The Runepriests are the support Archetype of the Dwarven Oathbearers Army. They are the masters in wielding the power of the Dwarven runes to cast spells that can enhance a player’s attack and defense. These runes are also used for casting offensive spells.

The following guide is all about the Runepriest – their Archetype, Abilities, Masteries, etc. This guide is written by Kinthral.

Welcome to The Comprehensive Runepriest Career Guide

This guide contains information, explanations, statistics, and a few opinions designed to help you better understand the career as a whole. It also serves as a compendium of current community-accepted builds and techniques, theoryhammering, and empirical data regarding mechanics. It does not focus on how to react to specific situations, but general uses are provided for abilities and mechanics. It encompasses all aspects of gameplay, from solo farming to city sieges and everything in between.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction, Table of Contents, General WAR Mechanics and Terminology, ‘Why a Runepriest?’
2. Core Abilities, Core Tactics, All Morale Abilities
3. Grungni Mastery
4. Valaya Mastery
5. Grimnir Mastery

Current Guide version is: 1.0.0
Current WAR version is: 1.0.2
Last updated: 09/30/2008

General Mechanics

• Career Mechanic: Oath Runes. These are on-hour, single-target, powerful, stat-increasing buffs that are only castable on party members only (not other warband party members or random friendly players). There can be only one Oath Rune on a single player, and any Oath Rune will overwrite another, regardless of the power level of the two runes. Oath Runes also grant the holder an additional ability they can activate and use like a regular spell. By default, using the ability has a 60.0 second cooldown, which can be shortened to 30.0 seconds depending on the Runepriest’s currently equipped tactics. These abilities will appear on the granted abilities hotbar.
• All of your abilities, be they damaging or healing, only require AP. Runepriests do not have a secondary mechanic that is required to cast healing abilities, and casting offensive spells has no effect on your healing spells, or vice versa.
• The term ‘rank’ and ‘level’ are interchangeable. (Rank is the correct term, however).
• The term ’spell’ and ‘ability’ are interchangeable. (Ability is the correct term, however).
• The cast bar progressing is referred to as ability ‘build up’.
• The cast bar regressing (due to taking damage) is referred to as ability ’set back’.
• Damageshields (such as Rune of Shielding) prevent set back while the shield holds. If any part of an incoming attack isn’t absorbed by the shielding, you could be set back.
• Percentage modifiers of damage (such as Rune of Preservation and Grimnir’s Shield) are effectively additive. 50% less caused by an enemy, and 50% less taken by you, causes incoming hits to be reduced by 99% or more. Guard doesn’t stack with Grimnir’s Shield, though.
• Over time effects (DoTs, HoTs) stack with each other, unless otherwise noted.

Terminology

• DoT: Damage over Time, refers to offensive abilities.
• HoT: Healing over Time, refers to healing/defensive abilities.
• AoE: Area of Effect, refers to any ability that affects multiple targets.
• PBAoE: Point-Blank AoE, the most common type of AoE. The effect is centered on the players location, and affected targets are determined by being in the circle formed from that center along with a radius, which is given by the ability’s range.
• CAoE: Cleaving AoE, the second most common type of AoE. Worded in tooltips as “affects all targets X feet in front of you”, the affected location is determined similarly to PBAoE. The one difference is that CAoE only affects a semicircle of about 125 degrees in front of you instead of all 360 degrees. A typically longer range compensates, and you usually end up with a similar affected area.
• Bouncing: AoE which affects its primary target, then picks a nearby target, affects that target, and then usually continues on through a number of charges. Abilities currently can bounce as soon as 1.0 seconds, but can bounce to a valid target anytime during the duration of the effect. Closest targets have priority; there is no priority for wounded targets currently.
• DPS: Damage per second, a comparative rate of the effectiveness of an offensive ability.
• d/AP: Damager per point of AP, a comparative rate of the efficiency of an offensive ability.
• HPS: Healing per seond, a comparative rate of the effectiveness of a healing ability.
• h/AP: Healing per point of AP, a comparative rate of the efficiency of a healing ability.

