I just started a guy who had 4 points in the ice rune and 4 points in the fire rune. I put 4 of each down and ONE SHOP the first half of warden krieg.
Please tell me they are strong later in the game cuz god damn thats satisfying and fun to use
Anyone else has more experience with the runes?
Doing a runebased tactician right now and at Level 51 I am already halfway through elite without dying even once. While that somehow speaks for the build I think, it feels like the runes are starting to lose power now.
Both are at 12/16 with 6-8 points in the supporting skills. Artifact handling is at 12/10.
Bomber-Sorcerer (grenado, canister) pretty much felt great throughout elite as well until it completely runs into a wall in ultimate, even with maxed skills. Its simply not a viable build. I fear the runes will fare equally bad.
Or am I wrong?
Big Runes fan here. You can pretty much “one shot(gun)” every boss in Veteran if you put down 10 runes with RR.
Here is a video (not mine) showing Hagarrad as secondary skill in crucible 140-150:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCLPFAiZyvk
You can see Hagarrad has great shotgun potential if it blows up under a boss’s feet as all projectiles will hit.
Ultimate rune-based build is very much viable but you need to stack higher defense than other pure casters because of the 1.5 sec arming time (since you’ll get hit more). Also you need to adapt to the “pre-load mines setup and lure packs into mine field” playstyle.
My Rune Purifier only got 2 mythical pieces and he’s blowing up everything!
Well, the defenses shouldnt be my main problem with soldier and a somewhat defensive orientated devotion selection.
Im fearing the killspeed in ultimate, especially against some of the more mobile, smaller bosses. Because lets face it, the pure damage on the runes isnt that good. Like canister, they seem to be designed to be a secondary skill for cc and trash clearing, not putting out the damage vs the toughies, even the Haggarads. Another problem is, most dev procs cant be assigned to them.
I didnt even intend to go down that route, but like you I started to like the gameplay of the runes and wondered if you could center a build around it.
How long does an ultimate SoT run take you, if you clear most of it? Alkamos is pretty resistant to the Haggarads damage. Also, ultimate AoM content, does it still feel smooth there?
You definitely can build around runes, but as I said, you need to enjoy the playstyle to play such a build. It is not like most direct damage builds when you can just Blitz/SS into mobs in warp speed and obliterate things. Every rune takes ~3 seconds: 1.5s cooldown + 1.5s arming.
It seems you care about clear speed by the words “killspeed” and “smooth”? Then I guess rune build might not be for you.
Since you brought up Canister as comparison, I can say Hagarrad has much better single target than Canister:
- Canister has much higher cooldown
- Canister has way higher DoT than Flat dmg but DoT doesn’t stack vs Hagarrad’s flat dmg is 3x higher than Canister (171.5 vs 549 @max rank) which means much greater shotgun potential
- Canister even with max AoE can only shotgun one target 3-5x (depends on hitbox size) vs every Hagarrad projectiles will shotgun if placed under a target’s feet
Clearing SoT and BoC is not a problem with 22 rank Hagarrad and 20 rank Kalastor. Max shotgun crit I saw was 220K. I always took my time and don’t speed rush dungeons, so it would take me 20-25 minutes per run. I can see it doable within 15 minutes for good speed runner.
Speaking of Alkamos, his fast/blink style (and most boss of this design) is actually the weakness of runes because it’s hard to keep him in place to shotgun (Shar’Zul is way easier). The tactic is to use the pillars: Kite in 8 shape around the pillars; place both runes ahead before taking sharp turns; take the turn and he will follow you and get rune blasted. Often he will blink and miss, but it’s ok because runes live for 30 sec, just keep placing them around the pillars and keep running in 8 shape, he will get caught eventually.
AoM content is not a problem (given cap/overcap important resistances) if you take the time to place 4-8 mines before engaging a mob and use choke points. Even charging mobs cannot reach you before getting blasted to death. New Nemeses are issues though but same for most builds.
I got all the way to the start of Ult with the runes, but unfortunately they did not scale well enough to get me through the endgame content…