How does the Thief's special ability work?

how would the thief get hit with an enemy defense if the defenses can't see them?

 

A guy in my guild tested the thief and sent me a replay, so I've now seen it with my own eyes:

'Who Goes There' cancels when attacking a wall, and presumably anything else. The guy deployed the thief in a quiet area, far away from the main battle, activated Who Goes There as they ran across land. They were cloaked as they came to a wall, and two nearby cannons did not respond. The thief then took one swipe at the wall, the cloak vanished, then the cannon promptly fired, blasting her into kibble. There was no water, no splash damage, and no enemy fire of any kind. All she did was attack a wall.

Is this the intended behavior for this skill, or a bug?

 

Noooooooooo

 

That was my friend's reaction, minus a few colorful words.

 

So we just send in some brutes to take care of the splash defenses and viola

 

also - do traps activate when she's invisible?

 

So the bottom line is at the thiefs special ability Cloaking, they give themselves away once they begin stealing. If mortars are in effect, they would get wasted fast, not effective. If the mortars are taken out, and the gold or grog out of cannon reach, which is rare, then they are effective. Chris, what makes this ability cost effective, how is it best used?

 

So disappointed in the cloaking ability. What's the point if the cloaking is deactivated once they reach the gold or grog?

 

If this is the case it still provides a player with a chance to take large quantities of gold/grog with little troop expenditure. That is, as long as the mortars are taken care of

 

Well, in the replays I've seen, they were gone before the mortars ever got a shot off. One hit from a nearby cannon (and not even a strong one) took them out.
Re: Traps. I'd imagine since they're "dumb", they'd work normally.

I think we need an official word here to end the speculation over whether this is by design, or a bug.

@Chris [Midoki] Is the 'Who Goes there' ability supposed to cancel when she attacks something, or not? I have seen two replays where this was tested, and it's definitely happening. A lone Thief was dropped in a remote part of a base. No water, no enemy fire or splash damage. She's cloaked as she sneaks by cannons, and they don't respond. She takes one swipe at a wall, becomes visible, and within a second, a nearby cannon ends her raid with one shot.

If this is the intended behavior, to paraphrase @DeckSwabber, This skill is ineffective unless the mortars are taken out, and the gold/grog are out of cannon reach, which is rare. What makes this ability cost effective, how is it best used?"

Thanks in advance for clearing this up for us

 

Well, that's...unfortunate.

Thanks for clearing it up, though!

 

Yeah it seems like if it had a time limit instead of automatically disengaging as soon as she attacks that would feel more useful

 

The 3rd line was surprising to me being that this isnt listed as a way for them to become uncloaked in the tooltip.

#1. This honestly really doesnt provide much benefit to this unit because if you are just going to uncloak when taking resources then their use is very limited and very short lived. Most all players store their grog/gold storage inside the middle of the base, surrounded by cannons and mortars. By the time you could ever use the thief in this scenario(which happens the majority of the time) most of the resources would have been cleaned up already by the juggs/brutes/bucs so whatever they can scrounge up is really not helpful considering that if you can make it in the main base cloaked without being hit with enemy fire then you probably were in a good position to take the rest of the map with the other units anyway.

#2. Even with the grog/gold collector buildings you cant take down one of them without a cannon killing them all. A collector building is rarely far away from a defensive unit. You cannot kill this defensive unit now with something like the buc or the gunner because along the way they would destroy all the collector buildings first before destroying the cannon or whatever defensive unit is behind the wall 'guarding' the collector items.

Considering these two points I dont see how this ability can be worth the effort and chance on the finding the perfect map scenario where this would be useful. The chance on getting this scenario is small when browsing through bases to destroy.

Perhaps if the ability included 'become uncloaked after x numbers of seconds following the first attack of a grog/gold building' where 'x' could be any number of seconds to be determined, then it might provide to be more useful but if I would have come on this forum first instead of taking the tooltip at its word i would have never spent all that grog to research this ability.

 

I agree, something like 10 seconds after taking the first swipe at a resource (but not a wall, c'mon).

 

The cloak is still (barely) useful, even with it turning off when the thief attacks. With the cloak on they won't get targeted while on the way to resources.

As for general usefulness, I bring 6 thieves in my normal army (the rest is: 7 jugs, 3 brutes, and 21 gunners). The thieves help in a variety of situations:

• To quickly clear outer collectors so that tanks go into a base rather than around.
• Since they target different buildings than the rest of the troops, they sometimes draw mortar fire away from everyone else. If all my tanks are beating on a mortar, rather than it shooting my gunners sometimes it will shoot a thief. Often a single mortar strike to the gunner brigade will make or break a raid.
• They help with three starring: since they are so fast, they are usually the first to reach the last few buildings. I don't care much about rank, but I do like the battle points!

The key is not to spam them, but just drop one or two at a time. If you drop them all at the beginning of a raid, they'll all move to the center of the base and die like it's going out of style.

 

Good tips. I guess the cloak's effectiveness depends on whether you can keep the defenses busy with other units. If a mortar or cannon's sitting idle, and a Thief uncloaks nearby. She's gone before she has time to fix her hair. Uncloak. Steal. Boom.

 

I really only see her as useful for cleaning up when the clock is running out, and I don't think that's her intended purpose.