Guild Wars 2

Hello, I’m rather new to thief. I main an engi and love support roles on all classes. I have a level 80 thief collecting dust and was curious as to wether there is a support thief build for havoc wvw? Any info would be most appreciated and thanks!

Probably a Venom Share build, but that’s probably it.

Venom share is pretty much it, and it pigeonholes you into running 6/x/6/x/x with the last two points wherever. It also pigeonholes you into taking all venoms as utilities, which means you can’t take any of the tricks a regular thief would have like shadow step and shadow refuge. You’re also stuck with bad self healing and no stun break.

IMO thief support is DPS with Stealths, Blinds, Fast movement for scouting, picking off the weak and finishing up kills for WvW.

x/x/6/x/x can do ALOT of support in Regen, -50% dmage when stealth (for anyone you stealth) regen when you give stealth. You can take it farther with x/x/6/6/x and have loads of Survival with SB skills, Stealths, blinds etc…

Im not a fan of venom shared AT ALL!!! I think its one of the worst builds in the game, the unitilty it gives is Very little, a 1 sec chill, a stun that can be break out of, Condition damage given to players with no condi damage isnt very good, your not set up for dps or condi so the torment doesnt do much. The Poison or Immob can be good but you have SB for aoe Poison and other classes can Immob 10x better.

• remember, venoms are a 45 sec base CD for a few sec of untility then you have no survivability your self, no breaks tuns, no stealths, no condi removal.

There is no such thing… promised!

>_>

<_<

There’s the Ninja Nurse and a venom share build. Both can be very viable in WvW small group roaming ^^

Venom share is a very type strange support namely it does a bit everything if traited for it: Healing, boons, debuffs, power dps increase, condition increase, soft cc, hard cc are all contained in the venoms or traits surrounding venoms:

• healing: Skelk venom heals for 700HP/hit ungeared without gear and with gear 900HP/hit, leaching venoms add another 325 HP/hit ungeared and 569 HP/hit to all venoms. So combined it gives with a full set of venoms it 286 HP/second ungeared and 456HP/second geared to allies .
• boons: Venomous strength gives every ally 2 stacks of might for 20 seconds per venom.
• debuffs: Skale venom can potentially give 20 stacks of vulnerability to the enemy for at least 10 seconds (I don’t know which player duration is used so I say 10 at the moment).
• power dps increase: leaching venom gives every venom hit at least 350 damage per venom strike and it scales with the power of the receiver (not the thief)
• condition increase: Skale venom gives every player 4 stacks of torment which is a very scarce condition which will not interfere with normal condition builds.
• soft cc: Ice drake venom gives chill
• hard cc: basilisk venom gives stun
  
  The advantages of this spreadout is that you always can support every player no matter what playstyle they have: ranged,condition, power, tank,… and in whatever team setting you are .
  The downside is that you cannot specialize well since some of your resources would be wasted.
  The three biggest downside are no stunbreaker, no condition removal and the short range of venomous aura. The condition removal can be solved by taking a sword (a very good choice since it can debuf with the auto attack), an off hand dagger with shadows embrace (together with sword you can steal boons from enemies ) or taking anti condition sigils/runes. The lack of stunbreakers can be solved by good use of dodges/evades. The only thing stopping venoms from being good support is the range. 360 is too short, 600 would be perfect.

Tim.6450:

Venom share is a very type strange support namely it does a bit everything if traited for it: Healing, boons, debuffs, power dps increase, condition increase, soft cc, hard cc are all contained in the venoms or traits surrounding venoms:

• healing: Skelk venom heals for 700HP/hit ungeared without gear and with gear 900HP/hit, leaching venoms add another 325 HP/hit ungeared and 569 HP/hit to all venoms. So combined it gives with a full set of venoms it 286 HP/second ungeared and 456HP/second geared to allies .
• boons: Venomous strength gives every ally 2 stacks of might for 20 seconds per venom.
• debuffs: Skale venom can potentially give 20 stacks of vulnerability to the enemy for at least 10 seconds (I don’t know which player duration is used so I say 10 at the moment).
• power dps increase: leaching venom gives every venom hit at least 350 damage per venom strike and it scales with the power of the receiver (not the thief)
• condition increase: Skale venom gives every player 4 stacks of torment which is a very scarce condition which will not interfere with normal condition builds.
• soft cc: Ice drake venom gives chill
• hard cc: basilisk venom gives stun
  
  The advantages of this spreadout is that you always can support every player no matter what playstyle they have: ranged,condition, power, tank,… and in whatever team setting you are .
  The downside is that you cannot specialize well since some of your resources would be wasted.
  The three biggest downside are no stunbreaker, no condition removal and the short range of venomous aura. The condition removal can be solved by taking a sword (a very good choice since it can debuf with the auto attack), an off hand dagger with shadows embrace (together with sword you can steal boons from enemies ) or taking anti condition sigils/runes. The lack of stunbreakers can be solved by good use of dodges/evades. The only thing stopping venoms from being good support is the range. 360 is too short, 600 would be perfect.

You forgot to say another HUGE downside to Venoms.

• Blocks and blind uses up Vemon and you gain no benefits from them. Im not sure about Evades if it does the same thing or not.

Geiir.7603:

There’s the Ninja Nurse and a venom share build. Both can be very viable in WvW small group roaming ^^

If you don’t focus on Vitality with Sentinels but use Soldiers or Knight’s it might also hit decently, without compromising it’s nursing ability. The support is based on Resilience of Shadows and Merciful Ambush, neither of those benefit in any way from stats.

Yes, as a support thief you pickup full berserker gear and instagib your targets as fast as possible. This is how you support your team as a thief, plenty of such builds are on this website.

people don’t have much creativity these days cus they get locked into what is too obvious. namely short bow and venom

have a look at your rune options, check those sigils too and you’ll find you can make a very effective build that will share buffs and boons, heal you and your team and totally blind the kitten out of the enemy at the same time.

you need to go full in at least shadow arts and the rest in trickery, consider acrobatics too for the dodge return. go p/d or d/p for black powder and interrupts and spec for healing power and toughness.

vit. isn’t as useful but can keep you standing. use the dodge heal and when your hp go down heart seeker out of black powder for regen.

you cant kill, but you are a master support tank. this style of build worked quite well when i tried it middle of last year.