Runes for WvW. so many choices!...?
Personally, I use Crest of the soldier, which is power/toughness/vitality.
In WvWvW, I’ve found being beefy helps a LOT, since you can’t always rely on heals from others, and if you’re fragile you’ll explode without being able to contribute much. I also use the Defense/Tactics trait lines, with healing shouts and condition removal, so I’m incredibly hard to put down.
This lets you stay in the fight way longer than you honestly should, and keep throwing out more and more damage on enemies, which makes you very good for defending a point for as long as possible, and getting away from a half-dozen people even if they pile conditions on you.
This is just what works for me, though. I’m sure there are plenty of other good options.
Kjaerand Gramvalda – Warrior – Maguuma
Melandru runes – Toughness, and % Condition and Stun duration on you. Which means every CC, Bleed, Burn, Cripple or whatever only lasts 75% of the time.
Best there is if you aren’t going for something build specific like soldiers for shout healing build or boon duration ones for perma sprint from sigil of rage!
Omx – Warrior – [JuG] Desolation
I have two sets depending on the size of my group/zerg. If I have 2+ with me or I’m in the zerg I usually keep up the AC armor set with vit/tough/power + AC hammer with healing power/vit/cond dmg and the on-kill-heal-stack sigil (forgot the name) with Valk jewelry and spec’d something like 0/0/30/30/10 with healing shouts. For solo or duo I typically run rifle/GS in CoF power/prec/crit dmg gear with soldier runes and zerker/valk jewel mix at 20/20/0/0/30 and try to keep up 1-2 shouts+bullcharge or the ranged root. Signet of rage for elite. Can usually handle 1v1’s fine with the glass build, and though I don’t kill people fast with the healing hammer build, generally people can’t take me down without 3+.
Unable to edit my previous post but thought I would add,
the reasoning behind soldier runes on dps gear is because I couldn’t decide between monk and soldier on the AC set and though I had nice runes in the CoF set before helping boost my dps, it really didn’t matter if I was dead in 1-2 hits and I usually run all shouts + warbanner for dungeons. Also if I wore my dps set while in wvw, even if respec’d, I still felt too squishy. Granted the vitality and toughness aren’t crazy high with just soldier runes, I felt it was more valuable than the 165 power+ crit dmg + I really dig the 6th bonus (even if it’s more viable for dungeons than in wvw since I run with less shouts in wvw).
My choices for WvW would be Melandru’s, Soldier’s, or Divinity.
Probably Divinity. The raw stat pad would be useful for diving over something more glassy, like Scholar/Ogre/Strength or Ruby x6. Hoelbrak may be a decent pick too — similar to Strength but with the reduction on conditions IIRC.
If you can’t read English, please do not reply to my post.
ive only been playing a few weeks but I would think it depends on what you are doing…
i use matale7’s rune setup of 2x air 2x water 2x speed (could sub in 2x pack if you want) this gives me 52 seconds of swiftness from a 48 second CD signet of rage (i have 10-20 points for boon duartion as well w/ 0% boon duration from trait you still get ~44 seconds of swiftness).
I tend to avoid zergs in wvw and like small squad play, this rune setup lets me have high mobility, solo I use a GS for damage/control/more mobility (which sounds funny but I use 1b to make ppl move) and hammer for more control and eventually a kill combined w/ GS.
w/ small group play I will use WH to help w/ squad mobility and have mainly shouts for utility.
anyways I like having a high mobility and thus 2-2-2 set of runes.