Observations about Armor/Runes

It recently occurred to me that I had a 100% 'noob' setup when it came to my Warrior's Armor. It's ok though, the setup occurred 6 months ago and I hadn't really played with him since. As I wasn't able to find a thread devoted to solely that on GWG I figured I would post one. Besides, you guys typically have some pretty good input to provide, there may be something I overlooked.

Primary Requirements: The Armor/Gear needs to provide High HP, High AC and High Energy. Weapon Attributes would have to be able to be maxed out if/where possible. Flexibility must be maintained across the board.

Secondary Requirements: It shouldn't look like total crap, nor should it break any reasonable person's bank.

Armor Selection:

Head: 1x Executioner's Helm (+1 axe), 1x Dwarven Helm (+1 Hammer), 1x Duelist's Helm (+1 Sword), Lieutenant's Helm (shortens hex)
Chest: Gladiator's Hauberk
Legs: Gladiator's Leggings
Feet: Knight's Boots (personal preference, Ascalon boots can be substituted)
Hands: 1x Gladiator's Gauntlets, 1x Stonefist Gauntlets

Armor selection is fairly standard stuff. The other sets have their places in PvE, but as we are looking for flexibility this is the best (imho) set to maintain.

Rune Selection:

1x Superior Axe Mastery
1x Superior Swordsmanship
1x Superior Hammer Mastery
1x Superior Vigor (major can be substituted if necessary)
1x Superior Absorbtion (major can be substituted if necessary)
1x Minor Tactics
2x Minor Strength
1x Minor or Major Strength or Tactics

Runes for every occasion, now we're going to cover rune placement. The key to my setup is that we want to have the ability to put 16 points into any given weapon attribute, as well as be able to put 13(14) into strength/tactics for running.

Rune Positioning:

Head:
Duelist's Helm = Sup Swordsmanship
Executioner's Helm = Sup Axe
Dwarven Helm = Minor Strength (more on this in a bit)
LT's Helm = Minor/Major Strength/Tactics (this is personal preference, I like running with max health so I only use minor runes. Further notes about tactics builds at the bottom)

Most of this is intuitive, except for the dwarven helm. We'll cover that when we get to the gauntlets.

Chest:
Hauberk = Sup Absorbtion.
Legs:
Leggings = Sup Vigor
Feet:
Boots = Minor Tactics

These are fairly self explanatory. They are the armor pieces that will be on your warrior 99.9% of the time so we will place the most needed runes there. The only exception are the boots of course. At the time, Minor Strength runes were cheaper than Minor Tactics. As you only need to put one of either on your boots, I chose Tactics for there. If you run a tactics heavy build and/or will eventually need a major/superior tactics rune (on a headpiece ideally) you may want to consider reversing the setup. Put one strength rune on the boots and use tactics runes everywhere else.

Hands:
Gladiator's Gauntlets = Minor Strength
Stonefist Gauntlets = Superior Hammer Mastery

The reason I chose to do it this way is simple. I will never wear the SF Gloves unless I am wielding a hammer. I will also never wield a hammer without wearing the gauntlets. It would make just as much sense though to flip the runes for the SF and Dwarven cap.

So what did we accomplish?

By wearing the specific helm and gear for each weapon type we are able to either max out our attributes or save points to spend elsewhere. We limit our health reduction to one Superior Rune penalty when fighting, and no penalty when running. We achieve -5 damage reduction without including a shield (-4 if using a major absorbtion) 100% of the time. We run with 26 energy, more than enough for most builds.

How can we improve this?

The only suggestion I can make to improve this setup at this time would be to perform the Strength/Tactics rune swap as previously described. This would allow us to include a Gladiator's Helm into the mix for an additional +1 Tactics when running.

Any other suggestions will have to come from you guys (and gals).

Nice post. I agree with that you have going. I have almost the same setup except I when with ascalon helm and glads boots for looks. But this means that I loose out on 16 axe mastery unless I buy anouther helm. Then I loose my damage reduction =( crap.