‘Why a Runepriest?’

If you’re reading this and haven’t picked a career yet, then chances are you fall into one of three categories. First, you don’t know what archetype you want to play as in Warhammer; second, you are set on playing for the Alliance of Order as one of its Support careers but can’t choose; or third, despite how much you like the playstyle of the Dwarven Runepriest and the Chaos Zealot, you can’t decide between the two.

The Archetype

Warhammer Online has grouped its 20 playable careers into four distinct archetypes. By now, you probably already know that those are the Tank, Melee DPS (MPDS), Ranged DPS (RDPS), and Support. The first three are easily discernible if you’ve played other MMORPGs/RPGs, so I’m not going to explain them. If the word “support” doesn’t appeal to you as a player, then the archetype probably isn’t for you.

Being categorized as part of the Support archetype essentially means you have access to reliable heals and buffs. “Reliable” means you have multiple abilities that aren’t on long cooldowns, or tied into Morale or chances to proc. The ability to heal, and to a lesser extent, buff, is practically nonexistent on non-Support careers. Reliable buffs exist on other careers, but the buffs aren’t as potent or plentiful as Support-archetype buffs.

Contrary to some “Support” classes in a number of other MMORPGs, WAR’s Support (and Tank) careers do have a decent capability to deal damage. They will certainly never pass a MDPS or RDPS in terms of raw damage output, but you’ll have enough damage output that you can assist with focus fires, and you’ll find soloing a much more pleasant experience. Support careers are some of the best soloers because of this, and for being healers.

The Support archetype is designed for players who wish to support the players around them. A Support career will generally have a hybrid playstyle, but above all, you should be placing more of your attention towards healing and buffing allies.

The Career

Now that you’ve chosen to play a Support career, you might be looking at the two opposing Realms in WAR. Both realms have an identical number of Support careers: three. If you’re thinking about playing for Destruction, I would suggest you look at career guides for the Destruction Support careers (Greenskin/Goblin Shaman, Chaos Zealot, Dark Elf Disciple of Khaine) since I’ll be talking about the Order careers. The numbers provided are rough estimates based off an easily identifiable number (100,000) – if you’re curious, these numbers are fairly common for a Tier 3 scenario – and should be looked at for rough comparisons only (utility and other factors skew the numbers).

The first is the Empire Warrior Priest. Of the three careers available to you on Order, the Warrior Priest is the most iconic in terms of looks, and unique in terms of mechanics. Warrior Priests have the highest base armor levels due to wearing Medium Robes, and wields either Great Hammers or a hammer and a charm (usually a tome) in the offhand to create various amounts of damage and healing output. The Warrior Priest’s offensive abilities focus on direct attacks that debuff/buff, while the healing abilities focus on HoT effects and small AoE heals. Buffs consists of Prayers, which are Auras granting chances to do things like heal or deal additional damage. The Warrior Priest’s career mechanic is Righteous Fury, which is a separate healing pool used to cast healing abilities, while the normal AP pool is used to cast offensive abilities. Because Righteous Fury doesn’t regenerate in combat, a Warrior Priest must use offensive abilities to continue to heal. Generation is an obvious disadvantage, but keeping your healing safe from AP drains and being able to heal or damage whenever you need to are big advantages.
Damage: 50,000 – Healing: 50,000

Next is the High Elf Archmage. Archmages are the “squishiest” of the three healers in part due to being in Light Robes, and in part due to their healing (defensive) abilities having longer cast times than other careers. Archmage offensive abilities focus heavily on debuffing DoTs and transfers (simultaneously damaging and healing), while the healing abilities focus heavily on HoTs and smaller casted heals. The Archmages’ buff is to all resists (defenses). The Archmage mechanic is High Magic, which encourages you to repeatedly cast offensive abilities (building Force) or healing abilities (building Tranquility), and then cast one of the opposite, which receives an increase in power or decrease to cast time, respectively. Due to this mechanic, damage and healing outputs spike up and down more with this career than the other two.
Damage: 25,000 – Healing: 75,000

