Guild Wars 2

Venoms: These are now active buffs that make the thieves weapon have different effects based on which Venom you choose. Venom’s can only be applied out of combat.
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New Animation: When you use a venom, you coat your weapon in venom. You actually pull out a towel coated in venom and clean your weapons with it.

If your pistol is in the main hand, you have an animation that loads your pistol with special shells.

((Each venom takes 4 seconds to cast now, and roots you for the animation.))
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Basilisk Venom: Your attacks have a 10% chance to turn your foes to stone. (lasts 160 seconds, can only occur once every 7 seconds.) [(Stone lasts 1 second.)]

Devourer Venom: Your attacks have a 10% chance to immobilize. (lasts 160 seconds, this can only occur once every 5 seconds.) [(Immobilize lasts 2 seconds.)]

Ice Drake Venom: Your attacks have a 10% chance to chill. (lasts 160 seconds, this effect can only occur once every 2 seconds.) [(Chill lasts 3 seconds.)]

Skale Venom: Your attacks have a 10% chance to make foes weak and vulnerable. (lasts 120 seconds.) [(Weakness Lasts 3 seconds, Vulnerability Lasts 10 seconds.)]

Spider Venom: Your attacks have a 10% chance to poison your foe. (Lasts 160 seconds, this effect can only occur once every 2 seconds.) [(Poison lasts 4 seconds.)]

Venom Trait Changes:

Quick Venoms – Increases the tigger chance of venoms by 5%, this trait also effects allies nearby if you have Venomous Aura. (self explanatory.)

Residual Venom – When a venom is cured, a second effect triggers afterwords, depending on which venom was cured, this trait also effects allies nearby if you have Venomous Aura. (this way it won’t be a useless trait, because it will work if they’re venom’s stack over yours.)
(([Basilisk Venom: 0.25 second daze.
Devourer Venom: 2 second cripple
Ice Drake Venom: 1.5 seconds of chill.
Skale Venom: 2 seconds of weakness.
Spider Venom: 2 second of poison.]))

Venomous Strength – Venom skills last longer, based on which venom.
(([Basilisk Venom: lasts 0.25 seconds longer.
Devourer Venom: lasts 0.5 seconds longer.
Ice Drake Venom: lasts 1 second longer.
Skale Venom: Weakness lasts 1.5 seconds longer, vulnerability lasts 2 seconds longer.
Spider Venom: lasts 2 seconds longer.]))

Venomous Aura – Allies close to you gain your venom’s, this effect immediately wears off when your allies stray to far away from you. (You are a moving banner, the buff only works to people standing close to you.)

Leeching Venom’s – Steal health when triggering a venom, based on that venom, this trait also effects allies nearby if you have Venomous Aura. (this will give the thief a way to heal the group.)
(([Basilisk Venom: Heals for 1050 base. (based on a longer internal CD.)
Devourer Venom: Heals for 750 base.
Ice Drake Venom: Heals for 550 base.
Skale Venom: Heals for 350 base.
Spider Venom: Heals for 550 base.]))
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This makes venom’s more like what they are in real life, things you apply to your weapon to make it have a chance to hinder your opponents.

this wont work its not wow ..

I honestly do not understand why people want to buff venoms so badly. They are very good at the moment.

Because I can already do a lot of what the venoms do without putting them on my utility bar.

Don’t see how WoW has anything to do with this.. :/

The problem IMHO is that they’re good, but not good enough to take up a utility slot unless you’re running an instagib build. Instagibs don’t care about utility or survivability at all, and thus replacing Shadowstep with a venom isn’t that big a deal to them. However, I can’t see how venoms could possibly fit into a “normal” build that doesn’t want to kill the person in 1 second: They don’t last long enough, they have long cooldowns, and they take away a utility slot.

Venom is fine, no “Fixing” required, OP play another profession.

if venoms are fine, how come nobody uses them?

your statistics on ‘nobody’? I’m sorry are you once again pulling numbers from your imaginary chart? why would you presume that nobody is using them? because you aren’t?

i think your suggestions are bad. making venoms work like applied poisons from World of Warcraft Rogue is not a good idea.

i think its basically just spam of this forum to post a thread like this. this isn’t really a topic for discussion. this is you stroking your ego and hoping people praise you for posting your idea.

