THF post 55Follow

At level 60, you get the job trait Assassin which allows you to solo TA and make it a crit like SA.

You just have to get behind whoever you want to transfer hate and pop TA, and and you next swing will be a strogn crit just like SA. You can stack TA with WS also, just like SA. you don't need anyone facing any special direction with TA anymore.
It's also recommended that you solo SA and TA and DE as soon as the timers and/or TP is ready to increase your DD.

I really would NOT recommend standalone DE in the 60s.

At that level, given the types of mobs that people normally fight (and the speed at which you gain TP), you will get better results by using your TP on SA/TA+WS (particularly Shark Bite, once you get it).

Try not to think of it as something difficult or confusing, instead, think of it as making what you already have to do, easier and more simple.

Right now you have to get a first voke and then get your tank and yourself into position, you have to trust that your first voker doesn't think dancing around the mob helps evade attacks and that your main tank doesn't take hate before you hit your SATA macro then your VB macro or however you do it.

At 60.

You no longer need that first voke, that's right, screw him, he can dance if he wants to...(He can leave his friends behind...)

Your main tank can get straight into getting hate and you just need to walk behind him, hit TA and DE/SB/EV whatever, and then you can solo SA afterwards if you want. The Mob really should be dead before your TA timer gets back up.

Nothing about the function of TA changes, you still need to be behind someone to pin your hate on them, the difference is that, it just becomes a critical attack, and is more viable to use separate from SA than together.

Soloing TA and SAWS defeats the purpose of what your there for imo, your planting hate not for your own DMG but for your party.

At the end of the day it does come down to preference and what works for you, you literally have thousands of mobs your going to be doing this to from 60 onwards, plenty of time to practice your style...but make sure the style you pick actually gets the job done.

THF post lv 60 is amazing. I sorta enjoyed THF up to 59, but after Assasin and Dancing Edge.... wow! Another hardly used, but very cool ability is Hide. After Lv 54ish chances are you will fight Colobris, which are sight based, so every 5 minutes heres what you can do: Tank vokes, you get behind the tank with 100+tp, Pop Sneak Attack, Trick Attack, Hide, then Dancing Edge/Shark Bite right after for very nice damage. Because you hid, the Sneak Attack will also kick in, for nice dmg. Synced down to lv 63-64, I pull off some nice 800-1100 dmg SA+TA+Hide+WSs. ^^ Hope you have fun with THF post 55, I know I do :D




P.S. There are many different ways to set up this macro, I do it like this:

Alt1 macro:
/ja "Sneak Attack" <me>
/wait 1
/ja "Trick Attack" <me>
Alt2 macro:
/ja "Hide" <me>
/wait 1
/ws "Dancing Edge" <t>


Takes a little practice, but I normally hit the second macro right as the TA animation is seen. ^^

Edited, May 19th 2009 7:20am by KittyprydeKujata

55 isn't too special as far as EXP play goes (other than moving to ToAU, but you might have already fought colibri in East Ronfaure [S] so it might not be anything new). 60 is where it's at. Assassin really makes things a lot simpler. You don't need to rely on a SATA partner or first voke or any of that bullsh*t, so it allows you to cut loose a little more.

Main thing that seems to help my damage in EXP play post-Assassin is riding those SA/TA timers as much as you can.

I strongly recommend against having more than one JA or a JA and a WS in the same macro with a wait. Doing that results in the higest rate of macro missfires and miss timings.

I keep each JA and WS in its only macro. Just hit the macros you need for the situation you are in. No need of those complex situational macros. You need to have SA and TA macros with nothing else in them anyway to solo SA and TA when their timers come up. And being able to swap WS on the fly to take advantage of a possible SC is always a plus.

THFs that rely on macros that use multiple JAs and JA+WS are the thfs that tend to always use those macros even with the situation doesn't merit it. You will need to use everything at some point by its self. Why waste space having situational macros on top of all that.

What does belong in the other 5 lines of macro for things like SA, TA, and WS is the gear swaps for that skill/ja. you can have SA go off, then 5 lines of dex equips, TA have 5 lines of AGL equips, and DE have whatever you are using at your level for de equips. (unless you use spellcast or windower macros)

Please separate macros, every time I see a THF use SA+TA+WS obviously out of a macro when standing on the side of a mob with on one in front of them I cringe and kill a kitten.

Lordtrey, I know what you mean about THFs who ONLY have one macro with SA+TA and use that one macro even if theyre not behind someone, etc. You also kinda assumed that I do this too. This is far from the truth lol. I do have a solo SA, solo TA, SATA, TAWS, hide+WS, and a SA+WS macro. If Im level synced under 63 , Ill cut and paste my Dancing Edge ws macro over my Shark Bite macro.

Lordtrey, The reason for me making macros with 2 JAs per macro is that Ive lost count how many times the macros would missfire and mess up pressing 4 different macros: alt1-Sneak attack, alt2-Trick Attack, alt3-Hide, alt4-WS...... that to me has failed me more than anything lol. Seriously , using your 4 macros for SA+TA+Hide+WS, how many times have you did your normal Crit high dmg hit before the ws went off, resulting in a 60dmg DE? If you said zero, then I must call you a FFXI god lol.....

I didn't mean to accuse you of being of the of thfs that always uses the multi-ja macro wither or not the situation calls for it. I mean to say that those macros encourage that style of poor thf playing.

However, having used both styles of macros, I will say with 100% certainty that the failure rate of multi JA macros is much higher than separate macros. You can make corrections with separate macros as well. If while hitting SA+TA+hide TA fails, you can still hit it after hide (only works with Ta on SA after hide btw) then hit your WS.

The delay pause added by JA use is generally enough to make any correction needed. Of course these all all macro ideas fail in FFXI from time to time. It sucks, but there are ways around it. Things like spellcast and windower macros fail far less often than ffxi macros (i am not sure why, but i think its because things are intercepted client side and resent in order).

On top of all that. As you have to have separate macros anyway, the combo macros take up macro space I dont really have.