Guild Wars 2

The changes to Perplexity:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Currently Live: Superior Rune of Perplexity
(1) +28 Condition Damage
(2) 15% Confusion Duration
(3) +55 Condition Damage
(4) 20% chance to cause 3 stacks of confusions for 5s on hit. 15 ICD
(5) +100 Condition Damage
(6) +15% Confusion duration; Causes 5 stacks of confusion for 10 seconds on interrupt. 8s ICD

New Version: Superior Rune of Perplexity
(1) +25 Condition Damage
(2) 10% Confusion Duration
(3) +50 Condition Damage
(4)) 25% chance when struck to inflict 3 stacks of confusion for 5 seconds. 25s ICD
(5) +100 Condition Damage
(6) +20% confusion duration; when you interrupt a foe, cause 5 stacks of confusion for 8 seconds. 15s ICD.

Now here are the changes bonus by bonus
(1) -3 Condition Damage
(2) -5% Confusion Duration
(3) -5 Condition Damage
(4) +5% trigger chance, +10s ICD, changed the trigger from on hit to when you are struck
(5) no change
(6) +5% Confusion Duration, -2s confusion duration, +7s ICD

So this is a rather big nerf, more so for those of us Ele that run Condition builds. With that in mind i am curious how many of you are thinking about changing the runeset out and if you dont run with it – what do you run with?

The annoying thing is, the Runeset isn’t even the problem its some classes having to much access to Confusion Engineer and Warrior being key examples of when this Runeset becomes broken.

Rune of Undead could be a decent alternative. No extra condition but an extra 5% of Toughness turned into Condition Damage which for most should be an extra 100 Condition damage (assuming 2k toughness)

Antitoxin, Sunless. Scavenging, Nightmare, Grenth and Tormenting could be viable options IF they get some changes.

Antitoxin – decent -25% Condition duration is welcome. the 6/6 would need to be changed and have a 4/6 that has a chance to reflect conditions back at the target. Change the 6/6 so that You gain the Might for 10 seconds but that it also offers something else. I think just affected by Poison and Torment is kind of weak for a 6/6

Sunless – More reduction in condition duration, though only 20% this time. the 4/6 needs to be changed. Don’t understand the reason for Critical damage in a condition rune. 5/6 needs to have 100 Condition damage added and 6/6 needs to be changed. Not quite sure what to but 1 second of fear on using an elite is pretty awful.

Scavenging – the 2/6 would need to be upped a bit, 5% chance is pretty awful. Make it 50% chance with 25-30second cool down. 4/6 is decent though i am pretty sure the healing gained is rather poor. So again this would need to be buffed a little bit same goes for the 2/6. The 6/6 is okay but would be a little weaker on Ele i think.

Nightmare – the Condition duration should be upped to 20-25% the 4/6 would need some effect added to it. Not fear something else, Maybe a chance to proc Poison or something? the 6/6 would need to be replaced. Terrible proc chance and insane cool down. Kind of useless for Ele as we need more Conditions on the target.

Grenth – Nice addition of Chill increase, Though only 20% is kind of weak considering others increase all conditions by either 20% or 25% The 4/6 Needs to be improved. Low proc chance and high cool down. The 6/6 could again be decent with Arcane Brilliance and Elemental Surge, though the duration could be improved.

Tormenting – Would need higher AoE stacks of Torment. This could work nicely with Arcane Brilliance and Elemental Surge. Maybe add a 4/6 that can proc it on attacks that would be nice as well.

Some decent options should the changes to Runesets make them more appealing. Most condi ele use Perplexity because it is a great runeset for another Condition that we dont have access to and that can be on the target a lot.

