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Thief Venom Traits- wrong tree?


arenta.2953

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https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow_Arts

so i'm looking at Venom skills, as they would be appealing to my character...except theres only 1 trait that affects venom skills

and its in the stealth tree.

aka, for the entire tree, just one Major trait affects it. every other trait in the tree benefits stealth(Deception skills)

why is the venom trait in a tree that has no grandmaster trait or adept trait to benefit using it. the tree practically forces you to go stealth.

would venom fit in better with a different tree? where you can use it, and other traits from the tree remain usable.

the thing i getting at is, if you go venom build, whatever adept or grandmaster trait you select. not ot mention the minor traits, become worthless because you using venom skills, not deception. theres no traits that can be valuable without deception skills.

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@roamzero.9486 said:I agree that Sundering Shade should be moved/merged somewhere into Shadow Arts. But Venom trait in SA works perfectly for my main build, so I would be kind of bummed if it was moved.

i'm interested in how it works for your build, as using venom limits stealth. and SA is all stealth, no help for venom save for that 1 trait.

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@arenta.2953 said:

@roamzero.9486 said:I agree that Sundering Shade should be moved/merged somewhere into Shadow Arts. But Venom trait in SA works perfectly for my main build, so I would be kind of bummed if it was moved.

i'm interested in how it works for your build, as using venom limits stealth. and SA is all stealth, no help for venom save for that 1 trait.

I run venom p/p Daredevil and use the bound trait for stealth.

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@roamzero.9486 said:

@roamzero.9486 said:I agree that Sundering Shade should be moved/merged somewhere into Shadow Arts. But Venom trait in SA works perfectly for my main build, so I would be kind of bummed if it was moved.

i'm interested in how it works for your build, as using venom limits stealth. and SA is all stealth, no help for venom save for that 1 trait.

I run venom p/p Daredevil and use the bound trait for stealth.

ok but how does the adept or grandmaster traits benefit your venomeven indirectly like to weapon or something.

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I can explain,

Pistol has a very nice synergy with Rending Shade because any single shot of Sneak Attack will trigger the boon steal. For condi that is essential for cutting through the resistance spam so you can deal damage.

The Adept traits in SA can give strong condi clear or cooldown reduction for Deception skills which is extremely useful because Shadowstep and others are high cooldown so the 20% reduction really helps.

SA overall synergizes well with stealth based gameplay (why you see it in several Deadeye builds).

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@saerni.2584 said:I can explain,

Pistol has a very nice synergy with Rending Shade because any single shot of Sneak Attack will trigger the boon steal. For condi that is essential for cutting through the resistance spam so you can deal damage.

The Adept traits in SA can give strong condi clear or cooldown reduction for Deception skills which is extremely useful because Shadowstep and others are high cooldown so the 20% reduction really helps.

SA overall synergizes well with stealth based gameplay (why you see it in several Deadeye builds).

ok so condi clear and boon steal

and what about the minor traits? =/

looking at it. Deadly arts would benefit you more, as its focused on condi dmg and offensive work. while shadow arts is more defensive. venom is offensive.....

both minor traits and major for deadly arts help

while minor traits for shadow.....don't really help you at all (heal downed maybe. but 1 sec more stealth for you 1 stealth skill. and reduced dmg, but your venom..so u wont be in stealth much). and major...honestly your sorta reaching for it with the grandmaster, and the adept major is relying on your steal unless u not bringing venom....which only hurts you.

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Venoms alone aren’t the majority of your damage. That said, I run P/D with torment access so it’s somewhat different from P/P.

P/P with bound is going into stealth a lot. It needs to because P/P lacks kiting ability and being focused is much easier without stealth. Longer stealth and speed bonus in stealth helps with both. As does the 25% reduction in damage. SA is built around using Stealth as defense.

Venoms are fire and forget. You can unload with venoms and go into stealth while the damage ticks. But you will be doing more in and out of stealth to max out bleeds etc.

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Just to give an alternate perspective.

Moving venoms to DA actually allows for less diversity in builds and will weaken condition builds overall and in particular the p/x sets. What you in fact do is REMOVE choices when you do this as at the level of major master you can only take one trait. If you take venoms (assuming it moved) then you can no longer take Panic strike or deadly trapper. As it currently stands a person can take venoms and Panic strike in a P/P condition build just as example this allowing for p 2 to be useful in applying more poison. Added to this you can also make builds focused on bleeds/torment and confusion in some combination and forgo DA entirely.

When you put every add to condition builds into a single traitline , not only do you force the condition build into using that traitline (less choices and less diverse builds) but you lower the total number of choices available given you mustT forgo one of two of deadly trapper, Panic strike or Venoms in order to take one of them. The same is true with BA. In existing builds one can take both Potent poison out of DA and BA out of trickery. Were people to use the same reasoning (all condition traits should be in DA) then the condition build only has access to one of these.

The same is true with power builds and using SA in the curren t sysem in conjunction with Revealed training. It might seem logical that revealed training be in the SA line but again this lowers overall choices. An existing build using RT might like hidden thief for the port too with stealth with an instant attack to garner that RT +200 bonus. Move RT down to SA and this can no longer be done.

In order to have diversity each traitline at every position needs to offer meaningful choices so a person can better tailor a build to his or her needs and desires. There has to be some element of flexibility.

Take s/d as another example. Acro would seem a defensive line but throwing the sword trait, swindlers equilibrium, into that line allows for much more flexibility in builds. This allows DA, or CS or Drd or DE to be dropped with that extra damage and steal that SE allows making up for that damage loss to a degree. As such in function , (if not in form) by sprinkling a few of these seemingly offensive traits into other traitlines , we retain a bit of the original GW2 system wherein a person was not forced to take an entire traitline in order to get one desired trait.

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Merging trap traits and swapping them with the venom trait, doesn't really results in less choice, you can no longer go Panic strike + venoms but you can go Panic Strike + traps or traps + venoms. And you have a major adept trait freed up in DA. I feel traps are more suited to Shadow Arts considering the existence of rune of the trapper.

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@"Satullya.5276" said:Merging trap traits and swapping them with the venom trait, doesn't really results in less choice, you can no longer go Panic strike + venoms but you can go Panic Strike + traps or traps + venoms. And you have a major adept trait freed up in DA. I feel traps are more suited to Shadow Arts considering the existence of rune of the trapper.

I do not think a Runes existence should dictate where a given trait should be placed. I can see the argument that they are in effect a 'stealth based attack' as they are invisible to the enemy player but that said my post was in response to the OP's where swapping trap traits with venoms not mentioned.

As to venoms. Currently CS and Acro provide little added benefit to a condition build resulting in them being less used by the same. To an extent Daredevil is much the same with only one real trait that directly benefits conditions with the rest favoring power builds or neutral. On the other hand trickery allows access to troment and confusion making it as viable a choice for a Condition build as it is for a power build. I feel that in removing venoms from SA that traitline loses some of its viability as far as condition builds are concerned . Overloading DA with condition based traits means DA becomes a must have just as trickery has become for far too many builds.

When you have panic strike, venoms and Potent posion all in one line there little choice but for a condition build to take that line as Condition builds are built around traits and utilities over weapons to a greater degree then are power builds. Power builds can drop CS and or DA entirely and remain viable. I really do not think "if you are a condition build you MUST take TR and DA in order to do condition damage" is more choice.

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