Curse

Thom Bangalter · Nov 07, 2006, 09:32 AM // 09:32

Is anyone else as happy with the new runes as I am? They add an extra depth to the game and since armor swapping is gone, makes you think even harder about how you rune. I've yet to see any discussion on them here, so I thought I should break down my thoughts on them and see what others think.

Here's my thoughts about each:

Rune of Vitae: Would, theoretically, be an ok rune if you're running few attributes and rune of clarity, purity, etc didn't exist. In the few days between when they were released and when Nightfall came out and the condition-removing runes came out I contemplated nabbing one, but depending on your attribute spread It's rare to see play.

Rune of Attunement: +2 energy. Relatively useless in my opinion, because if you need that extra +2 something is seriously wrong.

Rune of Clarity: A must have for rangers, dervishes, paragons, assassins, and warriors.

Rune of Restoration: My personal favorite. As a runner, runes such as this make a huge difference in split situation or dealing with someone in your base. Makes crip shots even more worthless in a skirmish situation, and makes YAA slightly less scary. (very slightly).

Rune of Purity: A very meta-ish rune. If you are expecting to see a ton of condition builds certainly worth taking, but not quite verstaile enough to carry around all the time.

Rune of Recovery: reduces the two scariest conditions in the game. however, the conditions themselves are so scary they should be getting removed quickly, but worth considering, if only for deep wound reduction.

DISCUSS!

Dragannia · Nov 07, 2006, 11:50 AM // 11:50

All the conditions runes, IMO, are useless, with the exception of the Cripple one. Conditions usually get removed, I'd rather not waste a rune slot in case you come across the odd Disease riding team with a dozen sources of Poison, I'd rather get a Vitae. Deep Wound is probably the most useless, since it's a spike condition, the duration is relatively pointless, and even on pressure teams it gets removed rather than ridden out.

Sophitia Leafblade · Nov 07, 2006, 12:20 PM // 12:20

Well i dont think much of the condition ones but the Vitae and attunement are very handy, vitae more so on Melee chars and attunement more so on Casters.

LightningHell · Nov 07, 2006, 01:21 PM // 13:21

I haven't looked at the condition runes yet, but the vitae/attunement ones look a bit pointless but handy.

scamPOR · Nov 07, 2006, 01:47 PM // 13:47

I like the concept of the reduces runes at least on a flagger. Run a reduces crippled with a shield with it or offhand and its a nice swap to... Still its -10hp which isn't huge for a marginal bonus.

Greedy Gus · Nov 07, 2006, 03:06 PM // 15:06

I'm not a fan of the whole concept because it makes it pretty difficult to make a PvE character ready to run all the builds you'd want to in PvP.

Vitae is basically the only one I use when I have spare slots, though attunement runes are attractive on gale mesmers.

TheOneMephisto · Nov 07, 2006, 03:08 PM // 15:08

I generally run vitaes in every extra slot that I can fit them into unless I'm running a ganker. If I'm running a ganker, the cripple or blind ones are pretty useful depending on what kind of ganker I'm running (i.e. you don't really need either on a YAA war with malice, cripple is good on anything w/o condition removal, blind is good on warriors w/o malice, sins, and dervishes, etc.)

Drewfense · Nov 07, 2006, 03:11 PM // 15:11

Blind is the best one. People spec so little into air that a 20% from a rune + 20% from tanzits makes blind go away really fast. If a warrior is just pressuring and a blind only lasts 3-4 seconds, then it is one less condition the midline has to worry about removing.

Divineshadows · Nov 07, 2006, 05:41 PM // 17:41

Greedy Gus summed up the attunement runes best -- they are only useful on characters that need a larger exhaustion buffer, but otherwise they are inferior to vitae runes.

From a PvP character standpoint, I think the runes are a great addition. Particularly the vitae rune for anti-spike and the clarity rune.

From a PvE character standpoint (whether the character is being used in PvE or PvP), all of these runes are equivalent to equipment creep which it is my understanding A-net was making every possible effort to not have happen. They failed. The introduction of these runes exponentially increased the number of armor configurations needed for a given PvE character class to run a multitude of builds using optimal rune configurations.

Wasteland Squidget · Nov 07, 2006, 05:43 PM // 17:43

The paradox of the anti-condition gear is that conditions either get removed quickly or you really don't care about them. I'd rather have a blind off in 2 seconds than 5. Cripple and Daze tend to be a pretty important condition that gets removed. Deep Wound either stays on and you die or gets removed and you live.

These runes do have their uses on gankers, but less so now that gankers have gotten so good at self condition-removal. Ganking warriors and assassins don't have to care much about blind when they can take Signet of Malice and just play through your Blinding Flash.

Drewfense · Nov 07, 2006, 06:02 PM // 18:02

I agree with you that most of the conditions are useless (whats the difference between deep wound lasting 20 secs and 16), but I do think blindness and crippled are worth having depending on the build. Blindness is the easy example. If you are playing a hybrid water ele, the blind is only going to last 4ish seconds. If the ele is bad, with the rune+tanzits the blind will wear off in about the same time it would be removed. If he is good and can see the spikes, then removal is necessary. Versus air ele flash bots spamming the skill. Blind is probably going to last about 2 seconds if removed, with the rune+tanzits it will only last 5 at the longest. If a build is weak on point condition removal (mainly a mend or something on the monks), then I have a hard time rationalizing removing blind constantly so a warrior can get 2 more hits of his weapon in.