Finally, there is the Dwarf Runepriest. Runepriests also wear Light Robes, but due to a few choice abilities and, in particular, two Runepriest-only tactics, they have much better survivability than the Archmage (and perhaps better than a Warrior Priest). Offensive abilities are a more standard repertoire with a few DoTs but the bulk of the damage through direct attacks devoid of buffs/debuffs, and healing abilities are also a mix between HoTs and small direct heals without secondary effects. Officially, Oath Runes (and to a lesser extent, Master Runes) are the career mechanic, which are for the most part the the only long-term buffs that increase output (offensive versus input/defensive). Most don’t consider the Runepriest to have a career mechanic though which is fair to say; at least not one that impacts their playstyle.
Damage: 10,000 – Healing: 90,000

To Summarize

Healing flows greatest to least: Runepriest, Archmage, Warrior Priest
Damage flows greatest to least: Warrior Priest, Archmage, Runepriest
Survivability flows greatest to least: Warrior Priest or Runepriest (defensive), Runepriest (base), Archmage
Buffs/debuffs/utilities flows greatest to least: Runepriest, Archmage, Warrior Priest
Adaptability (to make instant changes in playstyle): Warrior Priest, Archmage, Runepriest

Warrior Priests are required to DPS to heal, Archmages are encouraged to DPS in bursts, Runepriests usually don’t DPS.

The Mirror

If you want to play a Runepriest on the Destruction side, you’re looking to play a Chaos Zealot.

Many of the key differences were removed after beta, so now most of what remains is the Zealot’s Harbinger of Doom ability. Most of the other differences are dependent on mastery choice.

Because the comparison between these two is quite subjective to other factors (balance between the Realms as a whole, balance between the careers that protect you as a healer on either side, and so on) I’m not as versed as I’d like to be with the Zealot to make a definitive comparison. This quote by Grondoth, a RP from the WHA forums, is a great synopsis though.

Quote:
…And everything else is debatable: Zealots say RP are better group support, but there’s not much we can do that they can’t, except knockback people more often and proc armour buffs that negate armour penetration, and resurrect groupmates that are within 30 feet of you every 3 minutes. There’s a lot they can do that we can’t, reduce resists, silence multiple people, make the area of their ritual kinda dangerous to enemy players, give AP freely, or proc a heal on people attacking a target. It’s not much of a heal, but it’s something! Yes, Rune of Burning does more damage than Storm of Ravens, and rune of fate’s easier to use than the transference tactic… but they do the same things. RP might be a little tougher because of a few tactics and a r2 class morale, but that’s about it.

Core Abilities

Flee

Obtained at rank 1
All – If you do decide to use it (typically to escape or catch a Fleeing enemy), be prepared to defend yourself. Your defenses are very poor with no morale or AP upon flee ending, so try to put some HoTs or a damageshield on yourself before Fleeing.
PvE – This is primarily your transportation around the world until you get a mount.
RvR – It can be used in combat, to greater effect at earlier levels when snares aren’t as abundant, but is generally risky. Snares prevent Flee from doing anything, so you’ll want to wait to not have any, or cleanse yourself first.

Rune of Regeneration

Obtained at rank 3
100hps, 50h/AP, coefficient 1.72
All – The only drawback to this ability is the time it takes to run its course. It is out most effective proactive heal (healing damage as it happens) due to its low AP cost, being instant cast, and the fact that it can (and often should) be on every nearby friendly.

