Guild Wars 2

Hello, I wanted to get some of the engineer community’s thoughts and feedback on comparing rune of undead/scavenging with an alternative runeset such as 4/6 altruism with 2/6 water for might stacking potential. Or even the altruism/fire/hoelbrak setup.

Currently I run a Rabid/Dire mix grenade/bomb condition build and run Undead runes. Here are the numbers I came up with:

Undead Runes:
183 condition damage
50 toughness
~86 condition damage converted from toughness with my gear setup (1710 toughness)

That gives me 269 straight up condition damage with 50 toughness.

If I also consider rune of scavenging, 7% of my vit would give me ~102 condition damage with my setup for a total of 285 condition damage.

If I were to take might stacking into consideration, from what I understand, 1 stack of might = 35 condition damage. Which means that I would need to maintain 8 stacks of might to have condition damage equivalent to an undead/scavenger rune set. Without going into the HGH route, with a minimalist setup of superior sigil of battle and 2/6 runes of altruism, I can at least start out any engagement with 6 stacks of might (210 condition damage), and with 4/6 altruism and 2/6 water for the boon duration, it seems the “potential” is higher with this setup since you can build on those 6 stacks. But on the other hand, the condition damage from undead/scavenging runes are not dispellable, they can’t be stolen, and they can’t be turned into conditions against you.

With all that said, is undead still a better choice because it’s not worth going for the might route without more investment into might stacking skills/traits?

use noble runes for might stacking condi builds. their usefulness has diminished because of the enhance performance nerf though.

Personally I use boon duration runes instead of might. The engineer has a lot of boons and increasing all of their durations is better than just focusing on the one. I have 2 travellers, 2 monks, and 2 waters. That gives 45% boon duration. + 30% from alchemy line + 20% from omnom cream for a total of 95%. The 20% elixir trait can boost that to 115%; however I prefer to use other traits instead.

With this I get about 10 seconds of stability every 30 seconds (which is awesome!), and near continuous regen, swiftness, and fury. As for might, I roll with FT juggernaught, which gives 10 free stacks (due to boon durations) just for doing nothing. With sigil of battle and fire blasts, I find it easy to maintain 25 stacks.

Now, back to the root of your question. A or B. Well, if you like to micromanage your boons like that, then it’s more rewarding to go that route. If however you just want to play and not concern yourself with that rubbish, then the increase condi dmg from runes of undead (which are also cheap to buy) would be a better option. I use to alternate between the two when I first started with engie and I did have more fun with perma stats like runes of undead. I only switched to alchemy because I really need access to those other boons for my playstyle.