It isn't an mind boggling effect, but neither is 10 health.

Ensign · Nov 07, 2006, 07:51 PM // 19:51

I don't care about the condition runes at all. I put Vitaes in every previously empty slot, or to replace minors that aren't all that useful. Attunement runes I use about as often as energy armor - only on very specific characters who need a big pool.

Peace,
-CxE

Wasteland Squidget · Nov 07, 2006, 07:52 PM // 19:52

I think the paradox is that even with these runes, you still need to run enough condition removal to keep all th dangerous ones off. They don't save you any skillslots, and they really don't save you any time.

Ideally you want Draw on an off-caster. That's strong removal for most conditions that doesn't take a massive investment of time or energy, and is difficult to shut down. If you can't have that, you usually want some kind of self-removal in the form of Plague Touch or Signet of Malice. You need to bring these skills whether you have the runes or not, and if you have the runes removal will hit before they ever trigger.

Again, I can see running these if I was expecting my character to be in skirmish situations. Being outside the range of removal makes a short duration on conditions very useful, more so than an extra 10 health. However, for a flagstand character removal needs to be coming faster than the conditions fade. Since you still need the removal whether you have the runes or not, why bother bringing the runes?

Thom Bangalter · Nov 07, 2006, 09:04 PM // 21:04

Rune of Restoration is in my previously unused slot, and I've fallen in love with it.
Since I'm sometimes speccing into 3 attribute lines that I can rune for, I don't have much in the way of extra rune slots. minor air, minor energy storage, superior vigor are all musts, so with only 2 slots to choose from, It's tough. Rune of restoration is so unbelievably useful, if only for this reason: if you're at burning isle, when running through lava, you have moments where you get to just be on fire, instead of being permanently crippled. It really doesn't work that well against YAA warriors, because YAA is still rediculous.

Then the choice becomes minor water or minor vitae, and I'm still deciding. It depends on how heavily I'm splashing into water (sometimes I've run Ice prison, and then I want minor water, but if running gale in that slot vitae would be it).

Fortunately, at least for ele, all the minor runes, and most of the new runes, are really cheap, so you can rerune at your liesure. For warriors and monks, who have more expensive runes, swapping them out gets fairly annoying. You could, of course, just use a PVP guy, but I still hate using them, at least for ele.

RandomEngy · Nov 07, 2006, 09:39 PM // 21:39

When you combine the Clarity rune with the "I can see clearly now" shield inscription, it's 40% blind reduction. It can help a lot when your removal characters are kiting or energy strapped. And you're giving up 10 health and conditional, minor damage reduction? I think it's worth it.

Thom Bangalter · Nov 07, 2006, 10:37 PM // 22:37

With the inclusion of "I can see clearly now" there is no reason for a warrior to have the damage reduction mod now. It's been fairly useless post-nerf, and this just gives you something better to substitute for it. Additionally, for your draw guy, it helps a lot if he's going to have to push up really far to remove the blind, in addition to what Engy pointed out.

plus, on warrior, who gives a crap about minor strength?

Drewfense · Nov 07, 2006, 10:57 PM // 22:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thom Bangalter

plus, on warrior, who gives a crap about minor strength?

but your a warrior...your suppose to be strong...I still remember seeing a pve er with 12 strength and 5 sup strength runes...it made me laugh.

I Brother Bloood I · Nov 08, 2006, 12:14 AM // 00:14

Id rather fill my armor with more useful runes. If i have space ill use clarity/recovery/restoration. Basicly not worth losing 1 attribute for conditions when healing conditions can be a good amount of healing(if u get what i mean im not sure if i do). My chars are usually full its just works better take my war for example, minor strength/tactics sup vigor/absorption and helm with sup rune. Fills all my armor works for me. Monk sup vigor minor heal/prot (alot of builds go multi taskin if i come to somethin without i throw in a rune of vitae or w/e) minor divine helm with minor/sup.

Greedy Gus · Nov 08, 2006, 03:03 PM // 15:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drewfense

Blind is the best one. People spec so little into air that a 20% from a rune + 20% from tanzits makes blind go away really fast. If a warrior is just pressuring and a blind only lasts 3-4 seconds, then it is one less condition the midline has to worry about removing.

Sorry, but this is certainly not coming from the warrior perspective, and it's pretty bad advice. First of all, tanzits sucks, and now that the inventory is locked out you won't see it again. But more importantly, the last thing you want to do as a warrior pressuring the enemy is let all of their blinds end on duration on you (no removal). It just gives them the go-ahead to spam that blind on you and laugh as you run around waiting on your gear to shorten the duration by a few seconds.

It's when your removes are coming the fastest where you're most effective at pressuring, and that's what makes the enemy less persistant on spamming the blinds (most will just attempt to disrupt spikes if you have a quick draw character).

As squidget mentioned, you're already having to bring that removal anyway, so you're not saving any skill slots, just some possible "hassle" from the midline draw character (who should understand that while it may be boring, drawing those blinds is one of the most damaging things they can be doing to the enemy).

The real danger is getting DP on your warriors, so those vitae runes are definitely still king.

moriz · Nov 08, 2006, 03:09 PM // 15:09

the inventory is most certainly not "locked". you can still change your weapons and offhands. it's just your armor that you cannot change.

with the vitae rune, my monk's now got a nice, even 600 hp without using hp armor. they're my favourite runes now.