Think venomancers are overpowered? Please read.

chipsing1234 wrote: »

The main complaint is that the technique allows the user to become nearly invincible (not to be confused with the invincible technique venos can get at 79). A veno who uses this with phoenix will chase down any running opponent.

That sounds like if we'd win instantly lol.......
It also means if you're in the air, drop down and run.
If you're in ground stun and run also the BMs can stun phoenix too.
If a barb has to worry bout bleed then they gotta reroll.

btw if the pet goes too far from user it warps next to the veno, so if you outrun the veno you're good to go.

Bramble does NOT make the veno invincible. Someone doesn't know how to get around defense skills *rolls eyes*

I think bramble is a perfect skill for venos and have no idea what the rest of you are complaining about.

If I see a nix coming at me but can't find the veno, I kill it. If the nix catches me unawares then I'm dead. That's all the what ifs I need. Your what ifs are the same comparisons as pure dex archer and pure mag wizard, who caught who off guard first. Stop QQing and Aerilius should lrn2reed.

chipsing1234 wrote: »

Bm is the only class with AOE stun. Mind you it's only 3 seconds to start off. So maybe they can escape. Whopee.
If we go past that...
Phoenix has stun. So what if a barb or archer stuns you yourself? Your phoenix is free to stun them, bleed them, and otherwise **** their hp. Once you're out of stun, are you not free to chase them as well? Your summer sprint gives you 25% boost. I'm not sure what the cooldown for phoenix stun is, but you have your own stun that goes past 20 meters in range. I don't think more than a few stuns are needed for the phoenix to bleed and finish them off.
And it's not like barbs have infinite hp.

Mind you in 3 secs they can sprint and bye.
You cant send pet to do anything while stunned, so the part of archer and barb is BS.
If barb dies to veno 1 on 1 then reroll

dieseasily wrote: »

I have siad this in the threads before and I will say it again here. As far as Venomancer's pet Pheonix and Herc, if you are complaining that they are uber buffed because they are the only thing that can kill you, then there is no reason to nef them because they are a game balancer against you. And since there are so many people stating that Venos are easy to kill, even if they have a Pheonix, this implies that "you" (anyone complaining about dieing to a pheonix or herc) do not know what you are doing. The only way that this arguement could be valid is if you are able to say, for example, I have all the best equipment that money can buy, I routinely go out to TW and take on people and win more often then I lose. But every time me and a buddy of mine with simular equipmens come up against a simular level veno with a herc/pheon we have our a$$es handed to us..." then you have an arguement. And I have yet to see anyone even willing to make this claim.

I started to read alot of this thread and I could not take the idiocy in some of the complaints. I saw someone complain about how Venos can solo mobs higher level then themselves. Then I saw a BM say he can Solo mobs 20 to 30 levels higher as well and a cleric give the same example. And then a response stating yeah but "just remember so can a veno." What kind of arguement is that? The first implies that only a veno can do it and the second and third implies that the first persons arguement is invalid. So to come back with "but so can a veno"? Whats your point?

The most intellegent post I saw argueing the fairness of a veno vs all the other classes was Naimy's post showing the actual statistics which show that veno are not top dog on any server. That one post shuts down all arguements that Venos are overpowered. If they were as overpowered as everyone says, then it would reflect in the rankings. But instead we see archers rank the highest the most often. I say for that reason Archers are too uber and need to be nerfed! Lets stop picking on venomancers and start picking on the UBER ARCHERS~!

I'd like to think you're a veno.

Lessie - Lost City wrote: »

Mind you in 3 secs they can sprint and bye.
You cant send pet to do anything while stunned, so the part of archer and barb is BS.
If barb dies to veno 1 on 1 then reroll

Oh, so your pet can't move whilst your stunned? I'll concede that point.
But in the end, it's: If a veno uses hood, stun and run for your life, because you can't do anything against them.

Aesthor - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Hm...I'm not sure but I think the pet CAN move, but you can't issue orders.

I mean when you're stunned.

I'm never really stunned so I can't say yes or no to this but I CAN say you can always stun the pet.

This sound slike a troll thread, or more specifically: A troll trolling trolls trolled by trolls on troller-blades.