Oh, didn’t know WoW stuff was like that, never played WoW.

awesome idea,i like it +1

in the competitive scene,i dont think people would like chance on hit to apply poisons.

The problem with venoms is that it’s pretty clear ANet balanced them around the grandmaster trait to share them with allies. Without that trait they are very underwhelming for the length of their cooldowns. With the trait they’re only great if you have 4 other players to make use of them AND wouldn’t otherwise hit the condition caps without them.

IMO venoms should have that grandmaster trait baked into their basic functionality. Warriors, guardians and rangers don’t have to trait to share their banners, shouts and spirits. I see no real reason why thieves couldn’t work the same way. It would also improve the thief’s group utility and make room for a new support option of some kind.

I really laughed at first, but then I understood the OP idea and it is genius. GENIUS. I too do not this that any venom skill deserves to be in my utility. Check any screenshot of any thief and prove to me they have venom on their utility. NO THEY DON’T. This idea is very viable. I really like it and even though I know it wouldn’t be implemented, I thank the OP for sharing his idea. Thank you.

Alberel Leonhart.9640:

The problem with venoms is that it’s pretty clear ANet balanced them around the grandmaster trait to share them with allies. Without that trait they are very underwhelming for the length of their cooldowns. With the trait they’re only great if you have 4 other players to make use of them AND wouldn’t otherwise hit the condition caps without them.

IMO venoms should have that grandmaster trait baked into their basic functionality. Warriors, guardians and rangers don’t have to trait to share their banners, shouts and spirits. I see no real reason why thieves couldn’t work the same way. It would also improve the thief’s group utility and make room for a new support option of some kind.

I concur. Excellent post good sir. Venomous Aura makes or breaks venoms.

Alberel Leonhart.9640

The problem with venoms is that it’s pretty clear ANet balanced them around the grandmaster trait to share them with allies. Without that trait they are very underwhelming for the length of their cooldowns. With the trait they’re only great if you have 4 other players to make use of them AND wouldn’t otherwise hit the condition caps without them.

IMO venoms should have that grandmaster trait baked into their basic functionality. Warriors, guardians and rangers don’t have to trait to share their banners, shouts and spirits. I see no real reason why thieves couldn’t work the same way. It would also improve the thief’s group utility and make room for a new support option of some kind.

Indeed, That trait is pretty much the only thing stopping venoms from being awesome. If that was baked into venoms already and we didnt have to trait for it, A venom would surely make its way onto my skillbar 90% of the time.

There’s a problem with this. A big problem.

It changes venoms from something that you use to something that you have. Think about it.

Right now, using a venom gives you a guaranteed, immediate effect. If I have devourer venom on my skill bar and I need an immobilize, I use it. I get an immobilize. There was skill and timing involved. You can just spam venoms, but (with the exception of spider venom) that’s not as effective as timing it right. Using venoms requires a thought.

With your changes, venoms no longer require any thought. It’s simple. Before you fight, you stand there and cast all of your venoms. After that, you don’t have to think of them for 2-3 minutes. Your change essentially turns venoms into traits. The only difference is that these traits take up a skill slot, and you have to sit still and recast them every couple of minutes.

Imagine what a venom build would look like with this change. You would only have your weapon skills and healing skill. Your utility skills and elite are gone, replaced with passive effects that take no thought, skill, or timing. In sPvP you would just sit invulnerable in spawn while you cast your venoms, and then go out and fight without thinking about them.

You also couldn’t plan around them as part of your build. Since they only have a chance to activate, they’ll activate sporadically and you can never count on a given effect when you need it. This is fine for things like poison, weakness, and vulnerability, but for control effects (immobilize, stun, chill) it’s important to be able to time those. Those are effects that you need at a specific time to work with other skills, not just randomly.

