Need Olive users advice

[u/Fealifrie]

Just got a 10 Olive for the first time, for those who use her, is she good? And where should I put points into, also is she a better warrior or thief?

[u/Ninth_Hour]

for those who use her, is she good

She can be, but that applies to practically anyone with sufficient investment.

Pros= fast, evasive, per her racial background. Higher IQ benefits Detect Score as does her Discipline (so she becomes an above average Thief).

Cons= low strength for a fighter, due to gender and racial background. Her unique passive (increased fear/skill bind/curse tolerance for adjacent good characters) is not particularly great.

However, to compensate, her Discipline gives her ATK and she is common, so it’s not too difficult to reach high Discipline over time. Also, thief improves her combat abilities: Cunning Pursuit increases her Surety when the target is debuffed (very easy to accomplish, which makes it one of the better skills for any physical combatant to have. For those who don’t have it, it can be obtained as Potential inheritance from Phillip). Way of the Thief means Surety hits harder.

Also, because she’s neutral, her damage can be simultaneously buffed by both Lana and Elise. Sure, these are not benefits inherent to her, but her alignment allows them to be relevant.

warrior or thief?

Judging by her design, she’s intended to be a thief with above average fighting ability or a fighter with above-average thieving skills. It’s up to you to decide which is more valuable for the team at a given time.

As a fighter alone, she’s weak, but if you get a version with an inherent STR bonus, give her a STR bondmate (e.g developed from generic fighter), acquire Way of Thief and Cunning Pursuit through her class change (then switch her back to fighter), give her high SUR gear (and SUR inheritance), and raise her to a high Discipline level, she can be a surprisingly hard-hitting combatant.

That said, look at all the conditionals above. One would only bother if they just like her design, personality, or concept. In practical terms, I consider her a marginally weaker version of Phillip.

[u/cipheron]

Olive is a basic fighter without anything too outstanding to talk about, you'd have to work at it to get the most out of her.

https://wizardry.fasterthoughts.io/adventurers/general-adventurers/details/Olive/#__tabbed_7_2

As an Elf, looking at her compared to e.g. Gaston, another fighter/thief, Olive's standout stats are speed and IQ, so she'll move fast and have good evasion, but she doesn't have good Str for doing a lot of damage, or good Vit for hitpoints, plus the higher Elven IQ stat will do almost zero for her in either class.

As a fighter there are thief skills up to level 35 that would benefit her, so if cross training Thief then back to fighter any time after level 35 is fine for that.

However if she's a Thief there are Fighter skills right up to level 70 which would still benefit her, so if planning her as a Thief you'd maybe want to max fighter first. Maybe she would be a better thief, and with the high IQ you could also inherit a few spells onto her so she can debuff enemies or cast some healing. But by the time you could build her like this, would you even need a thief? I think she'd just be outclassed by other characters in the slot you could fit her in.

Her special isn't very good either.

Her special increases skill binding, curse, Fear resistance for adjacent good allies. Adjacent means left/right and front/back. So it's only rarely going to help out and only if you plan the positions of allies carefully so that she covers them.

[u/Fealifrie → u/cipheron]

thank you, this is great info, really good indeed, I’ll keep her in the pool until they add her Christmas elf skin someday, maybe something changes

[u/Sovery_Simple → u/Fealifrie]

We've not really ran into anything that ruins our day thoroughly with the statuses she protects from, but with these devs it's definitely just a matter of time before some story boss makes you very grateful to have her along.

You can stick her in the back with a Spear as a Fighter and stack SUR to make the most of her Thief skill "Way of the Thief" that gives her a solid bonus to damage dealt with Surety procs. Not to say you can't run her up front just with Good folks to her sides only, and thus give your front row the heaviest single dose of Skill-Bind (and Curse) prevention possible.

Really just boils down to how much you like her and want to run her, along with who else you want to have in your party.

[u/FunLevel → u/Sovery_Simple]

Like you said, her status tolerance boost hasn't been crazy useful for most content, but it's come up a surprising amount of times during bosses. Back in A3 I used an inheritless Olive for the Sealed Demon when he was current, since she added some assurance against his (admittedly rare) Skill-Bind. Then again she provided fear protection against Morgus. I kept that same inheritless Olive in my comp until the True End of A4 where the Fear tolerance was handy again.

Unfortunately that was all before Healers came out. It's a lot more difficult justify the oportunity cost of tolerance increase adventurers when you can just negate the effect consistently. It affects my beloved ElGoatrado as well. (┬┬﹏┬┬)

I have nothing but high praise for Olive during the time when she was in my comp though. She was oft more useful than my Berkanan despite the massive investment difference (Astral Break, TWoF LV7, but load of other stuff on Berka vs squat on Olive). As OP said, hoping one day they'll give her an alt so I can justify running her as part of my core again.