How-To Guide: Thief

One of the Forty Thieves
Thief isn’t so much a thief as it is an assassin. Nothing about it is very thief-like, except one job ability called Steal. It has a five-minute cool-down timer and rarely ever steals anything. If it does, it usually sucks anyway. On the other hand, Thief also has Sneak Attack and Trick Attack. Those are very assassin-esque, and basically all that Thief ever uses. Thief is one of the most survivable jobs in the entire game. It’s a support-role job that never takes hate. If you do for any reason take hate, you have the most evasion in the game, and since you’re going to be subbing Ninja for almost all your career, you have Utsusemi. If all that fails, you have Perfect Dodge and Flee too. And Hide. If you don’t like dying, this is the job for you. Thief can solo well and works excellent in parties. Most people see Thief as a damage-dealer, but really, it’s a support-role job that can keep hate control at a maximum, close awesome skillchains, pull, and enfeeble its targets. It’s also the best job for camping notorious monsters and collecting items to sell for money with its Treasure Hunter traits. '''Please note: This is only a guide. Please add anything if it is needed, and take away anything that is either untrue or not needed.'''

Job-Race Combinations
Please note that race is the absolute last thing you should worry about when picking a job. Anything said here is seriously exaggerated. A single piece of gear can often make up for a race's negligible lack in a stat. Every race also gets "Race Specific Equipment", or "RSE", that will boost a race's stats to equal, or possibly even surpass other races.

Hume

 * The two main stats a Thief needs are dexterity and agility. Hume, being the most rounded race, doesn’t skimp on either. The stat intelligence is also credited for being better for opening chests and coffers, but this is unknown. You also need strength to keep higher damage to make up for your low-damage dagger weapons. Charisma also helps for Dancing Edge, one of the best weapon skills a Thief gets. Moderate HP and vitality also help keep the job’s survivability super-high.

Elvaan

 * Elvaan may have the lowest dexterity and agility in the game, but they certainly make up for that loss with their highest strength in the game. Especially in lower levels, Elvaan Thieves won’t have a problem keeping damage high with everyone else. Since Thief already gets high dexterity and agility, it makes up for Elvaan’s natural loss. Their amazing race-specific equipment makes up even more. You might even beat Mithra in the mid-levels. High HP and vitality make Thief’s already high survivability even higher. High Charisma is great for Dancing Edge, one of Thief’s best weapon skills in the game.

Tarutaru

 * I sadly don’t see a lot of Tarutaru Thieves. This is possibly their best melee job since they have super-high dexterity and agility for Sneak Attack and Trick Attack. They also have great Charisma for Dancing Edge. The only downside to Taru Thieves are their low strength, but that’s negligible after Lv.15 when Sneak Attack is present. Their highest intelligence in the game helps with opening chests and coffers, or so it’s said.

Mithra

 * The race with the highest dexterity and agility, and also moderate intelligence and half-decent strength make Mithra one of the most wanted Thieves in the game. You can’t go wrong with super-powered Sneak Attacks and Trick Attacks. One of the only downsides is lower charisma for Dancing Edge, but that’s made-up by high accuracy, which is more useful for the weapon skill anyway. You certainly won’t miss much with this job-race combination.

Galka

 * Galka make by far the most survivable Thieves in the game, combining huge evasion and enormous defense and hit points. They also have quite decent dexterity and agility for their Sneak Attack and Trick Attack. Low charisma can be easily made-up by tons of other equipment. They enjoy a high amount of strength for very plentiful damage, especially early-game.

Weapon

 * Early on, Thief gets a wider variety of weapon choices. For any lazy player, you can easily choose a Dagger, but you won’t get any good results. I strongly suggest choosing something else and just skilling it up later on. Your two best choices from Lv.1 to Lv.32 are Hand-to-Hand or Sword. Choose Hand-to-Hand if you want to sub Monk, and Sword if you want to sub anything else. The reason is because Thief gets a very low “D” rating in Hand-to-Hand, and you have incredibly low accuracy and damage. However, with Martial Arts, you can get some nice damage. With Sword, you get nice per-hit damage for fights against Crabs and Pugils. Throughout your career, I suggest skilling your Dagger up, though, since at Lv.33, you’ll want to switch right away. At that level, you get Viper Bite, which is insanely powerful with Sneak Attack and Trick Attack. Also, it will become very annoying having such low damage with your dagger. You know what you could do is use a Sword with a Dagger in the offhand (subbing Ninja) to keep it leveled throughout. When looking for weapons, you want to pick higher damage over lower delay, and anything that gives you a decent boost to attack, accuracy, dexterity, agility, or anything good.

