theif/ranger is the best

[poppipo]

I would just like to say that theif/ranger is alot better than thf/nin or thf/war u know why? becus.....Theif can barely hit shit with knifes right? so why not just use a bow and do more dmg with regular hits then use SA and TA? Yull end up doin alot of dmg, belive me i have a lv 72 thf/rnm, he says the same that people who party with him never knew it was so good either

[Deodorant]

People would take you more seriously if you were talking from personal experience rather than theories or "my friend said this-and-this"

And no, thf/rng isn't better than thf/nin or thf/war. It's by no means a gimp or shitty combo, just that it isn't better than the main two job combos.

[Roldarin]

People would take you more seriously if you gave reasons other than "DOES NOT!"

[ibroyles]

There are some things you didn't really take into account. The main role of a THF is to build up TP for a massive SATA+WS onto the tank. With a sub like /NIN and some low delay daggers, you might not be doing much damage on regular hits, but you will gain TP much quicker than a /RNG. Also, shooting with a bow is probably not the best way to accumulate TP, especially with THF's below average skill in bows and marksmanship. Even if you did have your character blinged out in ranged acc. gear, it would take away from some of your +DEX or +AGI gear, thus resulting in a THF who won't do his job as well. So while THF/RNG is respectable, /WAR and /NIN are probably better suited to a THF's role in the party.

[guyincorporated]

Geez, if the level 12 whitemage says it's so, I guess I need to start leveling up ranger. what a fool I've been.

Btw Poppipio, my level 75 whm/drg friend says that's actually the way to go, because you can chain-cure then superjump to get rid of all the hate. You should keep that in mind.

[John Doe III]

Originally posted by ibroyles
There are some things you didn't really take into account. The main role of a THF is to build up TP for a massive SATA+WS onto the tank. With a sub like /NIN and some low delay daggers, you might not be doing much damage on regular hits, but you will gain TP much quicker than a /RNG. Also, shooting with a bow is probably not the best way to accumulate TP, especially with THF's below average skill in bows and marksmanship. Even if you did have your character blinged out in ranged acc. gear, it would take away from some of your +DEX or +AGI gear, thus resulting in a THF who won't do his job as well. So while THF/RNG is respectable, /WAR and /NIN are probably better suited to a THF's role in the party.

What the hell do you know about THF/RNG? >.> My Marks is @181 and I can hit VT and IT about 4/5 times. Didn't you forget about Barrage + Acc Up Ibroyles? My damage from my gun does just about the same as when my two daggers hit. So, at level 60, correct me if i'm wrong but if you get every hit and using a gun you will get 72 TP from one barrage (if every hit makes it).

Even if you did have your character blinged out in ranged acc. gear, it would take away from some of your +DEX or +AGI gear, thus resulting in a THF who won't do his job as well

Umm...doh. Switch out gear MAYBE? Equip ACC gear to help make sure you hit for all barrage as well as the pull and then switch to your DEX/AGI gear before Renkei/pull.

On a Side Note, why would you forget Crossbow? >.> Do a few acid bolts before Renkei then switch to Fui gear and do it. You could also help out your party by doing Blind/Poison and so forth. Or if you are fighting gobs and a gob pulled a bomb last battle pull the next mob with HP bolts to save MP. So, really...this job fits into the top if you have the money and if your 60~+ for reasons I just said.

My 2 cents /;D

[poppipo]

joe doe is right, and u dont have to use bow all the time, u could just use barrage to get tp then do a few hits with dagger and then use SA and TA. Also you dont always have to put on ranged accuracy gear, yu could equip agility gear with will help eveasion, ranged accuracy, and the power of Trick attack

[Jaggywaggy]

I think this is a potienally good combo combo, especially vs stuff with resistance to piercing weapons if you have the gil for guns/bullets.

But with thf's sub par arch+mark skill you'd need to be pretty decked out with a rng acc+ set of gear.


1. This wouldn't be cheap, great if you have extra gil after your main agi+, dex+, and attack+ purchases.

2. I don't see why a thf/nin couldn't do the same thing with almost the same effectiveness. They have great agi, /rng vs /nin in agi would be near equal.

Although by 60 ranger would have 2 rng acc+ traits. But lets look at ninja shall we. Dual wield, 2 archer knife or 2 hawk knifes, that's at least +20 ranged acc vs about +10. This gimps SATA in my opinion on a negative, and you can't stiwch these without tp loss, huge loss here. But with ninja sub you can main a dagger great for SATA, and sub an archer for no reduction on SATA+ws.

For pulling traits stealth vs alertness, no winner here.

Resist bind(ninja) vs resist poison(ranger). If a spell is managed to be casted on you pulling, in a bad situation resist bind is probably better for safety.

Sharpshot, makes a great difference but for one minute every 5.

Barrage, can't argue this, powerful ability.

Utsusemi, this has saved my life and xp several times.

Lastly ninja sub provides more although only a little: Dex,str,hp,vit,int over ranger sub. In conclusion I think ranger could make a very powerful sub given you don't gimp out on anything, even stuff like that necklance with the + 10 acc and rng attk for 4-5ish million. I'll probably stick to ninja but get some rng-acc+ for acid bolts on an X-bow eventually.

[leii]

yea i planned on making a thf/rng so that i could do 1500dmg+ with slug shot or sidewinder. but i dropped the idea since i would have to spend 5 billion gil every 2 hrs. and also i was told that we cant transfer hate with a bow so.....dropped the idea.

