![]() |
|||
![]() |
|||
|
Starting and building your Character: Runemaster Guide
By Brian Kallenbach
v1.0 - September 13, 2003
Introduction
The Runemaster is Midgard's primary damage dealing caster class, and is one of the most versatile and effective casters in the game. The class has multiple effective builds, both in PvE and RvR, and can fill a multitude of roles, from support and damage prevention, to crowd control, to primary damage dealing. So, You Want to Play a Runie? 1. The PBT. The Runemaster holds the Midgard version of the pulsing bladeturn chant, or PBT. A bladeturn is a buff which negates the next hit that the target takes. The PBT recasts this buff every 10, 8 or 6 seconds, depending on how high you spec in Suppression. This chant is something that almost every Midgard group wants, and you've got it. This makes you extremely group friendly. 2. Ranged damage. In combat, you deal your damage at a distance, and this provides you with a lot of advantages. If you're feeling particularly brave, you can hang in the fight, or you can flee, at your discretion. If you time your casts right, you almost never draw aggro. And if specced highly in Runecarving, you can solo effectively by dealing massive amounts at a distance through your bolts. 3. Utility. The Runemaster, in particular the Suppression line, is an extremely versatile character. Whereas certain specs of the Eldritch and Wizard, his variants in the other two realms, can only truly deal damage, each of the three Runemaster specs have additional utilities that make them powerful additions to any group. From Darkness' powerful damage add to the Runecarver's resist debuffs to Suppression's toolbox of abilities, a correctly specced Runemaster has the tools to do a multitude of things in any situation. Your First Decisions Race: No race selection is bad, and therefore, you should select the race that you like, based on appearance, backstory, whatever you like. Dwarves have a slightly higher constitution, which enables them to survive longer, but in the long run, this advantage is slight. Likewise, kobolds are slightly more dexterous, giving them a slightly faster casting speed. Whereas a dwarf may take one more hit, a kobold might get a second spell off when the dwarf would get one. Pick the one that fits your playstyle, if you want to go by numbers. Otherwise, pick the pretty one. Some claim that kobolds or dwarves are more difficult to target in RvR. Don't believe them. Kobolds and dwarves are actually among the first targetted in RvR. Many dwarves are healers or Runemasters, making them primary targets in RvR. The group with no healers loses. Likewise, kobolds are almost always Runemasters, Spiritmasters, or shamans. You're a target either way. If you want to play the mental game, play a Norseman, make yourself short, and hope to blend in with the rest of your group. Stats: Each point after the tenth in a single stat costs an increased amount. Therefore, to get the full amount of your beginning stat placement, you want to put 10 points into three different stats. Only three stats really matter to Runemasters: Dexterity, Constitution, and Piety. Put 10 in each. If you're a dwarf or kobold, you can slightly make up for your race's downfall by putting 15 in your lowest stat, dwarves in dexterity, and kobolds in constitution, then 10 in piety. Starting Location: Start in Aegirhamn. Leveling there is easier than in any other place in Midgard. Primary Specs Darkness: Speccing high in Darkness gives you the advantage of the largest single-target direct damage (DD) spells in the game. You also have the most damaging multi-target DD that the Runemaster has access to, a DD which also debuffs cold, the resist your damage is based off of, and the best damage add in the realm. This line also increases the damage of your primary baseline DD. Damage is pretty much all you do. This is the least versatile primary specline, and because of that, you have to focus on dealing damage any way you can. Suppression: Speccing high in
Suppression gives you the 6-second pulsing bladeturn, and makes you a grouping
monster. You also get a high nearsight, which is an effective pulling tool and
an excellent RvR weapon. Your DD's, both area-of-effect (AOE) and
single-target, have a snare component, which makes kiting easy. You are a
swiss-army knife of tools, and are welcome in any and all groups. The snare
component means your targets have twice the chance of resisting your DD's, and
you don't really do a huge amount of damage in any case. The power drain of
the PBT is incredible, and you will never really have enough power until you
have mystic crystal lore (MCL), raging power, and serenity realm abilities.
