The runes were brought up in the OP things thread, and since nobody is reading a wall of 400 posts, the intent of this thread - and further ones to come - is to give feedback on specific skills. Emphasis - post the builds you are playing!
The OP will start with Rune of Hagarrad: Ironically, it was a lot easier to build for Vitality RoH than it was for its native type, which is silly in of itself.
Due to a lack of off-hand options and Scorv’s visage being irresistible, it was best to simply DW the dagger and let Bone Harvest leech + Wendigo + Bat cover for the lack of cooldown reduction. As for the rune itself:
16 projectiles is a lot of projectiles.
It beats Crucible 150-200 on one set of buffs + blessings, which is perfectly fine for my standards. Will try later on higher SR realms, but the consensus feels like: very tanky, if on the slow side to compensate.
Vitality RoH has the potential for more projectiles than any other type, so my suggestion is to reduce the bonus on the daggers to +1 projectile and add 2 projectiles to the main skill. Or - as others have said - reduce or eliminate the shotgun penalty.
Speaking of RoH, Glacial Defender looks really cool, except without any sources of +shield block for either class, it simply becomes a worse version of one of those “20% to reset the cooldown” types of bonuses. The +1 charges is cool, but how practical is this item in gameplay, and what’s the incentive to use this over an off-hand that gives global cooldown?
August 31 Feedback: Runebinder Set
A set that’s basically a 6-pc set because of the 2H weapon where you only get +2 to your main mastery is one thing, but having the set cover 2 different skills that don’t have a single damage type shared between them (Pierce and Cold for RoH, Physical and Fire for RoK) makes it a terrible set in principle.
As such - the build: Runekeeper, Level 100 (GD 1.3.0.8) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator
Avoiding Form of the Beast and TDM for now; even when forgoing that +10 mastery points, skill points are super tight. Chose Raven form because that was the only way to get most of my damage converted to 1 type (Pierce and Fire → Cold, Physical is mostly Elemental).
Everything feels worse than the Vitality RoH & Acid RoK builds. Seeing the runes blow up enemies is cool, but the lack of sustain and low Health made running Crucible and SR a constant fear of death.
My suggestions: move the Runic Bolts DAR to another weapon entirely and put some kind of defensive buff (a large damage absorption proc like that in Runeguard Greaves in its place. If you want to keep the theme around building around either rune, put 100% Pierce to Cold Conversion on Hagarrad and 100% Physical to Fire Conversion on Kalastor. Those two things alone would feel much better in having gearing options that would help us obtain more health + sustain.
September 1: Final Feedback
After testing both runes among several different damage types and classes, this is how I would rate runes as a general playstyle:
Rune of Kalastor definitely suffers from a lack of good itemization options. Bad MI’s and a lack of general good items means that outside of dedicated sets like Radaggan (which is a good set) and Octavius (someone else can judge that set), Kalastor is basically going to be forgotten.
Rune of Hagarrad could use a little more beef since it is technically a 4-node skill when you account for Artifact Handling. I didn’t play Chillwhisper and won’t protest the buffs asked for there, but Hagarrad is fine when you build another skill around it (Bone Harvest for the Vitality version and Devastation for the Aether version).
Artifact Handling suffers mainly from the fact that you don’t have any builds that really use both runes. Runebinder set is not worth playing as it currently is. There are two new MIs that make hardcapping Artifact Handling possible, but the bonuses per point investment are so low: -0.1 second + 1% Crit does not cut it when each skill point needs to matter.
We’ll see what the dev team thinks of charges as a whole, but there just needs to be a better bonus overall to make the skill point investment worth it.