How do you play Venomess?

[Rogue]

I started with Niss, which was pretty intuitive but I'm having a hard time figuring out how Venomess' abilities work and how I should be using them. I've read the descriptions in the abilities page and I must be too dumb for this because I don't quite get it. I think I understand healing herself and teammates is depends on poison clouds but what causes those clouds?

When you engage a group of enemies, what's your move? Currently, I shoot a few guys (I think I'm proccing venom on them?), then poison cloud dash, then turn around and cloud bomb for damage and heals. But I don't feel like I'm doing a lot of damage or a much healing, so I don't think I'm using her correctly. Any advice would be appreciated!

Edit for specific questions: When/why do you use her abilities? When do you use tendrils? When do you use the bomb? When do you use her ultimate?

[Multigun]

Her damage doesn't start to wake up until she's further developed, so to speak. At least what I've found. I'm only level 23, and like you I started out with Niss until I unlocked Venomess.

She felt weaker than Niss right off the bat, despite being higher level. And maybe she'll always be like that, hard to know without having an end-game version of both. But my damage is slowly but surely picking up quite a bit as I get more levels put into her. Her 1 is now my nuke button since I put 3 ability points into it.

Otherwise, I found this video to be helpful in getting me started on a build for her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSyyFxoLvWQ

[BEZOBRAZNIK]

I found it to be much more intuitive to play her w/ daggers rather than rifles. Prefer building WP-AP>Crit. She is desperately dependable on dodges and stamina rejuvenation, as far as my knowledge goes.

[Mojito]

Play here with daggers. She is 100x better that way.

[Multigun]

Originally posted by Mojito:

Play here with daggers. She is 100x better that way.

Isn't Niss also with daggers though? I like the idea of having a specific weapon to each class, eventually and over the long time it will take me to fully kit them all out.

[DaxiraxJr]

Originally posted by Multigun:

Originally posted by Mojito:

Play here with daggers. She is 100x better that way.

Isn't Niss also with daggers though? I like the idea of having a specific weapon to each class, eventually and over the long time it will take me to fully kit them all out.

That's a sure way to limit yourself, but that's the beauty of these kinds of games.

[Multigun]

Originally posted by DaxiraxJr:

That's a sure way to limit yourself, but that's the beauty of these kinds of games.

Its limiting to use the same weapon on multiple or even all the classes? I don't see it that way. I also find it boring. I want the gameplay experience to be different for each class, not slightly different because their skills are different.

To each their own though, people should play how they want to.

[KitKat]

I play Ven with her burst rifle.
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2450614265063384411/8E8490C1B4756029527268247693C0FEB133B112/
Focus on Ability Power + Crit Rating. Stacking poison via burst rifle's crits is super easy, leaving clouds everywhere, plus using her abilities as "nukes". And no doubt the right top talent, which heals on exposed targets.

I tried daggers and it was fun. But I like this way more. I stay at a distance from enemies and they often die before even reaching me. If they do - I got dodges + her gas-glide ability, whatever it's called. And with high enough AP, even just simple poiston stacks from those crits eat through most enemies with ease. It's fun - the main point here. Even if daggers are *perhaps* stronger. I still like this more.

[Daxius]

Originally posted by Multigun:

Originally posted by DaxiraxJr:

That's a sure way to limit yourself, but that's the beauty of these kinds of games.

Its limiting to use the same weapon on multiple or even all the classes? I don't see it that way. I also find it boring. I want the gameplay experience to be different for each class, not slightly different because their skills are different.

To each their own though, people should play how they want to.

No that isn't limiting to choose the dagger repeatedly because you like to use them. It is limiting to say I will never choose daggers because I need to have a separate weapon for each character even if I want to use the same one.

[Tao]

My main right now is Lora and I really wanted to play a ranged alt, particularly Venomess but unfortunately I just can't make rifles work. Playing melee the combos and mix of heavy and light attacks just sort of flow really well. Melee weapons also automatically move the character to close distance to varying degrees, which I can use to move around the board to advantage as well as sometimes dodging attacks. Add in the actual dodge ability and the combat just feels satisfying.
With rifles, you run out of ammo too quickly (for me) and then there's a pause while I am clicking buttons because I lost track of my ammo and now I am trying to also play a mini-game with the reload button., oh and I need to keep track of lock and load pips...ugh. I am just too old and too uncoordinated. It's great when Venomess can spray a crowd and poison everyone but mostly I just find rifles too frustrating.
I've switched Venomess to daggers and man is she a lot more fun for me. Enter a room, maneuver to a good position and hit Venom Thrusters/dash poisoning a bunch of mobs and leaving behind some clouds, then immediately hit Transfusion for the HOT (heal over time) then start slicing everything or just back off and watch the poison do critical ticks and everything die. Take a big hit and need some quick health, drop Vampiric Blast for a big heal.
Venomess lives or dies by having as many mobs poisoned as possible and daggers just do that too well, plus good weapon specials and good damage, especially when you have three combo points. My Venomess is level 21 and built heavy Ability Power and Crit Rating+Crit Power with Defense (she gains AP bonus) and Weapon Power as secondary.

