Thief Class Progression - Part 1 - Classes, Specs & Pets

Introduction

Greetings Travellers!
Welcome to the written guide of our Thief Class Progression Guide as part of our Beginner Guide Series for Orna. I've also uploaded a video version to YouTube you can check out here:
​This will act as Part 1 where we cover Classes, Specs and Pets in particular. In Part 2 we'll cover itemisation and gearing options for thief classes.

We'll start with the general overviews of the thief class tree and supplementary classes, followed by recommended specs and pets. Following that I have written out in more detail some solid description of each class below.

Thief class tree main progression including supplementary classes

Recommended spec and pets options for thief classes

Tier 1 - Thief & Tier 2 - Rogue

Tier 3 - Battle Master

Ok we begin the early to mid game "hybrid" classes in that we can wear all gear types with the Blademaster class, including mage gear for some reason, I guess we are true masters of battle then actually. Anyway this is a great class with nice passives for early game and great skills that last into late game.

We keep critical strikes, meaning we can keep using the attack button with extra damage output from slightly more crits. It's not a deal breaker but if you out of mana in PvP it's definitely useful with zero mana cost.

​Apothecarist gets us 25% more healing of HP and mana from potions, nice for world farming in my opinion. Exp step is good if you like walking I guess but it's never going to out-level killing mobs, maybe there's a crazy challenge in there for someone?

The first skill we learn is Battle Dance at lvl 50 which is great sometimes and frustrating at others. It's got a 25% chance per stat to boost a stat. This can boost single ups for the 5 base stats, Def, Res, Att, Mag and Dex. The less stats up you have the more chance this skill has of proccing the single ups, so basically at the start of a fight it's very good and will likely give you 1 - 3 stat ups straight away. The problem starts now if you didn't get Att up, which is what we're mainly after. The chance now is very low and it can take many turns to proc the remaining stats up, probably best to use Warcry by itself honestly. But it is a good way to buff up
At lvl 55 we learn the fantastic Double Edge skill, this has incredibly high defense penetration relative to this point in the game. It can actually be used to do some damage to much higher tier raid bosses, you won't get gear drops but you can still get potions and more importantly gauntlet keys from Titan and Balor Elite raids. Try it out you might be surprised! Otherwise it obviously does good damage for a single hit and will get through most defenses you'll see at this level, only costs 25 mana, just watch for the 10% self damage you receive.
Cyclone we learn at lvl 65 is a good multi-hit skill, it'll be our highest hitting skill until learning Tricut at lvl 75. Cyclone also regularly procs stunned on your enemy, causing them to miss turns and making them unmissable. Finally yes we learn Tricut, a great skill that'll last long into the game, I still use this in dungeons at tier 10. Great damage and mana efficiency, low damage penetration but at this level we'll normally be ok as long as you're using a weapon of the same tier and aren't lagging behind.

Tier 4 - Adept

So at tier 4 we have the attack melee low tier god the Adept class. It's a hybrid of warrior and thief and although the Mystic is also technically hybrid of thief and mage, it doesn't learn any attack skills, neither does Spellsword for warrior either actually so Adept is our only real choice here for attack builds. It also learns solid skills the best one having to be Barrier 2 which gives single up Defense and Resistance, it's also guaranteed on first use. For other builds it's a mandatory pick-up actually.
Damage skills we learn are all second versions of previously learned skills, all giving a little extra damage for more mana as well. In Orna in general the increased mana cost of upgraded skills will not give the same increase in power, so for example Charge 2 costs twice as much mana as Charge 1 but won't do twice as much damage. The real benefit comes in PvP defense actually where the AI has unlimited mana. But of course sometimes we want the highest damaging skill possible and aren't worried about mana efficiency, just as thief classes we tend to have less mana and this become more important to think about for builds.

Flurry 2 can also give defense down on your enemy, while Tricut 2 will do the most damage providing your attack is high enough compared to your enemy's defense.
The Adept's passive abilities are the exact same continued from Battle Master, critical strikes means we don't have to panic when running out of mana, the attack button will still be a valid option or last resort in PvP. Exp step is barely noticeable, I guess if you wanted to challenge yourself in levelling up without killing any mobs it could help? No partying though! Certainly not gonna be helping during covid-19. And Apothecarist again gives us an extra squeeze of juice from our potions, a nice little buff to world farming and raiding.
Generally the Adept is a solid generalist attack class at tier 4, giving you flexibility for gearing and one of the best defensive skills in the game.

