Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,

returning to my thief after some engineer play.
man, ng’s are so much more fun to play… but however.

I was getting tired that all my utilities always circle around 5 , depending on the situation.

I wonder if any of you ever tried a full venom based build. ( PvE )
I know i will not be able to deal the amount of dmg i will be doing with full zerker setup + 25/30/0/0/15 , but i am looking for something different.

There are now dmg-meters so i don’t care so much about that, i seek a fun to play build.

Venom by itself is bad, it seriously needs a buff. But a bleed+venom build can become quite decent according to my experiences, given that you have enough cond dmg and cond duration. But that only works in solo. Imho until ANet solves the issue of a common condition stack between players you shouldn’t stick to these kind of builds.

Btw I don’t understand why poison bleed and burning are a thing shared between players. If 5 condition build people attack the same target, they should deal the same kind of damage 5 power based people would do, even if only in a longer time. Reduce max stack to 15-20 and give us individual condition stacks, that’s what ANet should so.

There is a full venom build for the thief, but it isn’t built for a lot of damage, instead it’s a healing, survivable build. For traits, if you go 30/0/30/10/0 and trait for reduced venom cooldown, extra poison duration, and 1 extra strike for all your poison skills in the deadly arts line. Trait regeneration in stealth, leeching venoms, and heal in stealth in the shadow arts tree. And go for vigor on heal in acrobatics. Run around with full apothecary gear, with superior runes of water. Use pistol/dagger. Equip withdraw, 3 venoms and whatever for your elite. Now you have a supportive, survivable thief, with an insane amount of healing and regeneration and decent conditional damage. Just to give an idea, every second that you’re in stealth, you regenerate about 700 hp (4 seconds of stealth if you wait it out). Every time a venom triggers it’s about 500hp. You have 14 venom triggers (7000hp) every 36 seconds. Keep in mind these numbers are just what I remember from when I tested this in pvp on the npc fighters, they are not completely accurate. I don’t know how viable it would be in pvp, but in pve I can imagine it would be really fun running dungeons, or doing any high-level intense pve with this setup.

I actually run with the 30-0-30-10-0 and it works. I’m sticking with it really as it’s how I want play PVE rather than through any min/max calculation. I get good venoms but I see them as one option amongst many since they are just not optimal all the time ( I only use 3 venoms when underwater, and this build should be good underwater). The build provides a strong shortbow with the trait for extra damage and the bonus of weakness upon poison. You get a good offhand dagger with choice of main hand weapon. The bonus damage against enemies with a condition is a given. There are times when it’s still better to have an offhand pistol and the build struggles to give much support there. I usually work with no additional initiative generation at all.

To be honest, I’d recommend 10/15 points in acrobatics for any thief in any build since you need vigor and endurance for the most dangerous dungeon/fractal opponents.

I did something like this for a while. It worked out okay, and sharing Basilisk Venom in a dungeon is hilarious. You bypass defiant! I’m not sure if you interrupt (I think you just… pause the enemy mid-animation) but it gives more breathing room in boss fights as well.

The build isn’t naturally high in damage, but it has a lot of control. (Spider poison will give weakness, ice drake for chill, basilisk for stone, etc) If you go 30 points into Shadow Arts (sharing is caring!), you get a lot of survivability as well, since you can choose 2 stealth traits.

My only problem was that I didn’t feel directly impactful unless I was using basilisk venom. I mean, looking around and knowing all the poison / weakness / immobilize / chill floating around was because of me felt nice, but outside basilisk, venoms never quite had the “Boom I win” moment that other utility skills could provide.

lvis.3824:

man, ng’s are so much more fun to play… but however.

Uh….what the hell is ng? I’ve never heard that before…or am I missing something?

Short for N.G.Neer would be my guess.

My Thief runs 30/10/30/0/0 in Knight’s gear for PvE. Throw in some “heal on critical” effects (via weapon sigils and food) to back up the low health and you should be good to go. It’s decent for soloing and powerful when you can raise the effectiveness of a bunch of people. However it’s not the strongest grouping spec if people won’t stay close enough to you for your buffs. (I personally run Lyssa runes for the condition removal, but those are a matter of personal taste.)

I used to play a venom/bleed thief, and I had no problem eating zerker bursts from other thieves or 100 blade warriors. Your bleeds also hit like hell (over 100 per tick). I went for a survival d/p later because I wanted to try something new, but the condition thief is far more powerful if played right.

Anyways, these were my traits: 20/0/30/20/0. All Carrion gear. Superior sigil of agony and runes of the mad king (just for the fun of the elite skill) / runes of the krait, centaur and afflicted if I remember right. Go for a P/D set up with SB as second weapon set. Devourer venom, spider venom,Signet of Shadows and Thieves Guild. Main rotation will be Cloak n’ Dagger and then 1 skill (Sneak Attack). You heal when you apply venoms, you heal in stealth, you gain initiative and/or blind upon doing so too. You can chose to go 25 in deadly arts, but you really don’t need that extra damage, because your bleeds is your main source of damage, not the shot itself.

I found SlicGW after playing some time with my condition thief, and he really know what he’s doing, so I suggest you look him up on YouTube for some guidance on how to play this build.

Hope this helped

lvis.3824:

~snip~

I wonder if any of you ever tried a full venom based build. ( PvE )
I know i will not be able to deal the amount of dmg i will be doing with full zerker setup + 25/30/0/0/15 , but i am looking for something different.

There are now dmg-meters so i don’t care so much about that, i seek a fun to play build.

I don’t see why a full venom based build would not use ’zerker items when the ’zerger benefits the most with such build.

I used to run 30/0/0/30/10 with Apothecary + Undead Runes + Rabids. A lot of condition damage but it is vey slow at killing anything in comparison to other weaponset.