Need small advice

[Bolla]

I am going to play thief and I wonder which sub job would be best for thief to solo
easy prey?

[Jarre]

Re: Need small advice

Use /war and use a sword and shield, daggers are not very good until lvl 30. Provoke at lvl 10 helps as well. if you have Nin then at lvl 20 swap war sub with Nin for duel weld. and shadows at 24.

[Bolla]

Re: Need small advice

Thanks.

[Ellipses]

Re: Need small advice

Before level 10, it doesn't really matter much. /PUP is apparently awesome on toast, but I haven't tried that myself.

10-24, against Easy Prey, I'd say /DNC has a good chance of being worthwhile. EP aren't going to be hitting you often or hard enough for Drain Samba to not cover it. Maybe /WHM for cures and such if you don't want to go that route.

24+, NIN.

[Ziero]

Re: Need small advice

For low lvl soloing, Whm or Pup > 10, Dnc till 20+ till you can start getting pts.

FOr partying, War or Mnk (with h2h) till 15, then War, Mnk, Rng (with acid bolts) are all good, as is Drg 20+. Though most people will say /nin, I've always seen that as rather lackluster till at least 25(Fed knives) as dual wield isn't that strong and Utsu isn't really needed.

30+ War or Nin really, though if you have the right gear for it, I believe Drg could be a devestatingly strong sub.

[Spinnthrift]

Re: Need small advice

If you're starting out fresh, /whm and a supply of Selbina Milk will help you storm your way to 15, solely so low level Dia's and Poison casted on you won't kill you.

From 15 on to at least 20, /War will be your friend in party, and sword/shield is definately the way to go.

If your gear is exceptional, and by exceptional - I mean, you have leaping boots, straight HQ gears, 2x small sword (the +2 dex swords), and Emp Pin + Nadrs + Fed Knife available from 24, you can /Nin very effectively from 20 onwards.

If it's not amazing gear, /War or /Mnk are good choices to use, just make sure you keep your dagger skilled up.

At later levels for solo'ing, /Nin is about as good as you can get really, as Utsusemi is a perfect compliment to Thf evasion, /Bst though also is a hugely effective sj for solo farming and levelling - *IF* your Bst main would be equally or higher levelled than your Thf's main level.

One side note (slight derail).

Only other major thing to say would be... MEAT JERKY. You can buy from npc's for ~150g a piece iirc, and it lasts 30 minutes. It provides the best attack ratio in the game for cost/level ratio and for newbies it's just awesome. I won't level any newbie job to at least level 10 without it.. even Smn. Meat Jerky. Eat Meat Jerky. Can't say it enough. It'll last you easily into the 20's and will give better results than any other food.

[Ziero]

Re: Need small advice

If you're starting out fresh, /whm and a supply of Selbina Milk will help you storm your way to 15, solely so low level Dia's and Poison casted on you won't kill you.
From 15 on to at least 20, /War will be your friend in party, and sword/shield is definately the way to go.
If your gear is exceptional, and by exceptional - I mean, you have leaping boots, straight HQ gears, 2x small sword (the +2 dex swords), and Emp Pin + Nadrs + Fed Knife available from 24, you can /Nin very effectively from 20 onwards.
If it's not amazing gear, /War or /Mnk are good choices to use, just make sure you keep your dagger skilled up.
At later levels for solo'ing, /Nin is about as good as you can get really, as Utsusemi is a perfect compliment to Thf evasion, /Bst though also is a hugely effective sj for solo farming and levelling - *IF* your Bst main would be equally or higher levelled than your Thf's main level.
One side note (slight derail).
Only other major thing to say would be... MEAT JERKY. You can buy from npc's for ~150g a piece iirc, and it lasts 30 minutes. It provides the best attack ratio in the game for cost/level ratio and for newbies it's just awesome. I won't level any newbie job to at least level 10 without it.. even Smn. Meat Jerky. Eat Meat Jerky. Can't say it enough. It'll last you easily into the 20's and will give better results than any other food.

Small Sword and Nadrs are both overshadowed by the higher base dmg of the Flameblade iirc and the Fed Knife is 25.

[Spinnthrift]

Re: Need small advice

Yep, the base damage is higher, but the results you can get from SA Fast Blade with dual Small Sword is the best, at least for a few sword upgrades, and the poison proc of the Nadrs is strong enough to warrant it still being used into the 30's as an offhand weapon.

