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And just like that. 2 great builds have vanished. A loss for Build Diversity.


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Altruism was one of the few runes with a unique and really interesting mechanic that allowed for the creation of interesting builds. One of these builds most people know about here which is "Altruism Engi" which is a variant on the more traditional meta engi.

But the other build that just got wiped off the face of Tyria, that most didn't even know about was the 0 energy Altruism Heal Rev A competitive cleansing heal rev (that could cleanse more than an ele as much as a scrapper) that i had just made a couple months after Feb patch, and to see it go so soon is incredibly sad.

Build Diversity is on the decline. I've already since quit playing this game and pop into the forums every now and then just to see what is going on...but every time i see an update it just disappoints me to no end. I hope one day we can realize that Build Diversity is more important than balance.

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@Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365 said:yeah nah it was stupid as hell. as a sup engi main im pleased to see it gone

And just because you think something is stupid means it deserves to be removed from the game? i don't see the logic there. I think the current meta is stupid. So am i justified in thinking that the meta should be removed from the game?

Also what does being a sup engi main have anything to do with this? I've mained sup engi for probably 3 weeks...does that make my opinion anymore valuable than anyone else?

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unique and really interesting mechanic..... Altruism EngiAh yes, spam mortar kit, spam stow, spam rune trigger, so interesting. much creative, smash 1 button harder than a Smash match, aka a QTE

Wow. A 10 second cooldown (still shorter than all heal and cleanse skills) and suddenly the sky is falling. You should be happy Anet blessed you with a still overperforming 10 seconds, rather than bring it up in line with other elite trigger runes with 45, 60, or 90 second cooldowns.

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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365 said:yeah nah it was stupid as hell. as a sup engi main im pleased to see it gone

And just because you think something is stupid means it deserves to be removed from the game? i don't see the logic there. I think the current meta is stupid. So am i justified in thinking that the meta should be removed from the game?

Also what does being a sup engi main have anything to do with this? I've mained sup engi for probably 3 weeks...does that make my opinion anymore valuable than anyone else?

It was overpowered as hell.

Giving the rune set an internal cooldown prevents issues in the future with other elites which might be spam-able.

As a support engi main myself: yes it was fun, yes it was overpowered as hell, yes it was to be expected that some type of change would be implemented. Holding down the elite skill as much as possible during fights is hardly skill.

@misterman.1530 said:Sorry. The Rune effect only triggered on an Elite skill use. Since Elite skills have their own cooldown, not sure how this 10 sec cooldown has any affect. I will admit I know little about Rev mechanics, but how has this change impacted...well...anyone?

Equipping and unequipping the mortar kit had no cooldown. Do the connection here.

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@Cyninja.2954 said:It was overpowered as hell.

Overpowered and yet it isn't even in the meta?

The rune had a trade-off that grounded it... like any other ability that siphons conditions from allies, you had to be able to deal with those conditions on yourself. You could be pulling upwards of 80 stacks of burning...so if you weren't on your toes and paying attention it meant you'd be dead in a split second.

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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:It was overpowered as hell.

Overpowered and yet it isn't even in the meta?

The rune had a trade-off that grounded it... like any other ability that siphons conditions from allies, you had to be able to deal with those conditions on yourself. You could be pulling upwards of 80 stacks of burning...so if you weren't on your toes and paying attention it meant you'd be dead in a split second.

Are you going by metabattle? because I can tell you, in gvg altu scrapper was seeing a lot of play. The reason it's not meta for WvW public is because it was very easy to kill ones self. Given the average skill of public players...

Yes, 80 stacks of burning. Big deal while running 1 of the cleanses while keeping the elite pressed. If you died in publics on an altu scrapper your were simply shit.

The rune was overpowered in a capable players hands. That's all it takes to get it on the balance radar.

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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:It was overpowered as hell.

Overpowered and yet it isn't even in the meta?

The rune had a trade-off that grounded it... like any other ability that siphons conditions from allies, you had to be able to deal with those conditions on yourself. You could be pulling upwards of 80 stacks of burning...so if you weren't on your toes and paying attention it meant you'd be dead in a split second.

dude you knew it was coming... everything about it screamed unintended

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@"Cyninja.2954" said:Are you going by metabattle? because I can tell you, in gvg altu scrapper was seeing a lot of play. The reason it's not meta for WvW public is because it was very easy to kill ones self. Given the average skill of public players...

