Guild Wars 2

I’m currently working towards a set of Ascended Zerker Heavy Armor. Since it’s Ascended, I know once I slot the runes, I won’t be getting them back. Also, it’s too much work, for the foreseeable future, to plan on making more than one set. I am currently running a Celestial set with traveler’s runes on my guardian. I want to be able to swap the zerker set between guard, war, and the coming rev. I don’t know what is in store swiftness/speedwise for rev, but since guards don’t have a +25% speed boost available, I’m looking at choosing either speed or traveler (heresy for a zerk set, I know, but work with me here).

My question is: which set, in your opinions, will be more beneficial? I will not be slotting anything other than one of those two sets, since I’ve come to really enjoy the +25% speed and don’t want to lose it. Also, cost is not a factor. I know speed runes are much cheaper, but I want the pros/cons of effectiveness without factoring price.

TL;DR If you were given the choice between only Runes of Speed, or Runes of the Traveler, on an Ascended Zerker Heavy Armor set, which would you choose and why? Assume price is not a concern.

Well it depends on what you’ll be playing with that armor I think, but I’ll give my opinion of both:

Speed: With rune of speed all you get is vitality, which might be helpful if you’re running zerk to give you a little more survivability. The combo berserker/valkyrie back piece option indicates that vitality synchronizes well with the vulnerable nature of zerker armor. The hard cap on movement speed is +33%. So that means swiftness will only give you 8% more from the +25% you’ll always have.

But the swiftness WOULD be good in situations where you are chilled or crippled a lot, as it’s a plus and minus game. So swiftness plus the +25% movement speed would give you a plus 58% to counteract cripple’s minus 50% or chill’s minus 66%. So Rune of Speed would be better if you expect to be hit with control conditions a lot and you won’t have much on your build or a teammates build to clear them out.

Traveler: Traveler gives you generic across the board stats which give a light compliment to any stats you are running. It will give a little boost to whatever armor stats you’re running for as well as whatever stats you get from traits. (or however else you will be able to modify stats once they remove stat gains from traits)

If you have enough condition clears either from yourself or your teammates then Traveler’s would work well. It’ll boost whatever stats you run and give you a thin pillow of stat spread for every other stat.

So make your decision based on your expected exposure to movement impeding conditions. Speed if you expect them to be a problem and Traveler if you don’t expect it to be a problem.

Mo Mo.1947:

Well it depends on what you’ll be playing with that armor

I’m shooting for best versatility between guard/war/revenant, and I know I’ll be sacrificing some dps by choosing either rune set. Whatever build I run will have to spec around that. We’ll see what happens with trait stats when they change. My main reasoning is guard’s lack of access to +25% speed boost.

Mo Mo.1947:

So swiftness plus the +25% movement speed would give you a plus 58% to counteract cripple’s minus 50% or chill’s minus 66%.

Is that really how it works? I was under the impression that the two bonuses never stack, even when movement speed is impaired.

Mojo Gris Gris.5941:

Mo Mo.1947:

So swiftness plus the +25% movement speed would give you a plus 58% to counteract cripple’s minus 50% or chill’s minus 66%.

Is that really how it works? I was under the impression that the two bonuses never stack, even when movement speed is impaired.

It isn’t. Both bonuses doesn’t stack, you only get the bonus of the highest one.

Oh I didn’t know, oops. Thought it stacked that way for cancelling slow.

In that case I’d go Traveler’s. The only thing I’ve ever put Rune of Speed on was a set of Nomad’s Armor I made for purely tanking damage while running through enemies. With zerker you would only get a minor benefit from the rune of speed while traveler’s will boost your power, prec, ferocity that much more and give you a cushion with the rest of the stat boosts.

[!!] Honestly though I’d get all the basic components together for your ascended armor and then wait until they release the trait update and skills overhaul. (which will come before HoT release) Once they release that it’s not clear whether Zerker will remain the best all-around armor that it currently is. [!!]

Yeah, I don’t expect to actually have the armor before HoT drops anyway, but I’ve been mulling over the decision between the 2 rune sets because I gotta have my speed.

For my guardian, I prefer Speed, because Guards have a low healthpool. If that is not a coinsideration, Traveler is generally superior.

I always use traveller .. better alround stats and especially the +boon duration
is also very nice.

Speed i only use on my mesmer, since i very seldom play her and thus i just
wanted something cheaper.

Also tip : if you have black lion salvage kits buy armor with the runes and salvage
it

Well you don’t lose much dps if you can get to your target faster. The other benefit is that if you are a class with a utility slot speed boost, a rune set frees up the slot for something else that is useful (e.g. a slot for shadowstep on a thief). Think I paid roughly 35gp for a set of traveler runes, seems worth it and not very expensive really.

Might be off topic, but i would actually suggest either Pack or Centaur, with pack being better overall imo. They give you higher uptime on swiftness, almost enough to be permanant.l, and pack also has very nice offensive stats to keep up ur dps

Daywolf.2630:

The other benefit is that if you are a class with a utility slot speed boost, a rune set frees up the slot for something else that is useful (e.g. a slot for shadowstep on a thief).

^That is the primary reason for only considering these 2 rune sets. Well, that and the fact that guardian just doesn’t have one.

I’m definitely going to wait to craft the set until after the changes go through for traits, and maybe even until after HoT is released. Thanks to all for your input.

Guardian has multiple speed boosting skills (check shouts) available, plus 3 skill on staff. They stack in duration, so once you have your rotations down you can keep yourself fairly mobile. Even possible to use a swiftness of weapon swap sigil to go with your staff

Finally, if you are using a greatsword, swap to your staff in the middle of a skill 3 jump, before dropping the staff swiftness aoe.

Now, all that said.. I still use traveler on my ascended heavy just to have every swiftness option covered. Base speed drives me crazy when I’m using a norn.

Mojo Gris Gris.5941:

^That is the primary reason for only considering these 2 rune sets. Well, that and the fact that guardian just doesn’t have one.

I’m definitely going to wait to craft the set until after the changes go through for traits, and maybe even until after HoT is released. Thanks to all for your input.

Well yeah, that’s the thing, with so many changes coming to guard it’s hard to tell what a respec will bring at that point. One has vitality while the other boon%, so it’s going to factor into what you build at that point. On my guard I’d take traveler, only because I already have a lot of vitality in the build. But that may change at HoT…

But for my thief or engi right now, I don;t think it’ll make much of a difference once HoT is here, so my engi has speed and thief with traveler.