Guild Wars 2

Just wondering what everyone’s thoughts on this might be:

I’m currently geared with Speed runes on my thief, but have been considering going strength after the critical damage nerf. I’m 50/50 roaming/zerging. The issue would be that I’m giving up the perma-25% movement speed that I have become so accustomed to. I’ve been playing around with withdraw in place of HiS for healing, along with the about face – withdraw forward trick. It’s pretty good for positioning, but I’m worried that losing the 25% bonus will totally wreck my mobility. However, it does make me interested in dropping the movement speed altogether (due to using Withdraw and Infiltrator’s Signet rather than HiS and Blinding Powder)

I’m considering these possible builds:

http://tinyurl.com/pto6p5w (speed, possibly traveler runes)
and
http://tinyurl.com/kwxuxvy (strength runes)
OR http://tinyurl.com/mw4lklq (dropping Shadow Refuge for 25% movement signet)

Food would either be 100P/70F or 10% damage while moving. Not a massive difference in base power between the two, but with the 7% modifier and ~100 power difference, that’s somewhere around 12% more damage with the strength runes, assuming I keep fleet shadow rather than mug (in which case, ~17% difference, but moving like a slug). If Strength runes weren’t so expensive I would just try both, but such is the meta.

TL;DR – Do you use movement speed runes or pure damage runes in WvW? How do you fare with positioning and escaping if using damage runes? If using 25% speed runes, have you experimented without the 25% bonus and found it to be an issue?

I once used (Like many) ruby orbs and my only speed buff was fleet shadow. That was enough for fights.
But You know the reality of roaming, Its 90% running around looking for fights, 7% chasing down some helpless zerglings and 3% fighting enemies that fight back.
So i decided some time ago that traveller runes Would be better. Yes They were.
But speed runes seem now superior because you can use more zerker/cav armor because you get a Lot of vit from runes. Traveller stats are just…almost non existent
To answer your question: if you want to be fast at roaming and kill fleeing ones, use speed incr runes.
If you want duels and zerging only, go strength or so

Strength runes are so much better than every other rune right now especially on thief. All you really need is Hidden Assasin/Signets of Power. I believe 2 points in acro is enough for movement especially with all the blinks we have. Swiftness when dodging coupled with Fleet Shadow is enough for me. Simply go into stealth to run around faster and dodge in between stealths. Very easy with D/P.

Domey.9804:

I once used (Like many) ruby orbs and my only speed buff was fleet shadow. That was enough for fights.
But You know the reality of roaming, Its 90% running around looking for fights, 7% chasing down some helpless zerglings and 3% fighting enemies that fight back.
So i decided some time ago that traveller runes Would be better. Yes They were.
But speed runes seem now superior because you can use more zerker/cav armor because you get a Lot of vit from runes. Traveller stats are just…almost non existent
To answer your question: if you want to be fast at roaming and kill fleeing ones, use speed incr runes.
If you want duels and zerging only, go strength or so

This . . . .

I have use Traveler, Speed and Strength.

Trust me man, for roaming the best is speed because of what he said, you can focus using more ber pieces stats due to the vit you get from them.

Traveler are nice, but since ferocity nerf they lost a lot. Better now speed, that they focus only in vit and swiftness (one of the most important boons for roaming thieves).

Strenght are great in duels, but for roaming speed is the way, the free utility slot is wonderful xD.

And the most important . . . they are cheap.

I use strenght runes on my valk/zerker setup. Like what’s allready said, when you are running around 90% of the time looking for someone to fight, some extra speedbonus is nice. What I do, is equiping Signet of Shadows while running around, and when I finally meet someone, I change back what I un-equiped (I sometimes forget to change it tho, and sometimes you will be caught off guard, which sucks).

I miss the movementspeed in combat tho…

Just a sidenote: I foresee a possible nerf on the runes, maybe scaling down the 7% dmg bonus to 5%. But it’s still nice.