Endgame Thief Guide by Malizia

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=About the Author=
I've been playing FFXI since 2004 on Sylph. Thief was my first job to 75 (back when it was the cap, ha!), and Red Mage my second, and now I've added a few more jobs to the mix. I play Thief about half the time in endgame events, and it's by far the most kitted (kittened?) out job I have. I am by no means the "ultimate" thief but I still have a lot to share!
=About the Guide=
There was a big gap in the FFXIclopedia guides about what THF does in endgame, and I decided to fill that. We'll also cover subjobs, job abilities, and equipment setups. We won't cover anything about leveling THF.
Please do not edit the guide. If you have fascinating insight into endgame THF, that's great! Write about it in the discussion page or message me directly. I'll update the guide with your feedback.
Dec 2011 Update Malinote! All updated! Time to get some new shinies!
=The Role of a THF in Endgame=
There are few reasons endgame LS's want a THF:
1. TH7
No, they don't want TH3, they want you to have Thief's Knife, Assassin's Armlets +2, and Raider's Poulaines +2. If you don't have TH7, don't expect to come THF to events. Sorry. I know these items are still very hard to get (well ok, the Knife used to be hard), but they're a necessary evil.
The more cynical of us would say this is the only reason THFs are in endgame. It's not true, the reasons below are important too, but this really is the #1 for a reason.
2. Hate Control
You get Collaborator and Accomplice at 65. Collaborator your squishies (mages) or, really, anyone who doesn't want hate (everyone but the tank) whenever the timer is up. Your LS will either love you for it, or expect you to do it and yell at you if you don't. You may find yourself overtaking the tank's hate, even with frequent Trick Attacks on the tank, so make sure your evasion set is up to the challenge! You may even be the tank in some situations. Trick Attack is also wonderful for MPKing alliance members. Hey, wait a sec!
3. Feint
A meritable JA that significantly reduces an enemy's evasion. It starts on a 10-minute cooldown, and if merited fully will only have a 2-minute cooldown. Merit it fully, no exceptions! No matter what you do, a 2-minute Feint cooldown will always be helpful.
4. Pulling / Tanking / DD
Thieves make excellent pullers: we have the best evasion of any job, we have ranged weapons, and we have movement speed bonuses like Flee. Problem is, there are so few modern endgame events that require pulling that this is a low priority. We also make decent evasion tanks, but it's hard to hold hate against a dedicated melee DD or a NIN. If you are tanking, use Collaborator often on your squishy, enmity-grabbing teammates, like the BLM or the RNG, but if a fellow melee is tanking (especially if it's a PLD, NIN or a job /NIN) you should probably let them hold hate. You want to avoid Collaboratoring a melee and the monster wandering off to smack your BLM, or worse your healer.
Finally, we can deal damage, especially in Abyssea with buffs like Atma of the Razed Ruins, but that's not why we're invited to endgame events. If you want to be the bestest of the bestest of all the THFs in FFXI, first make sure you are fully covered by points 1-3. Done? Then go ahead and get better at damage dealing. LS's love a THF that can do all of the above and deal damage, but they don't care for thieves that deal great damage but can't do anything else. Plenty of other jobs can do that, us thieves have to be better.
I have gone to plenty of events (like Abyssea) where my damage output is utterly irrelevant, or even detrimental because I'll give monsters TP. I have also gone to plenty of events (like Abyssea) where every extra bit of damage counts. Thieves need to be extra aware of what the event requires out of them, because it's going to change case by case.
=Subjobs=
NIN
You will use this almost exclusively. It has some nice things like sneak/invis and Dual Wield, but you're subbing this for the Utsusemi. Make sure you have both Ichi and Ni and you know how to cycle between the two for maximum shadow usage.
DNC
Soloing easier stuff where they don't hit hard enough to use shadows? Try /DNC. I haven't used this in any event setting ever, nor do I ever expect to. You actually get some really nice abilities but you still lack the survivability and TP-gaining speed of NIN, in exchange for buffs and debuffs a DNC main will be more efficient at applying.
RNG
For those situations when you shouldn't be meleeing, and you're not pulling (sure, /RNG is nice for when you pull, but it's terrible for after you pull). Think HNMs. Also great for farming with Wide Scan.
DRK
Like /WAR, but with Stun! Also has some nice damage boosting abilities. Don't expect to use this a lot either. If you do, be very careful when using Souleater and Dancing Edge or Evisceration, you'll probably lose 50% or more of your HP! At least now, in Abyssea, you get a TON of HP to play with for maximum Souleater goodness.