I don’t want this change. Leave venoms the same style that they are: effects that I can use when I need them. I’ll agree that venoms could use some rebalancing because they’re balanced around traits, but that’s a matter of tweaking the magnitude of the skill, not changing the style.

Dude, they would be the same as banners/spirits/shouts.

Thieves rely too much on burst already, we don’t have enough passive effects anyways, Venom even if you apply to a group are useless because they don’t stack.

Even though the percent seems small, imagine giving these effects to other players within range of you like banners/spirits/shouts/buffs do.

With 5 people around you all with these venom buffs, it would be DANGEROUS, especially with the weakness and vulnerability, poison or even basilisk, since it would all be on separate CDs, even though it relies a bit on “chance” doesn’t critical chance?

We need to help our group, giving everyone a chance to hit a debuff would be amazing utility, if the traits affected them as well. (healing them when it triggers, ect ect, extra trigger chance.)

It would make a new breed of thieves, the venom thief. (we would give up a lot of damage and tank-ness for it, but its balanced around the fact we help people around us more then ourselves.)

Honestly, I would agree with you about the “effects I use when I need them” but giving 5 people the same venom is useless when they don’t stack, its not like you can turn someone into stone 5 times, you turn them into stone once and then afterwords they ignore it.

Venomous Aura either needs changed to only benefit yourself and make venoms alot stronger, or changed so its like my post, to percent based effects.

Think about it as a group:

Venom Thief:
Your group members (or people near you.) now have a 15% chance to heal themselves on an attack AND apply an additional effect.

Each group member has a 15% chance to apply weakness and vulnerability on hit, even though its random, it could get up to 8-15 stacks passively at all times atleast with all the fire going on. (not overpowered, its a debuff.)

Each group member has a 15% chance to some times chill the opponent. (he can’t do as much and does it slower, making it easier to see his attacks, especially the ones that one shot ya.)

An example of this would work like shouts is “shouts give group members” a 20% chance to critical and 3 stacks of might, that is still “chance” like venom’s would be, whats the difference?

Random chance is bad. It is always bad, and I would really rather not have even more of it.

“Critical Chance” is a random chance, and its not bad.

And seriously? are you thinking for yourself or your group here?

If your team-mates/group/raid/buddys all got the buff, it would be firing off a lot every time the internal CD wears off.

This isn’t a solo game, its a group game, the “chance” is so its not overpowered solo.

Daecollo.9578:

Dude, they would be the same as banners/spirits/shouts.

No, they wouldn’t. Banners/spirits/shouts have limited times and cooldowns, so using them at the right moment takes thought. Venoms would be like the traits that give nearby allies +X of a stat. No timing or thought involved.

Daecollo.9578:

Venom even if you apply to a group are useless because they don’t stack.

Daecollo.9578:

…giving 5 people the same venom is useless when they don’t stack, its not like you can turn someone into stone 5 times, you turn them into stone once and then afterwords they ignore it.

Okay, first off, you’re wrong here. One venom doesn’t stack: Basilisk Venom. And even then, the venom stacks just fine; it’s just the effect it applies doesn’t stack on a single target. However, the rest of the venoms apply conditions, which stack just fine.

If there’s an issue with venoms in group, rebalance venoms and venomous aura.

Daecollo.9578:

Even though the percent seems small, imagine giving these effects to other players within range of you like banners/spirits/shouts/buffs do.

…

We need to help our group, giving everyone a chance to hit a debuff would be amazing utility, if the traits affected them as well. (healing them when it triggers, ect ect, extra trigger chance.)

Your group members (or people near you.) now have a 15% chance to heal themselves on an attack AND apply an additional effect.

Each group member has a 15% chance to apply weakness and vulnerability on hit, even though its random, it could get up to 8-15 stacks passively at all times atleast with all the fire going on. (not overpowered, its a debuff.)

Each group member has a 15% chance to some times chill the opponent. (he can’t do as much and does it slower, making it easier to see his attacks, especially the ones that one shot ya.)

You know what this would do? It would turn us into an exceptionally powerful Ranger spirit.

