Guild Wars 2

I see a lot of people complaining about burst thieves, and I understand your annoyance as we all deal with them. The thing is when you look at how god awful venom skills are there is a reason we just roll high damage. Investing in venom skills is a waste. They are undependable.

The reason I say they are undependable is because their duration is short, and damage is mostly a joke, and my biggest gripe is that they lose stacks whether or not you hit a target so if you accidentally hit that 1 key you lose a stack.

SOLUTION:

Give thieves more ways to apply conditions. I don’t care about stacking vulnerability let me poison.

Either change venoms so they only apply on hit(Hitting a target who is blocking will take away a stack(s). Or give them a flat duration that their affect lasts. I don’t think I have played an MMO where venoms were in stacks vs. a flat duration.

PUT +10 Condition Damage Onto Deadly Arts and +10 Duration onto Trickery. It makes since that a trait tree that deals with buffing venoms would increase their damage vs the duration.

Change the venom traits, to make us really see a benefit in them. I will touch on why the current ones are bad/outshined by other skills below

Venomous Strength When applied, venoms grant 2 stacks of might for 20 seconds.
-This is a bad trait due to the fact applying venoms is unreliable and stacks are so easily wasted

Potent Poison Increases poison duration by 33%.
-Who cares when conditions are easily cured by bunker builds, and anyone who has half a brain, and again only good if you apply them, and some durations are so low 33% is only a fraction of a second and doesn’t matter anyways.

Residual Venom Applied venoms last one extra strike.
-Again pointless since stacks are so easily wasted and poison is so easily cleared

Venomous Aura When you use a venom skill, you apply the effects to all nearby allies as well.
-This has to be the most randomly placed trait skill. The whole tree deals with deception and benefits from stealth. So I can give my team my undependable venoms. Such a waste of a trait skill especially at 30 points

Basilisk Venom Turns your target to stone for 1 1/2 seconds
-Why anyone would take this over Guild or Dagger Storm is beyond me. I can see it being good, but just how venoms work at the current moment make it unreliable.

Also I know a lot of thieves think traps are also unreliable and I can see their point as well since the first thing to cross them activates it and with all the clones/phantasms/minions players have makes them useless.

Thoughts, any other suggestions the whole community has?

The traits aren’t the worst part about venom builds. The venom traits are actually quite good. Venomous aura share venoms to ALL allies, ie. Rock dog, Thieves Guild. Also keep in mind that Leeching Venoms apply to allies w/ venoms shared off via Venomous Aura.

The weakness in Venom Builds are the VENOM utilities.

Actually venom builds are not bad they really shine in a well put together team where the thief calls out when he is using them so the others can take advantage of the aura.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/45902-lowells-ultimate-spvp-thief-guide-wip/

Yeah, let’s reference a guide written during beta to comment on the current game state.

I agree that Venoms are lackluster. But the traits aren’t the biggest issue. They are mostly underwhelming, yes, but not what’s broken about them.

The biggest downside of Venoms is that you have to give up some really useful utility spells in order to use them. Venoms aren’t just competing with themselves, they are competing with stun-breakers, Shadow Refuge, Caltrops and various Singets.

When you look at the opportunity costs of using a Venom build (which requires at least 2+ Venoms) then you always come up short.

One big problem with the venoms is that multiple of them don’t really add anything to the thief’s arsonal.

Anyone with 5 points into Deadly Arts gets 10 seconds of poison free with every steal, as well as AoE poison with Shortbow 4.

Speaking of the shortbow, you know what shortbow 4 also creates?

A poison combo field.

Fire a clusterbomb into the field, and you gain AoE weakness as well. Your allies can partake in the combo field as well, and it opens up utility slots otherwise used on the venoms. There’s a high initiative cost, but you can always take roll for initiative in one of those newly opened up slots to mitigate that, as well as all the other benefits of the roll.

There’s just no good reason to use venom utility skills as well when we’ve got things like shadow refuge, and scorpion wire which greatly diversify our arsonal.

Lets also note that “33% longer poison duration” Only affects the Poison condition – it does not effect the conditions produced by skale, ice drake, devourer, or basilisk venom. And there are bugs with Residual venom triggering the extra venom correctly on multi hit abilities.
Otherwise, everyone here is pretty on the ball concerning venoms.
- They’re kind of sub-par when looked at on their own
- They’re absolute crap when you consider how we could be using those utility slots
- The current meta is very focused on condition removal, so only short duration “setup” venoms (Devourers, basilisk, maybe ice drake) even have a use.
- Venoms are hilariously front loaded – with condition removal being what it is, why do i want spider venom to trigger 5 times in a row? So my opponent can conveniently clear it with 1 ability? By the same token, I probably do want devourers venom to trigger twice in a row – this leaves an inconsistency concerning venoms.
- 45s base CD is insane, considering how many better abilities have shorter CD’s

Actually Dee Jay if you had looked through it you would have noticed he does put out updates to it with the last being 10/18 but I know reading is hard and some of the venom builds make up for lack of utilities by not rung themselves as glass cannons.

