Guild Wars 2

A few Mesmers in my guild had raved about how awesome Runes of Lyssa were in conjunction with Signet of Inspiration. Before a push in WvW, pop Mass Invisibility and the signet, and bam! – 5 people have all boons for 5 seconds for the push. Hooray! OP!

…….we still died.

I am just not seeing it. Its useful for me when I have to run into the middle of a zerg and drop a portal, but other than that, I feel as if my guild/group would get more mileage out of Runes of the Undead or Runes of the Centaur. Has anyone else had success with this? Make me a believer?

I use that combination, usually as a gtfo mechanism for me and a few stragglers that try to run away from the enemy zerg. The invis in itself is already a defense, but added with aegis, swiftness, stability, protection, regen, it gets really even better.
I’ve saved many people from a gruesome death that way

It’s a gimmicky manouver on a 90 second cooldown, and leaves you with a set of otherwise useless runes. Additionally, the boons only last 5 seconds. That’s barely enough time to get through the portal and make one attack.

Pyroatheist.9031:

It’s a gimmicky manouver on a 90 second cooldown, and leaves you with a set of otherwise useless runes. Additionally, the boons only last 5 seconds. That’s barely enough time to get through the portal and make one attack.

Why exactly would the runes be useless?
They have the same sort of stats any other rune has. I wouldn’t call 165 prec, +10 cond duration, 10s boon on heal and get all boons for 5s and loose all conditions, useless stats. Unless you run a build that has no need for prec at all, and does not use any conditions at all.

Ironvos.9014:

Pyroatheist.9031:

It’s a gimmicky manouver on a 90 second cooldown, and leaves you with a set of otherwise useless runes. Additionally, the boons only last 5 seconds. That’s barely enough time to get through the portal and make one attack.

Why exactly would the runes be useless?
They have the same sort of stats any other rune has. I wouldn’t call 165 prec, +10 cond duration, 10s boon on heal and get all boons for 5s and loose all conditions, useless stats. Unless you run a build that has no need for prec at all, and does not use any conditions at all.

+10 condition duration goes poorly with the precision. The 10s boon on heal is a useless addition. Its basically the signet of inspiration passive, but worse. The 6 set bonus is complete crap, because the boons only last 5 seconds, and even if you take mass invisibility, its still on a 90 second cooldown. Any other rune set that wasn’t based around a gimmicky 6-set bonus will perform better than lyssa runes.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Ironvos.9014:

Pyroatheist.9031:

It’s a gimmicky manouver on a 90 second cooldown, and leaves you with a set of otherwise useless runes. Additionally, the boons only last 5 seconds. That’s barely enough time to get through the portal and make one attack.

Why exactly would the runes be useless?
They have the same sort of stats any other rune has. I wouldn’t call 165 prec, +10 cond duration, 10s boon on heal and get all boons for 5s and loose all conditions, useless stats. Unless you run a build that has no need for prec at all, and does not use any conditions at all.

+10 condition duration goes poorly with the precision. The 10s boon on heal is a useless addition. Its basically the signet of inspiration passive, but worse. The 6 set bonus is complete crap, because the boons only last 5 seconds, and even if you take mass invisibility, its still on a 90 second cooldown. Any other rune set that wasn’t based around a gimmicky 6-set bonus will perform better than lyssa runes.

Let’s look at runes of centaur then.
165 power, +15% bleed duration, +20% swiftness duration, swiftness on heal.
Bleed duration goes poorly with power aswell.
The swiftness is only useful out of combat, it will make you maybe escape from combat that one time more, but won’t help you at all in battle.
And the power bonus is thesame as lyssa’s prec bonus, useless if you don’t use a powerbuild for example.
Now you may wonder, why would anyone not use any power? Well i would also wonder why would anyone not use any precision, it triggers a lot of weapon sigils, triggers vigor trait, makes sharper images useful and increases your damage by a whole lot.

Runes of undead is even more situational, it’s useless if you don’t use any condition+toughness build.

I’m not saying runes of lyssa are everyone’s answers to their problem, but they can be useful for a lot of people, just as runes of undead can be useful for others.
I actually find the all praised rune of the centaur pretty underwhelming.
You can move around almost as fast with focus #4 and blink, you just need to switch a weapon and skill for it if you don’t use them normally.
But atleast you can switch them between battles, unlike the runes.

