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

The only useful thing about Radiant is you can sell it to buy inscriptions that don't suck. There are very, very, very few cases where an extra few energy on your cap make any difference - your energy consumption and management remain the same, so all it does is add more time until you have no energy and terrible ways to get it back. On the other hand, survivor can save you in cases, and conditional armor (area/build dependent) can reduce overall pressure.

The only case ever to use radiant is if you need to get off a specific chain nonstop, such as a SS UW necro, or if other inscriptions are irrelevant (55 monks).

Warrior: Survivor
Monk: Survivor
Ele: Survivor
Necro: Survivor
Mesmer: Survivor
Ranger: Radiant
Paragon: Centurion
Assassin: Survivor
Rit: Survivor
Dervish: Survivor

See a pattern?

Health > Energy. So throw on a Vitae or 2 as well. And less sups = better. I use minors almost all the time, and I must say, ~640hp owns.

Survivor on everything, only toon I run a superior on is my warrior but I have a helm swap to a minor in case of DP.

Weapon swaps > Radiant. Press of a button and your energy jumps by 30.

For insignias, I go all radiant all the time, except blessed for my ele and tormentor's for my necro. Those two professions have fewer energy problems.

For runes, yeah, usually a superior on the headpiece, a minor in the primary attribute, maybe one other minor depending on the build, a superior vigor, and fill in the rest with attunement.

Survivor ftw. Nothing better than being the monk that's not targeted, living the easy life while your counterpart with the superior has to kite.

Never use radiant insignia or health runes. Maximum energy is useless beyond first 30 seconds of a fight. What matters is energy management and runes don't provide you with that.

So go with vitae and either +HP insignia or +armor/condition if you know you're always going to meet that condition. (i.e. blessed insignia for ele, because you'll always have attune up)

Lol. Don't forget that the +3 energy makes it superior to attunement runes, as well as boosting your energy storage attributes.

Minor Energy Storage is a non-stacking attunement rune. I don't think I've met many eles who don't have one. If prices at the trader are a guideline, its clearly popular.

Does that make Radiants good just because they're popular?

I like to use the following runes, mostly for heroes, for my own toons I have multiple different sets but mostly similar preferences

Rangers: Beastmaster (they are mostly B/P)
Elementalist: Hydromancer or Survivor (my own Ele uses Blessed) + 2x Vitae
Monks: Survivor
Warriors: Brawler or Dreadnaught
Dervish: Blessed
Paragon: Centurion
Assassin: Nightstalker
Ritualist: Radiant
Necro: Radiant for Curses, MM for Minion Masters. All get Bloodstained Boots.
Mesmers: Radiant for my own, Prodigy's for my Heroes, as I do not use them at all.

I was gonna have radiant on my monk as just 5 more energy can allow you to heal a party member that is on the brink of death up to a reasonable amount, then I noticed that this would leave me with <500 health which imo is a big no no on any profession so I went for survivor . My warrior uses all survivor, minor strength+tactics, sup absoption, sup vigor and a minor rune in the head for the atrribute i'm playing except I use a major when i'm playing axe, I dunno why it's just alway been like that

I don't understand this hate toward Radiant insignia. The way that I see it is, it depends on both the build that you're running and your profession.

If you're an elementalist, an extra +8 energy isn't very helpful since they have Energy Storage and several Attunements and Glyphs (and even Elites) that can help with energy recovery. But if you're a warrior running an energy-dependant axe build, it could be pretty useful as +8 energy is a 40% increase. I mean, not everybody is going to have access to a Zealous mod.

Any insignia that you use can work well depending on the situation. For instance, most people think that "Hydromancer" insignia is worthless, but I used them on my heroes as cheap temporary upgrades, and I was surprised that enemy casters really did target them less frequently due to the inherent +10 to +25 bonus armor vs. elemental damage.

There was a huge and heated topic on almost the exact same topic not that long ago. The question was whether Bonus Armor or Bonus Health mods on weapons were better. This became a source of endless debate and actually it's still not resolved. The pricing on mods suggests that Health is more important, but this elevated price is probably due to people trying to counter the health sacrifice from using Superior Runes, and not so much about getting lots of health. Keep in mind that in really hard areas (or Hard Mode), it doesn't really matter what your health is, as you're going to need excellent Protection Prayers covering you since the +35 health will barely cover a single sword strike from a boss monster.

My recommendation is... Well, you know your build. What seems to be the problem? If you're having energy problems, maybe Radiant isn't so bad. If you're constantly getting aggro (and you're not tanking), then maybe Blessed might get some monsters off you. Are you getting hit a lot by degen damage mostly? Survivor will raise your health pool giving you several more seconds of life.

Just curious if all the pro-survivor people agree to use this on Hero's?

3 radiant(+1 energy each) + 2 energy: One more use of a 5 energy skill healing.

That's more than 25 energy Survivors provide.

You have to think forward.

I think you mean 25 Health there. I'd agree that I think Radiant overall is a better choice.


Now for argumentative sake let's assume you have the popular rune/insignia setup here.
Runes:1 Vigor,1 Attribute,1 Primary Attribute and 2 of Attune or Vitae.
Insignias: Full Radiant or Survivor.
That equates to: 12 Energy Vs. 60HP.

From a Monk's perspective I would much rather have all my Hero casters have that extra energy Vs health because I know the odds of me being able to keep them up are extremely good. If they die then it's probably for the best because at that point the entire party is exhausted of energy and the waiting time for an ele to regain energy vs health is a big difference. I'm the type who likes to go through things as efficiently as possible.