Tier 5 - Dragoon or Majestic

So now at Tier 5 we have our only real choice to make with regards to which class to play, both are hybrid classes and both can lead to the tier 6 Blademaster. Don't worry you can't make a "wrong" decision here, both Dragoon and Majestic classes are more than viable for our attack based builds at this stage in the game. The way I normally recommend people choose is actually down to these things:

• Thematically if you like a dragon slayer archetype rather than an elemental class, and as long as you can play fairly actively to kill a few dragons to keep your charges up, go with Dragoon. On the other hand if you love elemental based archetypes the Majestic class learns the upgraded second versions of the elemental strike skills.
• Based purely on playstyle and activity: if you were like me and kill lots of mobs in the world as a regular couch farmer, Dragoon is a great choice as you can keep your Dragon's Vengeance skills supercharged and they become the hardest hitting skills at this tier. Each dragon kill increases the power by 2% and remember as you increase your attack with buffs you need more dragons to reach full potential. You can check hidden.info for more details on charges.
• If you're less active in killing monsters then Majestic will likely be the best choice, you have a higher floor than Dragoon with damage but less ceiling, you will do consistently good damage let's say.

Majestic
So with that said let's take a closer look at each class individually starting with the Majestic. We have the first Eternal Light passive which is a charge passive that works by basically having the game open, no extra killing required. Also gives view distance and night vision. We also get critical strikes, which would suggest this is the truer "thief" archetype choice. In general these passive are probably slightly stronger than Dragoon's.
As mentioned before we learn the second elemental strike skills at lvl 100, giving us a lot more "oomph" with our faction hits and elemental damage. Also dark and holy strike 2 at lvl 110, these are slightly less useful honestly, I guess holystrike is useful if you're playing at night time, a lot of night mobs are weak to holy but you're likely not going to need extra damage.
At lvl 105 we learn Fortify 3 which gives us a massive 7 turns of ward. Actually a really great skill, a lot of people use this later in the game to build up ward turns in dungeons and raids as fast as possible. Remember ward absorption is based on the maximum percentage absorption skill used, so if you've used ward of mythril in the fight you'll always absorb 75% of damage to ward.
We then learn the second Osmostrike and Omnistrike skills on leaving the tier at lvl 125. Again these add more damage to the utility, have good defense penetration as well. Osmostrike heals you while Omnistrike potentially lowers enemy stats. I tend to use Omnistrike 1 to lower enemy stats as it's the cheapest mana-wise, while I'll use the highest Osmostrike skill available in order to heal as much as possible. Neither of these will be your highest damage output skills so use them accordingly.
Finally we learn Arcane Strikes also at lvl 125, this is I guess the Majestic equivalent to the Dragoon's Dragon Vengeance 2 skill, taking 2 turns in battle. The problem with this skill is it is a multi-hit and therefore has low damage penetration. However if you know you've got high attack relative to your opponent you can use this as a nice nuke.

Dragoon
Let's look at Dragoon's passive abilities now and the stat boosting charge is called Dragon Slayer and as you should've guessed by now, we charge this up by killing dragons. Doesn't take many kills to charge up this passive and reach maximum stat boost of 20% i think it is, same for all classes at this tier. We also have the Valhallan Way passive which slightly raises our pet's action rate and power. Now I'd say it's not incredibly noticeable at this tier but you may notice a bit of more timely healing from your wisp pet at least.
The first skill we learn at lvl 100 is a big one, Dragon's Vengeance. Again this gets charged by killing dragons but note the charging is separate from your passive ability "Dragon Slayer", they charge the same way but are separate things. Dragon's Vengeance requires many more dragon kills to reach maximum potential, the ceiling is also pushed higher when you boost your attack stats in battle. When fully charged however this skill wrecks absolutely everything, you will feel like a true dragon slayer with the power you gain. And just wait til you unlock Dragon's Vengeance 2!
Flare is an unstable dragon element mage skill so unless you're playing hybrid magic for the banter we won't be using it as a "thief".
We learn a new good ward skill Rampart 3 which is like a budget friendly Ward of Mythril, granting 75% absorption and a couple of ward turns. Pretty nice if you are playing defensively. I prefer to go full attack mode when levelling though, entirely personal preference.
We learn a dragon element attack skill finally with Blightstrike, great wee skill especially if you haven't found Dragonstrike from an Arcanist yet. Potentially applies blight to your enemy, great in PvP as the Blight Pendant isn't available until t6, the most common way of getting blight immunity, and Wisp's Heal doesn't cure blight.
The next few skills are for magic users, Wyvern Speed grants Mag and Dex single ups (not guaranteed by the way), if you want the version that can give Att as well it's Wyvern Speed 2 learned from the Dragon Knight, but remember it's not a guaranteed stat up for some reason! Dragon Breath and Flare 2 are both magic spells that deal Fire and Dragon damage respectively.
Finally that leaves us with Dragon's Vengeance 2, an absolute beast of a skill if you can keep up dragon kills for maximum charge. This hits crazy hard. If you check the hidden info guide we can see we need 300 dragon kills for this to be fully charged and even more if your weapon had your faction element, 375 which is 25% more. Aye this skill will last you well into the next tier if you're keeping your charges high.

