Guild Wars 2

I have multiple characters at 80 but Mesmer is one of my favorites – especially for dungeon runs, however I find that the lack of a speed/swiftness boost usually leaves me behind other members of my part. Sometimes I can’t make it through the runs past the trash mobs and it’s becoming disheartening.

Is there anything to do for a speed boost besides Runes of the Traveler (at 10g a piece they seem like a lot)? I’m concerned that running Traveler runes will take away from either Ruby Orbs or something else I could run in my armor.

What do you guys do for speed or to help keep up with your parties?

Focus, blink, phase retreat, chaos storm, runes of centaur. Pick one.

Before Traveller Runes, many people ran Runes of the Centaur or Runes of the pack, I used the pack myself, my 2 armor sets are currently Runes of Traveller and Runes of Melandru. The Runes of the Pack and Runes of the Centaur help, but arent nearly as good.

There are also much cheaper runes of Speed, but since you set on zerk stat bonusses these will not be good for you. So its a choice you have to make. Mobility has its price, but for most of us that have switched to travellers, we will not go back, its that good.

What party composition are you running so you don’t have anybody providing swiftness?

When running past trash:
- ask party members to use their banners, warhorns, shouts, staff symbol, etc.
- switch to focus offhand (it is useful in dungeon runs generally)
- switch to Blink when running

You can always try cheaper runes (Centaur, Air, Pack) if Traveler is too expensive for you and you are really desperate.

When I’m running with friends/guildies swiftness isn’t really a problem, it’s moreso in pickup groups. I really wanted to know if the Traveler’s were worth it for the boost – I assume they are and the comments here have supported it. I’ll check out the other runes, but if Traveler’s are much better I’m sure I’ll end up going that route.

I mostly do WvW, so I dont know much about dungeons.
But for me I ditched Perplexity for Travelers and have 0 regrets. They are friggen awesome.
I would put them on a power build in a red hot minuet! (the gain of speed over the loss of X is just to big imo)

I use Rune of Speed. The vitality is good so you won’t be scared to go something like 30/30/?/?/? and put the rest of the 10 points somewhere.

Also traited manipulation (20% and range) + blink. I can’t live without that.

With warden’s feedback, temporal curtain gives 12s of swiftness every 20 seconds. On average this gives approximately a 20% movement speed increase compared to no buff at all.

Ignoring all other movement skills that mesmers have, 6 traveler’s runes will slightly increase the swiftness duration from your focus plus give you the 25% bonus when swiftness is off, which averages to approximately 30% movement speed increase compared to no buff at all.

Assuming NOBODY else in your party can apply swiftness then it’s up to you to decide whether the additional 10% move speed is worth the cost of 6 traveler’s runes AND the massive damage reduction you suffer from not using scholar’s.

Edit: The above calculations were done for out-of-combat movement.

Aurik Astraeus.4106:

When I’m running with friends/guildies swiftness isn’t really a problem, it’s moreso in pickup groups. I really wanted to know if the Traveler’s were worth it for the boost – I assume they are and the comments here have supported it. I’ll check out the other runes, but if Traveler’s are much better I’m sure I’ll end up going that route.

For me traveler runes are worth it and I have them on my PVT and zerker armor which I use mostly for WvW. On my rabid armor I am still using Perplexity, but god how slow it feels . I wish there was a +25% movement speed rune that boosts condition damage/duration.

I would have no problems using zerker + traveler runes in normal dungeon runs. For speedruns tho I would get a extra armor set with scholar runes, because maximizing damage is a priority and you can count on swiftness provided party members (+ your focus).

Runes of Speed looks like a cheaper alternative, but they are really quite heavy on defensive stats. Looks more suited for some WvW builds.

Traveler for WvW.
Use a Focus for dungeons.

I just started really playing my mesmer and the lack of speed was …disturbing. i ended up sucking it up and buying the traveler runes. It was worth it. I’m used to having warrior swiftness and my hubby is tired of me yelling “move you kitten slow woman!!” at my computer.

12 seconds of swiftness of the focus + blink is generally enough. If your running at least 10 in dueling, you can swap whatever your normal trait is to far reaching manipulations to get that extra 300 distance.

Also, rune’s of the traveler are simply 100% NOT worth it for dungeons. Use Runes of the Centaur. Traveler runes are 25% movement speed compared to Centaur’s swiftness on heal (33%). Just swap out your healing skill to Mantra of Recovery before running sections and you can activate that swiftness any time it lapses. Between focus and this, you’ll have 100% swiftness uptime (lapsing for just a fragment of a second when you need to apply it with the curtain).

6 Centaur rune’s are also a fragment of the cost of only 1 traveler rune. So if you have a rune set you prefer for combat (for me personally I normally use scholar), you will not be sinking a lot of money into making a second armor set just for running.

The last thing, try your hardest to stay out of combat when making runs, use of stealths and blink can aid with this. Also be wary of anything that makes a clone. Phase retreat can be used as an extra blink forward if you target something behind you, but the range is short and the clone will instantly put you into combat slowing your speed down.

Centaur runes + Eternal Cold Potion = 100% swiftness

You don’t need any swiftness runes for dungeons.

Equip focus and centaur runes, nuff’ said.