Some extra thoughts based on comments. Did some more testing with Smoke Screen and I can see the appeal of gibbing small packs of goblins instantly with it. However I still think I would take Implicate over it as it offers the same combo with Twin Fangs but also handling harpies and yanking down big boys. It does seem if you spam enough Smoke Screen you can infinitely attack big boys without them aggroing which is pretty interesting. For pawns I want to reiterate that Plunder has top tier utility and can even steal rare mats for you. Additionally on the note of stealing from NPCs, you activate Shadow Veil and then Plunder the NPC. This will steal from them without causing aggro.
Smoke Screen is overlooked. Automatic crits on anything standing in it during the duration (drop smoke, spam Y on mobs) It works best as an offensive skill for taking out packs quickly. My straightforward pawn utilizes it well offensively and often packs of 6 hobgoblins or suarians are dead within seconds just from him
I replaced formless faint with smoke screen due to giving myself a more challenging playthrough and love it, not only does it work well offensively like you mentioned you can use it as cover when reviving a downed pawn, it also feel so good having you and 3 pawns all thief vocation with smoke screen and descend on a group just for the smoke to clear and only have you and the pawns standing
By late game, implicate and Skullsplitter will handle everything, coupled with your super strong light and heavy attacks. Basically that leaves 2 skill slots to pick whatever. I don't find formless feint or blades pf the pyre necessary at all. You can kill everything just using what I listed above, in mere seconds. So the last 2 skills really can just be for preference or utility.
My 2 cents. If you are building a pawn, they do not underatand to use formless feint to negate the self damage from blades of the pyre, they will just nuke themselves 😂. From what I've heard smoke screen will prox the ambuscade augment which can be big damage. Pair it with sorceror augural flare on warfarer and watch the fireworks.
needs to be calm if any other they will always use the wrong way round. Calm they use feint before pyre, Well mine does everytime but I now changed it off for Implicate and plunder.
I agree, but imo it's still better then athleticism, since as a Thief I mostly Carve + Dash anywhere. And Formless Faint gives a speed boost making you even faster. You can refill Formless Feint by killing small enemies with Carve even during large enemy fights. Besides Voracity recovers 10% stamina. Say you have 1500 stamina. You get +150 per kill. Where natural recovery is 100/s. It's just my opinion tho. Good video.
Concussive Leap is a nice interaction with Skullsplitter as it gives you more forward momentum and height and more height gives Skullsplitter more hits. Of course on top of it being effectively a double jump for exploration. Athleticism also imo not needed on Thief because Thief can move faster than sprint by spamming dodge light attack and its stamina positive to do so.
Thief is the best class not because of skull splitter, but because of their strong attack on downed enemies. I don't care about killing Dragons faster. Those fights are actually fun. I care about killing Rock lizards faster, and Implicate into pinning them to the ground means you can clear packs of them faster than anyone else. I mean, not as fast as Sorcerers casting maelstrom, but whatever they don't count.
You can double that with meteorodon too. Just copy the books and give those to the sorcerer meister. Then complete the mage meister quest. If you choose mystical spearhand, as long as you shield the sorceror, it will be a fest of both maelstrom and meteorodon. Everything dies.
Skull Splitter is way too OP. It completely trivialized the end of the game for me. The first time I faced the final boss of the main game I was a fighter. It was an epic battle that lasted like 20 minutes, and I barely got the win. Second time I fought him using Warfarer with Skull-Split I literally beat him in 2 minutes.
Implicate is amazing, but unfortunately it doesn’t act as a grappling hook for exploration. Concussive Leap actually has an interesting quality beyond exploration and giving your Skullsplitter more height - if you perform Concussive Leap with 0 directional input, you will backflip in place and any enemy next to you is likely open to a jump attack execution thanks to the explosion - which you are conveniently ready to deliver immediately because you got launched in the air. This is extremely useful for dealing with saurians, shielded enemies, stout undead, etc. So while Implicate might be better in a pure combat scenario, I do think Concussive Leap deserves some kudos as well.
I appreciate Cowboy's love and energy for this game. Maybe I'll be ready to learn a whole new RPG system and open world this summer. Right now, even just the idea exhausts me. 😮💨
It’s really intuitive and easy to get into. I’m telling you nothing about it is exhausting. In less than an hour you’ll be totally immersed in it. All I’m trying to say is I think you’ll enjoy it a lot when you finally do play it bro.
thief allows you to move faster than just using dash. it also wont consume stamina. repeatedly use swift step+carve, swift step+carve, swift step+carve.
