Therion (5★ Thief)

Table of Contents

octopath traveler champions of the continent cotc therion guide

I’ve often discussed why the Thief class is currently (and in the forseeable future) the dominant job class in the game.

What does dominance look like in Octopath Traveler COTC?

The short answer is raw, unstoppable DPS.

The long answer is a self-sustaining DPS that with some support, can frequently ram the damage cap and trivialize many bosses.

Our first real “taste” of Thief dominance came from the release of Therion many banners ago. That was proceeded by Nier Automata’s A2.

But let’s talk about our god Therion Traveler: Therion of the Continent™.

Tier List Overview of Therion #

In my tier list of all units by roles, Therion scores S+ in the PDPS category and very highly as a breaker.

His dagger nuke combined with his free repeat passive lets him ram the damage cap with the right setup.

He scores S in the Breaker category. Here’s why:

  • 6-hit Dagger at max boost
  • 4-hit AOE guaranteed shield break at max boost with chance to paralyze
For now, he scores A as a Fire damage dealer. In the future once we get elemental daggers, his “Fire” firepower goes way up, rocketing him to S tier. 
 

Stats

Currently, Therion has the 4th highest PATK amongst thieves and the highest SPD amongst all units.
 
With Origin IV weapon equipped, he continues to have the highest SPD in the game.
  
His max speed is a huge concern, because you don’t want him to act first. Your buffers/debuffers should be initiating a battle or a break.
 
Like A2, you’ll want to purposely NOT unlock some of his SPD nodes so that he acts slower than Viola or even Falco (410 SPD). You can always revisit his SPD nodes at a later time.
 
If you’ve made a mistake – not too big of an issue but definitely an inconvenience. King Chomper Vest (+38 speed) exists, as well as other accessories that can boost SPD.
 

Unit Kit #

Passives

  1. Raise recovery amount of absorption skills by 50% for Self.
    • He can absorb 45% of damage dealt as HP instead of 30%, easily healing himself to full.
    • He can absorb 3% of damage dealt as SP instead of 2%, easily healing his SP to full during break.
  2. When using Max Boost on a skill, use that skill again for free (Divine Feat).
    • This is the single biggest reason why Therion is so coveted. See below for a lesson on multi-hit.
    • Therion can repeat any of his skills for free including non-damaging ones.
    • Normal attacks and Ultimate do not proc this passive.

A Lesson on the Power of Multi-Hit #

This section is written in collaboration with the Head Priest of Therion Church PrimROse is my EX.
 
In the long run, multi-hits benefit from the following advantages that single hit nukes do not. Multi-hits are skills that hit two or more times. All of Therion’s skills (not ult) can be considered multi-hit.
 
1. Potency Up Bonuses 
Future Soul/Fortune weapon series have potency up slots (up to 15% more damage at max roll) but only to a single skill of your choosing.
 
If a single hit nuke already reaches the damage cap, but a multi-hit move does not, then giving your multi-hit skill a 15% potency bonus is a 15% net damage increase. 
 
2. Crits 
Crits are a flat 25% increased damage for every single hit it procs on. 
 
If a single giga nuke already rams cap without crit, then multi-hits can experience the full benefit of every crit. This is another 25% increased damage advantage over single hit or even 2-hit nukes. 
 
Additionally, even in cases where single hit nukes do benefit a little bit before ramming the damage cap, due to crit RNG, spreading your crit chance over a greater # of hits gives you lower damage variance and greater consistency for damage control and hitting precise thresholds. 
 
3. Move Set Consolidation
If you use the same move for breaking and nuking it provides 2 large advantages. 
 
The first is it gives you greater overall damage, b/c you’re experiencing the potency up both in your breaking actions as well as in your nuking actions. 
 
You wouldn’t want to get 2 potency up slots on your soul weapon anyways as this is a high opportunity cost on stats.
 
Secondly, having the same move for breaking and nuking gives you moveset consolidation. 
 
This allows your character greater flexibility as they can now run more support moves instead. (3-moveslot syndrome or even 4-moveslot syndrome bypassed).
 
A lot of times people wish they had A2 because they need to run both multi-hits and single-hit nukes. With this moveslot advantage we bypass this issue entirely.
 
