Guild Wars 2

Venoms as they are now are very flawed. They’re dull, and they’re kinda weak.
I think a great way to improve them would be to add a passive effect along with the active effect, similar to signets.
There are any number of ways they could be differentiated from signets if necessary, like having the active effect not disable the passive while on recharge.

Have them passively apply an effect on every X attack you land, just like the Guardian’s Virtue of Justice.
For example, Devourer Venom could passively apply a few seconds of Cripple on every 5th attack that you land, and apply Immobilization on your next attack when you activate it.

This would make them feel much more like Venoms should as well as giving them a generally more interesting mechanic. More importantly it would make them more useful.
One of the bigger problems with Venoms is that they just frontload a bunch of conditions at once, which in some cases can’t even stack with their self, and in many cases will just all get cleansed off together. This change makes them more spread out as they should be.

I think lower cooldowns would do it. Accordingly – reduce the number of hits per application. So you could just apply one dose of spider venom, then get another in 10 seconds or so, rather than getting 5 at once then lots of time without any, or make it 2 every 20 seconds…something like that. Skale venom is awful, so put the doses/cds on par with spider venom. This would mean many more applications of venoms, so venom mightstacking may be affected as well…but people don’t really use that trait much now, so I don’t think rebalancing it would nerf any popular builds. This would also make venom healing a bit better, and would let thieves put venom on throughout a fight, rather than just frontloading it, and then having little utility.

Another suggestion I saw in a thread a while ago was to treat them like mantras, which I think would be good as well.

Not sure about this signet idea…seems like too much of the same thing.

Devourer Venom is plenty strong.
Problem with venoms is high CD’s keep them out of the game for extensive periods of time. Making them all flat forty-five seconds doesn’t help the attractiveness of things like Ice Drake venom when it’s sitting next to Devourers.

Devourer’s is useful in certain builds, but I wouldn’t really call it a “strong” skill. The Immobilization doesn’t stack with itself, so you only get 2-3 seconds of Immobilization, literally nothing else without traits, on a 45 second recharge.
Compare that to something like Throw Bolas, which gives a flat 4 second Immobilize on a 20 second recharge. And Warriors have infinitely more potential to abuse an Immobilized target than Thieves do.

Make passive element on this Venom skills.

Spider Venom – every 3 hits applies poison or 30% chance per hit/crit to apply this effect
Skale Venom – every 3 hits applies Torment or 30% chance per hit/crit to apply this effect

Problem fixed

Evilek.5690:

Make passive element on this Venom skills.

Spider Venom – every 3 hits applies poison
Skale Venom – every 3 hits applies Torment

Problem fixed

This. I would use venoms more if this happened.

I realized something else this would fix; right now Venoms are weak because, with the proper Grandmaster trait, they can be shared with your group.
With this change though, only the Active effect would be shared, and the Active effect would need to be toned down to fewer hits to compensate for the passive.
This means that much less of the skill’s effect would be focused on the shareable portion, and so there would be far less need to limit its power.
Since Venomous Aura would then become a weaker trait, it could also be moved down to the Master tier and become far more accessible.

And while you are at it give us 2F-4F for steal pockets

Evilek.5690:

Make passive element on this Venom skills.

Spider Venom – every 3 hits applies poison or 30% chance per hit/crit to apply this effect
Skale Venom – every 3 hits applies Torment or 30% chance per hit/crit to apply this effect

Problem fixed

This is a great idea. I like it. I’d probably reduce it to 20% or so, but the concept is great.

Similar to what I proposed for venom’s a while back

Venoms in general – 15s CD (excluding Basilisk Venom), Both passive and active effect. No internal CD on passive effect. Passive effect is base 20%(Might need adjusting?) chance to trigger

Spider venom –
Passive: Poisons for 2s.
Active: Poisons 3 times for 2s a piece, bleeds 3 times for 6s a piece.

Devourers Venom –
Passive: Cripples for 2s, vulnerability for 4s.
Active: Immobilizes 1 time for 3s

Ice Drake Venom –
Passive: Torment for 2s.
Active: Chill 3 times for 1.5s, torments 3 times for 4s a piece

Skale Venom –
Passive: Burning for 1s
Active: Burning 3 times for 2s,

Basilisk Venom (CD unchanged)
Passive: weakness for 1s
Active: Stun 1 times for 1s

Traits:
Potent Poison: Unchanged
Venomous Strength: Gain 1 stack of might for 4 to 5s every time a venom triggers (included passive and active triggers)
Quick Venoms: No longer lose the passive effect of venom’s when they’re on CD, 20% faster venom CD
Residual Venom: 15% greater passive trigger chance.
Leeching venoms: Effect reduced by a great degree – the venoms I’ve designed above trigger much, much more often, so the additional damage/heal would need to be reduced alot
Venomous Aura: Bigger radius, includes passive trigger chance while in radius as well, otherwise unchanged.

