Wayfinder – Venomess Guide

Beginners Guide to Venomess

Venomess is a hybrid dps/support wayfinder that really shines in group play with her passive healing utility, as well as having good survivability in solo play.

The main bread and butter of her kit is her venom passive dot, which can be stacked up to 5 times for max damage, making fast attacking weapons generally best for her. She can use both ranged and melee weapons depending on preferred playstyle.

FAQ

What scales with WP?

• All weapon hits/shots and their respective weapon abilities (including the stacking poison DoT of nightshade)

What scales with AP?

• All ability damage and heals
• Venom Passive DoT ticks
• Cloud damage ticks

What can crit?

• All sources of damage be it a weapon hit, an ability hit, or an ability’s DoT ticks
• Heals cannot crit

What is 2313 and why that number?

• 2313 refers to the recommended power level of the dungeon you should run to farm accessories.
• Because accessories of level 29 and 30 drop at that power level.

Builds

Venomess has four general build variations you can run (a document with additional numbers and videos is linked below for a more in depth analysis)

• Hybrid – a good balance of all offensive stats coming together in harmony to create a fluid gameplay experience that takes advantage of all the tools in her kit.
• AP – a more generally support oriented build for group play, and those who want to maximize their DoT damage as well as healing throughput.
• WP – a build that doesn’t necessarily fit her kit, and is generally worse than the hybrid build. This build can still see decent results as WP tempest can be done on any wayfinder currently due to how powerful the tempest weapon is. Arcstorm is another decent option as well.
• CR/CP – a build that takes advantage of reaching 100% crit rate and is capable of putting out fast boss kill times. 

Stat priorities for each build:

• Hybrid – 3.5k-4K crit rating > ability power = weapon power > crit power 
• AP – 3.5k-4k crit rating > ability power > crit power
• WP – 3.5k-4k crit rating > weapon power > crit power
• CR/CP – 4.5-5k crit rating > crit power > ability power = weapon power

With Venomess access to crit reload/inspiring flourish mastery as well as unerring toxin perk, having around the aforementioned crit rating will get you around a ~90% crit rate. The CR/CP build is capable of reaching 100% crit rate further taking advantage of the crit power multiplier.

Key Affinity Perks

• Unerring Toxin – Increases crit chance against poisoned targets by 10%
• Deadly Venom – Increases damage over time of Venomess’ poisons by 5%

These are the two most important perks Venomess has access to and should always be picked up. Whatever perks you decide to take after these will have little effect on gameplay. Additionally some popular allocations for affinities are 15/5/5, 5/5/15,14/0/15, and 15/0/14.

Weapon Mastery

• Critical Reload (Rifles) – on a hotspot reload grants up to 16% crit chance, based on the amount of shots reloaded, for 10 seconds.
• Inspiring Flourish (Daggers) – Increases crit chance by 8% for 10 seconds per flourish point consumed, up to 24%.

These are the two most important weapon masteries available to venomess as they provide a high amount of crit value and should always be taken.

Weapons

Hybrid options

• Nightshade – high rate of fire, capable of applying venom quickly.
• Tempest – high burst damage, capable of applying 5 stacks of venom in one shot.
• All three daggers are viable options.

AP options

• Nightshade – high rate of fire, capable of applying venom quickly.
• Nights Edge – quickly applies venom stacks, high burst damage with CP investment, access to parry.

WP options

• Tempest – high burst damage that scales incredibly well with WP stacking.
• Arcstorm – high burst damage from a safer range.

CR/CP options

• Same as Hybrid.

These are general suggestions of weapons that synergize well with the given builds. That does not mean you can not use other options, and we encourage you to try different things as this is early access.

Key Ability Points

• Transfusion – 3 points should always be allocated to this spell as it provides good damage as well as decent healing and is very easy to use. 
• Deep Breath – 1 point should always be allocated to this spell for the damage increase, a second if you are wanting to play more of a support style build.

Aside from the aforementioned points above the remaining points are free to be used at player discretion and playstyle.

Key Echoes

• Talon
• Blood Berserker
• Codex Sage
• Shuul Baelhorn
• Arclight Guardian
• Hollow One
• Hollow Horror
• Bloodletter
• Duskhunter
• Goblin Hunter
• Wolf
• Turach Et Mourne

While we can not recommend a specific echo setup as they will vary depending on your accessories and their corresponding echo slot types, however the aforementioned echoes are some recommended options with either high or valuable statlines. Honorable mentions for the rush slot are Equilibrium and The First for a more supportive role.

Key Accessories / Sets

Gloom Monstrosity Set:

• Bottle of shadows (any 2313 dungeon with a shadow imbuement).

• Essence of night (any 2313 dungeon with a shadow imbuement).

• Shadow-inked journal (crafted).

• Mystic’s Focus (any 2313 reaver woods lost zone).

• Bestial Mantle (arena event in shrouded woods sphere 4).

• Golden Cloak (any 2313 reaver woods lost zone with a greed imbuement).

• Remnant Prayer Totem ( the first sphere 4).

Hazardous Quarry Set:

• Accursed Bracer (sphere 2 Grand Deceiver Maras).

• Spider’s Fang (sphere 1 Dread Legion).

• Spore Pendant (crafted).

Key Elixirs:

• Unstable/Stabilized Ancient’s Tear (Unstable = Bloodworks Drop).

• Unfiltered/Purified Dragonkin Blood (Unfiltered  = Bloodworks Drop, Purified = Maras Drop).

I hope the above information was helpful. Happy gaming!