A new thief thread

[Ergorion]

I searched the pages of The Battlefield looking for a thread that deals with thieves and stopped when I found two incredibly useless threads that dated back to 2004.

I'm just wondering some strategies for thieves with respect to pking.

[Grayden]

The best strategy for playing a thief is to reconsider your career. I suck at playing a thief, sidestep rocks, but I learned in a thread a while ago that when I would spam hide I was just making myself visible. My advice is to use the skills (sidestep, whatever) and only try to hide once. If found, run and hide again. Surprise is your only friend.

Grayden Grim of the Bloody Fields of Flesh

[Soldier]

My suggestion for your best bet is hide, blackjack and if it lands backstab. Sidestep, and kicks are powerful too and remember base most your eq on hitroll instead of damroll.

[Mandor]

I wouldnt say use these all at the same time on one person, but defenitely using different ones for each find can keep people guessing how you're going to fight them, which helps a lot to keep them in the dark.

1.master hide, I've seen it can still be whored even with aggressive adrenaline.

2.town is your domain, you're at a disadvantage most other places, but anywhere you can hide is probably almost as good as town, this is respective to dirt kick.

3. I dunno if they still get scrolls, but find some nice healing ones, for obvious reasons.

4. if you're going to sneak around town to attack, watch your moves. if you whore hiding and sneaking you will get run down fast unless you fly scroll to get out of there when things go bad.

5. steal as much money/items as you can when you're not actually looking to kill someone. the fact any character is a thief is imo grounds for having cleptomania, or anything closely related to it. besides, stealing money from someone to buy any item they auction just feels so good.

6. find targets to get nice weapons from. you'll want one of each type, segment, shaft, blade. you will also want something in the form of a held item.

7. find one or three great damroll pieces for backstab, then switch to the hitroll after you flee, then use the flee murder routine.

8. change things up, you'll have to get a feel for it by trial and error, but you want to be unpredictable to any fighter class, in terms of weapon and combat style. backstab should be what puts you on the level from the start, so get that weapon and combat superiority for the sidesteps with the auto-skills (I heard some mention of autobash in another thread, and the disbelief it caused there, and now im lol'ing ).

9. blackjack can still be used at any time afaicr, so you might try that if itll secure a win that you'd otherwise lose, as long as failure means you can still flee. of course starting off with blackjack is just as good, because either way you'll want to pry weapons off those fighters, make em fight defensive hand to hand from the start and they cant get any superiority while you have both. remember to check inventory and grab those too.

10. if you've got double superiority you might try lagging them, if they lag they suffer double inferiority while unable to do anything about it like change weapons or use skills. double ouch I should think. this is where being unpredictable, or being able to predict your enemy comes in handy. plus if you run them until their sanc is about to drop, then lag them when they come out of it, while having double superior, they can just say good night.

11. throw if you're dirted and they try to switch to get superiority on you. throw dual is the command.

12. sneak is a good way to get free hits in, even if you're not hidden, because only the most clever opponents will be able to see you enter. beware of murder spams though, whether you flee murder with this tactic or not, always be unpredictable in how long until you come back into the room, this will get to the enemy psychologically, and winning is 9/10ths psychological. you might even try running a few steps away like you're fleeing, then returning for a hit, but if you're clearly winning, better to eat one murder and get the kill than let them run away.

13. Warriors: use throw to initiate, as you wont get countered, but make sure theyre defensive or two handed which would be even better, so if you make them two hand to cleave for exposing you, thats when your knives really work.

14. element of surprise: any class can kill much easier with this.

15. beware of the berserk and rage skills. beware of nukes at low hp + sancfall time. beware the rabbit.

[Davairus]

[Mandor]

was talking about dual wielding, obviously I wouldnt have said throw dual in reference to held throwing knives.

[Accident-Prone]

[Davairus]

Nope they can't do that.

[raginggnome]

learn what items are easily pried, if blackjack lands steal potions weapons... if you have infravision steal their light(obviously) rings are somewhat easy. If you cant track dont start with backstabcause they will run, also if in town quickly close gates or nearby closeable exits if you are gonna backstab. stealing their sack is somewhat risky but worthwhile. And lead them on a wild goose chase if you miss blackjack and learn how long it takes till you can do it again.

[marsd]

Just a random tip: Don't backstab a warrior.

[Soldier]

It's always worked for me if theres a blackjack involved

[Davairus]

I don't see how you would need a whole new thief guide really, just take out the hide safety net and add harm/hobble-nuke and you're pretty set.