Hm, I personally would like to use the Lyssa runes for their precision, and as an additional way of condition removal. But! I’m okay with the precision I already have, AND I got the centaur runes because I always felt like a snail in WvW. Seriously, I often fell behind when moving in groups, because everyone else has this permanent 25% movement speed increase and just I as a Mesmer have to rely on swiftness. It was so frustrating, thus I got myself centaur runes. Now I can have swiftness up permanently. It is also nice for the EB jumping puzzle, as it allows me to take a shortcut in the dark part. In addition, I don’t HAVE TO use a focus all the time in WvW. The 15% bleeding duration isn’t bad either, as it increases the bleeding from my staff by a second. All in all, I like the centaur runes more than Lyssa. Just sometimes, I feel a bit like “Mesmer… Lyssa… Mesmer… Lyssa… T_T”. ^^

Then again; being a human, I got to kill soooooooo many centaurs while leveling… that earned me centaur runes!

Ironvos.9014:

Let’s look at runes of centaur then.
165 power, +15% bleed duration, +20% swiftness duration, swiftness on heal.
Bleed duration goes poorly with power aswell.
The swiftness is only useful out of combat, it will make you maybe escape from combat that one time more, but won’t help you at all in battle.
And the power bonus is thesame as lyssa’s prec bonus, useless if you don’t use a powerbuild for example.
Now you may wonder, why would anyone not use any power? Well i would also wonder why would anyone not use any precision, it triggers a lot of weapon sigils, triggers vigor trait, makes sharper images useful and increases your damage by a whole lot.

Runes of undead is even more situational, it’s useless if you don’t use any condition+toughness build.

I’m not saying runes of lyssa are everyone’s answers to their problem, but they can be useful for a lot of people, just as runes of undead can be useful for others.
I actually find the all praised rune of the centaur pretty underwhelming.
You can move around almost as fast with focus #4 and blink, you just need to switch a weapon and skill for it if you don’t use them normally.
But atleast you can switch them between battles, unlike the runes.

Your arguments don’t make a whole lot of sense. I’m going to go through them bit by bit and explain why.

Centaur Runes: With centaur runes, the only important thing is the 6 set bonus. The 20% swiftness duration increase synergizes great with the 6 bonus. The bleed duration makes no sense, and is also inconsequential. The power is unimportant as well. No one uses centaur runes for any reason other than to obtain permanent swiftness. Also, the runes are used BECAUSE swiftness is such an utterly important boon to have reliable access to in wvw. Since mesmers have almost no access to reliable swiftness, runes like the centaur are the only other choice we have, as bad of as choice as it may be.

You compare the swiftness from centaur runes to using a focus + blink. Using a focus is fine, but you get under 50% uptime on swiftness with an untraited focus. Additionally, you won’t be using the focus in a fight, where swiftness is still a very important boon to have. Using blink to get around is a horrible idea. Yes, it moves you 900 units instantly, but it is also an extremely important utility stun breaking skill on a reasonably long cooldown, and burning it just to move around quicker is a massive waste and liability in any build that could need blink for its normal purpose.

Runes of the Undead: You said it yourself, they are useful in a condition damage + toughness build. Yes, they’re useless if you don’t use a condition damage + toughness build, but that is a useless thing to say. Saying that is like saying the necromancer scepter is useless outside of a condition damage build. It is a true statement, but also has no value in an argument. The runes of the undead are used in that sort of build because they are massively effective and work perfectly with that build.

Runes of Lyssa: The 6 set bonus is gimmicky and almost totally useless. In the best case scenario, you have 5 seconds of uptime on the boons once every 90 seconds. That’s 5.5% of the time. Additionally, if you are running in a team, or simply prefer the quickness utility of time warp over mass invisibility (I use either one depending on the situation) your uptime is down to 5 seconds every 210 seconds, or a 2.4% uptime. That simply is not worth getting 6 runes for. The centaur 6 rune bonus is important enough to justify whatever other crap the runes contain. A maximum 5.5% uptime on a bunch of boons is not.

The rest of the runes of lyssa contain possibly useful buffs, and possibly not. The random boon on healing is almost entirely ignorable. One boon for 10 seconds every 15-20 seconds isn’t anything to think about. The other unique bonus is a 10% increase in condition duration. This is decent, but it is also by itself and doesn’t synergize with any of the other bonuses from the runes. The rune stats add precision. More precision is never a bad thing, but precision doesn’t synergize well with condition duration in most mesmer builds, as even using greatsword clones or pistol phantasms, we are still pretty horrific at stacking bleeds.

Overall, runes of undead are designed and used in specific builds. That is a non-issue.

Runes of the centaur have a 6 set bonus that is of such importance that it outweighs any other disadvantages that the runes themselves contain.