Honestly, GVG isn't even considered a real game mode in the eyes of Anet. The fact that it's anywhere near criterion for balance decisions is ridiculous. I could understand a balance decision if Altruism was the meta in every single pickup and clouding out every other healer like Ele and Rev and Firebrand because Altruism cleansing was SO VASTLY Overpowered...but I've yet to see that happen.

The rune was overpowered in a capable players hands. That's all it takes to get it on the balance radar.Honestly, anything in a capable players hands can potentially be "overpowered"

i'm just more surprised that Anet doesn't have the gall to remove Purity of Purpose and instead goes for it's non-meta cousin build....why? because its "op?" since when exactly? since for 3 years now since the rune was introduced? the logic does not make any sense there. And the fact people are okay with this change is again sad. Enjoy stickwars2, where Sneak Gyro Engi is the only support build in the game.

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This was probably the only "on elite skill use" rune that did not have an ICD. It was clearly an oversight. The ICD was needed as it made scrapper too effective at cleansing condis and converting them to boons by literally spamming one single button.Speaking of which, WHERE THE NERF TO PURITY OF PURPOSE!?

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@"Vova.2640" said:This was probably the only "on elite skill use" rune that did not have an ICD. It was clearly an oversight. The ICD was needed as it made scrapper too effective at cleansing condis and converting them to boons by literally spamming one single button.Speaking of which, WHERE THE NERF TO PURITY OF PURPOSE!?

There was quiet a few runes that had no ICD's both before and after the large rune update twoish years ago. Slowly over time the builds that were using things with no ICD (because generally, no ICD's opens up build options, and are generally are more useful...that's why alot of runes saw reductions in ICD's from the big Rune/Sigil Patch) were removed because of a PARTICULAR interaction between one thing and the rune. We saw this happen with Rune of Sanctuary and Rune of Evasion, except in the case of Sanctuary, Anet changed the trait interaction rather than the rune...and guess what...everything turned out fine, and sanctuary still sees use on builds and remains a viable option for many players.

Rune of Altruism was no where near as bad as the interaction between Sanctuary and Abrasive Grit. Any decent theory-crafter will tell you that Altruism was reminiscent of "Emo bonding" in Gw1. It had the same style of support and if you added an ICD...of any time scale to burning speed in gw1, you would have killed emo bonder, just like how they have now killed these two builds.

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Sorry, but altruism runes should NEVER have operated like they did on engineers (and, yes I play an engi sometimes, but I never used these runes). That was just a huge bug or coding oversight or something. Glad they finally fixed it and wish I was more surprised that it took them this long to do so. I'm unfamiliar with the other build, but why should anything that is as "great" as you describe cost zero energy to a rev? The entire concept of rev skills is that they cost energy (and, yes, I play a rev sometimes).

Cheese builds like these that take advantage of broken or overlooked game mechanics are why the WvW game has degenerated so far down the drain.

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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:Are you going by metabattle? because I can tell you, in gvg altu scrapper was seeing a lot of play. The reason it's not meta for WvW public is because it was very easy to kill ones self. Given the average skill of public players...

Honestly, GVG isn't even considered a real game mode in the eyes of Anet. The fact that it's anywhere near criterion for balance decisions is ridiculous. I could understand a balance decision if Altruism was the meta in every single pickup and clouding out every other healer like Ele and Rev and Firebrand because Altruism cleansing was SO VASTLY Overpowered...but I've yet to see that happen.

Again, in a capable players hands it was doing just that. You can pretend the rune interactions with Purity of Purpose and on the heal scrapper kit in the current meta was not overpowered in your opinion. I'm pretty sure the decision to balance this was based on metrics of fights.

The build gained traction in the current meta where cleanses have become more important than before the last big balance patch. Which also explains why this synergy was not noticed or addressed earlier.

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:The rune was overpowered in a capable players hands. That's all it takes to get it on the balance radar.Honestly, anything in a capable players hands can potentially be "overpowered"

i'm just more surprised that Anet doesn't have the gall to remove Purity of Purpose and instead goes for it's non-meta cousin build....why? because its "op?" since when exactly? since for 3 years now since the rune was introduced? the logic does not make any sense there. And the fact people are okay with this change is again sad. Enjoy stickwars2, where Sneak Gyro Engi is the only support build in the game.

See above. The rune gained a lot more attention in the current meta than before.

Purity of Purpose was already nerfed in the February patch. Having it nerfed again is not out of the question so let;s not hold our breath there, this might still happen. It's still very powerful, even on the "regular" support engi.