Spider venom is a good all around venom (poison is useful), and the active is good for Condi specs.
Devourer venom is tailored for Direct damage specs, but condi specs might find use in cripple and immob
Ice Drake Venom and Skale venom are tailored for condi specs, and basilisk venom is tailored for Direct Damage.

Maybe some of the specific numbers up there need to be adjusted a bit, but there we go – Venoms that work well by themselves, Are worth spec’ing into, and work well with both Power/Crit setups And Condition setups. Best of all, they work well with our high hit volume attacks (PW, Unload), opening up new avenues for Condition based P/P or S/P. Heck, you could turn Shbow into a team fight condition weapon with the above venoms and the right spec.

Consistency in the every X attacks is much better than a random chance though; it prevents you from getting a bunch of wasted back-to-back activations or drawn out gaps of no activations.

Grimwolf.7163:

Consistency in the every X attacks is much better than a random chance though; it prevents you from getting a bunch of wasted back-to-back activations or drawn out gaps of no activations.

Every X attacks makes it hard to use effectively for certain setups – who wants trickshot wasting a venom trigger on a turret, or choking gas applying it to a rock dog, or a ricocheted unload shot applying it to a jagged horror?

evilapprentice.6379:

Grimwolf.7163:

Consistency in the every X attacks is much better than a random chance though; it prevents you from getting a bunch of wasted back-to-back activations or drawn out gaps of no activations.

Every X attacks makes it hard to use effectively for certain setups – who wants trickshot wasting a venom trigger on a turret, or choking gas applying it to a rock dog, or a ricocheted unload shot applying it to a jagged horror?

If you have things like that hitting multiple targets, you may risk losing the venom to a random enemy you may not want, but you also get more activations overall.

Grimwolf.7163:

evilapprentice.6379:

Grimwolf.7163:

Consistency in the every X attacks is much better than a random chance though; it prevents you from getting a bunch of wasted back-to-back activations or drawn out gaps of no activations.

Every X attacks makes it hard to use effectively for certain setups – who wants trickshot wasting a venom trigger on a turret, or choking gas applying it to a rock dog, or a ricocheted unload shot applying it to a jagged horror?

If you have things like that hitting multiple targets, you may risk losing the venom to a random enemy you may not want, but you also get more activations overall.

You don’t get more activations overall, you just get more predictable activations – if we pretend the activation chance is 33%, or your attacks apply it on the third strike, they should happen at the same rate. It will also have the unfortunate side effect of applying all your conditions to 1 target – lets say you’re running Skale, Ice drake, and Basilisk venom, and you’re AAing with shbow – that third target is the only one being hit by any passive venom triggers. random chance lets you spread the love a little bit, while having the same overall trigger rate.

No, I mean you get more activations from the every X method when attacking multiple people, rather than attacking a single person with the every X method. Which counteracts the chance of applying it to someone you don’t want.
Say you’re attacking one person primarily, but catching a second person with ricochets or whatever. You have a 50% chance of hitting the person you want, but you’ll trigger the venom twice as often.
Besides, how is that worse than ALWAYS having a random chance of applying it to who you want?

Grimwolf.7163:

No, I mean you get more activations from the every X method when attacking multiple people, rather than attacking a single person with the every X method. Which counteracts the chance of applying it to someone you don’t want.
Say you’re attacking one person primarily, but catching a second person with ricochets or whatever. You have a 50% chance of hitting the person you want, but you’ll trigger the venom twice as often.
Besides, how is that worse than ALWAYS having a random chance of applying it to who you want?

But you don’t get more activations – mathematically, 33% chance is equivalent to every third attack (well, 33.3%, but you get the idea) – one method is set in stone, the other is random.

Each attack has a chance to trigger the venom – each initial pistol hit and each ricochet has (in this example) a 33% chance to trigger the venom, which is the same as every third attack.

It’s potentially worse in an AoE situation where the only person suffering from your conditions is the third person being hit, rather than everyone being hit to some lesser degree.

the venom share makes your party strong if <300 range (all melee?)
but yourself is weak, and a liability if the party is not staying close to you

Grimwolf.7163:

I realized something else this would fix; right now Venoms are weak because, with the proper Grandmaster trait, they can be shared with your group.
With this change though, only the Active effect would be shared, and the Active effect would need to be toned down to fewer hits to compensate for the passive.
This means that much less of the skill’s effect would be focused on the shareable portion, and so there would be far less need to limit its power.
Since Venomous Aura would then become a weaker trait, it could also be moved down to the Master tier and become far more accessible.