Offense priorities would be:

1) Backstab to turn around the thief hp deficit
2) Dirt kick for the lag & auto-combat advantage (skills might look nice, but most of your damage still comes from your weapons)
3) Dirt kicking them again.
4) Trip/clobber to keep your opponent cornered now he's losing.
5) Weapon type skill if appropriate (e.g. 2H clobber disarms a dirt kicked opponent, counterbalanced clobber does dirts, sidestep is a high damage slow attack nuke, etc)

Defense priorities would be:

1) Lurk around places you can run into for hide cover
2) Avoid warriors and especially shamans, unless its Grayden, hex and hobble will dick you over
3) Catch some ticks and recite some cure scrolls

Besides whats bold I don't think people are really having any problems finding what to do with a thief, and that's more of a chronic problem that all scroll-using classes are doing. Makes warriors a lot more powerful than they really are. If you think about it, if you can somehow restore 300 hp worth of health, you'd have fought like you had more hp than a warrior. Funny because I hear plenty of imaginative things from thieves I hadn't considered, but farm&recite some energy scrolls, that was tough to realise..?

[Mummy]

Where can you find healing scrolls though?

[Grayden]

[Viggs]

I liked all your tips but take it from me on how to play a thief.
Die, steal more eq, die then die again run hide run run run run hide hide quit logon run run run run run hide die.
Freaking thiefs,. they rock ,, Im going to make another right now ,
Viggs

[Ergorion]

A couple nights ago I used your strategy about running and hiding. It worked. Ha. I thought I had a chance at taking a warrior and actually fought with him until I had 10hp, how stupid I was.

[Davairus]

It really is a nightmare to fight a warrior, even if you know what you're doing. If you don't you'll be wiped out by hobble. But against the other classes they can be pretty cool. You'll have a much better shot at killing an experienced mage with a thief class, just because dual backstab from the shadows knocks their socks off.

Anyway the scrolls are found in elemental canyon.

[Vertas]

Ok, from what im noticing thieves need to worry more about weapon advantage so they can use their skills and combat type classes need to worry about style.


WRONG
stay in style advantage so you don't get hobbled against warriors, chances are you won't catch a mage type class with weapon ward down unless they're an idiot or they let it fall during combat, don't waste your time and energy trying to guess if its up, unless your seeing failed parries due to weapon advantage don't bother with sidestep clobber etc.


Keep sanc up at all times whether your opponent is using it or not, its not worth it to keep a warrior in battle no matter how injured he is if you don't have sanc up theres been times when i've had them, saw sanc fall and just kept tripping. Bad call...And yeah keep an escape route...

[Davairus]

Faith in humanity, -50.

Keep sanc up? This is a thread about playing thieves. Keeping sanc up is a safe assumption I should think. And actually the people saying that thieves have to focus more on weapon advantages, are right. When you put wild weapons and weapon advantages together, it makes a difference. Every weapon advantaged attack always come out wild. When you don't have much hp you have to score more damage to win, so that's a real godsend. Thieves should always be wearing wild weapons and going for weapon advantages. If you want to play defensive, put hp items with that, avoid using your skills (causes offensive adrenaline), pray a flee doesnt lag you, and pray a hide succeeds. Try to stay out of style disadvantage? LOSE. You can't. Period. Outdamage or die. Common sense should tell you its hard to dodge a halfling thief to begin with, since he has such a high dex and natural hitroll, but your parry is going to be super-strong if he doesnt go for weapon advantage. So..duh, what do you think?

Don't get hobbled, haha. You've never played a thief then. You'd fear overbear/overhead a lot more than hobble if you knew what you were talking about. Hobble is just win button for uber-eq warrior.

Don't overlook scrolls.
Don't overlook wild weapons.

Those'd be my two big tips to someone who wants to improve their game with thieves, because that's the things I see go missed the most. There's also a lot of dirty tricks to do with steal that shouldn't be posted here, and those just by themselves make thief a useful class.

[Vertas]

Well the thing is though that hobble screws with fleeing and movement, I'd worry more about having safe escape route than having to spend a round and a half or so lagged, a counterbalanaced rogue can dodge an overhead strike easy enough, so thats not even so much a problem. I totally agree with you for the offensiveness of wild weapon, assuming the thief is chaotic, which most probably are, and assuming they can get their hands on one, pre 42 that is when you can't buy them from darkhaven. However I'm going to argue with you and say that when the situation changes so should your strategy, it's not going to matter if you have weapon advantage if your fighting a mage, just keeping it up is a good way to see if weapon ward falls so you can rape them, but unless they're an idiot they're gonna be paying attention to that. Being a thief is about patience, waiting for them to make a mistake and then taking advantage of that, and you can't take advantage of that if you don't have a good defense yourself.

I do completely agree with you, thieves do have steal, pry, and pilfer for a reason.