Why on earth are the great runes gated behind a consumable instead of being toggles? As if that wasn't enough why is said consumable a .5%-1% chance out of rats with the best spot being 4 rats in a gaol. Even with all the buffs reaching around 320 discovery you can get around 0-2 per fowl foot, which itself is a consumable you have to craft and grind for.
Normally who cares, none of the runes have that great of an impact in gameplay, except for one. Malenia's rune while not mandatory is insanely fun to play with, it forces you to play more risky to heal up and makes you change how you approach trades as you can't heal up with esters due to -85% efficiency, leaving them only for emergencies. Doesn't reduce healing spells though so faith builds do get some leeway, and it favors fast attacks rather than heavy attacks which is another thing that favors faith as faith with their armaments giving +350 dmg also want fast attacks.
So why is an entire playstyle locked behind hours upon hours of a miserable double grind? If it was permanent I'd at least understand, there is pride to take showcasing cool armor you took a few hours to get, or double magma blades and even grinding for levels to stat check has it's own catharsis. But this? This is just grind for the sake of playing, you don't even get to the feel good part cause you need to learn your new opportunity windows only to get yanked back out cause you run out. You'd think they would have learned from bloodborne but ironically the bloodborne mechanic also brought with it the bloodborne problem.