Venom Support is a thing. Because multiplying each venom’s power by 5 actually makes them matter. (Spider Venom is still only good for triggering venom traits now, sadly – nerfing Lotus Poison hurt it a lot)

I can press one button to apply 20 stacks of vulnerability and torment to a boss. Every 36 seconds. Kind of strong?

I could, in theory, lock a boss down for 10 seconds… every 36 seconds (More than that really, since it interrupts and such, but this would require godly coordination).

Also, I apply a decent amount of might to the party on a regular basis, and heal them a bunch too.

I like it, myself. But yes, venoms practically require you to use the aura trait to be worthwhile (barring Basilisk, which is nice on its own, having far less competition). I would LOVE to see the auras trait removed and made to do something else, and then buff all venoms a ton.

Polaritie.4851:

Grimwolf.7163:

I realized something else this would fix; right now Venoms are weak because, with the proper Grandmaster trait, they can be shared with your group.
With this change though, only the Active effect would be shared, and the Active effect would need to be toned down to fewer hits to compensate for the passive.
This means that much less of the skill’s effect would be focused on the shareable portion, and so there would be far less need to limit its power.
Since Venomous Aura would then become a weaker trait, it could also be moved down to the Master tier and become far more accessible.

Venom Support is a thing. Because multiplying each venom’s power by 5 actually makes them matter. (Spider Venom is still only good for triggering venom traits now, sadly – nerfing Lotus Poison hurt it a lot)

I can press one button to apply 20 stacks of vulnerability and torment to a boss. Every 36 seconds. Kind of strong?

I could, in theory, lock a boss down for 10 seconds… every 36 seconds (More than that really, since it interrupts and such, but this would require godly coordination).

Also, I apply a decent amount of might to the party on a regular basis, and heal them a bunch too.

I like it, myself. But yes, venoms practically require you to use the aura trait to be worthwhile (barring Basilisk, which is nice on its own, having far less competition). I would LOVE to see the auras trait removed and made to do something else, and then buff all venoms a ton.

Totally ageed, i had running a Sharing Venom thieves for like 4 months and i can tell you is a very bored one built in long turn. Venomous Aura is a bad trait, its builts dont let you many (to not say any) importat variability to make it work fine, but that solo trait draw back all other possibilities of the venoms, so making it dissapear for the sake of buffing venoms will benefit more the thieves comunity in general.

If the idea of Venomous Aura is giving to the thieves a good support choice, then changing the trait to something like, for example, Sharing Thief: All the buff you apply to yourself also apply to all nearby allies as well will do a better job, letting thieves whith other builts, besides of venoms, also given some support to goups.

evilapprentice.6379:

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I love this idea, but your numbers would need fixing. A 15 sec cd on some of these is too low imo (4.5sec chill, on a 15sec (12sec with 20% reduc) is too strong imo. But overall a VAST improvement on the current venom state. Who ever though front loading all these charges on a 45sec cd, with potentially no affect (with a thieves attack speed all charges could be spend in 1-2 secs) was smoking something powerful. Now maybe if we could activate these charges like mantras…

Also I think you would need an internal cd on the passive, or lower its chance. As I mentioned, D/D thieves attack at an incredibly fast rate, so 20% might be a bit too much (but then s/? attacks slower, hence my suggested internal cd) like once every few seconds (greater then 2sec less then 5sec)?

I was thinking myself about a couple changes for Venoms to try to make them more interesting and balanced with or without Venom Share.

- All venoms (except Basilisk maybe) are updated to apply 2 different conditions.
- Venom Share only shares the second venom condition to your team and does so on a much bigger radius.
- Great buff on the effect of the first condition to make it worth is used alone
- Venom charges reduced to 1 where it doesn’t matter much like Devourer which doesn’t stack anyway
- Residual Venom effect changed from +1 charge to “Venom charges do not dissipate if the attack is missed, blocked, evaded or invulnerable”

For example, Devourer Venom goes from 2 charges of 1s Immobilize that doesn’t stack to 1 charge of 3s Immobilize and 2s Cripple and only the Cripple part is shared with the trait.

Something will have to be done about the Leeching Venoms trait though. Not sure what. Maybe scale the healing based on how many charges each venom provides so that to balance them all with each other?

