Guild Wars 2

Hello fellow thieves,

I could really use your help now. My guild is starting to do an organized WvW raid with balanced groups. We have a few thieves and now im trying to see how to make us efficient.
First thing that got in my mind is Venom Share builds, but i never tried them and im not really sure how do they fit in that kind of gameplay. How is it played? Do you use all of them at once or time them one by one. Waiting for first push then after stabilities are gone, you time them one by one?
What weaponsets would be good for venom builds? Does condition damage work on venoms, conditions from venoms? Does condition duration work on conditions from venoms? If conditions from venoms scale with condition damage do they use thieves condition damage or from the person that inflicted them to enemy?

Besides venom share build i saw the Ninja Nurse build that seems good, i’ll test it later today to see how that works and how efficcient is to ressurect allies with it, or is it better just to rally them with kills and war banners.
Do you think one Ninja nurse is enough for cca 20 ppl raid? And others to go venom share.

P.S. Sorry for my bad english.

Cheers,
Lexiar

In my opinion is playing a power based caster killer the best option you have.

If the enemy is sticky, your SB can deal a good amount of damage, because you can run nearly full zerker. If some casters are going low, switch to your melee weapons, target them in your group, and burst them down.

Honestly…. venoms aren’t worth it in their current state. I’ve tried venoms many times, in different builds – 4/0/6/0/4 & 6/0/6/2/0 – they just don’t seem to hit hard enough and aren’t up when you need them due to the long cooldowns.

I will say this tho… you will occasionally pull off really amazing stuff. Mass immobilizes, huge group heals, etc… but you’re overall ability is taking a big hit.

If you really want to share stuff, going into Trickery and picking up Bountiful Theft and Thrill of the Crime are pretty nice. They give you and your team a nice buff and with the reduced Steal CD you have a pretty good uptime.

Currently I’m running 0/0/6/4/4/. Acrobatics lets the boons from trickery last a little longer and the extra vitality doesn’t hurt either.

If you want to be more damage oriented go 2/0/6/0/6

Is it prefered to run venom build with condition gear or it doesn’t really matter? I can see that poison is more usefull just as less healing and not dmg wise. And does that dmg comes from thief cond dmg or the persone that did the strike?

I could maybe go for venom share and 1-2 utility venom. With the normal dmg build?

^ The venoms that use condi damage will use the value from the people you give them to (which generally will not be much), so yours is only relevant for yourself. But in the case of the heals from Leeching Venoms, it uses YOUR Healing Power stat for the healing portion of the leech.

I’ve run venom share builds in my havoc guild quite frequently using a 6/0/6/0/2 setup with dire gear. The dire gear gives you a lot of survivability so you don’t just fall over if you catch a bit of enemy aggro. The main focus of your venoms isn’t for damage though, remember that. You want to basically give as many control conditions to your party members as possible. A venom share build, when properly used, can lock down a group of enemies and give your damage dealers a zone to dump their aoes and hard hitting skills. In all honesty, a group that can take advantage of a venom share build appropriately can win fights that they would otherwise lose.

Venoms, while seeming nice on paper, are not that great in practice.

Concentrate on your Shortbow for cluster bomb (usually don’t detonate it) and choking gas. Daggerstorm and warrior steal for big burst.

This guy from Za Drots is a great example of how it’s done, though the videos are a little old. GLHF

The Hammer.5960:

Venoms, while seeming nice on paper, are not that great in practice.

Concentrate on your Shortbow for cluster bomb (usually don’t detonate it) and choking gas. Daggerstorm and warrior steal for big burst.

This guy from Za Drots is a great example of how it’s done, though the videos are a little old. GLHF

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pFtALv1kr8

I disagree with you saying venoms are weak, since a properly used venom share build in a group will completely change the tone of a fight. I do however agree with your shortbow advice.

A lot of groups that use thieves will actually have their thieves throw a choking gas field down on the impact zone of their front line. Blast finishers on that field cause weakness, meaning your enemies will be a whole lot less effective and will give you an even more significant edge in the fight. Your shortbow is your best weapon for group play because of the spammable blast finisher on cluster bomb. Need might stacks? No problem blast into a fire field a few times. Need aoe healing? No problem do the same in a water field. The list goes on! Shortbow is amazing.

SMH at people who want to throw away the unique utility that a Thief brings to a group (venomshare, spammable blast finisher, etc) in exchange for something you can get from literally anywhere (burst damage).

This is why the myth of Thieves being weak in group WvW persists; people don’t play them properly.

Interceptor.2653:

SMH at people who want to throw away the unique utility that a Thief brings to a group (venomshare, spammable blast finisher, etc) in exchange for something you can get from literally anywhere (burst damage).

This is why the myth of Thieves being weak in group WvW persists; people don’t play them properly.

Not to mention with the recent nerfs to burst in general, which definitely hit thieves hard (ferocity changes), the utility that thieves can offer with their utility builds is even more valuable.

Both make valid points, but lets face it guys, in large scale fights you’ll be dealing with almost perma stability and constant cleansing.

Don’t get me wrong I love the idea of venoms, but I just don’t feel it’s as effective. Delving that deep into SA takes away from Critical Strikes, Acrobatics and Trickery too… I’ve just never felt it’s worth the trade off, particularly when a thief can aoe spike so well (which is really what counts in zerg fights).

Each to their own though.

Take care out there!