​Tier 6 - Blademaster

​Where we become a tad more rogue like in that we can't wear mage gear anymore, although warrior gear is still available to us for this class and finally the tier 7 Majistrate class as well.
Blademaster is most infamous for its Second Chance passive, this occasionally procs in battle as your last chance, letting you live with 1 hp instead of falling in battle. This is the first time in the game you'll come across this passive and it can be quite infuriating to play against! A good counter to second chance is putting a dot on the enemy such as burn/bleed/posion, as this will actually tick damage on the ai controlled defense before they attack, causing them to die.
The Crest of Avalon is the stat charging passive for the Blademaster, you'll see what level of charge you have in the main character screen and fully charged will increase your stats by 20%
Skill wise we learn a great mix of single hit utility skills and multi-hit damaging skills.

First Horizontal Slash can lower your opponent's defense while giving you 1 turn of ward, this can be useful for maintaining your ward turns after using something like ward of mythril. Riposte works in a similar way by giving you 1 ward turn but can proc temp att and def up for you, so this can be good in dungeons or raids if you're utilising ward in a more defensive build or even if you're playing down the warrior line it's good and also for pet builds with attack based pets.
X Slash is a great skill not because of the damage, which is sub-par and has low defense penetration, but because it has a high proc rate of the bleed, exactly what we want for taking down last chance enemies! I regularly use this in my t10 pvp loadouts, bleed is also hard to build equipment immunity for.
Now then at lvl 140 we get the big one - Swordplay. This is a 3 hit skill that has the potential to give you temp single ups to the four main stats (Def, Res, Att and Mag) while at the same time proccing temporary single downs of those on your opponent. It has bad defense penetration like all multihit skills, but we should have a good attack stat relative to our enemies so this will be our highest damaging skill at this point. Fantastic raiding skill, i especially recommend using a mirror off-hand to get heaps of extra mana, that will allow you to dish out really great DPS magnified by lots of temp attack ups as well.
Finally we enter the next tier learning Coup de Grace, a 3 turn hard hitting skill that never misses, probably most useful as a nuke in PvP, particularly against Grand Mystics at this tier when they're below half health and have Mystic Feather procced, or against bosses. The multi turn charge up does leave you vulnerable so bear that in mind, have a play about with it in certain situations to see if you like it. It's obviously not going to have the same consistent damage output as swordplay.

Tier 7 - Majistrate

​The hybrid of thief and warrior classes comes to its grand conclusion at tier 7 with the Majistrate, an elite elemental force of Annwn.
We immediately learn the elemental strike 3 skills at level 150, using your relevant faction strike is gonna be your new hardest hitting 1 turn skill and these become very useful in tier 9 against the fallen god bosses especially doing those boss dungeons hunting for your ithra's blade. Definitely also worth having your faction strike in your pvp loadout in-case your pvp opponents are not resistant, they'll be crushed pretty fast.
The dark and holy strike 3 skills will rarely be more than situational skills in later tiers against weak-to-that-element enemies, t9 Kraken boss is weak to holy, t10 lyonnesse mobs including king gradlon now weak to dark so you might find a use for those skills there, perhaps against beserk mobs or if you're yet to find a strong enough weapon.