Armor

 * Thief doesn’t get any heavy scale or plate armor, but it does get pretty much everything else. Until Lv.30, you’ll want to stack up as high as possible on any evasion, defense, and/or accuracy enhancing equipment. Afterwards, pick anything that increases dexterity and agility. Later on in your career, such as Lv.65, you might want to pick-up some attack-boosting gear like an Amemet Mantle. Battle Gloves work well until 30, and the Noct. Double set works well from then until your artifact equipment. Also, try as hard as possible to get an Emperor (or Empress) Hairpin, and Leaping (or Bounding) Boots, as you’ll use both until 75 guaranteed. A Spike Necklace is great from 21-on, and if you’re really rich or lucky, you can pick up a Peacock Charm. Use dexterity-boosting rings from 14-29, and both dexterity and agility-boosting rings from 30-on. I suggest buying one Garrulous Ring and one Unyielding Ring, as those are the best things you can get until the elemental rings in the final levels.

Soloing 1 to 10

 * Thief isn’t hard to solo these levels if you pick-up a Sword or some Knuckles. If you can buy one, try getting a Jack-o’-Lantern, since they last three hours and will boost your accuracy, ranged-accuracy, and evasion by 10 each. If you have a support job, try subbing Warrior (if sword is used) or Monk (if HTH weapons are used). If you want, a support job like Blue Mage for healing and damaging spells works too, but I suggest WAR or MNK. Fight mostly any monster. Goblins and other beastmen will give you decent-selling items if you steal a bunch of times. If you fight the little Sapling monsters, stealing from them can be even better. Pick-up some Bronze Harness gear and at 7, some Leather gear, and you’ll be ready to go.

Valkurm 10-20

 * These are your unfortunately most pathetic levels and will almost guaranteed put you off of Thief for life. However, if you can put-up with them, it’s truly worth it. From Lv.10 until the end of Lv.14, Thief is like a Warrior, but with no defense or attack. I suggest picking-up a crossbow and some Blind Bolts if possible so you can pull and skill-up your marksmanship. If your marksmanship is already skilled, use a boomerang or something cheap until you can use Acid Bolts at 15, then use them until Lv.75. They’ll be your best friends, especially versus Crabs. Not only do they lower their defense, but if a Crab uses its defense-boosting ability, you can dispel it using them. At Lv.15 is when Thief starts becoming a good job. You get both Treasure Hunter and Sneak Attack, two very job-defining things. Sneak Attack deals critical, completely 100% accurate damage for your next attack and also adds your dexterity into the mix. The best use is with a weapon skill like Fast Blade or Combo. Sneak Attack (and later Trick Attack) DO NOT work with any elemental weapon skills like Burning Blade or Gust Slash. Keep that in mind. You’ll play the role of puller and damage-dealer in these levels. If you sub Warrior, make sure your party knows you’re not a tank. As a THF67, I’ve only been KO’d twice in my career, both times in these levels. (Pugil’s Screwdriver one-shotted me after Sneak Attack, and another time was after the WHM got aggro by a Bogy, I tried zoning it, but it used Stone II on me).

Mid-levels 20-40
(THF)> (Tank)> (Monster)> <(Voker)
 * These levels are a lot more fun. From 20-29, you’ll just be doing the same stuff you did in Valkurm, except at 25, you get Flee, which is seriously nice for escaping any links or just getting around. Once you hit Lv.30, however, you get Trick Attack. This job ability is the sole purpose of Thieves. It’s also one of the most annoying things to learn, and why most people don’t invite Thieves (because most people just screw it up and make the better Thieves look bad). It’s very hard to explain with text as opposed to a demonstration or picture. That said, I’ll explain it using all three. Just before you pull your target, use SATA (short for Sneak Attack and Trick Attack -- Japanese terminology for SATA is "Fuidama") and pull it. At this point, you will need one main tank and one first Provoker. The initial ‘Voker uses his or her job ability and stands still, while the tank moves BEHIND the monster. You go BEHIND the tank, like this, using arrows pointing the direction the person is facing:

If this is done properly, you will hit the monster for about three times the damage you normally do including every DEX and AGI point you have. Plus, it’s 100% accurate. With all that, you’ll wind-up dealing about 200 damage and give every iota of hate onto the tank in front of you. After that, all the tank has to do is use Provoke, and he or she shouldn’t ever lose enmity. Once you hit Lv.33, you get Viper Bite, which increases your damage by 1.5x after all of that. Meaning if you normally deal 200 damage, you can deal about 300 damage. If you close a Distortion skillchain, you’ll get 480 damage. If you have 100% TP at the start of a fight, don’t use SATA at the start. Basically only use up your TP at the start of a fight, don’t waste it mid-fight.

