Guild Wars 2

So a thief general is thought of being sneaky….stealthy….poisons…..etc right? so i was thinking out of all these useless venoms that we never equip….why dont they just make them a more integral part of one of our traitlines like Deadly Arts and or Critical strikes
or just mix them around etc.
Some Ideas for traits or passives:

Dipped blades
“30% chance on a critical strike to apply skale venom for 5 seconds. 30 sec Cooldown” Traited

Arctic Venom
“Whenever you apply poison you also chill that enemy for 1.5 seconds” Passive

Basilisks Surprise
“20% chance on a critical strike to immobilize an enemy for 2 seconds from the side/rear. 45 second cooldown” Passive

Spiders Speed
“10% chance to poison enemy for 2 seconds on auto attacks” Passive

Toxiphobia (love this name:) lol )
“Chill nearby enemies for 1 second when activating a poison” Passive

Serpent Strike
“Apply 3 stacks of bleeding whenever you poison an enemy” Traited

Assassins Boast
“When you kill a target you have a 10% chance to renew all venoms. Cooldown 50 seconds” Traited

Venom potpourri
“Appy a random venom to an enemy for 3 seconds when an attack misses from being blinded. 10 second cooldown” Traited

Cathartic Finale
“Apply poison for 5 seconds, 3 stacks of bleeding for 5 seconds, chill for 1.5 second, immobilize for 1 seconds, weakness for 5 seconds and blindness for 5 seconds on up to 5 enemies without 750 radius whenever using and elite skill. Gain cripple for 10 seconds, 20 stacks of vulnerability for 10 seconds and poison for 10 seconds. "

just some ideas but the main point is they should/could make venoms so much more integral than they are. would love to use a poison build if it were a viable choice. just using the utility venoms kinda are not enough to make a build work…..making them integral with traits would help and also work into the whole “thief assassin” mentality lore.

I actually really like that idea. Make it happen cap’n!

I still dislike venoms.

zach yeah but if they were integral part of thieves so you got all these plus the utility ones …..u could really do some damage! not op but theres ways to change what i said abov e to make it really flow well like the whole stealth system. stealth synergy is great for thieves as we can get defense offense and healing/condi kill out of it without having to sacrifice all offense or all defense to do it. although our defense is pretty much sac’d as is but u know what i mean

I see what you mean. Personally I think they should put venoms on the F keys.

Why not just have venoms as f2 f3 and f4 with separate obviously more powerful ones in utilities and traits. Steal has got to be the most boring simple class specific mechanic in the game. Adding venom’s as a class mechanic could spice things up.

Traits are the main problem that venoms have currently. Venom traits should be removed, not added. Venoms will never be useful to a majority of thieves when they’re balanced around taking every venom trait and building around them. I’d rather see malleable and useful venoms that every thief can integrate into their playstyle than a single viable venom build that loads up on them while everyone else ignores them.

Tulisin.6945:

Traits are the main problem that venoms have currently. Venom traits should be removed, not added. Venoms will never be useful to a majority of thieves when they’re balanced around taking every venom trait and building around them. I’d rather see malleable and useful venoms that every thief can integrate into their playstyle than a single viable venom build that loads up on them while everyone else ignores them.

interesting point. since everything has to be balanced with venom share in mind, venom share builds wind up being mediocre, while taking a splash of venom in a build is just pointless. I like where you are going with this.

alternatively, I think venom share should be moved to trickery. seems oddly placed as is.

Tulisin.6945:

Traits are the main problem that venoms have currently. Venom traits should be removed, not added. Venoms will never be useful to a majority of thieves when they’re balanced around taking every venom trait and building around them. I’d rather see malleable and useful venoms that every thief can integrate into their playstyle than a single viable venom build that loads up on them while everyone else ignores them.

I’m with you on this. The problem with Venoms is that they’re all balanced around the assumption you’ll have every related trait, which on top of it all are split between two separate branches.

Honestly I do fine with venoms, it’s more about they buffing Skale and Ice Drake.

The first thing they have to do is break their design rule of “all X next attack based skills are active for 30 seconds and 45 seconds cooldown” (there are ranger and elementalist skills that work exactly like this too, it’s a shared design). It could perfectly change for each separate case (20 seconds cooldown with 15 seconds active, 35 seconds cooldown with 25 seconds active…) and they would be way easier to balance.

If Skale gets the change to torment AND (and only if both happens) it’s aumented to kittens it will be usable (Spider is great on sharer leech venoms for all the damage it gives in kittens of leeching).

About traits I think that putting Quick Venoms and Venomous Strength would be a good start.

Something I was thinking the other day when they mentioned more ways to break stun:

Alchemist Focus: If you have 2 (maybe one with longer cooldown) venoms active you break stun, X seconds cooldown.