Osmostrike 3 at lvl 165 is gonna be our predominant life healing spell now as well, hits really hard with good defense penetration and returns 25% health. Great for going deep into raids.
Omnistrike 3 is more expensive mana cost and as far as i know gives the same proc chances to lower opponent stats as the first omnistrike skill, so for that purpose i would actually still use omnistrike 1 to lower stats as it's more mana efficient, and we're not using these skills for damage output.
Finally we learn Arcane Strikes 2 at lvl 175 going into tier 8 and it's the upgraded version of Arcane Strikes learned with the Majestic class, continuing that theme of Anwnn forces and lore-wise Arcane damage is thus strong to Balor Forces. So in reality those Balor mobs the gateway in t7 and t9 mobs and balor king aren't anywhere near strong enough that you need arcane damage to kill them, and for pretty much every other situation there's much better skills to be used rather than this; it's a 3 turn multi-hitting skill with terrible penetration...
So checking Majistrate passive abilities now we get critical strikes back which although isn't extremely useful in the mid-game, remember the attack button has very high defense penetration so if you're up against a high defense opponent use the attack button and an extra crit here and there is always welcome.
We also get Steadfast which is a lovely passive in that you don't know what you're missing until you play a class with it. Raids such as Balor Elite will become a breeze. It opens up your accessory slots a little as you can rely on steadfast to prevent status afflictions happening to you regularly.
Our final passive is Eternal Light again same as Majestic, by playing and having the game open you increase your stats. Also gives you a permanent torch effect including view distance.

​Tier 8 - Arcanic

We now finally leave the hybrid melee attack classes behind and recharge ourselves back into pure thief classes with the Arcanic at Tier 8. Continuing with the lore as a deadly rogue of Anwnn we are immune to Arcane damage and can now only wear thief equipment.
Let's start with the affinity skills, which override the element of your weapon. Useful if you're using one of dragon boss weapons from Tiamat or Typhon for example, using the affinity of your faction will mean your normal skills that use weapon element will now do 25% extra damage due to faction bonus, great for raiding and dungeons where these buffs will last for the duration. The "No Affinity" skill will simply remove a previously used affinty skill.
Ward of Anwnn is a cheap way of getting the 4 basic elemental resistances, which is obviously good and useful against certain raid bosses such as The Morrigan, its only drawback is the proc rate is quite low. You may end up with 150 ward turns before proccing all 4 resistances, but that might not necessarily be a bad thing just something to bear in mind.

We then learn quadcut at lvl 190 which is an efficient multihit skill great for dps, then learn swordplay 2 at lvl 195. Swordplay 2 does more damage than quadcut and gives the same temporary stat buffs/increase to you and your enemy, but it does cost 45 more mana than quadcut so for raiding i liked to fit both of them in and use them both in a complimentary fashion as one gives you temp buffs while the other is more mana efficient for dishing out damage. If you're bard spec you'll have warrior's dance skill which is only 35 mana and you'll use that instead of quadcut.
Finally we learn Arcane Strikes 3 at lvl 200 and i would just copy and paste what i said about Arcane Strikes 2 but even that isn't worth the time.
For Passives as Arcanic we get a slightly improved stat charging ability in Eternal Light 2, i think the stat gain when fully charged is an extra 5% now totalling 25%
We get a unique passive in arcane mastery, giving us the chance to proc status afflictions when using physical skills - this is fanastic especially in PvP where you want to start using physical "element" as people should soon concentrate on equipping elemental resist gear.
Apothecarist 2 now gets us an extra 50% juice from potions, very nice for cheapskates using the lowest versions of potions as possible, great for world farming and can obviously help getting you back to full health after taking a big hit in raids.
Mystic Feather is finally here we can defintiely feel like a real rogue now. This works independently from dexterity miss calculations, and basically gives you an extra chance to dodge when below half health, increasing your chance the closer to zero HP you are. Amazing passive for PvP, can be so clutch in many fights for you. Just beware the status afflictions that prevent miss chance entirely and guarantee hits even when blinded (Sleep, stunned, freeze)
We also come across Recharge for the first time, gaining back 25% HP and mana on a critical strike. Works from either the attack button and skills, makes lunge a good option for hard dungeons as an example.
Speaking of crits we also continue to have critical strikes passive yet again.