Geeze. I ran across this thread and find nearly all of the anti-veno stuff is posted by one person with an apparently very big axe to grind. Personally I think venos are overpowered (my main is a veno), but not for the reasons everyone thinks. I'll get to that at the end. But to make an objective list of pros and cons, you have to consider the full advantages and disadvantages of each skill. You can't just look at the advantages of a skill and cite it as an example of a class being overpowered:

chipsing1234 wrote: »

We forgot something. Venos are the only classes who can catch pets, and consequently sell them for profit.

The only players who will buy regular veno pets are other venos. So this makes no difference to how much richer venos are compared to other classes. All it does is move money from one veno to another veno.

The baby pets can be sold to other classes, but the majority of their cost is in the NPC-imposed expenses (meaning the veno doesn't get much money), or the fact that it requires several rare pet eggs (meaning there are going to be very, very few of them sold so on average they don't make the veno much money).

chipsing1234 wrote: »

I'd say due to the fact bramble hood forces the opponent to flee is bad enough. No other class has that defensive ability. If you're in pk mode, it'll save your life.

Bramble hood doesn't force the opponent to flee. It forces them to think outside the box. Both melee classes have skills which can inflict partial non-physical damage. They are just not generally used because they're weaker than other skills. Well, bramble hood is a skill which changes the playing field for 15 seconds and makes those skills more valuable during that time. Personally I think any skill that discourages mashing the same skill buttons over and over again is good for the game.

Demon venos are immune to movement debuffs. Meaning demon venos with phoenix, kiting, are nigh on unbeatable.

The movement debuff immunity for demon venos lasts all of 6 seconds. Re-using it requires switching back to human form, them back to fox-form. It's not an instant-on proposition. Don't believe everything you read on the internet. ^.^

chipsing1234 wrote: »

Technically, pets skill don't need to be upgraded at all. Their physical attack goes up with lvling, and the veno deals the main damage anyway.

Trust me, pet skills need to be upgraded. My main is a 53 light veno, and I'm starting to pull aggro off my golem and bear often enough that I'll have to upgrade their skill soon. I ran up a pure mage veno to 30 just to try it out, and by 30 it was pulling aggro off the golem. If you don't upgrade the pet skills, you're gimping your character's DPS.

chipsing1234 wrote: »

According to ecatomb, this skill has 2 second cast. So you're assuming your opponent who hopefully isn't in a mid-cast happens to see your animation and immediately stuns, which probably won't land before you finish your 2 seconds. Most I'd say don't have that precise timing. There I checked it. Archer total stun cast time: 1.6 seconds. Reaction time of .4 seconds? Not happening.

Learn to hit the escape key. Except for maybe wizards, 2 seconds is an eternity compared to the average spellcast time for all other classes.

chipsing1234 wrote: »

Let's start countering your points.
"you cant tank everything": I never said you could. But what other class has the ability to solo fb19 at lvl 2x? Ability to solo Chintien at 6x? No other class by a long shot.

My barb could solo the mobs in FB19 when he was 19. Course it took forever and since he couldn't split-pull the mobs, he couldn't actually do the FB itself. I actually tried it solo at 21 with my veno. Took over 3 hours to get to the boss, and I knew there was no way I could kill the boss. Funny you cite it as an "advantage" when it's just a huge waste of time.

"You have to click on pet skills and use your own skills": Pets use their own skills automatically, don't say they don't. Even if you do click on them: oh noes, you have a pet and you have to click to use their skills. Isn't having a pet supposed to add another set of options?
"Pet can only attack one mob at once": So can the rest of us.

Yes it is a big deal. The pet controls don't work very well. I actually logged in today to post about it in the veno forum when I ran across this thread first. Sometimes the pet doesn't do what you tell it. Sometimes it does it after a short delay. Sometimes it insists on running back to you first before it does what you told it to do.

As for the skills themselves, they require alt-key combinations which don't mesh well with Windows (pressing alt gives focus back to Windows instead of the app). The idiosyncrasies make it annoying enough that I only use the extra pet skills in emergencies, not in general play.