Rune of Preservation

Obtained at rank 7
All – The Runepriest’s detaunt ability. Despite the tooltip, it functions similarly to other detaunts, reducing the damage output of enemies by 50%.
PvE – The threat loss is enough to deter any accidental aggro, but its to your advantage to learn to pre-emptively use it so your tank doesn’t get worried. If you pull aggro from multiple mobs, quickly clear your offensive target, and the first mob to hit you will become your target, ready to receive Preservation. This way, you don’t detaunt the tank’s Taunt target (leaving extra mobs to attack you).
RvR – If you see a player running across the battlefield towards you, its best to Preservate and wonder why later. (TM Loading Screens).

Rune of Life

Obtained at rank 10
All – A basic resurrect, castable in combat. Targets are resurrected with 20% health and empty AP and morale bars, at the location of where the resurrect was casted. The person you resurrect is detargeted, so be ready to retarget them and give them some heals, lest they experience death all over again.
RvR – Most players will respawn before you can resurrect them, but bringing back key players like healers and tanks can have a huge effect on a fight, largely in part due to the psychology. Its also occasionally effective to let a target die and immediately resurrect them instead of trying (and failing) to heal them in the first place, as that puts them at maximum range with no debuffs and a full health bar.

Rune of Cleansing

Obtained at rank 16
All – Removes a single Curse or Ailment on a friendly target. Stacks count as single debuffs and are removed with a single cast.
PvE – This can easily provide more net healing then casting heals. Get used to what debuffs you can remove look like, and get rid of them.
RvR – Cleansing snares and healing debuffs are the big uses for this ability. Cleansing an early snare can allow you to make an easy escape. Watch for enemy careers with healing debuffs that might debuff the people you are trying to heal, and wait for them to “waste” it. Reacting once the debuff has crippled enough heals and your target dies is a poor idea: you won’t outheal these debuffs with any number of healers.

Rune of Sundering

Obtained at rank 25
All – It works as it says it does.
PvE – The knockdown is mediocre at best, only buying your tank some time to pick up an additional target or two. It is a good interrupt though.
RvR – An interrupt and knockback all in one, this is best used offensively. Depending on your surroundings, you can potentially remove an entire group of enemies from a fight (at least for a little while). Knockbacks prevent fall damage from most heights now, so its not as lame anymore. In scenarios, you’re usually putting players you “punt off a cliff” out of the fight for 15-30 seconds.

Oath Rune of Sanctuary

Obtained at rank 40
All – Instead of an offensive ability, Sanctuary grants the holder the ability to self-resurrect. Since the Toughness buff lasts an hour, its possible to rotate the buff through your entire party so everyone can have the toughness buff if the self-res isn’t needed on a particular player (such as the healer for wipe prevention).

Core Tactics

Stoutness of Stone

Obtained at rank 11
All – Until you get something better, you might as well use it.
PvE – If you’re getting stunned as soon as the Stun diminishing return buff fades (or if the buff isn’t working), it’s probably a good idea to have this on a different tactic set and swap it when fighting certain mobs (Trolls come to mind).
RvR – It’s not really necessary until Tier 3 when a number of careers get long-duration stuns.

Divine Fury

Obtained at rank 13
All – You need to have this on at least one offensive tactic set.
PvE – If you’re soloing, you should be using this. In early to mid parts of PQs, using Divine Fury and DPSing is more efficient at building contribution than simply healing.
RvR – The benefits don’t make up for the drawbacks, unless you have a very specific role. If you aren’t sure how to effectively use it, then pick a healing tactic for RvR.

Swift Runes

Obtained at rank 15
All – Sometimes it’s working, sometimes its not. Tactic must be active to reduce the cooldown.
PvE – Your best option for solo/PQ content until rank 23.
RvR – Rune click abilities are generally mediocre and situational in all but Tier 1 RvR, and you’ll want all the healing and defenses tactics you can get for RvR anyways.

Stubbornness

Obtained at rank 17
All – There’s not a ton of Corporeal damage for a Runepriest to worry about, but preventing a fifth of it is probably your best option for a healing tactic this early on.
RvR – Replace Stoutness of Stone from your RvR set.

