Guild Wars 2

Generally, yes, I do have an idea on certain passives.

For example, on a necro, you look at what weapon he’s wielding. If it’s a scepter, chances are pretty good he’s got Nightmare runes and Reaper’s protection, because right now, that’s probably the most effective build for conditions. You know he’s condition specced because he’s using a scepter. Or he’s bad, in which case holding something in reserve isn’t hurting you.

By holding the stunbreak in reserve, you’re ready for when he does use Doom or Reaper’s Mark, even if it turns out he’s not running Nightmare runes.

Of course, after the first fight, you should have a pretty good idea if he’s running those passives or not.

my personal issue with proc:

you can blind or interrupt fear usually

however even if i blind/stun person wearing rune i still get feared because rune doesn’t take into account blind

Sarrs.4831:

I do think that Rune of Nightmare could use adjustment. When you get high condition duration, especially as a necro, it’s very easy to turn that 2 second fear into a 3.5-4 second fear- Which, as a Necro, also does a huge amount of damage.

Isn’t all condition duration increase capped at 100%?

Carighan.6758:

Sarrs.4831:

I do think that Rune of Nightmare could use adjustment. When you get high condition duration, especially as a necro, it’s very easy to turn that 2 second fear into a 3.5-4 second fear- Which, as a Necro, also does a huge amount of damage.

Isn’t all condition duration increase capped at 100%?

+100% of 2s fear = 4s

Moment of clarity increases stun/daze/fear duration is in a category of its own. Fear double dips the durations and can be increased to 8s max.

Cynz.9437:

my personal issue with proc:

you can blind or interrupt fear usually

however even if i blind/stun person wearing rune i still get feared because rune doesn’t take into account blind

Yeah but a player can generally blind or interrupt applications of long bleeds, confusions, poisons, burning, chill, attacking flocks of birds, torment, and so on and so forth, but they can all be applied by hitting a player with a specific rune set. That is without even going into sigils.

Yet some of you feel these runes are specifically OP and the others are not? Would you mind rationalizing the hypocritical logic behind the thought process that makes these a specific problem?

Some of you have posted on the forums for 2 years and never said a word on this matter, then some one makes a thread and I see many of you jumping on the band wagon. Some of whome I have specifically seen posting in defense procs when they favor your mains or builds.

That is what I am failing to see anyone justify. Everyone here complaining, is about these runes specifically, and ignoring that the ones they like, are just as problematic. I agree that no one has offered a reasonable argument to date, as to why these runes are any worse then the runes that stack ridiculous amounts of boons or stack long durations of other conditions.

coglin.1867:

Cynz.9437:

my personal issue with proc:

you can blind or interrupt fear usually

however even if i blind/stun person wearing rune i still get feared because rune doesn’t take into account blind

Yeah but a player can generally blind or interrupt applications of long bleeds, confusions, poisons, burning, chill, attacking flocks of birds, torment, and so on and so forth, but they can all be applied by hitting a player with a specific rune set. That is without even going into sigils.

Yet some of you feel these runes are specifically OP and the others are not? Would you mind rationalizing the hypocritical logic behind the thought process that makes these a specific problem?

Some of you have posted on the forums for 2 years and never said a word on this matter, then some one makes a thread and I see many of you jumping on the band wagon. Some of whome I have specifically seen posting in defense procs when they favor your mains or builds.

none of those bleed, torment etc. procs puts your character under hard CC which either results in your dying on blowing up major CD (if you have it up)

also you forget that this specific runes got huge buff in spring patch, before it was only 5% proc chance

also as far as might stacking, bloodlust runes etc., all of those affect direct dmg which can be dodged, blocked, interrupted, reflected etc…. which also has animation and can be predicted…. the passive fear like this can’t be seeing, can’t be predicted and can be only countered by stability… the problem with stability is that you need to know that rune proc is off CD

also nobody argues here that this runes are worse or better than strengh runes etc. this thread is about runes of nightmare… if you don’t like bloodstacking runes make thread for it

i mean, if this runes are fine, why don’t we get zerker runes that have 50% chance to stun target and apply massive dmg when hit

Cynz.9437:

i mean, if this runes are fine, why don’t we get zerker runes that have 50% chance to stun target and apply massive dmg when hit

Because physical damage is often front loaded and doesn’t rely on ticking?

