Guild Wars 2

style.6173:

venomshare isn’t great now and it isn’t going to be very great after the patch either. No one will want a thief for support. It just isn’t the role of the class.

if they made it so the stacks of venom dont go away unless hit…. that would be better.

I think we’re also forgetting, that so far we’ve only seen a preview of the changes that come tomorrow. I’m not saying that they’re going to fix venoms or do anything besides what they’ve already said, but until patch rolls out tomorrow we have no idea.

I’m going to maintain that you would probably be more effective speccing deception skills and then traiting master of deception. It only takes 10 skill points, you get an awesome wall on a 24 second cooldown, an AoE healing+stealthing darkfield on a 48 second cooldown (which they recently buffed the lifeleech in), and your choice of a couple of other skills. If you go D/P + SB you could take shadow protector and give group stealth + regen.

I don’t see the point in investing heavily across multiple trait lines to become less effective than a staff necro without bringing unique mechanics.

@Maugetarr, what kind of build are you talking about? physical or condition.
Also i’d be interested in seeing this build and what it has to offer. I dont understand what your saying tbh.

MyCondolences.8172:

@Maugetarr, what kind of build are you talking about? physical or condition.
Also i’d be interested in seeing this build and what it has to offer. I dont understand what your saying tbh.

Well, initially just thrown together, something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYQQNAoaVlYmiP3eS9E+5EymidqC5UUUMl3DyasMLA-jUCBYLCikFQEBgUBAJPKrZPCiFhFRjVXDT5iIqGA-w

Group might, fury, swiftness, and vigor every 21 seconds (their calculation for steal recharge is wrong) 3 stacks of group might on your heal (every 15 seconds). You give regen when you stealth teammates. You can blast finish your BPS and smokescreen for group stealth and SR gives initial healing, regen, and life-leech (through projectile finishers). This is just a base, modify as you see fit.

yeah, dont get the point of your build.
Your neglecting most of your dps for a few boons and no real boost in survivability. You also trade your utility slots for a low healing power regeneration. Only useful aspect i can see of this build is near perm vigor up keep but the radius of that is worse then that of venom share and since it activates on steal, only people at melee range will benefit.

Sorry i dont see how that build is at all helpful for party members.
With the exception of vigor, venom share provides everything this build offers but better, aswell as additional heals and more dps.

MyCondolences.8172:

yeah, dont get the point of your build.
Your neglecting most of your dps for a few boons and no real boost in survivability. You also trade your utility slots for a low healing power regeneration. Only useful aspect i can see of this build is near perm vigor up keep but the radius of that is worse then that of venom share and since it activates on steal, only people at melee range will benefit.

Sorry i dont see how that build is at all helpful for party members.
With the exception of vigor, venom share provides everything this build offers but better, aswell as additional heals and more dps.

Well using the heal + stealing it has high might and fury uptime, and can steal and share + boons, and still has some cc with pistol offhand. It also has pretty high regen uptime along with high wall uptimes, but fair enough assessment as I wouldn’t play this or venomshare (both are not my style). If I wanted AoE condis and large group healing it would be with a grenade/bomb engi.

(The idea though is that it’s at least using things that are fairly unique to the thief rather than something another class could easily replicate with their weapon skills)

Well if venom share doesnt work out for me i’ll just continue playing warrior.
In PvE atleast i see no reason to use a DPS thief when i can just play warrior, dish out similar dmg and not have to worry about dying in 2 hits.

I’m going to try something like this for PvE (Venom Share and Boon Support). Runes of Speed for the laziness. Could as well go with Might runes (e.g. Hoelbrak) or boon duration runes for even more party support (e.g. 4 Altruism plus 2 Water/Monk).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsaFFpnDNZai/cig7RRh6T9UQ2xqp4m2E-jEyAYLBRySgICgJvhsm9iYxsIasqHMlLRUNA-w

I also thought about 30/0/30/0/10 but I would prefer having the extra Initiative for Black Powder.

aLovedhater.4096:

i actually just posted a build fore the new healskill, it’s full cleric, using the new healing skill and full venoms. it focuses of condi dmg and stealing/signet activation for damage, and it’s tanky and has tons of sustain, it would be used for group wvw and zerging, (WvW)
what do you guys think of it?
:http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAV6KFhmLNpai/cCh7hFCVPlmCaym6UkVaFA-jkCBYiKzIOBiCAiWAmOAIPqIasFhFRjV1ATtiIq2roIa1CB8dNA-w

I think you’re being creative. But I also think that, if you want to play a cleric-build support role, you and your group would be far better off if you were a guardian or elementalist, or perhaps an engineer.

Qaelyn.7612:

Auesis.7301:

Any Thief PvE build that isn’t based around DPS is a joke and should be ignored.

LOL. Gotta love blanket declarations from people who think that whatever idea they come up with is the only possible good one.

Nobody would ever come up with new build ideas if they followed that sort of attitude.

Acctually there is some truth in that statement. I find that almost any non dps build is fairly subpar in pve (for almost every class), because pve is mindless dodge/dps race, added a twist of some sort, which is always not class based but enviroment based. That is even more straightforward than even classic tank and spank fights in mmos since there is no real tank. I guess thats the result of removing holy trinity from the game in order to make all classes equally desirable in pve (as stated by anet), though that didnt work out in the end.

Xaylin.1860:

I’m going to try something like this for PvE (Venom Share and Boon Support). Runes of Speed for the laziness. Could as well go with Might runes (e.g. Hoelbrak) or boon duration runes for even more party support (e.g. 4 Altruism plus 2 Water/Monk).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsaFFpnDNZai/cig7RRh6T9UQ2xqp4m2E-jEyAYLBRySgICgJvhsm9iYxsIasqHMlLRUNA-w

I also thought about 30/0/30/0/10 but I would prefer having the extra Initiative for Black Powder.