For these reasons, it takes a lot longer to get a pet to cycle through multiple mobs than for a player. The situation is not at all comparable as you suggest.

chipsing1234 wrote: »

2. Venos don't have to be HA to be in fox form. It's not hard to switch, purge/amplify, then go back to casting. In fact it adds more flexibility to the class.

??? If you're at max mana it'll cost you anywhere from 20%-30% of your mana to do it, plus 60-300 mana for the transformation spell itself. And there's a 6 sec cooldown between transformations. I could understand doing what you suggest for purge. But amplify only lasts from 6.5 to 20 seconds. If your party needs you to put amplify on a target, you're going to be staying in fox form. Doing what you suggest for amplify nearly quadruples the mana cost per amplify, and reduces the time you have to cast spells by more than half. Just stay in fox form and melee.

chipsing1234 wrote: »

Other classes can rarely fight more than one mob, besides bms and barbs. And even then it's usually only two mobs. If one gets ganged, they usually run.

That's the trade-off for the veno. Has lower damage so takes longer to kill stuff in a particular fight (my support cleric can kill stuff faster), but can handle a wider variety of situations. To borrow an aerospace term, any single performance characteristic is not the best, but its flight envelope is the biggest.

chipsing1234 wrote: »

Venos have bramble guard to discourage constant physical attacks, a quick hp/mp switch, and a quick hp recovery. At lvl 71, it's 50% hp recovery. Need I compare this to 20% bm recovery that requires one spark?

The 20% BM recover is also instant casting. The veno HP recovery skill has a 2 second channel, 1 second cast time during which you're standing in one spot. The HP/MP switch is instant, but consumes up to the equivalent of 1 spark (i.e. it doesn't require you have a spark, but reduces your chi by that amount).

Also, in the case where the person is trying to get away, the veno has the pet to distract the mob/person, and summer sprint at lvl 59+ gives faster movement buff than the archer movement buff. Plus, that is level 2 summer sprint, which costs less to upgrade than to get Wings of Protection to a comparable effect. Consider all this, and venos get bramble hood.

I thought most PvP happened in the air now? (Dunno since I don't PvP). Summer Sprint has no effect on flying speed.

chipsing1234 wrote: »

The main complaint is that the technique allows the user to become nearly invincible (not to be confused with the invincible technique venos can get at 79). A veno who uses this with phoenix will chase down any running opponent.

Considering it (bramble) confers no defense bonus against magic, you have a funny definition of "nearly invincible". By that measure, shouldn't barbs and clerics with plume shield be the top target of your nerf bat?

What's the invincible level 79 technique?

chipsing1234 wrote: »

Phoenix has stun. So what if a barb or archer stuns you yourself? Your phoenix is free to stun them, bleed them, and otherwise **** their hp. Once you're out of stun, are you not free to chase them as well? Your summer sprint gives you 25% boost. I'm not sure what the cooldown for phoenix stun is, but you have your own stun that goes past 20 meters in range. I don't think more than a few stuns are needed for the phoenix to bleed and finish them off.

Pet stun lasts 3 sec and has a 60 sec cooldown. Dunno if it works 100%, but I've seen it not seem to work, and sometimes seen it outright resisted. Veno stun lasts 1.1-2 sec with a 12 sec cooldown. Technically a veno can't do "a few" stuns. They can only do 2 in sequence - their own, and their pet's. After that they have to wait for the cooldowns.

chipsing1234 wrote: »

As was pointed out, the rankings show what type of people play. I personally don't know very many PK oriented venos.

Your reasoning is self-defeating. If the veno were so awesome at PvP as you suggest, they'd be played more often by PvPers. In my experience, the PvPers who take pride in figuring out an unusual and relatively unknown but effective strategy are few and far between. The vast majority flock to whatever works best, be it magic, archery, melee, or pets.

So pay $200, or 20 mil (obtainable by farming TT, which doesn't exist for other classes)

Sure it does. They just have to be in a group to do it. On the veno board right now is a thread debating whether it's more effective(least time per material dropped per person) to do TT solo or in a group. So I'm not even sure it could be argued that being able to solo TT is an advantage.

Mishie - Sanctuary wrote: »

Pets do unreduced damage to bosses.