Plexxing.2978:

Cynz.9437:

i mean, if this runes are fine, why don’t we get zerker runes that have 50% chance to stun target and apply massive dmg when hit

Because physical damage is often front loaded and doesn’t rely on ticking?

and condi dmg atm is not front loaded lol? have you fought necros or engis recently?

Why not just make the passive activate on CC and reduce the CD….simple

I feel like making my necro a terrormancer just to see people cry. Also, condi damage isn’t often as front loaded as burst which is what a zerk rune set would be used for. Imagine a thief with that. Condis can tick hard but direct damage can kill you faster in my experience. For terromancers fear gives them the time that their condis need to “burst”. It’s also their defense just as aegis, vigor, and blocks are to others. If you’re curious, I main a necro spectral build at the moment.

Cynz.9437:

none of those bleed, torment etc. procs puts your character under hard CC which either results in your dying on blowing up major CD (if you have it up)

Are you suggesting that long duration poison procs that do consistent damage ticks and greatly negate your healing to a point that it could result in your death? You are creating imaginary lines in an attempt to create a fabricated distinction between the two simply for the convenience of your argument.

Cynz.9437:

also you forget that this specific runes got huge buff in spring patch, before it was only 5% proc chance

It was a fairly reasonable adjustment in my opinion. As they had back end information showing how seldom the runes were utilized in comparison to the other runes proc conditions.

Cynz.9437:

also as far as might stacking, bloodlust runes etc., all of those affect direct dmg which can be dodged, blocked, interrupted, reflected etc…. which also has animation and can be predicted…. the passive fear like this can’t be seeing, can’t be predicted and can be only countered by stability… the problem with stability is that you need to know that rune proc is off CD

Actually you are completely incorrect here. You see it is a fact that you can dodge, block, interrupt, reflect etc……………..What you seem to fail to comprehend, is that the skills that you do get landed on you, are all, each and every one, effected by those runes. You see, in either case, you are going to be hit with a certain amount of skills. Those other runes passively increase the effects of the skills landed. The amount of skills landed are the same with or with out the runes. Only with the runes, there is a passive effect and increase allied to each one. You are simply making artificial concepts to try to justify the other runes so that you can artificially condemn these ones.

Cynz.9437:

also nobody argues here that this runes are worse or better than strengh runes etc. this thread is about runes of nightmare… if you don’t like bloodstacking runes make thread for it

Actually yes they are. The fact that your arguing on a thread to target this runes specifically, makes that self evident. Secondly, you should read the paragraph just above this one. Because you very specifically just did so there, yet claim otherwise here. If they are no worse or better then other runes, then why are you arguing against these runes specifically? It appears to me, you are contradicting yourself very evidently on this matter.

Cynz.9437:

i mean, if this runes are fine, why don’t we get zerker runes that have 50% chance to stun target and apply massive dmg when hit

Mostly direct damage already severely trumps condition damage in every aspect other then 1v1. This is why we had such things as the ferocity change. Secondly, these runes do not offer any more damage increase then any other rune on any profession other then necromancer, and only with a specific trait. Thus it only accomplishes what you suggest on a specific profession, and only with a specific trait. Yet you claim it as if it does so in general, which is untrue. It is extremely unreasonable to take a very specific subset of the situation, and portray it as if it is the root of the problem across the board. No one can have an honest discussion when your misrepresenting the situation in such a manner.

Cynz.9437:

and condi dmg atm is not front loaded lol? have you fought necros or engis recently?

