Guild Wars 2

Just going to throw my 2c out there:
Except for Renown Hearts, map completion should be account-wide.

Running around for map completion (after the first time of course) is nothing short of a major grind.

Knighthonor.4061:

There are traits to add blinds to the active, but is that the only way to play it?

There are also traits to add vulnerability to blind.

Acaelus.2138:

At no point does stealth make you OP unless we’re talking about those upset at stealth used as a pocket escape.

/disagree
Perma stealth makes you completely op as a scout in WvW/sPvP where scouting information can EASILY make or break a match.

If PvP was a solo game, then you’d be right.
If you can’t dish out damage while stealthed and your opponent heals every time you stealth away to heal, then it wouldn’t matter.
But this isn’t a solo game. Strategy matters, and scouting information is invaluable.

Sunflowers.1729:

I doubt they will nerf perma stealth. The problem isn’t being able to stay in stealth forever…

I disagree.
Do you realize how powerful it is to be able to scout while stealthed in WvW/sPvP?
Perma stealth is the problem.

Frequent short bursts of stealth for positioning is totally fine now that culling is fixed.

Atherakhia.4086:

What is the problem? It’s the initiative regen.

I don’t think this is necessarily true either.
Init regen is just your solution to slow down stealth stacking. But you can fix stealth stacking without touching init regen.
The abilities that grant stealth on short/no cooldowns should be used as short duration positioning tools, so why not just stop stealth duration from stacking at all?Then simply adjust some of the durations (such as making Shadow Refuge hit us with 15s all at once), add a subtle screen queue so that people can easily know when stealth/revealed is about to wear off, and be done with it.

Well the condition removal (if you spec 20 in Shadow Arts) is better than infiltratror’s strike (at cheaper init cost) because the first condition is removed the instant you hit CnD instead of after a global cooldown. That can sometimes make a difference against destroyers, but most of the time it’s not going to matter.

However; I believe both CnD and Tactical Strike do more damage than auto attack, so if you’re fighting against a single mob then it should result in a slightly higher dps to work them into your rotation, right?

ens.9854:

as for dancing dagger… well I’m hoping they are going to remove it completely, and that’s why they haven’t done anything to improve it.

So you want to remove the cripple from p/d, turning it into by far the worst weapon set available?

Yamsandjams.3267:

The original idea they talked about with always applying revealed on every destealth instead of just on attack was actually a good idea… I wish they would put that in.

It didn’t fix the problem either though.
As long as you never come out of stealth, nothing changes.
You can alternate Shadow Refuge, Black Powder + Heartseeker, Smoke Screen + Cluster Bomb, etc… to stay in stealth indefinitely and never encounter a revealed debuff until you attack.

How to fix stealth:
1) revert revealed to 3s everywhere – anything other than 3s makes auto attack rotations HORRIBLY clunky.
2) stealth duration can never stack.
3) shadow refuge provides 1 long stealth duration
4) tweak stealth duration on other skills as needed

Once you fix the stacking, stealth becomes a positioning tool instead of an overpowered scouting tool.

Volrath.1473:

phor.7952:

Is the SotG show specifically about PvP (in which case please ignore this rant)…

Yes, Guru’s SoTG is about PvP only, thats is why they invite players from the top tournament teams to participate in them.

Well that’s a bit of a load off my mind then I guess.
Thanks.

I’m a little concerned that every single time they talk about balance they’re talking about sPvP and the pvp meta.

I understand that they want to concentrate on turning sPvP into a competitive community, but they specifically mention splitting effects so that they don’t neuter PvE with changes, so obviously they should be paying at least some attention to PvE balance right?
Yet the only change they discussed making BECAUSE of PvE was a change to Pet Ai.

There’s a LOT to be said about PvE balance such as how blinds are completely overpowered against normals/vets but then almost completely useless against champions or how condition damage is virtually useless in large group events, etc… etc…

Is the SotG show specifically about PvP (in which case please ignore this rant), or are the devs really placing 99% of their attention to balance on PvP with only a secondary thought to how those PvP changes will affect PvE?

Just go back to the original nerf, 3s revealed every time you come out of stealth regardless of if you attack or not and prevent stealth stacking.

Tweak some of the stealth times to compensate (such as having Shadow Refuge apply a single amount) and add extra mobility to weapon sets that don’t have any(such as P/P) and be done with it.