Again, i think builds like this are useless. You have next to no healing power so you’re leeching venoms will only heal about 350 per a hit. Fury is quite easy to get and a few might stacks on party wont make a world of a difference. Vigor is one of the only benefits of this build.
Without Exposed Weakness and 30points in Critical strikes your missing out on approximately 60% dmg from traits so even in full berserker gear your dps will be subpar even further so given your poor crit chance.
You also have no real increase to survivability or sustain, 14×350 is only 4.9k from leeching venom plus another 2.8k from new heal so roughly 7.7k group heal every 36 seconds or 213hp/sec. Or about 12k self heal which is only about 20% more then going full serker using withdraw.

Venom share built just to much point investment.And little return for the team.Devourer venom might be good for WvW since immobile stack now.though not as good when it was 5 stack max and now 3.

I can’t imagine playing thief without multiple dodge from signet of agility and a stunbreak.I feel silly slotting venom on all utility bar. Especially when you lost escape skill of sword #.

I like the new healing venom and think it has good potential. I will keep my crit build (10, 30, 30, 0, 0) as it is and just swap traits and utilities around. For my build, I don’t see any point sacrificing the benefits from critical strikes just for that extra 1 venom hit, so I will just rely on the traits and u-skills. It will allow me to remain a high dps class while at the same time having the option of swapping things around to become semi supportive.

So, done my first tests with this build today. Its really quite tanky. Ran TA and had hardly any trouble. I was also dealing out decent DPS through conditions, keeping blinds up on vets, add some decent healing to party and over all had great sustain.
As i thought earlier, the DPS isnt amazing, but its not horrible, if its a race to the finish then this build isnt for you, but for those times where staying alive and keeping your party alive, this build works really well.

Everyone arguing that “Thieves shouldn’t be focusin on support builds” needs to come off it.

GW2 is supposed to be designed in such a way that there’s a valuable DPS, control, and support option for any class, meaning that “Just take a guardian” shoudn’t be the obvious end-all answer.

THat said, Venomshare is extremely narrow, requires too many traits, and as people have already said, is a less efficient and useful way of adding what a condi canro can do easier, safer, and without the input of party members.

I’m all for more viable support builds, but venom and trap builds are extremely narrow and broken when held up to similar builds from other classes. Adding a lackluster venom-heal is a band-aid on top of a sucking chest wound. You didn’t all of a sudden make venomshare an awesome idea. You just made it slightly less bad. It’s still leaps and bounds worse than just putting shadow refuge and smokescreen on your bar and running whatever build you were already running.

IMO thief support is best when using skills like shadow refuge, scorpion wire, or black powder shot. They are effective tools for either offensively mitigating damage (well, not in boss fights, because blind is useless despite aegis being 100% effective and doing the exact same thing.) and “controlling aggro and enemy positoning” is an extremely powerful form of support that no other class really has. I’d see a proper support thief as the polar opposite of a support guardian, with aoe pulls rather than bubbles, blind rather than aegis, and weakness rather than protection. In theory, with a few skill changes, and some updates to blind limitations in PvE it could be just as good an option as a guardian, with the primary difference begin one is a much more aggressive form of support.

i wish blind worked on defiant, but it would be quite OP. I think a good compromise would be making it like stuns and removing stacks, so that way blind would still be viable, reliable and thiefs would have a good place in parties.
If blind ignored defiant it would be quite easy without a boss overhaul to almost permablind bosses. If it worked off defiant, it would either take alot of skill investment to keep near perm blind up or atleast work towards deminishing defiant stacks so better CC options could be used.

On the point of venomshare, i’m currently running blinding powder traited for regen. Its a real life saver and makes this build really quite useful. Gives me a chance to ress and a counter for CC.

MyCondolences.8172:

i wish blind worked on defiant, but it would be quite OP. I think a good compromise would be making it like stuns and removing stacks, so that way blind would still be viable, reliable and thiefs would have a good place in parties.
If blind ignored defiant it would be quite easy without a boss overhaul to almost permablind bosses. If it worked off defiant, it would either take alot of skill investment to keep near perm blind up or atleast work towards deminishing defiant stacks so better CC options could be used.

On the point of venomshare, i’m currently running blinding powder traited for regen. Its a real life saver and makes this build really quite useful. Gives me a chance to ress and a counter for CC.

Which is, honestly a failure to properly design blind/aegis skills. I’ve remarked on this before, but the only conceivable reason for blind to be “special case” in regards to defiant is because of its potential application frequency… until you take a look at the practical application frequency of aegis.

Blind lasts until a target attacks, whether it hits something or not. Aegis lasts until it actually mitigates something. This means not only does an AoE aegis application effective have a potential application of up to 5x the mitigation of am AoE blind, but also that aegis is mechanically superior due to rewarding rather than penalizing skillful play. Using blind and then avoiding attacks anyway penalizes the user for mitigating the damage in stead of relying on the blind.

Essentially, if the frequency of blind applications was lowered, but blind was “made equal” by not being cleared until it actually mitigated an attack, I don’t think it would need the special case in defiant, and furthermore it would be a lot more useful/skillful in all forms of play.

Not only that but blind could actually work with aegis, making it possible for a defensive minded party to double up on mitigation, allowing for much useful and dynamic support builds while keeping the distinct advantages and disadvantages of both. Namely that AoE Aegis is more useful against single targets like bosses while AoE blind is more useful against multiple targets like tough trash fields or adds. The difference would be that single target applications would be normalized. Single aegis would be universally useful just as it is now, while single blind would be useful in a situation other than 1v1 PvP.