Thief build advice

[CMGuest]

Realized I'd probably have better luck asking here than in the comments section (plus, you know, easier to find in the future).

Long and short of it is that I've been playing nearly as a pure Thief (albeit with Cleave to help with mob-clearing), and I'm having some issues with Grungendyr and Alissa. I've got pretty good spike damage, so actually killing them is proving to be less of a problem than surviving long enough to do it. To clarify, I can and have beaten the quest, but I've never saved afterwards because it bothers me that I've had to use my Tears to revive in at least one of those two fights. This is usually due to them spiking me hard enough (sometimes on the very first turn) to take me from full health to no health in one turn.

So, naturally, this has me thinking about my gear/build and how I should better optimize them.

Offensively, I've been running the standard Petal/Kunai dual-wielding setup.

My 'favored' stats have been Str/Agi/Cunning, so I've mostly put my points into those, with the character page breakdown looking thus:

Str: 17
Agi: 23
Will: 8
Tou: 14
Cun: 16
Pre: 13

Then comes the armor

Head: Patrician's Mask (a recent addition, replacing Helm of Heroes)
Neck: Fox Tail Charm
Shoulder: Cloak of Winter
Armor: Royal Leathers
Waist: Champion's Belt
Arms: Royal Gloves
Feet: Winged Sabatons (...Huh, I thought those had the heavy tag. Might have to go back and choose Perfect Positioning)
Rings: Mare's Ring (and the extra money ring)

Is there anything obvious that I'm missing here to improve my performance? Or is this just one of those "eh, sometimes RNG just gets in mood" things?

 

[WolframL]

Knowing your party composition would help because there are more factors than just the Champ's setup that determine a fight. When I hear 'I sometimes get one-shotted on the first turn' the questions that immediately spring to mind are 'Do you have a tank?' and 'Are you allowing them to do their job properly?'.

 

[Kingu2]

As wolframL said the Tank is kind of a major component for these fights. Tui is probably the most effective in this role from my testing but brint and azzy also do pretty well here. That being said there are a few things you could be doing better.

first off I would not split up my stats like that going all in on strength and cunning in addition to agility to maximize overall damage potential and let the rest of the party fill in the gaps for defence and magic damage.

second for equipment you should swap out the patricians mask and money ring with the everblossom hood and rogues ring respectively. This is because when you're playing a, sort of glass cannon damage dealer you really need to minimize your threat generation so enemies don't target you.

 

[CMGuest]

Knowing your party composition would help because there are more factors than just the Champ's setup that determine a fight. When I hear 'I sometimes get one-shotted on the first turn' the questions that immediately spring to mind are 'Do you have a tank?' and 'Are you allowing them to do their job properly?'.

Fair. My typical party has me with Brienne and Cait - both base form - and my combat flow is set to just controlling the player, meaning that they both do their own thing.

For this particular quest, I've been using Queen's Raiment Ryn, Daliza (who is admittedly suffering the madness debuff for the final fight, but not Grungendyr), and Brienne again as my opt-in. Sweeps up pretty much everything but those two fights, unless the golem gets a lucky hit off, but it's certainly within reason that it may have made me complacent about harder content.

As wolframL said the Tank is kind of a major component for these fights. Tui is probably the most effective in this role from my testing but brint and azzy also do pretty well here. That being said there are a few things you could be doing better.

first off I would not split up my stats like that going all in on strength and cunning in addition to agility to maximize overall damage potential and let the rest of the party fill in the gaps for defence and magic damage.

second for equipment you should swap out the patricians mask and money ring with the everblossom hood and rogues ring respectively. This is because when you're playing a, sort of glass cannon damage dealer you really need to minimize your threat generation so enemies don't target you.

Thanks.

Though while I take your meaning on the stat distribution, I'm afraid I didn't quite get what you were suggesting as the preferable distribution. I can read what you wrote as either "only invest in those three stats" or "you made a mistake by spreading yourself among those three stats". Could you please clarify?

To clarify my own history: the lion's share of my points had gone into those three stats. In the first six levels I'd only put 4 points in anything else (2 in toughness, 2 in presence), with a slight preference towards strength and agility.

 

[Kingu2]

Fair. My typical party has me with Brienne and Cait - both base form - and my combat flow is set to just controlling the player, meaning that they both do their own thing.

For this particular quest, I've been using Queen's Raiment Ryn, Daliza (who is admittedly suffering the madness debuff for the final fight, but not Grungendyr), and Brienne again as my opt-in. Sweeps up pretty much everything but those two fights, unless the golem gets a lucky hit off, but it's certainly within reason that it may have made me complacent about harder content.



Thanks.

Though while I take your meaning on the stat distribution, I'm afraid I didn't quite get what you were suggesting as the preferable distribution. I can read what you wrote as either "only invest in those three stats" or "you made a mistake by spreading yourself among those three stats". Could you please clarify?

To clarify my own history: the lion's share of my points had gone into those three stats. In the first six levels I'd only put 4 points in anything else (2 in toughness, 2 in presence), with a slight preference towards strength and agility.

yeah sorry about that. You should definitely only invest in those three stats and ditch all of the other ones. unless you're doing some kind of hybrid build the willpower, presence and toughness aren't going to be as useful to you. In addition you should certainly be in manual control for all your party memebers so you can coordinate your attacks effectively because the AI likes to do dumb stuff with it's turns.