Thief is extremely fun, but also incredibly broken. It's the vocation that needs the most nerfs by far. Basically nothing can output the damage of a Thief. (except Sorc with Augural Flame)
Enkindled Blades is good for a pawn. Gives it ability to ignite enemies that can be ignited (run agument from sorc that makes it easier) and also lets pawn oneshot slimes and bloated zombies. Plus griffin and such can't fly away when burned. Good ability for more self-sustained pawns. Lethality augment due to how damage calculates results in about 2% more damage. Might as well run something actually useful (stamina recovery, pdef, mdef).
In the first game you could use pilfer on pawns that wander the world to get a ton of really good items (as well as being one of two ways to get a specific set of daggers that had darkness infusion) so I'm curious if you can do the same in this game. Each vocation you stole from would drop items from their own specific loot tables
Great video my guy. I've been preferring to play thief without the meister skills tho just to make it more fun lol Do you know if the buff from enkindled blades or blades of the pyre have any effect on elemental weapons? I can't tell since they don't affect the numbers on stats
Would Blades of Pyre still hurt and burn you if you equip the Ring of Quenching? This ring is supposed to negate burn. I didn't get a chance to test this out yet, but if it does work, that means you won't have to use Formless Feint... I don't know if that would be beneficial or not because I heard Formless Feint is sort of overpowered.
I believe the initial burst of fire damage would still hurt. TBH there's really no reason to use it without Feint though, you could use Enkindled if you want fire with none of the risk.
if you're on pc there is a mod on nexus called custom difficulty tweaks, it has some presets or you can customise pretty much anything youd want in a hard mode
Solo was my favourite way to play DD1, so looking forward to playing thief in ng+ without pawns. Seems like the one class with a toolkit for all scenarios. Unfortunately, a lot of the vocations don't seem to be geared toward solo (though granted, ive not played spearhand or msgic archer yet so can speak on those). Archer, for instance, is lacking any elemental bows, which will hurt it solo..
If you wanna get a preserved medusa head, try running thief and have a mage pawn with lightning affinity. The lightning damage seems to make a big difference, I went full physical at first and couldn't get it but when I used lightning I got it first try
I ended up switching to Thief after the quests to sneak into the gaol and castle and I could not figure out the stealth mechanics of the game, so just being the sneaky class made a lot of sense
Smoke screen is literally like the smoke bomb in Assassin's Creed. You throw it down and crit stab anything caught in the smoke. If you wanted to live our your AC fantasy in DD2.
I have the same thief skill set up too. I main thief too. Gear wise, more resistance set up. End game gear (some) lacks resistances. Resistances>>>>> just looking good, imo. Or functionality >>>>>> looking good 😅😅 imo.😊
Smoke screen is best used as a combo with twin fang. Twin fang auto crits when something isnt in a combat stance, and enemies arent in combat stance inside smoke screen. It is stupid good, to the point i use it instead of implicate now.
@@FightinCowboy i know. I was just commenting for the people that might have thought smokescreen was ONLY for escaping. It gives up flying targets and knockdowns for an aoe stancebreak/cloud of safety for the party. Both are good, i just prefer smokescreen. Thief's cup run'eth over lol
Unfortunatly once i found out lethality is only a 5% increase to dmg to weak points i stopped running it. Also i find skull splitter against dragon hearts is a pain in the ass because about 90% of the time i end up on his back and miss the heart all together
Ok so like a lot of players, looks like you haven't checked what augment gives what when it comes to numbers. To anyone who wants to slot useful augments, Zeal only saves 5% of stam on skill, Lethality increase your dmg to weakspots by only 5% as well and athleticism reduce stam used while dashing by 10%. Whereas Apotropaism from mage gives you 30% increased mag def, Mettle from Fighter gives 30% increased Phys def and Constancy from Sorc gives 30% Knockdown res... Do yourself a favour and don't slot close to useless augments when you have access to those at the very least.
Yup same with “Intrepidity.” On paper it sounds amazing slowing down the cumulative health bar loss. But it only does it by 5% so it’s pretty negligible.
@@DodgyDamRogue I'm not sure I understand what you're asking. The point I was making is that there's no value in defensive skills here when we're damage immune with formless feint so even the 5% weakspot will be more valuable since we already have a tool to mitigate all incoming damage. Additionally enemies aren't a threat at all past 50 from how fast we kill. Because of this defensive skills don't have as much general value because we're not at much risk of being hit to begin with. I run them on Fighter because "lol mega tank" but they could be 50% and it wouldn't make a difference until we see a hard or insane mode difficulty added. It has nothing to do with not checking numbers, it's that defense just isn't necessary here.