4. Break Enemy Faster
Obvious but it’s no surprise that your damage during an enemy break accounts for 50 – 70% of total damage dealt during the course of a battle. This is largely due to saving your units’ BP for this specific moment.
 
You deal 200% more damage to an enemy during Break, and they’re unable to damage you.
 
Breaking faster allows you to do more damage over the same # of turns and increasing your team’s survival.
 
5. SP Conservation
In the near future, we’ll get units like Bargello/Edelgard/Levina who have extremely costly 1-hit nukes. Their multi-hit abilities cost far less, and are the better skill to use in long drawn out battles.
 
Conclusion
 
15% (from soul/fortune weapon)  x 25% (crit) is already a 43.75% damage advantage for multi-hits.

I haven’t even discussed the new Pet mechanic that will further boost unit damage. But that’ll be for a discussion for another day.
 
It’s entirely practical and realistic to assume that given 2 identical characters in the same role, the character with multi-hit skills w/ all these advantages would contribute 50% more damage throughout a fight than a character who’s reliant on their single/low-hit count nuke (Cough Olberic). 
 
And in the near future, it’s not wild to suggest that multi-hit can do 4x more damage than single hit given the same potencies.
 
Now back to his unit kit.
 

Best Skills

  • 5* skill: 1-hit Dagger nuke with chance to paralyze.
    • Therion’s strongest damaging skill during max boost.
    • Paralysis can come in clutch; see section on paralysis.
  • 5* skill: 2-hit Fire to all enemies, guaranteed to remove shield points, chance to paralyze.
    • This turns into a 4-hit AOE guaranteed shield removal with a chance to paralyze multiple enemies.
    • Actually deals tremendous amounts of Fire damage once we get eatk daggers.
    • Is a major reason why he fits into any team comp, regardless of enemy weakness.
  • 4* skill: 3-hit Dagger to single foe.
    • His second strongest dagger skill and has the potential to do the most amount of damage; up to 6 hits at max boost (think 99,999 x 6) in the future.
  • 3* skill: 2-hit Dagger to single enemy, recover 2% of damage dealt as SP.
    • Becomes 3% due to his passive.
    • Can fully recover his SP with one attack even at 0 boost during Break; just deal 11k damage.
  • 2* skill: Inflict 15% PATK/PDEF down to single enemy for 2 – 5 turns based on boost.
    • Both debuffs are capped to 9 turns in a single action if used at max boost, although you’ll rarely ever use your BP in this manner.

Generally you’ll want to pick:

  1. 1-hit dagger nuke with paralysis (unless you’re breaking damage cap too easily)
  2. 2-hit fire with paralysis and shield break
  3. 3-hit dagger
  4. 2-hit dagger with SP recovery in longer battles
  5. 15% PATK/PDEF debuff if planning to cap enemy PATK/PDEF down with Falco/A2/Viola

Ultimate Skill

  • 1-hit single target dagger nuke and recover 1 – 2 BP.
    • This ultimate is weaker than any of his other damaging skills at max boost.
    • The simple tactic is to use his ultimate after running out of BP or at 1BP, so you’ll have 3 BP on the next turn. 
    • Prioritize Awakening 1, 2, 3, 4 over Lv 10.
Awakening 4 Accessory
  • 40 PATK, 60 SPD, 400 HP
  • Raise Dagger damage dealt by 15%
  • When breaking an enemy, have a high chance to inflict paralysis (turns: 3)

This is an A rank accessory provides good amount of HP and the highest amount of speed from an accessory. You can give it to the likes of Falco or even Lynette to act before Therion. The paralysis effect cannot be depended on but it is a nice bonus.

How Strong is Paralysis? #

Arena bosses (including Yan Long) are immune, but they have adds (including Crows) that are not immune to paralysis. 
 
Even if Therion isn’t hitting their weakness – his 2-hit/4-hit AOE fire skill with guaranteed shield break can come in clutch, paralyzing the adds and protecting your team.
 
Nearly every Lv 100 NPC is not immune to paralysis. This status effect might be the thing you need to RNG clear them for the first time.
 
In short, paralysis is a powerful status ailment if your goal is to clear the toughest content with enough time and RNG.
 