Can someone expand on this? I haven't noticed any damage reduction on bosses, pet or player, other than what's to be expected from the higher p.def/m.def.

Ok, so if you got this far, here's the only real problem I see with venos: pet p.def and m.def is too high. At 50, my cub had both p.def and m.def of over 4000. At 52, my golem had a p.def over 5000. There is just no way for a player to attain these def levels without spending gobs of money on gear upgrades. The veno gets it for free by taming and leveling a pet.

I think you could lower these def values way down without adversely affecting the veno's solo ability. Right now I can (outside of dungeons) finish most even-level fights only needing to heal the pet afterwards. Sometimes I can go 2-3 fights between heals. This is silly. A good balance IMHO would be if the veno had to heal the pet 1-3 times in a fight. That would slow down the veno's kill rate, and make it less appealing to do things like solo FBs and TTs.

Solandri - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Geeze. I ran across this thread and find nearly all of the anti-veno stuff is posted by one person with an apparently very big axe to grind. Personally I think venos are overpowered (my main is a veno), but not for the reasons everyone thinks. I'll get to that at the end. But to make an objective list of pros and cons, you have to consider the full advantages and disadvantages of each skill. You can't just look at the advantages of a skill and cite it as an example of a class being overpowered:


The only players who will buy regular veno pets are other venos. So this makes no difference to how much richer venos are compared to other classes. All it does is move money from one veno to another veno.

The baby pets can be sold to other classes, but the majority of their cost is in the NPC-imposed expenses (meaning the veno doesn't get much money), or the fact that it requires several rare pet eggs (meaning there are going to be very, very few of them sold so on average they don't make the veno much money).


Bramble hood doesn't force the opponent to flee. It forces them to think outside the box. Both melee classes have skills which can inflict partial non-physical damage. They are just not generally used because they're weaker than other skills. Well, bramble hood is a skill which changes the playing field for 15 seconds and makes those skills more valuable during that time. Personally I think any skill that discourages mashing the same skill buttons over and over again is good for the game.


The movement debuff immunity for demon venos lasts all of 6 seconds. Re-using it requires switching back to human form, them back to fox-form. It's not an instant-on proposition. Don't believe everything you read on the internet. ^.^


Trust me, pet skills need to be upgraded. My main is a 53 light veno, and I'm starting to pull aggro off my golem and bear often enough that I'll have to upgrade their skill soon. I ran up a pure mage veno to 30 just to try it out, and by 30 it was pulling aggro off the golem. If you don't upgrade the pet skills, you're gimping your character's DPS.


Learn to hit the escape key. Except for maybe wizards, 2 seconds is an eternity compared to the average spellcast time for all other classes.


My barb could solo the mobs in FB19 when he was 19. Course it took forever and since he couldn't split-pull the mobs, he couldn't actually do the FB itself. I actually tried it solo at 21 with my veno. Took over 3 hours to get to the boss, and I knew there was no way I could kill the boss. Funny you cite it as an "advantage" when it's just a huge waste of time.


Yes it is a big deal. The pet controls don't work very well. I actually logged in today to post about it in the veno forum when I ran across this thread first. Sometimes the pet doesn't do what you tell it. Sometimes it does it after a short delay. Sometimes it insists on running back to you first before it does what you told it to do.

As for the skills themselves, they require alt-key combinations which don't mesh well with Windows (pressing alt gives focus back to Windows instead of the app). The idiosyncrasies make it annoying enough that I only use the extra pet skills in emergencies, not in general play.

For these reasons, it takes a lot longer to get a pet to cycle through multiple mobs than for a player. The situation is not at all comparable as you suggest.


??? If you're at max mana it'll cost you anywhere from 20%-30% of your mana to do it, plus 60-300 mana for the transformation spell itself. And there's a 6 sec cooldown between transformations. I could understand doing what you suggest for purge. But amplify only lasts from 6.5 to 20 seconds. If your party needs you to put amplify on a target, you're going to be staying in fox form. Doing what you suggest for amplify nearly quadruples the mana cost per amplify, and reduces the time you have to cast spells by more than half. Just stay in fox form and melee.


