Guild Wars 2

Please no flaming, these are my honest opinions and that is all they are OPINIONS. We are all entitled to them. Please keep all feedback constructive and on topic. Thanks in advance.

/Begin.

I have seen several posts regarding the Runes of Perplexity and people complaining about how “overpowered” they are. However, I would like to say Thank You for this rune set… And here is why.

When it comes to content that is hard / challenging like Liadri, people asked for nerfs, including myself. However, some players explained how if you could learn the mechanics and still damage her enough to win, then it was a tough challenge. I hated this challenge, and failed so many times that I finally gave up. I decided that due to my laptops limitations on FPS and skill lag, that I was not going to be able to beat her and obtain a mini. But Liadri did make us players actually think and pay attention, promoting SKILLFUL gameplay.

Now we get to the Runes of Perplexity. I see players complaining that these runes are to Overpowered and should be nerfed. While other players claim they are not overpowered.

I would have to say these runes are not as Overpowered as players are letting off, and here is why I believe this.
1) The on hit effect stacks 3 condition with an ICD of 15 seconds = Balanced

However, the problem players seem to have is the #6 ability of Interrupt causes 5 stacks for 10 seconds. This is actually not overpowered at all, because the only way this works is by Skillfully using an interrupt ability. This makes players think and as we know it can aggravate some people. By introducing these Runes you have made the gameplay change to a whole new level. Players can no longer mindlessly spam abilities to be as effective. If someone is spamming their skills just to put them on cooldown and gets interrupted it has an effect. If the player using the runes uses an interrupt skill but the player cannot be interrupted at that moment, his skill now goes on cooldown and the enemy has 0 stacks confusion.

This Rune set also promotes Teamwork. If you are a solo roamer in WvW, you need to be prepared to have some cleanses for conditions. Say a Warrior uses Shield bash (interrupt 1), Stomp (interrupt 2), Bulls Rush (interrupt 3). They will all be on cooldown = no more interrupts for at the least 20 – 30 seconds.

By playing with at the least 1 other player, you can easily provide Condition Removal for each other, classes depending.

Now for the side where everyone says these are Overpowered.
In 1 vs 1 gameplay, fighting an Unskilled opponent, this rune set can absolutely /facemelt an enemy. However, vs a well played opponent, these runes are useless.

For instance, take a 3400+ Armor warrior with 1700 condition damage with Runes of Perplexity, 3 interrupts versus a Guardian. The Guardian can out damage you because you stack 2 – 3 types of conditions, while constantly removing the conditions before you can stack enough to do any damage. Versus a D/D Ele who runs the 0 10 0 30 30 build, they will be able to cleanse faster than you can apply conditions as well.

On another note, I have seen videos of engineers stacking 22+ stacks in a few attacks, however, I also observed the Engineer using his BRAIN… He times his interrupts, he waits for the enemy to use a skill and would then interrupt, this is wonderful to see as it is the player using tactics and not just spamming his skills.

So I would like everyone to think about these Runes, lets not NERF tactical gameplay, but to encourage it. Let ANet bring more Runes like this into the game. It will promote more strategic gameplay as well increase the skill level of the players. Learn and adapt to these changes, bring more of this stuff to the game to increase build diversity. If these Runes were called Runes of Feedback, #3 bonus 15% chance Grant 10 seconds of Retaliation on hit. 15 second ICD and #6 bonus Grant 10 seconds Retaliation on Interrupt, this would be interesting to me as well. What other neat ideas can ANet create.

TL;DR:
My thoughts on the new runes, they promote strategic gameplay less skill spamming. Players must time their interrupts to benefit from the Runes of Perplexity otherwise waste a chance of landing confusion. Some other useful stuff, if want to know it all, please read.

No comments on this subject?

The only thing I can think of to say, is that the glamour mesmer did the same thing. Promoted strategic thinking. Sure in a zerg you could pop feedback and watch the pretty numbers, but in a more one of one situation you had to anticipate what your opponent was going to do and apply confusion strategically.

And ANet nerfed that into the ground. I honestly don’t understand why they would do that and then introduce these runes.

And the pendulum swings again…

In my opinion this is just a large text that you’re trying to prove with that the runes are OK as of now, which they are not.

The Engi video you’re talking about and say he’s using his brain just shows him doing basic stuff. It’s ridiculously easy to interrupt players you don’t need a lot of skill to do so.
And the frightening part is, he was an Engi, now a couple of friends of mine and I (3 thieves) all went D/P and bought these runes and went in to WvW and and roamed and it was beyond ridiculous how easy it was to kill ANYONE. These runes are beyond game-breaking in terms of what other runes are available. 20+ stacks of a condition in seconds, cleanse it? No problem, you’ll have another 20 stacks on you in seconds again.

