Dragon's Dogma 2 best Thief build, skills, and augmentations

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How to play Thief in Dragon’s Dogma 2

Thief is a dual-dagger wielder Vocation that focuses on concentrating attacks on a single enemy or part of their bodies. Thief is capable of unleashing long sequences of quick slash attacks to enemies, making it a potent damage dealer.

Another scenario where Thief shines is when fighting large creatures, such as dragons and ogres. Thief is great to climb on them and look for their vitals. Since this Vocation is capable of concentrating much of its damage in a single point, you become the best damage dealer of your party once you reach a creature’s back or head.

This is a high-risk, high-reward type of Vocation since you need to get really close to enemies to attack them. More than once, a cyclop will step on you or a dragon’s trail will throw you out of combat. Consider taking some time to heal before getting back to the battle.

Because of Thief’s capacity to concentrate damage to a single point, it is the best Vocation when it comes to cutting pieces of an enemy’s body off, like with Medusa. On the other hand, Thief suffers when facing groups of enemies. While the Vocation has one or two abilities that allow them to hit multiple targets, they aren’t as effective as a Sorcerer spell, for example.

Thief is also a very selfish Vocation, bringing almost no utility to the group besides Smoke Screen that blinds enemies around you, and Ensnare, which helps to deal with flying enemies. Even so, this is a single-target ability, meaning that fighting a group of harpies is still troublesome. To compensate for the Vocation’s lack of support abilities, Thief’s kit comes with a solid skill that can be quite useful when exploring ruins or hunting for chests. Footpad allows you to kick off a wall to reach higher places.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 best Thief skills

In general, Thief doesn’t have a good variety of skills and some of them are situational. Considering there are only four slots for skills, it’s difficult to justify equipping abilities like Pilfer without a goal in mind. Thief has, however, specific skills that you should consider implementing in your basic rotation of abilities for every situation.

Here are our recommendations for the best Thief skills in Dragon's Dogma 2:

• Formless Feint: Thief’s Maister skill, Formless Feint compensates for one of the biggest issues of this Vocation, the high risk of getting hit by enemy attacks when fighting them. This ability works as a stance and when you activate it, you evade all attacks from hostile targets. Because it consumes Stamina while active, you can keep Formless Feint all the time. Even so, you should always activate it before an encounter.
• Ensnare: Although Thief is pretty movable, you can’t fight well against flying enemies. Your basic attacks don’t reach them and you lack skills that fire projectiles. You have, on the other hand, Ensnare, which lets you pull enemies, bringing flying monsters to the ground where you can fight them properly. You should also use this ability when larger enemies are off balance. Ensnare will pull them to the ground, giving you the opportunity you need.



• Gut and Run: To really capitalize on Thief’s ability to climb enemies, Gut and Run is a fundamental skill to have. It’s one of the strongest abilities you have when it comes to damaging enemies and it does more damage if you hit a weak point on the enemy’s body. In other words, this is the go-to ability when you are at the top of an ogre’s head.
• Enkindled Blades: Fire is one of the easiest elements to use in Dragon’s Dogma 2 since almost every enemy in the game is capable of getting afflicted by burn. Enkindled Blades is the only type of self-inflicted 'buff' that Thief has and it’s possible to use while clinging to a foe. Just avoid using it in case your weapons are already enchanted because Enkindled Blades overlaps it.
• Easy Kill: This a solid ability that allows you to quickly get rid of smaller enemies like goblins, wolves, and malicious adventurers that attack you. When you use Easy Kill, you parry their attack and jump behind them to cut their throats. This is an instant kill when dealing with weak enemies, which is great for clearing groups of annoying enemies.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 best Thief Core Skills

When compared to other Vocations, Thief is not the one with the longest list of Core Skills in the game. Working like upgrades to the regular kit of abilities, Core Skills are important to improve the performance of your character. While it’s completely possible to unlock all of Thief’s Core Skills, here are the ones you should prioritize:

• Scarlet Kisses: With Scarlet Kisses, you unleash a flurry of forward slashes. There is nothing of too special in this one, but considering that your role as Thief is to cause damage, nothing sounds more useful than a skill that will increase the amount of damage dealt.
• Controlled Fall: As mentioned in previous sections, you should always climb on enemies. Thief is great for this and it is also a good strategy to defeat large enemies. This doesn’t mean that they won’t resist. Eventually, they can throw you out of their backs. Controlled Fall helps in situations like this because it assists you in regaining your feet faster and mitigating impact damage.



• Footpad: When exploring the Dragon’s Dogma 2 map, you will find chests in places you can’t reach with your regular jump. Footpad allows you to kick off a wall to launch you to a great distance. With this ability, you can even jump over a gate that is closed, which is great for getting your hands on the sweet treasures hidden in the abandoned ruins of past conflicts.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 best Thief Augments

Augments are passive abilities shared by Vocations once you unlock them. They are the best way to optimize and customize your character, working on their strengths. The list of Augments in Dragon’s Dogma 2 is enormous though. Here you find our recommendations of which Augments you should use for considering the rest of the build:

• Subtlety: In Dragon’s Dogma 2, when you cause too much damage to an enemy, you aggro them, becoming their target until another character calls their attention. Since you don’t want to stop attacking just to avoid getting punched by a cyclops, you should equip Subtlety, one of Thief’s Augments that decreases the chance of you being targeted by enemies.
• Vigor: Not every dragon or griffin is easy to climb and, in some situations, it takes a lot of effort - and time! - to reach their weak points. With Vigor, another one of the Augments you get by leveling Thief up, clinging to enemies consumes less Stamina, which is extremely important if you want to avoid falling on the ground with no energy to run to a safe place.



• Verve: You can unlock Verve by leveling up Thief and with this ability equipped, you increase your Strength. This attribute affects the damage you cause with weapon skills and basic attacks with Thief. A simple method to increase your damage potential with this Vocation.
• Endurance: All important actions during a fight, from using weapon skills to running and climbing enemies consume Stamina. To prevent situations where you run out of it, you should always equip Endurance. This Archer Augment increases your maximum Stamina, allowing you to perform more actions in sequence.
• Zeal: To equip this ability, you need to unlock it by playing Warfarer. The effort pays off since this Augment reduces the Stamina consumed when performing a weapon skill. With this ability, your main skills cost less Stamina, giving more to spend climbing on enemies or running from them.

Good luck playing Thief in Dragon’s Dogma 2!