[FaeLenx]

Snip

A bunch of hypotheticals and yet you'll find any runemage who tries to employ these strategies will get opened up and spread out over a field by round 2. Also ignoring the fact that you can play stat pad with any class.

1: Ranger. A massive ranged combatant with a 90% chance of having invested in smasher that can outrange the runes and deal damage to face while you set them up.

2: Pretty much any curate promotion. Big, sudden damage does nothing when you're extremely limited on range and cooldowns yourself. They'll out heal your damage and either snipe you from a distance or just whittle you down if you don't have any self heal.

3: Monk. Body of isesip and step onto the rune that you just lovingly crafted.

4: Funny rock. Budget body of isesip.

5: Void assassin. You're dead well before round 3 if your plan is to wait until round 3 to do meaningful damage.

The list does go on.

The problem with the idea that a lack of play means a lack of power is that it's almost always untrue. The real statement is a 'lack of play usually means that people will only take the character or build out when it's safe to do so, such as when they know their enemies or can make a team composition to build around their strengths. Otherwise, builds that don't see a lot of general use are usually highly circumstantial and easily countered.'

And so many of Runemages counters got buffed and are more common while runemage itself got nerfed. It wasn't scary before its nerf, but it was a win condition if the enemy didn't have those counters. Now it's neither scary nor a win condition.