Originally Posted by Epinephrine

I think he mistook your post as calling mine (directly above it) a whiner. I suspect you were targetting someone that was complaining. I won't argue about my competance, I have been playing mostly PvE (with brief HoH bouts to gain familiarity) though I am heavily into theorycrafting/metagame analysis. My guildmates are pretty knowledgable and include a moderator of these fora, so I imagine that when we decide to truly delve into GvG we'll do alright.

I think this (faction) is a fine solution - not as good as an unlock all skills for your profession on beating the game, but a reasonable way to do it. Those who want to unlock fast can blur through the minor and major runes in little time, and instead of hunting FOREVER to get the superiors they are missing (one of my guild mates is STILL missing Superior Air and Vigor, has the others) you can get the runes you want unlocked. You don't need to unlock them all, just the ones needed for your build. If the unlocking were random with faction points I'd agree that it's a bit excessively long, but as it is you can get your superior rune pretty fast if you've played through PvE and are still missing it. Will it eliminate the PvE? No - PvE will still be way more efficient for unlocking the mahority of skills and the minor/major runes, as well as many upgrades on the away, but if you have (for example) a +17% Enchanting bow grip unlocked form PvE, you can easily upgrade it to a maxed grip.

I like the balance of the two; while it is technically possible to unlock everything through PvP now (yay!) it is very time consuming (boo!). Likewise, you can unlock everything through PvE (Yay?) but again, because it can be hard to get the last few runes or the specific one you want (boo!) it takes forever* (BOOOOOO!). With the combination of the two methods though, you can unlock a large number of random things, then upgrade the ones you need relatively quickly. So I am not whining, and I would guess you were writing about another poster.



No, I suspect the fastest is now a PvE blitz to gain most of the easily aquired stuff, as well as unlocking the majority of your runes, trading unIDed runes with others to acquire runes from less fleshed out classes; follow this with PvP to target specific runes/items to flesh your character out.

Really, if you have 3 ranger superior unlocked and find an unIDed ranger superior, you are better off trading it for a Warrior rune for example, if you only have 2 ulocked warrior runes; rather than a 75% chance of wasting a superior rune you now have only a 40% chance of wasting it, and it'll be more efficient to unlock the last few runes through PvP. After all, once you have the faction it isn't a gamble - you get exaclty what you want.

* For the mathematically inclined, there are 27 superior runes out there. If you have a build which needs 2 specific runes in mind, starting with neither oof the runes you wish, you would need to unlock an average of 39.5 superior runes to get the two you desire. If you play through PvE you'll have the majority of the Minor and Major runes unlocked, if not all of them. The number of random rune unlocks to get all superior runes on average is 105.0693 unlocks (27 times the 27th harmonic number for those interested), but given how quickly you can unlock half of them for example (it only takes 19 or so unlocks on average to have half the superiors) you can then acquire the missing ones with faction points. With 32 randomly unlocked superior runes you have on average 8 runes left over, but those 8 will take you an average of 73 more random rune unlocks - granted, with the Unided being from classes you can cut this down a bit most likely, as it allows some degree of targetting, but when you have all but one rune from each profession the faction is starting to look much more efficient.