Umm, no it absolutely is not. Hence the term “Damage Over Time”……..I am curious, because you have asked about basic game mechanics in two separate post, why are you create artificial arguments, then asking questions to us about basic game mechanic functions? I am genuinely curios.

dancingmonkey.4902:

-snip-

- no, my point is that you have more than enough time to react to effect of those procs (by clearing them, mitigating, healing etc), with rune of nightmare you either have condi cleanse/stun break or die… there is not really much time to react or choices

- it was refered to coglin claiming that people didn’t complain about those runes for 2 years when they were made really strong in spring patch this year; weither or not it was a good buff is different story

- the effect from strengh etc. runes can be completely negated if you dodge/go invul vs buffed attack, you can’t escape the effect of fear at all unless you popped stab before hitting someone with those runes… so with dodges i can escape part of the passive runes buff, but i will get hit by fear no matter what, it is 100%

- the set itself is not problematic, it is just the 6th bonus or rather the way it interacts with enemy

- so just because condis can stack up to 25 stacks there should be condi runes that offer passive unblockable CC? i am not saying such direct dmg runes should be added, i am just brining an example how silly it would be

- condi supposed to be dot hence why condi builds are usually pretty sturdy however the way the balance is and the way condis work atm in pvp, you can burst someone down pretty fast even with condis as long as you have access to burning, torment, fear (in necro case), confusion etc….

also, all non topic related comments about my person: just no….

Cynz.9437:

- no, my point is that you have more than enough time to react to effect of those procs (by clearing them, mitigating, healing etc), with rune of nightmare you either have condi cleanse/stun break or die… there is not really much time to react or choices

Your point? Do you mean your opinion? Because As I see it, your point is incorrect. You have to cleanse poison or die too. You have to cleanse any condition or dies for that matter. You are simply trying to pretend it only exist for fear in my opinion. Unlike the other conditions, fear can be negated with stability, and both cleansed or stun broken. Your suggestion that fear must be broken or you die is not factual. Particularly when you attempt to suggest it is not the case with other conditions.

Cynz.9437:

- the effect from strengh etc. runes can be completely negated if you dodge/go invul vs buffed attack, you can’t escape the effect of fear at all unless you popped stab before hitting someone with those runes… so with dodges i can escape part of the passive runes buff, but i will get hit by fear no matter what, it is 100%

You are not accurate here. You are going to negate damage with that list of damage avoidance skills either way. If A player has no runes of strength, you will still do all of those things. What your going out of your way to pretend doesn’t exist, is that the damage increase on the skills that would land in either case, is very significant. More so then you will get out of these runes every 90s. As well in the case of other runes, they can effect AoE damage, nightmare do not. The proc on these runes do not do any damage what so ever on their own.

Cynz.9437:

- the set itself is not problematic, it is just the 6th bonus or rather the way it interacts with enemy

Cynz.9437:

- so just because condis can stack up to 25 stacks there should be condi runes that offer passive unblockable CC? i am not saying such direct dmg runes should be added, i am just brining an example how silly it would be

Unblock able? So if I have aegis up, the proc goes through it?

Cynz.9437:

- condi supposed to be dot hence why condi builds are usually pretty sturdy however the way the balance is and the way condis work atm in pvp, you can burst someone down pretty fast even with condis as long as you have access to burning, torment, fear (in necro case), confusion etc….

None of that has anything to do with your question about conditions being front loaded. Either you truly did not know, or you were being sarcastic, in which case you did not actually understand. Direct damage is front loaded, conditions are absolutely not. As well I see you listed fear for a damaging condition. fear does not innately do damage. So please stop claiming it does.

I feel pretty bad for the OP because this is a good topic which needs dev attention and it’s just been overrun by the talk talk talk forum warriors.

There happen to be many sides to this argument. It’s not simply a matter of “this rune is bad”. Almost all runes are bad, because they dominate the game. Rune of Nightmare is not unique in it’s functionality, and I do think that deserves equal attention.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

There happen to be many sides to this argument. It’s not simply a matter of “this rune is bad”. Almost all runes are bad, because they dominate the game. Rune of Nightmare is not unique in it’s functionality, and I do think that deserves equal attention.

Actually Nightmare runes are unique in the sense that they’re a random hard CC, the only other rune that comes close is Grove and most top players agree they’re poor design as well.

