Rune of Sanctuary & Abrasive Grit

[tyu.9470]

@"Irenio CalmonHuang.2048"

 

Is it intentional that the rune doesn't work with thief's self-heal trait "Invigorating Precision"? Or a simple bug that you'll fix in the future?

[Zunki.3916]

What I dont understand is why rune of sanct triggers so hard from livesteal and some other common effects, but not from soothing mist and regen. What interaction there would make the rune op?

[ThiBash.5634]

> @"Irenio CalmonHuang.2048" said:

> Thanks for reading,

 

Thank you for posting. It's very insightful and much appreciated.

[Carighan.6758]

What about the simplest effect-restriction on **most** of these runes/sigils, **making them work only on stuff you actively cast yourself**?

[Omnicron.2467]

One issue I do not understand with this rune which I would really appreciate an explaination on is this:

 

As far as I can see people say that the ICD on the rune would make it useless, and as the OP pointed out could lead to people getting a small heal triggering the effect rather than the larger heal as intended.

 

The question I have is who exactly would run this rune in a Fractal or Raid setup? Your DPS would not run it, and your chronotank has better options and so does your healer. So in terms of group play who is this rune really good for? The current way it is working it is only being used becasue the effects were broken in combinations with certain specs in certain situations, especially in PvP, but this is an unhealthy reason to choose this rune over others. If the rune was less broken in its interactions with traits and skills (without nerfing those traits and skills!) who would use it?

 

The only profession I could see using it is Scourge, and the most reasonable suggestion I have seen is that the rune only triggers on the skill use (not passives) of the person equipping the rune

[Jockstrap.3179]

First, thank you for sharing the thought process on this change. That's about the only thing nice I have to say about the change itself. I am constantly trying out different ways to counter the arguments I get when I want to bring a support scourge into raids. I do not disagree that the combination of Sanctuary runes and Abrasive Grit is broken, but hotfix/disable the new change causing the break instead of nerfing a trait that was working perfectly fine before the update. My challenge to anyone getting a vote on changes as significant as specialization traits is to actually play it a minimum of 8 hours in every game mode before a decision is made. How about the developers spend some time balancing support roles so there are equally valuable options outside of Chronomancer tanks and Druid healers? Players don't refer to it as "jail" for no reason.

[Laila Lightness.8742]

> @"Jockstrap.3179" said:

> First, thank you for sharing the thought process on this change. That's about the only thing nice I have to say about the change itself. I am constantly trying out different ways to counter the arguments I get when I want to bring a support scourge into raids. I do not disagree that the combination of Sanctuary runes and Abrasive Grit is broken, but hotfix/disable the new change causing the break instead of nerfing a trait that was working perfectly fine before the update. My challenge to anyone getting a vote on changes as significant as specialization traits is to actually play it a minimum of 8 hours in every game mode before a decision is made. How about the developers spend some time balancing support roles so there are equally valuable options outside of Chronomancer tanks and Druid healers? Players don't refer to it as "jail" for no reason.

 

Druid only exist for spirits and slb with all spirits is not that strong to take dps spot. So thats real reason druid is a healer nerf spirits druid would be kicked on sight since why bother having a weak healer whos even beated by theif in heal numbers. But i agree the trait shouldnt be nerfed rune shouls gotten icd instead.

 

[Jockstrap.3179]

> @"Laila Lightness.8742" said:

 

> Druid only exist for spirits and slb with all spirits is not that strong to take dps spot. So thats real reason druid is a healer nerf spirits druid would be kicked on sight since why bother having a weak healer whos even beated by theif in heal numbers. But i agree the trait shouldnt be nerfed rune shouls gotten icd instead.

>

 

The point I was getting at is that we need some more options in PvE. Chrono and Druid should not be meta for literally every single encounter. I was really hoping to see some replacement options with the PoF specs but nope, we're still looking at the same support specs 6 wings into raiding...and changes like this are not helping the matter at all.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @"thrag.9740" said:

> I know this is off topic, but literally every time I read this statement, or see an old video of a dev making the same statement I think about social awkwardness in fractals.

Which is why they announced plans to change it ages ago (along with adding a bunch of new instabilities, many of which will offer a tradeoff of good|bad).