[Rogue]

Originally posted by Tao:

I've switched Venomess to daggers and man is she a lot more fun for me. Enter a room, maneuver to a good position and hit Venom Thrusters/dash poisoning a bunch of mobs and leaving behind some clouds, then immediately hit Transfusion for the HOT (heal over time) then start slicing everything or just back off and watch the poison do critical ticks and everything die. Take a big hit and need some quick health, drop Vampiric Blast for a big heal.
Venomess lives or dies by having as many mobs poisoned as possible and daggers just do that too well, plus good weapon specials and good damage, especially when you have three combo points. My Venomess is level 21 and built heavy Ability Power and Crit Rating+Crit Power with Defense (she gains AP bonus) and Weapon Power as secondary.

This is good info and what I was looking for with this question, so thank you! What do you mean by "especially when you have three combo points"? I wasn't aware of combo points.

[Tao]

So each weapon type (2-handed, Dagger, Shield, Gun) has a different mechanic which is tied to the special ability of each distinct weapon. By default the special ability is the "Q" button and you will see it on the main screen next to your abilities.
2-Handed gets momentum and shows bars in quadrants around the icon for the "Q" ability. As you attack you build up momentum and then when you hit Q you get a special affect.
Shields/Sword shows an outline of an empty shield (meter) and three shield pips. As you attack the larger shield icon will fill up and then you can use a light attack combo (right mouse, right mouse, right mouse, right mouse) or heavy attack to gain a pip. This allows you to use your Q ability and the more pips (1-3) filled the more powerful the effect.
Guns have three bullet icons and as you fire and generate weakness and then hits the bullets will fill giving you 3 charges of the gun Q ability.
Daggers work similar to shields but also a little different. As you attack you have an outline of a dagger that fills up (meter) and then allows you to gain pips (1-3 diamond icons). Hitting your heavy attack, 'E" by default, instead of "Q" will allow you to perform a combo move depending on how many pips you spend. I forget the 1 and 2 but 3 point combo does a hard hitting AOE attack. You can also gain an iFrame and some buffs too. Using the Dagger pips with "E" also charges your "Q" for the regular weapon special.
If you go to the character screen "C" and click on "Abilities" hover over the white icons at the bottom to see the full information, Switch which weapon type you have readied to see the different mechanics. Sorry for another long post :).

[SpiralRazor]

Originally posted by Rogue:

Originally posted by Tao:

I've switched Venomess to daggers and man is she a lot more fun for me. Enter a room, maneuver to a good position and hit Venom Thrusters/dash poisoning a bunch of mobs and leaving behind some clouds, then immediately hit Transfusion for the HOT (heal over time) then start slicing everything or just back off and watch the poison do critical ticks and everything die. Take a big hit and need some quick health, drop Vampiric Blast for a big heal.
Venomess lives or dies by having as many mobs poisoned as possible and daggers just do that too well, plus good weapon specials and good damage, especially when you have three combo points. My Venomess is level 21 and built heavy Ability Power and Crit Rating+Crit Power with Defense (she gains AP bonus) and Weapon Power as secondary.

This is good info and what I was looking for with this question, so thank you! What do you mean by "especially when you have three combo points"? I wasn't aware of combo points.

it comes down to weapon choice and the associated ability.. Personally i like the autorifle/runecannon but some like melee

[noctua🦉]

I play her with Burst Rifle and Ability Power + Crit stacking. She's basically immortal and the poison explosion can crit for incredible amounts of damage.

[Ghom]

I built my venomess (who is a secondary charcetr for me, my main is a 4.1k power kyros) with burst rifle focusing on AP and Crit Rating. If you dig around in her ability perks she's got a few ways to spawn venom clouds. Namely once per critical hit every 6 seconds, every sixth application of venom per 5 seconds. Personally I prefer the Last Ditch weapon as the weapon ability provides very solid burst trash clear which seems to be one of her weaknesses.
I think the most important thing about building her is that you want to have a fairly fast weapon. Daggers do work but are riskier. Rifles are a bit lower DPS but quite a bit safer.

[Mister Cebion]

i play her with crit dagger crit ratio > Ap > Crit dmg and upper left skill tree. Doing great dmg with her