Immo.9217:

Actually Dee Jay if you had looked through it you would have noticed he does put out updates to it with the last being 10/18 but I know reading is hard and some of the venom builds make up for lack of utilities by not rung themselves as glass cannons.

So they last longer to apply lackluster, easily cleansed, long CD venoms? All while not bringing any other sort of utility to the table? No shadow refuge for revival/stomps, no scorpion wire to pull targets off walls, no caltrops for point control, no blinding powder for stealth on demand, and so on. I’m not sure I follow….

You don’t need all 3 utilities to be venoms… and many of the cool downs are not bad when you trait for it 36 seconds seems long when you read but when your playing the venoms are usually back up for each skirmish although i do believe the builds are more suited for team fights over 1v1s

Immo.9217:

You don’t need all 3 utilities to be venoms… and many of the cool downs are not bad when you trait for it 36 seconds seems long when you read but when your playing the venoms are usually back up for each skirmish although i do believe the builds are more suited for team fights over 1v1s

A traited 36s CD against a base 30s cd on more powerful, more versatile abilities. That’s the argument I’m making. It gets worse the more you invest too – if you’re running quick venoms, venomous strength, and residual, you -have- to be running 2/3 venom utilities just to make it worthwhile, and tbh, you’re probably also running basilisk venom (which is nigh useless outside burst setup).

I’m not saying venoms are the worst thing ever, but they are definitely lackluster, and outshined by nearly every other option we have. In a team setting, Venom share + leeching venoms has alot of potential… the actual venom effects are whats holding it back. In a solo setting, leeching venom is absolute crap compared to the other survivability options available in shadow arts; yes they’re stealth based, but stealth is your friend. I’ve tried to run a dozen different no-stealth or minimal-stealth survivability based thief builds, and they’re all crap in comparison.

The bottom line is, with all the resources and traits your devoting to making venoms passable, you could run more versatile, better utilities, have more freedom trait wise, and end up with an all around stronger, more versatile build.

skale: Vulnerability stacks multiple times and is compounded by how many are applying it thus it’s good in that regard.
Spiders: Stacks duration, if they’re not running condition removal it can last for a while also has the most stacks to apply leeching venoms more which is the purpose of the venom share build really.
Frost drakes: chill is INSANELY potent vs certain targets but is ultimately the one that falls a little short I feel.
Devourers: is by far the most useful

and lastly

Basilisks: High synergy with rune of lyssa and is a potent stun

Venomancer is actually quite good if you build the standard 20/0/30/x/x
I do agree however that the aura range is far too pissy and the venoms being used up on misses and wild swings needs to change but the venemous aura trait was swapped to shadow arts due to the power of the build before if I remember right.

Hellkaiser.6025:

skale: Vulnerability stacks multiple times and is compounded by how many are applying it thus it’s good in that regard.
Spiders: Stacks duration, if they’re not running condition removal it can last for a while also has the most stacks to apply leeching venoms more which is the purpose of the venom share build really.
Frost drakes: chill is INSANELY potent vs certain targets but is ultimately the one that falls a little short I feel.
Devourers: is by far the most useful

and lastly

Basilisks: High synergy with rune of lyssa and is a potent stun

Venomancer is actually quite good if you build the standard 20/0/30/x/x
I do agree however that the aura range is far too pissy and the venoms being used up on misses and wild swings needs to change but the venemous aura trait was swapped to shadow arts due to the power of the build before if I remember right.

I still disagree – as good as the venoms are, they’re still lackluster when you consider the amount of traits you had to slot to get to that point. Thats quick venoms, (possibly Venomous strength), leeching venoms, and Venom share. On top of all that you’re -still- consuming 2 out of 3 utility slots, minimum, for venoms. If they fixed Aura range (which i believe is laughably 300, IE useless unless you specifically instruct your team to huddle around you) and venom use on miss, it’d be better, but still meh.

Concerning Lyssa runes with Basilisk – there’s nothing intrinsic about Basilisk venom that makes it good to run with these runes, besides the traited 36s CD. a venom with an application time for a 1.5s stun is still crap.

Above, when talking about spider venom, you mentioned “if they’re not running a condition removal…”. Anyone not running a condition removal (or 12) in the current meta is insane. I play an aggressive bleed spec, and I see my stacks wiped 2-4 times a fight (not counting support ele’s, who wipe them every 3s)- if you’re running venom share, you’re TTK is going to be fairly long – you’re going to see the same amount of condition removals, and with 36s CDs on venoms, you’re going to run out of tricks before they do.

Seems to me venoms should maybe go 1 of 2 ways -
A) Much shorter CD, fewer procs. 15s CD, 2-3 procs on spider, 1 on devourers, 1 or 2 on skale/ice drake. This will make it riskier for opponents to use their condition cleanses the second your poisons are applied.
B) Use venoms more like an enchant. Use spider venom – for the next 15s, every connected attack builds a “venom stack” at 3 stacks, the poison is applied to the enemy hit. For more powerful venoms (like devourers or ice drake), you could make the duration of the condition once applied very short, or increase the number of “venom stacks” required for application.