 

 

[Sephylon.4938]

> @"Omnicron.2467" said:

> One issue I do not understand with this rune which I would really appreciate an explaination on is this:

>

> As far as I can see people say that the ICD on the rune would make it useless, and as the OP pointed out could lead to people getting a small heal triggering the effect rather than the larger heal as intended.

>

> The question I have is who exactly would run this rune in a Fractal or Raid setup? Your DPS would not run it, and your chronotank has better options and so does your healer. So in terms of group play who is this rune really good for? The current way it is working it is only being used becasue the effects were broken in combinations with certain specs in certain situations, especially in PvP, but this is an unhealthy reason to choose this rune over others. If the rune was less broken in its interactions with traits and skills (without nerfing those traits and skills!) who would use it?

>

> The only profession I could see using it is Scourge, and the most reasonable suggestion I have seen is that the rune only triggers on the skill use (not passives) of the person equipping the rune

 

Think pvp/wvw. Full necro fb squad running this rune, or necro+pocket healer in pvp

[GWMO.4785]

in the meantime, renegade and mirage also still have super aggressive heals duo to tormenting rune ([source](

"source")). deadeye remains freaking untouched in its perma stealth 1 shot burst. if not got even stronger thanks to vision sigil. not to mention the very tanky, weaver that literately can outheal everything got buffed to oblivion ([source](

"source"))...

 

_"This situation goes against one of our design philosophies for Guild Wars 2: Seeing another player should not be frustrating."_

yeah... nice words. not buying it

[Walhalla.5473]

> @"Irenio CalmonHuang.2048" said:

>

> With that, and the addition of ICD to Abrasive Grit, you’ll have control over when that ICD is triggered because it is based on barriers you grant. This keeps the rune legible and easy to understand in the meantime. Abrasive Grit remains usable, though it lost a bit of its burst-condition-cleansing potential, and gained some might uptime. We’ll be keeping an eye on it and watching for reasonable options that promote healthier, skillful gameplay for everyone.

> ~Irenio

 

Well thanks to the big ICD you don't really have control when to trigger the trait. There are some situations where you need to apply barrier for a big damage spike and this would trigger the trait when you right now don't want to trigger it. Also keeping track of the ICD is not something I would call fun. Its a hidden clock and you don't really know when you can trigger this trait again. To have more control you'd need a tool that shows you when the trait can trigger again which would probably against the ToS. Or... well just get rid of the ICD

 

The might uptime isn't that great and as Astralporing said, to profit from the increased might uptime you'd need to apply barrier in a more counter intuitive way otherwise you'd trigger the trait when you'd need the barriers but not the condi cleanse or the might application right now. Its more or less punishing right now. Get the barriers out when needed? You apply way less might then before. Apply barriers to get might out? You'll have a harder time to cleanse or put the barriers out when needed. Basically Anti-Synergy.

 

This change doesn't make gameplay healthier, it makes gameplay less healthy. The ICD is just a band aid fix that doesn't fix the problem and makes things worse in terms of gameplay. The ICD should go away ( or go to like 1 or 2 seconds ) since it takes control away and promotes counter intuitive gameplay and the rune shouldn't trigger on every heal since this function gives the rune the possibility to break other stuff as well and can be quite op with heavy heal builds or even make them go YOLO. Right now I still think that Abrasive Grit died for the sins of the Rune.

 

Still, thank you for the explanation, even though I disagree with the change. I hope that we'll see more dev interaction in the future.

[Nasbit.3240]

The **best** - well, **not the easiest** - solution would be:

Changing the trait, but not with an inner cooldown like you just did... no, change it that way, that it only triggers on barrier given from the necromancer itself. So the trait do not trigger for barrier given from the rune or another player.

This would fix the problem with the rune of sanctuary, recover the necromancers potential, and make sure to not abuse rune or barrier.

[The Bassist.5410]

You know, Rune of Sanctuary could've been changed back to the way it was.

[Pifil.5193]

> @"lodjur.1284" said:

> > @"Irenio CalmonHuang.2048" said:

> > This situation goes against one of our design philosophies for Guild Wars 2: Seeing another player should not be frustrating.

>

> While I think that this change is good I think this design philosophy is not generally lived up to. In WvW when playing necro, I get frustrated a lot, as do everyone else who plays necro outside of a group of 5+. This is because everytime you see a thief/mesmer/ranger you know you're in for an awful fight.