As soon as stealthing for longer than a few seconds is only possible with a cooldown we can finally get to buffing Thief PvE without causing a flood of PvP whiners to make their way back to our forum. 7=¬þ

swinsk.6410:

EDIT: If you are using shortbow to shoot people in the ledges of keeps/towers in wvw, you are not a true thief.

Why would that make you “not a true thief”?
Cluster Bomb, scorpion Wire, Devourer Venom are some of the best skills available for defending gates. Cluster bomb is one of the only AoE’s in the game that can still bypass the 5 target limit, you can fire it from further back on the wall than the attackers can AoE, and it hits like a truck. You can pull in and then immobilize ranged attackers who are laying down AoE on the walls, opening the area for more of your teammates to fire down at the gates.

I suppose you think it’s more beneficial to your server to roam and take out solo people who aren’t even attacking your points?

At any rate, this is a P/P topic not a SB topic, and for that I agree with:

I like P/P for its poor utility, low damage and no access to stealth and mobility.

Unload is a fun skill, but the effectiveness just isn’t there in the rest of the p/p skills.

Then why did my example show the scaling for condition damage + precision was better than power + precision at 40 with a blue shortbow?

Hint: it’s because the armor value MATTERS and you NEED it to make a valid comparison…

Really though, while leveling we’re arguing about a few points of damage here and there and the game’s PvE difficulty isn’t tight enough for it to matter.

Precision and Critical Damage affect power scaling in a non-linear manner, so the comparison you make between power and condition damage directly (while true) doesn’t come to a conclusion that is useful for players trying to decide how to gear (outside of levels 1-20).
20-60 you need to include at least one other stat(precision/critdmg), then at 60 the comparison should involve power/precision/critdmg vs conditiondmg/duration.

Taking just two data points at level 1 and 80 and comparing only power and condition damage just won’t do it.

Extrapolating armor values based on a scaling assumption (as I did) probably isn’t 100% accurate, but it’s simply a better approximation than guessing (as he did).

If he (or you) want to prove me wrong by leveling up a character and recording tooltip values at 5 or 10 level intervals to get actual armor values then more power to you. I’d love to be proven wrong with some actual data.

But to say that you can compare the scaling without the actual armor values (when armor is a divisor in the entire direct damage formula) is just crazy.

I never said we CAN’T know.
I was simply implying that Dasorine hadn’t done the necessary work to make that statement with any sort of confidence.

:X

Dasorine.1964:

every 10 levels the scaling of power gets a tiny bit weaker due to the way things scale

In order to make this statement, you have to know the armor value of PvE mobs…

Dasorine.1964:

Well for example I just tested against a level 10 ettin, a level 10 wasp and a level 10 moa and a level 10 bear.

And where exactly did you find a level 10 ettin?
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ettin_
Beastiary also shows the only lvl 10 wasp is a veteran in Queensdale.

I’m beginning to think you’re completely full of kitten at this point and just don’t want to admit to being wrong.

Dasorine.1964:

And its actually the opposite power takes the lead straight away its not until later that condition can really match it.

Take my level 1 example, with a white bow that has an average damage of 124.5 20 power increases the damage by 25 damage while 20 condition damage only raises the damage by 12 per detonation for a difference of 13 damage gain with only a 7 point difference to begin with in the favour of condition.

You are ignoring armor again.
Jesus dude. Give it up.

Dasorine.1964:

Well take for example the test golems in the mists each has a different armour type to test, this granted could just be for PvP testing and all mobs could have the exact armour the tooltip uses to calculate (so all mobs at 80 have 2600) but this is unlikely.

How is that unlikely? If mobs had different armor values, it would be incredibly easy to test. Golems in the mists are there to test PvP damage. PvE is different.

Dasorine.1964:

And of course in this scenario its giving the condition build one of its best comparisons as its not calculating in anything like thief signets, traits that increase direct damage by %’s or crit rate or crit damage etc, any other attacks utilized during the last 4 seconds of bleeding etc etc etc.

However we’re also not talking about condition duration which affects condition damage in a HUGE way when you hit breakpoints.

Point is, at low level, condition damage is just fine (even though I agree that using deathblossom or pistol mainhand are simply better than cluster bomb for condition damage).

It isn’t until you can start stacking power+precision+crit damage or until you use a masterwork or higher quality shortbow that direct damage takes any kind of significant lead.