WAR
Sadly, I can't recommend this anymore. You get significant Attack Bonuses and a little Accuracy, but you lose 15% Subtle Blow, 15% Dual Wield (remember we get tier 1 natively), and Utsusemi. I'd say the Dual Wield bonus alone accounts for the loss in Attack and Accuracy, and Utsusemi is a life saver. If you really want to get yourself killed, you could still try DRK.
SAM
The only reason you would ever sub this is for Meditate. Unfortunately the Hasso / Seigan abilities won't work for you because THFs can't equip any useful two-handed weapons... but if you're fighting something where you can't gain TP easily but you need to be effective, /SAM can work. Don't use it in Abyssea though, just use a regain atma.
=Job Abilities and Traits=
Treasure Hunter
I think we've drilled it in by now that this is what makes THF a THF :p but unfortunately, no one knows what it does! There are tons of theories about what the effect actually means, but at least we now know how to apply it. Make sure your first hit on a monster uses all your TH gear, then pick and choose when you use it after. I actually recommend using Raider's Armlets +2 if you have it over Assassin's Armlets for SA / TA because of the increased likelihood of a TH increase.
Feint
Merit this, and merit it fully! It's fantastic for increasing damage output from everyone attacking the monster. Works best on things that are highly evasive, so bosses and super-nasties. With the 2-minute cooldown you can use this without worrying if the monster is the "right" one for it.
Sneak Attack and Trick Attack
You've had these for a long time, you better know how these work! The only thing in endgame is that they're much harder to pull off. No one's going to line up the monster perfectly for you, and hate control can be extremely unpredictable. Don't complain if you try to line up your SA / TA and it doesn't work because someone else stole hate at the last moment, it's going to happen all the time. Oh! And now it's quite important to separate these from each other and your weaponskills since they have a good chance of increasing TH.
Perfect Dodge
Your 2-hour! Yay! It's like Invincible, but doesn't stop ranged attacks and doesn't generate any hate. So what's it good for??? Pulling! Or, really, for sacrifice pulling. You can pull huge chunks of monsters, pop Flee, then when you're somewhere very far away from everyone else and the monsters have caught up to you Perfect Dodge for an extra thirty seconds before you die. Or not, if they cast magic. I've used this to great success in Salvage and Dynamis for getting people past large groups of nasties, or for (someone else) getting a single monster out of a very large and angry pack (which chases after me).
Steal / Aura Steal
Steal is your tried and true method for getting drops no one else can :p it's great for getting extra currency in Dynamis, or for more important reasons like in Sky. Put at least a single merit in Aura Steal to make it a Dispel on a five-minute cooldown, which is surprisingly useful and even works on some monsters immune to the spell. If you have the room and the inclination, you can invest some time and not a lot of gil to make a decent +Steal equipment set. Steal also makes for an excellent NM claim tool.
Despoil
Despoil possibly steals different items than Steal while applying a debuff. It also doesn't Aura Steal, yet it shares Steal's cooldown timer. I'm going to go with common sense here: Steal if you need to dispel, Despoil if you don't.
Flee
This and Perfect Dodge can make you survive anything for quite some time, for all those sac pulls where you need to die... but not immediately. Also great for pulls where your enemy moves faster than you can, or for just running to places super quickly. I actually keep my AF boots around for this JA, the extra 15 seconds is quite nice.
Mug
Great for NMs, HNMs and for Sky gods, useless for everything else. Enjoy your 1-2k every fifteen minutes? Also a pulling tool when you absolutely don't want to deal damage, or a secondary NM claim tool after Steal.
Hide
I don't get to use this nearly often enough, but it's nice for two things: dropping aggro from sight-only baddies (yes, even if you're right in front of them!) or for setting up Sneak Attack when you're not behind the monster. Unfortunately the "dropping aggro" bit almost never works in endgame, most NMs and high-level monsters see right through it.
Collaborator / Accomplice
Collaborator is the five-times-faster, half-as-powerful younger cousin of Accomplice. It's also the one you should use. Every minute throw a Collaborator on your nuke-happy BLM and they'll thank you, then nuke some more.
Triple Attack / Assassin's Charge
Every thief should merit Triple Attack to its maximum, for a base 10% chance. That's like having a free 20% haste! Sort of. You can also put merits into Assassin's Charge for a guaranteed Triple Attack, obviously to be used when you weaponskill, but no one's going to think poorly of you if you don't.
