What the heck. All the is the same silly stuff most people do and it doesn't work well. I mean don't get me wrong it is nothing wrong with getting links from forums, web 2.0 and so on, but most people just don't do it right. Details are very important. Details will make the difference between raising in SERPs and getting penalized.
First off, I assume you folks are lazy or something since all you talk about there are links that can be automated with software. Thing is, that doesn't help much by itself. You need some quality links too, both to the money site and to the tier 1 links. Personally I don't just build web 2.0 for tier 1 but also I actually register domains and build my own network of sites which i can send quality links to since there's no risk of the web 2.0 owners suspending my site and me wasting time with that.
Where do you get quality links? Well, there are tons of places. d0f0llow comments on high pr blogs, manual forum posts on threads that are relevant to your niche. Or with xrumer if you have it, just keep it relevant instead of blasting everything. Then there are guest posts and dozens of other link building methods that work great. They're just not a push-button solution like those crappy mass links. But if you want results then you better stop being lazy and start working. There's a place for automation and there's a place for manual link building.
Also n0f0llow links do not help at all. They only help a page get indexed but will not help it rank. You can build a million n0f0llow links they won't matter. Actually they can hurt you because you will obviously have high link velocity and that will trigger google's filters.
Forum profiles don't work either. They just don't. I could explain you the theory behind it but i doubt it would make a difference.
All Google updates were built as anti-spam measures. In other words what worked 2 years ago still works as long as you're not doing it in a spammy manner. Xrumer, ScrapeBox, UltimateDaemon, SENuke and any other tool can both kill a site, make it rank high or have no effec on it and it is 100% because of how YOU use it. Has nothing to do with the tool. Software is just a tool. You're not skilled with it don't blame the tool.