Runes of lyssa have a 6 set bonus that is entirely underwhelming even in the best of circumstances, and almost completely unnoticable in the worst. On top of that, the rest of the runes don’t contain buffs or unique abilities that justify taking that weak 6 set bonus, causing the set as a whole to be generally worthless for a mesmer.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Your arguments don’t make a whole lot of sense. I’m going to go through them bit by bit and explain why.

Very well i shall do the same with your arguments if i may.

Centaur Runes: With centaur runes, the only important thing is the 6 set bonus. The 20% swiftness duration increase synergizes great with the 6 bonus. The bleed duration makes no sense, and is also inconsequential. The power is unimportant as well. No one uses centaur runes for any reason other than to obtain permanent swiftness. Also, the runes are used BECAUSE swiftness is such an utterly important boon to have reliable access to in wvw. Since mesmers have almost no access to reliable swiftness, runes like the centaur are the only other choice we have, as bad of as choice as it may be.

So you justify the use of 6 rune slots just for the use of its 6th bonus (and the 4th to boost it)?
I find that a bit of a waste.
Fact is here you also say the bleed bonus has no use together with the power bonus. So that would nullify your statement that the cond bonus on lyssa does not synergize with prec as a reason not to use it.

You compare the swiftness from centaur runes to using a focus + blink. Using a focus is fine, but you get under 50% uptime on swiftness with an untraited focus. Additionally, you won’t be using the focus in a fight, where swiftness is still a very important boon to have. Using blink to get around is a horrible idea. Yes, it moves you 900 units instantly, but it is also an extremely important utility stun breaking skill on a reasonably long cooldown, and burning it just to move around quicker is a massive waste and liability in any build that could need blink for its normal purpose.

Yes i do compare it since it are both two means of trying to move around quickly.
You wont be as fast as a centaur mesmer, but still fast enough. When you’re in a zerg people spread swiftness allover the place, and if you do fall behind you can use blink, i never have any trouble keeping up. If you are alone the speed difference between centaur/focus+blink doesn’t matter much. When in a small group you are still fast enough, sure you cant catch up to ele’s or thiefs if they go in fast travel mode, but neither can most of the other classes, swiftness won’t help you there.
And yes, you do loose some mobility if your focus and blink is untraited, but there are people who have it traited anyway.
If loosing an important stunbreaker cause blink is on cooldown is such an issue, you can still slot decoy and/or mirror images. Most likely they already have one of those skills in their normal setup anyway.
And on not using focus in a fight? Maybe you don’t but there are many people that do, you get a swiftness/cripple/pull/reflect(traited)/combo field skill + an aoe/projectile blocking/reflecting(if traited)/whirl finisher phantasm , all in one offhand weapon.

Overall, runes of undead are designed and used in specific builds. That is a non-issue.

So runes of lyssa can’t be used in specific builds?
Many builds make use of precision and have a use for +cond duration, many builds use a focus in battle and have enough stunbreakers to justify the use of blink for traveling.
I use Lyssa for the complete package it gives, there are no all powerfull stats in it, but everything together does add up to something nice.
You shouldn’t look at the runes as a stand alone something, they meld into your build and other gear. The stats on the rune do not need to synergize with the other stats on it, they need to synergize with your build.

Runes of the centaur have a 6 set bonus that is of such importance that it outweighs any other disadvantages that the runes themselves contain.

Runes of lyssa have a 6 set bonus that is entirely underwhelming even in the best of circumstances, and almost completely unnoticable in the worst. On top of that, the rest of the runes don’t contain buffs or unique abilities that justify taking that weak 6 set bonus, causing the set as a whole to be generally worthless for a mesmer.

As i said before, i find it a waste to just focus on the 6th bonus, the whole rune needs to fit your build, otherwise you are missing out on a lot of benefits. And i find the benefit of perma swiftness isn’t enough cause i can get around without it. Yes the lyssa 6th is gimmicky, but useful for me none the less, and i wouldn’t be using lyssa if i had no use for precision at all.

With all this i don’t mean to say that one rune is better than the other, they all depend on your build, and we don’t really know what build the OP has. The three runes mentioned in the first post all have 3 different main stats on it (lyssa= prec, centaur = power, undead = cond+toughness).

Both have their places. I have sets of armor with each. Right now I’m running a build that doesn’t use focus and doesn’t have blink traited (tho I still use blink! love that skill) so I have centaur runes on my armor. When using a different build with blink traited and off hand focus (traited or not) I have no use for centaur runes and have no trouble keeping up with groups in wvw or even out running them lol so I have more flexibility to add in whatever rune bonus I want. Honestly, even just having focus traited and not using blink, swiftness up time isn’t bad and in a group in wvw there are always other people who can give aoe swiftness.

