Rune of Sanctuary & Abrasive Grit

[DaFishBob.6518]

I feel like this problem would be better served by changing the rune to have a 5 second ICD and grant a barrier size independent of the heal received. This way a tiny tick of healing does not affect the barrier produced. The ICD will prevent a rapid flow of heals to stack up an enormous amount of barriers because it's the exact length of time that a barrier lasts before expiring. The interaction between Abrasive Grit and Rune of Sanctuary will also be toned down as a result which means Abrasive Grit can be returned the way it was before.

[thrag.9740]

> @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

> First, instabilities weren't released until October 2015 (for that matter, fractals weren't introduced until November 2012). It was changed a couple of times since then to be less, erm, agonizing.

This is just straight up wrong. Instabilities came out with fractured on nov 26, 2013. (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractured).

 

Next, see this page here from nov 26, 2013.

http://dulfy.net/2013/11/26/gw2-mistlock-instabilities/

 

See social awkwardness in there? Same stupid principle; "standing near your team is bad". Still counter to a core design philosophy of this same game. Lets see, that was in Nov 26, 2013. That's almost exactly 5 years ago. It wasn't a problem for most people back then because everyone just did f40 and f50, not fractal 46.

 

> @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

>

> Regardless, the dev who said there were plans to change it has always been upfront with us, has always come through (by announcing delays, changes in plans, or plans to scrap, or of course actual implementation). Regardless of how long ago it was mentioned, the point is that the devs are dealing with it. I'm not sure what else we can reasonably expect of them.

 

What else can we reasonable expect? How about not to make such a colossal blunder in the first place? I don't care that Ben is super cool, that doesn't magically excuse all mistakes Anet has ever made. Seriously I can't emphasize this enough, SA goes completely against a stated core design philosophy of the game, and it has been in the game for nearly 5 years. Granted much of those 5 years it was reduced to obscurity and irrelevance, but Anet made the decision to make it a bigger part of the fractal experience. If I were in charge, I'd hot fix it by disabling social awkwardness until I could do a real fix. SA has caused many players to leave fractals, because SA made fractals not fun anymore for a lot of players, especially players who were pugging with other casual players. I expect Anet to actually try to retain the fractal population.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Astralporing.1957]

> @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

> > @"thrag.9740" said:

> > > @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

> > > > @"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).

> > >

> > >

> >

> > Yeah I know they did, the keyphase is, 'ages ago'. Multiple updates ago. This game is what? 6 years old and we have had to deal with this stupid mechanic which goes against the very heart of the game for nearly half the games life.

> First, instabilities weren't released until October 2015 (for that matter, fractals weren't introduced until November 2012). It was changed a couple of times since then to be less, erm, agonizing.

>

> Regardless, the dev who said there were plans to change it has always been upfront with us, has always come through (by announcing delays, changes in plans, or plans to scrap, or of course actual implementation). Regardless of how long ago it was mentioned, the point is that the devs are dealing with it. I'm not sure what else we can reasonably expect of them.

Considering that they had years to deal with this problem (one they acknowledge exists) and yet they haven't managed to do so yet, they should have just removed that instability completely long ago.

The truth is, that we hear about them wanting to do something about it every time there's some change to fractals. And yet, nothing ever comes out of it.

 

[Nimon.7840]

> @"Irenio CalmonHuang.2048" said:

> Hey all,

>

> I wanted to talk to you about Rune of Sanctuary and Abrasive Grit.

>

> Firstly, the interaction between those two was ridiculous. Yes, there are other strong interactions with the rune, but they are not OMGWTF OP interactions.

>

> This is what we went through when we were figuring out how to fix it on Tuesday:

>

> 1) 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. Then, we went on to look at what effects that change would have had on the rune and everyone using it. In particular, we looked at a worst-case scenario that would have happened as a result:

>

> Player A has Rune of Sanctuary and starts using their strong heal ability.

> Player B heals them for some small amount, causing the rune to go on ICD.

> Player A completes their strong heal and loses out on the effect of the rune.

> Player A is frustrated or angry that player B screwed something up for them.

>

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

 

So can we talk about Condi reaper? Cause that's exactly how it works: other players make it really frustrating to play Condi reaper, due to combo field overlap.

 

>

> 2) We then spent some time looking at and investigating lifesteal interaction. We quickly reached the conclusion that lifesteal wasn’t what was causing the issue to blow out. It was merely contributing to the ease of causing the interaction. Changing it so that lifesteal wouldn’t trigger the rune barrier gain wouldn’t fix the issue because there are plenty of other ways to gain rapid heals, whether it is your own sources (like life siphon) or external ones (like having a druid, medi engi, or other player/source healing you).

>

> 3) We further considered whether to have the rune grant only a barrier on heals over a particular size. This felt bad for a few reasons: It gets harder to read/trigger, it eliminates the lower-level interactions entirely, and it pushes the possible abuse case to be slightly harder, but not unreachable. This leaves it likely to happen again, just a little later - after builds are developed that are capable of getting fast heals just over the minimum value.

 

This would have kinda been the right way. But not make the rune trigger when a certain amount gets healed, but make the trait trigger, when getting barrier over a certain threshhold. (Maybe like 1.5k?)

 

>

> Given those paths and their consequences we chose to put an ICD on the trait while at the same time increasing its might stacks and duration. This was the best, most surgical option available to us on this timeline.

 

The best about the trait isn't the might. It's the condicleanses which got gutted.

In wvw you will have 25might anyways in zergfights.

In pve-raids as a support scourge, you aren't responsible for stacking might, you have a druid for that, because he can do it better.

Also. Why isn't weaver nerfed then?

Weaver + rune of evasion is really overpowered. You can literally stand inside of a ghastly breach as a weaver, use a dodge skill at the very end, and you are back full health, with no conditions.

 

So you don't get punished for standing inside a punishment skill?

You can just ignore it.

Why didn't this get fixed. There are several videos showing how insane this interaction is.

 

>

> 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.

>

> Thanks for reading,

> ~Irenio