@@FightinCowboy Close to the point I was making tbh, the whole build, as you just explained, evolves around formless feint and not much else. Since you called it an "ultimate guide" some may think you're presenting them with the best options for the thief all around. If there's any player who do not want to play with FF those augments you showcased are absolutely not the BIS ones to grab. Your video is more a specific build guide rather than a class guide which are 2 very different things, but thats just my opinion.
Some notes I'd like to point out about Concussive Blast and Smoke Screen: Concussive Blast may not have good utility in combat BUT its use outside it as a traversal skill is fantastic, it functions as a "double jump" when used mid-air. I always have this skill on my character all the time, when I'm not playing with Fighter/Warrior Pawns with the launching skill Concussive Blast helps me get some extra jump height to reach a ledge or something, not only that if you accidentally walk off a cliff you can use Concussive Blast to launch you back onto the cliff, saving your from fall damage/death. Smoke Screen puts just about all small enemy types into a finisher state, meaning press Heavy Attack on the enemies in the smoke screen for an easy kill, this skill is great for clearing out small enemy groups. Meaning smoke screen doesn't need to be used only for escapes, even though it does help with that. I'm still figuring out the mechanics for this skill when used on large enemy types, as far as I can tell, it seems to make climbing them easier...? Not 100% sure about that.
@@FightinCowboy That's true, I agree with you there. Implicate and Skull Splitter is god-like skills I would never remove from my thief, I would replace the masters teaching skills since they are only good when you pair them together, IMO
This is just for the pure flashy thief fantasy. Using the concussive double in battle allows you to do the jumping heavy attack to enemies and face mount ogres, Minotaurs, and kneeling cyclops. However I too mainly run implicate for harpies mainly, archer pawns be too slow to shoot them down
I personally prefer enkindle/ignited blades over blades of the pyre cause with the duration I think it outclasses blades of the pyre and I'm not killing myself 😂. Though I haven't found any elemental daggers yet. I know enchantment skills/spells don't override innate enchantments. So it's nice to know feint dodges the pyre. I think mage's exaltation is good for any build because stamina recovery
Self imposed hard mode: use the borderwatch camp gear in unmoored, only using rings with downsides like a STR class using the Ring of REcitation (faster spells, lower HP) There’s also ting of derision but that’s too far imo
Is there a reason you don't go for the twin fangs finisher on the dragon heart when it's knocked down? It's not super necessary with this gear, but it's still a huge damage boost in my experience. I've been messing around with just going unarmed and the finisher is one of the saving graces for higher health enemies.
Isn't lethality only like a 5% weak point damage boost? Vs Verve's 30% str boost. Might be worth testing out if verve is a better option for melee classes vs lethality.
Dragon's Dankmas still won't load for me past the glowing eyes at the title screen, but one of these days I'll be able to play this thing. Thanks for the content, Cowboy.
I'm around level 68 and I kill everything so fast. I hope hard mode isn't like DD1 where all it does is increase gold from drops and enemy damage. I want all of that plus more enemy HP b/c hard mode will be a joke with our current dps. They could even add the harder monsters as default spawns in hard mode as well.
I fell in love with thief when I saw the trailer. Aemond (main pawn) has all vocations maxed out and when he reached the final level of archer, he complained that he felt more useful as a thief. So as his counter part in the TV show I rolled him to thief 😂 My arisen is also a thief but the warfarer she's gonna be a thief/archer or thief/magic archer 😂
I put double magic boost rings and sagacity augment on my Pawn Thief. I wonder is all the magic boost making me do a lot of damage with heavens key or is it just because he is level 80ish. I wish we had damage numbers that we can turn on and off.
Hey Cowboy, could you provide the Pawn IDs that you are using? Serosh especially looks like someone I would love to have in my party. Sorry if this was already asked about a million times
Awesome I agree it doesnt really need one and it would be a massive undertaking in the way a souls one wouldn't be just was curious! Havent seen the stream so ty
I'm still unsure why your stamina regen is so fast. While I'm using a recovery ring as well as the augment from Mage, and my stamina doesn't replenish near as fast.
@@FightinCowboy Very Light - Light. Was curious if perhaps something was bugged or unintentionally working in reverse. IE the augment or ring. Both are stated to recover an additional 10 per second, but a 3 quarter bar refill takes about 8 seconds for me.
