Guild Wars 2

From what i have seen on the Ready Up, the low end bonuses are much weaker now then they used to be. Specifically for the rune of the monk the second bonus is only 5% boon duration down from 15%. If this is applied to all similar runes then mixing 2 sets to gain up to 30% boon duration from runes seems no longer possible.

This is such a downer for me as it messes with options and completely wrecks my build that has many components that work well together all relying on that extra boon duration.

Sigh

They are making it so you should just pick one set. The Rune of the Monk will have a maximum of +15% Boon Duration, as you can see here:
http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/c/3928027?t=35m14s

Their “more build diversity” = kill all good builds.

I wonder if there is still a combination left that will give you 45% boon duration (that you could get beforehand with 2 traveler, 2 monk, 2 water). Even 30% seems far fetched now, because one of the sets (monk) that used to have 15% on the first two now only has 15% total.

If that stands true for all the sets, then yes it is a massive nerf to boon duration, currently you can get 45% by going 2 into 3 different rune sets.

If all rune sets adhere to the format above for monk you can get 20% after the patch by going 4 of 1 rune set to net you 15%, then 5% from a different set by having 2 of them.

So unless there is a specific rune set that offers boon duration of 45% it is indeed a nerf. A very big nerf, which will primarily hurt Eles and Guards as the 2 classes that rely heavily on boons and boon duration.

Svarty.8019:

They are making to so you should just pick one set. The Rune of the Monk will have a maximum of +15% Boon Duration, as you can see here:
http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/c/3928027?t=35m14s

Cheers for the link. Maybe they are going for making boon duration focused on a single buff stronger than bringing the duration up on all boons a decent amount. I noticed that the Rune of Strength had 45% might duration on it. I think they want you to either focus on a single boon than bringing all boons up across the board. It makes sense but will definitely hurt guardian and elementalists (or builds focusing on boons). So instead of bringing 45%+ boon duration to all boons, you will have to specialize towards one boon.

I think its kinda funny that Anet has came out and said they want us to use a full set of the same type of rune. I mean if they made it to where we had to have 6 for the full effect why didn’t they think at some point we would mix and match to get the bonuses we wanted just like we do with armor to get the look we want.
As for why this was such a huge deal to them I will never know. Unless someone there took it as a personal slight that we were not playing the game the way they intended it to be played. If they wanted us to only go one way with it, they should have only allowed us to only slot runes on the chest piece and had that one rune encompass the same power as the six together and be done with it.
I personally liked the idea of mix and matching runes. I felt that it allowed for a more deserve play style. That and given that some rune sets were next to useless to start with….

Im cool with having boon duration nerfed. Yeah it bugs me but atleast how i have enough wiggle room to use hollowed ground without breaking the cap.

Edit. Wait thats a 15% reduction if i stick with the trinity of runes. If i go all monks liek they want me to do…yeah that bones. They need to fix the boon duration on armor and stuff, for reals

No. They didn’t. There will still be options to at least hit 60%.

IF boon duration really matters that much to you then you can run food for +20% +6/6 rune set for +15% and 30 in your boon duration line which will give you +65% boon duration. 4pce + 2 pce split set would net you another 5% using the example from Ready up so 70% overall.

This is assuming there is no rune set that will give a overall duration to all boons I don’t think there will be and that they want more of a focus on a specific boon. Might is the boon you can slack on the most if you want to focus on another boon specifically since the duration of might is already long from blast finishers and attunement swaps etc.

Might is also the boon that is hit the hardest by less boon duration because it gains the most and loses the most duration of any of your other boons since it’s base is already large.

To really understand how much this will impact your build you need to look at the boon durations of the boons that matter to you and see how much you lose/gain.

60% – currently gives your elemental attunement boons +3 sec to prot, regen, swiftness.
45% – +2.25 for prot, regen, swiftness

Zephyr’s Boon – 60% = +3 sec
45% = +2.25 sec

Updraft = +6 sec
45% = + 4.5 sec

Armor of Earth = +3.6 for stability and protection
45% = +2.7 sec

For dps you will see the biggest hit when you try and maintain high might stacks the window of opportunity to capitalize will be shorter.

Blast finisher might = 3 stacks 20 sec(same as sigil of battle)
60%= +12 seconds
45% = +9 second

45% overall is ok for me personally on my ele. I will look at the other sets to see what actually changed because we don’t know for sure like what happened to water. I think water will be very popular as I think the condition removal chance will rise to 25% but have to see what the boon duration looks like. Right now I am looking at runes of earth for my bunker armor and runes of strength possibly for my dps armor.

