Guild Wars 2

What if, instead of being tied to stats, the main stats on runes were removed (leaving just the 2,4,6 effects.

There are lots of runes that have decent effects, but aren’t taken because they have stats such as vitality or precision. It was the same way with trait lines when stats were still tied to them, many traitlines had stats that just didn’t synergize very well.

Now I realize that runes are one of the last bastions of stat customization thanks to the removal of traitline stats and jewels, so with this change I would suggest reimplementing the jewel mechanic to PvP weighted at 33-40% of total stats. It would be very nice to be able to mix soldiers/marauders, carrion/rabid, etc.

This would almost certainly lead to a greater variety of rune sets being used, as well as better stat customization.

Lack of rune variety isn’t due to their primary stats; it’s because of the rune 2,4,6 piece special effects.

Strength/Hoelbrak, Pack, and Vampirism are the main runes for power or balanced builds (which make up the vast majority of meta builds). Strength/Hoelbrak are used mainly by celestial builds to get more might through procs and extended duration, which offsets the relatively low power values on celestial. Vampirism is used by squishy DPS as an extra and extremely powerful defensive cooldown. The rest use Pack because the raw stats are so strong and the group proc is extremely powerful.

Ignoring stats, pick any other rune set and compare. Would you use it on a power build for the 2,4,6 piece effects? The answer is almost always “no”.

The offending runes or their symbiotic mechanics need adjusted to be on a more level playing field with the rest. For example, Pack should have its 4pc and 6pc swapped and then the precision bonus adjusted down to be representative of a 4pc bonus.