Add more runes and amulets without any profession in mind.

[Swagg.9236]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Swagg.9236 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Swagg.9236 said:The only issue that you could develop by hyper-diversifying rather than striking a balance among overlapping skill types utilized by all classes is that in the former's case, any sort of "overpowered" aspect would be an extreme stand-out rather than being a burden shared among the entire class base to some degree. If everything rune were super niche, then the one which is super, super strong or outright overpowered stands out far too well and, more importantly, cannot be countered by any sort of in-game mechanic or technique (since nothing overlaps). This is why people complain about things like Rune of the Trapper: nobody can counter it consistently, and only a fraction of the builds in the game can use it. If everybody could use Rune of the Trapper (which would be awful; let's never do that), at least everyone would sort of be able to anticipate enemy strategies to some degree and build toward counters which could still be versatile and applicable in situations outside of "gotta hard counter the one invisible dude laying traps everywhere."

Basically, by maxing the "rune diversity" scale, you're just going to make dozens of Runes of the Trapper; whereas, if you try to find a balance between max homogeneity and max specificity, you generally end up with a lot of unique interactions which have to be discovered and utilized creatively in a case by case basis. This is sort of the foundation behind the magic of things like IWAY teams, EoE bombs and SWAY in Guild Wars: all three of these were teams used niche abilities in order to exploit the game in a way which nobody had done before despite the fact that basically everybody had access to most of those niche, build-defining skills for months and months before the teams emerged in the meta. Most importantly, perhaps, when some aspects of those builds became too oppressive to balanced comps, they were easy to nerf (SWAY, for instance, was basically obliterated by a single, subtle change to Escape that had really no effect at all on the rest of the game or even Ranger's effectiveness as a class).

Right. I actually don't disagree with you at all and i agree with everything you are saying. Although i want to just make it clear that homogeneity and specificity aren't on the same spectrum. You can have a homogeneous effect pool filled with specific mechanics and likewise you can have a diverse effect pool filled with specific mechanics.

The two things that are on the same spectrum is Homogeneity and heterogeneity... standardization vs. uniqueness.

So what i want, isn't multiple runes of the trapper like runes.

It's the idea that having Rune A give you a 5% damage bonus if you are a ranger, and Rune B giving you 5% damage bonus if you are a warrior, is a bad thing. This is both a homogeneous and specific configuration, which is kinda what we currently have in the game...and this is bad.

What we want instead is Rune A gives you "insert awesome interesting mechanic here" and Rune B gives you "insert awesome interesting mechanic here." Both runes can be used by both classes, so it's non specific, and both are heterogeneous because they are unique.

"insert awesome interesting mechanic here" is EXTREMELY difficult to implement in a game as shallow as GW2 without it immediately becoming oppressive in PvP. Remember, the PvP meta is effectively dominated by only three things:

mitigate damage while attacking, undermine positioning and timing by teleporting or using stability, being able to passively (or very consistently) generate health faster than your opponent can deal damage

. Consider how Thief has been eternally viable or meta simply for having two of these things at arm's reach since launch (even though they also have stealth, even being perfectly invisible on demand isn't stronger than just hitting someone repeatedly while taking zero damage). You're REALLY going to have an extremely difficult time inventing even a handful of "awesome interesting mechanics" without them almost immediately mimicking those three staples of GW2 PvP.

Ehh i don't really agree. But what do you want me to say? I mean it would all come down to how creative they are. Lackluster mechanics will be just that, lackluster, and interesting mechanics will be interesting... There's really nothing more to it than that.

You can give Picasso, Davinci and Joe Rogan a canvas to paint on. Tell em to paint something interesting. They will each paint something, some will maybe be more interesting then others.

Personally? I can think of many interesting mechanics. You can probably too if you thought about it for a while. and meanwhile Elon Musk is planning to go to Mars. Nothing is impossible.