That's the trade-off for the veno. Has lower damage so takes longer to kill stuff in a particular fight (my support cleric can kill stuff faster), but can handle a wider variety of situations. To borrow an aerospace term, any single performance characteristic is not the best, but its flight envelope is the biggest.


The 20% BM recover is also instant casting. The veno HP recovery skill has a 2 second channel, 1 second cast time during which you're standing in one spot. The HP/MP switch is instant, but consumes up to the equivalent of 1 spark (i.e. it doesn't require you have a spark, but reduces your chi by that amount).


I thought most PvP happened in the air now? (Dunno since I don't PvP). Summer Sprint has no effect on flying speed.


Considering it (bramble) confers no defense bonus against magic, you have a funny definition of "nearly invincible". By that measure, shouldn't barbs and clerics with plume shield be the top target of your nerf bat?

What's the invincible level 79 technique?


Pet stun lasts 3 sec and has a 60 sec cooldown. Dunno if it works 100%, but I've seen it not seem to work, and sometimes seen it outright resisted. Veno stun lasts 1.1-2 sec with a 12 sec cooldown. Technically a veno can't do "a few" stuns. They can only do 2 in sequence - their own, and their pet's. After that they have to wait for the cooldowns.


Your reasoning is self-defeating. If the veno were so awesome at PvP as you suggest, they'd be played more often by PvPers. In my experience, the PvPers who take pride in figuring out an unusual and relatively unknown but effective strategy are few and far between. The vast majority flock to whatever works best, be it magic, archery, melee, or pets.


Sure it does. They just have to be in a group to do it. On the veno board right now is a thread debating whether it's more effective(least time per material dropped per person) to do TT solo or in a group. So I'm not even sure it could be argued that being able to solo TT is an advantage.


Can someone expand on this? I haven't noticed any damage reduction on bosses, pet or player, other than what's to be expected from the higher p.def/m.def.

Ok, so if you got this far, here's the only real problem I see with venos: pet p.def and m.def is too high. At 50, my cub had both p.def and m.def of over 4000. At 52, my golem had a p.def over 5000. There is just no way for a player to attain these def levels without spending gobs of money on gear upgrades. The veno gets it for free by taming and leveling a pet.

I think you could lower these def values way down without adversely affecting the veno's solo ability. Right now I can (outside of dungeons) finish most even-level fights only needing to heal the pet afterwards. Sometimes I can go 2-3 fights between heals. This is silly. A good balance IMHO would be if the veno had to heal the pet 1-3 times in a fight. That would slow down the veno's kill rate, and make it less appealing to do things like solo FBs and TTs.

Fabulous post! As a fellow veno I greatly appreciate you taking the time to write and explain all of this information.

It really bothers me when people will only look at the advantages and not take the time to see the disadvantages.

This thread has become just another Veno bashing thread. There's a few posts about other classes but I'm sure bashing the veno was the whole point do to the title and point number 2 in the first post.

Other classes can be purfied of the debuffs, pets cannot.

Zoe - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Other classes can be purfied of the debuffs, pets cannot.

But, pets aren't players.

I didn't see any stats for PVE and I'm sorry if I missed them but here are Heaven's Tear stats for top 10 & 50

TOP 10
1 Cleric
2 Archer
3 Wizard
4 Cleric
5 Cleric
6 Veno
7 Cleric
8 Wizard
9 Barb
10 Veno


There are of each class in the Top 50

Archers - 12
Clerics - 11
Venos - 10
Barb - 9
Wizard - 7
Bladers - 1


These Factful stats go right along with the top PVP stats. There would be way more venos in these list if they were as powerful and easy/quick to lvl.

Advantages and disadvantages are purely people opinions. One might see something an advantage that another will see as a disadvantage. These are pure straight forward stats that should be the only to proof that venos aren't as powerful and easy to play as some may think.

catrinka, why do you keep posting the PvP stats as if that solves the whole argument? There are many sides to it, such as money making, ease of leveling, being able to solo instances. I get the feeling most phoenix venos use it to grind, rather than PvP. Again, those lists show the type of people that play. I wonder what it'd be like if all the phoenix venos started heavily PvPing?