Which upgrade technique did you use. Dwarven gives more knockdown. Bahtal more physical elven more magic and vernworth a little bit of everythign. Also he had a knockdown ring on
Unmoored World - Nameless Village. Top, far right of village. Go right and below the mansion to the where there used to be water. There should be a chest there. For hood. Chest armor is sold by Sara in Endgame.
I also found the game balance is a bit out of whack, early game I just died so much and found it very hard to kill anything. But now even at level 40 with half upgraded gear things die pretty easily.
@@visionofgrey yes but you can still upgrade them with Dwarven smithing that will boost the magic and the physical damage plus more knockdown, it's better to do that than to get a higher increase in magic damage from elven smithing since most enemies aren't weak to holy damage anyway
Some extra thoughts based on comments.
Did some more testing with Smoke Screen and I can see the appeal of gibbing small packs of goblins instantly with it. However I still think I would take Implicate over it as it offers the same combo with Twin Fangs but also handling harpies and yanking down big boys. It does seem if you spam enough Smoke Screen you can infinitely attack big boys without them aggroing which is pretty interesting.
For pawns I want to reiterate that Plunder has top tier utility and can even steal rare mats for you. Additionally on the note of stealing from NPCs, you activate Shadow Veil and then Plunder the NPC. This will steal from them without causing aggro.
Smoke Screen is overlooked. Automatic crits on anything standing in it during the duration (drop smoke, spam Y on mobs) It works best as an offensive skill for taking out packs quickly. My straightforward pawn utilizes it well offensively and often packs of 6 hobgoblins or suarians are dead within seconds just from him
Didnt know this. Thank u! Fkn legend
I replaced formless faint with smoke screen due to giving myself a more challenging playthrough and love it, not only does it work well offensively like you mentioned you can use it as cover when reviving a downed pawn, it also feel so good having you and 3 pawns all thief vocation with smoke screen and descend on a group just for the smoke to clear and only have you and the pawns standing
Does your pawn bounce off the saurians or does it know to go for the tail?
I’m going to have to give this another whirl…
I took thief as soon as i saw the dual daggers, because, ya know. Realized very soon how absolutely broken this class is!! Great Video as always!
I started thief as my first character. 30hrs in and still love it.
By late game, implicate and Skullsplitter will handle everything, coupled with your super strong light and heavy attacks. Basically that leaves 2 skill slots to pick whatever. I don't find formless feint or blades pf the pyre necessary at all. You can kill everything just using what I listed above, in mere seconds. So the last 2 skills really can just be for preference or utility.
Wouldn't you be able to go Warfarer then, for the extra fashion choices? If that's your thing I mean
@@Anon-21jthis is how I’m playing. I can’t play without leviate loll
Thief is the best class.
It just wrecks everything. Good vid bro. 🤘
I really do hope they add a hard mode at some point. I’ve been enjoying playing trickster more simply because not everything dies instantly.
I switched to warrior & had so much fun with bosses because I wasn't deleting them in 10 seconds.
@@casper5563lol warrior kills dragons arguably even faster then theif, watch cowboys warrior guide he kills the dragon in like 35 seconds
@@JubWhere I know, but I don't use that skill because its too overpowered..
My 2 cents.
If you are building a pawn, they do not underatand to use formless feint to negate the self damage from blades of the pyre, they will just nuke themselves 😂.
From what I've heard smoke screen will prox the ambuscade augment which can be big damage.
Pair it with sorceror augural flare on warfarer and watch the fireworks.
needs to be calm if any other they will always use the wrong way round. Calm they use feint before pyre, Well mine does everytime but I now changed it off for Implicate and plunder.
@ProjectEvolutionz implicate is just too good lol. I'd probably only put formless, implicate, and skullsplitter on at this point
Yes, please keep doing vocation guides
Dropping a new one everyday. Got everything except Trickster done so far because I don't really enjoy the class.
@@FightinCowboy awesome! yea I didn't enjoy trickster either
No Voracity on Fromless Faint seems like a miss tbh. Stamina regen on kill lets you delete small mobs without ever running out of stamina.
You can disable FF between encounters though and refill near instantly.
I agree, but imo it's still better then athleticism, since as a Thief I mostly Carve + Dash anywhere. And Formless Faint gives a speed boost making you even faster. You can refill Formless Feint by killing small enemies with Carve even during large enemy fights.
Besides Voracity recovers 10% stamina. Say you have 1500 stamina. You get +150 per kill. Where natural recovery is 100/s. It's just my opinion tho. Good video.
Concussive Leap is a nice interaction with Skullsplitter as it gives you more forward momentum and height and more height gives Skullsplitter more hits. Of course on top of it being effectively a double jump for exploration.