Your AF Weapon

 * …is pretty useful, actually. It has a fairly decent damage-delay ratio, plus gives 2 to both dexterity and agility. At any rate, you’ll be using it for a few levels at the least. I suggest getting this as early as possible, even though it’s quite hard to get. I was in Beadeaux for several hours spamming “Steal” on the Quadavs that give the item.
 * This quest is a pain in the rump. At least it was for me, but I just have bad luck (you should’ve seen me on the AF quest where you have to gamble three Goblins, I was there for three hours). First, you go to Windurst Woods and talk to the Cat Burglar, Nanaa Mihgo. Go to Lower Jeuno and talk to Harnek at J-7 inside the Tenshodo headquarters behind the tavern front. You will then receive a key item which you have to take to Selbina. Talk to Elfriede at J-9 to start a cutscene with another NPC. At this point (and at no time before; believe me, I tried) to the Quadav home base Beadeaux and use Steal to acquire Quadav Stew from Garnet, Silver, Zircon, or Bronze Quadavs. If you have a higher level job, subbing Thief works too, but not as well. Once you get the stew, go back to Selbina and trade it to Elfriede. From here, go back to Lower Jeuno and talk to Harnek. After a final, brief cutscene, you’ll have your Marauder’s Knife. Congratulations!

Mid-High Levels 40-60

 * Up until Lv.60, you’ll be doing exactly the same thing as you’ve been doing since 33. At Lv.45, you get Hide, which has three nice purposes. One is to drop all enmity. If you use Flee, you can use Hide after you’re out of an enemy’s perception range, you can drop it all. Another use is to have a free Invisible effect for a short time. The best use, however, is if you’re not the main puller, you can use SATA before Hide to produce an initial ‘Voker-free SATA. In these levels, you start doing your limit breaking and artifact quests. Thief’s AF gloves, pants, and feet pieces are useful, but the other two aren’t. Either way, you have to get your hat piece to get the others, and your body piece does have use. With that said, get them all. As for your genkai quests, you have one of the easiest times getting it. You have a better chance of finding the drops for G1, for G2, it’s no easier or harder, and the other three are easily soloed by Thief. You can even solo your Testimony, but it takes a long time usually. Either way, you don’t have to worry about the last three until 60, 65, and 70.

Your Artifact Armor

 * Your first pieces are your AF hands at Lv.52. Rogue’s Armlets are quite useful. I know I use them all the time, but a lot of Thieves don’t. They have a decent defense bonus, as well as HP bonus, and give a +3 boost to dexterity. Above all that, they also give a boost to Steal and a resist-vs.-ice buff of +10, which makes ice-based spells, including Paralyze, less potent against you. Next is your useless-as-hell hat. It looks as ugly as it is too, so you won’t want to wear it anyway. It gives a nice boost to defense and HP, but that’s about it. The intelligence +5 is hardly anything compared to both DEX and AGI+3 from the Emperor Hairpin. The Steal+1 is useful for stealing, obviously, but that’s about it. Unless, of course, intelligence boosting your coffer-picking is true, then it does have a second use. Your Lv.56 leg pieces are your best pieces, and will last you a long time. Even if the high defense and HP boost weren’t there, or if they didn’t give you another boost to Steal, the huge agility +4 increase is enough to make any Thief want to wear them until 75. Your Lv.58 piece looks cute, and does have macroing use, but otherwise is useless. Macroing in for ‘Hide’ will increase its duration, but the strength and HP boosts aren’t worth losing-out on the Scorpion Harness. Your AF feet at Lv.60 are very nice to have. Even if they’re useless in parties, they can be macroed in for Steal and an increased Flee duration by 50%. If you’re soloing, you’re not using Trick Attack, so the extra HP and defense compared to Leaping Boots might be a good idea too. Plus, I don’t care what anyone else says, I think they look neat too.