Because the way you are thinking is biased. If you are an older player you know by now people will JUMP on the bandwagon the moment they get to. You think a bunch of warriors are going to be running now with these runes? No, there’s going to be thieves and Engis with kitten well near 100% up-time on most interrupt skills just going around all over the place.

If it was, as you said, something that requires some sort of tact with limited interrupting options then yes, the runes are fine. But as it stands now before these get fixed we’re going to see a huge influx of a specific few classes that figure out how to be able to interrupt with little down time on their interrupts just milking these runes for all their worth.

I actually agree with you, but every attempt I have made at presenting a case to it is met with the equivalent of “you just don’t want your op runeset nerfed”. I think the problem many people have is when they see something they don’t like they typically will only consider it from one narrow viewpoint to make their case. In a 1v1 setting these runes are definitely strong and they do exactly as you say “punish skill spammers” but it works on both sides of the fence, if I have the runes and I spam my interrupts and the other player does not spam their skills they will most likely win, and vice versa if they spam skills and I don’t I will most likely win. There is a hatred in this game by many for conditions in general and especially confusion, these runes are just the icing on the cake and something for some players to take up arms about.

TooBz.3065:

The only thing I can think of to say, is that the glamour mesmer did the same thing. Promoted strategic thinking. Sure in a zerg you could pop feedback and watch the pretty numbers, but in a more one of one situation you had to anticipate what your opponent was going to do and apply confusion strategically.

And ANet nerfed that into the ground. I honestly don’t understand why they would do that and then introduce these runes.

This is exactly what I think about lol. I ran a glam build and I think it was easy to get up to maybe 10 stacks of confusion (don’t remember honestly but it was no where near 25) Mesmers kept saying that people just needed to learn to cleanse and not spam.. but yet it was still nerfed and you never see a glam mesmer any more So the argument about learning to play against confusion will never work. However, that said, I don’t think these runes are easy for everyone to use and stack confusion and it keeps them from being op. Maybe in some hands idk, but if they were really that op and desired I think that the prices would increase on the mats more than they have.

nawrasz.6219:

And the frightening part is, he was an Engi, now a couple of friends of mine and I (3 thieves) all went D/P and bought these runes and went in to WvW and and roamed and it was beyond ridiculous how easy it was to kill ANYONE. These runes are beyond game-breaking in terms of what other runes are available. 20+ stacks of a condition in seconds, cleanse it? No problem, you’ll have another 20 stacks on you in seconds again.

I’ll preface this by saying that I do agree with you that the runes are broken. I think the stacks of confusion on the 6/6 of this rune put out should be reduced and/or the duration should be reduced slightly. I think adding a cooldown would break the intent of the rune, and wouldn’t allow for aoe confusion. That said, 3 D/P thieves roaming will kill anyone either way, runes or no runes. A single thief spamming pistol 4 with good initiative regen I supposed could stack up to 20 stacks of this. It would take 4 to stack 20 assuming all 4 actually interrupted. So are you saying you can then stack another 4 in seconds if it’s cleansed? Or are you talking about 3 thieves re-stacking them? As for engineers, they can’t restack 20 stacks in seconds due to the fact that both shield abilities and big ole bomb have 30s cooldowns, magnet has 25s, and air blast has a 15s cooldown. Those aren’t’ spammable abilities.

Keep rune, fix the spamability of stuns. Spamming is a huge problem in this game. They need to stop treating the symptoms with internal cooldowns and just address the sickness itself.

Deified.7520:

Keep rune, fix the spamability of stuns. Spamming is a huge problem in this game. They need to stop treating the symptoms with internal cooldowns and just address the sickness itself.

The only problem with this is that with the exception of thief no class can repeatedly spam the same skill over and over since they are tied to cooldowns. Now some classes can chain multiple stuns, knockdowns so on and so forth but the only way to address this issue would be to introduce a longer gcd(global cooldown) and noone wants that I don’t think. They could possibly add a system similar to defiant stacks to players where you can get one cc and then the rest become ineffective until the stacks are removed which I don’t think is a optimal choice either. So these runes are pretty much the best answer to that at the moment heh.

ShadowPuppet.3746:

Deified.7520:

Keep rune, fix the spamability of stuns. Spamming is a huge problem in this game. They need to stop treating the symptoms with internal cooldowns and just address the sickness itself.