Chorazin.4107:

So unless there is a specific rune set that offers boon duration of 45% it is indeed a nerf. A very big nerf, which will primarily hurt Eles and Guards as the 2 classes that rely heavily on boons and boon duration.

There are perfectly viable nil boon duration builds for both classes so its not going to hurt the classes overall.

morrolan.9608:

There are perfectly viable nil boon duration builds for both classes so its not going to hurt the classes overall.

There are perfectly viable nil boon duration builds currently, without any change to boon duration rune sets, my meditation build runs 1. But id prefer to promote diversity rather than restrict it, so why the need for change? Admittedly we dont know if a rune set is going to just sport boon duration up to 45% in the patch but my thinking is it will not.

It’s a change that has me scratching my head, i dont recall being in a fight recently and thinking the reason we lost was because boon duration was way over the top. And if they think it is going to slow up those big guild hammer trains they are having a laugh. Those trains often have 10 Guards+ in them.

The design idea is the more you stack runes, the more powerful effects you get. Right now, there should be only one rune that does not follow that design; Rune of Divinity, which does not have min max attributes.

I don’t think that’s hard to figure out and it should be easy to see this fix coming. Too bad it lasted long enough so a lot more people are attached to it.

With this upcoming fix, I hope they would also fix Giver’s armor and/or add more fun sources for boon duration.

xFireize.6318:

With this upcoming fix, I hope they would also fix Giver’s armor and/or add more fun sources for boon duration.

I agree givers is rubbish, and yeah if there were more avenues for boon duration sure.

I guess my argument is does the change encourage build diversity or limit it? Or was it done simply because they want people to use a whole rune set rather than mix and match. Which will still happen, you can go 4 of 1 runeset for the 15% and 2 of a differing runeset for 5% so what have they really achieved here?

As Ozii said it may be more they are forcing you to focus on a single boon and there will be runesets to support each 1, you want large uptime on regen or protection there will be a runeset for it.

xFireize.6318:

I don’t think that’s hard to figure out and it should be easy to see this fix coming. Too bad it lasted long enough so a lot more people are attached to it.

More that people have wasted a lot of real life money or time on building ascended armour sets around having large boon uptime. And does the change overall promote build diversity or is it more just to fit into their paradigm?

oZii.2864:

This is assuming there is no rune set that will give a overall duration to all boons I don’t think there will be and that they want more of a focus on a specific boon.

I think you are right that ANet wants us to focus on specific boons. However, I’m quite sure that we will get at least one rune set which provides more than just 15% boon duration. My bet is that Water will be turned into a condition cleanse rune set and Altruism will become the boon duration set with at least 25% boon duration. This way all of the former healing sets will have a distinctiv purpose.

if you look at rune of the monk then you can see that the 6th slot is not filled with boon duration so it is safe to assume that there exists one with the 6th slots so the max boon duration from sigils will probably be 30%.

It does appear that Boon Duration mixing is taking the hardest hit from the sharp change in Superior Runes. I am sad since I only recently bothered to get that combo, to try to compensate for the nerf to Symbol of Swiftness. The added up time on stability was really useful. The change in PvP to no mixing period (one rune slot only giving the effects of all 6) makes it obvious that the balance issues with mixed sets are to be hated out of the game.

It seems unlikely they did this just to hate boon duration, so what other OP mixes are being used? Just curious what I missed and what Runes to dump if I have them in inventory.

I am also confused by why we spend the first 59 levels of the game being Trained to Mix Runes, or have un-Runed armor? Just seems pretty silly to me that if using full sets is to be the be all and end all of ‘proper’ game play, that there are only 2 runes per Minor and 4 per Major. Or is power leveling so common that the Minor and Major runes have become irrelevant?

I also wonder if they remembered to nerf the 10% Major Sanctuary rune down to 5%. At 10% it used to be the 3rd pair in a full boon duration set up.

I am currently using a spirit ranger 0 0 30 30 10 build with mighty swap and sun and stone spirit.
I am also using OH training with sword+horn and axe+torch combo with having sigils on battle on each weapon set.
The combo goes with jungle stalker and 4 altruism and 2 water runes.

In essence, my horn 5 gives 24 second duration buffs on a 28 second cooldown which is almost perma fury. I can use my jungle stalker and fire field blast to get my pet might up to 21 instantly while keeping long fury and swiftness on it. On myself i can keep 10-19 might stacks depending on timing.
From healing spring i gain almost perma regen and my protection on dodge is 3 seconds and protection from stone spirit 4.5 seconds.

The cornerstone of this is the extra 30% boon duration i get from mixing runes along with 30% from NM line.

If they also – finally nerf the +/- foods to +10% / -10%, then I’m 100% a-ok with such changes.