Athleticism also imo not needed on Thief because Thief can move faster than sprint by spamming dodge light attack and its stamina positive to do so.
Yeah but who wants to mash L1 constantly? That's exhausting
Thief is the best class not because of skull splitter, but because of their strong attack on downed enemies. I don't care about killing Dragons faster. Those fights are actually fun. I care about killing Rock lizards faster, and Implicate into pinning them to the ground means you can clear packs of them faster than anyone else.
I mean, not as fast as Sorcerers casting maelstrom, but whatever they don't count.
You can double that with meteorodon too. Just copy the books and give those to the sorcerer meister. Then complete the mage meister quest. If you choose mystical spearhand, as long as you shield the sorceror, it will be a fest of both maelstrom and meteorodon. Everything dies.
Skull Splitter is way too OP. It completely trivialized the end of the game for me. The first time I faced the final boss of the main game I was a fighter. It was an epic battle that lasted like 20 minutes, and I barely got the win. Second time I fought him using Warfarer with Skull-Split I literally beat him in 2 minutes.
Skull splitter has always been the goat even back in dd1
I kind of naturally came across the blades of the pyre/formless feint combo by accident, and it's been my mob/boss destroyer ever since.
Implicate is amazing, but unfortunately it doesn’t act as a grappling hook for exploration.
Concussive Leap actually has an interesting quality beyond exploration and giving your Skullsplitter more height - if you perform Concussive Leap with 0 directional input, you will backflip in place and any enemy next to you is likely open to a jump attack execution thanks to the explosion - which you are conveniently ready to deliver immediately because you got launched in the air.
This is extremely useful for dealing with saurians, shielded enemies, stout undead, etc. So while Implicate might be better in a pure combat scenario, I do think Concussive Leap deserves some kudos as well.
I was actually looking this morning to see if u had made a video on the thief yet. Thanks cowboy!
I appreciate Cowboy's love and energy for this game. Maybe I'll be ready to learn a whole new RPG system and open world this summer. Right now, even just the idea exhausts me. 😮💨
It’s really intuitive and easy to get into. I’m telling you nothing about it is exhausting. In less than an hour you’ll be totally immersed in it. All I’m trying to say is I think you’ll enjoy it a lot when you finally do play it bro.
thief allows you to move faster than just using dash. it also wont consume stamina. repeatedly use swift step+carve, swift step+carve, swift step+carve.
You sold me at "i-frames" on that dodge.
Thief is extremely fun, but also incredibly broken. It's the vocation that needs the most nerfs by far. Basically nothing can output the damage of a Thief. (except Sorc with Augural Flame)
Enkindled Blades is good for a pawn. Gives it ability to ignite enemies that can be ignited (run agument from sorc that makes it easier) and also lets pawn oneshot slimes and bloated zombies. Plus griffin and such can't fly away when burned. Good ability for more self-sustained pawns.
Lethality augment due to how damage calculates results in about 2% more damage. Might as well run something actually useful (stamina recovery, pdef, mdef).
My favorite to play as well by far with double stagger/knockdown rings. Skills I run Formlessfeint, Skullsplitter, Powerderblast, Implicate.
Awesome video, as usual your content is top tier
In the first game you could use pilfer on pawns that wander the world to get a ton of really good items (as well as being one of two ways to get a specific set of daggers that had darkness infusion) so I'm curious if you can do the same in this game. Each vocation you stole from would drop items from their own specific loot tables
I had a lot of fun with my thief build. I can’t wait to try this one out
Great video my guy. I've been preferring to play thief without the meister skills tho just to make it more fun lol
Do you know if the buff from enkindled blades or blades of the pyre have any effect on elemental weapons? I can't tell since they don't affect the numbers on stats
Would Blades of Pyre still hurt and burn you if you equip the Ring of Quenching? This ring is supposed to negate burn. I didn't get a chance to test this out yet, but if it does work, that means you won't have to use Formless Feint... I don't know if that would be beneficial or not because I heard Formless Feint is sort of overpowered.
I believe the initial burst of fire damage would still hurt. TBH there's really no reason to use it without Feint though, you could use Enkindled if you want fire with none of the risk.
Feint is overpowered and there's no real reason not to use it.
Hey Cowboy! Great video! Just curious if you’re working on a 100% Dragons Dogma 2 playthrough like your souls-like playthroughs?
if you're on pc there is a mod on nexus called custom difficulty tweaks, it has some presets or you can customise pretty much anything youd want in a hard mode
Solo was my favourite way to play DD1, so looking forward to playing thief in ng+ without pawns. Seems like the one class with a toolkit for all scenarios.