Right now, you can properly time a venom for a devastating effect. If you’re in PvP, you can coordinate Devourer’s Venom with other classes’s offensive buffs and burning all AoE nukes to get huge, inescapable burst damage. Normally skills like Dragon’s Tooth are easy to dodge, but not if you’ve worked as a team to immobilize them first.

With your changes, your contribution to your team would be to cast venoms on cooldown and then stay within range of your group. That’s it. No more well-timed combos for devastating effect. You’d get really powerful group buffs, sure, but there’s no thought, skill, or timing in that. They’re all passive, and they’re constantly up.

I’ll agree that venoms can use some rebalancing (I’d rather see them stronger untraited and have the traits be weaker), but the style they have right now is great. What you’re suggesting is far less fun. Do you really want to spend 10% of your time standing still casting venoms, and 90% of the time focusing on staying within range of your allies rather than fighting the enemy? Venoms in the style that they are now require skill and timing; they’re active. Venoms as you want them are passive and boring.

We might as well get the classic MMO pre-fight buffs. In Lord of the Rings Online, I played a class called Captain. We were the support masters of LOTRO. We had all kinds of ways to keep our group alive and make them stronger. Some were active, and those were fun to use. I’d heal my group, or hit them with a short but powerful damage boost along with them blowing their burst cooldowns for a massive spike of damage.

Then there were the passive effects. I had several different banners I could lay down that provide a passive effect to nearby allies. I had buffs that last an hour that I had to cast on every single person in my 12-man raid. I had a couple of buffs that lasted exactly as long as their cooldowns and simply had to be spammed the moment the icon lit up.

Those buffs were chores. They’re no fun, and they don’t take any teamwork, communication, skill, or timing. There’s no difference between a good captain and a bad one. All but the worst knuckle-draggers could manage those tasks. It was cool that I was supporting my group, but this part of it was no fun at all.

Trust me, the support in GW2 is much more fun entirely because it’s active. Shouts and Banners don’t have durations and cooldowns so that they can’t be up 100%. Spirits can’t move and are extremely squishy, so you have to be incredibly careful where you place them. All of the many group boon skills we have are active and have to be timed properly. This means that supporting your group takes skill and thought, and teams of people who work together and communicate can make those skills far more powerful by timing them right. You can’t do that with passive effects.

That is wrong, I play a banner warrior and I can get all my banners, except my elite one, up forever.

I can get some of my shout buffs up forever as well if I get 30 points in vitality for boon duration. (even make them cure conditions too if I get the right set!)

I don’t know a thing about spirits since I don’t play ranger.

Also, your right, it can be a devastating effect if done properly… but it could also be a waste of time too, your forgetting that you could waste it all on a single target, or even apply it all on a single group and then it all be instantly cured by a SINGLE guardian or shout warrior.

If your fighting against a warhorn warrior, he could cure every condition and change it into a boon, making your venoms kitten.

And these are COMMON builds in zergs and battlefields, the RANDOM chance makes it WAY better because your not throwing your stuff all at once, your effects are happening randomly, causing chaos, even if he cures his own poison or chill, his friend may get the effect after that and he won’t even know.

CHAOS on the battlefield trumps any well timed attack or advantage.

Since most Conditions Cures are AOE …. it completely destroys the “orderly” way to apply these venom debuffs, if you ran into a warhorn warrior with the right traits, he completely negates the current purpose of venoms, he will turn all your effects into a long AOE protection/regeneration.

And some how I don’t view thieves as the most orderly of players….

Your also forgetting about how orderly raids and stuff are this generation, everyone and there mother uses a voice chat program to order people to do certain things, since venom’s apply there effects all at once, its easilly countered in a raid by commanding certain players to cure such effects before they can make an impact.

Random proc has a place in GW2. See elementalist Glyph of Storms…or any on-crit sigil.

Venoms as the OP wants them would IMO be much better as a Signet-type ability. Equip them and have a passive chance for a weapon proc. Activate them for the guaranteed effect (only 1x probably)

Only make the active effect get shared to the group with venom sharing.