Dasorine.1964:

Another way to look at what scales better is to see how much each stat takes to double the base damage of their component of the attack.

No. You can’t factor in the base damage when you’re talking about scaling. If I have to explain why that is wrong, then there’s no sense arguing with you.

Dasorine.1964:

the enemy armour is taken as 800 as thats a good rough number of what a heavy armoured mob at that level might have:

Your entire conclusion is hinged around this armor number, yet you’re just taking a wild guess and selecting a number that will support the conclusion that you want to come to.

As far as I know, mobs don’t have armor types. I hit a bat for the same amount I hit an earth elemental.

If you look at the equation for weapon damage and place monster armor value on the same slightly logarithmic path (which would make sense for scaling) instead of just wildly guessing, you will get closer to 1000 armor for a level 40 mob.

And at that value, the direct damage for the condition build falls to 696 and for the power build falls to 1443. Add the condition damage numbers and you get 1888+696=2584 vs 1068+1443=2511.

Dasorine.1964:

That is not true though, I ran the calculations and power build always comes out ahead of condition damage even in optimal conditions for condition damage compared to just blue weapons for power because while the weapons lower damage scaling effects power the condition damage scales even worse at all times.

Anyone can say “I ran the calculations” on the internt.
Until you actually post them, how can anyone take you seriously?

Dasorine.1964:

But with the condition build your not capitalizing on it, your focusing on the conditions which scale terribly in comparison. I mean those numbers didn’t even factor in the crit chance (which the condition build would get less return from) and such.

You also have the fact that power is a multiplier and condition damage isn’t

Granted for a thief outside of perhaps pistol/X conditions always going to be the weaker choice for the weapon but stating that shortbows better as condition outside of level 80 exotics is false. And if you really want to go condition thief the 2 other options are superior.

Of course my numbers ignore crit because we’re talking about low level.
Base crit only adds about 2.5% to direct damage and that’s not going to change the difference in scaling.

You can get condition damage + precision gear instead of power + precision, so gearing for condition damage does NOT mean you’re not capitalizing on base power.
It’s exactly the same in either circumstance.

The scaling is what matters, and as I have shown, the scaling for condition damage is simply better at low level.

Want to prove me wrong?
Show me some math instead of just spewing “conditions scale terribly” over and over.

What? That makes no sense at all.
Base power level isn’t a multiplier, it’s additive. It’s the same no matter how you gear.
You don’t get either direct damage OR condition damage, you get both.
So the only thing that matters is scaling from gear and traits.

Base power affects you either way. That changes nothing.

Dasorine.1964:

Your calculations totally ignore the higher amount of direct damage stats you get.

60% of your condition damage to actual damage may sound better than that 42% but that 42% is 42% of a number thats going to be around twice that of the condition damage.

Huh?
You get the exact same amount.

At level 20 you can put 10 points into trickery and get 100 condition damage or put 10 into deadly arts and get 100 power.

A level 10 Malign chestpiece gives 8 condition damage. A level 10 Mighty chest piece gives 8 power.

Might gives the same amount of condition damage that it gives power.

Player armor values aren’t the same as PvE mob armor values.
(if you’re looking to use math to support a point, you should probably show your work so that other people can check it without having to make assumptions as to what you did)

Let’s discuss:
Bleeds get 5% condition damage per tick and tick 4 times per application.
0.05 * 4 * 3 = 0.6
So each time you detonate you get 60% of your condition damage.

The direct damage portion gets 50% of power per small explosion for a total of 150%, but then you have to multiply that by (weapon strength/enemy armor).

Since we aren’t given enemy armor values, all we can do is estimate.
At 80 a blue shortbow does 726 average weapon damage.
So in order for power scaling to be better, mobs would have to have less than 1815 armor.
726/1815=0.4
0.4*1.5=0.6
At 80 the tooltip uses 2600 armor to calculate direct damage.
So that means power scaling would be ~42% compared to condition damage’s 60%.

As far as we know, weapon damage and armor values are both slightly logarithmic for PvE mobs (that’s what makes the scaling possible when you are downleveled).
Here’s a graph of Blue Shortbows at various levels:
!http://i33.tinypic.com/2it4n7s.png!
Since they both follow a slightly logarithmic path to make scaling possible, what’s true at 80 with a blue shortbow should also be true at earlier levels.