High Levels 60-75

 * This is the first guide I’m going to have written that actually says something other than “you’ll be doing the exact same thing from 60 to 75 as you’ve been doing the whole time”. Why? Thief gets another amazing job-defining trait at 60. Assassin. Yes, it totally proves my point that the job is played like an Assassin. What it does is allows Trick Attack to be played without Sneak Attack. This means a ton more damage and no more initial ‘Vokers are needed. It actually makes the job a lot more fun. And just plain amazing since you don’t have to do that trivial line-up anymore. Then, at 65, you get a fairly new job ability called Accomplice. It steals one-half of the target’s enmity and gives it to you. This can save the life of a damage-dealer who took far too much hate, or a mage who had to cast Cure too much. It basically gives your two-hour ability a non-solo purpose. Makes it a lot like Paladin’s “Invincible” actually. Another purpose it has since its recast is only five minutes is stealing hate from a Ninja who accidentally mis-casted his or her Utsusemi and got interrupted.

End-Game

 * (Please add information about Dynamis, Limbus, Salvage, merit parties, etc.)

Ninja

 * A lot of people sub this really early on. I don’t see why, though. You don’t even get Utsusemi: Ichi until 24. Even then it’s not as useful as Warrior. I suggest avoiding sub-Ninja until about Lv.30. It really weirds me out seeing Lv.10 THF/NIN. Even at Lv.20, Dual Wield isn’t a very good excuse for subbing it. If you have Ninja leveled, surely you have Warrior. However, you do get Utsusemi, which, when coupled with your huge A+ evasion stat, can keep you alive for a long time and prevents problems. Dual Wield isn’t particularly useful until Lv.50. However, you can stack two stat-boosting weapons(Note: Weapons such as Federation Knives [Level 25] are worth their weight in gold for the accuracy and atk+ they offer). You also get Tonko, which is an almost-free Invisible effect. Otherwise, Ninja gives no other good effects. However, if the populace thinks that’s the ultimate support job, why not.

Warrior

 * I personally subbed this until 30, when I changed to sub-Ninja. I also used a Sword, since I found Hand-to-Hand to hit for 0 a lot when I played Monk and partied with other Thieves and Monks. With that said, as THF/WAR, you should use a Sword weapon, particularly something that gives a decent stat boost and/or high damage. Choose damage over delay, especially in Valkurm levels. Remember that even though you get Provoke, you shouldn’t use it unless the party really, really needs you to. Warrior gives a nice vitality, HP, strength, and dexterity boost. Though used only until sub-Ninja takes effect by the mass populace, Warrior has potential in parties otherwise. Since Thief doesn’t generally take any hits post-30, having the extra strength and dexterity boost might help a bit. Berserk can boost your damage even higher, and make quick work of any hits that hit for zero. On top of which, Warcry can be used just before skillchains to boost damage even higher.

Monk

 * A second useful Lv.10-30 option. It gives a nice boost to Hand-to-Hand if you can survive the low damage and accuracy from having a “D” in the skill. Boost is nice too, but shouldn’t be used very frequently since you want the monster facing elsewhere when you use Sneak Attack.

Ranger

 * Great for camping notorious monsters because of Widescan. Sharpshot and Scavenge are nice too, since they both have five-minute recast timers, meaning any placeholder with a five-minute respawn is ripe for the picking. Personally, I would probably sub this to Thief if given the option in parties. Accuracy Bonus being a nice boost to your already wicked accuracy. And Widescan helping you with pulling. Sharpshot can be used when a monster uses a defense-boost ability, so you can land your Acid Bolts better. Or if you take damage, Sharpshot and Bloody Bolts can heal you. Sleep Bolts can sleep a monster quickly and easily. Who needs Utsusemi? Seriously, I never take hits, even after pulls. And I find Dual Wield to be nearly pointless pre-50. Even then, Accuracy Bonus would be far better than anything else.

Samurai

 * Another nice support job for Thief, but only used in end-game situations where TP is the only way a Thief can deal damage. Personally, I could see this being another alternative support job. Though Hasso and Seigan don’t work, Store TP, Meditate, and Zanshin sure do. Store TP allows for extra TP per hit, which actually does boost it, as opposed to Dual Wield. This allows for more frequent SAWS, TAWS, and SATAWS. Meditate lets you use them more than once per fight. Sometimes even three times. And if you’re waiting for someone who went afk for 6 or more minutes, you can use it three times, boosting to 300% without lifting a finger. Zanshin has less of a use, since it only activates on missed attacks. However, it can be useful for Dancing Edge in case one or more swings missed. Third Eye can make-up for a loss in Utsusemi if you pull. It can be used once per minute, and if timed right will save you from getting hit from a close pull.