People can be in favor of a change if it is in line with taking out unintended effects like abusing lacking internal cooldowns. You being unhappy about actual balance and removal of oversights which given across the board internal cooldowns is your personal reaction to losing 2 builds you enjoyed. Understandable but hardly a reasonable position to take if balance is the goal.

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:Rune of Altruism was no where near as bad as the interaction between Sanctuary and Abrasive Grit. Any decent theory-crafter will tell you that Altruism was reminiscent of "Emo bonding" in Gw1. It had the same style of support and if you added an ICD...of any time scale to burning speed in gw1, you would have killed emo bonder, just like how they have now killed these two builds.

Except in this case there was already 2 builds "abusing" the lacking internal cooldown on the rune set. The choices were:

  • change both engineer and revenant (and any potential future class/build which has access to elites without cooldown)
  • change the rune
  • do nothing

Seems to me like the most reasonable approach was altering the rune. Both in terms of workload, making it future proof as well as overall game balance.

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@"DeLys.5380" said:Sorry, but altruism runes should NEVER have operated like they did on engineers (and, yes I play an engi sometimes, but I never used these runes). That was just a huge bug or coding oversight or something. Glad they finally fixed it and wish I was more surprised that it took them this long to do so. I'm unfamiliar with the other build, but why should anything that is as "great" as you describe cost zero energy to a rev? The entire concept of rev skills is that they cost energy (and, yes, I play a rev sometimes).

Cheese builds like these that take advantage of broken or overlooked game mechanics are why the WvW game has degenerated so far down the drain.

With the amount of condi spam that exists in this game, you ABSOLUTELY need a build that can remove those conditions as a counter play. That was basically all the build did. The broken mechanic was not the Rune being used to remove conditions, because they were transferred to the Engi and can kill him very easily.

As for the Rev, if you are spamming Mallyx to transfer hundreds of stacks of conditions to yourself off your team, you better believe that you need all the energy you can get to continually apply resistance to yourself or you are going to be dead in a nano second.

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@Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582 said:

@"DeLys.5380" said:Sorry, but altruism runes should NEVER have operated like they did on engineers (and, yes I play an engi sometimes, but I never used these runes). That was just a huge bug or coding oversight or something. Glad they finally fixed it and wish I was more surprised that it took them this long to do so. I'm unfamiliar with the other build, but why should anything that is as "great" as you describe cost zero energy to a rev? The entire concept of rev skills is that they cost energy (and, yes, I play a rev sometimes).

Cheese builds like these that take advantage of broken or overlooked game mechanics are why the WvW game has degenerated so far down the drain.

With the amount of condi spam that exists in this game, you ABSOLUTELY need a build that can remove those conditions as a counter play. That was basically all the build did. The broken mechanic was not the Rune being used to remove conditions, because they were transferred to the Engi and can kill him very easily.

Yes, all that and the condition conversion, which was the actual reason this was of so much value. Which in this case happened twice, on the target where the initial condition was removed and transferred to the engineer, then again on the engineer when he cleansed the condition off himself.

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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:It was overpowered as hell.

Overpowered and yet it isn't even in the meta?

The rune had a trade-off that grounded it... like any other ability that siphons conditions from allies, you had to be able to deal with those conditions on yourself. You could be pulling upwards of 80 stacks of burning...so if you weren't on your toes and paying attention it meant you'd be dead in a split second.

Zerg meta =/= gvg meta.

This is like asking why a nailgun isnt meta when its so much better then a hammer.

For most situations, a hammer is effectiv enough.

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@Turkeyspit.3965 said:I don't have any views pro or con here, but I have to ask, if a Rune is what makes or breaks a specific build, doesn't that suggest the Rune itself is an issue?

The first thing is that you see it as an issue to begin with.

Some mechanics are critical to how a build can function at all in the first place. For example, Smothering Auras and by proxy it’s sister mechanic, Rune of the Trooper (both of which have no ICD btw), allow the current meta ele build to even cleanse conditions at all. Take either one or both of those away and you will effectively and permanently kill Support Ele.

Likewise Rune of Altruism allows builds like the 0 energy Rev to cleanse enough conditions to be competitive. Take that away and you will like I said earlier, effectively kill the build

This behavior exists across a number of builds seen not just in gw2 but also in gw1, and the flexibility of such mechanics allow for higher build diversity.

Again if all you want to play is sneak gyro support scrapper as the only viable support build than be my guest and start nerfing all these seemingly “overpowered mechanics” and give everything in the game a 300 second ICD.

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