Guild Wars 2

Per thread title, has anyone done a detailed comparison of the two?

On the surface it doesn’t seem like too much of a difference except for the rune’s +10% damage while > 90% health. And given the price it seems like ruby orbs are a no-brainer if the difference is indeed small.

Thoughts?

There have been a bunch of threads on the subject but basically yes, go with the orbs.
The other thing to look at is your HP. How often do you actually meet the >90% requirement?

If you’re amazing (and not a Shatter Mesmer), then use Scholar Runes. If you’re not amazing (or a non-Shatter Mesmer), use the Ruby Orbs.

Why the hate/love for Shatter Mesmers? They’re the only build on Mesmer that benefits from Scholar Runes. The other builds will all just be wasting runes.

The typical results that I see espoused on forums is the following:

Scholar runes do 7.5% more damage than ruby orbs when your health is above 90%.
Scholar runes do 2.5% less damage than ruby orbs when your health is below 90%.

If you are above 90% health 25% of the time, you will deal more damage with scholar runes than ruby orbs.

I have not run these numbers myself but I trust many of the users who have vetted the results themselves.

I put scholar runes on my ranger. she tends to stay out of trouble, so full health most of the time.

The trick with Ruby Orbs vs Scholar runes is it depends. Where your Crit Damage and Crit Chance are before adding the upgrades can make a difference on which is better.

If you have quite a low crit chance beforehand, you likely should use something else. However, the scholar runes will do better for you since they add more power along with the +10% damage (if your health is over 90% a lot).

On the other hand, if you have low power and high crit chance, the ruby orbs are likely to be more useful as they add more crit damage and that 10% bonus is less attractive.

Just some thoughts, but in short, look at your build and run the numbers.