Daily Farming #

Therion is probably the top 2 best units to use for daily farming (alongside Cyrus) – caits, elites in Bonfire of Battles,  and normal battles for material farming. 
 
His 4-hit AOE shield crack along with 6-hit daggers allow for some easy grinding and gold farming. 
 
He can also regen SP to full with one of his skill.
 

Best Accessories #

  • Kota’s Glove for 30% PATK passive buff is the best DPS accessory – and Therion can recover his SP to full with one skill
  • Any 15% Dagger, depending on the enemy weakness
  • Accessories that provide flat HP for survival

Skill Damage Rankings #

I assume all units at A4, Lv 100, with Origin IV weapons.

Unit passives are generally active unless otherwise specified.

Click here to view the full skill firepower table and an explanation of how it’s made.

Top 25 damaging skills


At first glance, it may look like Therion’s best skill pails in comparison to others. 

However, if you look again, you’ll notice how almost every skill above Therion’s requires set up. A2 requires 1 turn to use berserk mode, lasting for 6 – 9 turns. 

W’ludai requires 1 turn to use AoE spear attack. And Jillmeila requires an enemy to be bleeding. 

We can safely ignore all the ultimates in this comparison.

Only 2B has higher damage than Therion without set up, but her attacks are 1-hit nukes and we’ve already talked about the weakness of 1-hit.

One thing my Firepower table does not show, is skill damage after being equipped with powerful accessories. 

Let’s see how the damage rankings change if everyone is equipped with 30% passive ATK (Kota’s Glove for example) and 30% passive DMG Up.

Now 4 of Therion’s skills are in the top 25. And they are still the easiest skills to use with multi-hit capabilities. 

Once Bargello and Rinyuu come out, everyone can hit the cap of 30% damage up on dagger skills.

Top 20 Dagger skills

 
Following the same inputs of all units being equipped with 30% ATK/DMG accessories… we see that Therion’s entire Dagger skill kit is in the top 20.
 
Top 20 Fire skills
This table assumes all unit have 30% EATK and 30% Fire DMG up.
 
We see Therion can somewhat match Cyrus and Molu’s fire damage with just Origin IV weapon equipped.
 
Once Fortune/Soul weapons come out, Therion has the potential to do more Fire damage than Cyrus.
 

Team Comps #

  • Falco for Dagger damage up
  • Alfyn is the best BP battery bank for Therion; Tithi 2nd best for BP; Primrose’s Ultimate and Tressa can also provide BP but shouldn’t be chosen specifically for this role
  • Lynette/Primrose/Glossom multiple other units that buff PATK 
  • A2/Falco not only have dagger damage, but can debuff enemy PATK/PDEF in combination with Therion; in one turn you can max debuff enemy’s PATK and PDEF down 30% for 6 turns at zero boost.
  • Absolutely needs regen, Alfyn does this the best
  • In the future, we’ll have Bargello to raise the damage cap by 20k, boost 10% Dagger DMG and 15% PATK 
  • Find other companions via the Buff/Debuff finder tool
  • Another useful resource is the recruitable allies table for multi-hit shield shaving and attack buffs
 

End Game Content Usage #

So Therion’s AoE paralyze and shield break makes him usable in high level content even if he isn’t hitting weaknesses.
 
  • Tikilen/Glossom/Varkyn/Yan Long Cup: the two adds can be paralyzed
  • Ri’tu Cup (Ri’tu weak to Fire)
  • Gertrude Cup (Dagger and Fire)
  • Yunnie Cup: all adds can be paralyzed
  • Yan Long Cup (Sword)
  • All Lv 100 NPCs aside from the Adventurer + Partner can be paralyzed
  • Lv 100 NPC: Muttering Codger (Dagger), Sea-gazing Graybeard (Fire), Adventurer (Dagger)
  • Largo cup (spoiler)
  • Thief Job Tower (spoiler)

Should You Pull? #

At the time of writing, there is still a Thief rate up banner which includes Therion. It’s still a gamble.

At the time of release, Therion was pity-able for just 3k gems. This was very fair for the amount of value he brings to the team.

Therion is in the permanent pool and given enough time, you might be able to pull him randomly.

In JP, they did have new rate up banners for Therion + other units.