What... does any of that... even mean? What it comes down to is mostly just a single question: What are you going to make that can compete with the generic "teleport/ranged attack and negate damage man" build that sort of runs the show in GW2 without just outright bludgeoning it out of existence with hamfisted stat lines or by just imitating it for the purpose of making a "bad build/class" viable? You can't just throw out some vague pitch about "something awesome" and expect it to produce anything of substance. You have to be specific with your idea's form and intent.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@"Swagg.9236" said:What... does any of that... even mean? What it comes down to is mostly just a single question: What are you going to make that can compete with the generic "teleport/ranged attack and negate damage man" build that sort of runs the show in GW2 without just outright bludgeoning it out of existence with hamfisted stat lines or by just imitating it for the purpose of making a "bad build/class" viable? You can't just throw out some vague pitch about "something awesome" and expect it to produce anything of substance. You have to be specific with your idea's form and intent.

If you want specifics, then here is literally me sitting here for less than 5 minutes, with 6 different rune ideas i just came up with. They are all unique, and are non-specific so any class can use them.

Rune of Counter

• When afflicted by a daze,knockdown,float,stun,knockback,taunt or fear, deal X amount of damage to the attacker.

Rune of Cautery

• Every time you use your heal skill, cleanse a condition on nearby allies. For each condition cleansed, you suffer (X+1) seconds of burning.

Rune of Prodigy

• Your abilities recharge 33% faster. Every second, you lose X amount of Health.

Rune of the Savannah

• Every time you activate a Utility, create a Savannah Heat at your location.Savannah Heat : Deal X damage in a 240 radius around you.

Rune of Intensity

• After activating an Elite Skill, your next attack deals it's damage twice.

Rune of Mingson

• Upon landing a critical strike, summon a spirit that inflicts blindness in the area every 10 seconds. This spirit persists until death.(10s Cooldown)

so you know what i did to come up with these? I looked at Gw1 wiki and just lifted some of the effects and incorporated them into gw2 effects. Literatlly just 5 minutes. Now imagine if someone actually spent many many days and hours to make sure the skills don't have broken interactions, are fun to utilize, and tested? It's really not THAT complicated to come up with interesting mechanics and ideas...

[Leonidrex.5649]

@"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" most of those runes would be broken or useless, expecially Rune of Prodigy and Rune of Mingsonfor the sake of "interesting" we might see 3 of those pulsing blind spirits on mid, interwoven with mortar blinds and other tools to make the game unplayable etcmaking new runes like those AND making them balanced is something developers are incapable of doing, in what world can you make rune like

Rune of ProdigyYour abilities recharge 33% faster. Every second, you lose X amount of Health ?I can already see this abused by high sustain builds like holo/necro, and be utterly unusable on most others that would just die to degen. And even if they would find it usefull, holo/necro would find it much MORE usefull, meaning the rune or holo/necro would have to be nerfed ....

[CutesySylveon.8290]

Weren't you the one complaining they should remove Rabid amulet because it was similar to knight's?

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@Leonidrex.5649 said:@"Just a flesh wound.3589" most of those runes would be broken or useless, expecially Rune of Prodigy and Rune of Mingsonfor the sake of "interesting" we might see 3 of those pulsing blind spirits on mid, interwoven with mortar blinds and other tools to make the game unplayable etcmaking new runes like those AND making them balanced is something developers are incapable of doing, in what world can you make rune like

I mean you can pick apart via speculation how useful those runes would be, but that's not the point. The point is that you CAN imagine up interesting mechanics with relative ease. Like i said, i spent 5 minutes on it. You have to imagine what balance devs would create if they did so for many days or weeks which is part of their job, to look at skills and make changes etc.

Rune of ProdigyYour abilities recharge 33% faster. Every second, you lose X amount of Health ?I can already see this abused by high sustain builds like holo/necro, and be utterly unusable on most others that would just die to degen. And even if they would find it usefull, holo/necro would find it much MORE usefull, meaning the rune or holo/necro would have to be nerfed ....

Secondly, this is just pure speculation on your part. Frankly i see this rune being useful by nearly every class, so long as they can deal with the lose x amount of health mechanic. From my perspective it seems like a rune that works well for sustain classes and healers, since having faster cool downs favors classes that tend to want to use multiple cool downs over a period of time...in other words, burst classes won't find much use in skills being 33% faster since they just want to unload their burst and disperse themselves from a fight....So that is kind of the point...it would be a rune for sustain/healer type builds...but ALL classes are able to use the rune, so you can technically have a bursty build from some class that might find a use in that rune.

