Nate
FH is my second home
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2004
- Messages
- 7,454
One of my guildies found this on IGN boards, it's a good read and highlights some very strong specs/playstyles in RvR. Original post
After a great deal of time and testing, I've come to some conclusions about the only class I've seriously played in this game. Literally hundreds of gold have been spent on respecs. Far more on equipment to be used once and rest forever in my increasingly-crowded bank vault. And the lesson I've learned from it all is that there are two, and only two viable RvR specs for a R40 Rune Priest. Though they both primarily heal, and have a good deal of survivability, for clarity’s sake we’ll call one of them ‘Healing spec’ and the other ‘Survivability spec’.
Healing spec RPs will maximize their willpower and healing crit at all costs. It’s hard to place a relative value between the two; benefits from restorative burst and blessing of grugni can be difficult to quantify. But for me, the correct value feels like its around 15wp=1%healing crit. The eventual target is between 1000-1100 willpower, and +25-30% healing crit (with the broken renown ability). Combined with the natural 10% chance to crit, this results in a base ~35% healing crit.
The real trick to this spec is Runic Blasting. With 1100 willpower, and a full spec in the grungi line, grugni’s gift (GG) heals for 532 a pop. With blessing of grungi it heals for 665; a crit heals 798; and a crit with blessing up heals 998. Needless to say, with the 50%+ crit rate offered by Runic Blasting, you won’t be seeing many 532s…
This ridiculous crit percentage also addresses one of GG’s main flaws – put simply, it’s an AP hog. At 30 a heal it’s not very efficient, but with Restorative Burst and Runic Blasting the cost changes dramatically. There’s still a 50% chance you cast it at full cost, but there’s also a 50% chance you cast it and gain 40 AP back, for a net gain of 10 AP. This balances out to exactly -10 AP per cast, on average. Or, in other words, an average of 25 non-stop grugni’s gifts off a full tank of AP.
Though technically not required, Discipline and Blessing of Grungi both have such high synergy with this spec that I see little reason ever to replace them. As for the division of mastery points, a full 15 in grungi is optimal, +1 for Runic Blasting, +1 more for Rune of Binding. The remaining points should go into Grimnir up to Master Rune of Adamant, which should then be grabbed to complete the spec.
Rune of Binding has an enormous range of utility, and should be grabbed by every rune priest in my opinion. And as for Master Rune of Adamant, I need only mention that it is a ground target that casts repeatable DIRECT heals (aka, not a HoT). This means that every tick, on every group member, has the chance to trigger Blessing of Grungi and Restorative Burst (though not more than one burst per tick).
Bar none, a Rune Priest thus specced is the best healer on Order. GG is spammable while running, and can keep up any single competent player any other single player from the moment the first GG hits. Aside from the Archmage’s channeled heal (which requires them standing in place), GG is the only heal spell on Order that can actually save someone’s life when it most needs saving. But with such power comes downsides. More than any other healer, this spec is vulnerable to disorient. GG becomes ridiculously innefficient with even a 1 second delay. And though no single enemy can bring you down (not even a witch elf), your low defensive stats mean that when a WE pops out of stealth, you HAVE to drop to what you’re doing and save your own hide with GG spam. Which means the group goes without your healing output until the WE is off you.
This brings us to the Survivability spec. Rather than focus on willpower, which scales so well with GG spam, this template loads up on initiative, wounds, and –chance to be crit %. And whereas the Healing spec requires three to four tactics to perform its combo, the Survivability spec is free to pick up some of the goodies that their colleagues must leave behind.
The endgame goals of this spec are 800 corporeal and spirit resist (without buff), 7500 hitpoints, and, through a combination of initiative and –crit%, a chance to be crit of 0%. As a result your willpower will end up somewhere around 650 (500 without discipline).