The problem is more like that 3 of the poisons are utter crap.

Basilisk Venom -> Cast time
Ice Drake Venom -> needs to be 2 sec
Skale -> completely useless, 3% more damage, for only 5 seconds to boot, woot….and if youre poison specced you can easily get weakness from other sources.
Spider -> only poison, no other effect, daggers already have this spammable, short bows (that every thief uses) have this spammable.

That only leaves devourer venom as the only good poison.
Also the “lasts for one more strike” trait needs to go, it’s too hard to balance with that existing.

My way is they have a long cast time and you may only have one or two venom’s up at a time, but they are quite powerful and passive, which leads to more chaotic random effects, not easily cured by enemy groups.

Since you are more group oriented and have to take the Venom Traits, you naturally do less damage then a normal thief and since your utility slots are filled, you cannot get away as easily as other thieves.

I like the way venoms are in combat, but hate how they work going from combat to combat. The long cool downs make it feel really bad to have it on your bar when going from fight to fight. I propose that when you are out of combat that you venoms auto apply themselves without triggering the cool down. This would allow the feeling like the venoms are being useful with out changing fights longer then 10 sec. Also make it that the auto apply doesn’t trigger on apply effects like might, venomous aura etc.

Dacromir.6207:

There’s a problem with this. A big problem.

It changes venoms from something that you use to something that you have. Think about it.

Right now, using a venom gives you a guaranteed, immediate effect. If I have devourer venom on my skill bar and I need an immobilize, I use it. I get an immobilize. There was skill and timing involved. You can just spam venoms, but (with the exception of spider venom) that’s not as effective as timing it right. Using venoms requires a thought.

Please listen to this man.

I like a guy with his own ideas so props for that, but venoms won’t ever be changed to a no-skill chance effect. They just won’t. It would be poor design.

IMO anet should buff venoms for the thief while nerfing venom sharing so that shared venoms have half the effects. Half the damage. Half the lifesteal. Half the duration. You get the picture.

Spider Venom should have more upfront damage with a more gradual trailing off effect, thereby promoting quicker use of condition removal abilities as a counter.

Drake’s Venom should have the duration doubled.

Devourer’s Venom is fine.

Skale Venom needs a complete change into something else. A 3-5 charge blind perhaps, or maybe a defensive option like a damage debuff on the target.

I think that the Basalisk Venom’s cast time is fine as it is, though it needs a way to differentiate itself from Devourer’s. Maybe a +% damage buff for the attacker on that target. It’s low cooldown (for an ultimate) makes up for the fact that it’s underwhelming.

Venoms DO need a buff however, for the following reasons:
1: They use valuable utility slots and this is highly detrimental to the survivability and flexibility of the thief
2: Their effects are very underwhelming (with the one exception) unless speccing into venoms and condition damage
3: Committing to a venom build requires a number of venoms to be on your bar for decent return on your investment, exaggerating the problems outlined in #1
4: Your venoms can be cleansed by all classes, netting you zero returns
5: Your venoms will be wasted if your enemy is halfway decent, through enemies blocking, being out of range, dodging or moving out of line of sight, also netting you zero returns

Have to agree the venom skills are worthless to be honest, If the effect isn’t totally lackluster, it doesn’t last long enough to be worth a utility slot, that is the problem with venoms, long cd, totally MEH effects, and they last for all of like 2 seconds. IMO stuff like that should’ve been a trait in poison tree or something lol, totally useless as utility slot.

I prefer the way it is now, its faster on the go type style and not WoW. I dont want GW2 to just become a WoW port with graphics.

Excellent concept for a thread. Let’s try to keep this one up top.

I certainly don’t make any use of venoms unless I’m specifically specced to. They should be good enough that I can feel I can switch them onto my utility bar on occasion while roaming around the world, giving me the chance to gain real advantage at least in certain situations and to have a blast while doing so.

All of the tricks and deceptions are up there at the moment. Traps have their own issues.

