Guild Wars 2

Go to the 12:10 mark for patch notes on nerf to runes of strength.

Fan kitten tastic. Groan.

how come he has access to patch notes?

Hm. Still good. Will not sell.

I still think they are useful for Phalanx Strength builds, but that being about it… Back to Scholar I guess….

Big Jay.1479:

I still think they are useful for Phalanx Strength builds, but that being about it… Back to Scholar I guess….

They’re still very good runes and are the best for soloing content, but for good groups and even lousy PUGs you will want to be using scholar even more so than before.

originally posted: http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/m/6563292/viewthread/13612527-strength-runes-vs-scholar-groups-solo

Hey all. Wanted to show how the strength rune nerf played out in actual terms. So I ran the comparison to scholar in both solo and group DPS.

Solo Assumptions: Banner of Discipline (100% for simplicity sake), 23 Might for strength runes, 17 Might for Scholar, 3 Vuln on average. Greatsword Camping rotation, Curry Butternut Squash Soup, 65003 build, Scholar Runes 100% uptime. 100% bleeding uptime, Fury 100%.

Group Assumptions: Both banners, 25 Might, 25 Vuln, GS Camp rotation (for simplicity) CBN Soup, 65003, Scholar Runes 100% uptime, 100% bleeding uptime, Fury 100%

Solo Strength Rune Post Nerf: 8,187 DPS

Solo Strength Runes Pre Nerf: 8,343 DPS

Solo Scholar Runes: 8,170.22 DPS

Group Strength Runes Post Nerf: 10,616 DPS

Group Strength Runes Pre Nerf: 10,818 DPS

Group Scholar Runes: 11,364 DPS

Conclusion: The nerf wasn’t terrble in terms of whole numbers to be honest. In a solo setting you lose less than 200 DPS, which is probably only vaguely noticeable. The big change is that they are essentially the same as Scholar when solo, assuming you can keep Scholar uptime at 100%. Any Scholar downtime will obviously drastically lower the DPS. But the end result for solo play is if you already have Scholar there is no real need to buy Strength runes unless your goal is to push solo boss kill times as far as possible.

For groups, scholar was always clearly better, now much more so, by about 7% instead of 5%. This just confirms the superiority of Scholar for group play, especially since fights are short enough that maintaining scholar bonus is significantly easier.

The total conclusion, for me, is that Strength Runes have become niche for pro solo’ers rather than the go-to rune for everything. I didn’t feel bad before about using Strength in a group, but I likely would now. And before I would have considered the advantage of Strength over Scholar in solos (3%-7%) to make using Strength for everything a fairly smart move. Now, I would only recommend Strength if your main gameplay is solos AND you care about pushing times. If you enjoy doing solos but you aren’t out to compete with Dub, Goku or Miku you should probably just use Scholar.

I tested scholar and it totally surprised me as I was beasting on Wraithlord with consistent >40k 100b’s, but I’m pretty sure that it was only because I wasn’t getting hit at all that I felt like I was doing better than with strength. For the average person learning an encounter or struggling with their rotations/evasions I definitely think strength is the better route as it’s more forgiving and has an unconditional +5% damage modifier rather than a very demanding conditional requirement of having nearly full hp for a 10% one.

I also bought a second ascended set to test with, so keep in mind that whether or not you have exotic will certainly make a bit of a difference with your results.

Strength runes still #1 for soloing: http://www.twitch.tv/purpleishawt/c/4586394

I tested some more with scholar vs strength on Berserker Abomination in Arah P2… Strength is definitely better by a noticeable amount even with 100% scholar uptime. Realistically you have to break out of your 100b chains quite often to make sure you maintain scholar buff. I didn’t even bother to try it on Lupicus because of the glitched RNG swarms. NO ONE LIKES YOUR SWARMS LUPI. STOP IT.

its not really that bad of a nerf…

’Twas a shave, not a nerf. Your precious runes for pve are fine. It was due to pvp but they are still the go to rune regardless.