The only problem with this is that with the exception of thief no class can repeatedly spam the same skill over and over since they are tied to cooldowns. Now some classes can chain multiple stuns, knockdowns so on and so forth but the only way to address this issue would be to introduce a longer gcd(global cooldown) and noone wants that I don’t think. They could possibly add a system similar to defiant stacks to players where you can get one cc and then the rest become ineffective until the stacks are removed which I don’t think is a optimal choice either. So these runes are pretty much the best answer to that at the moment heh.

CC’s are the bread and butter of the W3 meta though(along with mobility). It’s not so much one profession having limited “spamibility” of CC’s, it’s the fact that a well coordinated small group can effectively shut down an opposing group if they do two simple things: rip stabo, and chain CC. The only sure-fire way to escape this is a double-dodge roll…which has its own cooldown to consider.

The more numbers you have with you, the more CC’s you can spam…and for a longer period. This is one of the major reasons why zerging is so beneficial and popular now; #CC’s > #stunbreaks/stabo

Obsidian.1328:

ShadowPuppet.3746:

Deified.7520:

Keep rune, fix the spamability of stuns. Spamming is a huge problem in this game. They need to stop treating the symptoms with internal cooldowns and just address the sickness itself.

The only problem with this is that with the exception of thief no class can repeatedly spam the same skill over and over since they are tied to cooldowns. Now some classes can chain multiple stuns, knockdowns so on and so forth but the only way to address this issue would be to introduce a longer gcd(global cooldown) and noone wants that I don’t think. They could possibly add a system similar to defiant stacks to players where you can get one cc and then the rest become ineffective until the stacks are removed which I don’t think is a optimal choice either. So these runes are pretty much the best answer to that at the moment heh.

CC’s are the bread and butter of the W3 meta though(along with mobility). It’s not so much one profession having limited “spamibility” of CC’s, it’s the fact that a well coordinated small group can effectively shut down an opposing group if they do two simple things: rip stabo, and chain CC. The only sure-fire way to escape this is a double-dodge roll…which has its own cooldown to consider.

The more numbers you have with you, the more CC’s you can spam…and for a longer period. This is one of the major reasons why zerging is so beneficial and popular now; #CC’s > #stunbreaks/stabo

Even if you took cc completely out of the game people will still zerg if nothing else for the simple “safety in numbers”. Is it possible that a well organized smaller group can take on a larger less organized group using cc, absolutely and as it should be to give a counterplay to the only deciding factor being how many people you were able to field that day. Either way this is off topic of the op’s post and my post which you replied to was really to be taken in terms of cc’s effects with the perplexity runes.

I personnaly think the no internal cooldown should stay, I used distracting strike in my sPvP build after they upgraded it and I never had any complaints about my Warrior stacking multiple stacks of confusion with distracting strike, people were actualy claiming that trait was weak…

Now we get the complete opposite reaction while it does exactly the same thing, but a bit better. In my oppinion, the only thing that needs a change is the duration of that confusion and its intensity. It is basicaly an improved distracting strike. To my oppinion it should be similar or a bit weaker compared to the warrior trait. 3-4 stacks of confusion during 8sec would already be more balanced.

ShadowPuppet.3746:

Deified.7520:

Keep rune, fix the spamability of stuns. Spamming is a huge problem in this game. They need to stop treating the symptoms with internal cooldowns and just address the sickness itself.

The only problem with this is that with the exception of thief no class can repeatedly spam the same skill over and over since they are tied to cooldowns. Now some classes can chain multiple stuns, knockdowns so on and so forth but the only way to address this issue would be to introduce a longer gcd(global cooldown) and noone wants that I don’t think. They could possibly add a system similar to defiant stacks to players where you can get one cc and then the rest become ineffective until the stacks are removed which I don’t think is a optimal choice either. So these runes are pretty much the best answer to that at the moment heh.

Not saying multiple skills, but difficulty preventing every stun each player can cast.

I tried going up against a hammer warrior and necromancer. I popped my stability save me a bit of time, he stripped it, I dodged 2 stuns, got feared once. Spent the next 15 seconds getting stunlocked and starting at my screen.

There are too many stun skills in the game for each class and not an effective DR to prevent unlimited stunlocking. As said earlier a coordinated team can just stunlock into oblivion. These stun skills often have little to no call animation either.