Topher.1684:

evilapprentice.6379:

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I love this idea, but your numbers would need fixing. A 15 sec cd on some of these is too low imo (4.5sec chill, on a 15sec (12sec with 20% reduc) is too strong imo. But overall a VAST improvement on the current venom state. Who ever though front loading all these charges on a 45sec cd, with potentially no affect (with a thieves attack speed all charges could be spend in 1-2 secs) was smoking something powerful. Now maybe if we could activate these charges like mantras…

Also I think you would need an internal cd on the passive, or lower its chance. As I mentioned, D/D thieves attack at an incredibly fast rate, so 20% might be a bit too much (but then s/? attacks slower, hence my suggested internal cd) like once every few seconds (greater then 2sec less then 5sec)?

After some back and forth on the suggestions forum, I posted a more balanced version of this idea over there. I’ll copy/paste the changes below.

Updated Version

Venoms in general – 25s CD (excluding Basilisk Venom), Both passive and active effect. 5 CD on passive effect per venom. Passive effect is base 15%(Might need adjusting?) chance to trigger

Spider venom –
Passive: Poisons for 2s.
Active: Poisons 3 times for 2s a piece, bleeds 3 times for 6s a piece.

Devourers Venom –
Passive: Cripples for 2s
Active: Immobilizes 1 time for 3s

Ice Drake Venom –
Passive: Torment for 2s.
Active: Chill 3 times for 1.5s, torments 3 times for 4s a piece

Skale Venom –
Passive: Burning for 2s
Active: Burning 3 times for 2s,

Basilisk Venom (CD unchanged)
Passive: Bleed for 2s
Active: Stun 1 times for 1s

Traits:
Potent Poison: Unchanged
Venomous Strength: Gain 1 stack of might for 8s (debatable length) every time a venom triggers (included passive and active triggers)
Quick Venoms: No longer lose the passive effect of venom’s when they’re on CD, 20% faster venom CD
Residual Venom: Increase passive trigger chance by 4% per initiative point spent on the attack. (This way trigger rate is tied to a finite resource, so auto-attack doesn’t become a condition spamming delivery vector)
Leeching venoms: Effect reduced by a great degree – the venoms I’ve designed above trigger much, much more often, so the additional damage/heal would need to be reduced alot
Venomous Aura: Slightly bigger radius, includes passive trigger chance while in radius as well, otherwise unchanged. Passive trigger chances do not stack – 2 venom share thieves running spider venom still only have 1 chance to trigger per attack.

I could also see mixing up the passives of some (Like say switching spider and skale’s passives) so that the difference between the passive and active leads to situations where its important to use the active effect.

I think one of the major flaws with venoms and traps is that it’s not that the effects are in particularly bad, it’s the fact that there’s better skills to spend your precious utility slots on.

So… why not make them kits?
Each kit could have 3-4 effects (venoms/traps) in them. Extra kits could be added to add diversity and fill in the consolidated slots.

There’s probably more that’s needed but I think this would go a long way to making them viable.

threothree.2618:

I think one of the major flaws with venoms and traps is that it’s not that the effects are in particularly bad, it’s the fact that there’s better skills to spend your precious utility slots on.

So… why not make them kits?
Each kit could have 3-4 effects (venoms/traps) in them. Extra kits could be added to add diversity and fill in the consolidated slots.

There’s probably more that’s needed but I think this would go a long way to making them viable.

Engi’s pay a hefty price for their Kits – the worst weapon choices in the game.

Though thief isn’t much better, it still has vastly superior weapon choices than engi, and would be a bit unfair to them for thieves to all of a sudden have access to kits.

evilapprentice.6379:

Engi’s pay a hefty price for their Kits – the worst weapon choices in the game.

Though thief isn’t much better, it still has vastly superior weapon choices than engi, and would be a bit unfair to them for thieves to all of a sudden have access to kits.

Sure, there’s barely any variety in the weapons they get, but I don’t think they’re the worst. Pretty much every skill is useful. Thief has it worse IMO, you have the mess some weapons sets are combined with the fact that the initiative system ensures that certain skills are almost all the time are going to be prioritized over others. I’d rather have less options that are all useful over a plethora of useless ones.

People (read: other classes) would complain about kits yeah, but people complain whenever the meta changes. But I really can’t think of anything less drastic that would push venoms and traps out niche use.

IMO, those poisons should have just been f2-f4 for all they do for us atm. All the traits could still work that way too (cds may need a rework).

Topher.1684:

IMO, those poisons should have just been f2-f4 for all they do for us atm. All the traits could still work that way too (cds may need a rework).

I kind of like this idea as well. The recent buff to steal makes it kind of hard to justify however. Pre-Buff, venoms generating additional class skills might have been a good fix. Now however, we need something else.

Venomous aura should just be caked into venoms themselves.