Guild Wars 2

Any new rune combinations for various necro builds?

A bit too early to tell in combination with builds..
But take the most prominent features of necro and invest in those..

Fear/Torment/Bleeding/Chilling/Conditions (might?) and maybe with the new scaling in healing some Vitality and Healing runes.
Same goes with signets..

Best runes now:

Nightmare – Got buffed to a 2 second fear, got the on-chance to proc raised, and got an extra 5% condition duration to all.

Noble (called something else now… Aristocracy?) – Got buffed 5% more duration to might effects. Was already a good rune, is better now. Works better in conjunction with Death Magic for the even more might duration.

Perplex – Works on fear now, and is of course pretty good as a result.

Scavenging – Unchanged, but still good.

Balthazar – Surprisingly a rune set that might not be so bad… the on-heal effect is pretty amazing, AOE burn. The quickness buff comes too late to help out though, and you would of course have to take dummfire to make a lot of use of the duration.

Krait and Sunless looked good at first glance, but we have no good way to proc those amazing elite AOE effects short of Golem, and I wouldn’t take either rune for just on-entry to plague. Maybe one day when we have an elite that isn’t a minion and has a shorter cooldown.

Not to go into the power options, as I haven’t looked hard at those yet.

Rennoko.5731:

Krait and Sunless looked good at first glance, but we have no good way to proc those amazing elite AOE effects short of Golem, and I wouldn’t take either rune for just on-entry to plague. Maybe one day when we have an elite that isn’t a minion and has a shorter cooldown.

Hmm .. Krait suddenly looks extremely nice to me. I already use 2 (I have 3 sets of different Bleed duration runes to maximise the bleed duration on scepter and dagger OH. Krait now gives me practically the same duration gain (45% now) and an extra 100 condition damage (175 instead of +75), and on top of that I get an 8s AOE spread of conditions on top whenever I go into Plague in a Zerg .. this is the WvW Condimancer’s dream, isn’kitten
Oh! And add Parasitic Contagion to that ..

PvP: nightmare runes are epic now , 2 sec fear or easy proc
PvE: Power: still use Scholar/Eagle
Condi: Undead

If you can make them work with your build and consumables, Traveller runes are still great.

I’m cheap and go for Runes of Speed. Moving at a halfway decent speed without having to sacrifice a utility slot for Signet of the Locust is invaluable. I don’t need condi dmg/duration buffs that badly and the VIT is nice on a rabid build.

I eventually dropped runes of tormenting for krait.

Now that Dhuumfire isn’t as useful, I won’t always be putting 30 into spite. But, since the condi build still relies on bleeds first and foremost, I need the extra duration. Hemophilia + rare pizza + krait runes puts me at 105% bleeding duration, so long as I have 10 in curses I can run with nearly any condi spec. The loss of torment on heal and always maxed torment duration is a bit of a hit, but overall I think the krait runes perform better.

I’m still using tormenting runes on PvE, same as dhuumfire. I don’t think that the trait is dead. Now you just need to get into DS every time the cd is gone. Is not a big deal once you get used to.

For condition duration I think i’ll go with this set-up:
30% (spite) + 10% (toxic cristal) + 40% (pizza) = 80% all
Bleeding: +20% (Hemophilia) + 30% (lingering curse)
Torment => 100% thanks to the runes.

So, the only damaging condition that I left at 80% are just poison and burning. Poison doesn’t a lot of damage, so I don’t care much.
While burning duration goes from the base of 3 to 3*1,80 = 5,4 sec => 5 procs. 1 less from the 100% duration set-up. It’s a good compromise I think.

i find that the best power rune for us is the Strenght one.. i love that one, its a Roughtly +7% damage ALWAYS

Traveler for my zerker well. The movement speed is too important to not have, imho.

Apart from that the minion masters around us, especially pvp enthusiasts, should really consider rune of the pack after the lyssa nerf.
25% procc chance on aoe fury is really strong with flesh golem and putrid explosion.

My Lyssa runes were not that good before the update. Now…

The Standards Undead, Scavenging are all good.

Divinity/Travelers works best if your running Celestial Gear.

Krait is a new intresting setup for bleed builds, but seems better in pve.

Tormenting is really good if your all in for this (Tainted Shackles reduced cooldown, sigil of torment etc).

Strength/Aristocracy are really good for Power/Condi builds and hybrids if you can afford them. You can easily be running 20-25 stacks of Might on your own with a sigil and strength and blood is power.

personally i prefer the undead runeset. the extra toughness is good and the boost in CD is great.

PvE

Scholar for power builds.
Aristocracy for condi builds.