Guild Wars 2

Organically came up with this in one of the many other ideas threads and thought I’d bring to the foreground to see what others’ impressions are.

Searing Venoms – Adds 10 seconds of burning to a target when a venom is cast.

The idea is to buff venom and condition builds in a sensible way since those are our weaker build options at the moment. Burning when CAST and not APPLIED I feel would be appropriately balanced. How this might fit into the traitlines still needs workshopped, but I think it could be fairly added on to Quick Venoms so the trait would look something like this:

Searing Venoms – Adds 10 seconds of burning to a target when a venom is cast. Venom skills recharge 20% faster.

Hear me out. Take a look at Warrior’s Forceful Greatsword trait, which is “Critical hits with a greatsword grant a stack of might. Greatsword skills recharge 20% faster.” That’s an amazing trait. Our venoms would apply a burning condition and are still subject to much longer cooldowns even with the 20% reduction you would gain from this. It is a Master level trait, same as Forceful Greatsword, so it is not too cheap in the tree. It would be cool if Venomous Aura worked with the burning, but that might get OP which is why I say burning on Cast, which belongs to the thief only. Who knows, maybe it wouldn’t be imba.

At any rate, thieves could really use another condition type to help with everything we apply being removed too easily, and speccing full venoms is not as balanced as it could be.

way OP it ll never happen if I go full venom build I would have 15 venom strikes at 10 secs of burn that is over 2 min of burning add that with a short bow aoe and venom share 5 people could take out a 20 man zerg even if it were 2 secs it would be op.

yeah burn is the most painful condition. 10s on a venomactivation would be insane. 4 venoms + condition duration + improv resetting venoms + burn duration runes.

4 minute burn. Bye bye commander siegerazer!

Wickedluck.9248:

way OP it ll never happen if I go full venom build I would have 15 venom strikes at 10 secs of burn that is over 2 min of burning add that with a short bow aoe and venom share 5 people could take out a 20 man zerg even if it were 2 secs it would be op.

when CAST not APPLIED meaning when you press the venom utility your target gets burnt, meaning at best 4 applications from 3 utility and BV.

Tbh in that form it wouldn’t really be that good, rather just add in a new venom “salamander drake venom”, “Your next 5 attacks apply Burning for 3s”

Though even that would give a terrible uptime on the burn.

1100 condition damage = ~603 damage a tick on burning / sec.
603×10 = 6,030
6,030×4 = 24,120

Even assuming they aren’t idiots and have a cleanse… I think it’s a bit much.

“Burning is a condition that inflicts damage over time and stacks in duration.” ~ Wiki

With 1100 condi damage, at best you get 6,030 damage in 10 seconds. You can stack it to last Longer, or reapply it after it gets cleansed. I think it would allow you to keep the pressure on an opponent if you are venom spec’d since you aren’t exactly bursting them or stealthing relentlessly. PvE it is only 24,120 damage over 40 seconds, not exactly game breaking.

5 seconds might be a more likely duration if 10 is OP. Make sense?

1 second on aplication with no ICD would make more sense to me. it would also allow you to spread it with venom share though, so that could be interesting.

Selver.1307:

1100 condition damage = ~603 damage a tick on burning / sec.
603×10 = 6,030
6,030×4 = 24,120

Even assuming they aren’t idiots and have a cleanse… I think it’s a bit much.

so 24,120 damage over 40 seconds every 45 seconds, if cleansed its xdamage over however long it took to be cleansed every 45 seconds at the cost of all your utilities and your elite.

Compare that to people that get to have a permanent up time on burning at the cost of equiping their condition damage weapon with a reapply time of anywhere between 2 seconds to 10 seconds depending on who is applying it.

Yeah the thief one is totally to much.

Personally I think it would be a terrible way to do it simply due to the next to no way to maintain the burn for any real length of time outside of PvE.

Dasorine.1964:

Selver.1307:

1100 condition damage = ~603 damage a tick on burning / sec.
603×10 = 6,030
6,030×4 = 24,120

Even assuming they aren’t idiots and have a cleanse… I think it’s a bit much.

so 24,120 damage over 40 seconds every 45 seconds, if cleansed its xdamage over however long it took to be cleansed every 45 seconds at the cost of all your utilities and your elite.

Compare that to people that get to have a permanent up time on burning at the cost of equiping their condition damage weapon with a reapply time of anywhere between 2 seconds to 10 seconds depending on who is applying it.

Yeah the thief one is totally to much.

Personally I think it would be a terrible way to do it simply due to the next to no way to maintain the burn for any real length of time outside of PvE.

So you’re saying it sucks because it is Not Enough burning?

because its not enough burning in a reasonable fashion.