Of course we can’t leave it there because power also scales directly with crit chance and crit damage whereas condition damage doesn’t. When you gear for precision and crit damage, power takes the lead even with a blue weapon at 80.

HOWEVER, when you’re low level, you can’t stack multiple stats. Pre-20 you only get 1 stat on gear, and then 2 per piece all the way to 60.
Pre-20, condition damage dominates power for sustained damage. 20-60 they’re a bit closer if you gear power/precision. 60+ the direct damage can take the lead if you gear berserker.

I just want to make something clear so people don’t get confused.
Cluster is better with power/precision/crit at 80 while using an Exotic weapon.

While leveling and using a blue or green weapon, the (weapon damage/armor) portion of the direct damage equation hurts direct damage enough that condition damage comes out slightly ahead vs equal level PvE mobs and quite a bit ahead vs anything that’s over your level.

So it’s only “wrong” to build shortbow for condition damage at 80 with an exotic weapon.

If you’re using signet of malice, then detonating nets WAY more healing.
So that’s another thing to consider.

Karolis.4261:

Trickery is not where you want to be for condition damage, condition gear is where you want to be for that, couse bigest part of it comes from gear, not from traits.

He’s talking about pre-40 so sorry, but you’re wrong.
At that point you get just as much out of the stats from traits as you do from gear.
Sure at 80 in exotics the stats from traits don’t matter nearly as much, but in low levels they’re arguably more important than the traits themselves.

And again, at 80 you are correct that power/precision scale slightly better than conditon damage for cluster bomb, but that’s only because the (weapon damage/armor) modifier is more favorable at 80 while you’re using an exotic weapon. While you’re leveling with a blue or green weapon, that modifier hurts the direct damage portion of cluster bomb enough such that both the base damage and scaling are better with condition damage.

Not to mention condition damage also increases your damage from choking gas whereas power/crit do nothing.

Question about your build:
If you’re focusing on bleed damage by detonating your clusters, then why are you going down the DA and CS trees?

The formula for bleed damage is:
(0.05 * Condition Damage + 0.5 * Level + 2.5) per stack per second

It doesn’t use power and bleeds can’t crit, so those two trees are only helping your auto attack damage. Trickery is where you want to be for condition damage.

Assuming you’re talking about PvP, no-one uses it anymore because the pistol whip build got nerfed, then nerfed again, then nerfed a 3rd time.

1)(15% damage nerf)Pistol Whip Damage was nerfed so that it’s actually worse dps than auto-attack.
The build was still ok after this nerf because you could heal a ton to compensate for the lower damage.

2)(90% healing nerf)Cooldown added to lifesteal food so that it only procs about 1/10 as often as it did with pistol whip pre-nerf.
This one pretty much killed the build, but some people continued to use it because you could still get kills with it against squishy players and they didn’t want to relearn skills to make the switch to D/D.

3)Haste nerfed to 50% attack speed.
After this nerf, I don’t really know anyone who still uses it in PvP.

But as has been said above, it’s still fine for PvE.

Einlanzer.1627:

Blinds help, but it’s not as easy as leveling a Guardian, at all. It’s faceroll in comparison.

How exactly do blinds “help”? Against normals/vets blind is actually BETTER than Aegis because it’s spammable. You can apply it in AoE with virtually no cooldown.

I have played both GS+Sword/Torch Guardian to 80 as well as D/P+SB Thief and I’m telling you, it’s JUST as easy to level.

Of course it’s a different story when you fight champions or do dungeons, but while solo leveling you can ignore them.

Einlanzer.1627:

phor.7952:

Plus stealth gives you ways to escape if you get into a bad situation.

No it doesn’t.

Yes it does. It doesn’t drop aggro, but mobs don’t follow you. You can easily get far enough away while you’re stealthed to leash mobs when you get in trouble.

Completely disagree with Einlanzer.

Because thief has access to spammable blinds with several weapon sets, when you fight against any normal/veteran(aside from dredge), you can build full glass cannon and still take literally no damage.
D/P leveling is just as easy as leveling Guardian.

Plus stealth gives you ways to escape if you get into a bad situation.

I do agree that thief downed state is completely terrible for PvE though.

The base dps for Dagger auto-attack chain is actually quite a bit higher when you count the poison damage because the chain is faster at 2 seconds compared to sword’s 2.4 seconds.