​Tier 9 - Nyx

We now switch lore forces in t9 with the Nyx class, an elusive assassin of Balor, meaning we lose the Eternal Light passive that was linked to Anwnn. We are now immune to Dark attacks however, very useful against Apollyon's common Nightmare skill. Our new charge passive is Dungeon Crawler, increasing our stats as we kill monsters in dungeons, effectively we only need to complete one dungeon a day to keep this fully charged which you should definitely be doing by this point, boss dungeons ideally to find that Ithra's Blade (we'll talk more about that in a second).
We get 4 other fantastic passives as well, Steadfast and Mystic Feather we've already talked about in this video. Life Siphon allows us to recover HP on quite a regular basis, this is a fantastic passive for raiding.

We also have the new Saboteur passive which is solid in PvP mainly as ward starts to become a prominent part of the meta at these higher levels. Saboteur absolutely shreds ward, as it doubles your damage against it, and can even lower their defense stats, you're gonna love this against Titanguards and Omnimancers.
For skills we learn Elementless which is a bit misleading - it works as an affinity spell but it actually makes your weapon do physical damage, not "elementless" such as drain or bolt mage spells. Thanks to Major in the discord who corrected me on this the other week and I tested it myself and that's how it's currently working. Still a useful skill to have especially if you have the Ithra's blade and you're not Frozenguard faction, you probably want to be doing physical damage in PvP and against certain raid bosses like the Fey Yeti who casts Prism Wall.
Osmostrikes is a multi-hitting healing skill, with the potential to do more damage and thus mroe healing than Osmostrike 3, but remember like most multi-hit skills it has no defense penetration. Similar story for Omnistrikes we learn at 210.
We then learn Quadcut 2 and Swordplay 3 at levels 215 and 220 respectively. With enough mana we will probably be using Swordplay 3 more as our spammable damage dealing skill in raids, as we benefit from the temp buffs more and deal massive damage with our naturally high attack stat. Obviously if you're Charmer spec you'll be using mainly Warrior's Pavane with a sprinkling of Swordplay 3 if you fancy it. These skills paired with Life Siphon make Nyx probably the best raiding class at t9.
Finally Ward of Balor is a similar skill to Ward of Anwnn except it also grants resistance to Holy and Dark as well. This gets outclassed by Ward of Balor 2 learned with Gilgamesh by the way, the proc rates are much higher with the second skill but this is still a good cheap way to gain resistances while saving skill slots.
The last thing I want to mention with this great class is probably my little pet-peeve with it, the lack of Greatbow weapon proficiency with Nyx which makes gearing a little less diverse. Obviously Ithra's Blade will be your number one goal but there's also the Mighty Tempest which drops from Mighty Griffin boss and it should be a great thief weapon but we don't get proficiency with it which will now cost us a significant amount of attack as we start to go deeper into 4-figure attack stats.

​Tier 10 - Realmshifter

The end of the Thief road returns back to Annwn with the Tier 10 Realmshifter class, a great climax to the thief class tree progression in my opinion. We get the highest base attack in the game meaning with the right spec we can push attack to absurd levels before even buffing in battle. We also get better weapon proficiency with the long-awaited addition of greatbows as well as swords, opening up our weapon options. Not to mention the increased critical damage for Realmshifter which is a 2.5 multiplier instead of the normal 2.
We are immune to Dark and Holy damage completely, and with our Realm's Light passive we can see in the dark equivalent to using a torch but it also grants view distance which we can stack with a torch by the way, and a tiny addition that makes this passive useful in battle is we can occasionally cause blind on our opponents.

