Guild Wars 2

I feel like im the only person using them. I run a Mantra build but sometimes go shatter, and im thinknig I might benefit from something other than Scholar Runes. I hate to get rid of these things from how much money I spent, I thought about making a seperate set of armor but my armor is tier 3 human. ugh. So im assuming Air is the way to go ( wvw, some pve)

No, scholar runes aren’t worth it. Basing 10% of your damage on assuming that you stay over 90% hp is a poor gameplay decision.

I have a set with rubies orbs, air and centaurs. I swap between them a lot. Air is some nice spike damage to counter thieves but can reveal you with unlucky timing.

IF you just want straight damage, I’m convinced that ruby orbs are the only way to go and are relatively cheap.

10% above 90% health is nice but how often are you actually above 90% health? and it doesn’t affect your phantasms. If you go shatter and sneak up on someone with an alpha strike, it could be worth it.

Eagle: 165 precision/8% crit dmg/ 5% below 50% enemy health
Ruby orbs: 120 power/84 preicison/12% crit dmg. The 120 power is already ~5% boost to base damage for most mesmers without a health restriction. 4% less crit chance but 4% more crit dmg. So much cheaper. Furthermore, in groups, a lot of traits benefit from enemies having less health so the last half of a fight lasts less then the first half.

Basically, ruby orbs for damage or runes for utility.

Most important thing about the mesmer is having many sets of awesome looking armor. Keep the runes for alpha strike lols. Start a collection.

Lol my tier 3 is my main set… im thinking of going air. I can always buy scholar again in the future. Air or Ruby orbs not sure now

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Most important thing about the mesmer is having many sets of awesome looking armor. Keep the runes for alpha strike lols. Start a collection.

Exactly…I also like to change my armor color various times while running with a zerg.

I have 3 sets of Berserker, 2 sets of Knights, 2 sets of Rabid and 1 mixed set (zerk, knights, valk) all with different runes.

I remember a couple posts saying that if you could stay above 90% hp for 25% of the duration of a fight that Scholar runes were on par with ruby orbs. If you can manage more than that then you should be doing more damage in a fight. The effectiveness obviously depends on what you are doing, but I find that when I am using GS and Sword/Focus I am often at 90% hp in WvW (zerg or small groups) and PvE during my fights.

It’s all down how much time you spend with more than 90% hp.

This is about as bad as basing traits around your downed state. There are many runes that are a lot more useful, seeing as you’re generally (depending on what you’re doing I guess) going to be missing more than 10% of your health in WvW.

Ruby orbs went up a bit, but set stats that don’t rely on a certain situation are the way to go. Mesmers in all-out zerker armor with ruby orbs in pve are fine, but usually you’ll want a combo of knights/zerker stats in WvW.

You won’t regret air runes if you’re spending a lot of time in wvw. You get some on demand swiftness without going for broke on swiftness with centaur runes.

The air strike is a great bonus in solo/small-man, too. It’s particularly good vs thieves, a class frequently encountered when roaming in wvw.