Guild Wars 2

With the current meta surrounding condition cleanses (there’s alot), and the underperformance of Thief venom in general, I think most of us will agree that venoms need something to be more viable.

The issue here is, any boost to condition length or number of applications wouldn’t address the issue – the line between meh and OP for effects like chill and immobilize is razor thin, and I don’t feel there’s a way down that path to fix the underlying issue.

So, simply put, just give venom’s a passive and activated effect. The passive effect would simply be a % chance on hit to apply the venoms normal activated effect. Activated effects would stay the same, and like signets, once activated the passive effect would not trigger until the venom is back up. There might be a need for some playtesting (low % chance for chill or immobilize, since these are powerful abilties, or perhaps the passive effect for immobilize can be crippled, a varying internal CD for more powerful venoms, etc etc…), but I think this would be -leagues- better than what we’re offered now. This would also tie in with making Residual venoms an actual grand master level trait, rather than the buggy crap it is now – Residual venoms could simply boost the % chance on passive poison application.

Thoughts?

Thieves have signets already.

If anything, it should be engineers the ones getting a passive in one of their skill types, as they don’t have signets. In gadgets, for example.

For venoms, I’d rather give more duration or more uses or extra conditional effects or something like that.

Yes, thieves already have signets. Unfortunately, adding anything else to venoms feels like either a bandaid or too powerful. Poisons inflicting multiple effects would certainly help a little with the cleansing issue for classes with constant/high amount of cleanses, but classes that cant just strip conditions like crazy might be overwhelmed.

Perhaps if venoms also did additional damage on application?