Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,

So I’ve been wanting to experiment with a Lyssa runes build and Basilisk Venom. A friend of mine has been playing with lyssa runes for a while, and he says it works well with basilisk especially if you trait into the power line and get the cooldown reduction. However, i read on the wiki that lyssa runes have a 45 second internal cooldown on the bonus when activating the elite skill. I don’t really feel like buying lyssa runes just to test this, so can someone confirm or deny this note on the wiki? 45 seconds for a condition cleanse and 5 seconds of boons doesn’t seem as worth it to me as a lot of people make it seem to be. Actually 30 seconds doesn’t even seem that worth it to me.

Why do a lot of people love it? Is there a 45 second cooldown?

ya it has a 45 sec cool down .
people like it because most runes now r junk and it is one of the few balanced runes we have to work with.
as of now . till we get the april patch

the condition remove is more important than the boons u get

Yes, there is a 45 second cooldown.

The reason why Lyssa Runes are considered so good is because they give every class the means to deal with massive condition bombing. A condition dump of the likes of Signet of Spite would normally put an end to most classes that do not have access to a full cleanse.

Lyssa Runes allow them to counter it with their ultimate. The 4-piece bonus also happens to be quite nice, especially when used in conjuncture with a low-cooldown heal such as Withdraw.

Overall it’s a great Rune Set that helps compensate for a weakness in class design. Thieves especially love them because they can capitalize on all the benefits. They have the low-CD ultimate, a low CD heal and no means to wipe conditions outside of constant stealth.

Having “all boons” for a few seconds is really just a nice bonus and not the reason most people opt for Lyssa Runes.

Yep you read right, the runeset has a cooldown.

The runeset with the right build is indeed powerful, even more powerful than the elite itself. Thieves have no burst cleanse of conditions which makes it really useful to carry runes of lyssa, and the thief spvp meta builds have poor condition removal overall.

If you play D/P 10/30/0/0/30 for instance and get stacked for 30 seconds of cripple by a necromancer, while you have shadowstep on cooldown you gonna have a long boring walk, unless the necromancer killed you. Although I suggest more damaging rune options for D/P.

Hambow has really long immobilize, bleed and burn, popping lyssa the moments you get caught in that will usually save your life and grant aegis, stability and protection against the powerful hammer attacks you will face til you gain control of the fight.

If you use withdraw as a heal, you may also gain a random 10s boon every 15 seconds,
but overall the runeset is strongest in short fights, for longer fights it’s quite weak except the random boon.

If you play a classic x/30/30/x/x build in WvW there are better options imo.

Don’t forget that boon duration works on all boons granted by this set. Thieves with deep Acrobatics can easily get 6-6.5 seconds out of the elite bonus. If you want to know what it feels like to be a Warrior for 6 seconds, enjoy your Protection/Regen/Stability with bonus Aegis. It can be disconcerting to duel with a Thief who isn’t going to lose a health trade in a straight-up face-to-face fight.

It is honestly the best rune set for power Thieves imo. I have used full divinity, Travelers, and Eagle in the past, but Lyssa is by far the best set that I have used. Getting 10s of vigor or protection on withdraw is great, and having a full condi clear on a 45 sec cd as well as having access to stability for 5s is a major boon to any Thief build.

for a back stab build ? lyssa ?? there is no reason??

and to depend on the boons from lyssa is foolish because they r not that wonderful.
way over rated

but lyssa fills a niche roll. and with out it the thief instantly loses a few builds :S

Sparrow.5936:

A friend of mine has been playing with lyssa runes for a while, and he says it works well with basilisk especially if you trait into the power line and get the cooldown reduction.

There are other traits better than Quick Venom. The internal cooldown of Lyssa compliments the fourty-five-sec (kitten filter) cooldown of Basilisk very well. It’s a good indication that Lyssa’s bonus is ready to proc. Reducing the venom cooldown will only messed up your timing of Lyssa’s bonus since you have to mentally keep track of two cooldowns.

Thanks for the information everyone, I can definitely see how they can work very well to help clear conditions. I love S/D and ever since the infiltrator return was nerfed into uselessness, this might help me get back on track with an evasive build rather than a stealth build.

Don’t use with Quick Venoms, it will lower the BV cd to 36s and you won’t be able to proc the runes every activation.
This runes are great with Withdraw too, because you can get great boons like 10s of protection, 10s of fury, etc.

It’s such a poor design that we have to rely on Runesets to be able to counter the condition meta but if we use the SA line we are called cheesers and kittening noobs.

You know what? kitten it i’m going perplexity P/D for the sake of kittening ppl off