With the nerf it is getting i think most that use Perplexity will want to switch out to something else. Especially as the 4/6 has been to changed to when hit, rather than when attacking.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

-8 Condition Damage
4th ability gets +5% trigger chance, +10s ICD, changed the trigger from on hit to when you are struck
6th ability gets -2s confusion duration and +7s ICD

Changes aren’t as bad when you group them instead of list them seperately though. The stat change is pretty much irrelevant, and for what I’ve seen all runes get it. The 4th ability took a hit but the good thing is that it’ll now activate when something is actually doing something to you. That can potentially be an advantage, because if they hit you once they’re likely to use another skill right after. The 6th ability did get a hit, but given that confusion on top of a stun is pretty powerful, it makes sense. It’s by no means useless now though. It’s just no longer the choice for every condition build. Which is nice, imho.

The problem with the 4/6 is that we tend not to want to get hit. So that a lone is a nerf to the access we have with it. The cool down is rather high as well. The 6/6 isn’t that bad of a nerf really.

It is more about the 4/6 than anything else that is rather a big nerf for a class that tries its best not to get hit thanks to low health and low armor.

New runes of Balthazar might be worth a look. +175 condi dmg, +45% burn duration, +3s aoe burn on heal (10s cd).

Punch.4231:

New runes of Balthazar might be worth a look. +175 condi dmg, +45% burn duration, +3s aoe burn on heal (10s cd).

Interesting. Though i would prefer one that adds a condition that we don’t have access to. That is the biggest reason to use Perplexity as we don’t have Confusion so we need as many different ways to get conditions as possible thanks to our rather low access to them.

If Tormenting was improved enough that could be a reasonable choice. However it would need a 4/6 that has a chance to proc on hit and the 6/6 would need to be buffed.

If you want extra conditions, you could consider using Sigil of Torment and Sigil of Doom after the patch. You’d get 2 extra conditions which would give you room to use a rune that doesn’t add yet another condition.

ThiBash.5634:

If you want extra conditions, you could consider using Sigil of Torment and Sigil of Doom after the patch. You’d get 2 extra conditions which would give you room to use a rune that doesn’t add yet another condition.

I use them both already, it will be nice when they don’t share a cool down but the 250 condition damage loss will be a real pain. As i run with Corruption/Doom and then go Torment/Doom at 25 stacks. Won’t be possible come the update though

Well, on the plus side…once they change the bosses to have more armor and less health, your condition build will be stronger in PvE. May not be much, but at least it’s something.

It doesn’t matter what class you play if you have if you can interrupt in a condition build with decent cooldowns perplexity is always better.

I think every rune has been redone to be appealing so it is hard to say what the other ones look like. Undead is plain and due for a facelift, rune of the elementalist will probably be redone, scavening etc etc.

Just from what is known right now perplexity would still be better but we still don’t know. Rune of the noble would be really good also and would allow for crazy condition damage levels.

Really though it is hard to say right now we don’t know what the other runes look like. They bumped up sigil of accuracy to 7% crit chance I didn’t see that coming at all which makes me think every rune and sigil has in fact changed.

I dunno, i am going to wait and see what the rune changes offer up. I really hope that Anet really shakes them up. Because it says a lot when 1 rune set becomes the “best” over all the others. Is that because that rune set is just too strong or because the others are too weak?

Im running 70% condition duration increase, with the 25% bonus burn duration from fire trait. The +45% burn duration would be sweet, id like to see the burn from my fire shields last a lot longer, however im not sure about the caps. I know the auto attack length is already capped out so im worried I couldn’t take advantage of another 45%.

Both I guess but it depends on your perspective.

Me personally I think Perplexity rune is a proper rune. Everyone will usually set up their traits the same in a build maybe 1 or 2 changes then you run different runes. It still doesn’t really give you the feeling that it’s something different.

Instead of having a torment ele, perplexity ele, or scavenging ele for example it usually ends up as 1 of the above. Then the differences aren’t usually apparent right away.

Take rune of grenth if you gave me a 20% chance to proc in when “I” hit someone then I look at the rune a little bit different I can control that proc just a little bit more. When “You” get hit then I usually don’t even pay attention to the 4 piece and just look at the raw stats or the 6.

