Superior Rune of Altruism and alternative healers

[Mint.6210]

The new changes on the Superior Rune of Altruism are not healthy.

The 6th bonus on this rune used to give fury to allies: "When you use a healing skill, grant Fury to nearby allies for 8s. (Cooldown: 10s)". Now it simply gives healing power and transfers 1 condition from 5 allies to you after using an elite. This seems like a useless bonus for many PvE situations, such as most of the raid and fractal bosses.

This rune used to give many alternative healers, such as firebrand, renegade and scrapper, access to grant fury and keep a 100% uptime on it. Fury is an important boon to many damage dealers, and not all of them can self-generate it. This change makes druid even more of a must-have in fractals and raids now, which is not a healthy change. Arguably a chrono can provide the 100% fury uptime with chaos traitline, but this is not the case with fractal parties that wish to run with just a healer. The changes also made this rune less competitive against the runes of Water and Monk, which is also not a good change.

Therefore, I hope that this thread gets some attention, and hopefully there is a chance to get our old rune of Altruism back for the sake of diversity.

[LilScorpion.4952]

Yeh, the old rune of altruism was my go-to rune for healers that couldn't get access to fury in other ways. Druid has even more of an edge now. The old altruism rune did favor low cooldown heal skills, which aren't super common, but it was a great addition for healers.

[Ishaellis.1540]

Who needs diversity when you can just use druid forever. FeelsGoodManWe need the good old 2chrono, 2 druids, 2 PS meta back! Please don't.

[Brynioch.1873]

Only scourge and engineer don't have access to fury for groups. Guardian, Elementalist and Revenant have all pretty easy to use access to that boon groupwide.

Firebrand for example has sword 2 which gives allies fury when they stand in the symbol.

[Mint.6210]

It is true that firebrand can get fury with a sword, however this takes away either mace (a lot of healing and blocks come from this, and blocks increase your healing power) or staff (no access to might from Empower and blast finisher). You also get fury from the elite shout but its not enough to keep it up full time.

Herald has access to fury but renegade does not, and renegade healer has better might and alacrity generation than herald does.

Engineers also have fury from a traited rifle turret but this is not enough for full up-keep either.

Tempest healer can provide full fury uptime for 10 people, which is why I didn't mention it in the first post as well, just firebrand, renegade and scrapper.

[Tzarakiel.7490]

The only class that cannot easily maintain 50% uptime of fury on themselves with minimal investment is necromancer. I don't quite see how a support would have to provide 100% uptime for any other class.

[Astralporing.1957]

You may have a different definition of "minimal investment" then.

[Za Shaloc.3908]

I do miss the old one as well, but the new one is interesting. I think a new runeset should have been created for this so Altruism runes can be reinstated.Something like:

Rune of Empathy

1. -5% incoming condition duration
2. +5% boon duration
3. -5% condition duration. Using a heal skill converts one condition to a boon (cooldown 10 seconds).
4. +10% boon duration
5. -10% incoming condition duration
6. Using an elite skill transfers one condition from nearby allies (600 radius).

I would love for the transfer to passively pulse per interval for Mallyx and Kalla elites. The tech is there as far as I'm aware since Diabolic Inferno automatically procs when the ICD is up. It seems like this rune was redesigned with these elite skills in mind.

[Renshu.5329]

For the sake of support diversity this really does need to come back. On my support Firebrand, I've removed my Radiance tree which was an amazing fit because of Perfected Inscriptions + Bane Signet. All that for a Valor tree, and while the 3 extra AOE aegis procs come in handy along with the F3 Tome Reset feels great, my impact in Fractal T4 is astronomically reduced the whole party deals way less damage because I'm not applying enough might, or there's a lack of perma fury for the DPS.

Losing a party wide Bane Signet passive impacts the whole groups DPS significantly, and my might generation is far less than before, and I have to use Smite Condition just to trigger party fury, that or drop my stave / mace for a sword which has ONE party utility skill VS 3 on Mace(111,2,3), and 4 on Stave(2,3,4 , Blast 3 for Condi Cleanse) which I absolutely refuse to do because that also reduces party DPS even more. Sure I heal more with Monk runes, but it's almost excessive. Nobody brings a healer JUST because they heal, it's the boons. Please consider bringing it back.

[Mint.6210]

@Tzarakiel.7490 said:The only class that cannot easily maintain 50% uptime of fury on themselves with minimal investment is necromancer. I don't quite see how a support would have to provide 100% uptime for any other class.

I'm not sure in which environment this would be, but in general raid environment, with the general raid builds, many classes don't take self-fury. Many players also bring these same raid builds to fractals then.

@"Pterikdactyl.7630" said:I do miss the old one as well, but the new one is interesting. I think a new runeset should have been created for this so Altruism runes can be reinstated.Something like:

Rune of Empathy

1. -5% incoming condition duration
2. +5% boon duration
3. -5% condition duration. Using a heal skill converts one condition to a boon (cooldown 10 seconds).
4. +10% boon duration
5. -10% incoming condition duration
6. Using an elite skill transfers one condition from nearby allies (600 radius).

I would love for the transfer to passively pulse per interval for Mallyx and Kalla elites. The tech is there as far as I'm aware since Diabolic Inferno automatically procs when the ICD is up. It seems like this rune was redesigned with these elite skills in mind.

This idea would be nice, this suggested new rune has a clear purpose. If the old Altruism is reinstated, it is competitive against the runes of Monk and Water again. The problem with new Altruism is that there seems to be no reason at all to take it over runes on Monk or Water, unlike the old one.

[Morte de Angelis.7986]

I still want to know why Altruism was changed. They must of known that it was such a staple in any sort of healer alternative to Druid.

FB can get Fury in Valor and is alright in uptime when companied by a Rev, but you have to use two skills constantly to keep up the Fury and pretty much just sit of Staff for might. Kinda suck honestly. I'm beyond annoyed at this change.

[Xeri.6290]

I just wanted to chime in and say that I too think that this was not a good change. Wasn't the whole purpose of changing runes to promote alternative viable builds? I doubt we'll ever hear anything about this from a developer... but I am curious to see what their thoughts are on this. If we never hear anything I'll have to assume that it was an oversight.