Obviously this is opinion based, but many of you are overrating quite a few skills.

Good thief skills (General):

Gentle Walk (combined mostly with stealing, poisoning, exploration)
Knife
Blackjack
Doubleback (nukes chase triggers, and confuses the actual opponent)
Cheap Shot
Improved Hide
Grease Weapon
Grapple


Mediocre Thief skills (General):

Covert (situational and niche uses, primarily centered around summon ganging, very rarely will anyone be behind and next to a door long enough that they won't see you coming)
Disengage (rescue yourself from the cabal inner)
Climb (lazy man's fly for rooms that require it, and can potentially save your life as a non-flying thief for certain exploration)
Isolate (can't use with grapple but situationally useful, plus more likely to work than separate in a single exit room, especially with disengage at a cabal inner, though pull/drive will always be more efficient)
Shadow Disappear (usually when you need to use this, you are fighting someone who detects hidden already. If not, useful to escape polearm specs or for situations where you can't flee)

Bad Thief Skills (General):

Bribe Mercenary (you can't bribe conjurations or Centurions or special guards or druid pets)
Shield Block (too many points, you should never be tanking if you can help it)
Thief Waylay (blackjack is better and having both is a waste, mainly useful for poisoning or for when you need to steal shit without them calling for help, useless if they detect hidden)
Weapon Trip (you need cheap shot to make this remotely useful, but it's your only lagging move against flying people)
Separate (Isolate is better, but if you take grapple, you should seriously consider separate, especially if you are fighting Tribunal and need to get them away from their guards, then you can combine it with grapple and parting block for a disarm and pindown once you've prepped)
Dual Backstab (too situational to be useful and in the situations it will fire, they will have too much HP/dam redux for it to matter)

Bad thief skills (other):
Shadow Drag (they will 99.9% of the time input something that will make them realize they're immune to this)
Gouge (it's cost is mainly to make parting block prohibitive, otherwise it's a ranking skill)
Death Strike/Strike on the Abandoned (mainly useful during cabal raids away from inners, and most of the time you don't tank well enough to take advantage of these)
Arcane vision (you have detect magic and invis rolled up into one. Good for you?)
Fence (it doesn't let you spam it, has a timer on it, gives you a worse return than killing a merchant in Tir Talath and selling... why?)
Hypnotize (2 round lag for mediocre effects similar to assassin's poison darts. The effects don't synergize with any other thief skills. Why didn't I just play an assassin?)
Weapon butt blackjack (HAY GAIZ I R A THIEF UND HAVE STRANGLE)

Good/Exceptional Thief Skills (other):
Lore of the Ages (free extra dodge against magical attack types and Defiance's progs? yes plz)
Veil of Secrecy (essential to ditch Tribunal locate object whores and almost spammable 24/7)
Acrobatics (excellent capstone to what can otherwise be an extremely boring path until you hit hero and start frequenting cabal raids as a neutral party, if you can justify the cost of purchasing this skill it makes you harder to kill and able to try dumber shit against dangerous folks, and additionally with decent saves vs. neuro, extremely hard to gang down)
Envenom (possibly the only useful thief skill in poisoner, lets you change your attack type(s) to poison anytime you want, which means you can throw down with giants 24/7 even right after a regear with physical weapons)
Deft Touch (if you get this skill you essentially don't need the rest of the pickpocket path once perfected, if you want to go a different path but still need to steal)
Combat Steal (essential, since sometimes the only way you're going to find some of the juicier loot is when the holder is busy ganging/being ganged down, you can steal and remain out of combat while they are fighting with this)
Cutpurse (try it sometime on some asshole who likes to whore the town healer)
Earclap (kills every mage but shapeshifter when done at the correct moment, even makes tackling prepped muters far less dangerous, and is downright hilarious if you follow it up with grapple while their spiderhands is down)
Advanced picklock/Locksmith (I'm sure some explorerfag is going to swear by these)
Knock-out poison (even if you don't advance beyond this in poisoner, and even though it can't be done in combat, it doesn't trigger physical sleep protection which can lead to some cheeky, if non-guaranteed, abuses on non-poison resistant races/shifter forms)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/08/2009 09:31AM by Scrimbul.