Guild Wars 2

(Posting this on behalf of a friend who has a bug that prevents them from accessing the forums!)

PvE Healing/Support Thief

I came up with an interesting build for thieves that I found to work quite well in dungeons at both debuffing enemies while also keeping your team topped up on health. Naturally it comes with some disadvantages as well as it’s advantages which I’ll try to outline in my post.

The Build

30 Deadly Arts. IV (Venomous Strength), VIII (Quick Venoms), XII (Residual Venom)
30 Shadow Arts. III (Shadow Protector), IX (Leeching Venoms), XII (Venomous Aura)
10 Trickery. V (Thrill of the Crime)

Pros

• Provides some good healing to the team via Leeching Venoms.
• Can constantly apply Weakness to mobs via Poison.
• Can keep up Blindness on groups of mobs via Black Powder.
• Is great at keeping up Might.
• High Toughness.

Cons

• Low damage for a Thief.
• Small health pool if focused on Healing Power.
• Requires you to be close to your teammates to apply venoms. (Roughly 300 units)

Weapons, Utilities and Gear

I personally like to use Dagger/Pistol + Shortbow with this build. With these weapons it’s easy to apply AoE blinds (via Black Powder) which can really help against lots of elites mobs, and it can also apply AoE Poison with Shortbow, which paired with Lotus Poison from the DA tree makes it an amazing way to stack Weakness on groups of enemies. Dagger’s primary attack also applies a poison, and so weakness as well, which is handy for single targets.

For utilities, the build is based around healing via your venom skills. I take Skale Venom, Spider Venom (simply for the 6 procs of heals it’ll bring), and I take Shadow Refuge which when geared for healing can easily provide 2k+ heals plus a Life Leech field for projectiles. For the Elite I use Basilisk Venom, which when applied to your team can stun any kind of boss mob for upwards of 5+ seconds, depending upon the spread of your attacks.

For gear I went with straight up Cleric’s gear. Cleric gear adds Power, Toughness, and most importantly Healing Power. Coincedentally enough those are also the stats you get from your trait lines, so it all works out!

The Role

Your role with this build is to help keep your team’s HP up with your venoms, while also constantly keeping Weakness up on the enemies, providing significant damage reduction to your team. You can also provide awesome blinds via Black Powder to elite mobs, making their attacks all but non-existant. Blinds are only 10% effective on champion/boss mobs however, so focus on Weakness for those. Aside from the healing, your venoms also provide some great conditions and with Thrill of the Crime you can apply a bit of Fury and Swiftness to teammates as well.

With Venomous Aura, all the venoms you use also apply to allies within about 300 units from you. However it also applies the benefits that your traits adds to venoms as well, such as Leeching Venoms and Venomous Strength. That means if you give Spider Venom to your team, you’re giving them 2 stacks of Might for 20 seconds, plus 6 attacks that will heal them for about 600 HP per attack (varies based upon healing power).

The healing people get from the Leeching Venoms depends entirely on your own Healing Power, not theirs. I find this to be outstanding, as I can stack healing power and someone who’s traited for pure DPS can still benefit greatly from my venoms.

Tips

• Don’t overlap your venoms. If you stack all three venoms overtop of eachother, the next attack will only heal once, but take away a charge from all three venoms. It’s a waste of healing, so spread out your applications to provide the best overall effect.
• Choking Gas (the Shortbow poison AoE) applies 4 ticks of poison throughout its duration. This applies 12s of Weakness to enemies in the field, which can increase your team’s survivability significantly.
• Healing provided to your teammates by Leeching Venoms is also determined by your own Healing Power.
• Basilisk Venom’s stun does not stack in duration, but if you hold off on attacking for a short time after your teammates have stunned the mob, you can then stun it immediately afterwards to prolong the effect. With timing and teammwork, you could potentionally stun a boss for 10 seconds.
• Basilisk Venom seems to ignore champion mobs CC immunity counters. It stuns everything!
• A well-timed Skale Venom provided to your team can apply up to 20 stacks of Vulnerability (+20% damage taken) to a boss for a few seconds.
• Don’t underestimate the strength of Weakness!

That’s about all I can think of for now. What do you think?

I personally run Signet of Malice as my heal skill.
I run Sword/Pistol + Shortbow because the auto-attacks AoEs which takes only one charge from a venom, easy condition removal, and though it’s been slightly nerfed, PW is extremely useful in interrupting/evading/healing yourself, especially if you have Signet of Malice.

I’ve also been running this build in WvW with some success. I feel like I’m one of the few thieves that actually like Basilisk Venom the way it is now. Broke the stun? Nope, sorry, my teammate just restoned you. On occasion I’ll switch it out for Dagger Storm and infiltrate them, using the signet’s auto heal and venoms to keep me alive.

very interesting build, but it looks like it would require a LOT of team coordination.

Its a cool build, and group venoms are powerful for sure.

Personally, I dont like healing power as a stat for the thief. Even with 1100 healing power, my hide in shadows, regeneration boons, and assassins reward heals barely seemed to heal me for more than what I normally get with only 250 healing power. I didnt notice a significant difference anyway. I also gear for toughness, but I prefer to stack power/prec and or cond damage instead of healing to boost my damage.

Question: Why use Dagger/Pistol instead of Pistol/Pistol? It seems like close quarter combat is something you want to avoid with this build.

I like the idea of it and will happily give it a try.

Steelfang.9164

I feel like I’m one of the few thieves that actually like Basilisk Venom the way it is now.

It’s my friend who’s running this spec, but from my perspective, the group basilisk venom is great!

Stx.4857

Personally, I dont like healing power as a stat for the thief. Even with 1100 healing power, my hide in shadows, regeneration boons, and assassins reward heals barely seemed to heal me for more than what I normally get with only 250 healing power.

To give you some comparison numbers for how it works with Leeching Venom:

• 300 Healing Power: 385 per heal
• 1388 Healing Power: 603 per heal

That’s a pretty sizable amount, but it ultimately depends on what you’re trying to achieve, I’d say, and whether or not the ~57% increase is worthwhile or not.

Judas.5432

Question: Why use Dagger/Pistol instead of Pistol/Pistol? It seems like close quarter combat is something you want to avoid with this build.
I like the idea of it and will happily give it a try.

While it’s my friend who runs it, I think I can help shed some light as to this one! Basically, the short range of the Venomous Aura (seems to be about ~240-300) is pretty restrictive and the nature of the build means that you’ll want to be wherever your party is. This usually means close-quarters for the usual group composition my friend and I run with!

That said, I’d still be interested to hear if you end up preferring one set of weapons over the other when you get it a shot!