Guild Wars 2

With the Ferocity change, some things about runes will naturally get mixed up.
Some runes will get reworked, and nobody knows, which and in what way, but let’s stay at runes granting critical damage for now.
As for, which values I am calculating with, I will use the 15 ferocity to 1 crit conversion, I derived from pvp items, as the lower border and a 21 ferocity to 1 crit conversion, which behaves similar to precision as the upper border.

Naturally, Divinity Runes will lose a lot of their appeal. They probably won’t degrade to garbage tier, but I don’t see them staying above 3 gold a piece. Probably more like 2 gold long term. 10 ferocity won’t even be equal to 1% critical damage.
Let’s keep in mind here, that the currently used alternative, the ruby orbs, will also lose a lot of their appeal, so people will probably still get divinity, if they simply want raw stats.

But let’s go on: There are runes with a minor crit bonus, for Example Runes of the Ranger and Runes of the Scholar.
If critical damage gets a rate of 1 crit per 15 ferocity, these runes will already lose some damage(8%→3%), if they follow normal rune behavior. If critical damage will drop down all the way to 1 crit per 21 ferocity, the raw crit bonus of these runes will be cut down from 8% all the way down to ~2.5%, again, if they follow normal rune behavior.

Now, which ones are the winners?

Let’s take a look at runes with critical damage as their primary attribute, namely rune of rage, rune of air and rune of the golemancer.
Assuming, the new runes follow a 25-50-90 scaling, those will get:
1:15 scaling of ferocity: Instead of the current 10% crit damage, we get 11% crit damage.
1:21 scaling of ferocity: Instead of the current 10% crit damage, we get ~8% crit damage.
Now, keep two things in mind: If the scaling really goes all the way to 21:1, the average crit damage of a player will be around 50%. Critical food, which currently provides 10% crit damage, will probably be cut down to 70 ferocity, too. So even in this case, the crit major runes will probably be your best bet, if you want a high critical damage(as they should be, actually).
Especially the runes of rage, which provide an extra 5% crit damage, while the player is under the effect of fury. I think, this one aspect of the rune will probably not be changed to ferocity, as I see no need for it.

So, basically, what the next patch will do is bringing the runes with minor critical damage bonus back in line and make runes with a major crit bonus actually worth having. My Ranger will cry about the loss of her Runes of the Ranger, but she will get over it.
I expect runes of the scholar, runes of the ranger and similar runes with minor crit bonus(wurm, eagle, ogre, etc) to fall slightly in popularity, while rune of rage and to a lesser extent rune of air will probably become more viable.

But that is all speculation, as nobody can know, what the next patch will do to underused runes. What are your thoughts on runes? What will be the next big thing?
Condition runes also come to mind, if arena net doesn’t bring cond damage down alongside the critical damage. A start here would be nerfing cond duration food.

Whichever rune give +10/15/20% might duration is going to be a serious contender for some builds. Same for Fury.

Rune of the Flame Legion I think will be a serious contender. We’ll see.

Nike.2631:

Whichever rune give +10/15/20% might duration is going to be a serious contender for some builds. Same for Fury.

Water Monk Traveller again?

Watch Sigil of Night. 20% damage increase on staves and GS~!

Reverence.6915:

Rune of the Flame Legion I think will be a serious contender. We’ll see.

Better buy up all those cheap Flame Legion and Balthazar runes. They are gonna become 10gp apiece.

Actually, sigil of Rage sounds intriguing, too, as the sigils won’t clash with weapon swap sigils anymore.

Scholar will still be the winner in PvE because of its +10% damage boost even if the crit damage is reduced slightly. Nothing else currently comes close.

I think we will see ore and wurm being major rune sets because they have blunt dmg % at all times and not just crit dmg.

I don’t know but I just spent about 200g buying the dirt cheap superior runes hoping they turn into the next travelers set. Worst case, I can probably sell them for almost what I have in them. Best case a few of them turn out to be the next hot item and I make a few hundred G on the investment.

Straegen.2938:

I don’t know but I just spent about 200g buying the dirt cheap superior runes hoping they turn into the next travelers set. Worst case, I can probably sell them for almost what I have in them. Best case a few of them turn out to be the next hot item and I make a few hundred G on the investment.

I was going to do that, at most I would have lost 1g but the space requirement was just too much.

In retrospect I could have just used the storage guild bank.

Khisanth.2948:

Straegen.2938:

I don’t know but I just spent about 200g buying the dirt cheap superior runes hoping they turn into the next travelers set. Worst case, I can probably sell them for almost what I have in them. Best case a few of them turn out to be the next hot item and I make a few hundred G on the investment.

I was going to do that, at most I would have lost 1g but the space requirement was just too much.

In retrospect I could have just used the storage guild bank.

You can also mule them onto a character that isn’t played much. Runes of the same type stack so you only need one slot for each type. I bought 15 of each type so it wasn’t that many slots in total.

Nike.2631:

Whichever rune give +10/15/20% might duration is going to be a serious contender for some builds. Same for Fury.

Why? Did something change with might?

Superior Rune of the Suckness. I mean Sunless.

Straegen.2938:

Khisanth.2948:

Straegen.2938:

I don’t know but I just spent about 200g buying the dirt cheap superior runes hoping they turn into the next travelers set. Worst case, I can probably sell them for almost what I have in them. Best case a few of them turn out to be the next hot item and I make a few hundred G on the investment.

I was going to do that, at most I would have lost 1g but the space requirement was just too much.

In retrospect I could have just used the storage guild bank.

You can also mule them onto a character that isn’t played much. Runes of the same type stack so you only need one slot for each type. I bought 15 of each type so it wasn’t that many slots in total.

I have a habit of playing that character every time I do that. :P

Either that or it makes me not want to play that character because I don’t want to deal with the inventory. That happened with two of my characters in GW1.