The trick to this spec is that for our two big heals, the group heal and rune of restoration, casting lag, disorients, and interrupts slow things down so much that willpower is barely relevant. If a rune of restoration takes 5 seconds to cast, a difference of 200 hp per cast hardly makes a difference in either the short or long run. What does make a difference is whether you stay alive to finish casting it.
And staying alive is what this spec does best. Go check the Witch Elf forums for yourself if you don’t believe me – in their most horrific nightmares they see pint-sized, pajama-wearing runepriests skipping across the battlefield with half a melee assist train in tow, emoting /dance, telling their group not to bother peeling cause they’re not in real danger yet. Though any healer worth his or her salt can survive a single witch elf, this is the only one besides a Grace-specced WP (an insane target for a witch elf), that can continue to heal his group while being attacked. Against all but the two best WEs on my server, it’s as simple as detaunt, HoT myself, group heal, group heal, etc. This is because Witch Elves largely rely on crits for their damage. Without them, it can easily be healed through. You’ll even have enough time to emote /dance during the cast buildup, once you’ve gotten some practice. That should discourage them from even bothering next time.
There’s also a second trick to this spec – Concussive Runes. The tactic suffers from two bugs, one good, the other bad. The bad is that, if you don’t reequip it every time you zone, it does nothing. Fortunately the good is that if you DO re-equip it, it procs 100% of the time on grimnir based attacks for a 15 second detaunt. With this equipped, Rune of Cleaving becomes a 180 degree detaunt. Oath Rune of Warding’s clickable ability is an AoE one. And Rune of Battle casts an aura that AoE detaunts every 3 seconds for 15 seconds.
Discipline and Concussive Runes I’ve already mentioned. The other two recommended tactics, Blessing of Grungi and Restorative, should come as nu surprise…but perhaps the lack of Ancestral Inheritance requires some explanation. You see, in my experience armor in this game is paper-thin at best. Every class has a million and one abilities to debuff it or ignore it. I find that, no matter what my armor starts at, by the middle of any fight its effectively zero. As for point distribituion, I go 13 Grungi + 1 for Rune of Binding, and 9 Grimnir +1 for Rune of Battle, +1 for Master Rune of Adamant, and +1 for Concussive Runes.
Between AoE detaunts and high defensive stats, a rune priest thus specced can do things that no healing class should be able to. One of my favorites is to have a tank put guard on me. As he runs into a group of enemies I HoT him and cast Rune of Battle on him. After the first rune ticks, everyone within 30 feet is detaunted to me, so I run in and start being obnoxious (start rune of resto, /showoff, etc.). They switch their targets to me and get a steady stream of 1s and 2s (guard + detaunt), which lasts until the last detaunt wears off some 30 seconds later.
But that’s just being fancy. More spectacular are the everyday examples of ‘tanking’ a witch elf and marauder simultaneously until the group arrives to peel, or bunny hopping across the front lines with a whole heap of detaunted tanks following. Of course this spec lacks the backline functionality of a pure healer, which is to say, if a WE pops on your bright wizard you won’t always save him in time. Nor will you ever outheal a rune priest with 1100+ willpower. But this spec, played correctly, will provide a nearly unkillable source of healing and ressurection. It will also provide a far more consistent one, particularly when under heavy enemy fire.
As I’ve said, in my experience these are the only two currently viable level R40 specs. A slight variation on the second ignores Rune of Battle, Master Rune of Adamant, and Concussive Runes in favor of Ancestor’s Echo. I find this this inefficient in light of recent shield nerfs, but this spec would be viable too. That’s all I’ve got for now, I hope new rune priests find it useful!
