You don't get to 400+/400+ armor with that damage and stats witout using this exploit (especially because you said you upgraded all the time in other threads) except if all your other chars just wearing low lvl gear and even than it's not much likely, considering the cost of a single weapon.
Because you only can steal your things 1(or 4 times, if you spec every char into thievery for that) time(s) back per merchant it's kinda obvious what you did there.
It's just kinda obvious for anyone who knows the bug and you can defend yourself like you want it doesnt matter much. :p
If you have been stealing from everyone, only 2 thief is enough and both my Ifan and main ranger char have maxed thievery, 8 with current thievery gears I swap when I want to pick pocket.
The game gives so much trader everywhere that respec steal isn't even mandatory to keep your gear updated. At least 40% of the longer quest come with a new trader to steal and even some random npc you rescue, like the cow girl, is a trader. Just the Lone Wolf place give you 3 traders, that's almost 90k to earn with 2 thieves if you just wait for an hour before killing the boss so they can restock and be pick pocketed twice.
Stop rushing quests for exp. I'm already 53 hours in and I'm only level 16 because I leave the game on sometime just for the store to restock. If I really bother to respec-steal with Fane + Red prince on all of the merchant I am shopping from, I will probably have 400k leftover or something which is just overkill and unnecessary.
And learn to plan ahead. I left fort joy with almost 30k worth of total fund because I didn't steal anything until level 6 with thievery gear. Right now, I am leaving at least 5 trader open for pickpocket hoping there will be a thievery ring or something soon so I can make 50k on each of them instead of 30k.