Discipline

Obtained at rank 19
All – One of the best all-around tactics for this career, pairing healing output with a nice amount of spell disrupt.
PvE – If you’re healing use it, but if you don’t like Swift Runes once you hit rank 20, you can use this with Divine Fury to reduce downtime.
RvR – Use it in every tactic set.

Cleansing Vitality

Obtained at rank 21
All – It’s situational (Rune of Cleansing requires a debuff to cast) but it helps you to remember to cast Cleansing more often. The heal is moderately impressive, and saves you a global cooldown.
RvR – When facing Marauders and Witch Elfs in particular, this is a more effective tactic. Cleansing should be the second thing you do after detaunting, and getting heals rolling on yourself in the same step really adds to your survivability.

Ancestral Inheritance

Obtained at rank 23
All – One of the best tactics available to us, this is a flat 15-20% armor increase for us. You’re in Tier 3 now, and being able to “tank” Champion level mobs and harder hitting enemy MDPS becomes one of the Runepriest’s biggest assets. This only gets more better when you get Regenerative Shielding.

Subtlety

Obtained at rank 25
PvE – For single target tanking, you shouldn’t need this, as you’ll more often be limited by AP regeneration than threat. Considering that you can only detaunt one mob if you pull aggro, you may want to give this a shot if you can’t wait for the tank to build aggro on multiple mobs. In instances, this becomes a better idea just for safety.
RvR – this has no effect, so don’t get caught with it.

Regenerative Shielding

Obtained at rank 27
All – This is mostly the same deal as with Ancestral Inheritance, but with a different mechanic. You’ll usually want to use both for the combined average 50% armor you’ll have in-combat. If you have to choose one, then it’s this one for sure as it affects other targets and ignores armor penetration (what good is 100% armor if it’s all getting penetrated?).

Restorative Burst

Obtained at rank 29
All – Better for Grungni Runepriests then others, but you should still be using Grungni’s Gift fairly often. The true effectiveness ultimately comes down to how you spend your renown points (for healing crit or not) and how much healing crit you stack on your gear.

Blessing of Grungi

Obtained at rank 31
All – Yep, its probably a typo. Same deal as Restorative Burst. It becomes more effective the more healing your target(s) will be receiving (ie raids, keep sieges) and allows for burst healing.

Potent Runes

Obtained at rank 33
All – Situational, but particularly useful against enemies with shields and other Support characters in RvR. If you’re DPSing, the mastery tactics are generally better choices for your tactic slots.

On your Feet!

Obtained at rank 35
All – Resurrects are quite powerful if you can get them off, but your friendlies shouldn’t be dieing in the first place with you around. Counting on you to fail at your job means there is usually something wrong, but maybe that’s what you want your enemies to think. The major synergy that gets brought up is Alter Fate and Grimnir’s Fury.

Sundered Motion

Obtained at 37
All – It’s obtained this late, because knockback is just plain fun to use.
PvE – The knockdown is quite situational compared to the knockback and snare in RvR.
RvR – Given that Discipline/Ancestral Inheritance/Regenerative Shielding are the big three tactics use in RvR tactic sets, this is usually the one most people will fill that last slot with.

Thick-Skulled

Obtained at rank 39
All – Yes, Grungni’s Gift is instant cast, and yes, this tactic needs to be updated. Unless something like Rune of Restoration or Blessing of Valaya is added, it’s basically useless due to the quick cast times on the other two abilities if applies to.

Core Morale Abilities

Note: the examples for each level are rough approximations of the amount of fighting to unlock each level every 60 seconds. You can of course save up and skip several cooldowns.

Level 1 Morale (solo chain pulls)

Divine Favor

Obtained at rank 8
All – This is probably the strongest Level 1 choice, simply because it heals so much, is rarely not up being only Level 1, and is useful in RvR as an emergency heal or in PvE should your tank take an unexpected burst of damage. Castable on other people is the big thing here.