Because your base weapon damage is 1 higher than the Flame Blade on SA, and dex is also a small mod for fast blade, meaning you can push out higher numbers with it.

Actually, if you take 2x Small sword for SA as base 17, in terms of SAFB, Nadrs is the first upgrade to 18 base damage, 3 levels before the HQ Gladius (Gladiator)

[Ziero]

Re: Need small advice

Yep, the base damage is higher, but the results you can get from SA Fast Blade with dual Small Sword is the best, at least for a few sword upgrades, and the poison proc of the Nadrs is strong enough to warrant it still being used into the 30's as an offhand weapon.
Because your base weapon damage is 1 higher than the Flame Blade on SA, and dex is also a small mod for fast blade, meaning you can push out higher numbers with it.

From my understanding, the higher base Dmg of the Flameblade strengthens both normal hits and SA on it's own. And at 25 if you're going to /nin then a Fed knife is the best offhand weapon due to the Acc+Att. In parties mages can cast Poison, in solo, Poison works against a good thf.

Though really, all this is off topic as the original question was regarding low lvl solo subs, which to me are Whm, Pup and Dnc. (use Selbina Milk and Meat Jerky too!)

[Ellipses]

Re: Need small advice

The original question said absolutely nothing about level.

[Icemage]

Re: Need small advice

The original question said absolutely nothing about level.

Bolla's FFXI Character Info
FFXI Character Name: Bolla
Linkshell: Dark Ninjas
Server: Cerberus
Main Job: Warrior
Sub Job: NONE
Job LVL: BLM6 MNK2 RDM3 THF4 WAR75 WHM7
A.Job LVL: BRD2 BST6 DRK12 PLD7 RNG3
A.Job2 LVL: DRG4 NIN5 SAM3 SMN53

Though I'd take all of the above with a healthy grain of salt, as I refuse to believe that it is possible to level WAR to 75 or SMN to 53 with single-digit level subjobs to choose from.


Icemage

[Ellipses]

Re: Need small advice

Bolla flat-out said the job levels were a lie in another post. The wording of the OP looks to me like the intention is to solo THF, period. Ad infinitum.

I mean, it's insane and silly, but this is the internet.

[Nuriko]

Re: Need small advice

In the 25-30 range, is it worth using the fed knife over swords? It might be worth splitting this into fighting mandies, not fighting them, and fighting a mix of them and gobs...

[Spinnthrift]

Re: Need small advice

It depends.

I personally used Dagger/Sword from 24 till 33, but then I was partying with LS friends and had an SC setup around Frag using SA Shadowstich prior to Viper Bite so the Blm could MB.

Something stupid like Smash Axe > Shadowstich, which wasn't the greatest melee damage in the world, but the Blm and Smn'er bursting made up for it.

I think, if you have access to Fed Knives - use them. They're fairly strong in their own right. If you turned up to a low level party as a Thf with either swords or daggers post 25, I wouldn't reject you for either option. So long as your other gear works (and I don't mean straight HQ's), that's what matters.

For solo EP's/DC's, I'd still go with Nadrs personally at that level, if I was taking more than a minute to kill an EP... (time for SA to recharge up in between kills).. I was doing something drastically wrong.

Hell - at 75 Thf, if I'm farming things that take less than a minute to kill, be they TW/EP/DC, I'll consider Venom Bolts just to make things faster, as it's added damage over time that doesn't accrue more mob tp other than the crossbow bolt which is used to help me accrue tp faster for more DE's or being able to have SADE ready for the next mob.

And Ziero - everything is situational. Yes - your flame blade, hit for hit, will do more than a small sword will (less than a Nadrs will though, and the fire proc isn't reliable enough to count on for damage). At that level, where MB'ing an SC is pretty much the fastest exp before melee start getting serious attack/acc boosts, making the skillchain count for something is where Thf excels at that level, because of naturally low attack/accuracy, and the way SA mods pDif. So, you can flail about for a couple of damage more per hit tops, or put out bigger SC's. Maybe I'm just being 2004...

[Ziero]

Re: Need small advice

In the 25-30 range, is it worth using the fed knife over swords? It might be worth splitting this into fighting mandies, not fighting them, and fighting a mix of them and gobs...

As a main, it's iffy, as it's a very strong weapon but the WS suck. Sub though? It's got high dmg, low delay and great Att AND Acc boosts.