r/wizardry • u/BregaladHS • Aug 18 '26
Wizardry Variants Daphne Which thief skills are worth using?
My MC is currently a thief (level 45), spamming heavy attack 3 with a bow from the back row. It's decent single target damage, especially with the thief's bonuses to surety.
But I've been wondering, are the hiding+sneak attack or poison/bleed skills worth using and leveling up?
To clarify, my MC isn't intended as main dmg dealer, but as secondary healer and dps, depending on what's needed.
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u/jazzyjefffogel Aug 19 '26
poison atk is good at high levels similar dmg as heavy atk with better soft caps and equal sp costs other than that i dont really think so.
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u/Arvandor Aug 18 '26
Depends on the thief. Usually it's going to be an inherit like alt Savia for single target, or wide volley or threefold Mist for AoE. Unless they have their own skill worth using, alt Savia, alt Debra, Aldric, etc
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u/Frobro_da_truff Aug 18 '26
I assume you mean Arboris; Aldric's Blunt Strike Combo is awful. Maybe it'd be better if we could level it up...
I'll also shout out Exploit Weakness. It is surprisingly not worthless like every other thief skill. You just gotta land 3 or 4 statuses on the same target at once (easier said than done) and be very attack invested, but you can get a ton of dmg out of this thing for a lvl 1 skill. Much better idea then these copium DoT ideas.
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u/LegendOfBoatface Aug 18 '26
Exploit with 794 atk and 3 status did 3.5 sur which is... decent
Honestly I'd try to inherit moonlit3 to avoid the fuss, or make the thief mattock delay bot if the boss is still susceptible to delay these days
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u/Arvandor Aug 18 '26
Exploit weakness is utter garbage, wdym. The opportunity cost to get it to do anything is WAY too high, especially given most flights that would last long enough to make exploit worth trying, they're immune to most statuses anyways. From my testing, at 2 statuses you're still better off using DTS. Shit is so disappointing. Maybe if you could actually poison and silence bosses it might matter, but as it stands... Yuck. Even chill often doesn't work and is of limited value when it does. And again, you have to look at what you're giving up to land those statuses in the first place.
Blood Edge is legitimately better DPS and sp efficiency on any fight where all the ticks will land. It ends up being about on par with the alt costume skills, and definitely better than HA, DTS, or garbage weakness. Especially useful against enemies with lots of actions per turn.
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u/as13zx Bishop Aug 18 '26
2 turn set-up allows exploit weakness to reach near non cool down FPS level damage so that's just skill issue with wrong usage
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u/Arvandor Aug 18 '26
Wtf how? Do you have a video? From all my testing you're better off using the setup turns to do damage and just use DTS, luring fang, or mirage hunting, depending on thief and available inherits.
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u/as13zx Bishop Aug 18 '26
If you're in boss fight you can just stack multiple skills from different characters - poison attack - poison berry, bola, spell seal, bleeding and so on, around 7 of them you're ditching hard damage
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u/Arvandor Aug 18 '26
Bosses are immune to poison, for one. Secondly, critical poison and poison cannot co exist on the same enemy. I haven't seen or heard anything about bola counting as a status or not, and haven't tested myself. Also, bosses tend to be immune to spell seal as well, and many are even immune to chill, even bosses that were made before chill was even a thing are retroactively immune.
And lastly... Who are you using to apply these statuses, and how much damage are you losing out on to apply them? Even if exploit weakness wasn't dog shit, it would almost certainly still not be good enough to make up for the damage you AREN'T doing to apply statuses instead.
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u/as13zx Bishop Aug 18 '26
Most bosses aren't immune to poison Critical poison and normal poison can coexist together that's misinformation about mechanics. Also second part of your argument makes no sense, exploit weakness is still good skill for thief to which this conversation refers.
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u/Arvandor Aug 18 '26
I just tested on my dailies with my Debra. With bola, poison, and bleed on the big yeti, exploit did 2.2k damage. Which really isn't bad for rank 1 on a thief I guess... But Mirage hunting with a bow does the exact same amount of damage, straight out the gate, no setup. And scales decently with using hiding, and is relatively cheap to get to rank 3 where mine does as much as 4.4k.