Your Two-Hour Ability

 * Perfect Dodge is perfectly useless in party scenarios, unless for some reason you have all the hate. Obviously, it has its uses Lv.15-30, when Sneak Attack is used without its cousin. And at Lv.60, it can be combined with Accomplice to make a job ability similar to that of Paladin’s ‘Invincible’. Keep in mind that Perfect Dodge will only avoid melee attacks, not special attacks, not ranged attacks, and certainly not spells. Though if you’re in an area that you’re exploring, using Flee and Perfect Dodge can save your life, especially if you have means of leaving an area (such as Warp or a Warp Cudgel). In combination with the other two, Hide can occasionally work to drop all enmity and make the monster give up.

Job Abilities

 * Steal is unfortunately a very useless job ability. It has a five-minute cool down, and it rarely ever works. Assuming it does work, however, you get very mediocre items unless you’re stealing from really high-level monsters. I suppose it’s better than nothing, but when Square Enix made Thief, they obviously didn’t want them to be all that much better than any other job at making money. If there is one thing Thief needs in an update is more Steal abilities. I was bored one day and came up with a few of my own. Check the “Talk” section of this guide if you want to see some of these.
 * Sneak Attack at Lv.15 is when your job starts getting a little interesting. Though, until Lv.30, it’s generally a death wish, and you’re basically on your knees most of the time praying it doesn’t give you fatal amounts of hate. If you haven’t read it already, Sneak Attack basically increases damage when used behind a target. That’s a serious understatement. As a main job, the Thief’s dexterity is added directly into damage, then all damage is doubled, and made 100% accurate of your next hit. Meaning, prepare for a huge spike of damage (and hate). If used with a weapon skill, expect either the monster to die, or it getting really mad at you. With a one-minute recast timer, it’s a very frequent ability and can be used upwards of twice to even four times in a delayed fight.
 * Flee is a really convenient job ability that will just seriously save you a ton of time when running around. It completely doubles your movement speed for a whole thirty seconds once you get it at Lv.25. This has a number of uses, as you can tell. The most prominent use is just for getting around in town or to a camp or whathaveyou. A more party-useful note is in case you link, you have a much lower chance of getting defeated. Same with aggro.
 * Trick Attack = awesome. Seriously, once you get this job ability at Lv.30, Thief suddenly becomes a lot less horrible to play as. It basically means you deal all the damage as with Sneak Attack, but give it all to the tank. Unfortunately, until Lv.60 with Assassin, it’s almost useless on its own, and will generally make the next hit miss. Used in conjunction with Sneak Attack (which conveniently shares its one-minute cool down) it can deliver large amounts of damage and just give it all to the tank. That’s what it does, it tricks the target into thinking the person in front of you did all the damage. It’s very unforgiving in terms of positioning, though. And it seems it’s the person closest to the target that gets all the hate (keep this in mind, because you REALLY don’t want to give hate to the wrong person. At Lv.60, you start splitting the two job abilities up, and then you get even more damage.
 * Mug is a lot like Steal, except it’s even more useless and has triple the cool down time. That’s right, it takes a whole 15 minutes to use again. It only works on monsters that would normally have money on them, like Goblins or other Beastmen. And when it does actually work, it may mug all of 20 gil or something. At Lv.1, that might sound appealing, but by Lv.35, when you finally get it, that’s enough to maybe buy one bolt for pulling. High-end bosses might yield a nice 1000 gil, but that’s still pathetic.
 * Hide is a sadly very unused job ability. It’s acquired at Lv.45, and I personally love it. It has a number of uses. First of all, it’s a free invisible. When used with your AF body, it can last almost as long as it too. Secondly, it drops all enmity when used successfully. In order for it to be used successfully, you have to be out of the target’s perception range, and it can’t detect by scent (though if it does, Deodorize or rainy weather will help). The third and best use for it is you can use Sneak Attack from any angle on the monster. This means you can SATA without the need of an initial ‘Voker as long as someone else pulls for that fight. If timed really well, you can even get a SATAWS on the tank in the middle of the fight.
 * Accomplice is a new job ability that isn’t hard to understand. Once you hit Lv.65, you can use it once every five minutes to steal half of the target’s enmity and place it on yourself. This can be quite useful. Its most prominent use is to give your two-hour ability a use. For example, the Paladin used Invincible, but it wore off and he’s sustaining huge amounts of damage. You use Accomplice and Perfect Dodge, and just like that, you have enmity and you’re not taking damage for a whole thirty seconds. It can also be used to steal hate from a person who doesn’t want it, like a mage or damage-dealer. Just in case they cross the hate threshold and the tank can’t get hate back in time.
 * Assassin’s Charge is one of two meritable abilities for Thief. It makes the next attack, be it weapon skill or otherwise, a triple attack. Just picture that for a second. An extra two hits on any weapon skill. Combined with Sneak Attack or Trick Attack and you’re looking at absolutely ludicrous amounts of damage. Though it only activates for the first hit of a weapon skill, so using it with Dancing Edge or Evisceration might not be as noticeable as with Shark Bite. It has a fifteen minute cool-down timer, but can be brought down to ten with additional merits.
 * Feint is the second meritable job ability for Thief. What it does is lowers the target’s evasion by a whopping 50% for about thirty seconds. That simply means that you’re not going to miss anything for the next half minute. Its cool-down timer is originally ten minutes, but can be brought down to six with additional merits.

