Thief

You love to penetrate your enemy’s defenses and come from behind. Someone’s trash—rotten eggs—is your treasure, and so are the trinkets you steal with a good mugging. You sharpen your blade on opponents’ razor stubble and dull it on their throats. You’re the rogue of the bunch, the Thief, the class that slips out of the shadows to knife an enemy.

Why Choose This Class

If you like to play stealthily and steal from the downtrodden, you’ve picked the right class. The Thief can execute with the best of them, but he also has more tricks than a bat-shaped utility belt. Whether backstabbing from the darkness or calling on your shadowy network to overwhelm your foes, the Thief ambushes, pummels, then disappears quickly so as not to wrinkle his shirt.

Special Abilities

You can poke, you can prod, or you can Gross Out opponents with a handful of rotten eggs. At high levels, you can call for genocide with the Death of a Thousand Cuts; at low levels, you’ll have to rely on a solid backstab or execution.

Backstab

Sneak behind a foe in the back row and slip a knife between ribs five and six. Backstab deals heavy damage and, if you inflict a Perfect Attack, adds bleeding to your foe as well. Backstab II increases damage, and Backstab III deals extra damage for every stack of bleeding on the target. To heap two stacks of bleeding on your opponent, perform a little Backstab IV, and if you really want to be an asshole, deal extra damage to slowed or stunned enemies with Backstab V.

Mug

Shuffle behind your opponent with Mug and steal an item. If you execute this perfectly, then punch your foe in the face to complete the experience. Mug II increases damage, while Mug III swipes a random beneficial effect from your target on a successful steal attempt. Mug IV mimics Steal Advantage, though you gain HP from a successful steal attempt. To increase the duration of the possible stun effect on Mug, upgrade to Mug V.

Execute

Sling your daggers at your opponent from the air with Execute to remove armor and shields. Execute II increases damage, and Execute III deals even more damage to stunned targets. With a nasty name like Execute IV, you know it’s gotta be bad, and it is—the target bleeds out all over when you inflict damage. When you feel like going on a Execute V, knock out an enemy with Execute and you’ll gain two actions on your next turn with the haste effect.

Stink Bombs

Toss rotten eggs at your target, both removing beneficial effects and causing Gross Out. Deliver a Perfect Attack with Stink Bombs and you throw more eggs. Stink Bombs II increases damage, and Stink Bombs III increases the number of stink bombs thrown. Piss off enemies and make them forget to use their special abilities with Stink Bombs IV, and Stink Bombs V just dumps the whole egg carton on your enemy, splattering everyone nearby for extra damage.

Death of a Thousand Cuts

It’s ambush time with a Death of a Thousand Cuts. Call on your shadowy network to teleport in and slash away at your foes for major damage with bleeding. Death of a Thousand Cuts II increases damage, and Death of a Thousand Cuts III distracts your opponents and causes an Attack Down effect on each one. Death of a Thousand Cuts IV reduces the cost of all your Death of a Thousand Cuts abilities, and Death of a Thousand Cuts V heals you up on each successful hit.

Thief Special Abilities

Perks

Because you’ll be making people bleed—a lot—Bloodlust matches nicely with main abilities. You inflict additional damage on enemies with bleeding and take less damage from bleeding enemies. To further increase your damage dealing, take Mauler for extra damage with your melee weapon and Sucker Punch for extra damage with your strike each combat. How can you not take a perk with the name Violence Solves Everything? Each time you KO a foe, you remove a debuff and keep yourself in tiptop fighting shape for the next moron.

Gear

What better to shave your opponents with than the Master Razor. This relic from an ancient war deals four strikes of serious damage, as well as penetrating 50 enemy armor and causing Bleeding on a Perfect Attack. It also looks cooler than a Gnome Pickaxe. You can’t leave home without your mysterious hood and tripping-hazard cloak, so pick up the standard issue Thief’s Armor of Absorption when you want to exude sneaky. Aside from looking the part, the HP boost from the Bulky trait is a nice touch. Making this a combination of pain, the Vampirism trait will drain your freshly Bleeding enemies of their HP.

Combat Tactics

All battle scenarios assume you’re not taking on two clowns that can barely tie their shoes. Just use Perfect Attack and Perfect Block to crush that competition. The battle scenarios that follow give you tips for fighting bosses, mini-bosses, and annoying opponents that require more finesse and greater firepower.

Battle Scenario 1: Melee

Go for the kill immediately with a Backstab. If your opponents don’t die, they’ll be bleeding all over the place. Against a foe with high HP, Mug first and hope to stun. Stunning an opponent takes them temporarily out of combat; you can deal damage to them, and they miss attacks on you. Against a heavily armored enemy, rain down daggers from up high with the armor-piercing, shield-smashing Execute. Given a choice of melee targets, generally you want to pound the one with fewer hit points. If you can drop an enemy, they can’t counterattack, which means less damage you have to withstand. If you know a target has a deadly special ability, then that foe should become the priority.

Battle Scenario 2: Ranged

When you can reach the enemies in the back row, there are a few more decisions to make during combat. You rarely fight four or more foes, so the defended enemy (one not able to be hit by melee) will be your ranged target. Generally, ranged weapons deal less damage than melee weapons—you’re giving up damage to strike at difficult targets—but it’s worth concentrating on a ranged foe to remove them from the fight if they have potent abilities (particularly those that raise the dead). It’s also possible to harass enemies by striking a foe with a single ranged attack to stack on a negative effect (say, Stink Bombs’ Gross Out effects, to prevent healing) or to add an increased-damage effect such as bleeding. While you switch to other enemies in the battle, the ranged foe continues to take damage.

Battle Scenario 3: Multiple Targets

Once you have the proper gear, you should beat almost any group of two opponents. Fighting three or four opponents gets tricky; most of the time you need to break out some of your multiple-target abilities to kill off more than one enemy at a time if you want to survive. The Thief’s Stink Bombs will weaken multiple opponents, but it’s your Death of a Thousand Cuts once you reach level 10 that will deliver major damage. At lower levels, you’ll have to rely on your buddy to help you out with crowd control. Jimmy’s Lullabye and Stan’s Whirlwind Slash, or even Cartman’s Flame Strike against the first two foes in a row, can make it much less likely you’ll want to hide in the shadows for good.

Battle Scenario 4: All Out

Your ultimate attack chain, assuming you have enough power points, goes something like this: Mug, Backstab or Execute, Stink Bombs. Mug lets you steal an item before the kill and possibly stuns your opponent. Backstab should be your main attack against normal opponents to try and kill them quickly. Use Execute against foes with high armor or shields, then follow up with a Backstab when you see an opening. Stink Bombs will Piss Off opponents and prevent them from using special abilities and lay Gross Out on them to prevent healing. If you need more damage, add Death of a Thousand Cuts to the rotation before returning to another Mug or Backstab. Where the Fighter might break every bone in a foe’s body, the Thief just carefully punctures the vital organs.