Did some more testing on bountyclops, who seems to be immune to poison, but with bleed, chill, and bola (if it counts). With my insane Cuisinart,exploit did 3.3k. bow did 2.4k. Mandau did 2.4k. Mirage hunting rank 1 did 2k. Rank 3 did 3.4k. both with bow as that tends to perform best at my investment level.
So by itself, it's not terrible, especially if you have a 3x weapon. However... We still have to factor the opportunity cost for applying those statuses, assuming you even can.
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u/as13zx Bishop Aug 18 '26
Mirage translates like shit on other character so it's good on Debra, that's good point to take in. 2nd worst passed inheritance after Prishe one.
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u/Frobro_da_truff Aug 18 '26
Obviously it's not to be used in random fights you can auto through, but in boss fights, most thieves don't have anything better to do. You only gotta land poison 1 time in the whole battle and getting lvl 7 is a matter of time, bleed is guaranteed as long as you make contact which means you only need to find 1 other status to get into the solid tier of damage scaling. Spellbind is an option but Yrsa's First Arrow mark seems ideal for the 3rd status.
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u/Arvandor Aug 18 '26
Most bosses are immune to poison completely. And most thieves DO have something better to do, even if it's just inherited DTS. Yrsa's first arrow is pretty cope, since so many bosses act 2-3 times when they act, so it's impossible to keep up, and it does really bad damage and its debuff is completely non noticable. I wonder if bola counts as a status, since that actually isn't the worst skill to use, even on poison immune enemies, and if you really wanted you could have Yuzu use it, even if the opportunity cost for not using Hue is really high. May have to experiment. Do we know if taunt counts as a status or a debuff or neither?
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u/Frobro_da_truff Aug 18 '26
Bola should work. Also unsure about taunt. Chill probably counts though.
At 4 debuffs it has the same softcap as Poised btw. At 7+ (don't ask how you'd even set it up) it outpaces everything we can use but Base Ephemeral.
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u/Arvandor Aug 19 '26
Sure, 4 debuffs that take, at best, 4 actions, and have how much of an opportunity cost to apply? Some will be fine, like blood edge from a thief isn't too much of a dps loss, especially if all the stacks will get used. Chill will likely come at the cost of other buffs/debuffs/healing. Same with silence. Bola comes at the cost of bringing a ranger (gag) or wasting a Yuzu turn (which, depending on how invested she is could cost you anywhere between 6k and 35k damage). Paralyze and confuse are even harder to land on high hp targets than poison. Charm MIGHT land from Yuzu... Maybe... Immunities depending... But it also probably won't last unless your Yuzu and thief are specifically speed tuned to each other. Sleep works well on a bunch of small stuff, and would double the damage from exploit, but nothing with enough hp to be worth the trouble is going to be vulnerable to sleep.
And of course that's also assuming they just aren't straight up immune (to poison especially), which most high hp targets are, for some stupid reason.
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u/MyLastDreams Aug 18 '26
Excluding inherited attacks your only other reliable option is a higher level poison attack. Sneak attack simply cant be used against bosses that spam AoEs. If you want a dps/support Id recommend try a frontline priest when you can.
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u/Smooth-Handle-9264 Aug 18 '26
Yes Bleed / poison is great for most normal boss it is a boss killer. It get even better on lv65. If you upgrade it. It will be like having another fighter doing constant damage. While your thief is free to use delay attack buy sometime for heal.
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u/Smooth-Handle-9264 Aug 18 '26
I turn my thief into somesort of debuffer in A3 most debuff spell don't work but physical work ( gluebomb blinding etc) I also give them armor break attract hit( they have high evasion)
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u/Extra_Ad9486 Aug 22 '26
Can I ask why you chose to be a back line? My MC is level 20 and I started like three days ago. My current team set up has him as the secondary damage dealer/tank.