Ambrecombe.4398:

I personnaly think the no internal cooldown should stay, I used distracting strike in my sPvP build after they upgraded it and I never had any complaints about my Warrior stacking multiple stacks of confusion with distracting strike, people were actualy claiming that trait was weak…

Now we get the complete opposite reaction while it does exactly the same thing, but a bit better. In my oppinion, the only thing that needs a change is the duration of that confusion and its intensity. It is basicaly an improved distracting strike. To my oppinion it should be similar or a bit weaker compared to the warrior trait. 3-4 stacks of confusion during 8sec would already be more balanced.

I agree with this, if it does need to be balanced it is my opinion that it should be duration of the 6/6 set bonus that is adjusted not implementing a icd. I still don’t think it is so ridiculously overpowered that people can’t overcome it in it’s current state but obviously there are many that do, I just hope if Anet does look at changing these runes they do so better than their typically heavy handed approach.

After reading a lot of the above posts, I understand how players may see my view as bias, however I was not trying to come off that way. As for the Glam mesmer, I have never really played a mesmer and I just created one, only currently level 12.

I am all for a duration decrease on the runes if need be, or even a duration cut from 10 seconds to 5 – 8 seconds.

The main point I was trying to make in this post isn’t that we should be complaining about the Runes, however, hoping that Arena Net will add in NEW Runes with similar abilities to create more open Builds. What these runes are doing is actually giving Support Based characters some damage.

Before this Condition Meta, Conditions were honestly crap… Everyone was rolling high dps zerk builds and that was the way to go, still pretty much is in most PvE. I have 4 Level 80s and 3 of them are condition spec chars, well before the Meta.

I thank everyone in here for their posts and welcome all ideas for these and future Runes.

Again, the point to this was to hope ANet adds in more Runes that will promote build diversity.

jazzllanna.1278:

TooBz.3065:

The only thing I can think of to say, is that the glamour mesmer did the same thing. Promoted strategic thinking. Sure in a zerg you could pop feedback and watch the pretty numbers, but in a more one of one situation you had to anticipate what your opponent was going to do and apply confusion strategically. Though to stay onto the topic of the runes. THey are pretty decent. It’s OP on Warrior because it goes well with the trait they have, in which 1 interrupt can equal 12 stacks(assuming you proced the on hit one) and can easily scale up to 20+ stacks.

And ANet nerfed that into the ground. I honestly don’t understand why they would do that and then introduce these runes.

This is exactly what I think about lol. I ran a glam build and I think it was easy to get up to maybe 10 stacks of confusion (don’t remember honestly but it was no where near 25) Mesmers kept saying that people just needed to learn to cleanse and not spam.. but yet it was still nerfed and you never see a glam mesmer any more So the argument about learning to play against confusion will never work. However, that said, I don’t think these runes are easy for everyone to use and stack confusion and it keeps them from being op. Maybe in some hands idk, but if they were really that op and desired I think that the prices would increase on the mats more than they have.

Back then it’s true it promoted strategical thinking in zerg play, but from a roamer/small group point of view it was the biggest can of BS you can ever face in wvw(mostly roamer). The fact that mesmers were able to easily reapply confusion(pre-nerf) with clone shatters and a bunch of random condition covers. Even after cleansing you still take the proc of it. To top it all off Retaliation on phantasms and yourself. (Vengeful Images and Retaliatory shield.) While having to deal with a mesmer you couldn’t touch because torch off hand(if chosen) stealthing and kiting you from days on end. I know the game isn’t based on 1v1s but i’m just pointing out from a different perspective. To stay on topic the runes are decent. Though it does become relly lol when you add distracting strikes to it with a condition build. Can easliy ramp up to 2-+ stacks of Confusions lol.

if it last 10 second then give them 10 sec internal coldown, every other rune work that way, and i don´t know what gw2 actually consider an interrupt cause i was just running without even casting a single auto atack and a engi got me 20 confusion stacks on…

Benkei.6293:

if it last 10 second then give them 10 sec internal coldown, every other rune work that way, and i don´t know what gw2 actually consider an interrupt cause i was just running without even casting a single auto atack and a engi got me 20 confusion stacks on…

At most a engi can hit you with 15 with these runes if you don’t get interrupted, prybar(5), concussion bomb(5), the pistol skill (2) and three from a 20% proc on the rune. Unless of course he was a asura which can add a few more stacks with their racial skills which is not unique to engineer. If he was the asura and ran that setup gk,tk, and the asura racial then he had no stun break and no stability so your own hard cc is the easy counter. Either way two of those three require being in melee distance to perform and if you were not fighting back then you took zero damage from the confusion.