Discussion : Best Insignia/Runes for each profession for PvE.

When I was checking the equipment of my old toons to see if they are ready for eotn, I realised I never changed their runes and insignia from the limited choices they had during prophesies.

To give and example : My elementalist had minor runes of fire, water, air, earth and energy storage but no vigor at all. My armor was pyromancers before and were converted to insignia. I also have a second set of armour with sup runes for a 55 build. (Most of my characters were set up like this, so I can change between minor and sup runes at will. The others had room for a vigour rune though. :-)

I think I'll be spending some time reequiping them and I'd like people's views on what they consider the best set of insignia/runes for certain professions.

Here is my view :

Most of my builds revolve arround use of one 2 attribute lines (1 + the primary) and some utility functions that either require little or no attributes and might come from my secondary profession. That means I should only have 2 attribute runes and the others can be bonus health or energy.

Runes : I think I'll be using 1 Sup attribute rune, 1 minor primary attribute rune, 1 Sup vigour rune, 2 attunument runes except for my elementalist who has energy storage and should have 2 vitae's instead of attunement. Not sure about warriors, assassins and dervishes who tend to take most damage and might need the extra health, but I'm still inclined to go with more energy for them.

Insignia : I want my insgnia to give me an armour boost depending on a condtition I'm going to be meeting almost all the time. For my Ele and Dervish who are allways enchanted these will be blessed insignia.

For the others I'm not sure though and advice is welcome. My necro for instance usually does curses and has no enchantments on his skillbar. But can he count on monks enchanting him when taking damage ? Blighters or Stalward might be just as interesting or shall I go for radiant ?

I stated interest in the best insignia. I know that the 4 energy or 20 heath won't make much difference in PvE most of the time and staying with a variety of minors linked to each attribute is more flexible. My curses necro with a minor blood rune is not bothered by it, but clearly attunement or vitae would be "better".

Please state your ideas either as general guidelines, generic or profession specific.

I just load up Radiant + attunement runes on most of my characters and heroes. IMO energy is the most valuable asset in the game. You are pretty much useless with full health but 3 energy left unless you are relying on adrenal skills.

There are only two exceptions to this, warriors can do with as much armor as possible, making sentinels the better insignia option, and vitae is also as good as attunement. Paragons are similar to this as well.

And rangers, they use stances to survive most of the time, plus you have expertise to save energy therefore making the vitae runes more useful than attunement runes. The ranger insignia line, again IMO, is not as effective as other insignia lines, so anything here will do.

Of course the above is from a PvE POV, in PvP I guess every tiny bit of advantage counts, so can't say much about that.

It's simple.

Survivor insignia are the way to go.

They are 100% dependable and unconditional.
They help you against being spiked down and give monks titme to react with prot.
They work versus every type of damage.
They actually allow you to afford sup rune.

Only other insignia that are worth using are when they are part of build. Like earth elemental insignia.

When runes to fill unused spots go, again, its health runes.

As far as runes go, only two charactes justify having Sup attribute rune: MM necromancer and someone going 55 hp. Thou, nothing beats having multiple headpieces each with different grade of rune.

Dont use Attunement runes of Radiant insignia, rather get good energy management. Armors with radiants were good in prophecies times where there was no other choice, but game has evolved since.

On my warrior I'm a big fan of the brawler insignia. I think it's awesome but I never really pay attention anymore...

As for Runes for my war I go weapon, tactics, strength, vigor X, then whatever. Probably the one that reduces Blind duration, since there's no greater warrior gimp than not being able to see (not being able to move is a problem as well, but there's no runes preventing that).

Hard for me to say though since I'm PvE.

What this guy said.

The only time something is better than health is when you can get a reliable +conditional armor bonus, and then you have to take into account +dmg skills that ignore it... so health tends to be best.

For my ele? Survivor's all the way.
2 head pieces for each element, one with a Sup rune for maximising damage output in PvE, one with a minor for the rare situations I accrue DP in PvE, and for PvP.
Then sup vigor, minor E-Storage, and Vitae on the rest.
Also, a set of boots with a minor Elemental rune in each, for when I'm running a secondary element.

You really don't need Radiant as an ele. Unless you suck.

Since there's no one rule, and everything is build dependant...