You'll be begging for Pacification healers to give you Runecarving: Speccing high in Runecarving makes you a soloist, a loner whose group viability is limted until you get to RvR. You get a second bolt, and your baseline bolt becomes a viable, high-damage option. The ground-targeted AOE DD (GTAOE or GTAE) is an extremely potent tool in RvR, and, in combination with your dual bolts, makes you a powerful force in both keep taking and keep defense. Your debuffs allow you to destroy people alongside a Darkness specced mystic, and maybe even do some massive damage yourself. Because of the way the experience system works, levelling solo at high levels will be a pain. Like the Darkness Runemaster, you're dealing damage, and little else, but you have a number of interesting options. Your only real RvR utility is the GTAOE, and outside of keep action, you'll be struggling for options. Secondary Specs As Suppression, usually those extra points are placed in Runecarving. Because of the 50 spec DD in Suppression, you usually only put 20 into Runecarving. You get the GTAOE at 19, giving you a decent utility there. Because the GTAOE almost always hits every target in its radius, regardless of levels, even a low level GTAOE is useful. One important combination of secondary and primary spec is called darkcarving, and uses Runecarving as its primary spec and Darkness as its secondary. Rather than using the nukes in the Runecarving line, you use the baseline 50 Darkness DD, along with the 48 spec debuff. You get wild variance on your baseline nukes, but the fact that you're doubling your damage with the debuff makes this one of the most powerful damage-dealing forces in Midgard. You have two high-damage bolts that will hit for hundreds of damage and your follow up nukes will do a similar amount. The Big Two PvE Tactics Kiting Runecarvers and Darkness Runemasters have to utilize the baseline Suppression root, and have to time their roots in order to deal their damage in the most effective manner. Usually, this involves two or three DD's, followed by the root, and then backing up as above. Runecarvers open up with two high-damage bolts that are on a short timer. By using these two bolts, rooting, and then pulling back and waiting, you can get the timer to run out, and bolt again twice. This is a massive amount of damage, and generally, you'll only need to nuke the target once or twice before it'll fall. This is your basic soloing strategy. Always have your finger on the quickcast and root buttons, because they are your only failsafe. Grouping Groups are where Suppression Runemasters shine. You can act as the primary puller with an incredible range on the nearsight. You can be crowd control, through use of the root and the confusion. You can, of course, deal damage. Just remember to keep your role filled, no matter what. If the group is counting on you to do one thing, then do that one thing, and do it well. The PBT is your ticket into most groups, and bladeturns will save your group countless times before you reach level 50. You can essentially make your group immune to melee damage by repeatedly casting and cancelling the friend bladeturn on your main tank, or the group bladeturn or the bladeturn chant on the whole group. You don't want to use a turn above what you have to, due to power concerns, however, once you have MCL 2 or better, you will be able to maintain bladeturns on your group, constantly, for upwards of 5 or 6 minutes, using the 10 second bladeturn chant, repeatedly casted. Never be afraid to use this power when your healers are down or out of power, or when your group has pulled a couple more mobs than it can handle. Equipment Throughout your early levels, up to 20 or more, worry more about simply maintaining a high focus on your staff, and high skill levels on your armor. Above and beyond that, there isn't much use for your armor, as you shouldn't be taking many hits. High purple armor degrades quickly on hits, but since you're dealing your damage at a range, especially as a Runecarver, you shouldn't need to worry exceptionally about that. If you can put together a high purple suit that provides you the bonuses you need, you can wear that suit effectively until it goes blue, which can be 20 levels, in some cases. Once you get into RvR, there are a few things you have to keep in mind. First, and foremost, make sure your items giving you +11 skill in your main skill. Of secondary importance is resists, and you need to cap out every resist you possibly can. The reason you do things in that order is because you're not going to take that much more damage with capped resist everything than you would with slightly lower resists. Because of that, you should focus on your damage output. Resists are still a necessity, primarily energy, to avoid mezzes and the like, and body and matter for damage-over-time. Single-target and AOE DD's are still going to rip you to shreds, even if you're reducing the damage by 50% or more. Therefore, make sure you keep your damage up. Cap your Piety if you can, also, doing so will improve your damage output and your power pool. You can also increase your constitution, hits, dexterity, and power, but you get less of a return for each individual increase. It is far better for you to focus on resists, piety, and skill increases. All three of those give you multiple benefits per point put into the stat. RvR Tactics Tricks of the Trade Survive the First Minute Before you go out, color yourself all black or other dark colors. Doing so masks the fact that you're wearing cloth. Also, try to find a cloak that has its hood up. This hides your helm, which is also a dead giveaway. First and foremost, you are not primary crowd control, so don't try to cast until you have to. This means, primarily, no DD's. At all. Keep your finger off the trigger until the opening rush is up. If you start casting, you're putting out a beacon for tanks to come straight for you. While if they notice you're carrying a staff and wearing cloth, they'll know anyway, it's harder to tell this at a glance. Second, you aren't as important as the seers. The healers are crowd control, and the shamans provide buffs. They need help, because they can't quickcast. Therefore, you should focus on helping them during this time. Root anyone coming back to your back lines. Immobilizing these threats enables them to do their jobs more consistently, and translates into RP for you. After you have taken care of all the tanks
coming back, find yourself a nice, soft caster who doesn't know you're there,
and let 'er rip. If you can't, assist your tanks, DD their opponents. These
are the basics, but your biggest advantage as a Runemaster is your versatility
.You have a wealth of tools at your disposal