Let's talk about our battle buff passive Resurgence, this acts linearly from 50% down to 0% HP and like the other T10 battle buffs (excluding Deity) eventually provides a 20% increase to all our stats at full charge. This grants us maximum power at low health, providing us with quite a challenging yet immensely rewarding playstyle. If you're a fan of world farming and killing lots of mobs like me you can sit at 1hp one shotting pretty much everything except beserk Chimeras and the new arisen mobs, it's super fast. In raids we can hide behind ward using pets like Orichalcum Golem to regenerate ward for us while we dish out reams of damage. Sitting at low HP in Resurgence range is known commonly in the community as Red-lining. Just be mindful of dots! Also in PvP a misplaced hit from our opponent can leave us on low health, giving us the chance to end them.
This works well with our buffed Saboteur 2 passive, which now gives us a 2.25 multiplier against ward, putting Realmshifter in a solid place against the ward meta at t10. Adding the Mystic Feather passive we really become savage to deal with at low health.
Recharge 2 is great to have as we can build around trying to proc it when we need to. For example using most multihit skills will never crit so if we want to stay low health we can use that. Whereas if we're doing something like Hard Mode dungeons we can use a skill like Sortie or Lunge to regain our mana, and then a cheap skill like Double Edge to work down back into Resurgence range.
Finally we have Apothecarist 3 which doubles the effectiveness of potions. You might need a little time to get used to the crazy healing this provides.
My favourite Realmshifter skills we learn immediately at lvl 225. Sortie is a hard-hitting, good defense penetrating yet cheap skill which can crit. You'll likely start to receive a few turn 1 sorties to the face in the arena, they hurt when they crit! Sortie has a place in all my Attack based PvP and World/ Dungeon loadouts. It even holds our ward turns steady making it useful for other classes and especially if we're using Cataphract spec.
Realmstrikes is the one of only a few multi-hit attack skills that can crit, giving it huge damage potential. It does come with a 15% miss chance to balance this. Still a very fun skill to use, we all love seeing crazy damage numbers right?
We then learn the upgraded multihitting Osmostrikes 2 and Omnistrikes 2. Again doing more damage while applying their healing or stat lowering effects. Bear in mind they still have low defense penetration.
We then learn Evasive Strikes at lvl 230 which is interesting in that it gives us a rare instance of increased temporary crit chance. Remember this only affects the attack button. I've seen this utilised in an interesting hard mode dungeon build by "tiresdonexits, the Sage of Swash", using Evasive Strikes and the Attack button to devastating effect.
Speaking about temporary buffs, Realmshift can even proc temporary double stats both up and down. Super itneresting one-turn temp buffing skill. Might want to use immunity gear to prevent your defense and attack getting shredded. Allows us to get even more crazy high damage numbers. The double stat proc rates are understanbly much rarer than singles.
I actually prefer that skill to the final one we learn as Realmshifter, Bloodshift at 235. This skill can only proc single ups of the basic 4 stats but also temp crit as well. However it also gives us a unique dot which can't be cured, so don't use this at maxium Resurgence power. I've personally always used Realmshift over this skill for the chance at the double stat ups, and it's fairly easy to mitigate the stat downs.

Supplementary Classes

OK so that concludes the thief class progression tree, to give you a taste of what end-game damage numbers can look like I hit over 2 million with Realmstrikes against Pumpkinhead in October, unfortunately I lost the original footage but this gif lives on. Let me know in the comments if you'd like to see a video going over the set-up required for a big Realmshifter hit like that!
Now lets move on to the supplementary classes we want to also unlock and it's fairly standard to be honest especially if you've watched my other class progression videos. T5 Druid is mandatory for Golem's Fortitude giving double Defense and Resistance ups, just watch for the Attack down you'll need to have a way to fix that or prevent it. I'd say for most people you want to try and get Druid immediately after getting your T7 class which is Majistrate in this case. If you've accumulated enough orns beforehand by doing lots of quests and achievements or whatever then obviously feel free to pick up sooner.
Then we have Atlas Vanguard at T8 for Divine Bastion skill, this allows us to hide behind 100% ward absorption, which is what a lot of Realmshifter builds will want. You can later transition to Titanguard's Divine Bastion 2 spell which gives a couple more ward turns. We also get our respective faction god classes. The elemental strike skills are exceptionally hard-hitting with great penetration and damage. We also get Deific Channel at 225, which can obviously be quite frustrating to use, especially as Realmshfiter we usually have good enough consistent multi-hit damage to go far enough in raids, but anyway it's better to have the option of DC and use it or not use it as personal preference.
Finally the only other mandatory supplementary class pickup is Beowulf at lvl 230 specifically for the Gait of Gunnr buff skill. This grants us 50% attack buff while reducing our magic and resistance to basically zero. Certain specs won't care about that anyway. Gunnr really boosts our damage potential and for most things we want to try and destroy our opponents before they can take a hit at our defenses anyway.