The same idealogy applies to all the runes in my example...All classes can use them because they are non-specific, and all the mechanics are unique so that we don't have meaningless non-differentiation.

Compare that to runes like

Rune A+5% damage if you have might

Rune B+5% damage if no boons

Rune C+5 % damage if you have boons

I mean what kind of selection do you want? Do you want a boring stale meta game?

[Sigmoid.7082]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"Swagg.9236" said:What... does any of that... even mean? What it comes down to is mostly just a single question: What are you going to make that can compete with the generic "teleport/ranged attack and negate damage man" build that sort of runs the show in GW2 without just outright bludgeoning it out of existence with hamfisted stat lines or by just imitating it for the purpose of making a "bad build/class" viable? You can't just throw out some vague pitch about "something awesome" and expect it to produce anything of substance. You have to be specific with your idea's form and intent.

If you want specifics, then here is literally me sitting here for less than 5 minutes, with 6 different rune ideas i just came up with. They are all unique, and are non-specific so any class can use them.Just because they can doesn't mean they will. Even if your list there are some that would favour some classes so heavily they may as well lock the rune to the class or a utility skill type.

It's really not THAT complicated to come up with interesting mechanics and ideas...It is. I mean in your list the values of some , if not most, of these would have to be so low or the ICD so high that the rune would be considered pointless and / or boring. If something is more specific you have less interactions to consider so its easier to balance.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@Sigmoid.7082 said:It is. I mean in your list the values of some , if not most, of these would have to be so low or the ICD so high that the rune would be considered pointless and / or boring. If something is more specific you have less interactions to consider so its easier to balance.

You should ask yourself why you would believe that to even be the case.

Right now we have runes JUST LIKE THIS in the game currently, that pose no problems at all with no ICD's or low values. If you didn't notice, some of those runes are loosely based on runes/abilities we currently have in the game. Rune of the Warrior, Rune of Altruism, Glyph of Elementals... Do those need ICD's? or do you want to destroy any semblance of build diversity still left in the game?

Just because they can doesn't mean they will. Even if your list there are some that would favour some classes so heavily they may as well lock the rune to the class or a utility skill type.

I'm not even going to address this because i've already addressed this multiple times. Locking the runes to class specific utilities makes it so that you CAN NOT make ANY use of the rune whatsoever. It's SENSELESS to just butcher build diversity this way, when you could universalize it and make it applicable to all classes. All those runes in my example can easily be used by so many builds i could think of on any class. Some builds will find it more useful than other builds, but this doesn't stop other classes from using those runes and exploring builds that might work with those runes.

Edit: Also you never answered my question from earlier :

if we talk about choices, what choices do you think we will have if every rune was hyper specialized for specific build configurations? If I run a venom thief build, and there is only one rune specialized for venoms (and all other runes are specialized to other utilities) then what choices are exactly available to me? It would seem only this venom rune, would that not be true?

I'm still waiting for an answer from you.

[Swagg.9236]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"Swagg.9236" said:What... does any of that... even mean? What it comes down to is mostly just a single question: What are you going to make that can compete with the generic "teleport/ranged attack and negate damage man" build that sort of runs the show in GW2 without just outright bludgeoning it out of existence with hamfisted stat lines or by just imitating it for the purpose of making a "bad build/class" viable? You can't just throw out some vague pitch about "something awesome" and expect it to produce anything of substance. You have to be specific with your idea's form and intent.

If you want specifics, then here is literally me sitting here for less than 5 minutes, with 6 different rune ideas i just came up with. They are all unique, and are non-specific so any class can use them.

Rune of Counter

• When afflicted by a daze,knockdown,float,stun,knockback,taunt or fear, deal X amount of damage to the attacker.

This is awful because it uses the same principle as the atrocious retaliation boon: it punishes people for creating an advantage and rewards poor play (particularly because it's very easy to just have stability in many cases; this rune more or less tells you to just eat certain attacks like an idiot).

Rune of Cautery

• Every time you use your heal skill, cleanse a condition on nearby allies. For each condition cleansed, you suffer (X+1) seconds of burning.