Well then you just run with some necros to boon strip from your enemies and take away their stability. A skillful rotation of your raid composition and their class skills make a venom share build fantastic. And let’s face it, there’s a weak link in every guild raid group. Odds are if you lock down a significant portion of them, whether they have condi cleanses or not, you’re going to down one or two of them, and that can snowball the fight in your favor easily. I’m not saying every thief in a raid group should run venom share, but having at least one makes a huge difference. It’s nice to have a few burst spec thieves lurking in the periphery of the fight to focus on squishy targets, such as eles too though.

Fair point, but how many thieves do you expect to be running with in a 20 – 30 man group? As for ‘just run with some necros’ (of course you will be), again this sounds simple but the reality is usually quite different in my experience. Usually half an enemy raid will be guardians :/

Not here to argue with you though bro. If you can make venomshare work well for you and your guild then enjoy! Just sharing my personal experience here. ^^

Have a good one!

I’m not saying you’re wrong by any means btw! Condi cleanse can definitely be a hurdle for a venom share build, but that’s the beauty of WvW really. Every fight is different. One fight a venomshare build may completely dominate a group who isn’t properly prepared to deal with it. The next fight might be against a condi clearing hammer train and you’ll just have to abuse range against them to bring them down. I’m not saying throw all of your eggs in the venom share basket for your raid, but having diverse and specialized builds within your group gives you more versatility and the chance to survive encounters with different groups that have different strengths and weaknesses.

Btw, thanks for being a civilized person on these forums and participating in a discussion with me instead of doing the typical bashing of ideas that happens on these forums. +1 for you good sir!

I do agree with both of you, but im leaning towards godz opinion, i do see the option after initial pushing and boon striping to engange with venoms and cc few of them and spiking. But all in all i’ll just have to test it myself and brain a bit for the possible tactics of using it. So you suggested dire gear. What about weapon sets? Shortbow is one, any suggestions for the second.

and for the 6/0/6/0/2 build, what to take in trickery? uncatchable or thrill of crime?

The Hammer.5960:

Both make valid points, but lets face it guys, in large scale fights you’ll be dealing with almost perma stability and constant cleansing.

Well, condi cleansing and stability isn’t going to help you against a life leech from Leeching Venoms. Only things that stuff attacks (aegis, block, evade, blindness) will prevent the effect.

Since LV ignores Armor and scales directly with the recipient’s Power while healing with the Thief’s Healing Power, you can contribute a decent amount of damage/sustain even with the venom and strike limitations. It’s bonus damage for your side (even for your PVT people), plus a little bit of extra sustain.

Plenty of things to do with Shortbow while waiting on cooldowns to recycle.

Lexiar.5732:

I do agree with both of you, but im leaning towards godz opinion…. [snip]

and for the 6/0/6/0/2 build, what to take in trickery? uncatchable or thrill of crime?

Fair enough! Good luck and see if it works for you. I’d recommend thrill of the crime btw to give better group support – but I had guildies run uncatchable before.

As for Life Leech – yeah it’s very strong. If you share with 4-5 guys and all spike the same target then it’s golden. That’s unlikely to happen though I think, and even then I would go so far as to say it’s a bit of a waste if you’re only downing 1 or 2 guys. Taking cooldowns into consideration you’ll likely do more damage as a power build spamming Cluster Bomb I think.

All I can say is that in my experience it’s not that great. However since the feature patch I guess we’re all treading new ground to a certain extent.

Play around with both guys! A few months back people were trying to say that thieves as a profession had no place in large scale WvW – meanwhile all the top guilds were running 1 or 2 of them in raids haha

Experiment and see what works for you and your guild. ^^

For what it’s worth, I’d go with something like this though (feel free to mess around and imporve it, I just threw it together quickly).
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAoaVl8Mp7plOxwJ0PNxOBtdAq9A8cKRpzc0WA-TlSBAB0s/wZKBpUVlrUeUpaFlpEbhjAgGPAAAOFA5pPIAACghO0he0je0u5Nv5yVuyJFwDLjA-w

Respect to you all.

Also hugs!

imo it really depends what your group running

if your back line focus on condition than you might think venom share wont do much difference
but and its BIG BUT
if your team can through it at the right time you can win most of your fight

i have used at the beginning full venom share when it wasnt so popular. my guilds mates didnt want me to . after 1 raid the back line scream for me to use only venom share
the ability to time it right and use it to mass immobilize the enemy front line which are the most dangerous and torment them alongside the necros for 6-8 stacks and poison them yield instant death to them
again you have to practice and time it right/ if you just use it and the enemy use mass cleanse than you just miss used it.

also i play once nurse who in outnumbered situation got able to res 10 of our allies and won the fight. i basically did almost no dmg just ressing ppl all around. so only skill commander will notice your contribution.

and the basic ganker which most like is also situational . if you fight against tight guild group you probably wont do much as you cant stand near them as you got low armor.
so now and than you be able to get down 1-2 ppl who didnt make to the tight group.
if you fight scattered enemy you can find many target to down fast

as you see its all depends how the group like to fight and know it and how is your skill contribute to them.

Thanks for all the opinions and advice! I’ve tried it now for a short run with my power gear just got the traits and filled up utility. I immediatly replaced Skelk venom with withdrawl. I felt so crippled with Skelk, doesn’t look good. And with all utility slots used on venoms and no stunbreaker, ohkittenhelp skills and so…Gonna try it more tommorow, need to get used to it ^^
There were few situations with multiple basiliks venoms, immobilize and chill…had one engi locked out till he droped dead…
Anyway ill post up news here

if you want to try full venom share check my videos

6 0 6 0 2 condi venom builds OP. With double dagger you have do many evades it’s not even funny.