For 0% crit chance
Sentinel Skullcap - 3% to be crit
Annihilator Shoulders - 3% to be crit
Darkpromise Grudgecoat
Vestements of the Watcher
Sentinel Runecuffs
Runesash of Hatred - 2% to be crit
Redeye Clogs - 2% to be crit
Shard of the Warden - 3% to be crit
Enervating Sigmarite Sigil
Wiseman's Ring of Reinforcement (spirit resist tali)
After a great deal of time and testing, I've come to some conclusions about the only class I've seriously played in this game. Literally hundreds of gold have been spent on respecs. Far more on equipment to be used once and rest forever in my increasingly-crowded bank vault. And the lesson I've learned from it all is that there are two, and only two viable RvR specs for a R40 Rune Priest. Though they both primarily heal, and have a good deal of survivability, for clarity’s sake we’ll call one of them ‘Healing spec’ and the other ‘Survivability spec’.
Healing spec RPs will maximize their willpower and healing crit at all costs. It’s hard to place a relative value between the two; benefits from restorative burst and blessing of grugni can be difficult to quantify. But for me, the correct value feels like its around 15wp=1%healing crit. The eventual target is between 1000-1100 willpower, and +25-30% healing crit (with the broken renown ability). Combined with the natural 10% chance to crit, this results in a base ~35% healing crit.
The real trick to this spec is Runic Blasting. With 1100 willpower, and a full spec in the grungi line, grugni’s gift (GG) heals for 532 a pop. With blessing of grungi it heals for 665; a crit heals 798; and a crit with blessing up heals 998. Needless to say, with the 50%+ crit rate offered by Runic Blasting, you won’t be seeing many 532s…
This ridiculous crit percentage also addresses one of GG’s main flaws – put simply, it’s an AP hog. At 30 a heal it’s not very efficient, but with Restorative Burst and Runic Blasting the cost changes dramatically. There’s still a 50% chance you cast it at full cost, but there’s also a 50% chance you cast it and gain 40 AP back, for a net gain of 10 AP. This balances out to exactly -10 AP per cast, on average. Or, in other words, an average of 25 non-stop grugni’s gifts off a full tank of AP.
Though technically not required, Discipline and Blessing of Grungi both have such high synergy with this spec that I see little reason ever to replace them. As for the division of mastery points, a full 15 in grungi is optimal, +1 for Runic Blasting, +1 more for Rune of Binding. The remaining points should go into Grimnir up to Master Rune of Adamant, which should then be grabbed to complete the spec.
Rune of Binding has an enormous range of utility, and should be grabbed by every rune priest in my opinion. And as for Master Rune of Adamant, I need only mention that it is a ground target that casts repeatable DIRECT heals (aka, not a HoT). This means that every tick, on every group member, has the chance to trigger Blessing of Grungi and Restorative Burst (though not more than one burst per tick).
Bar none, a Rune Priest thus specced is the best healer on Order. GG is spammable while running, and can keep up any single competent player any other single player from the moment the first GG hits. Aside from the Archmage’s channeled heal (which requires them standing in place), GG is the only heal spell on Order that can actually save someone’s life when it most needs saving. But with such power comes downsides. More than any other healer, this spec is vulnerable to disorient. GG becomes ridiculously innefficient with even a 1 second delay. And though no single enemy can bring you down (not even a witch elf), your low defensive stats mean that when a WE pops out of stealth, you HAVE to drop to what you’re doing and save your own hide with GG spam. Which means the group goes without your healing output until the WE is off you.
This brings us to the Survivability spec. Rather than focus on willpower, which scales so well with GG spam, this template loads up on initiative, wounds, and –chance to be crit %. And whereas the Healing spec requires three to four tactics to perform its combo, the Survivability spec is free to pick up some of the goodies that their colleagues must leave behind.
The endgame goals of this spec are 800 corporeal and spirit resist (without buff), 7500 hitpoints, and, through a combination of initiative and –crit%, a chance to be crit of 0%. As a result your willpower will end up somewhere around 650 (500 without discipline).
The trick to this spec is that for our two big heals, the group heal and rune of restoration, casting lag, disorients, and interrupts slow things down so much that willpower is barely relevant. If a rune of restoration takes 5 seconds to cast, a difference of 200 hp per cast hardly makes a difference in either the short or long run. What does make a difference is whether you stay alive to finish casting it.
