take at the date of that post.

That is funny. I'm not google'ing stuff every time I want to make a post. Asking someone to do means you're detached from reality.

Your loss since you spent all that time testing it instead of doing a 3 second google search.

Ya know, if the FORUM search worked...

i thought rooks fixed that

(i'm just now realizing r00ks is automatically converted to idiot boy, here i was thinking it was a really persistant thing by the mods)

edit: yea, seems fine

Certain aspects of the ffxiah forum has always confused me. I'm going to head out for a bit. If anyone's leaning too hard on this, I'm going to ask you to sit there and reevaluate your life for a little while.

It's not my place to convince you not to be a loser, but please try.

it's like 6 different people making one post each and you being upset that your 'new' info wasn't new, i kind of doubt anyone is that invested

You know.......I was just trying to help you find relevant info faster with search so you can save time on testing them. It was written with good intention.

The result of this discussion surprised me a little....in a negative way.

Call people loser, have underage cartoon girl avatar, are you projecting?

Just got Aeneas yesterday. Which would be better off hand, tauret or skinflayer with these augments:

Dmg +9
Triple attack +3
Critical hit rate +2
WSD +7

I always preferred to have Triple Attack for my offhand dagger and used Skinflayer with Triple Attack on it until I built my Twastar.