Unless your loading up on full venoms thats 10s of burn every 45 seconds if you DO load up on venoms thats 40s every 45 which is only appliable in PvE as in PvP anyones going to cleanse it off in the first 5-10 seconds leaving you out of utilities and no more burning for basically a minute.

Compare that to the perma burns people can already get that can be reapplied around the same rate they could be removed… well..

I mean a condition engi can keep poison and burn up permanetly, keep a stack of around 10 bleeds at least AND have around 80% uptime on confusion.

Compared to a condition thief who can keep poison up and depending on the build maintain 12 bleeds with the odd burst of more from caltrops.

And thats just the damaging conditions, others have just as much if not more CC as well.

LordSlack.4685:

Organically came up with this in one of the many other ideas threads and thought I’d bring to the foreground to see what others’ impressions are.

Searing Venoms – Adds 10 seconds of burning to a target when a venom is cast.

The idea is to buff venom and condition builds in a sensible way since those are our weaker build options at the moment. Burning when CAST and not APPLIED I feel would be appropriately balanced. How this might fit into the traitlines still needs workshopped, but I think it could be fairly added on to Quick Venoms so the trait would look something like this:

Searing Venoms – Adds 10 seconds of burning to a target when a venom is cast. Venom skills recharge 20% faster.

Hear me out. Take a look at Warrior’s Forceful Greatsword trait, which is “Critical hits with a greatsword grant a stack of might. Greatsword skills recharge 20% faster.” That’s an amazing trait. Our venoms would apply a burning condition and are still subject to much longer cooldowns even with the 20% reduction you would gain from this. It is a Master level trait, same as Forceful Greatsword, so it is not too cheap in the tree. It would be cool if Venomous Aura worked with the burning, but that might get OP which is why I say burning on Cast, which belongs to the thief only. Who knows, maybe it wouldn’t be imba.

At any rate, thieves could really use another condition type to help with everything we apply being removed too easily, and speccing full venoms is not as balanced as it could be.

I think that this would be a fantastic idea, but I think that a nerf to bleed stacking would have to happen. Even with the nerf to bleed, the access to a burn would make condition thieves much stronger. you need approx 7-10 stack bleed to compare with that of burning so we’d need to cut out about 5-7 stacks of bleed to make this adjustment. Now before people get up in arms about bleed getting nerfed, one has to look at the biggest problem plaguing condition damage…….cleansing.

What do I mean? I mean that when a Thief applies his conditions, he is constantly stacking bleeding so it usually is the first condition applied. Yes one can apply poison or other none condition damage fodder, but then they have to use a none bleed opening strike first so that they can apply bleed. The Thief has plenty of conditions, but the damage conditions are important. So if I am able to stack 10+ bleeds (instead of 25 if I’m lucky), 10 sec of burning, damage will be similar, but I won’t have that huge risk that my damage is going to get killed if someone cleanses my bleed. This is pretty much the biggest risk to condition damage builds have and I think this would help it.

I also think making this new “trait” have an internal cooldown of 15 to 30 seconds on application would be best. That way even if you have 3 venom skills equiped, you’re only ever going to get 10 seconds of burning if you use all 3 venoms at once.

Keep in mind the Engineer can only stack about 10+ bleeds if he’s P/P, but he get’s 6s (12 secs if you run my build) ever 15 seconds. I practically can almost keep my target perma-burned with blowtorch & burn on crit.

Yes, I was saying it was impractical due to tying up utilities to maximize your burning uptime, and if blowing them all at once you’re left attacking and stuff with no utilities.

that’s like shadowstepping beside yourself, inside shadow refuge you just dropped, just to run into the middle of the zerg, blinding powder, then backstabbing the guardian in the middle of it.

maybe not that extreme, but you are typing up to much, even to trait it to teammates (where 10s is too much burning to be spread to 5 attackers), for it to be viable access to burning for condition builds. it would be venom builds with some condition damage.

the ICD idea on teh trait, or someones suggestion of it applying 1s of burning with the poison applications would be good imo, but I would still like a non utilitarian way to add burning to the thief toolset.

Golioth, no thief can hit 25 stacks of bleeds and keep it there, your looking at 10-15 at most outside of brief periods of 25 when burning stuff like caltrops.

Other people also get similiar spikes and such but on top of that they tend to have more damaging conditions in total as well.

And of course once you throw in another condition its already going to be nerfing the bleed stacking ability due to initiative costs or utility slots taken.

Dasorine.1964:

Golioth, no thief can hit 25 stacks of bleeds and keep it there, your looking at 10-15 at most outside of brief periods of 25 when burning stuff like caltrops.

Other people also get similiar spikes and such but on top of that they tend to have more damaging conditions in total as well.