Keep in mind that I'm simply using Myself (as a monk) and my Hero's (all casters) as an example here. If my party is about to be worked I really don't think the extra 60HP is going to make a difference because the casters probably won't have enough time to throw off enough spells(due to lack of energy) in the time period to kill all the enemies before the extra 60HP is negated by their deaths.

I've found in my play experience when my party is about to be wiped it's due to the lack of energy all around from my Hero's/Hench and not from inept monking/lack of health. Now if you have a poor monk on your team then I guess I see your need for Survivors/Vitae. The best defense is an offense IMO.

In general I like +armor more than +health in PvE. Bursts of armor ignoring damage are very rare in PvE, it's almost all big chunks of armor respecting damage from high level foes (against which armor is king) and degen (against which neither is terribly relevant). +health is good stuff to have around if DP starts to accumulate, which is why it's the set of choice if you have only one...however if you have more than one, using a +armor set most of the time is generally better.

On weapons I tend to grab health simply because I don't want to carry a health and an armor version of everything, and even if I did it would be a big pain to reset all my weapon swaps on the fly.

I only touch radiants in a couple of situations; first, on characters with low armor caps that spend their energy in quick bursts (Assassins and, to an extent, Dervishes). Usually you can adjust your play to fit in the normal cap, but sometimes you need to raise the cap a little bit to make it work. Second, when your max energy affects your energy management, either via skills like Mind Blast, Second Wind, or Ether Prism; or via mechanics like Soul Reaping that give energy back in big bursts. Again, most of the time you can adjust in other ways, but raising your energy cap is sometimes the best option.

But usually people use radiants and attunements because they are bad and don't know how to manage their energy at all.

There is no best, it all depends on what you are.

My ranger uses radiants to trap, beastmasters if I'm B/P or thumping or scouts if I've got a prep. Runes varies as well. Trapping I use sup wild, thumping I prefer to use minors etc. It depends on what you do.

I've you're not likely to be in the frontline, radiants are fine. My SS necro who two man's runs radiants cause she'll never be targeted. Except for when I'm drawing out the dying nightmares, so survivor does nothing for me. And if I'm MM, extra health is the last thing you want.

My main warrior runs 630 cause he'll take the brunt of all the spells and attacks when he first engages, so he needs to survive the initial spike. If I know the place is elemental heavy, then it's easier to switch to higher armour, since high armour makes a joke out of most ele damage, more than survivors.

As for heroes, I tend to pick a build for them and max out their armour for that. Olias runs only sup death, minor SR, attunements and MM armour + 1 bloodstained. My margrid runs minor expertise, minor beast then a vigor and two vitae runes with beastmaster armour. Equip them as if you were equipping yourself. Real easy to do too, since you can salvage the runes and insigs at will.

Yes and no.

I would have one hero per class with survivor. Per Ensigns post, survivors wins especially when you cant change armor.

Seccond insignia of choice are +armor with condtions that hero tends to meet most of time.

If i have third hero of class, he becomes specialist and isnignia/runes are dictaded by build. if there is nothing special about him he just gets radiants.

Then, +health insigniaed hero gets most use, followed by +armor insignia one, and radiant one getting no use at all (why did i insignia him actually? nvm.)

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In gwen i noticed way more armor ignoring damage, degen overload and spikes than in other campaigns, making health once again good choice.

For my Warrior I go with Brawler's Insignia simply because Warriors are ALWAYS attacking (Unless you've got Empathy on you.). I always run a 14 Swordsmanship build on my war, and I want to have enough points to put into tactics, so a Sentinel's Insignia did not seem like the best choice. Anyways, with some points in tactics, I can get my armour back via stances.

For my Necromancer, I go with Tormentors armour. There are very rarely any smiters worth worrying about as far as I know, so the +70 AL is very useful. I don't go with the Radiant Insignias because Soul Reaping kinda does the job for me since I can kill the enemy without much difficulty. I am also considering undertakers insignia, because you get armour when you need it the most. The lower your HP, the harder it becomes for the enemy to kill you. I think this is especially useful for Saccers and MMs who need armour when their HP is low or when they have lots of minions that they can't afford to lose control off.

On my mesmer, I always use a sup rune on my headpiece, as I switch headpieces while adventuring depending on if I need higher damage, better mitigation, or better e-management for that particular fight.
So the only consistency I have in gear setup is I will always be carrying 4 headpieces with 4 different sup attribute runes so I always have the option of +4 to a particular attribute I may be using.

BTW, I'm with Ensign that more often mitigation>max health and e-management power>max energy in PVE.

I'm not sure I can agree with these situations.

I find it unlikely that the extra energy is needed to receive the energy return on Mind Blast in most PvE situations. Any mob containing a physical practically guarentees a lower energy target to hit. In those off instances where the mob is comprised solely of casters it may be a different story, but they're casters so they'll ball up more easily and drop quickly to AoEs anyway. Your pool would regenerate enough before the next grouping.

Ether Prism just screams swap to a high set. Even if you're nearly dry that +30 set is going to make hitting the 50 energy return ceiling a simple chore.

Do elementalists even use Second Wind? You'd have to exhaust yourself quite a bit to get a higer return than Ether Prism, and even then the wait between fights would be atrocious.

I would agree, however, that the above skills would need a higher cap when you're expecting a zone with energy denial and interrupts (which would preventing the returns from an attunement naturally). Granted there may be a factor I am missing here, but from watching my own elementalist hero play a Mind Blast bar he rarely encounters energy issues of his own (the most common being Rodgort's into a Spellbreaker, but a PC wouldn't be so foolish).