However; at endgame swords actually have slightly higher weapon damage and the attacks actually scale slightly better with power. So by the time you’re in endgame berserker gear, sword and dagger tend to put out about the same auto-attack dps against a single target.

Obviously sword trounces dagger against more than 1 mob, but the strength in Dagger isn’t in the auto-attack chain, it’s in the skills. Heartseeker and Backstab can dramatically increase your single target damage with Dagger. None of the sword skills increase your DPS in any meaningful way over auto-attack.

You can’t just ignore the skills and say the auto-attack chain should do more damage.

Grizledorf.5290:

ohmergehd theres a slingshot? Can you use it on those things that drop mushroom jumpers? that would save me a lot of time

You can’t aim it up or down or target things.
It just fires straight ahead, so it’s not actually all that useful.

I don’t think any have been removed.
Some of the dig spots require you to face a certain direction when you dig, so you might have just missed it.

The skins only come from the Chests.
Since there is no chest at the end of the Rapids, it’s probably not possible to get a skin from the event completion.

That said, there is an easy way to skip almost half of the level if you guys haven’t seen it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvOIEEYsxKY

I don’t think the whip or the slingshot are worth it.
Slingshot can save you a few seconds in the boss fights but you waste more time collecting baubles to be able to use it than you make up.

Shovel First
Then Bomb
Then Wallet
Pick up candle when you can and I think I’d call it good after that.

Of course they have told us that both the Slingshot and Bomb will be getting upgrades in the future; that’s why when you “equip” them it leaves #3-5 blank. It’s room for new skills. But since the slingshot is just a convenience and isn’t necessary to find any secrets so far, I doubt it will be necessary in the future either.
Bomb on the other hand will likely continue to be necessary.

It’s also been confirmed that Moto’s Breath will be re-designed for the next release, so that might be worth picking up with your alts as well.

Blinding Powder also only lasts 4 seconds on a 40 second cooldown.

EVERY single other means of stealth a thief has gives away his position.
Cloak and Dagger requires you to be right next to someone.
Smoke Field + Heartseeker or Blast Finisher – attack the smoke field.
Shadow Refuge – AoE the refuge, or even better use a pull/knockback and you’ll instantly de-stealth the theif.

It’s REALLY not as hard as you’re making it out to be once you know which abilities grant stealth and how they work. You’re acting as though a thief can just perm-stealth whenever he wants and you can’t do anything about it.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

So instead of actually proving that Thieves aren’t OP that stealth isn’t an OP mechanic, you just go “All those players are just bad, and need to l2p”

How would I prove they AREN’T if they actually aren’t? The evidence wouldn’t exist. Come on now, you’re smarter than that.

The only proof that exists to support my argument is in the form of the dozens of videos posted that show terrible player after terrible player getting trounced. Hell, even the thief in one of the linked videos says “I’m going after upleveled players because they’re squishy and usually bad”.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Sure. In WvW, I’ve seen entire parties of thieves separate and eliminate Zergs.

Yet you have no video for us? Link it and your argument will be made as long as we don’t see that the zerg was full of up-leveled players who don’t understand stealth.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Thieves and Mesmers are always in denial about their classes being OP. (Despite Mesmer being significantly more balanced than Ele or Thief.)

Yet the only evidence to the contrary that we are presented with time and time again show bad player after bad player.

If it were denial, it would be easy to produce a Video of a thief 1vXing against good players.

I think you’re in denial that your whining is justified.

Hell, I even agree with you that the class could potentially be more fun and balanced if they were to make some sweeping changes to stealth and buffs to other builds/skills.

But calling something “OP” when it’s only effective against bad players and then thinking that’s the proper way a community should be communicating with the devs is juvenile.

bhagwad.4281:

What I said was that no matter what the class, no other profession can solo five people regardless of skill level on either side. No single person should be able to harass a group of 5 people no matter how unskilled they are.

Because it’s impossible to become five times more skilled than even the noobest character. I’ll take a team with 15 poor players against 5 of the top notch pros in the world any day.

Whether you like it or not, including “no matter how skilled” in your argument is an admission that you’re referencing bad players because the only evidence presented showing a single person taking on 5 people has been a good thief against really bad players.

I would COMPLETELY agree that it would be OP if a thief were able to take out 5 good players. Hell, even 2 good players is a stretch as long as they’re not geared berserker and get caught off guard.

