Guild Wars 2

It was disappointing to see Anet touting venom share changes in their preview video when they left venoms themselves in such a poor state.

The problem is a combination of factors -
- Most venoms on their own are lackluster for their CD
- Venom traits are all or nothing – there’s little benefit to taking 1 venom trait and 1 venom utility – you’ll typically go all in or ignore the traits entirely.
- Venoms take up utility slots, denying stun breakers and Condition Cleansing. Since you’re taking 4-5 venom-only traits, every non-venom utility you take is wasting all those trait choices.

Remember cantrip ele’s? Does anyone think they would have worked as well as they did if cantrips didn’t have a stunbreaker, protection, stability, and a condition cleansing mechanic among them? Because that’s how venoms are currently designed.

Having said that, here are some suggestions to fix venom traits (I Don’t have any good suggestions on how to fix venoms themselves, sadly)

Residual Venoms – In addition to the current effect, activating a venom now breaks stuns.

Leeching Venoms – In addition to the current effect,Triggering a venom removes/transfers a condition, 1s ICD

Quick Venoms (This one is “optional”, more brainstorming than anything else) – Reduce Venom recharge by 50%, reduce triggers per use by 33%, rounding up

Venomous strength – Small heal when activating a venom (instead of current effect)

Potent Poison – gain 1 stack of might (? Duration) each time you trigger a venom (instead of current effect)

Venomous Aura – Unchanged.

Residual venoms stunbreaking should have an ICD. Otherwise you’d have 4 stunbreakers all on 36s cooldown when traited. It’d be too much.

Gwalchgwn.1659:

Residual venoms stunbreaking should have an ICD. Otherwise you’d have 4 stunbreakers all on 36s cooldown when traited. It’d be too much.

I should have clarified, but I Don’t see BV stun breaking (Due to the cast time)

An ICD unfortunately doesn’t work, because then it would be nigh useless.

I don’t think 3 stunbreakers on a 36s CD is too much because you’re also using the venom. You’re trading the versatility of using the venom at the right time with the ability to get out of being stunned right now, and hoping that the venom is useful.

They also aren’t as useful as a thief’s current stunbreak choices – RFI returns init, evades, and breaks snare/root. SS is a gap opener/closer, a condition cleanse on return, and potentially breaks 2 stuns. Inf Sig teleports you to your target.

Was just adding my two cents. It’d be essentially 4 stunbreakers more for thieves
Also you forgot shadowtrap: Shadowtrap (untripped version) also stunbreaks with a casting time. Not saying that it’s a great utility (was better without casting time) but it still does it and have some perks when you have no other options. The tripped version is still a good stunbreaker

No, man.

Venoms need a tweak, not a massive buff. If they combine a couple of the traits so you don’t have to spread out so much to make them work it would be fine. You would run 2 utility venoms, 1 stun break and Basilisk as Elite.

If you didn’t have to spread out traits so much, then it would be fine.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

No, man.

Venoms need a tweak, not a massive buff. If they combine a couple of the traits so you don’t have to spread out so much to make them work it would be fine. You would run 2 utility venoms, 1 stun break and Basilisk as Elite.

If you didn’t have to spread out traits so much, then it would be fine.

That’s certainly an option – combining/reducing the number of traits needed to effectively run venoms could solve the issue, combined with slightly more useful venoms in the first place.

but if they retain the current structure then it should be powerful – If I’ve got 5 out of my 7 trait choices (Leaving only 2 adept traits not dedicated to venoms) focused entirely on venoms, shouldn’t they be fairly powerful and versatile?

They need to remove venom sharing, or modify it, so venoms can be properly balanced. Perhaps a base poison type that gets shared via venom sharing, and traits to upgrade what those venoms do, instead of increasing duration and what not, that won’t get shared.

-or-

Perhaps adjust Venom Sharing so that for every person under the 5 that would share those venoms, it reduces the cool down by say, 2-3 seconds per person missing. It would be beneficial to those that solo and run in a group. With Quick Venoms, that would put venom CDs at ~26 seconds if alone.