This line of argument that Nightmare should be ignored because there are other worse offenders just makes me think of a kid yelling that Johnny jumped off a cliff first. Yes we all know there are many many other problems with the game, that has no bearing on the fact that Nightmare is one of them.

shimmerless.4560:

Actually Nightmare runes are unique in the sense that they’re a random hard CC, the only other rune that comes close is Grove and most top players agree they’re poor design as well.

This line of argument that Nightmare should be ignored because there are other worse offenders just makes me think of a kid yelling that Johnny jumped off a cliff first. Yes we all know there are many many other problems with the game, that has no bearing on the fact that Nightmare is one of them.

While you are correct that the runes are unique in that they provide a reactionary hard CC proc, you also seem to be implying (sorry if I’m wrong) that this makes them “worse” somehow.

And again, just with the thread as a whole: why?
What is so bad about loss of character control (compared to every other proc or effect potentially making you dead) that it somehow needs special attention?

How can you take the OP seriously? @op, have you ever used these runes? You have any idea how often that fear procs on pets and clones? The proc cannot be controlled and more often than not, it will proc at unpredicted moments. If anything the CD needs to be reduced by 20-30 seconds.

shimmerless.4560:

I don’t think I should have to explain why randomly losing control of your character and having your channels interrupted thanks to a passive rune in a game with a very low TTK is bad design so I’m going to assume (from the tone of this and other posts of yours) that you’re just trolling/playing devil’s advocate.

No, I’m serious. Please, do explain.
That’s kinda what I’m waiting on.

Now ofc if you just say “Rune effects in general are bad design” then sure, full ack. :P
But also, that’s very unlikely to change. But if the implication is – as it seems to me – that these are inherently worse than other rune’s effects then I’d like to hear a “Why”-explanation for it.

Because the way I see it, the game at large simply disagrees. The runes go nearly unused. If they were inherently a big issue compared to other runes, we’d see them be used. But we don’t.
So this leaves us with “They’re bad design because you lose character control”, but that’s my point, why is that necessarily a bad thing, compared to other effects such as taking damage, the enemy healing or dropping various beneficiary effects?

CC is just… well… CC. It’s not some arcane magic and somehow in its own category. It’s a staple of every RPG and many other genres I can think of and has been around so long that by now it’d feel very weird to not have CC in a game with multiple enemy targets.
On top of that, it’s not incomparable either. If you think of battle contribution in terms of “presence” versus “opportunity cost” (of an action), then losing 2-4 seconds to a procced fear is no different than dying 2-4 seconds earlier from some damage enhancing effects, except in opportunity window availability (but that is a per-fight issue as you might as well gain a window later on).

But anyhow, to get back to the point, it’s not immediately obvious why loss of character control is so bad as a rune effect, compared to all the other ones. Why is it?

Yeah I don’t get that either. There are runes that cause you to take damage when you strike an opponent with that rune, which could potentially kill you. So how is an automatic CC rune worse, since it can be countered with a stun-break instantly?

Compare this to other runes, such as Rune of the Dolyak, with which a player is healed every second, and the ’’OPness’’ of Rune of the Nightmare ain’t really OP. A cooldown of 90 secs is a pretty kitten serious cooldown.

OK burst damage and hard CC are what win games, there are no runes other than maybe Air on a zerk amm which give massive burst damage output (there are sigils, though, and they’re both seen as a problem ATM) but there is a rune which tosses out hard CC, this CC can have any number of ridiculous effects in game and I must intone again this doesn’t require the wearer to actually do a kitten thing. To the poster who said this rune isn’t used competitively I want some of what he’s on, the rune was meta until the Balth buff (and is still better on a lot of specs than Balth)

If you look at a game like League where they take balance seriously you would never in a million years get a hard CC passive let alone a random one, hell they took out the 4% crit mastery because getting randomly chunked for half health and losing lane at level one wasn’t hot. Risk reward is a good basic principle, Nightmare runes don’t just ignore it they run over it back and forward with a dump truck.