Ya I thought exactly like you too, but someone who was helping me with my thief said that it was really easy to get 25 stacks with caltrops and such. I just assumed I sucked and that is why I couldn’t get 25 stacks.

yeah caltrops allow you to hit 25 stacks, however thats only around 6 seconds every 30 seconds you’ll hit the full 25 at base durations.

And of course only works if the target stays in them.

Man, only Sith deal in Absolutes…

Searing Venom would only be as useful as you make it. You want to run 4 venoms now all of a sudden to get access to 40 consecutive seconds of burning, be my guest. This probably wouldn’t be the best setup because all of your other utilities are now gone. PvE it could probably fly, but I wouldn’t PvP that way. 40 seconds of burn gets removed in 1 cleanse just the same as a10 second burn does. So does 25 stacks of bleeding or 5 stacks.

Say you choose 2-3 venoms and pick this trait. There is no point blowing all your venoms on one target immediately if you only have burning them in mind. You can stack up bleeding condition damage then pop a burning to bury it so your bleeds are not first removed. Or pop a venom to get a burn on a target then a few quick bleeds on top to protect it.

OK, so an ele just blew some cantrips or flipped to water to strip your burn off. Now you pop your 2nd venom and put it right back on. They’re gonna have to eat some fresh burn every time they cleanse it.

If this existed, I can’t tell you how to play with it and not suck by popping 4 burns on a guy at the same time expecting them to just die, then watch as it gets cleansed. Nor would it be the 1 trait intended to give 100% uptime PvP burn for anybody who took it.

But you’ll run out of utilities before they run out of cleansing and while they can wipe your stacks of bleeds if built right your going to be constantly reapplying them until they run out of cleanses etc.

Randomly putting a single instance of a condition somewhere won’t help condition builds as they’d need to maintain it to see any real use out of it and wont help direct damage builds cos “lulconditions”.

I mean that way isn’t quite as useless as our chill access but it wouldn’t really be worth it for I dare say the majority either.

Selver.1307:

Yes, I was saying it was impractical due to tying up utilities to maximize your burning uptime, and if blowing them all at once you’re left attacking and stuff with no utilities.

that’s like shadowstepping beside yourself, inside shadow refuge you just dropped, just to run into the middle of the zerg, blinding powder, then backstabbing the guardian in the middle of it.

maybe not that extreme, but you are typing up to much, even to trait it to teammates (where 10s is too much burning to be spread to 5 attackers), for it to be viable access to burning for condition builds. it would be venom builds with some condition damage.

the ICD idea on teh trait, or someones suggestion of it applying 1s of burning with the poison applications would be good imo, but I would still like a non utilitarian way to add burning to the thief toolset.

Let’s say that you use Spider, Icedrake, & Skale venom. They all have a 45 second cooldown. Take Spider venom alone. At most you can only get 24 seconds of poison. Let’s say you have a 15 sec interal cooldown. That means burning will proc for only 10 seconds out of 24 seconds and that you will only have 10 seconds of burn for that 45 second cooldown. Kinda sucks, but it doesn’t. That is why condition duration builds have become so popular for the Engineer. Don’t believe me check out the price history of Giver’s weapons and Rare Veggie pizza. With 100% condition duration you are now able to keep your poison up to 48 seconds. That now gives you 3 times to proc burning if it only had a 15 second interal cooldown. Add in the reduced cooldown trait on poison and now you have only a 36 second cooldown on your venoms, makes it even easier to get burning.

There’s a way to do it and I think condition duration builds could make this viable.

though the original idea was to apply the burning when you first cast the venom not when you apply a charge of said venom to the target.

It was, but I think internal cooldown would be better beacuse then it wouldnt be overpowering.

What if it was something like:
Searing Venom – 15% chance to add one second of burning to poisoned foes (2.5 second cool down).

That way you don’t necessarily have to bring your own poison but it would complement dagger main hand and short bow very well.

Goloith.6349:

It was, but I think internal cooldown would be better beacuse then it wouldnt be overpowering.

If we went the ICD route, I wouldn’t put it on a venom at all. Venoms already have 45 second cooldowns minimum. Also ICDs don’t have visible timers so it would just be another random and uncontrollable proc, and you would have no consistent way to reapply it once it gets cleansed, negating the purpose of building for conditions. Underpowered if anything, why even have it.

nopoet.2960:

What if it was something like:
Searing Venom – 15% chance to add one second of burning to poisoned foes (2.5 second cool down).

That way you don’t necessarily have to bring your own poison but it would complement dagger main hand and short bow very well.

I like this as a condition build helper, but it doesn’t do anything for venom specs. I mean, it doesn’t really Have to, I just think they need some love as well.

It sure would be interesting if ANET found a way to bring this idea to life.