I thought for a while about what I would do to venoms. I considered an instant effect with a short-duration proccing effect, and then I considered an instant effect with a chain skill effect. What’s very much appealing to me, is how you can even combine chain skills and proc effects:

Spider Venom/ Inflict poison with your next attack. Gain a 10% chance to inflict poison for 10 seconds.

—>Black Widow’s Kiss (chain)/ Expend your poison to create a poisonous cloud of gas.

I thought about the most memorable poison effects used in other games, as well as some of the interesting properties of poisons on real live bodies:

A popular dungeon crawling game features a rare type of poison dart that is coated in curare. In this game, curare inflicts drastic poison damage but also—and it intensifies with every impact—asphyxiation, which is another deadly threat even when hit point death is averted. No amount of antidote vials can save your character from that.

It’s very interesting to me how intensely you have to stack curare needles to get the second, more powerful effect, here.

Then, after dwelling on the properties of many real-world poisons, what especially struck me is how long they can take to wreak their full effect on the body. Few are immediately acting. They take hours, or days; there is even a compound that can lay dormant for months, before causing deadly nerve damage.

These design points in mind, I’d like to suggest my new double-acting venoms. They’re a bit necromancery in their condition-dependency, but really this kind of effect is as yet not commonplace to GW2.

Spider Venom/ Poison foes with your next three attacks
Poison: 6 seconds
—>Spider Fang Strike/On your next attack: Deal damage for each second of poison on your foe, removing poison from that foe. Cripple your foe for each second of poison.
Cripple: 1s per 3s poison

Of course, Spider Fang Strike and all the chain skills I am proposing would have a lovely, long telegraphed cast animation. It’s wicked and bursty, but it’s brainy burst. You have to time it right. You can even gear for condition damage and not feel bad about it.

Ice Drake Venom/ Inflict chilled with your next three attacks
Chilled: 1 second
—>Jaws of Winter/On your next attack: Daze your foe for each second of chilled, consuming the chilled effect. Leave your foe in a cloud of frozen air.
Daze: Up to three seconds

Devourer Venom/ Your next two attacks immobilize
Immobilize: 2 seconds
—>Stalker’s Opportunity/ While your foe is immobilized, stealth and shadowstep behind them.

Skale Venom/ Make foes weak and vulnerable with your next three attacks. This vulnerability stacks in time and duration.
Weakness: 3s Vulnerability: 3 seconds
—>Break the Weak/For 10 seconds, your attacks against a vulnerable target each remove a boon.

My belief is that these new venoms will bring to the battlefield that true horror reserved for the scoundrel who—in a world of knights and honour, steeped in the lore of skilled and highly refined sword combat—succumbs to such treacheries as to dip his weapons in deadly venom! Actual effects will not be that much above what is already present in game (especially here with the non-venom thief utilities), but as soon as those venom-laying animations flash before your foe’s eyes, you’ll see them do anything either to avoid being attacked, or to get that condition flushed at all costs. Thus we’ve moved far, far away from the pure cold lethality of the traditional rogue or assassin—here have the true epitome of the thief’s modus operandi: Deadly and underhand, but above all cruelly psychological!

Please critique and refine to the best of your ability. While the first set of ideas may not have appealed to all commentators, the original poster’s cause was a worthy one!

Leave devourer and basilisk venoms as they are. Move spider/skale/drake to f2-f3-f4 and make triggering one force a 10 sec cd on others.

So you want to turn them into WoW poisons and submit them to the folly of RNG? Can’t say I’m a fan of this idea.

Nice ideas, jump. A venom system that adds more options can only be a good thing. I especially like your suggestion of attacking an enemy with poisons running on him and your attacks consuming those poisons for damage, however this would be a challenge to juggle for the 99% of players who have auto-attacking turned on and wish to see the venoms run their full course.

Rather than attacking the target, I would suggest that a seperate ability should consume the venom for physical damage. After immediately after applying the venom, perhaps the venom skill on your utility bar could change into a consume venom toggle to give thieves that option between a sustained DoT with debuffs and immediate physical burst.