​Specialisations

Tier 5
Now our first spec in Orna for each character is always free and in general it doesn't take too long to reach lvl 100 so I recommend skipping a tier 3 spec, saving us 25k orns and selecting the Beserker spec at tier 5. I always recommend Beserker because of the insane power boost we get from the Beserk 1 skill that increase all our damage by 50%. Nothing else at this tier provides you with that much power. The 5% dot is very manageable with potions and even Osmostrike 1 at this level. This is a perfect set-up for charging through boss dungeons where we can grab some great loot, and also for raiding. Beserker is that strong you can stick with it until even Tier 9.
Other options at Tier 5 include the Hunter spec giving us a nice 10% boost to health, Greatbow weapon proficiency; useful if you find a nice Hurricane Arc from a Griffin. The Arrowstorm and Full Bend skills certainly do a good amount of damage.
If you manage to find 2 good ornate weapons you may also consider Duelist spec, it was buffed to now only reduce the stats of each weapon by 45% instead of 55%, and it gives you an extra 15% total offensive stat bonus as well. The skills are not particularly useful unless perhaps for using different elements is the only thing i can think of. If you've got proc chance from weapons that cause status afflictions they do stack together.
Tier 7
Now at tier 7 our options start to open up and diversify. You can still stick with beserker if you like. I'll first mention the Bard spec which we use for extra mana and the ultra mana-efficient Warrior's Dance skill, which does deal a lot of damage and is only 35 mana, pretty crazy. You also get weapon proficiency to instruments and can occasionally cause the Lull status effect on your opponent, which can cause them to lose turns in battle.
I haven't looked in detail to see if Bard is faster at raiding overall than Beserker, I'd imagine they're pretty close to be honest as you obviously have to mana pot less with Bard. I'd say if you're considering Ranger spec to try Bard instead, it might not make sense but the Warrior's Dance skill is much better than Arrowstorm 2 and Full Bend 2 and much more mana effective.
Swash
We then of course have the Swashbuckler spec available to us at tier 7. Now Swash is an amazing spec, it's so diverse and it definitely deserves an entire video in its own right, as I'll only cover the basics of it here. Basically the lower our defense stat the higher our attack stat is raised to a maximum of 50%, and that is a global attack stat boost including all gains from gear, origin town bonus etc. Every class has a defense threshold you need to get under to receive maximum attack bonus, it's usually just below net zero defense gain from gear I don't have all the numbers to hand.
As your defense goes a little bit higher the attack boost will drop slowly, and then start dropping significantly, looking something like this: credit to Ollie. Eventually if you have too much defense you'll have zero attack boost at all.
Now because swash builds around zero defense it makes a lot of normal stat gear redundant, meaning you have to look for viable alternatives and not just chase the biggest stat numbers. If you think about it this actually opens up a much wider array of gear choices to us, things that give status immunity are common picks for example.
There is too much detail surrounding the Swash lifestyle to go into in this video as i mentioned. What I will say is that it might be best to wait until t8 to start swashing as more ger that reduces defense is available to us. If you want to learn more about Swash there's a fantastic discord server set-up by swash legend Lenneth Valkyrie, if you join the main discord server and ask for directions there's always plenty of swashies on-hand to get you there.
Swash tends to get better as you get further into the game. As a reference my current highest attack stat with Swash is 9522. People don't tend to last very long. Although neither do I lol.
So yeah we'll make another guide focussing specifically on Swash in the future.
Tier 9
At tier 9 our main 2 new spec options are going to be Charmer and Cataphract. Assassin can be an options but I feel it lacks a little in utility in comparison to the other 2. Both of its passives stack additively with Realmshifter's rather than multiplicatively. So Assassinate with Saboteur and Last Breath with Resurgence. You can also occasionally proc temp defense triple down on your enemy which is not defendable against (you can't get immunity to triple down). It's more like a mini Realmshifter and I personally feel we can gain more overall by increasing our utility.
When you're Nyx class you can also probably give Raider a go, the life siphon passive works well with the increased dots from Beserk 3 which is quite hefty at 15%. You also get a little bit to base attack (not increased from gear) but lose a lot of health. So at this tier your main focus is probably raiding Apollyon, and Raider will be somewhat better than Beserker as Beserk 3 also raises your defensive stats allowing you to go deeper, but the damage is going to be very similar.
The first spec we'll talk about is Cataphract, a very common spec at higher tiers and plays into the ward meta. It obviously helps if you have ward gear available to you already, but Cata gives you additional ward turns at battle start, ward regen, 12% extra health and the prism wall skill giving us resistance to the four basic elements. As Realmshifter you're obviously already immune to holy and dark. This is certainly a viable option if you want more survivability, it will give you more ward than Charmer if you need it.
Charmer is special as it was buffed this year and now Warrior's Pavane skill is like Warrior's Dance from Bard on steroids. The highest potential damaging multi-turn attack skill in the game apart from a Realmstrikes crit maybe? Only costs 60 mana. Very efficient as we also gain extra mana as Charmer which is very useful to thief classes as we know by now. Realm Charmer is defintiely one of the best if not the best current raiding build in the game. You hide behind ward with an Orichalcum Golem pet or Fey Yeti if you picked one up this November, get down to low health for Resurgence, then use Warrior's Pavane to cause savage damage. The output is ridiculous, really fun. You defintiely want Divine Bastion for 100% ward absorption and you need to watch out for dots at low health.
As a little trick after buffing up and say you pot back up to 100% health but are now fully warded up as well. The Double Edge skill takes 10% of your health away but if your total HP pool doesn't end in a 0 it roudns down so you can use Double Edge 10 times and end up at near single figure health wise, basically maximum Resurgence power. Defintiely give Realm Charmer a go, I'd say for going up against The Morrigan you want at least 30k ward to get started, even more to be comfortable and not worry as much about it. It'll still allow you to go deep.