[John Doe III]

Although by 60 ranger would have 2 rng acc+ traits. But lets look at ninja shall we. Dual wield, 2 archer knife or 2 hawk knifes, that's at least +20 ranged acc vs about +10. This gimps SATA in my opinion on a negative, and you can't stiwch these without tp loss, huge loss here. But with ninja sub you can main a dagger great for SATA, and sub an archer for no reduction on SATA+ws.

You dont have to use archer knives....doh.

[ibroyles]

Originally posted by John Doe III
What the hell do you know about THF/RNG? >.> My Marks is @181 and I can hit VT and IT about 4/5 times. Didn't you forget about Barrage + Acc Up Ibroyles? My damage from my gun does just about the same as when my two daggers hit. So, at level 60, correct me if i'm wrong but if you get every hit and using a gun you will get 72 TP from one barrage (if every hit makes it).

I don't know much about THF/RNG, I haven't tried it. I am just trying to weight the potentials based on what I've seen in game so far. From what I've personally heard, later in the game ACC becomes a vital stat. I've heard of many THFs stocking up on ACC gear post 60, just so they can gain TP faster with daggers. Now, forgive me for using common sense here, but I would tend to believe that A skill in daggers would hit a LOT more often than C skills in ranged weapons (and we are assuming capped skills in both and ACC and RACC gear). I did some research and found that marksmanship would be 13 points below dagger at LV60. Barrage might help getting TP quick(if EVERY hit connects, like you said), but there's some other things to take into account. With THF/NIN you get the advantage of the 5% TP cap for low delay weapons, and you can get consistent TP back much quicker than RNG without relying on JA's. Especially at 60 when will have DW2 and 3A.

Anyways, I'm not attacking any THF/RNG. I just think that for the role of a THF, /NIN or /WAR is probably the way to go. I'm not just another person that doesn't want to spend money on gear either, I just think that the benefits of /NIN and /WAR outweight those of /RNG.

[John Doe III]

Well, I didn't mean that post in a harsh way or anything. But bear in mind even if Thief has a bad rating of C you can still use +7 ACC+ rings (2), AGI helps (LL/VE), can even switch from Life Belt to that +2 belt, so forth. Then before renkei or after you hit mob from pull switch to your fui macro and your set. Most of this ACC gear is pretty cheap to..

[Jaggywaggy]

I think it's very viable, but I do't find it very appealing. And if one doesn't have a satic keep this in mind. Picture yourself setting up a party and you see thf/nin, thf/war, thf/rng lfp. And you didn't know the 3 guys well or at all. Would you really assume the thf/rng has 2 full sets of eqiupement for agi/dex and ranged acc? Plus it's not that popular without doubt. If you got great equipment of both sets, gil, and a static, I don't see why not.

[Tokitoki]

If you wanna use Ranged Attacks so much then just go RNG >.>

THF is relied on for being the best damage dealer, its a burst damage dealer that is used for hate control, and, since our archery and marksmanship are low rating, it will be hard to hit the mob unless you have the skill capped and you ahve a lot of racc gear >.>

RNG stil miss even with al the abilities/gear focused on JUST RACC and RATK, now how would a THF fare against a RNG. And the idea that you only really get a worthwhile sub if you hit with every shot for barrage(which is a 5 min cooldown if i remember correctly) then whatuse IS the sub? 5 mins for the slighjt chance to hit every/most hits to go around 50% TP on average... I'd rather not get killed while pulling than to get a little extra TP every 5 mins >.>

[Ixaera]

thf/rng is ok. The benefits are mostly listed here -- for the most part it's mainly tp from barrage (I'll really only count barrage since I have never noticed any more tp gain using regular bow attacks all the time than dagger all the time...yeah, dagger is less at a time, but it's quicker...so there's not much difference and we're more accurate with dagger anyway...), widescan for pulling (not really all it's cracked up to be in exp parties...great for farming and NM camping though), better accuracy, and...hrm, that's about it.

Not bad, but certainly not the best there is.

You forget, you can *never* triple attack on a ranged hit. With /nin you have two chances for a triple attack every attack round. I personally see very little difference between tp gain with /war and /nin.

To play thf/rng well, I would think you would have to do one of two things. You could either equip a crossbow and status bolts and use sharpshot to land some nice status effects OR you could equip a gun or bow with good damage on it and use dagger all the time *except* when barrage is up, and use sharpshot+barrage. And only then, except when pulling.

Drawbacks to both is that keeping marksmanship capped this way is a bitch to do, but anytime a party member is more worried about capping skills than performing well in an exp group is a time to boot a party member...skilling up should really be done separately with a good set pt for that kind of thing. (This peeves me more even than when I go to help get a tough-to-get quest item and the person I'm helping wants to kill everything on the way for farming purposes....ugh, waste of time...or worse, when your group is out doing a mission or quest and someone says "Gee, I need the X drop from X mob, can't we stop and get that right quick?" Right quick...yeah...right... >< Tangent, sorry

Our real damage is with sa/ta/ws, so tp gain is one of the most important factors in choosing an exp sub. Barrage would be good for that, assuming you can afford the rang acc gear to make it useful.

Shooting arrows/bolts/bullets for every attack round is not so great, IMO. You'd miss out on triple attack and the extreme accuracy we have with our one A grade weapon. :/ Too many people underestimate the dagger. I go thf/nin almost all the time and outdamage everyone 4/5 fights, no lie.

thf/rng is likely pretty fun and a good change-up from the usual thf/nin or thf/war -- go for it if you want something different, but please do your party a favor and invest gil and time into capping archery/marks and buying rang acc items....