Steal Life

Obtained at rank 16
All – Steal Life acts mostly as an extra, more powerful DoT with a minor self-healing component.
PvE – Nice for soloing when you want to kill fast so you don’t need to heal. In groups though, Divine Favor’s safety net is still nice to have should someone weak pull aggro.
RvR – Even if you’re DPSing, the one minute cooldown of Morales and the lack of healing you’ll have means you’d probably rather have Divine Favor.

Rune of Insanity

Obtained at rank 28
All – Runepriest-only: This one is tricky, as there are two great times to use it, and neither of them you should be encountering that often. The first is using the AP drain portion to remove a Witch Elf’s AP pool: unless you’re stacking Initiative for some reason, you’ll get jumped, and then you’ll be wanting to stay alive against the already nearly-depleted of AP Witch Elf. The second is for finishing off a healer, where you have a nice burst of damage, and essentially silencing them for a few seconds until their AP regenerates.

Level 2 Morale (several mobs, typical Scenario fighting)

Rampaging Siphon

Obtained at rank 12
All – Improved by Intelligence and Divine Fury (no -20% on the healing), this is one way for offensive Runepriests to heal their group, and if you hit enough targets, it can be a very potent instant cast group heal.
PvE – Amazing talent when AoE farming solo or with a group.

Focused Mind

Obtained at rank 20
All – Focused Mind encompasses two very handy mechanics. First, removing the crowd control effects, you are able to prevent a potentially huge amount of damage. Removing snares/roots lets your Rune of Cleansing hit healing debuffs (as you run away) first. Second, Blessing of Valaya and especially Rune of Restoration with 50% haste and no setback is an amazing output of DPS. This is definitely a powerful and universal Morale to use.

Mountain Spirit

Obtained at rank 32
All – Runepriest-only: This is a borderline ridiculous Morale, and gives Focused Mind a run for its money. Focused on group mitigation instead of raw healing output, this increases your group’s physical reduction by about 35%, and spell reduction by about 40%. While a few careers may already be close to the caps on armor (and resistances if a cap exists), you can’t complain about the 30 second duration given the 60 second Morale cooldown. Level 2 Morale is obtainable every 60 seconds in all non-solo situations if you stay in combat.

Level 3 Morale (chain AoE pulls of groups, heavy Scenario fighting, light Keep fighting)

Divine Protection

Obtained at rank 24
All – Lacking. The shield lasts 10 seconds, and the amount isn’t as much as it should be for a rank 3 Morale.
RvR – Enemy melee should be focusing one group member, so the shielding is wasted on the other 5 members.

Rune of Rebirth

Obtained at rank 36
All – Runepriest-only: Great to have on hand as an emergency self-heal should you have been in the fray enough to gain Level 3 Morale without using one of the better Level 1 or 2 Morales. It doesn’t replace Divine Favor unless you had always been saving Divine Favor for yourself.

Level 4 Morale (chain AoE pulls of whole areas, heavy Keep/City fighting)

Alter Fate

Obtained at rank 40
All – Highly situational, but highly powerful. The main problem is that you’ll usually have to pass up multiple L1/L2 Morales, AND stay alive, AND have your group members die within 30 feet of a central location, AND heal them quickly enough afterwards to let the 20% damage buff actually do something.

Runepriest Masteries

The Path of Grungni

“A master of this path focuses on powerful and direct effects, learning to both restore his allies and smite his enemies with equal skill. The path of Grungni is for those who prefer to focus on a single target at a time, be they friend or foe, and unleash powerful effects upon them.”

The following is a review of the mastery path, its abilities, and its playstyle.

