thief qustion

[ireland]

I know i am going to be a thief just want to know what were the pros and cons of haveing a monk vs a ninja as a sub class if any one could give me some info that would be great thatnks

[OnionXI]

well I can't really tell you about ninjas I've only seen one. But from what I saw their skills are pretty nice.

As for monk I know they're awesome at dealing damage. Boost and stuff like that. Also monks get a great HP bonus. Thats a main reason lots of people sub monk. Hope that helps you a bit sorry I couldn't give more info

[SanJiYan-NoS]

I'm making a thief as well and then planning on going with NiN for my first advanced job. My plan is to basicallyl level both of those jobs and simply switch between the two depending on what i'm doing. THF for MF (magic find) and gold, NiN for lvl'ing. I'd like to keep both of them at or around the same lvl, but i think i'm going to get my THF up to 45 first so that i gain the second treasure hunter skill.

I guess i'll just start with some points in regards to your char early on. Early on, your going to want to switch between a few differen't weapon types. Why? B/c as a thief, all of your WS' (weapon skills) aren't going to be able to be combo'd with certain special moves. For instance, until your reach lvl 30, you'll mainly be relying on surprise attack to do most of your damage. Well, that skill doesn't work with a lot of the early dagger WS's you get. So you'll want to be profficient with more than one type of weapon. Also, when you use a weapon in battle, it slowly gains experience towards you char gaining a new WS. If for instance your using a dagger, theres a certain lvl it (your dagger ws's) can attain in relation to your actual chars lvl, where you run the chance of simply not gaining any exp b/c the dagger WS's might've peeked for the lvl of your actual char. When this happens, you wanna change your weapons to something else, this way your profficient in a few weapons. Later on in the game, when your with various parties, this will come in handy b/c you'll likely be able to customize your WS's to whats needed by the party.

In pursuit of the above mentioned stuff, you should try using Monk for your sub job at lvl 18 with the thief. YOu get a nice grapple (unarmred) speed 'boost' and later on you'll get HP boosts as well. Its basically either a Monk or a War for your sub job early on. Warrior has berserk and taunt which are both excellent while the monk excels at the unarmed combat. the choice is yours.

Ninja stuff:

The ninja skills are probably something that you'll want to have as a main job to get the most out of them. I'm planning on making it my sub just to try out and see how i like it. If i like it, i'll make it my main job for when i wanna lvl, and then use THF for my main job when i want to MF or get cash together. I haven't actually used one in person, but i've read a lot about them. So i'll just point some stuff out and you can make your own decision.

First thing, dual wield. Its not what you think its going to be. Yes you can hold 2 one handed weapons at once, no they're not going to work in that way you'd like them too. Lets say you dual wield and use THF for your main. if you back stab someone, your thinking its going to hit with both swords for huge damage. Wrong, the first sword will hit for the bonus 'backstab' damage and the second will hit for its standard damage amounts. Thats just the way it works, you don;'t get the bonus damage on both weapons. What you do get however isn't so bad. For one, you get experience for both weapons b/c your using both of them at once. This is a good thing in that you can improve 2 WS's at the same time. THe other good thing is that the second weapons attributes get added to your char. So you might be using a sword with good damage for the main sword and the other one could simply be there for adding dex/str or whatever you'd like.

Ninjutsu:

EXPENSIVE, which is why you sort of need to be a thief in order to really be effective with a ninja. The spell 'blink' kicks ass and will be a main stay in your magic usage so long as you can afford it. Powders cost money, so either get good at alchemy or get a lot of money together. I've only seen lvl 2 ninjutsu spells and their pretty good. You get one for each elemental effect, casting it on a monster lowers its resistance to the opposite of the spell you used. So say for example you hit a beast with fire, it would take fire damage and lowers its resistance to cold. So say your fighting a fire based monster and you nail it with a fire spell. That wouldn't hurt it (in fact it might heal it a tiny bit), BUT you'll lower its defense to cold making it easier for a BLM to inflict VERY HIGH cold damage on its next turn.

[Vesper]

Awesome info there SanJiyan-NoS, alot of things you hit on I was going to post, but you covered it already. Not to mention a few other things I was not aware of. Looks like Dual Weild just got another advantage w/training 2 WS's at once. A bit of info I was unaware of. Thx bunches for sharing your wealth of knowledge on this for us, definitely gives me something to think of and how I am going to implement this in my characters advancment.

[Hoccus]

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