Unfortunately, a lot of the vocations don't seem to be geared toward solo (though granted, ive not played spearhand or msgic archer yet so can speak on those). Archer, for instance, is lacking any elemental bows, which will hurt it solo..
was expecting that you add footage from stream where u were toying with cyclops to show how u can utilize it in early and mid game ^^
Dude you SHREDDED that dragon. Ok I’m switching to thief lol
just maxed out archer so I headed to this bc I was in nameless village. fateful decision - looking forward to it!
Just get as much stamina as you can and spam skull splitter. It’s hilarious how much I barely have to think when I play thief.
Thief is B R O KE N. The only thing in the game that's stronger that thief is Medusa's head.
If you wanna get a preserved medusa head, try running thief and have a mage pawn with lightning affinity. The lightning damage seems to make a big difference, I went full physical at first and couldn't get it but when I used lightning I got it first try
I ended up switching to Thief after the quests to sneak into the gaol and castle and I could not figure out the stealth mechanics of the game, so just being the sneaky class made a lot of sense
I saw that skull splitter was still in play and knew what I’d play first.
Smoke screen is literally like the smoke bomb in Assassin's Creed. You throw it down and crit stab anything caught in the smoke. If you wanted to live our your AC fantasy in DD2.
I have the same thief skill set up too. I main thief too. Gear wise, more resistance set up. End game gear (some) lacks resistances. Resistances>>>>> just looking good, imo. Or functionality >>>>>> looking good 😅😅 imo.😊
Never played dd b4 would u consider the I frames thief gets on dodge to be comparable to souls games?
Smoke screen is best used as a combo with twin fang. Twin fang auto crits when something isnt in a combat stance, and enemies arent in combat stance inside smoke screen. It is stupid good, to the point i use it instead of implicate now.
Implicate also opens everything to twin fang but also handles harpies and provides knockdown follow up for large enemies.
@@FightinCowboy i know. I was just commenting for the people that might have thought smokescreen was ONLY for escaping. It gives up flying targets and knockdowns for an aoe stancebreak/cloud of safety for the party. Both are good, i just prefer smokescreen. Thief's cup run'eth over lol
wrong title cowboy
Shhhhh
Oh? Looks like I must’ve missed out on whatever the title was lol.
dang. And drakes are resistant to fire too. I bet skull splitter with ice affinity wrecks.
Unfortunatly once i found out lethality is only a 5% increase to dmg to weak points i stopped running it. Also i find skull splitter against dragon hearts is a pain in the ass because about 90% of the time i end up on his back and miss the heart all together
Ok so like a lot of players, looks like you haven't checked what augment gives what when it comes to numbers.
To anyone who wants to slot useful augments, Zeal only saves 5% of stam on skill, Lethality increase your dmg to weakspots by only 5% as well and athleticism reduce stam used while dashing by 10%.
Whereas Apotropaism from mage gives you 30% increased mag def, Mettle from Fighter gives 30% increased Phys def and Constancy from Sorc gives 30% Knockdown res...
Do yourself a favour and don't slot close to useless augments when you have access to those at the very least.
Yup same with “Intrepidity.” On paper it sounds amazing slowing down the cumulative health bar loss. But it only does it by 5% so it’s pretty negligible.
With formless feint we don't need defense.
@@FightinCowboy Then why make a guide in the first place, especially an "ultimate" one ?
@@DodgyDamRogue I'm not sure I understand what you're asking. The point I was making is that there's no value in defensive skills here when we're damage immune with formless feint so even the 5% weakspot will be more valuable since we already have a tool to mitigate all incoming damage.
Additionally enemies aren't a threat at all past 50 from how fast we kill. Because of this defensive skills don't have as much general value because we're not at much risk of being hit to begin with. I run them on Fighter because "lol mega tank" but they could be 50% and it wouldn't make a difference until we see a hard or insane mode difficulty added.
It has nothing to do with not checking numbers, it's that defense just isn't necessary here.
@@FightinCowboy Close to the point I was making tbh, the whole build, as you just explained, evolves around formless feint and not much else. Since you called it an "ultimate guide" some may think you're presenting them with the best options for the thief all around. If there's any player who do not want to play with FF those augments you showcased are absolutely not the BIS ones to grab.
Your video is more a specific build guide rather than a class guide which are 2 very different things, but thats just my opinion.
