While I dislike the delievery, I can see the point. In the sweatier areas of play (diamond tier+ and true sweats / scrims), Hungering Blade is damned near required to keep going in the super. It's not that the people in the pubs are worse or better per se, but the higher tier players tend to be more team oriented and less player focused. A player might get themselves killed by a blade, if it sets up a teamfire situation that allows the entire super to be essentially reduced to a trade. Encore will generally allow you to be killed after a single engagement in this level of play, unless you catch the team not making calls or completely with their pants down. If you want to have a lot of fun, and the best of both worlds, you can run Mask of the Third Man with Hungering, and get a decent duration boost plus regen. Granted, no double skips or Bones boosting, but it plays heavily to the super game, rather than the neutral. That being said, blade neutral is insane right now, so it's a difficult choice to make; we'll see how bad they hit Shinobu's and go from there.