One question that might have been answered elsewhere: the Taboo instructs that this card costs 3 additional experience, but it's still a level 0 card, right? So, Preston or Marie can use it in their decks.

This looks like a great card with cool abilities for high Agility rogues, but in practice I found it disappointing. First you need to get it and a gun played. Then you realize it exhausts, so if the first shot misses or fails to kill the target you need a back up source of damage. Tony isn't going to bother with it.

It's much too expensive for its limited usefulness.

The Ornate Bow is still a better weapon for this role.

This card. This freaking card. Hey, did you know that its triggered ability isn't a skill check, so symbol tokens revealed for it don't weaken Seal of the Seventh Sign? And that, as a result, while the token is sealed, there's no risk involved in activating it?

Yeah. This card is far more powerful than they probably intended if there's a Mystic on your team. Even without the ability (because relying on that ability without any chaos bag manipulation is ... not a good idea), a 2 cost story asset that doesn't take up any slots for 3 soak is a fairly strong reward. But the moment you add any chaos bag manipulation, even just a Premonition, Grotesque Statue, or Olive McBride to let you use it once for free, you're getting a massive tempo advantage. And if you actually do the Seal of the Seventh Sign combo I alluded to above, you can use it to take care of the last two health of every enemy that shows up forever... or at least until the skill checks being done to advance the investigation break the Seal.

Of course, that does leave the issue of actually finding the dang thing in its side scenario, since, of course, it's a story asset...

There are a couple of points I don't see mentioned but I think are fairly important to consider when thinking of taking either this or it's lvl 0 counterpart.

The first is that the card DOES NOT protect you from negative effects that would occur even if you succeed. The big ones being the card loss from Mists of R'lyeh, and the action loss from Rite of Seeking. While the FAQ does mention Baseball Bat, that's a card, so I thought it worth mentioning that you will still have to deal with the consequence of a fickle spell cast. If you really can't afford to give up a card or you really need to investigate as your first action with RoS, Defiance will not help you. You will also be forced to spend a charge from Seal of the Seventh Sign.

To explain, Defiance blocks the effects a symbol token attempts to do as indicated by the scenario reference card; it is otherwise ambivalent towards your assets and your cards in general. Which brings me to Ritual Candles.

If you are using Ritual Candles, Defiance WILL NOT impede on the +1 skill boost. In some (albeit unlikely) cases, you may use this in tandem with two candles and then trigger, say Olive McBride or Dark Prophecy, to then turn what would have been a -4 (or , , ) into a +2. That's a significant difference. Part of the reason Olive is useful for this is that she can absorb the hit from the if necessary. And if you have access to say, cards, then you can confidently trigger succeed by 2 effects and other combos with greater assurance. And this does differ from Counterspell which, while protecting you from spell side effects, costs two resources and will definitely prevent candle bonuses. Though, I'm getting ahead of myself. Probably you'll just want to remember that Defiance doesn't disrupt your Jewel of Aureolus.

Lvl 0 Defiance can be used to target a popular token in this way, or to debuff a particularly dangerous token, but the choice may not be so easy, especially on harder difficulties. There is the possibly of it serving the measly bonus of being just a since no such symbol token may be drawn. This upgrade provides the opportunity to play cards that draw lots of tokens or hunt for specific symbol tokens in confidence because the is certainly not going to waste. Just remember that all consequences to symbol tokens from your play area will remain in effect.

No one has mentioned the obvious. This is a pure Roland Banks card. Roland is the only character that can trigger her ability in a non-janky way. Roland kills an enemy, then his reaction triggers, which discovers a clue, and then Alice deals a damage to another enemy. Obviously not a great card in solo but 2 enemies are common enough with just two players and you can tip the scales even more in your favor with "Let me handle this!" and On the Hunt. When there are no enemies, Roland's investigate is up to a respectable 4, thanks to Alice.

As other posters mentioned, Skids and Jenny are probably the next best two options.