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

Survivor's for Warriors (while great in PvP) is not ideal in PvE and less effective than armour. For caster classes +health is always a good choice except if you intend to finish your 5s casts before starting to kite.

It's not that you can't get away with not running radiants with those elites in most situations - you can. But it's a question of what you need to give up to get it.

Mind Blast can be tricky. It's true that you can switch to a melee attacker in most cases to regain some energy; similarly you can swap to a high set if you need to get energy off a higher energy target. However, you don't want either situation to be the norm. Mind Blast does deal a non-trivial amount of damage, and you don't exactly want to throw that away on a physical instead of a focused target...not to mention that you're going to burn out in 10 minutes if you need to switch targets for every single spell you cast while chain-casting. You really want to be able to Mind Blast the important targets for energy + damage, it's a whole lot more effective. Similarly you can sit in a high set to consistently Mind Blast a high energy foe, but the pips you lose are significant and end up restricting the other spells you can cast in between blasts. Swapping focuses for every single cast simply isn't realistic when chaincasting. While either are fine tricks to pull out in an emergency, you don't want either to become required, commonplace gameplay.

The other funny thing about Mind Blast is that it effectively lowers your energy capacity. Your energy floor becomes roughly equivilent to your foe's current energy; drop yourself below that and you're going to find yourself focusing on digging yourself out of the hole instead of on being as effective as possible. The radiant argument on a Mind Blast bar actually mirrors the radiant on the assassin argument - depending on the foes you're facing, radiants can end up giving you a lot more wiggle room in your energy expenditures.

The returns on Second Wind are really sensitive to your max energy capacity. You can go up focuses to use the skill, sure, but if you're benefitting from that too much you're really digging yourself a hole, since you will not be able to cast for very long on your main focus set from all the exhaustion. You really want as much energy as possible on your main set, to maximize your energy usage on your good focii. +8 energy is roughly equivilent to half a pip of energy, plus more margin for error, and is entirely worth it on that bar.

Also remember that a player Ele is very likely to have much more interesting attribute spreads. I'm usually splashing something or other onto a Mind Blast bar, and Energy Storage is what gives. Mind Blast misses a lot more often when you only have 8-9 ES than when you're rocking the full 13.

I've rocked radiant armor with both of those before, and I really do think that in a lot of situations, you get enough extra choices and significantly smoother energy that more than makes up for the armor or health you'd be losing.

I still can't believe that radiant isn't the best choice at least for a human-controlled monk or resto rit, even if you're bringing energy management too.

If you're positioned correctly you won't be taking as much damage as the rest of the party, you shouldn't need as much protection, but your energy is the lifeblood keeping the party alive.

For the most of it I choose Survivor, on Paragon I'd go Centaurion.

Radiant on monk is largely horrible and totally uneccesarry. For monk you have Energy management, and you have weapon swaps.

The vast vast majority use radiants because they can't/don't want to manage their energy.

The survivors lovers forgot thet the OP asked for PVE. Yes, in PvP Minors everywhere and survivors are necessary to survive a spike.
But in PVE that absolutely doesn't matter. If monsters know how to focus fire on HM, they don't know how to spike, and worst, they're not that clever at target swapping.
So a tank say, a warrior, with Sentinel armor and + armor insigna is quite okay. Keep several minor helms in case of DP (and if you have storage place). You can overload a tank with low health to keep aggro on him provided he's heavily armored and over protected (PS+Shielding hands for example).
If you don't use tanks, general protection skills (like wards) are generally better-to-use.
Survivors insignas are quite popular, but even in DoA, the 400+ damage skills are highly reduced by a +10 armor, especially elemental one.
And these +10 armor can combine with skill armor boosts (like SY!).
The ghostforge armor insigna for the rit for example, is a very easily met conditions for a +15 armor, and it clearly superior to survivor's insigna if you have a long-lasting weapon spell with ya...
IMHO of course.

If the mobs are behaving nicely, holding aggro and focusing fire on hard targets, then it doesn't matter one bit if you have insignias on your armor at all. You can sit in a shield set and never drop down to half energy the entire encounter.

Your reasoning fails because you're min-maxing the best case scenario. A team with any hope to complete what they set out to do is not going to have any problems with a best case scenario. Encounters are only interesting when things don't go according to plan, when the mobs decide to rush your backline or the Mesmers find your Monks.

A good benchmark for how well a Monk plays is how much can go wrong without the team suffering casualties or wiping. Radiants are not going to help you with that, the difference between 72 and 80 energy on your high set is inconsequential; if you're bottoming that out in the first place things are an absolute disaster. Good defensive mod selection keeps mobs off of you in the first place by making you a less appealing target, and helps you survive when things do get ugly.

Not to mention that modern Monk bars are incredibly efficient; it takes a lot to make their energy wind down and even then it takes a while to bottom them out. Time is a much bigger constraint for modern Monk bars. If you're burning energy so quickly that you think that an additional +8 max energy is really going to help all that much, you need to seriously re-evaluate what you're doing.