 

I believe Irenio probably means that when you see another _allied_ player it should not be frustrating.

[Agua.1607]

Your changes look really good on paaer, but it seems you didn't consider the following things:

 

1- Barrier usage: When does people use barriers? When they are about to receive damge obviously! Specially because decay time of barrier is really low. It is very normal to stack these barriers to avoid big attacks, which you won't be able to do now, unless you sacrifice might. So you now have to choose to actually mitigate damage, or provide boons, you can't do boths.(like... druid, who can do everything but better)

 

2- Condi converting: Why didnt you buff it as well? It was the necro thing, converting condi to buffs. I'll tell you why I think you didn't, because it goes against one of our design philosophies for Guild Wars 2: never buff necro, only nerf him.

Necro used to have nefarious favor, but it was nerfed to the ground. have in mind that it is a kill being paid in life force, that does not provide healing, it does not make damage, and only converting ONE condition into a boon(and for 3 people ONLY). It hardly justifies the cost on life force.

 

3- Boons speed: You could go 0-25 might time on yourself and your subgroup in 5 seconds. Now you must wait at least to 20 seconds to buff your group. Sure on long fight its... sort of ok(raids), but for all other PVE content... fights are shorter than 20 seconds.

 

4- Added dificulty for necro: Now you have to count 5 seconds each time you use a barrier. if you don't do a perfect rotation, those might stacks are lost.

 

In general, scourge(and any other support) are weaker than druids. Druids cangive all the boons, provide all the ccc, hace all the mobility, all the spirits,etc,etc,etc... there was only 2 reasons to pick a necro over a druid, and it was condi conversion, and aoe revival. Now condi conversion is lost, and we can't even provide might for our team unless we sacrifice support power...

 

 

 

Anyway, here are some possible solutions:

 

Make nefarious favor provide a small ammoutn of heal/barrier(why not both?) and convert 2 conditions to boons for 5 people on your group.

Make abrasive grit CD 3 seconds and convert 2 conditions on 5/10 man groups.

Fix the rune, instead of nerfing necro. The rune is still broken, people will find other interactions eventually.

[santso.9201]

Problem is not the scourge interaction anymore, but crazy barrier uptime/sustain it provides to groups especially in wvw, you can have permanent 7-8k barrier all the time on everyone just because of this rune. IT NEEDS TO HAVE ICD. it provides stronger sustain than some of the support options avaivable, why is this not the problem?.

[Blocki.4931]

> @"The Bassist.5410" said:

> You know, Rune of Sanctuary could've been change back to the way it was.

 

Nerf it for 8 other classes because 1 is super abusing it. No.

[Funky.4861]

To quote OP:

We immediately thought about putting an internal cooldown (ICD) on the rune. After all, the change to the rune is what enabled this unwanted behavior. This would have been the easiest and fastest fix.

...

We’ll be keeping an eye on it and watching for reasonable options that promote healthier, skillful gameplay for everyone.

 

They know this solution is crap but had to do something quickly. Give them some time and let's see what they come up with. It's nice to see the thinking behind it, but imo they need to hit the rune and restore the trait.

[rivvyn.6257]

Thank you for the explanation.

 

However, this is what I had feared:

Nerfing the trait generally because of its unwanted interaction with some 'new crap' you just added.

If you had changed the trait because you considered it 'owerpowered' in general, that would have been 'ok'.

But this way, it just 'fucks' with the scourge players.

 

I do not care about PvP or WvW in the least, but I want to 'support' in raids (and fractals) - and as there are plenty of other people giving might (thanks to the new CD, the trait's effects can now only be stacked twice...), my main reason for taking this trait is the emergency condi cleanse. With the internal CD, the trait _cannot_ be used for this _reliably_ and _exactly_ when you need it any more (and also not on the 'whole' squad).

 

I checked yesterday, and I still provide lots of condi cleanse - but this _is_ a badly scripted workaround, and I would highly appreciate it if you could soon come back to it and re-fix this 'emergency fix'. (I completely understand that a fast solution was needed.)

Why not e.g. split effects for game modes, as you do for other skills? (Many other options....)

