Guild Wars 2

Put 20 points into Shadow Arts and you can get the “Leeching Venoms (IX)” trait. This trait makes it so when you trigger a venom your target takes an additional 350 damage and you siphon for 325 HP (Damage scales of power, siphon scales off of healing power). Now this trait also works with venomous aura, so if you apply it to team-mates they too siphon health and deal additional damage. But there’s a catch, the siphon damage can’t crit.

So what if it could crit? Lets say a thief (to maximize the amount of venom) has Spider, Ice Drake, Skale, and Basilisk venoms, along with the Extra Venoms trait. That would be 16 venom strikes: 6 Spider, 4 ice drake, 4 skale, and 2 Basi. As it stands once all of those venoms are applied that is 5600 additional damage, 5200 healing .

So if someone gets off 6 successful attacks, Leeching Venoms works as follows (this is base dmg, does not take into the user’s power) :
• 1st strike: Additional 1400 damage, 1300 healing
• 2nd strike: Additional 1400 damage, 1300 healing
• 3rd strike: Additional 1050 damage, 975 healing
• 4th strike: Additional 1050 damage, 975 healing
• 5th strike: Additional 350 damage, 325 healing
• 6th strike: Additional 350 damage, 325 healing

Now if the damage could crit? What would it look like. Well the wiki says that base crits are 150% of the base damage, so 350 would turn into 525 (this is with 0 crit damage). 5600 total additional damage would turn into 8400 (assuming every strike crits).

• 1st strike: Additional 2100 dmg
• 2nd strike: Additional 2100 dmg
• 3rd strike: Additional 1575 dmg
• 4th strike: Additional 1575 dmg
• 5th strike: Additional 525 dmg
• 6th strike: Additional 525 dmg

I personally think this should happen just because their isn’t a real reason to have venom share in pvp. I mean immobolize locks are fun and can certainly screw up someone’s day, but once those venoms are on cooldown what do you do? So to compensate for the fairly short gap of no utility I think allowing some extra oomph in the damage being dealt by you and your team-mates (if you have venom share) would be useful. As for the healing part of this trait, maybe they can make it so when the damage crits so does the healing (325 healing turns into 488). What do you guys think?

Ignore venom sharing. Get the poison skills balanced without needing a grandmaster trait to make them worth a slot.

Stooperdale.3560:

Ignore venom sharing. Get the poison skills balanced without needing a grandmaster trait to make them worth a slot.

While you have a point this thread is about the leeching venoms trait’s, not neccesarily venom sharing.

I remember trying to get a venom share build going. Two mins later I stood in a necros well…two mins after that I clicked “reset trait points”

Hate to be negative but like what gets said around here often “other classes just do it better”

Also to address the trait itself. I doubt they would want a trait critting like that, remembering mugs fate.

Neoheart.2750:

Also to address the trait itself. I doubt they would want a trait critting like that, remembering mugs fate.

Yeah, I never got why they took away crit from mug. I get that it did a kitten ton of damage, but considers how the condi meta is, and that weakness now effects critical hits I can see it being countered today.

Just made this thread in hopes that leeching venoms would be good to pick up one day.

I rather enjoy leaching venoms with venom share. I pretty much exclusively play it in WvW. My guild usually runs a 3-6 man team and I find the lack of experience people have in fighting against it, hits opponents hard. Don’t even get me started on being able to distribute on demand snares to my guildmates. I also exclusively use it in dungeons with my guild. For solo play though, I can see how it leaves a lot to be desired. Nice way to bolster unloads damage though if you time the venoms correctly.

Part of me wishes that leaching triggered for each venom use as opposed to each strike that used venom(s). I prefer to stack them all at once for a large might boost with fury, swiftness and more might from stealing. Yet doing so means sacrificing dps and heals from spreading out the leach hits over the battle. Worse yet, trying to hit everyone as the battle unfolds is sketchy unless everyone is close to each other. Thankfully it is much much better than it used to be.

All said I would like to see this get a trial run as I still feel like venoms are not necessarily where they could or should be.