​Pets

Now for pets we start as usual with the T4 Wisp as it gives the great wee heal of 300 HP at this point in the game, also curing a few negative status afflictions. All other pet damage at this point isn't very significant but the Wisp's heal is so that's why it's so often recommended.
We then upgrade our Wisp at tier 7 with the Twilight Wisp, still following the classic pet healing line at this point. It can now attack and do a decent bit of dark and holy damage, as well as having the Wisp's Heal 2 skill which restores 1000 HP which is very nice indeed.
At some point you'll also want to pick up the Greater Yokai tier 6 pet, mainly for PvP purposes it has a whole array of debuffing skills which are especially potent against other thief classes. Not a priority for new characters going through the game, come back later to pick this up unless you like causing mayhem on war defense or charging through the arena.
Back to Tier 7 and there's a couple pets we want to pick up here. The Warhorse is great for Raiding if we feel we can do without the T-Wisp's healing, good with Majistrate that has Steadfast. Warhorse does decent damage and can also rarely proc double defense down on your enemy, it can defintiely take some time to proc but when it does your multi-hit skills will be basically reaching their full potential.
We also want to pick up the Orichalcum Golem as a tier 7 pet. You can probably come back and pick this up later once you've got ward gear in tier 9 or 10, and are focussing on playing Charmer, where this pet really shines. Ori Golem gives the most ward regeneration from any pet with its multiple ward skills, it'll also eventually give you the 4 basic elemental ward skills as well as infitite ward turns. This is most important to use when you're doing Realmshifter Charmer builds.
At T8 we pick up the Pale Dragon when it shows up. A solid support pet, Dispel heals pretty much all negative status afflictions which can really slow us down due to missed turns. The Miracle spell used regularly is a great little support skill giving you a minor heal but also temp defense and resistance single ups. You definitely want to have this as an option to you.
Now at Tier 10 the first pet we'll talk about is Chimera, which is obvisouly used for its Beserk 1 ability, giving us 50% increased offensive stats. We do need to be a little more careful than other classes when using this as Realmshifter because our Resurgence battle passive gets stronger the lower health we have, so being at low health is common for us. You'll need to keep a closer eye and monitor your health a little more closely when using Chimera. Definitely don't use it if you're planning on red-lining at low HP and hiding behind ward!
The other great pet for us is the Mighty Mimic, which will almost always cast Mimic's Mischief on turn 1 giving us double attack up (it rarely doesn't cast it for some reason?). This is useful mainly in PvP situations especially if we use Gait of Gunnr on turn 1, suddenly we've got our two main attack boosts up in one turn and sets us up to do massive damage. Pairs well with Swash builds as well. Be wary in wars when you see your opponent using this pet, it's a common Swash pet so expect to receive hard hits early if the AI plays it right. You might need to adjust your strategy accordingly and try and take them out early, just remember you don't want to leave a Realmshifter at low HP either though!

​Conclusion

OK Folks there we have it that concludes Part 1 of our Thief Class Progression guide in Orna. We've gone through the classes and skills from tier 1 to tier 10, covered most viable specialisations and pets in a decent amount of detail as well.
As always if you have further specific questions please feel free to leave a comment down below and I'll get round to answering your specific questions as best I can. Be sure to check out Part 2 where we cover thief gearing and itemisation options in detail at every tier in the game.
Big thanks for reading, I'm Shabbash, see you in the next guide ciao.