And staying alive is what this spec does best. Go check the Witch Elf forums for yourself if you don’t believe me – in their most horrific nightmares they see pint-sized, pajama-wearing runepriests skipping across the battlefield with half a melee assist train in tow, emoting /dance, telling their group not to bother peeling cause they’re not in real danger yet. Though any healer worth his or her salt can survive a single witch elf, this is the only one besides a Grace-specced WP (an insane target for a witch elf), that can continue to heal his group while being attacked. Against all but the two best WEs on my server, it’s as simple as detaunt, HoT myself, group heal, group heal, etc. This is because Witch Elves largely rely on crits for their damage. Without them, it can easily be healed through. You’ll even have enough time to emote /dance during the cast buildup, once you’ve gotten some practice. That should discourage them from even bothering next time.
There’s also a second trick to this spec – Concussive Runes. The tactic suffers from two bugs, one good, the other bad. The bad is that, if you don’t reequip it every time you zone, it does nothing. Fortunately the good is that if you DO re-equip it, it procs 100% of the time on grimnir based attacks for a 15 second detaunt. With this equipped, Rune of Cleaving becomes a 180 degree detaunt. Oath Rune of Warding’s clickable ability is an AoE one. And Rune of Battle casts an aura that AoE detaunts every 3 seconds for 15 seconds.
Discipline and Concussive Runes I’ve already mentioned. The other two recommended tactics, Blessing of Grungi and Restorative, should come as nu surprise…but perhaps the lack of Ancestral Inheritance requires some explanation. You see, in my experience armor in this game is paper-thin at best. Every class has a million and one abilities to debuff it or ignore it. I find that, no matter what my armor starts at, by the middle of any fight its effectively zero. As for point distribituion, I go 13 Grungi + 1 for Rune of Binding, and 9 Grimnir +1 for Rune of Battle, +1 for Master Rune of Adamant, and +1 for Concussive Runes.
Between AoE detaunts and high defensive stats, a rune priest thus specced can do things that no healing class should be able to. One of my favorites is to have a tank put guard on me. As he runs into a group of enemies I HoT him and cast Rune of Battle on him. After the first rune ticks, everyone within 30 feet is detaunted to me, so I run in and start being obnoxious (start rune of resto, /showoff, etc.). They switch their targets to me and get a steady stream of 1s and 2s (guard + detaunt), which lasts until the last detaunt wears off some 30 seconds later.
But that’s just being fancy. More spectacular are the everyday examples of ‘tanking’ a witch elf and marauder simultaneously until the group arrives to peel, or bunny hopping across the front lines with a whole heap of detaunted tanks following. Of course this spec lacks the backline functionality of a pure healer, which is to say, if a WE pops on your bright wizard you won’t always save him in time. Nor will you ever outheal a rune priest with 1100+ willpower. But this spec, played correctly, will provide a nearly unkillable source of healing and ressurection. It will also provide a far more consistent one, particularly when under heavy enemy fire.
As I’ve said, in my experience these are the only two currently viable level R40 specs. A slight variation on the second ignores Rune of Battle, Master Rune of Adamant, and Concussive Runes in favor of Ancestor’s Echo. I find this this inefficient in light of recent shield nerfs, but this spec would be viable too. That’s all I’ve got for now, I hope new rune priests find it useful!
For 0% crit chance
Sentinel Skullcap - 3% to be crit
Annihilator Shoulders - 3% to be crit
Darkpromise Grudgecoat
Vestements of the Watcher
Sentinel Runecuffs
Runesash of Hatred - 2% to be crit
Redeye Clogs - 2% to be crit
Shard of the Warden - 3% to be crit
Enervating Sigmarite Sigil
Wiseman's Ring of Reinforcement (spirit resist tali)
Though why he completely leaves out armor only god knows.
