rune triggers

quite possibly a personal annoyance: but all the rune triggers < 50% vamparism, sanctuary, infiltration, earth, svanir, (balthazaar- 4th), Orr; all need to be upgraded to 50% or more.Triggering at 20% isn't going to help you certainly not in wvw. I've tried sanctuary and its the 1-2 sec walk after the 5 finger death punch.Given all the damage flying about, these need looking at if anet is serious about build diversity.

I would love to see them beeing customizable between 20-80% but I don't think that can be accomplished without quite some effort.Maybe it would be the best to adapt them between game modes, in WvW 50% is a good threshhold in my opinion while in PvP around 70% might be better and for PvE 25% is perfectly fine for most builds.

I would have thought triggers are a fairly simple part of the calculations as its fixed and not on a timer/status so there's no when or if or dependent.

As a general rule I am against automatic proc traits, sigils, runes etc.

@Miko.4158 said:I would have thought triggers are a fairly simple part of the calculations as its fixed and not on a timer/status so there's no when or if or dependent.

The method they use has several blind spots due to how the triggers are actually detected. Health % triggers are reliant on the fact that you have to survive the tick that triggers it for the effect to take place. So if a tick of damage, or even a single hit takes you from 70% to 0%, the effect at 50% never happens. Another problem is how most of these effects are mitigating in nature, but the conditions in which players fall to those health levels are usually so overwhelming, the effect won't make a significant difference. Like how Vampiric only does 1 hit of Life steal, which gives you 900 HP back...... but our HP scales (16k for glass builds, and 22k for tank builds) isn't going to be a game changer against whatevers about to kill you. For the former, you're already taking more damage then you can withstand, while in the latter, the attrition rate to put a dent in 22k HP with damage reduction is not going to be stopped by a single boon.

These triggered runes are meant more for PvE, under the presumption that you're taking a series of hits that are well spaced. To matter in WvW, or even some PvP situations, most of these runes would have to put a buff on you with an multiple charges in order to offer breathing room; as that has more value then a one off effect that gets overwhelmed by attrition. For comparison, Aegis is the weakest from of block, as most classes deliver a chain of attacks to deal damage. But skills like Shelter and Infuse Light are always useful, sometimes even mandatory, as those skills don't have a limit on how many times their defensive effects work. Thats also why guardians almost always run Renewed Focus, as its the one of the few skills in the game that can survive multiple damage sources at once.

A hand full of rune effects set up as "life savers" are properly tuned, as their definitive enough to matter. But the ones that trigger boons should be changed to act in response to conditions that aren't strictly health %. I seriously miss GW1 monk and mesmer skills, as many creative conditional triggers and effects that (unfortunately) would be incredibly over powered with the type of Stat/Damage system GW2 uses.

Frankly, just one mechanical change to their damage system would enable a metric butt ton of effects that could be functional without overtuning.... and that a 2-pass overflow system for damage. Barrier is kind of a precursor for this, but exists on the wrong side of the calculations. As it stands, the engine applies damage, THEN checks for which triggers are valid given the new HP value, and THEN applies the effect. With a 2-pass system, the engine does a pre-pass to project the new HP value, and then checks for valid trigger effects BEFORE applying the damage. If a trigger effect is detected, it calculates the difference between the current HP and trigger point, removes that health, stuffs the remaining damage in an overflow, applies the triggered effect, and then runs a second damage calculation on the remainder. As an Example: HP pool of 10,000, with a Rune effect of Protection on 50% health. A 7k hit knocks out the first 5k HP as normal, but triggers Protection, and runs that reduction on the remaining 2k, bringing it down to 1340.

This has 2 knock on effects though. First- Burst builds are heavily hampered by this approach, but follow up pressure should still easily finish the job. Sustain builds are more metered, but this usually doesn't affect them in any negative way. Second- Multiple triggered effects can very heavily amplify durability, which does leave a significant window for players to recover health or purge conditions. I guarantee PvP players will hate it, because it specifically pushes back against decisive attacks. But given the current state of the game, there is far too much weight into front loaded damage- which itself is the result of most of our healing skills bringing us back to near full health. Attrition damage leaves too much room for strong recovery; so the only counter to that is lock downs and burst damage (both Power and Condi dmg).

I'm amazed that people don't see build diversity/viability as an issue. It means every 4th bod in wvw is a condi scourge.Not only does it make it dull in terms of roles and tactics it means that the proliferation of meta builds exaggerate the imbalances.In gw1 with massive customisation it was potentially more difficult to balance as people worked out exploits but it was builds/combinations that got nerfed, not what we have now which is massive swings in might/stab/condi etc which anet decide, but can't possibly gauge the effect of and round and round it goes with the odd hard counter iced on the top