Ambush
Your last meritable ability, this gives you additional accuracy when attacking from behind. Sounds great, right! Well yes, but remember what I said about Sneak Attack? It'll be tough to always be behind a monster, and sometimes (like with wyrms) you will never be behind a monster. So, it's great when it's used, but also not used as often as you might think.
Dual Wield
Hey, starting at 83 we get Dual Wield now! It's only tier 1 though, so all it really means right now is you can sell your shield for those rare occassions you sub something not NIN or DNC.
Conspirator
More Accuracy and Subtle Blow! I don't think there's anything fancy to this, use it when it's up and preferably when the most party members are in range.
Bully
Gives a really high chance for the target to be intimidated, even if you're not the one tanking. It also has a nice side effect of allowing Sneak Attack to work at any angle, even from right in front! This is way easier than trying to use Hide for the same effect. Like Conspirator, use it as much as possible.
=Merits=
We mostly covered this in the previous section, but here's the breakdown:
Thief Specific Merits (Group 1):
* Triple Attack: take to cap. More attacks mean more hits mean more damage. This one's easy.
* Um... the rest is up to you. SA/TA cooldown reduction is useful for DD and potential TH procs, but it's hard to consistently make use of an extra 2-10 seconds. Flee cooldown is always useful.
Thief Specific Merits (Group 2):
* Feint: take to cap. You and your teammates will have 95% accuracy against most things already, but against highly evasive mobs it's an incredible debuff worth spamming.
* Aura Steal: put at least one merit in this for the Dispel. More at your discretion if you like getting random free buffs.
* Assassin's Charge: if you really like those big WS numbers, put a merit into here. More at your discretion if you can remember to watch the cooldown. Note that a guaranteed triple attack does not mean a guaranteed two extra hits...
* Ambush: if you don't have anywhere else to put your merits, might as well put them here :p nothing wrong with more accuracy! Even if you can't use it all the time.
Everything Else:
* Evasion and Dagger merits are fantastic if you don't have other jobs that need the merits.
* Critical Hit Rate merits are also fantastic; full-time mages might have other priorities but if you're a full-time mage, why are you reading this guide?
* I'd choose Strength merits over Dexterity merits, because THF is the only job that prioritizes DEX over STR, and because even for THF it's much easier to get +DEX gear than it is to get +STR gear, and you do want some STR.
* Exenterator: either merit 5/5 or don't bother (1/5 or 0/5). It won't outdamage Evisceration in Abyssea if you're using Razed Ruins (and you ARE using Razed Ruins, right?), but outside of Abyssea it's your best unstacked weaponskill if you merit it fully. I've only merited it 1/5 because outside of Abyssea, I don't particularly care about my damage, but someday it might be required for Voidwatch and that animation is sure pretty :p
=Atma=
Let's highlight the shiniest ones:
Atma Name 	Effect 	Effect 	Effect 	Effect 	Effect 	Effect 	Drops from
Atma of the Razed Ruins 	DEX+:Superior(+50) 	DEX+:Superior(+50) 	Critical Hit Rate:Major(+30%) 	Critical Hit Rate:Major(+30%) 	Critical Hit Damage:Major(+30%) 	Critical Hit Damage:Major(+30%) 	Ironclad Pulverizer
Atma of the Gnarled Horn 	Counter+: Minor 	Counter+: Minor 	Critical Hit Rate+: Minor (+20%)	Critical Hit Rate+: Minor (+20%)	AGI+: Major(game typo, should be Superior) (+50)	AGI+: Major(game typo, should be Superior) (+50)	Sobek
Atma of the Apocalypse 	"Triple Attack"+: Superior	"Triple Attack"+: Superior	Quick Magic 	Quick Magic 	"Auto-Reraise" 	"Auto-Reraise" 	Shinryu
Atma of the Dark Depths 	AGI+:Minor 	AGI+:Minor 	Evasion+:Minor 	Evasion+:Minor 	Critical Hit Rate+:Major 	Critical Hit Rate+:Major 	Salvage