Thief is the way 😤🙌
Facts lol
Some notes I'd like to point out about Concussive Blast and Smoke Screen:
Concussive Blast may not have good utility in combat BUT its use outside it as a traversal skill is fantastic, it functions as a "double jump" when used mid-air. I always have this skill on my character all the time, when I'm not playing with Fighter/Warrior Pawns with the launching skill Concussive Blast helps me get some extra jump height to reach a ledge or something, not only that if you accidentally walk off a cliff you can use Concussive Blast to launch you back onto the cliff, saving your from fall damage/death.
Smoke Screen puts just about all small enemy types into a finisher state, meaning press Heavy Attack on the enemies in the smoke screen for an easy kill, this skill is great for clearing out small enemy groups. Meaning smoke screen doesn't need to be used only for escapes, even though it does help with that.
I'm still figuring out the mechanics for this skill when used on large enemy types, as far as I can tell, it seems to make climbing them easier...? Not 100% sure about that.
I just prefer implicate for trash. Same insta kill benefits but i can yank down big boys and harpies.
Try plunder if smoke stuns
@@FightinCowboy
That's true, I agree with you there. Implicate and Skull Splitter is god-like skills I would never remove from my thief, I would replace the masters teaching skills since they are only good when you pair them together, IMO
This is just for the pure flashy thief fantasy. Using the concussive double in battle allows you to do the jumping heavy attack to enemies and face mount ogres, Minotaurs, and kneeling cyclops. However I too mainly run implicate for harpies mainly, archer pawns be too slow to shoot them down
From what i heard smoke bomb also puts them out og "battle stance" and procs the smbuscade augment
damn chimera died before the tail got cut off. Hate when that happens, pissed me off in DD1 as well
I personally prefer enkindle/ignited blades over blades of the pyre cause with the duration I think it outclasses blades of the pyre and I'm not killing myself 😂. Though I haven't found any elemental daggers yet. I know enchantment skills/spells don't override innate enchantments. So it's nice to know feint dodges the pyre. I think mage's exaltation is good for any build because stamina recovery
Self imposed hard mode: use the borderwatch camp gear in unmoored, only using rings with downsides like a STR class using the Ring of REcitation (faster spells, lower HP)
There’s also ting of derision but that’s too far imo
hope to see this series reach the wayfarer for some build mixing, maybe get a mystic knight style for example
Solid tips as always bro!!
skull splitter completely melts health bars
Is there a reason you don't go for the twin fangs finisher on the dragon heart when it's knocked down? It's not super necessary with this gear, but it's still a huge damage boost in my experience. I've been messing around with just going unarmed and the finisher is one of the saving graces for higher health enemies.
More just showcasing how fast it can kill even without it than anything.
Isn't lethality only like a 5% weak point damage boost? Vs Verve's 30% str boost. Might be worth testing out if verve is a better option for melee classes vs lethality.
30, a flat 30 strength not 30%
Dragon's Dankmas still won't load for me past the glowing eyes at the title screen, but one of these days I'll be able to play this thing. Thanks for the content, Cowboy.
I'm around level 68 and I kill everything so fast. I hope hard mode isn't like DD1 where all it does is increase gold from drops and enemy damage. I want all of that plus more enemy HP b/c hard mode will be a joke with our current dps. They could even add the harder monsters as default spawns in hard mode as well.
I fell in love with thief when I saw the trailer. Aemond (main pawn) has all vocations maxed out and when he reached the final level of archer, he complained that he felt more useful as a thief. So as his counter part in the TV show I rolled him to thief 😂
My arisen is also a thief but the warfarer she's gonna be a thief/archer or thief/magic archer 😂
Good work Cowboy
I put double magic boost rings and sagacity augment on my Pawn Thief. I wonder is all the magic boost making me do a lot of damage with heavens key or is it just because he is level 80ish. I wish we had damage numbers that we can turn on and off.
Hey Cowboy, could you provide the Pawn IDs that you are using? Serosh especially looks like someone I would love to have in my party.
Sorry if this was already asked about a million times
He's in the official pawn listings.
@FightinCowboy Strange that I never noticed him, thank you for the quick reply
Page 2 on PC, they're sorted by level and it's a bunch of low level fillers take up page 1
You can do executes on the backs of enemies when they are in smoke.
Awesome man thanks youre the reason I got the game! Will you be doing a walkthrough?
He's doing a walkthrough already 😊 it's on his channel
He is not. This game is meant to get lost in not guided through. He stated so plenty of times on his stream, which is 100% playthrough.