The Ground-Targeted AOE There are a few tricks to using the GTAOE. Every caster has his own tricks for obtaining ground targets. The most basic tactic I use is to simply place a ground target about 200 or 300 units in front of me, about the distance between two doors at a keep. Now you can walk up to a keep door, hold your ground target key for a few seconds, and then let go, giving you a target on the opposite side. This is helpful mostly in keep defense, where you can't AOE the door. Once you can time this distance, it's not difficult to set other distances, most notably, the back line at a keep defense. Dropping a ground target there lets you effectively keep their casters from clearing the walls, enabling other casters in your defense force to get up on the ramparts and fire away. The most effective thing you can do with the GTAOE is to find a Shadowblade who knows well how to set ground targets. Ask your raid for ground targets consistently, if you know there's defenders. You'll get a couple, and a few good AOE's will deal more damage to a group than a Shadowblade would alone. The net result is that the two of you will be able to suppress the interior of the keep without putting stress on the rest of the raid. This is especially helpful if they have an arbalest set up on the inside. One other neat little trick is to set a ground target on yourself, and then casting the GTAOE to reveal stealthers. This trick is almost negligibly useful in the field, because of the recast timer on the GTAOE. However, putting it on a climb point at a keep isn't a bad idea. Peeling The most important thing when peeling is to disrupt the movement of the tank in question. That's what makes Suppression Runemasters so good at this, because of their high level snare and root. You don't really have to alter your strategy in order to peel, just keep an eye on your healers. If one of them is in trouble, stop, turn, and DD the target. If you're observant, you can also snare targets as they're coming back to you, which serves to help both you and everyone back there with you survive. Against a good group, you'll often have to handle 3 or 4 tanks coming back. This should be the only situation in which you break out the AOE DD. Generally speaking, AOE damage is risky, as it will break any mezzes that your healer has thrown out there. A mez is as good as a kill in RvR, and if you can successfully mez the entire opposing group without interrupting that mez, then you're simply going to win. Dealing Damage Tanks, when they're going after casters, have to run back there to beat on them. This opens them up to all the tactics described here that you'll be using. You have a fraction of the risks, as long as no tanks are beating on you in return. Therefore, learn to recognize your casters. Look for people waving their arms around, and little glowy balls around hands. By attacking the casters, you're interrupting them, which means they aren't attacking you (in most cases), and by attacking casters, you're forcing opposing healers to heal targets which are difficult to heal effectively. Sure, a weak heal will keep them alive, but if their spread heals are getting soaked up by casters in the back row, the tanks aren't getting as much healing. You're dealing more damage per-cast on a caster, since he has low absorb, and they're going togo down faster, because of lower hits. If you ever see your target swinging whatever weapon they're wielding, then find someone else. Generally speaking, as a Runecarver, you'll want to bolt everytime your bolts become available. The amount of damage that your bolts will deal will make it worthwhile to swap over to it in every instance. In a lot of cases, the same holds true for the Darkcarver build. While your base DD can do a lot of damage after a debuff, your bolts will hit more consistently due to your higher spec in Runecarving. As a Darkcarver or Darkness Runemaster, you'll want to open up with your debuff, whether it's the quick-cast 50% debuff, or the slower DD. Almost all of your targets in the frontier will have the group resistance buffs on them, and debuffing targets that are buffed against your attack type is good strategy for two reasons. One, debuffs reduce more against a buff on the same target. Two, doing so nets you a greater amount of damage than you would on a 0% resistance target, compared to what you would do without the debuff Some simple math: If you're attacking a target with a 25% cold resistance, and you're dealing, on average, 100 damage to a 0% resistance target, then you're going to be doing 75 damage, because your damage is reduced by their resistance. If you debuff them for 10%, then you're going to start dealing 85 damage, which is actually 13% more damage than you would have been doing before. If you debuff for 50%, then you're going to be doing 125 damage, or 67% more damage than you would have been if you hadn't debuffed. Realm Abilities Mystic Crystal Lore (MCL). Most casters, in general, will go through Thidranki or Abermenai purely to obtain this RA. It's a quick heal for about half your power bar every 5 minutes. While the RA list will tell you it can't be used in combat, it can, to some degree. It can't be used if you're currently in combat, which includes casting spells, swinging your staff, anything. Stand still for a little while, and you'll be able to use MCL after a few seconds. Also, you won't be able to cast for a few seconds after using MCL, so make sure you're not having to use MCL during a very tense fight. Purge. Purge is pretty mondo expensive for casters, and generally, you're going to need other RA's in order to make good use of your spells. However, Purge is a necessity due to the prevailing tactic in the frontier, mezzing and assisting. Purge can turn a disastrous ambush into a victory for your group if two or three of you Purge when your enemies lock onto one of your healers. You can AOE snare DD the group going after your healers, you can nearsight their healers (and will usually get a couple before they even realize you're awake), you can often even waste a caster or healer before opposing tanks will realize you're up. Just make sure you hold a few seconds before you Purge. Don't Purge if you see an opposing tank coming at you, he'll probably break the mez for you in a second, and you'll have wasted your Purge for the next 30 mnutes. Also, doing so lets opposing tanks get on whoever they want to beat on. In so doing, they're distracted, and you can pound away at opposing backlines. After the big two, there are a group of passives that almost every Runemaster will end up taking eventually. Eventually, because they're so cheap, and you'll want to save them for when you're not getting RP quite as quickly. The first 3 or 4 realm ranks come quickly, and that will give you 20 or 30 points to spend in a few weeks. Therefore, those points should be saved and spent on big abilities, like Purge, Raging Power, or Mastery of Concentration. However, all of these abilities are important in their own fashion:
There are also a couple of active abilities that you'll find very useful as well:
And then there are abilities that look useful, but aren't:
Contact Information |
||
|
|
|||
Copyright © 2001-2009 Trevor Moore, Nathan Wilcox & Classes of Camelot |
![]() |
||