Thieves: Love them or hate them?

[Kirb]

Fire Emblem has many classes, and one of the recurring classes throughout the series are thieves. Starting off with low combat abilities, thieves sport the ability to steal from chests and, depending on the game, others' items. Early on, their combat skills are relatively weak, their initial purpose to steal items from chest; as well as sporting minimal armour, giving rise to their low defence, much like mages. However, with time, one can properly train a thief to take down enemies in combat and counterattack properly. Their survivability is increased, which can be incredibly helpful on Fog of War maps.

My question is, do you like thieves? Do you take the time to properly train one, or only bring them to maps with treasure chests and leave them on the sidelines for the remaining game?

Personally, I love training thieves. Unlike many other units, training them is a pain, yet that is all part in the reward. The more you put into these units, the more they will give out in the long run. This is especially true in games where promotion is possible for a thief, such as Volke who promotes into an assassin (or, in the case of Radiant Dawn, is already an assassin). Classes like the assassin, whisper, and rogues make training thieves well worth it. During their latter levels, they have a higher dodge chance than most, easily doubling enemy units. To me, they feel the most rewarding class to train up, and seeing one take down something as powerful as a wyvern is truly satisfying. Even knives can have their uses!

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Like them in 5-10 because they can steal lots of great stuff, especially in 5 and Tellius.

In 6 they're nerfed because of their missing promotion and they can't steal anything good except for vulneraries and money.

In 11 + 12 I train Julian but he becomes sort of useless when Marth can unlock chests with the FE.

[You]

I don't particularly love or hate thieves. In some maps, you cannot do without them in order to fulfill certain objectives like steal loot or plunder chests.

As fighting units, I prefer using swordmasters over promoted thieves, though I played Fire emblem 7 and 8, not 9 and 10. I feel that swordmasters generally have better combat stats than assassins in general and the crit bonus is a lot more reliable than silencer is. I level thieves enough just to be fast enough or to survive hits, but I leave the real fighting to beefier, and stronger characters.

[eclipse]

They're awesome. And not only because some of 'em are really good-looking.

Nothing amuses me more when a thief gains a bunch of Strength and becomes a terror on the battlefield (since their speed's already good).

[Maritisa]

Personally I LOVE stealing items from enemies. There's a lot of strategy that has to go into it, unlike just raiding chests, which I mean anyone can do with a chest key.

Disarming enemies and selling anything I don't plan to keep for myself is one of my favorite things about Radiant Dawn. It's different from Capture because it's less about "get the enemy down to low HP as if I were feeding a kill" and more "Plan around biorythm and make sure your disarm user won't kill the unit you need to disarm." It also gives thieves a very specific niche that only they can fill, no one else, unlike in FE5.

Even without disarm though, I think the purpose of thieves should be to rob other units of their goodies, and be relatively safe while doing so.

[Baldrick]

While thieves' ability to take anything that isn't nailed down in 5 and 10 is great, I think they're the most useful in 4. The Bank of Dew can help a lot of units get their finances in order, and while most of the 2nd gen are well set up beforehand Patty is still useful for passing rings around.

[Katie]

Thieves are great IMO.

[Emperor Zurg]

Favorite class in the series. I make it a personal goal of mine to field at least one of the available thieves in each of my runs.

[Zerosabers]

I love thieves though I've stopped training them to fight and just field them when I need to open chests.

[maybe]

the class is okay I don't really like it but I like a lot of the characters so I tend to show them huge amounts of favoritism

having level 20 Sothe kill things with the Stiletto is pretty satisfying

but yeah stealing things is good I guess

although stealing things from enemies a lot of the time is just a gimmick and is basically just a slightly more risky chest to steal from

Edited October 13, 2015 by maybe

[Katie]

Yeah, I usually don't steal from enemies unless it's a really good item like a promotion item or something.

[Glitchy]

They are some of my favourite units. They are extremely useful, with their ability to steal, use lockpicks/have locktouch skill, increase line of sight in fog of war, and can even become assassins and have incredible combat in certain games.

It also helps that Matthew is one of my favourite characters personality wise.

[EricaofRenais]

I really like them, I always have one on my team even though I have to baby them at the start they normally end up being pretty good if not great at the end game.

