Thief

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Description
The Thief is a fast and nimble class which focuses on controlling mines and/or the Thievery skill. Illusion magic is capable of supporting the aforementioned tactics but can only be accessed later on at level 25.

Stats and Skills
The attribute changes you get by choosing this class:

The abilities you get by choosing this class:

Overall
Out of the many classes available in Warlords Battlecry 3, the Thief drew one heck of a short straw. At first, it may look like the Thief is abusable simply via his Thievery ability, but think again. The requirements to pull the Thief off are very steep, and few races will be able to fill the necessary holes. The skills past the initial ones are somewhat poor, although Illusion can be used to make the Thief invisible. The Thievery ability is extremely weak and highly outclassed by any Merchant or Tinker worth his/her weight in resources, not to mention the physical requirements of Thievery (the Thief starts off as a bit of a weakling). The last nail in the coffin is the current balancing where conversion speed increases simply upon level up. This means that almost any hero class can effectively be a mine thief by level 50. All of this makes the Thief one of the most undesirable classes in the game.

Races
A combo (if that's what it should be called) can be gained with the Dwarf Thief. Investment in Dexterity, Warding, Armorer and Constitution can make a fast, tough mine stealer with very high resistance to most arrow towers, allowing the Thief to easily traverse the map with little harm done to him. As a bonus, the Warding skill can make the elementally resistant Dwarves extremely tanky vs any elemental attack (however, if the enemy knows that you're playing as Dwarves, they are extremely unlikely to use elemental attacks anyway so bear that in mind).

If you were thinking of making a Fey Illusionist, a Fey Thief can be a reasonable alternative since it still gets an Illusion synergy as well as a couple of other tricks, most notably Warding.

A somewhat useful combo is a Dark Elven Thief, at least after level 30. Invest early in Dexterity, Running and Illusion magic and accumulate skill points for later investement, specifically for Summoning and Assassinate. A high Assassination chance combined with Invisibility is priceless, while Summoning is abusable with Summon Quasit (to build towers and fill mines) and Home Portal, to retreat.

Counters

 * The Dwarf Thief cannot really do that much in combat other than tank a multitude of blows.
 * Garrisoned towers can see the Thief stays well away from mines.
 * Without constitution or similar skills, the Thief is physically weak and easily susceptible to a decent mob.
 * Even if the Thief manages to escape, he/she is unlikely to have any support skills bar Warding so keeping control of the map via towers and/or troops will easily be the end of the Thief's side.