As venoms are usable even when stunned, you could either be inmune to your first stun if you have 2 equiped and if you get stun locked activate some of them to break it.

Why this make sense? Well, the Thief just put some very valuable resources on his blades/bullets that he needed time in an alchemy lab to get. He should be very focused that he will use them correctly when they apply them.

And… tadaaaaaa! A new family of utilites gets a stun breaker

Honestly breaking stun is one of the very few things that really affect me playing my Venom Share build, overal it performs really well.

See here (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Thief-is-not-a-Thief/first#post2187795) for some venom ideas that could actually become reality if the structure of venom/trait synergy was changed. At the very least, venom share could be offloaded to an elite.

they would be great if we didnt have to click to apply them. they dont neccessarily have to be put into traits or passives. but how about weapon skills added into or even other skill utilities. for instance :

scorpion wire + scale venom

3rd auto attack + 5 seconds of spider venom

30% chance of sec ice drake venom in trick shot

Scale venom + unload

.5 sec immobilize (devourer venom) on body shot

.5 sec immob on dancing dagger

so many ways you can put the venoms into the game without cluttering up utility bar or the traitlines etc. obv pistols are better at conditions so focus poison/bleed venoms on them and vulnerbiblity/weakness and immobilize on dagger since you need them immobed like so.

venoms mostly suffer from trying to be condition damage but only being able to apply one condition that actually does damage. If there was a trait that added bleeds to all venom applications then I suspect that would see a lot more use.

If the leaked notes are true venoms will see even less use however due to the change of the only good venom we currently have.

yeah basically right. venoms are a SLIGHTLY longer version of what weapon conditions do :P. major fail on anets part.

Travlane.5948:

Arctic Venom
“Whenever you apply poison you also chill that enemy for 1.5 seconds” Passive
Spiders Speed
“10% chance to poison enemy for 2 seconds on auto attacks” Passive
Serpent Strike
“Apply 3 stacks of bleeding whenever you poison an enemy” Traited

Nerf incoming

3 stacks of bleed + 1.5s chill on every auto attack chain of my daggers – yes please
3 stacks of bleed + 1.5s chill on every pulse of choking gas – yes please

I think venoms suck mainly because of the venom share trait.

1. The dev’s can’t make the venoms too powerful or they will be over powered when shared with a group. However, when not shared they are fairly weak. If they got rid of the venom share trait and buffed the venoms to be quite powerful then I think we would see more players running condition builds with venoms.
2. The other problem is that venom share AoE is far too small – it needs to be 600 or 1200 range rather than “everyone can you please stand right next to me so i can press some buttons before we start fighting”.

@dzernumbrd there really isnt anything OP in the suggestions of mine however perhaps if u apply them in venom share i could agree. only a 10% chance on auto attack to cause poison for only a lowly 2 secs? :P when that triggers apply 3 stacks of bleeding for like 5 secs? still a very low chance of happening ….although its passive so every lil bit helps. point is you dont have to put them in your utilities. i like venom share but they neede to superbuff regular venoms and put in a modifier for the venom share like only 1 tick each and half the time or somethign idk.

ps 3 stacks of bleeding when you poinson an enemy wouldnt be a bad grandmaster trait. id pick it especially with a chance at poisoning. so many attacks are missed…blcoked…evaded….blinded….invuln etc thakittens a really low low number. anyway lots of options here but i think we all agree the common denominator is the venom share . it breaks any chance of making venoms strong. take out venom share or modify it and make venoms correct.

Travlane.5948:

@dzernumbrd there really isnt anything OP in the suggestions of mine however perhaps if u apply them in venom share i could agree. only a 10% chance on auto attack to cause poison for only a lowly 2 secs? :P when that triggers apply 3 stacks of bleeding for like 5 secs?

The reason I think it is OP is this: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lotus_Strike

Thieves already apply poison during our auto attack (without your trait), so your bleed and chill traits would trigger on every Lotus Strike chain of the auto attack and on every pulse of choking gas poison field.

So every rotation of our auto attack would apply 3 stacks of bleed for 5 seconds (which on a condition thief with full duration bonuses would be very damaging) and you would be perma chilling them so they couldn’t move away (because our auto attack chain is so fast the next 1.5s chill would be applied just as the previous one was finishing).

If someone stood in our poison field from shortbow for the full duration they would have 12 stacks of bleed (4 pulses x 3 stacks) for 5 seconds and 6 second chill (4 pulses x 1.5seconds) and we would be able to spam it to where ever they are trying run because they would be permanently chilled. Players would melt to a condition spec thief with shortbow. Plus you can lay those poison fields while you are stealthed so we wouldn’t just be deadly – we would be invisible death. Can you imagine the forum crying…