Guild Wars 2

The upcoming one-rune system for PvP has got me thinking about a smoother way to handle runes game-wide. In PvE/WvW, you have six runes, but they’re individually weak and unnecessarily duplicate many of the bonuses that are already on the armor they slot into. Also, the market right now is heavily skewed toward superior runes, with minors being virtually unsalable on the Black Lion.

My proposal is to disconnect runes from attributes and armor, and equip fewer of them.

Attribute bonuses currently found on runes would be stripped out, compensated by a proportional increase in those same attribute bonuses on appropriate armor sets. Runes would keep their “special effects,” which now get the spotlight.

Unlock one minor rune slot on the Hero panel at early levels, then a major slot in the mid levels, and top it off with a superior slot near the end. Characters would thus slot one rune from each tier.

The effect of minor runes would be equivalent to current slots 1-2, majors would mimic slots 3-4, and superiors would cover slots 5-6.

Major and superior runes would only be equippable if the runes below them share the same name-type, but you can equip lower runes in higher-tier slots to mix.

This would clean things up considerably, while making lower tier runes more valuable. (To boost the value further and prevent superior costs from plummeting, all the old runes on the market may need to be annoyingly converted into fragments that players must combine into a whole.)