Guild Wars 2

Im currently running zerk gear with ruby orbs but i was wondering if there was something better to use? Any suggestions other than divinity runes? (overpriced and doesnt seem worth it to me)

Thanks in advance

Have you thought about Superior Rune of the Eagle? 6/6 Bonus with +5% vs foes with less than 50% health is quite a nice bonus to have consistently in my opinion.

Perhaps try Runes of Rage.

You should have 100% fury uptime with SoR and FGJ with the +fury duration, so you should have a consistent +15% critical damage.

EDIT: almost 100%.

Runes of the Soldier: sacrifice a bit of DPS for tankiness and condition removal
Rune

My problem with rage/strength is the wiki states the 6th doesn’t work, and haven’t been brave enough to try it. If it DOES, those would be serious considerations. With eagle you lose power and crit damage for a sliver more precision and 5% for below 50%… I consider that a big loss on trash for a 2.5% DPS gain (actually less, as that’s not counting the power/crit damage loss) on bosses/champions.

So really for glass cannon warriors, I only really consider Divinity, Soldier and Ruby Orbs. Would be nice if someone confirmed the 6 rune for Strength/Rage, as that would be the difference of those being a good option or not.

Soyuchi.5638:

Im currently running zerk gear with ruby orbs but i was wondering if there was something better to use? Any suggestions other than divinity runes? (overpriced and doesnt seem worth it to me)

Thanks in advance

Depends on what you want you want to do. If you want maximum damage, Ruby Orbs are very hard to beat out in terms of damage output.

If one takes a typical glass cannon Greatsword focused build using trait layout of 20/30/0/0/20, running full Berserker’s gear, with no other Sigil bonuses, consumables, etc…

• 6 Ruby Orbs gives a 13.57% damage increase
• Rune of Strength gives 11.88%
• Rune of the Ranger gives 12.56% with a banner, 8.45% without banner
• Rune of the Ogre gives 12.36%, not accounting for any damage from Rock dogs
• Rune of the Scholar gives 19.59% when you health is above 90%, otherwise 11.17%
• Rune of the Pack gives 11.07%
• Rune of Rage gives 7.85%
• Rune of Divinity gives 9.71%

This is probably most of the more damage focused Rune sets. Again, these numbers are based on a very specific state. The numbers probably won’t change too significantly with consumables and other minor tweaks, so the general comparison should be close enough.

From a money perspective, you really can’t go wrong with Ruby Orbs. Also, I should point out that secondary effects of Runes are not accounted for, like boon duration times and how that might affect damage output. Off the top of my head, I don’t think any of them would be significant, but every build is different and can be affected differently.

TLDR: If money is tight, don’t worry about switching out the Ruby Orbs. Most likely, you’ve already maximized your damage output. I would consider Runes only as a way to synergize with other specific aspects of a build.

I prefer permaSoR with boon duration runes over ruby orbs any day.

Assuming 10 tactics, SoR is down 31% of your time (15s), which means in that time you’re not getting the 5 might from it (-175 power) nor fury (-20% crit chance).
Even with FGJ you’d be 7s off with Fury and -5 might compared to a FGJ boon build.

Sure, we could put on our theorycrafting blinkers and only consider perfect favorable situations where others always provide you with Fury on a gold plate, Might is permanently stacked at 25 and everyone holds hand singing Kumbaya.

But I personally prefer to consider real in-game scenarios which rarely meet the requirements mentioned above, so I’m taking permaSoR over situationally useful Ruby Orbs.

Red Falcon.8257:

I prefer permaSoR with boon duration runes over ruby orbs any day.

Assuming 10 tactics, SoR is down 31% of your time (15s), which means in that time you’re not getting the 5 might from it (-175 power) nor fury (-20% crit chance).
Even with FGJ you’d be 7s off with Fury and -5 might compared to a FGJ boon build.

Sure, we could put on our theorycrafting blinkers and only consider perfect favorable situations where others always provide you with Fury on a gold plate, Might is permanently stacked at 25 and everyone holds hand singing Kumbaya.

But I personally prefer to consider real in-game scenarios which rarely meet the requirements mentioned above, so I’m taking permaSoR over situationally useful Ruby Orbs.

Funny how you don’t actually consider real in-game scenarios. You know, like ones where SoR is up and the ruby orbs add another 13% damage over your permanent (ie, useless most of the time) SoR. Why bother number crunching at all if you’re just going to take the inferior option so that you can feel better? Ignorance is bliss I guess.

Yaki.9563:

Red Falcon.8257:

I prefer permaSoR with boon duration runes over ruby orbs any day.

Assuming 10 tactics, SoR is down 31% of your time (15s), which means in that time you’re not getting the 5 might from it (-175 power) nor fury (-20% crit chance).
Even with FGJ you’d be 7s off with Fury and -5 might compared to a FGJ boon build.

Sure, we could put on our theorycrafting blinkers and only consider perfect favorable situations where others always provide you with Fury on a gold plate, Might is permanently stacked at 25 and everyone holds hand singing Kumbaya.

But I personally prefer to consider real in-game scenarios which rarely meet the requirements mentioned above, so I’m taking permaSoR over situationally useful Ruby Orbs.

Funny how you don’t actually consider real in-game scenarios. You know, like ones where SoR is up and the ruby orbs add another 13% damage over your permanent (ie, useless most of the time) SoR. Why bother number crunching at all if you’re just going to take the inferior option so that you can feel better? Ignorance is bliss I guess.

Agreed. Red Falcon has become quite notorious for ignoring data when it proves him wrong and living in a world where what he says is fact, not opinion.

I’ve run Runes of Rage and Ruby Orbs. Orbs do great damage and they are cheap cheap cheap compared to runes. So I’d absolutely recommend the

Red Falcon.8257:

situational

Ruby Orb… The ones that give you a constant 120 power, 84 precision, and 12% crit damage, can’t be stripped by boon removal, and don’t require CD management.

Drawing Guy.3701:

Runes of the Soldier: sacrifice a bit of DPS for tankiness and condition removal
Rune

My problem with rage/strength is the wiki states the 6th doesn’t work, and haven’t been brave enough to try it. If it DOES, those would be serious considerations. With eagle you lose power and crit damage for a sliver more precision and 5% for below 50%… I consider that a big loss on trash for a 2.5% DPS gain (actually less, as that’s not counting the power/crit damage loss) on bosses/champions.

So really for glass cannon warriors, I only really consider Divinity, Soldier and Ruby Orbs. Would be nice if someone confirmed the 6 rune for Strength/Rage, as that would be the difference of those being a good option or not.

Yeah I didn’t remember the perks from runes of rage and strength, I agree that those would probably be a better choice overall if runes were to be chosen over Ruby Orbs. The Precision bonus would be more for if you are specifically trying to spec into a crit heavy build. As phantom and others pointed out Ruby Orbs seem to be the way to go if you aren’t trying to get specific.

Unless you want some extra utility or survivability, I’d just stick to dps the orbs give.

If you think you may want some toughness, condition removal, or healing utility test out the sets in pvp.

i’m loving Pack runes, the 6/6 gives another 5% crit chance, and the fury procs are nice
if you pve/wvw you could even try lyssa runes, effectively giving you perma fury and swiftness from elite signet.