Just 2 thought off the top of my head, might not be the best.

edit: Look at it this way – in every fight you get into, there’s going to be a portion of time that 3 or 4 of your traits are rendered useless, because your venoms are on CD. You -need- those traits to make a venom build worthwhile, and they have basically limited uptime. I can slot other utilities and traits, which don’t suffer the same limitations, offer (arguably) similar utility, and tend to have quicker CDs.

Thought. What if venoms worked sort of like Mantras? Long, pre-charge likely done outside of battle with each use being allowed to be “placed” individually rather than having to be all at once.

You’d probably have to tweak the number of uses for each venom, but I think it could work well.

Some of the “drawbacks” I understand, you can pre-cast them, and potentially coordinated strikes of basilisks can be DEVASTATING if you compound the stun by x5 or at least in it’s previous incarnation of the only true “unbreakable” stun

I’m fully with you that venom sharing does need improvements and the 300-600 range is awfully poor and needs increasing for a start and whilst at first I would have said it was a top tier build now after seeing how most spvp matches turn out, I don’t think that it’s as dangerous and barely scrapes by.

But at the same time one does HAVE to be careful as improving things can very quickly lead to insane builds that can do a heck of a lot, the traits are most definitely what needs improving though with only minor tweaks to the untraited venoms as all you’d end up doing is adding extra utility to other builds which are already considered at least borderline OP if you buffed the venoms themselves too much.

omgdracula.6345:

Venomous Strength When applied, venoms grant 2 stacks of might for 20 seconds.
-This is a bad trait due to the fact applying venoms is unreliable and stacks are so easily wasted

I don’t see how pressing E (well, whatever your keybinding is) to get 2 stacks of might instantly and poison on the next few attacks is unreliable.

As soon as you press apply poison, you get the stacks of might.

This is a great trait due to the fact that applying venoms means “applying the buff to yourself, making your next attacks poison the enemy”. Applying venoms does NOT mean “applying the venom to your enemy.”

You’re APPLYING the poison to your weapons – and gaining 2 stacks of might in the process. How is that unreliable?

Rika.7249:

omgdracula.6345:

Venomous Strength When applied, venoms grant 2 stacks of might for 20 seconds.
-This is a bad trait due to the fact applying venoms is unreliable and stacks are so easily wasted

I don’t see how pressing E (well, whatever your keybinding is) to get 2 stacks of might instantly and poison on the next few attacks is unreliable.

As soon as you press apply poison, you get the stacks of might.

This is a great trait due to the fact that applying venoms means “applying the buff to yourself, making your next attacks poison the enemy”. Applying venoms does NOT mean “applying the venom to your enemy.”

You’re APPLYING the poison to your weapons – and gaining 2 stacks of might in the process. How is that unreliable?

Because this

Mug Deal damage when stealing. Is a lot more reliable than 2 stacks of might that in pvp will quickly get stripped from you or you wont be able to use due to get knocked around by a guardian or blown up by an Ele/Warrior/Thief/Necro/Mesmer

omgdracula.6345:

Rika.7249:

omgdracula.6345:

Venomous Strength When applied, venoms grant 2 stacks of might for 20 seconds.
-This is a bad trait due to the fact applying venoms is unreliable and stacks are so easily wasted

I don’t see how pressing E (well, whatever your keybinding is) to get 2 stacks of might instantly and poison on the next few attacks is unreliable.

As soon as you press apply poison, you get the stacks of might.

This is a great trait due to the fact that applying venoms means “applying the buff to yourself, making your next attacks poison the enemy”. Applying venoms does NOT mean “applying the venom to your enemy.”

You’re APPLYING the poison to your weapons – and gaining 2 stacks of might in the process. How is that unreliable?

Because this

Mug Deal damage when stealing. Is a lot more reliable than 2 stacks of might that in pvp will quickly get stripped from you or you wont be able to use due to get knocked around by a guardian or blown up by an Ele/Warrior/Thief/Necro/Mesmer

Ah, in that way.

Does Venomous Strength also give might to people affected by Venomous Aura?

Cuz giving up to 8 stacks of might (if you’re using really weird utility skills) might not be that bad.

Dee Jay.2460:

When you look at the opportunity costs of using a Venom build (which requires at least 2+ Venoms) then you always come up short.

Nailed it.

I played a P/D condition venom share Thief a lot in beta. I loved the group support—it was obvious when venom share was in effect—but you were fighting uphill against a lot of players.

You need at least two (2) venoms, and you’re giving up utilities that can offer condition removal, mobility, stun break or dark/smoke fields in exchange. In tPvP, you really can’t afford to be without a stun break or a condition removal.

I’ll be honest and say that I don’t know a simple way to fix this. Maybe rolling two venoms into a single utility and balancing it by making a 2nd or 3rd tier trait add more value (damage/duration/whatever), so that non-venom builds don’t gain too much by just picking up the single venom?