This one is somewhat OK because it at least has a drawback to the benefit; still very superficial and not really that interesting.

Rune of Prodigy

• Your abilities recharge 33% faster. Every second, you lose X amount of Health.

Unless you made the HP degeneration extremely small (which would more or less just turn this into a direct upgrade rune), the only classes that would probably be able to use it would be Guardian or Elementalist (so it's just a Weaver/FB buff). This rune is also now just the ONLY rune that anyone takes in PvE.

Rune of the Savannah

• Every time you activate a Utility, create a Savannah Heat at your location.Savannah Heat : Deal X damage in a 240 radius around you.

More, passive instant AoE damage in a game which mandates that people stand in specific, fixed areas. Not super healthy for the game mode (particularly if it's like the actual Savannah Heat skill rather than just a PBAoE Sigil of Fire), and it's not like this would be any good in WvW.

Rune of Intensity

• After activating an Elite Skill, your next attack deals it's damage twice.

Utter madness for a handful of niche skills; utterly useless for most builds since most builds are just keyboard spam that already effortlessly string a large number of medium damage skills in order to delete someone from the map in short order.

Rune of Mingson

• Upon landing a critical strike, summon a spirit that inflicts blindness in the area every 10 seconds. This spirit persists until death.(10s Cooldown)

More utter madness because of how critical hits are nearly guaranteed in GW2.

so you know what i did to come up with these? I looked at Gw1 wiki and just lifted some of the effects and incorporated them into gw2 effects. Literatlly just 5 minutes. Now imagine if someone actually spent many many days and hours to make sure the skills don't have broken interactions, are fun to utilize, and tested? It's really not THAT complicated to come up with interesting mechanics and ideas...

I can tell. The problem with trying to copy-paste ideas from GW1 into GW2 is that GW2's combat pacing is frenetic and sloppy compared to GW1's metered rhythms (as clunky as the game was). Moreover, things like critical hits were far less guaranteed (the only consistent way to crit anybody was by using a skill slot to boost your baseline crit rate--a massive opportunity cost--or by hitting a moving target), and elite skills had a much different purpose (no "I win" ultimates with huge cooldowns; rather they served as fulcrums to consolidate and amplify the conditional aspects of other skills). On top of this, conditions served less as damage and more as triggers for conditional procs on active abilities (an aspect which effectively every skill in GW2 has abandoned).

Basically, if you want to make good runes (as they are known in GW2) for the game of GW2, you need to look at what is good or fun solely within the scope of GW2. One problem is, while the game has a number of unique mechanics, a narrow number of them generally outperform others (i.e. Why use a leap attack when you could teleport?). Another problem is that this game is already saturated with instant-speed (or sub-half-second speed) effects which just sort of overlap on top of each other into a combat slurry that most people cannot interpret on the fly unless they're expecting it. Perhaps the only way to make interesting runes that exploit universal mechanics is, like I said initially, is to better homogenize weapon sets and active abilities (i.e. Every weapon should have a movement skill; Condition cleanses need to be spread more homogeneously across classes and/or healing skills; The only utility "types" ought to be Physical, Glyph, Signet, Shout and Cantrip skills or something), so that passives have to at least be activated by something that isn't just a mechanical cul-de-sac, still has a decent tell, and also isn't some throwaway ability used as a crutch to win an encounter (like a GW2 elite skill).

[Sigmoid.7082]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Sigmoid.7082 said:It is. I mean in your list the values of some , if not most, of these would have to be so low or the ICD so high that the rune would be considered pointless and / or boring. If something is more specific you have less interactions to consider so its easier to balance.

You should ask yourself why you would believe that to even be the case.

Right now we have runes JUST LIKE THIS in the game currently, that pose no problems at all with no ICD's or low values. If you didn't notice, some of those runes are loosely based on runes/abilities we

currently

have in the game. Rune of the Warrior, Rune of Altruism, Glyph of Elementals... Do those need ICD's? or do you want to destroy any semblance of build diversity still left in the game?

If you can't see how grossly overpowered that list you made is then that's not my problem. The only rune which isn't is the rune of cautery.