Dude just play it without a guide after u do it once them use a guide
Awesome I agree it doesnt really need one and it would be a massive undertaking in the way a souls one wouldn't be just was curious! Havent seen the stream so ty
Any recommendations for a thief pawn?
Implicate skull splitter plunder and one of your choice
@@FightinCowboyI know this reply is old but what augments would you switch out for since pawns don’t have Zeal, Dynamism, Or Athleticism?
Thief and mystic are my favorite
What smithing style do you use?
I had to restart the whole game ( don’t ask 😂) decided to go Thief this playthrough as it looks great
That pawn is thick!😂
Wich daggers are better before Unmoored World?
What type of smithing do you use on those daggers?
Dwarven
Yeah, there really needs to be NG scalong im this game. By level 50, you're already mowing down everything in the game and max level is probably 200.
Unrelated, but how did you get Serosh's name to be in blue font?
Not sure.
Probably because he’s an official pawn?
I'm still unsure why your stamina regen is so fast. While I'm using a recovery ring as well as the augment from Mage, and my stamina doesn't replenish near as fast.
Weight class?
@@FightinCowboy Very Light - Light. Was curious if perhaps something was bugged or unintentionally working in reverse. IE the augment or ring. Both are stated to recover an additional 10 per second, but a 3 quarter bar refill takes about 8 seconds for me.
@@Vitriosk Yeah that sounds weird for sure.
@@Vitriosk Keep in mind when he's fighting the Drake there's a Celestial Paeon active which makes your stamina practically unlimited.
which enhancement did you use on heavens key?
Dwarven
do you have the locations of gear to find in the unmoored world?
There's a post pinned on the recent unmoored stream from reddit that has most loot locations.
@@FightinCowboy Thanks man.
Do u have any vids on earlygame theif build
A good chunk of the streams were early game thief. Implicate, blast powder, skull splitter will carry you.
What smithing did you go with?
Based on the icons it looks like he went with Dwarven
Skullsplitter destroys everything on the map
Where to get shrouded armour set
How do i get the formless feint and the boom fire swords😂? I'm at max level for theif but didnt see those skills when i checked after max.
Nameless village, they're master skills
@@FightinCowboy thank you broski!
I feel like smokescreen should've been an item instead
Smoke screen gets you a lot of assassinate kills on small units. Its not as bad as you say.
Small units die instantly though already
Full Dwarven on both sets of daggers?
I updated my Heavens key all the way and i only have 489 knockdown? What did i do wrong
Which upgrade technique did you use. Dwarven gives more knockdown. Bahtal more physical elven more magic and vernworth a little bit of everythign. Also he had a knockdown ring on
Wait. Thief can steal from merchants? Can you explain how?
Probably knock them out by throwing something and then using the ability 🤔
Don’t see the darkness armor at any shop. Think you get it out of post game chests only
Unmoored World - Nameless Village. Top, far right of village. Go right and below the mansion to the where there used to be water. There should be a chest there. For hood. Chest armor is sold by Sara in Endgame.
I also found the game balance is a bit out of whack, early game I just died so much and found it very hard to kill anything. But now even at level 40 with half upgraded gear things die pretty easily.
Did you upgrade your heavens key with dwarven style for the extra knockdown/stagger increase?
Yep u should be using dwarven for everything except magic weapons imo
But aren’t the holy damage daggers elemental?
@visionofgrey yes but you still value the physical damage they do magick is just extra
@@visionofgrey yes but you can still upgrade them with Dwarven smithing that will boost the magic and the physical damage plus more knockdown, it's better to do that than to get a higher increase in magic damage from elven smithing since most enemies aren't weak to holy damage anyway
@@809Bman I see. Thank you for your advice.
Warrior next please!
How is 2 Slash DEF even good? Do we know how Slash/Strike DEF is calculated?
I don't but it's generally 0, 1, or 2 so I'd infer it has to be decent if it's going up in such small values.
@@FightinCowboy There are rings that reduce slash and strike damage by 15%.
What enhanced smith for heaven's blades elf's or baka
Dwarven all the way.
@@FightinCowboy cheers my mate will do
you can combo blades of the pyre with swift steps. that way you won't get damage
I didn't know implicate was that good
Implicate is goated.
😤🙌
I pulled down a griffin with it that's when I knew
Thief is so busted that the game feels way too easier than it already is
Amen on the Hard Mode comment.
Thief is awsome
Smoke screen let's you get crits on everything inside it
Title 😮
thief is amazing but too brainless, want to see that unga bunga brother
Tomorrow he comes.
Captain Levi build lmao