[X-Naut]

I dislike the direction they've taken in the newer games, only existing to open locks on indoor maps and being borderline useless otherwise. This applies more to the DS games although Locktouch being a transferrable skill in Awakening is silly. I guess Fates is better with it, but they've stopped existing as a standalone class here.

I want muh stealing back :c

[Jose_Darkeye]

Stealing things in FE 5 is soooo amusing. I love em.

[Radiant head]

They're pretty worthless without steal IMO. In Awakening, I just stock on keys. Though Assassin is a nice combat class for promotion.

[Shadow Mir]

I kinda like them, since opening doors and chests without the need for keys is convenient.

They're pretty worthless without steal IMO. In Awakening, I just stock on keys. Though Assassin is a nice combat class for promotion.

Aren't keys unbuyable in Awakening? What's more, the number of chest keys you can get in that game is countable on one hand.

Edited October 13, 2015 by Levant Colthearts

[Radiant head]

Really? I've never had that issue.

[Shadow Mir]

Really? I've never had that issue.

Ayup. Also, I'm sure that there's more stuff that'd actually be worth taking from chests than there are chest keys, to say nothing of the fact that most of the few keys you get are in paralogues.

Edited October 13, 2015 by Levant Colthearts

[Jagged Jagen]

Love them, for the most part. They make good Dodge Tanks.

I miss stealing off units :(

[Robert Stewart]

Thieves are pretty cool. Stealing is fun, though in FE5 Capturing is usually better.

Julian is pretty awesome in FE1/3 because he actually has the highest strength growth in the game (70 Percent!). So even though he can't steal, he's quite useful.

[Fire Emblem Fan]

It depends, it varies from game to game.

I like Julian and Rickard as characters, but as a unit they're both rendered pretty useless. I like them...but not as units.

I like Dew and Patty as characters, and as units they have some usefulness. I like them.

Chad and Astore are fine as characters, but Cath is a jerk! And as units, they're useful for chests and such, but they can't promote and that hurts them. I like Chad and Astore enough as characters, but I don't care for any of them as units, and I don't like Cath at all.

Matthew, Legault, and Jaffar all rank among my favorites when it comes to their classes. Matthew is one of my favorite characters in the series, and I like Legault and Jaffar too, and as units they can all be good if trained enough. Jaffar is good from the get-go, though. I like all three of 'em.

Colm and Rennac are cool too, they're up there with the FE7 trio. Colm is probably one of my favorites as far as units go, being behind only the FE7 trio and Anna, and Rennac is a suitable replacement if you're not using Colm.

Sothe and Volke are fine as characters, but they're definitely not my favorites. As units, they're useful enough. As for Heather? She's one of my least favorite characters in the entire series. She barely gets any lines at all, and as a unit she's rendered completely useless, both Sothe and Volke are better. And any chapter where Heather is your only option, there's really not much worth stealing. Sothe and Volke are fine, but Heather sucks.

I really like Anna, there are certain parts of her personality that I frown at but as a whole I think she's great. Gaius is pretty good too, but like Sothe and Volke he definitely isn't my favorite. And as for units? Well I don't think there's such a thing as a bad unit in Awakening.

I have no experience with FE 2 or 5.

So as a whole, Thieves are fine. I like 'em well enough, but it really varies from game to game.

[Tamanoir]

For me it would be like if you asked me if I liked healers or Dancers/Bards.

It's one of the essential class. I will always have one at a backup at one point.

And most of the Thieves characters (or Thief Promotion) are pretty good characters.

And it's now Anna's official class, so what can I say ?

So, I guess I actually really like them.

[TheAstraWolf]

Thieves are great, easily in my 10 favorite FE classes. Great dodge tanks, stealing without keys and their promotion to assassins are good too. Altough in FE6 I only ever use Astol, Matthew and Legault tend to fall behind in combat once Jaffar joins and they have pretty shit defenses plus their promotion only grants 1 strength. But Thieves have great characters in them like Matthew, Legault, Colm and my favorite non-promoted thief Gaius (if we are talking about Assassins too then Jaffar is my personal favorite Thief/Assassin in the series)

Edited October 13, 2015 by SSL01

[HiguraShiki]

Honestly, thieves are probably one of my favorite classes in the series. High speed, evasive, could steal (in earlier titles), and if leveled well can become solo monsters. Oh yea, and most of them look really cool.