I think runes overall should have a bigger impact on your build, that is pretty much why alot of certain runes are popular because they are that good.

I just hope that some of the changes to the other runes open up more options, it just seems currently you have a few stand out Runes like Lyssa, Perplexity, Travelers and then the rest are garbage and rarely used.

Condimentalist*

Wait for the changes then complain

Atoss.1056:

Wait for the changes then complain

I am not complaining. I am hoping that some of the less used and useless condition based runesets get turned into something that would be worth using. Made a post about it in the general balance forum with a couple of ideas how some could be changed.

I mean they could go all out and shake up EVERY runeset that would be pretty nice. Currently everyone pretty much uses Perplexity, Lyssa or Travelers. So many other rune sets wasted because they are not up to the standard they need to be.

I wouldn’t mind to see runes of perplexity get nerfed even harder. Who cares if it makes condimentalists a tad less powerful, it also means thieves with their never ending daze from pistol 4 won’t be so darn op too, along with engy and mesmer.

In my opinion, the nerf to bonus 4 is a huge deal for condimentalist. The most important thing about it was providing a cover condition every 15s. Number of stacks was never that important. So by nerfing cooldown instead of number of stacks, ele takes a big hit since ele has good condition durations for bleeding and burning but is much worse than most classes with quantity of conditions.

For me it was good because of the 4/6. The 6/6 was decent as well but the 4/6 was an easy to apply extra condition that covered the key conditions while still doing decent damage.

Making it so that it has gone from on hit to when hit is a rather big nerf for us, we want to be hit as least we can. That is the reason why i am hoping that some of the other Condition runes will get a real shake up to give us other options

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Atoss.1056:

Wait for the changes then complain

I mean they could go all out and shake up EVERY runeset that would be pretty nice.

They said they changed a bit in every rune.

I hope these changes include a fix to the bugs the perplexity rune currently has… I don’t know if the confusion duration currently works – there have been several discussions about that, but the other bugs (like applying the 6/6 effect to yourself when you get interrupted by – e.g. spike traps in Weyandt’s Revenge while casting Ether Renewal, shards in Thaumanova when they trigger their knock back, etc.) already “survived” one nerf to this rune. I hope they fix them this time…

Rayti.6531:

I hope these changes include a fix to the bugs the perplexity rune currently has… I don’t know if the confusion duration currently works – there have been several discussions about that, but the other bugs (like applying the 6/6 effect to yourself when you get interrupted by – e.g. spike traps in Weyandt’s Revenge while casting Ether Renewal, shards in Thaumanova when they trigger their knock back, etc.) already “survived” one nerf to this rune. I hope they fix them this time…

Don’t forget thief basilisk venom (if rune is not on cd ofc)

Atoss.1056:

They said they changed a bit in every rune.

Yeah “a bit” is not good enough. Some of the runes need a total overhaul.

On the other hand, this is great for D/D Eles, who get wrecked pretty hard by confusion

Marquis.7412:

On the other hand, this is great for D/D Eles, who get wrecked pretty hard by confusion

Bu not great to D/D Condi eles who use this Runeset. I just hope that we are given alternatives when the update comes. Because we used it not because it was broken which it wasnt on Ele thanks to our low number of CC and the high cool downs they have but because the 4/6 meant we had reasonable up time on a new condition that would protect the damaging ones we have.

Atoss.1056:

Rayti.6531:

snip

Don’t forget thief basilisk venom (if rune is not on cd ofc)

OMG, I didn’t even notice that by now… That makes it even worse! I guess I missed out on that because most of the thiefs I have encountered since running this rune are doing that more or less at the beginning of a fight – when my HP are still over 90% and Diamond Skin proccs. That explains why there were 2 “immune” texts though…

Marquis.7412:

On the other hand, this is great for D/D Eles, who get wrecked pretty hard by confusion

Well, looking at the bright side at least Necros don’t get to abuse this rune too now that Fear will work as an interrupt.