Hrm, ok, so three observations I have to make in that case:

• This is the first time I hear of Nightmare being a big issue post-clone-bug. Which was hilarious in how crazy over the top it was, but clearly a bug.
• Hard CC only wins the game in that it allows you to focus your efforts at the right moment. A procced CC is just as uncontrollable for the wearer (there’s no “proc in 5…4…3…”) as it is for the recipient, meaning the part you mention which is game-winning – and it can be! – doesn’t actually exist for this runeset, which might also go a long way to explain why these runes are so rarely taken nowadays. They provide very little benefit for the wearer, fear necros aside. And even those cannot really utilize the proc for CC, only for stealth-gank-defence or something equivalent.
• This is a MMORPG. League of Legends is a MOBA. The two use a completely different design paradigm to their classes and skills, for a very good reason. Namely, one being a RPG at its core, the other not so. In fact I’d argue GW2 goes too far away from the RPG side as it is, having too few really strong effects in its skills and items, no real “game changers” as far as class design goes. MMORPGs don’t take their balance any less serious in context of the genre than MOBAs, but you have to keep in mind the genre. Look at TF2, the classes aren’t remotely balanced if measured by the stick of a MOBA, yet the balance is far from bad, and with good reason very frequently used to compare other games to. Different genres.

But even given that we were to look at this with a MOBA set of balance rules (which makes no sense, seriously, I don’t get why people do it :P ), the effect these runes have is very small. Because unlike in a MOBA, GW2 has no underlying design of escalating mistakes.
Meaning that one proc, even if it happens at a good moment, and even if it causes a fight to be won or lost, still rarely makes much of a difference individually. And once you look at the whole match (and hence all procs), the amount of times the proc happens at a useful moment versus a completely inconsequential one is… well, let’s say “rare”.

I didn’t say we should look at GW2 with a MOBA set of balance rules, you’re taking bits and pieces of what I actually said and just running off with scissors. I brought up the League example because it was a case where low-investment RNG had a bad impact on the state of the game, if you’d like I’ll gladly go back to STO (an MMO) and detail cases where the health of PvP was hurt terribly by similar mechanics

The notion that Nightmare will only interupt something worth interrupting once in a while is one of the worst arguments I’ve heard yet put forward in its favor, and GW2 is absolutely a game of escalating mistakes, what on earth are you talking about? Equally skilled players the ones who misuse abilities or fail to properly rate objectives more often will generally lose.

Like I said the rest just seems to be yourself going on a tangent but w/r/t the rune’s popularity it is not rare by any means and +175 damage and +15% duration is nothing to sneeze at anyway.

Hrm… ok, maybe we just need to agree to disagree. You seem to take a very smallscale and very tPvP-centric view on things, focused on individual combat performance and individual encounters.

The smallest I’d look at balance wise would be point-outcomes. That is to say, does Nightmare-rune cause games to swing? If yes, how close do they have to be? If not, does it significantly change the balance? As in, does it help the winning team escalate their win?

I have a feeling the answer if ANet pulled stats on this is going to be a resounding “no”, simply because while individually the moment it procs a 2s fear can feel annoying, it’s larger impact is trivial every time I encountered it.

It could (in theory) have a bigger effect in team fights where a single AE attack can stack the duration. I’ve never seen them used on entire zergs in WvW though, so no clue how that’d pan out. I would wager to say that even then, it wouldn’t remotely make up for the loss in damage / damage reduction / CC reduction.

Well apparently ArenaNet did already feel that the rune had an outsized presence in PvP (tPvP + small scale is twice as many game modes as ZvZ btw) because they’ve already been “nerfed” unsuccessfully once.

The rune was (and is) abusive and saw great tPvP success, in fact it probably falls behind only Ogre in terms of its success over GW2’s history to date. Teldo used to run it on 3-kits/sidepoints (perfectly viable in WvW btw) and as I understand it is still meta on terrormancer which has been extremely strong since launch.

shimmerless.4560:

Well apparently ArenaNet did already feel that the rune had an outsized presence in PvP (tPvP + small scale is twice as many game modes as ZvZ btw) because they’ve already been “nerfed” unsuccessfully once.