 

At any rate, thanks for the great game and your continued efforts - I very much enjoy it!

<3

[Marxx.5021]

So poor to nerf a class trait instead of fixing the rune. I am sure if that were a mesmer trait you would have fixed the rune.

[Astralporing.1957]

> @"Blocki.4931" said:

> > @"The Bassist.5410" said:

> > You know, Rune of Sanctuary could've been change back to the way it was.

>

> Nerf it for 8 other classes because 1 is super abusing it. No.

It's broken (maybe not to the same degree as with Abusive Grit, but still broken) on more than one class even now after that "fix". Want to nerf all those classes as well just to keep the rune as it is? Besides, better to have one nerfed rune than one nerfed class. And no matter how nice it looks in theory, in practice AG change was a nerf, and not a minor one.

 

[AngelicLoki.1625]

> @"Irenio CalmonHuang.2048" said:

> I hope this will help you see that we’re right there with you, looking to resolve this issue as quickly and smoothly as possible. That is not to say that the solution was the perfect one, but when there is a live issue causing immediate problems we must address it as soon as possible.

>

> We’re aware of the current possibility to trigger Abrasive Grit’s ICD from someone else, but that should be fixed a bit later on.

>

> With that, and the addition of ICD to Abrasive Grit, you’ll have control over when that ICD is triggered because it is based on barriers you grant. This keeps the rune legible and easy to understand in the meantime. Abrasive Grit remains usable, though it lost a bit of its burst-condition-cleansing potential, and gained some might uptime. We’ll be keeping an eye on it and watching for reasonable options that promote healthier, skillful gameplay for everyone.

> ~Irenio

 

Irenio,

 

That's for the explanation, I think most of the community agrees with you on the points that you mentioned in the post. The key here is that the fix that was put in place needs to be a **temporary one**. It's understandable to nerf the trait in the short term until a better solution can be put in place, but please continue to work on such a better solution.

 

Now, your last paragraph (quoted) indicates that you think this is a balanced trade-off (you get more might and less condi removal). The issue is, it's not balanced at all when you include real-world playstyle, it's only balanced on paper. Any time you add an ICD, you have to ask yourself a question: Does the trait rely on proper timing to be good? In this case, prior to no ICD the answer was "no", but post ICD you only get benefit when the trait affects an AoE barrier (f3, heal, f1). That means there is now a significant amount of anti-synergy with things like Serpent Siphon or runes (such as the now-hilarious Rune of the Scourge, which is a support rune you can't use now because it interferes with your support spec traits). The lack of an internal cooldown per-player now also means that you can't use your F5 in a support spec except for immediately after F3 for fear of it triggering grit and "costing" you 8/18 might (depending on 5 man vs 10 man). There are some areas where an ICD is fine to prevent compounding activation (Unholy Sanctuary, for example), but this trait isn't one of those.

 

As other in the thread have noted, I think the scourge community would be very happy if this trait was instead changed to apply specifically to the shade skills. That is a nerf to the trait in that it would no longer proc on the heal skill or serpent siphon (and nobody uses serpent siphon in support builds anyway), but you can buff the skill by having it net changes to other shade skills as part of its affect as well. For example, you could have it apply 1 might for 8 seconds, and apply to the shade auto-attack. You could remove the condi-removal on barrier, and the use of the trait adds a 2 condi-conversion back to the f2 skill. There are so many better interactions that could be done with Abrasive Grit than just the current brute-force nerf to it. I'm going to be honest, you could add 10 might for 15 seconds to it, and it still wouldn't feel "good" to play with because there are just too many bad interactions with it today.

 

Please consider a net change to this trait. As it stands, it's just _not fun to play with_, which is the worst sort of balance change you could ever have done to it.

 

[DeceiverX.8361]

Thanks for posting this. Was good to see the insight, and the reasoning was fair.

Making AG and the rune not interact overall is probably still worth looking into for the future.

[Elmo Benchwarmer.3025]

> @"Irenio CalmonHuang.2048" said:

> This situation goes against one of our design philosophies for Guild Wars 2: Seeing another player should not be frustrating.

I get frustrated whenever I see a Spambeast, Holokeyboardsmash, Miserymesmer, Dumbdevil and basically any other overwhelmingly silly elite specialisation. Could you fix that too?