Just because they can doesn't mean they will. Even if your list there are some that would favour some classes so heavily they may as well lock the rune to the class or a utility skill type.

I'm not even going to address this because i've already addressed this multiple times. Locking the runes to class specific utilities makes it so that you CAN NOT make ANY use of the rune whatsoever. It's SENSELESS to just butcher build diversity this way, when you could universalize it and make it applicable to all classes. All those runes in my example can easily be used by so many builds i could think of on any class. Some builds

will

find it more useful than other builds, but this doesn't stop other classes from using those runes and exploring builds that might work with those runes.

It's not really butchering diversity. If the rune is utility specific there are something you can do with it you otherwise wouldn't be able to since you have less to consider interaction wise nor would it crowd out other things.

Look at your list. The rune of the Prodigy. As it stands there is no reason not to take this on ele and no real reason to take any other rune. You also wouldn't be able to use this on over half the classes because of the degeneration. If the degeneration is too lower everyone would only take this. To high nobody would. Low enough that all classes could realistically run it then the CDR would need to be lowered to a value that would likely be near pointless.

There is nothing wrong with having some runes for specific utility skill.

Edit: Also you never answered my question from earlier :

if we talk about choices, what choices do you think we will have if every rune was hyper specialized for specific build configurations? If I run a venom thief build, and there is only one rune specialized for venoms (and all other runes are specialized to other utilities) then what choices are exactly available to me? It would seem only this venom rune, would that not be true?

I'm still waiting for an answer from you.Why would I answer a question around a hyperbolic scenario which has nothing to do with what I was saying. I'm saying some , you're saying all, trying to push and prove a point.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@Swagg.9236 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Swagg.9236 said:What... does any of that... even mean? What it comes down to is mostly just a single question: What are you going to make that can compete with the generic "teleport/ranged attack and negate damage man" build that sort of runs the show in GW2 without just outright bludgeoning it out of existence with hamfisted stat lines or by just imitating it for the purpose of making a "bad build/class" viable? You can't just throw out some vague pitch about "something awesome" and expect it to produce anything of substance. You have to be specific with your idea's form and intent.

If you want specifics, then here is literally me sitting here for less than 5 minutes, with 6 different rune ideas i just came up with. They are all unique, and are non-specific so any class can use them.

Rune of Counter

• When afflicted by a daze,knockdown,float,stun,knockback,taunt or fear, deal X amount of damage to the attacker.

This is awful because it uses the same principle as the atrocious retaliation boon: it punishes people for creating an advantage and rewards poor play (particularly because it's very easy to just have stability in many cases; this rune more or less tells you to just eat certain attacks like an idiot).

Rune of Cautery

• Every time you use your heal skill, cleanse a condition on nearby allies. For each condition cleansed, you suffer (X+1) seconds of burning.

This one is somewhat OK because it at least has a drawback to the benefit; still very superficial and not really that interesting.

Rune of Prodigy

• Your abilities recharge 33% faster. Every second, you lose X amount of Health.

Unless you made the HP degeneration extremely small (which would more or less just turn this into a direct upgrade rune), the only classes that would probably be able to use it would be Guardian or Elementalist (so it's just a Weaver/FB buff). This rune is also now just the ONLY rune that anyone takes in PvE.

Rune of the Savannah

• Every time you activate a Utility, create a Savannah Heat at your location.Savannah Heat : Deal X damage in a 240 radius around you.

More, passive instant AoE damage in a game which mandates that people stand in specific, fixed areas. Not super healthy for the game mode (particularly if it's like the actual Savannah Heat skill rather than just a PBAoE Sigil of Fire), and it's not like this would be any good in WvW.

Rune of Intensity

• After activating an Elite Skill, your next attack deals it's damage twice.

Utter madness for a handful of niche skills; utterly useless for most builds since most builds are just keyboard spam that already effortlessly string a large number of medium damage skills in order to delete someone from the map in short order.

Rune of Mingson

• Upon landing a critical strike, summon a spirit that inflicts blindness in the area every 10 seconds. This spirit persists until death.(10s Cooldown)

More utter madness because of how critical hits are nearly guaranteed in GW2.