I play this build as well (Rune of Lyssa, Signet of Inspiration, and staff). It’s a lot of fun, as you can stack up quite a lot of boons. However, the only place that Rune of Lyssa are really useful, is when you need to escape a fight. You get stealth from Mass Invisibility, plus swiftness, protection, regeneration, aegis, and stability, which is all great when you’re running away. Alternatively, it can also be used with Time Warp, if you need to do a party wide revive (the boons will prevent you all from being interrupted and keep you alive).

When using Rune of Lyssa, it’s important to know that the majority of boons are defensive, so Rune of Lyssa are really bad in an offensive build. In a fight, you’re going to be playing mostly on the boons you get from your staff (Winds of Chaos) and Signet of Inspiration, plus the boon you get from Rune of Lyssa when using a healing skill. Going into a fight, it’s a really bad idea to pop your Mass Invisibility, because this is your best defensive skill (even without the Rune of Lyssa). You really don’t need to have a whole group using Rune of Lyssa, though. One or two players are enough. I recommend the others go for Rune of Altruism.

Personally I use

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_Altruism

with the signet… Maybe not all the boons but fury and a nice stack of might on a much shorter cd

I used lyssa runes in spvp/tpvp for a while. If your using MI its a great 90 sec condition remover or if your running TW its pretty helpful. TW—>Signet = other teams rapid death. I use air runes now for crazy mobility but lyssa rune set is good one.

Ironvos.9014:

The three runes mentioned in the first post all have 3 different main stats on it (lyssa= prec, centaur = power, undead = cond+toughness).

The three runes mentioned in the first post all have 3 different main stats on it (lyssa= prec, centaur = swiftness, undead = cond+toughness).

Fixed.

The only reason to use Centaur is for Swiftness (for primarily WvW) if you aren’t using a focus.

@jazzlana: Take mantra of restoration with those runes if you don’t already. That way you can proc the effect with no downtime.

@ironvos: You are significantly overestimating the basic mobility of a Mesmer, and significnantly underestimating the importance of having that mobility in wvw. Again, the swiftness on the centaur runes is so important that it eclipses any other considerations about the runes. The 6 set bonus for lyssa runes does no such thing, and that is why you must look to the rest of the rune bonuses to see if the runes are at all worthwhile.

I think ppl are underestimating the combat benefit of swiftness as well. In a game where combat mobility and positioning are so important (especially illusion placement for mesmers), I’m surprised ppl write it off so quickly.

I can’t count how many times I was was able to move into position quickly enough because of it (esp when blink is on CD). Many times it was the difference between coming out of stealth in an enemy’s face or out of view behind him. Also, centaur runes provide your allies (ie, illusions) with swiftness too. It can be the difference between nailing a critical shatter burst and giving your foe time to dodge it.

Don’t even get me started on warrior fools that refuse to slot a ranged weapon because they think they are melee gods.

For any kind of pvp/wvw, runes of Lyssa are beastly. Assuming the precision compliments your build and you know how to get good use out of Mass Invis (I prefer it to Timewarp, no matter how op it supposedly is).

It’s the condition wipe + stealth. The boons are just icing. I can’t count how many times this setup has saved my bacon.

I agree with xavi. Runes of centaur are a good option if you aren’t using a focus, or don’t like swapping one when traveling. But I feel like using the healing mantra is a punishment for perma-swiftness :P

kodesh.2851:

For any kind of pvp/wvw, runes of Lyssa are beastly. Assuming the precision compliments your build and you know how to get good use out of Mass Invis (I prefer it to Timewarp, no matter how op it supposedly is).

It’s the condition wipe + stealth. The boons are just icing. I can’t count how many times this setup has saved my bacon.

I agree with xavi. Runes of centaur are a good option if you aren’t using a focus, or don’t like swapping one when traveling. But I feel like using the healing mantra is a punishment for perma-swiftness :P

You use mirror with runes of centaur, as the cooldown is actually 15 seconds. Even swapping a focus while traveling nets you under 50% uptime on swiftness, which is really not enough. Additionally, most builds don’t actually use a focus while fighting, and in-combat swiftness is unbelievably important, particularly in wvw. Overall, the combat advantage of permanent swiftness is going to be many many times more helpful towards your pvping than a once in a while panic skill. The actual situation where this big panic skill is useful is extremely rare. You have to a. be in a situation that you cant escape using normal distortion + blink evasions while at the same time b. have a situation that somehow 5 seconds of stealth and a bunch of boons for 5 seconds are going to save you. This will happen almost never. As a general rule of thumb, if you can’t escape with your normal tools, this little trick won’t save you either.