What are the best Dragon’s Dogma 2 Thief skills? Silent and deadly, the Thief is a mere shadow on the battlefield until they decide it’s the right time to pounce. As a nimble melee fighter, you need to get up close and personal with your target using an array of movement options. Once you’ve got a hold of your target, it’s only a matter of time before your blades finish the job.
In Dragon’s Dogma 2, you need to be the one controlling the Thief in your party to maximize the amount of damage you can deal to a single target. Unfortunately, you can’t rely on Dragon’s Dogma 2 multiplayer to bail you out either, so you’re going to have to rely on your own skills to take down all Dragon’s Dogma 2 enemies. Don’t worry, we’ve picked out the best weapon skills, core skills, and augments for the Thief to make your life that much easier.
Best Dragon’s Dogma 2 Thief skills
To ensure you’re getting the most damage out of the Thief, we’re going to focus on weapon skills that promote a stealth-based play style. This makes the Thief a powerful option when fighting against tough bosses, but they might struggle when overwhelmed by several enemies. We can offset this issue by balancing the skills with some weapon skills that deal damage to multiple targets in a single attack.
The best Dragon’s Dogma 2 Thief skills are:
- Cutting Wind
- Implicate
- Masterful Kill
- Draw and Quarter
Cutting Wind
An improved version of the default weapon skill, Biting Wind, this skill features an extended attack range to let you run through lots of targets in an instant. Not only is this skill useful when fighting through hordes of smaller enemies, it’s useful purely as a movement option. Cutting Wind starts up with a long dash that doesn’t consume a lot of stamina, perfect for making your way across the Dragon’s Dogma 2 map.
Implicate
A stronger version of Ensnare, Implicate allows you to pull targets with greater ease. When fighting against any airborne enemies, this weapon skill is crucial as you won’t have any way to deal damage without using your trusty rope. It’s also a great option against larger enemies as it can trip them up, giving you an opportunity to go for the killing blow to their head.
Masterful Kill
Just when we thought this game was missing a parry option, Masterful Kill appeared to brighten our day. This weapon skill has a surprisingly wide parry window, giving your enemy plenty of time to attack you when you perform the defensive action. The parry automatically places you behind your target before you slit their throat, proper gruesome. This skill only works against human-sized enemies, so don’t go parrying anything like a Cyclops as it will break through your defense. Unlike Easy Kill, Masterful Kill can be used in the air.
Draw and Quarter
When it comes to single target damage, there’s no better weapon skill than Draw and Quarter. Though it may seem risky at first, climbing on a large enemy isn’t as dangerous as it may seem. Avoid dealing any damage to the enemy until you reach one of their weak points, then get ready to plunge your daggers using Draw and Quarter.
All Dragon’s Dogma 2 Thief weapon skills
The Thief has access to a host of weapon skills that let you customize the vocation’s play style. While we’ve opted to focus primarily on single targets, you can select a number of weapon skills that make it easy to clear batches of enemies. Depending on your preferred party make up, there are a lot of viable endgame builds available, you just need to work out the synergies between vocations first.
Here are all the Dragon’s Dogma 2 Thief weapon skills:
| Thief Weapon Skills | Cost (Dcp) |
| Biting Wind | Free |
| Cutting Wind | 1,000 |
| Enkindled Blades | 200 |
| Shadow Cloak | 200 |
| Shadow Veil | 1,300 |
| Helm Splitter | 300 |
| Skullsplitter | 1,300 |
| Powder Charge | 300 |
| Powder Blast | 1,600 |
| Concussive Step | 450 |
| Ensnare | 450 |
| Implicate | 2,000 |
| Smoke Screen | 700 |
| Smoke Shroud | 2,000 |
| Pilfer | 1,100 |
| Plunder | 2,500 |
| Gut and Run | 1,800 |
| Draw and Quarter | 2,500 |
| Easy Kill | 2,500 |
| Masterful Kill | 3,000 |
| Blades of the Pyre | Fake Maister |
All Dragon’s Dogma 2 Thief core skills
Each vocation comes with an unlockable list of core skills to help differentiate them from each other. In the case of the Thief, our core skills primarily center around movement options.
Here are all the Dragon’s Dogma 2 Thief core skills:
| Thief Core Skills | Cost (Dcp) |
| Scarlet Kisses | 150 |
| Controlled Fall | 250 |
| Bump and Lift | 400 |
| Footpad | 600 |
Scarlet Kisses
The Thief struggles to fight off multiple enemies without Scarlet Kisses. This enables the Thief to repeatedly attack enemies using a flurry of forward slashes, allowing you to hit multiple targets in quick succession.
Controlled Fall
Fighting game players will be familiar with this technique, also known as a ‘tech roll’, Controlled Fall lets you avoid taking a large amount of damage after being knocked down. Thieves will find this particularly useful against large enemies that throw you across the battlefield — use this core skill to maintain some health once you’ve been sent flying.
Bump and Lift
If you want to steal items from your enemies without having to rob their corpses, Bump and Lift lets you rob a target when you hit them with your primary attack. The success rate isn’t very high, so you’re going to have to pummel your enemy to get any use from this ability. By the time you’ve taken most of their health away, you may as well finish the job to get some experience points.
Footpad
By far the best core skill the Thief has on offer, Footpad gives you the ability to wall jump. Simply face a wall, point in a different direction, and press jump to launch yourself to another platform. Though this can be helpful in combat against bosses, you’re going to find a lot more use for it when exploring as it allows you to reach new heights.
Best Dragon’s Dogma 2 Thief party
Now that your Thief is ready to go, it’s important to pair it with complementary classes like the Mage and Archer. Healing comes as a premium in this RPG game which is why you need a Mage, and Archers are fantastic at keeping enemies at bay using a range of arrows. Likewise, a fighter wouldn’t go a miss either as they can tank the majority of incoming damage, leaving you free to climb on your target or get behind them to prepare an attack.
That’s everything you need to build the ultimate Dragon’s Dogma 2 Thief. Still not sure if the Thief is right for you? Give our Dragon’s Dogma 2 vocations guide a read to see if the other classes suit you better. If your PC seems to have some trouble running the game, be sure to check out our Dragon’s Dogma 2 system requirements guide to see if your build is up to spec.