User:Dragonspight/Thief: Equipment and Playstyle Guide

Introduction
As of the past few months, I've been seeing poorly equipped thieves everywhere. In Dynamis, in my Linkshells, in exp parties, and even just walking around in town. I've gotten into numerous arguments with some of these Thieves about how I feel that their lowly gear and styles of play are reducing their output in parties, and on such a large scale, making it more and more difficult for us to get party invites. I hope to write this guide in order to breed a new generation of DD competent thieves.

(Note: I'm not going to go over thief's non-DD/non-Party uses, such as soloing or Treasure Hunter.)

A most important thing
As with any DD, there is one thing that PC players have that can seriously improve their damage: a Parser. A parser will read your chatlog to determine the overall Accuracy, critical hit rate], Average damage, and other nifty aspects of you, and anyone whose damage you have unfiltered. If you play on Xbox 360 or PS2, I'd recommend getting a PC friend with access to a parser to help help see your results. Having one will alleviate "I hit enough without [[Accuracy|Accuracy Gear" syndrome *, along with many cases of excess Weapon Skill-philia * and "I'm above 60 and only use SATA" disorder *.

( * Not actual medical ailments. Do not contact your doctor if you are experiencing these symptoms.)


 * I'll leave finding a good FFXI Parser up to you and the people you can ask.
 * It is also possible to parse by hand if you have enough paper, enough writing skill, and enough patience.

Sneak Attack
Sneak Attack Level 15 (recast 1:00, down to :52 with merits): Sneak Attack is a one-minute ability that allows your next attack round to have 100% accuracy (will also ignore a mob's shadows) and your next attack to have 100% critical hit rate along with a boost in damage equal to your Dexterity at the time of your hit. The drawback? You must hit the mob from behind (within approximately 30° either direction.) This can be combined with any physical Weapon Skill or melee attack. This does not work for Magic-based Weapon skills, Ranged Attacks, or ranged attack weapon skills.
 * The effect of Sneak Attack will wear off after 60 seconds or one melee attack/melee weapon Skill. Using either ranged attacks, Magic-based weapon skills, or Ranged Weapon Skills will not cause Sneak Attack's effect to wear off.

Trick Attack
Trick Attack Level 30 (recast 1:00, down to :52 with merits): Trick Attack is a one-minute ability, much like Sneak Attack, that allows your next hit to deal a boost in damage equal to your Agility at the time of the hit and will transfer hate from the hit to another person. This Ability's drawback however is that you need to be directly behind the Party or Alliance member to whom you wish to transfer hate.
 * Trick Attack's effect will wear off in the same manners as Sneak Attack's.
 * Trick Attack can be used under any Invisible or Hide Status effects without causes them to be lost. This makes it an oddity in the Job Ability world.

Hide
Hide level 45 (Recast: 5:00, down to 4:10 with merits): Hide is, in my opinion, the funnest Ability a Thief has. Along with many uses outside of DD and Party situations, Hide can be used to allow Sneak Attack to gain its full effects from any direction. It is also useful for shedding your hate from mobs if you meet certain requirements.
 * I'll go into more detail about Hide later.

Triple Attack
Triple Attack level 55 (Job Traits are always active): Triple Attack is the first of many things that turns thieves' melee damage over time around. As seems obviously, Triple Attack triples you attacks. Its activation is about 5% without merit or gear, and can trigger during melee attacks or each hit in Weapon Skills.
 * Triple Attack merits raise the activation of Triple Attack to 10%, and certain gear can raise it up to a total of 14.5%.
 * If Triple Attack activates in a round after you use Sneak Attack or Trick Attack with Assassin, the extra hits also have 100% accuracy.
 * Note that there's a cap of 8 to the number of hits in a weapon skill, so you'll never seen more than one Triple Attack in Dancing Edge or Evisceration.

Assassin
Assassin level 60 (Job Traits are always active): Assassin gives Trick Attack the accuracy and critical hit bonuses that Sneak Attack receives.

Playstyles
For thief, the way you play your job makes a much larger impact on your damage than other common DD jobs. This will always be true. It is important that you know these playstyles since I'll be making equipment guides for each one.

Hate-Control Thief
A Hate-Control Thief ' s main job in parties is to SATA-Weapon Skill] the main tank so that they have a very high amount of [[enmity, thus allowing other DDs to do more damage without worrying about hate, often being Black Mages.
 * This type of Thief generally has two types of equipment sets they use: TP gain and Weapon Skill set.
 * A TP gain set consists of primarily accuracy, Haste (Status Effect), and Store TP gear. They may also use Attack gear since you don't get any TP for hitting for 0, but this is not necessary for low-defense mobs.
 * A Weapon Skill set mostly includes DEX, AGI, and STR at an equal priority. Since this style of play is mostly used with Viper Bite, it usually does not include any Accuracy or Attack. (Sneak Attack makes Viper Bite 100% accurate and the Critical Hit from Sneak Attack, along with Viper Bite's double-Attack mod caps out your attack.)
 * This is the type of Thief played most from level 30, when you get Trick Attack,until level 60, when you get Assassin and Dancing Edge.
 * The best weapon skill for this is Viper Bite at level 33 (32 with A Dagger Merit).

Important Note
This style of play becomes very obsolete as TP-burn style thief becomes more effective at level 60 and escpecially level 68.

How to Play

 * For this style of thief, you'll want to make sure you let your party knows your current TP. The tank needs to let his hate loosen, the black mages (if applicable) need to prepare to Magic Burst, your Skillchain partner needs to know to get ready, and other DDs need to know not to use Weapon Skills.
 * Once you get 100% TP, if your SC partner is not ready, you may want to switch to an actual damage.
 * Once you both have TP and are lined up, your Skillchain Partner uses Provoke on the mob to get hate, and uses a Weapon Skill, then you use SATA Viper Bite, the mob turns back to the main tank, and you switch back to your TP set.
 * Again, this style of play works best between 30 and 60 only.

TP burn Thief
Now, the most important part, for this is when thieves start to hurt themselves with their gear. With Hate-control Thief, gear is very straightforward, but with TP burn thief, you need to make many more decisions. Haste or Attack? Meat or Sushi? Shark Bite or Dancing Edge or even Evisceration?