But the evidence presented only proves that a thief is “OP” against bad players.
And you simply can’t balance a game around bad players. It’s a waste of time.

Don’t know how many times it has to be said or proven with video after video, but you have even basically confirmed it yourself.

Thief is only “OP” in pvp against terrible players.

You can’t balance for that without a MAJOR overhaul of the class.
If you want to talk about what kinds of nerfs and buffs that would entail, more power to you. But just crying “Thief is OP”, “Nerf Thief” and even worse, trying to use that as evidence in an argument that your class should get more attention?
Ridiculous.

So because your class could use some PvE help, we should ignore the others that also do, right?

Has Necro gone through any PvP nerfs that ended up neutering multiple PvE builds that were already underpowered?
That’s the difference here.

Come back and talk when the necro forums are full of “nerf necro” threads with suggestions that ignore the fact that they will neuter PvE even further. And then just wait until one of those suggestions actually hits the game with 0 PvE compensation.

As has been proven time and time again, Thief is only “OP” in pvp against terrible players. Changing that is going to require MAJOR changes to the class including a ton of buffs and not simply nerfs. Yet everyone coming to the thief forums just crys “OP” and asks for nerfs.

And so far, that’s all we’ve gotten.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

So what I’m seeing here, Dual, is you completely ignored my above post to essentially say “Sure we need a buff, but don’t nerf our already OP skill to do it.”

Really?

Just… really?

I think what he’s saying is that everyone is crying “nerf” because of PvP but ignoring the effect that has on PvE.
The 1second added to Revealed affected PvE thieves MUCH harder than it affected PvP Thieves… yet the forums are still full of cries for even more nerfs without even a thought toward PvE.

bhagwad.4281:

snip
I’m afraid this video merely proves my point. No profession other than the thief is arrogant enough to assume that they’re better than 5 people combined.

They’re not. It’s the class mechanic that allows it to happen.

But you basically admit that it’s only “overpowered” against bad players…
So are you seriously asking Anet to balance around bad players?

You’re asking the impossible.
Even Starcraft2 (whose balance team has worked for decades and only has 3 “classes” to deal with) can’t balance the races across every skill level. Nor should they.

The videos posted so far prove VERY convincingly that these players don’t have any clue how stealth works (or dagger storm either). When the Thief stealths they stop attacking. When he drops Shadow Refuge, they just stand around with their thumbs up their butts. When he pops Dagger Storm they blow their ranged cooldowns…
Videos like that aren’t evidence that Thief is overpowered, they’re evidence that bad players are bad.

……………………………………….

While I do not believe the current mechanics make thief “overpowered”, I really do wish they would have went through with their original nerf of stealth and just hit us with a couple seconds of “revealed” even if you didn’t attack to break stealth.
Getting rid of the zerg surfing and “perm”-stealth could open the door for some buffs that would finally help us in PvE.

Another MUCH easier way to skip the first set of rapids: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvOIEEYsxKY

Another easier way to skip the first set of rapids: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvOIEEYsxKY

“I hope so, but no promises” from a dev on the SAB team isn’t exactly confirmation that it WILL be back before then.

But it’s definitely better than no info at all.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

They said it’s going to be back before April.

Source?

If you have extra space in your bank, then why not?

If you don’t have extra space just lying around though, I’d say it’s probably not worth it. Chances are that this event won’t come back until next April, so that’s a long time to use up bank slots when it doesn’t take more than a couple hours to get those bubbles back if you know what you’re doing.

I run something similar for a PvE tank build.

A couple of suggestions:
You might think about swapping [Slowed Pulse] for [Master of Deception] and then swapping one of your Venoms for [Shadow Refuge]. It pulses 5 times and each pulse grants 2 stacks of Might (from Hidden Assassin). That means you can give out 10 stacks of might, heal for around 2500 and have an escape. So I think it ends up being a net gain over any of the Venoms even in a Venomshare build.

The initiative regen is quite poor in this build, so I’m not a huge fan of P/P with it. I like the build better with Shortbow or sometimes Sword/Dagger because they require a lot less initiative. If you do swap away from P/P then I’d also swap out Signet of Malice for Withdraw and pick up [Vigorous Recovery]. You can then swap [Assassin’s Reward] with [Power of Inertia] depending on whether you want more damage or survivability.