• Steal HP - It's a 2* skill so the power isn't all that impressive. But it's still decent self heal for thieves when you're still new and cant afford Thief's Revenge.
  
• Steal Time - Kind of rubbish. Soul breaks are where you get your haste from, and there are better ways to slow things.
  
• Steal Defense and Power - These skills are ok. They're basically Armor and Power Breakdown that grant the thief a buff instead of doing damage to the enemy. Steal Power is situationally nice when running a thief in a party with no Shout or other +Atk booster.
  
• Mug Time - See Steal Time. Basically the same effect, only now with some damage on top. This is getting a buff in the future to be two hits, but that won't redeem it. Avoid.
  
• Thief's Revenge - Now we're getting to the really good stuff. With 170 speed you get five high damage hits that also steal health, making this both great damage and healing. It's not going to get buffs in the future, but it doesn't need them. If you can hit the speed requirement, this is a recommended craft.
  
• Poison Leaves and Dash & Slash - Good elemental damage skills. Hit as hard as Spellblade equivalents, or even harder if you have a dagger equipped. Solid skills, but you also really want a reason to use them. Either a poison/wind weak target, or an appropriate Imperil or EnElement. Getting a buff to 4 hits later on.
  
• Mug Bloodlust - Absolutely stellar skill, and one of the better 6* skills in the game. Has a rare stacking debuff and buff on one skill, and hits like a truck. Just rank 1 will go far, because the debuff/buff durations are fairly long. It will also be buffed to spread the damage over multiple hits, making it even better. Only issue is that Thief motes are a pain to get. But if you do have them, and have good soul breaks for a Thief, this skill should be pretty high on the priority list to make.
  

• Shuriken - No.
  
• Swift Bolt, Water Veil, and Fire Veil - Ninja Magic is... strange. The base damage is very low, but the cast time is fast and the skills ignore resistance. You also hit the Mag cap pretty fast, at 370 magic. However if you can stack things like +Elemental% damage and +Ninja% damage, these skills provide respectable AoE damage (4000-6000 damage per hit is doable). If you can hit a weakness, these are also a good way to build up soul breaks. Also start with 4 uses, so these get a lot of uses for cheap orbs.
  
• Gust - Same as above, only Wind damage and slightly higher base damage.
  
• Phantasm - Non-elemental variant of the above, but you exchange AoE for single target and a high chance to Sleep the target. One of the best ways to Sleep enemies, in fact. Damage is also pretty good for elementally resistant targets, but this time you can't buff the damage with +Element% gear.
  
• Shadowsteel - Single target physical damage this time, with the unique utility of inflicting Sap. But nothing worthwhile is actually vulnerable to Sap these days, so skip this.
  
• Flurry of Petals - Theoretically decent physical damage if you can stack enough buffs, but nothing amazing. Same buffs will make better physical skills and soul breaks do more damage as well, so eh. Skippable.
  
• Raging Storm and Smoldering Fire - More ninja magic, this time elemental + double hit + single target. Extremely high DPS if you have the appropriate elemental and ninja boosts, double casts, etc. But these really require building around, so they're not exactly universally useful.
  
• Doppelblade - AoE physical attack that applies Sap. See Shadowsteel. It's getting buffed to being much faster to cast, but it still doesn't save it from being pretty useless overall.
  
• Stitch in Time - Currently slightly confused 6* skill that does two physical hits, but then buffs your Mag. So to get most use out of it, you need to be hybrid statted. And since Ninja magic caps at a really low Mag, the buff is questionable in value for most Ninjas. There are exceptions like Fujin who can use Ninja AND Black Magic, but that's niche. However it is getting buffed to an +Atk/Mag boost, making it much nicer for the hybrid role. Not a priority, but worth keeping in mind if you get good Ninja soul breaks. (edit: To clarify further, it's +Mag/-Def already, meaning it stacks with a lot of buffs. will be updated to +Atk/+Mag/-Def, still stacking with almost everything.)
  

1. Hydroburst, Blue Deep, and Flame Burst - Simple elemental AoE physical attacks, with slight damage boost for using a ranged weapon. Nothing amazing, but decent for mopping up trash mobs, or when there are fights with multiple opponents with the appropriate weakness.
   
2. Sapphire Shot, Icicle Shot, and Ruby Spark - Very similar to the Thief elemental double hits. Hits about as hard as spellblades do without a ranged weapon, higher with one. These are also being buffed to 4 hits in the future. Perfectly good DPS tools when you need to hit the weakness, or have Imperil or EnElement.
   

Attestant fucked around with this message at 08:32 on Aug 1, 2017

Kanos fucked around with this message at 12:08 on Aug 1, 2017

• Cloud BSB2 has native Enwind. That's 1.5x damage. (if you're dropping a SB with that, it's 1.8x)
  
• Naturally you'd want +wind gear on Cloud's armor and weapon slots, too. That's another 1.2x per slot.
  
• Let's slap on Bartz's Lv99 RM on top of that for good measure, which gives a damage boost to wind attacks. That's another 1.3x bump.
  
• Elemental boosts stack additively, so the math just for how windy we are is easy enough - 50% + 20% + 20% + 30% leads us to a 120% boost in damage - just from wind boosting alone that's 2.2x.

• We already said we're assuming full imperils on an otherwise neutral target. That's 1.6x damage.
  
• But wait! Cloud USB gives you a passive 30% damage increase on all physical moves. (Most EX modes give an ATK buff, instead, which readily strains against the softcap.) That's a 1.3x bump.
  
• It also gives an auto-crit effect, or critfixes Cloud to 100% critical rate. That would be 1.5x again, except...
  
• You brought along your good friend Ramza to Chant, didn't you? That 1.5x becomes 2.0x.
  
• Oh, and Zack's also here contributing a Wind Chain. Let's assume for simplicity you only have the hits from the BSB entry and USB on this tally, and that magically the multiplier doesn't increase with each respective hit of the attack - so 12 hits gives us a 1.12x chain.

KataraniSword fucked around with this message at 12:36 on Aug 1, 2017

KataraniSword fucked around with this message at 12:52 on Aug 1, 2017

Zurai fucked around with this message at 12:59 on Aug 1, 2017