Guild Wars 2

Everyone knows venoms are fairly underpowered and require lots of trait investment to make them, well still weak. So i am throwing some ideas to change them.

Venoms have been buffed in the past but in the wrong way me thinks. You see arenanet refuses to make venom skills good on their own, because then if you actually traited for them they would become op. Since me also thinks that all skills (utility or otherwise) should not need any traits to be useful, venoms should get a bit of a overhaul.

Instead of just giving you a few charges that then make your attacks apply a few seconds of conditions on a target (i mean look at ice drake venom, can’t get much more pathetic than that) they should also apply a debuff with a secondary effect with each strike (similar how the warrior offhand sword skill, impale does; a negative effect that is not a condition and cannot be cleansed).
This way venoms could be made more versatile and useful without traits and outside of condition builds, but this would mean traits would also need to be adjusted.

So the new ice drake venom would be: Chill foes with the next three attacks and also apply a iced veins effect with each strike that makes your foes actions 15% slower

Ice Drake Venom (30 s): Next three attacks inflict chill and iced veins
Chilled: 2 s (1 s base is to low)
iced veins 2.25s (with each strike)
Number of Attacks: 3

Every venom could have it’s own debuff like this making them more useful in pretty much every build. (basilisk venom could put on a debuff that makes all incoming vulnerability last 25% longer, skelk venom could put on a debuff that transfers a % of healing from the affected targets to the thief, ect get creative).

Now if venoms were to get buffs like thees there is 1 trait that would have to be changed: venomous aura
Instead of copying the whole venom with all of it’s charges and other trait effects (which would be op with the new venoms) it would only give surrounding allies 1 charge (that would still work with other venom traits).

Some other trait changes that come to mind and could make venoms more appealing would be:
Residual Venom: condition applied by venoms last 25% longer
(this would include the new venom debuff effects)

Leeching Venoms: Siphon life from your foe when triggering a venom. Attacks that deliver the venoms are unblockable.
(use a basilisk venom and get a unblockable back stab)

Quick Venoms: Reduces recharge on venom skills. gain 1 initiative when you use up all charges of a venom.

I know there are a ton of other posts about buffing thees skills but i felt like throwing out my ideas, so sorry if i bored you.
Also feel free to pitch in whatever you think might also be a worthy change.

You are forgot something...

TLDR: I think, thieves are not enough OP now, here is my suggestions how to do that.

Thief being OP or UP doesn’t matter; this is about diversity. I love venoms, thematically, but they are underused for a reason.

Creating new debuffs seems unnecessary. I would rather see each venom deliver two conditions, one of them always stackable.

Change Residual Venom to increase the duration of all venom conditions.

Change Venomous Aura to give out only the stackable condition and trait benefits, (other conditions won’t be dealt by allies).

Replace Venomous Strength with Penetrating Venoms, granting a bonus to Precision and Ferocity for each recharging Venom skill.

Introduce new trait Shadow Venom, adding a second activation to Venom skills. If you you have unused stacks of a Venom skill and activate it again, you consume the stacks to briefly go into stealth.

Just make unique dots with venoms with different effects and damage kitten .

I always thought venom’s should naturally work similar to signets: you get a passive venom proc on attack (e.g. spider: % chance to poison on attack, devourer: % chance to immob on attack) but also have actives (e.g. activating spider drops an 8s poison cloud).

If they worked like that I would love them.

The way they work now never made sense to me, the next x attacks inflict y? On a forty five sec CD (after 2 years now 40s)??? Terrible.