See here’s the thing. You can criticize the examples as much as you want. In fact it’s kind of funny that one person says Mingson is OP while the other says it’s garbage.

The fact is that with me presenting these examples, the point wasn’t to suggest runes and it’s equally ridiculous to say if they are OP or UP when they aren’t even real runes. The point was a response to your post that it’s impossible to make unique mechanics that don’t fit under your paradigm. Thus your straw-manning me.

so you know what i did to come up with these? I looked at Gw1 wiki and just lifted some of the effects and incorporated them into gw2 effects. Literatlly just 5 minutes. Now imagine if someone actually spent many many days and hours to make sure the skills don't have broken interactions, are fun to utilize, and tested? It's really not THAT complicated to come up with interesting mechanics and ideas...

I can tell. The problem with trying to copy-paste ideas from GW1 into GW2 is that GW2's combat pacing is frenetic and sloppy compared to GW1's metered rhythms (as clunky as the game was). Moreover, things like critical hits were far less guaranteed (the only consistent way to crit anybody was by using a skill slot to boost your baseline crit rate--a massive opportunity cost--or by hitting a moving target), and elite skills had a much different purpose (no "I win" ultimates with huge cooldowns; rather they served as fulcrums to consolidate and amplify the conditional aspects of other skills). On top of this, conditions served less as damage and more as triggers for conditional procs on active abilities (an aspect which effectively every skill in GW2 has abandoned).

Basically, if you want to make good runes (as they are known in GW2) for the game of GW2, you need to look at what is good or fun solely within the scope of GW2. One problem is, while the game has a number of unique mechanics, a narrow number of them generally outperform others (i.e. Why use a leap attack when you could teleport?). Another problem is that this game is already saturated with instant-speed (or sub-half-second speed) effects which just sort of overlap on top of each other into a combat slurry that most people cannot interpret on the fly unless they're expecting it. Perhaps the only way to make interesting runes that exploit universal mechanics is, like I said initially, is to better homogenize weapon sets and active abilities (i.e. Every weapon should have a movement skill; Condition cleanses need to be spread more homogeneously across classes and/or healing skills; The only utility "types" ought to be Physical, Glyph, Signet, Shout and Cantrip skills or something), so that passives have to at least be activated by something that isn't just a mechanical cul-de-sac, still has a decent tell, and also isn't some throwaway ability used as a crutch to win an encounter (like a GW2 elite skill).

This is the heart to which we disagree then... that homogenization leads to better balance. With this I fundamentally disagree... but this is a much deeper discussion that I’ve already talked about extensively and it’s a topic for another time.

Just as an FYI, I never fully disagreed with you at first, but somehow this turned into a you vs me thing which I don’t understand how that happened but w.e.

Why use a leap over a teleport? That one is easy to answer. Teleports are supposed to have long cooldowns while leaps are supposed to have shorter cooldowns this is game design 101 (known as a power budget)

I’m on a phone right now so I can’t put in a properly formatted response, but essentially homogenization to a degree is fine because regardless complex behavior will arise whether a system like gw2 is diverse or not. The only issue I have with homogeneity is that at its core, it implies that in order for balance to occur means everything must be equal...and that any differentiation will result in imbalance. To balance one thing to another in this way is an inherently impossible task because the two will never be equal until they are the same thing.

Balance can occur in more ways than just making things equal. They can occur via competition. Competition is at the heart of this idea where things will compete. In a homogeneous environment, two agents competing is somewhat meaningless if they are the same. It’s only when these two things are actually different where when the competing agents compete it results in one of them continuing on and the other dropping out of favor. This is synonymous with builds and how good builds eventually make their way to metagame and bad builds fall by the wayside. That’s why diversification can and does create balance, if there are larger variety of things competing with one another there will always be something that can out compete another thing in a cyclic manner. Rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, back to paper beats rock.

So you can have a homogeneous gw2 game but it’s not gw2 anymore...it will be a world of Warcraft or chess clone. That’s why I don’t agree homogenization is healthy at all in a game like this. Again this is a topic for a different time so I won’t discuss it here but you can totally see fully formed discussions about that elsewhere on the forums.

Anyway since my rune examples seem to be up for grabs then how bout we hear some of your ideas?