I was pretty aware the OP asked for PVE.

Elementalist:

Superior Vigor
Minor Energy Storage
Superior [Element] - on matching head armor
Vitae
Recovery
5 Blessed Insignias

Warrior:

Superior Vigor
Superior Absorption
Minor Strength
Minor Tactics
Superior [Weapon] - on matching helm
5 Radiant or 5 Survivor depending on build.

I will also have a Superior Tactics/Strength helm for some builds. Radiant works for builds like Headbutt+Plague Touch. That way you have energy left after using the 2 skills for another Plague Touch to remove your blind, etc.

Necromancer:

Superior Vigor
Minor Soul Reaping
Minor Blood Magic
Superior [Blood/Curse/Death] - on matching head armor
Attunement
4 Radiant Insignias, 1 Bloodstained Insignia

Having +1 Blood is good for most builds. SS uses Blood Ritual a lot, and MMs use Dark Bond alot.

Dervish:

Superior Vigor
Minor Earth Prayers
Minor Mysticism
Minor Scythe Mastery
Superior [Scythe/Earth/Wind/Mysticism] - on matching head armor
5 Windwalker Insignias

Paragon:

Superior Vigor
Minor Leadership
Minor Spear Mastery
Vitae
Superior [Spear/Command/Leadership/Motivation] - on matching head armor
5 Centurions Insignias

Monk:

Superior Vigor
Minor Protection Prayers
Minor Divine Favor
Superior [Healing/Protection/Divine/Smiting] - on matching head armor
Attunement
5 Radiant Insignias or 5 Blessed Insignias (depending on build)

Even when I run Heal, I take a condition removal like Dismiss Condition. So the Minor Protect is a nice help. I also have a 55 armor set, which uses all Radiant.

Mesmer:

Superior Vigor
Minor Inspiration
Minor Fast Casting
Superior [Domination/Illusion/Fast Cast/Inspiration] - on matching head armor
Attunement
5 Radiant Insignias

Assassin:

Superior Vigor
Minor Critical Strikes
Minor Dagger Mastery
Minor Deadly Arts
Superior [Dagger/Critical/Deadly/Shadow] - on matching head armor
5 Radiant Insignias

Ritualist:

Superior Vigor
Minor Spawning Power
Minor Restoration Magic
Minor Communing
Superior [Communing/Channeling/Restoration/Spawning]- on matching head armor
5 Radiant Insignias

Ranger:

Superior Vigor
Minor Expertise
Minor Marksmanship
Minor Beast Mastery
Superior [Marks/Expertise/Beast/Wilderness] - on matching head armor
5 Radiant Insignias or 5 Beast Master Insignias

Switching builds is far easier with multiple head pieces with appropriate runes on them. When using Radiant Insignias, I find I have less need of energy management 'skills'. I manage energy by using the skills at the right time, and don't need to recover energy often.

I recently equiped my ele's with Blessed insignias.. he had pyro on his sets before that. I really think that radiant on an ele is a waste.. I mean he already ha 95-100 energy why do I need more??

I outfit all my armors with Survivor and Radient Insignias. Raident on the headpiece, chest, and gloves, survivor on the boots and leggings. +5 energy and +10 health. After that, a Superior of my attribute that I favor, and minors in all others, saving a superior vigor and on my warrior, a superior absortion.



There is a point I'd like to argue with though.

Zwei2Stien, as for your theory of Survivor insignias faring you better than radiant insignias, I find it majorly flawed. Health is something you have a lot of. You have multiple spells to gain health and regenerate it faster. Energy is not. 80% of the skills in this game are spells, and energy is not something you can regain easily, expertise and BiP/BR aside. Yes, there are a few ways of making in regenerate faster, or save some (Glyphs and whatnot) but those are rare, some only work for when you are not the caster of the spell, and the others are usually conditional.

In any caster situation, I know that +10 energy would be favored over +10 health. +5 energy would be favored over +10 health for that matter. Energy comes in small quantities, and is much harder to get back than health. Far more difficult.

Yes, good energy management and attunement spells help it, but coming down to it, you'll last longer in any caster situation with more energy than your opponent if both of you use the same strategy and spells. When it comes down to Warriors and Paragons, I prefer one survivor more than my usual breed, but when it comes down to 2 pips of regeneration I want all the bonus I can get.


I also use at least one attunement rune on all my casters, I forgot to mention.


Summarry for those of you with lazy eyes:

Small amounts of health are expendable
Small amounts of energy make all the difference.




To the OP.

Most class specific insignias are over rated, a few aside, such as the warrior's insignia that gives a huge bonus to elemental damage with the requirement of 13 strength. I use it on one of my armor sets where I favor strength as my superior attribute.

On armor that isn't made for a certain build, universal insignias such as radiant and survivor insignias are best IMO.

I do agree with this post but I can weapon swap and gain +60 health (Hale of Fortitude) or +10 Armour (Defensive of Defence).

I think Radiant allows for slightly more build-flexibility from one armour set than anything else. That just indicated how personal preference is what matters because there is no 'best'.