The rune was (and is) abusive and saw great tPvP success, in fact it probably falls behind only Ogre in terms of its success over GW2’s history to date. Teldo used to run it on 3-kits/sidepoints (perfectly viable in WvW btw) and as I understand it is still meta on terrormancer which has been extremely strong since launch.

almost every single condi war/engi/necro/ranger i ran into recently had that rune … i would rather have that rune proc any other condi or dmg than hard CC like fear

Now you are simply miss informed. We have watched many t PvP tournaments that have been going on over many of the last few weekends. 2 things were noticeable. One is that necros were on many teams. The second was that in the several hundred players, only 8 of them used these runes in any given tourney with more then 24 teams. Therefore you are clearly either unaware of the favts, or being disingenuous about the use of them in tPvP.

For example, you mention teldo. What does one single player have to do with the topic to represent your claim that it is abused by many? Do you even know the last time he actually us ed them in tPvP? I am going to guess you do not, or you wouldn’t be using old examples to represent what you claim are current issues. When less then 4% are using them in current tournament’s, it doesn’t lend much credence to what your trying to claim about them being over used.

The only place they can possibly be considered over used is in random solo queue. And if you cannot beat a player there, it had nothing to do with the runes.

shimmerless.4560:

The notion that Nightmare will only interupt something worth interrupting once in a while is one of the worst arguments I’ve heard yet put forward in its favor, and GW2 is absolutely a game of escalating mistakes, what on earth are you talking about?

No, GW2 is not a game of escalating mistakes.

Here is the key difference between the two.

League of Legends is definitely a game of escalating mistakes. Each time you screw up, it gets harder to come back and win. This is because kills and objectives grant a resource, namely gold and XP. If you get killed or fail to take an objective, your opponents now have more resources to work with.

Compare to Guild Wars 2: if you die, sure, your opponents are closer to victory, but they didn’t gain a resource to make all future fights harder for you to win.

To OP: Do you use strength runes, aka the most OP runes in the game? If so- then shut up. If not- then complain about those instead. They are more powerful and more widely used. 45% might duration, 175 power+ 5% damage > 90 second fear proc. What is wrong with you

No I’m not “clearly misinformed” Coglinmonkey, I said over the course of the game they have been one of the most predominant runes. The only reason they’ve fallen out of favor with Engineers is that there are even more borked options available (Balth).

shimmerless.4560:

No I’m not “clearly misinformed” Coglinmonkey, I said over the course of the game they have been one of the most predominant runes. The only reason they’ve fallen out of favor with Engineers is that there are even more borked options available (Balth).

anyone who thinks 90 second ICD fear proc is more powerful than constant 45% might and 5% damage is smoking crack

Sagat.3285:

Why not just make the passive activate on CC and reduce the CD….simple

Sagat.3285:

Sagat.3285:

Why not just make the passive activate on CC and reduce the CD….simple

lol this would make the rune set more powerful…. I’m down for that

Cam Ron.4170:

Sagat.3285:

Sagat.3285:

Why not just make the passive activate on CC and reduce the CD….simple

lol this would make the rune set more powerful…. I’m down for that

Hey people are out here complaining about CC chain especially necro(only them have terror) so might as well make it more useful to make up weaknesses and uneffective for those not exploiting that weakness.

Make the fear AoE, 45 sec ICD seems fair.

shimmerless.4560:

No I’m not “clearly misinformed” Coglinmonkey, I said over the course of the game they have been one of the most predominant runes. The only reason they’ve fallen out of favor with Engineers is that there are even more borked options available (Balth).

What deal the past have to do with now? As they are not predominant now, how can you claim they are currently OP based on out dated issues that no longer exist.

By the way, why do you fling a personal name calling insult at me simply because I pointed out that almost no one has been using them in tournaments since they did the rune revamp and fixed the bug with the rune set?