Atma of the Sanguine Scythe 	HP+: Major 	HP+: Major 	Critical Hit Damage+: Major 	Critical Hit Damage+: Major 	Enmity+: Minor 	Enmity+: Minor 	Bukhis
Atma of the Voracious Violet	STR+:Superior(+50) 	STR+:Superior(+50) 	"Double Attack"+:Minor(10%) 	"Double Attack"+:Minor(10%) 	"Regain":Minor(2/tic) 	"Regain":Minor(2/tic) 	Eccentric Eve
Atma of the Mounted Champion	VIT+:Superior (+50) 	VIT+:Superior (+50) 	Regen:Superior (20 HP/tick) 	Regen:Superior (20 HP/tick) 	Enmity decrease when taking damage:Minor 	Enmity decrease when taking damage:Minor 	Kutharei
Atma of Alpha and Omega 	Triple Attack:Major 	Triple Attack:Major 	Attack:Major (+50) 	Attack:Major (+50) 	HP-:Major (-25%) 	HP-:Major (-25%) 	Proto-Omega
Atma of the Stout Arm 	STR+:Major(+40) 	STR+:Major(+40) 	Attack+:Superior (+50) 	Attack+:Superior (+50) 	Ranged Attack+:Major 	Ranged Attack+:Major 	Briareus
Atma of Cloak and Dagger 	Accuracy+:Major 	Accuracy+:Major 	Evasion+:Major 	Evasion+:Major 	Enhances "Resist Death" Effect:Minor 	Enhances "Resist Death" Effect:Minor 	Bloodeye Vileberry
Atma of the Sea Daughter 	"Regain": Superior (5/tic)	"Regain": Superior (5/tic)	Slow+: Superior (~13.3%) 	Slow+: Superior (~13.3%) 	Daytime: "Regen": Superior 	Daytime: "Regen": Superior 	Amphitrite
Atma of Dread 	Magic Evasion+:Minor 	Magic Evasion+:Minor 	Treasure Hunter+:Minor (+1) 	Treasure Hunter+:Minor (+1) 	Samba Duration:Minor (+10s) 	Samba Duration:Minor (+10s) 	A Moogle Kupo d'Etat
My favorite combination is Razed Ruins + Gnarled Horn + Apocalypse: +50 DEX, +50 AGI, +50% chance of crits, +30% crit damage, auto-RR3, 10% chance of instacast Utsusemi, and an insane amount of Triple Attack.
If you don't have Atma of the Apocalypse, go with RR + GH + Dark Depths for pretty much guaranteed crits, +70 AGI, and +50 DEX, which is arguably just as good! You can probably find other combinations for your own personal catnip fix :p but make sure you use Atma of the Razed Ruins! I mean, wowzacat! You want this one.
If you don't have any of the atmas listed here, get them (obviously!) but in the meantime look for DEX+, AGI+, Accuracy, or some form of extra attacks. STR+ isn't so useful as you would expect, since the benefit of STR to base damage has a cap (see fSTR) and we don't have STR-based weaponskills. If you have all your Abyssites of Furtherance your cruor buffs should give you a minimum of +40 STR which should be good enough. That doesn't mean Atma of the Voracious Violet is ineffective though, it has Regain and Double Attack - and the +50 STR certainly isn't bad. ^^
==Atmacite==
I have to be honest - I haven't gone to Voidwatch very often as THF (I go mostly as RDM). But based on my limited experience and the information over at BG, it looks pretty simple for a THF - you're there for dagger weaponskills; your TH doesn't really matter at all. Which means... don't expect to come THF to Voidwatch, because a DNC can do everything you can and more :( Sorry! But if you do manage to get into a VW run as THF, there are a couple nice atmacites (starting with the easiest ones to get, and listed stats are all if you fully upgrade the atmacite):
* Atmacite of Incursion: off Melancholic Moira, Bastok T3, and has DEX+15 and Attack+15. Costs 750K cruor to upgrade.
* Atmacite of Coercion: off Kaggen, Jeuno T3, and has Regain+3. Costs 1.25M cruor to upgrade.
* Atmacite of Skyblaze: off Ocythoe, Jeuno T6, and has DEX+10 and Accuracy+15. Costs 1.6M cruor to upgrade.
* Atmacite of the Valiant: off Ig-Alima, Jeuno T6, and has +15 to all stats and 5% haste! Costs a whopping 2.6M cruor to upgrade.
If you're lucky enough to have all of these and can equip two, then I'd go with Coercion and the Valiant for stats, lots of accuracy, and most importantly Regain. You need to cycle through WS's as fast as possible.
=Equipment=
(Level 75 / 
80 / 
85 / 
90 / 
95 Equipment Guides for reference)
=Credits=
Thanks to you all in LoA and HKS who helped me learn THF and gave me advice, and to Shamaya's LJ from whom I shamelessly stole a ton of ideas!
Also, BG / FFXIAH for more equipment ideas and item statistics.