Thief bow vs light blade and weapon, spell , armor questions

[malkavius77]

So I made it to the second chapter and I have 4 companions and a mage merc now. I was wondering is it best to focus on light blades for my rogue or bows? The thief wants A LOT of feats that seem very important. But bows and light blades need investment to really make use of a thiefs strength which is backstabbing in combat. As I'm also using the ranger companion i'm leaning towards using him as the main bow user since arrows are limited and I should just funnel them to one character. Trade off is backstabs seem to hit harder with melee but obviously more vulnerability and positional requirements.

This run was just a test run I did with armsman. I will probably do a fresh run tonight. My main was an armsman with 2 handed sword with heavy armor I do in most rpgs. I'm considering doing the same thing again with my main but might pick officer. But I am curious are there any "bad" weapon types? Like are axes trash and not very many or vice versa for the other weapons? Which magic schools offer the least? There is no respec and what little I played offensive magic is awkward and bad except for CC ones.

Lastly is there ever a reason for a character to use light or medium armor if they can use heavy? With an armsman it was weird having to waste 2 points into light and medium to unlock heavy. I was thinking maybe because there are some awesome options for the other 2 that might want you to consider them due to the enchantments.

[ZyloWolfBane]

For the thief weapons I've found using both to be quite effective, there's quite a few times where positioning prevents having everyone at melee range so at the very least it least my thief sit back and shoot.

Backstabs also activate on ranged attacks. Still figuring out a lot of the other stuff as on hard many fights can turn things upside down in a single turn for me lol.

[Neo007]

Consensus is fire is the worst magic school, consequently making battle magos worst class, I play battle magos I'm having fun but then again I like challenge runs. There are ways to make it work at higher levels but battle magos is unneccesarily gimped in this game.

all weapons have their uses two handers dominate though as two hander and individual weapon tree bonuses stack so if you speck club you get and use a heavy club/hammer you get benefit of both sets of perks.

best early damage spell by cost and utility is swarm of knats from earth tree magos school(there is a spell guide in guide section check it out). Swarm of knats is a tier one earth spell and it does ok damage and debuffs enemy, like all spells it can also "cascade" on a good role getting you a second cast, their are feats in magos line to increase max cascades (up to 4) and cascade chance along with maximum spell damage.

Most boni gets added to the maximum role not the minimum damage so 1-4 + 10 is 1 to 14 so remember that when you see low damage numbers. Melee doesnt appear to be affected in the same way but it could be because weapons tend to have better damage ranges and more stacking bonuses than spells.

[KnuckleHead]

I haven't played with any other magic school but, at least at level 7, can concur the fire school is VERY underwhelming.

[Dwarfurious]

I havnt seen max tier magic but i went earth and feel kinda gimped too since i grabbed summons not knowing that the summons do not scale with level or aptitude so you summon level 1 ♥♥♥♥ forever. Fire bad too because yeah damage on spells does not scale well but mass fire warrior is pretty nice for a buff. If i could start over i'd probably go air/earth because wow air has some nice stuff. Still, even a summoned rat is pretty useful for giving the thief sneak attacks.

[Neo007]

Originally posted by Dwarfurious:

I havnt seen max tier magic but i went earth and feel kinda gimped too since i grabbed summons not knowing that the summons do not scale with level or aptitude so you summon level 1 ♥♥♥♥ forever. Fire bad too because yeah damage on spells does not scale well but mass fire warrior is pretty nice for a buff. If i could start over i'd probably go air/earth because wow air has some nice stuff. Still, even a summoned rat is pretty useful for giving the thief sneak attacks.

every spell in this game has utility because of the deep mechanics, some are just far less useful or very situational. But the skill point investment along with attunement required make some options way too costly for what they offer.

[Apoc]

There are heavy armors with only 3 encumbrance so I don't really see any reason not to go for Heavy if the character can and has the feats available. I think they are harder to find, I see way more light and medium in loot and shops, but once you got one you are good. As far as I could tell every piece of magical equipment can have any of the bonuses on it.

I used both for the thief early on and when I had a good amount of arrows I keep going with the light bow. Enemy that are terrified and running away trigger backstab or instead of wasting a turn to move you can hide with the feat for a guaranteed backstab on any enemy while in melee you need to be positioned just right. So the thief can pick of everyone from afar. While in very limited quantity, there are also a couple different arrow types when you need elemental damage. Thief also has quite low defensive options beside dodge so if they do get hit it hurt, I prefer to have them far.

[etalian]

Originally posted by ZyloWolfBane:

For the thief weapons I've found using both to be quite effective, there's quite a few times where positioning prevents having everyone at melee range so at the very least it least my thief sit back and shoot.

Backstabs also activate on ranged attacks. Still figuring out a lot of the other stuff as on hard many fights can turn things upside down in a single turn for me lol.

backstab gets even more hilarious once you get the mage stun spells like Poison Globe or Thunderclap.

[ZyloWolfBane]

Originally posted by etalian:

Originally posted by ZyloWolfBane:

For the thief weapons I've found using both to be quite effective, there's quite a few times where positioning prevents having everyone at melee range so at the very least it least my thief sit back and shoot.

Backstabs also activate on ranged attacks. Still figuring out a lot of the other stuff as on hard many fights can turn things upside down in a single turn for me lol.

backstab gets even more hilarious once you get the mage stun spells like Poison Globe or Thunderclap.

Oh interesting, I didn't know you could do a caster thief!

[Longes]

Originally posted by ZyloWolfBane:

Originally posted by etalian:

backstab gets even more hilarious once you get the mage stun spells like Poison Globe or Thunderclap.

Oh interesting, I didn't know you could do a caster thief!

You can't. But you can use your mage to stun enemies so that your thief can backstab them.

[ZyloWolfBane]

Originally posted by Longes:

Originally posted by ZyloWolfBane:

Oh interesting, I didn't know you could do a caster thief!

You can't. But you can use your mage to stun enemies so that your thief can backstab them.

Oooooooh, that makes more sense. I don't have an offensive spellcaster in my party yet, just picked up a ranger and hired a custom character to fill my last two slots.

[malkavius77]

Great info but kind of in the dark still on going blade or bow for a thief. Both are obviously useful but there are a lot of feats to spread around that a thief needs. Using blade or bow is often a no brainer but choosing which feats for them while trying to spread the other ones is a bit harder.

[Valandryl]

As much as bows look interesting, what decided for me is that in the first several hours of the game gold is hard to come by. Shooting arrows is litterally shooting gold pieces, so eventually I went for the blades.
Now, however, I found a crapton of medium blades (rapiers) but thieves don't have all feats for such weapons so I'm pretty stuck with crappy weapons. But even without the feats, rapiers have a crit multiplier of x3.5 so backstabs are devastating with these.

[Furcas]

Thief the biggest thing is getting all the backstab mods, red arcs, and using a light weapon to trigger it. Max out the agility and crit chance nodes too as they come up. Next thing is the multiplier on the weapon is the most important factor in backstabs. Yeah some daggers do one extra more damage or two, but having a bigger multiplier makes a much bigger difference. Bows aren’t terribly great for this reason at least not as a primary weapon.

Ranger is arguably better with a bow because they can use the higher damage bows, get more +bow damage overall, have multi attack, and rapid shot (don’t need to bother with mark target it puts rapid shot on cd). It’s really close though. The benefit the thief brings is crippling finesse triggering off criticals, hide, hidden deployment, and smoke bomb all being really potent. There are mobs in game that are immune to backstabs / crits and that’s where thief loses a lot of steam.