Job Traits

 * Gilfinder is your fist job trait at Lv.5, and doesn’t go up in tiers. All it does is occasionally increases gil found on monsters that normally drop it, such as all Beastmen. Though since most of them drop mediocre amounts, it’s pretty irrelevant.
 * Evasion Bonus is a pretty straight-forward job trait. It grants a bonus to the user’s evasion. Though evasion is one of the most difficult things to measure numerically in the game, it’s speculated that the first tier gives +10 at Lv.10, and up to +48 (or so) at Lv.70 as its fourth tier. If your evasion is capped already and you have all these bonuses, you really don’t have to worry about being hit very often. This combined with Utsusemi makes Thief one of the best soloers in the game later on.
 * Treasure Hunter comes with two tiers, one of which is Lv.15, so can be attained through subbing Thief, and the other is Lv.45, so is Thief-exclusive. What it does is increases the chances that monsters have to drop loot. Treasure Hunter II works in a way that it will actually boost the chances to find rare and exclusive pieces of loot as well. This makes Thief the most sought-after job for camping notorious monsters or the like. Treasure Hunter only works of the Thief (or person subbing it) performs any action on the target at all and is within a fair range of it when it is defeated. It also doesn’t stack. In fact, only one Treasure Hunter will take effect, the one that is the most potent. It only has two tiers, but can be buffed with two items (Thief’s Knife and Assassin’s Armlets).
 * Resist Gravity is another trait that is what it sounds like. It will occasionally give the Thief a chance to resist the effects of Gravity. If, however, Gravity isn’t resisted, its effect will be a lot lower duration with this trait. It is acquired at Lv.20, and gets a third and final tier at Lv.60.
 * Triple Attack is a lot like Warrior’s Double Attack, but is completely Thief-exclusive (Lv.55) and gives the user three hits at once occasionally. It doesn’t cut TP gain down either, and it can activate on weapon skills. What’s really impressive is having it activate twice in a row. You seem to just attack in a constant stream for a whole eight hits (with Ninja subbed).
 * Assassin is what makes Trick Attack super useful and what makes Thief its own job at Lv.60, when otherwise every other job would be able to sub Thief and get the same effect. No, with Assassin, the notion of initial ’Voker is completely abolished. Though having two Ninja tanks juggling hate is still a good idea, it’s not necessary for one of them to Provoke for Sneak Attack and Trick Attack to be used in conjunction. It makes TA exactly like SA. In fact, if your agility stat and dexterity stat are completely equal, using them one after the other (assuming no other factor changes it), your TA and SA should be completely identical in damage.
 * Aura Steal gives Steal an actual purpose. It dispels an enhancement on the target and may occasionally steal the buff for the Thief’s self. That includes anything dispel actually normally works on, including things like Haste and Regen. Each additional merit increases the chance to give the buff to the Thief by 20%.
 * Ambush is probably the least useful of the group 2 merits for Thief. All it does is gives the Thief an accuracy and ranged accuracy bonus when behind a target. That would be useful, but Thief has enough accuracy as it is. I could see it having a use when skilling-up, but otherwise, Feint is a much better choice. However, Ambush is a perpetual job trait, so as long as you’re behind the target, it’ll do better. The best use for this is Sneak Attack into Dancing Edge or Evisceration for slightly better-landed hits.