Guild Wars 2

I allways knew that venoms are bad.
But i was looking for other utilities among all classes that have a similar effect to compare them.

Thief
Spider Venom
Poison: 30 s
Cooldown: 45 sec

No comparable utility skill that can poison longer then the venom.

Thief
Ice Drake Venom
Chill: 3s
Cooldown: 45 sec

Necro
Spectral Grasp
Chill: 4 s
Cooldown: 30 s

Ele
Signet of Water
Chill: 4 s
Cooldown: 30 s

Thief
Devourer Venom
Immobilize: 4 s
Cooldown: 45 sec

Warrior
Throw Bolas
Immobilize: 4 s
Cooldown: 20 s

Thief
Skale Venom
Vulnerability: 3×10 s
Torment: 3x 5 s (about 1.000 damage)

Necro
Well of Suffering
Vulnerability: 5x 5 s (2 stacks)
Damage: about 3.000

Thief
Basilisk Venom (Elite)
Stun: 1.5 s
Cooldown: 45 sec

Mesmer
Signet of Domination
Stun: 3 s
Cooldown: 45 sec

As you can see nearly all venoms are worse then other utility skills that do the same.
But is it really because of the venom traits? That should be a balance problem for the traits, not the utility skills.
The utility skills i chose for comparison can also be improved with some traits.

Another problem is that even most of the utility skills that turned out to be stronger then the venoms are only rarely used by its profession.

It’s because their effect dont have enough impact on a fight.

I would like to see the venoms changed so hitting the target applies a debuff that reapplies the conditions for a duration. The overall durations of the conditions would need to be increased as well.

That would make the thief a way better and unique support by controlling the enemies with conditions like chill and immobilize then some bad designed group healing venom builds. Keep the healing support to the guardian and / or ele.

To go even further, every class should have some kind of unique support like that.
Warriors allready got their banners. Guardians got very great protective utilities.

Venoms suck. That’s what they do.

That’s called “balance”.

They need to reduce the cooldown to 20s across the board since they are applied across a number of strikes with a warning on our buff bar so they can be partially (or entirely) mitigated. If they become too powerful when traited, nerf the associated traits so venoms can stand on their own rather than having to trait heavily into multiple lines to bring them up to par with their current cooldown.

Maybe Basilisk venom can stay at 45seconds, but looking at it realistically, its a 1.5 second stun with a 1 second cast time and a warning on the buff bar. This may have been alright when it was unbreakable, mug could crit, and HS could deal more damage across larger spans, but in it’s current iteration its nothing special (certainly not worthy of an “elite” slot).