Health should be a priority. The first time this became truly critical was with introduction of DoA. Having ~400 health there means one-hit kill. This thinking transfers well to hard mode as well. With unconditional weapon mods, I prefer to keep health on everything over 530, 550 if possible. 600 wouldn't hurt either.

Everything else... whatever your build requires. Perhaps more energy for casters, an extra minor rune, some specific insignia such as bloodstained....

But health is the way to go without exception. There's more than enough energy management skills, and almost without exception, monks will be protecting you more than any +armor mod can. Exception to this are enchant hostile areas, but those tend to be coupled with high degen, not heavy damage - one more reason for high health.

Also - the only build where I still sup rune in PvE is the MM. All others use exclusively minors, or a single major. The 5 points of damage in a nuker, or 2 points of extra healing won't save you in the long run - but 30-50 extra health will.

Obvious exception to this are builds that rely on certain weird and possibly area-specific traits. For everything else - health first, everything else second.

Monk/Derv/Ele = Blessed
Necro = Tormentors or Radiant, depends on the build and situation.
Paragon = Centurion
Mesmer = entirely depends on the build
Warrior = Sentinel/Dreadnought
Ritualist = build dependant, but you dont wanna be stuck at 60AL while holding an item.

Overall your better with an easy conditonal armor bonus than a health boost, i really see no argument for health in PvE since theres no dangerous spike potential and DP should never stack up above 15%, even then you have stacks of items dedicated to DP removal if your in a tight spot.

As for runes you dont really need superiors on a lot of professions, fire elementalists are best with a superior but its entirely choice, aslong as your health doesnt fall below 455 with a decent armor level of 70-80 your fine.

The insignia depend on what you want to do and you play style. I've found that more that 2 Sup Runes before level 20 is bad. The other day I had Melonni at under 200 health!! My Necro, which is my main toon, has 2 Radiant sets(Curses and 55) and 1 completely weird set(MM). Her MM armor has 3 MM insignia, 1 Survivor insignia, and 1 Bloodstained insignia. I made MM armor b/c I used to think you could MM anything. *lol*

Hmm...I have pondered this as well especially for my warrior char.

Currently I'm at 590hp/515hp (sup weapon rune) standard without Survivor insignia's but with all Dreadnoughts to basically make me AL90 + 10 vs physical.
I have wondered if full survivor would be worth it, basically the choice is between +10 AL or 40hp, not sure which is more effective though.

Each of the following have max vigor rune affordable - Superior because it's so comparatively inexpensive than in the past.

Ele: Blessed. My ele uses attunements 99% of the time. I use one superior rune for the head-piece, minor energy storage and 2 Viate runes.

Ranger: Superior rune on the relevent head-piece with 5 Radiant insignias, minor expertise and 2 Attunement runes.

Warrior: Survivor insignias, superior head-piece, minor strength + tactics, 1 Vitae rune.

Monk: I struggled to deice on monk insignias so I chose a mixutre of Survivor and Blessed.

Necro: Radiant all the way with Attunement runesand minor Soul Reaping. Superior runes on head pieces.

Mesmer: I chose radiant whereas Survivor is probably best. Mesmer-specific insignias aren't great.

Makosi makes a pretty good point about Sup. runes and headpieces. I always put my Sup. runes on headpieces that have the same attribute, so I can change my build easily while only having to switch one piece of armor (and not cramping up mah style).

Radiant for all imo.
That +35 hp isnt that good IMO; dont flame kthxbai

~Prof.

I agree. The reason I use survivor on warrior is because she doesn't really need the energy. Healing Hands is only 5 energy!

I agree. The reason I use survivor on warrior is because she doesn't really need the energy. Healing Hands is only 5 energy!

I've been debating this same question of late but more from a Hero perspective than my own characters. In addition to OP's discussion, do you use the same or different insginia/rune combos on Heroes?

Minus the earth insignia line, yeah you pretty much summed it up.

In PvE, monsters tend to attack the lowest HP/armor target when they do have the chance to pick. So that need to be taken into consideration as well.

I believe lower hp are chosen by monsters over lower armor. However, armor rating doesn't change much, while health change all the time due to DP. The reason someone who died first, often will die again is purely because monsters all target him/her as priority for the lower hp (doing stupid things aside).

This is GW. There is not 'best' there is 'best suited for'.

Minor Energy Storage is a waste imo.