WARDB Career Builder
At the link above you can see the layout of the Grungni Mastery path. The first pieces of the path to look at are the Grungni Core abilities. The abilities are:

• Oath Rune of Power
• Rune of Fire
• Rune of Restoration
• Protection of the Ancestors

And in more detail, the usefulness of the abilities, and therefore the usefulness of any improvements to them:

Oath Rune of Power

• An hour-long buff only usable on party members which increases the holder’s Strength and Intelligence by a significant amount (15% or so), and allows the holder to activate the buff to unleash a instant cast, direct damage Elemental attack (that is roughly as powerful as either of a Runepriest’s other DD abilities).
  • This is the first Oath Rune you get, so you will get some experience with it early on. Beginnning at Rank 9, however, Oath Rune of Warding (+resistances, and self-purge for a AoE DoT) becomes more useful for it’s activated effect and for survivability in PvP situations, where ranged damage dealers are more of a threat. Oath Rune of Power is still an effective buff to have for MDPS and RDPS-Casters, but typically a single Runepriest will focus on group survivability first, in order to make healing easier.
  • Even later on, Oath Rune of Iron has a greater activated damage potential, while possessing more defensively-oriented stats, so it is a more balanced approach.
  • In an interesting turn, when multiple Runepriests and coordination are present, this ability goes from the worst of the three Oath Runes to the best. Survivability of the group can be increased through coordination along with than the plethora of buffs available in a large group. Consequently, damage output, particularly burst damage (provided by Power), jumps much higher on the list.

Rune of Fire

• An instant cast, single target, direct damage Elemental attack on a short cooldown of 5 seconds.
  • Rune of Fire is one of a small few of burst damage options for the Runepriest. It sits at about 75.2% of the power of the primary nuke, Rune of Striking, and due to a 2.0 second global cooldown, it can be worked in quite punishingly while using other abilities.
  • It’s major drawback is high AP consumption – it is a draining ability (AP loss > AP regen over time) so if you use it every cooldown for too long, you will run into AP issues. It is quite effective for finishing off players and creatures that are fleeing.
  • While situational, it is one of the strongest options for burst damage outside of mastery abilities.

Rune of Restoration

• A 3.0 second cast, high value healing ability that always suffers from pushback while being attacked.
  • In a solo situation, this spell will rarely get used, but when you are allowed to freely cast, it will turn battles in your favor due to the burst healing it provides. It heals 65% of the primary HoT ability, Rune of Regeneration, but in a fifth of the time and as one burst.
  • Being a casted ability, it has much better Willpower coefficients than Rune of Regeneration, so it will scale better as well, making any improvements worthwhile.

Protection of the Ancestors

• A short-duration boon to health.
  • This one is tricky to analyze: It is quite powerful, but the cooldown management presents a problem. With improvements, though, it would be a solid pseudo-Morale ability.

Finally, the unlocked abilities and tactics.

Runic Blasting

• (Tactic): 15% crit to your bread-and-butter nukes, and also to a useful heal.
  • Without a way to increase your critical strike chance directly as of yet (although the character sheet hints that it exists), let alone 15% in one place, this tactic is worth it for anyone that will be using their nukes a lot.
  • That being said, you aren’t a super-effective damage dealer in PvE, or even PvP, and I haven’t seen any overwhelmingly positive results from “DPS Runepriests”.
  • I’d personally only take it if you find that your group has healing covered for the most part, or if you are trying to set up a “cripple”-spec Runepriest, such as with the synergy of Rune of Nullification later in the path.

Master Rune of Fury

• (Ability): You place a Master Rune on the ground, granting group members a 20% chance after using an ability to regain 50AP, so long as they are within 65 feet of the Master Rune’s fixed location.
  • A Runepriest really needs at least one of the three Master Runes, and most agree this is one of the better two of the three. At an average of 10AP off the cost of every ability casted by your party, your party’s AP will last much longer. 30AP/GCD seems to be about standard regen rate for AP, and taking nearly all abilities’ costs below 30AP on average means you would never run out of AP, unless you are being drained.
  • While the burst nature of the AP gains from the ability are uncontrollable (it might not come at the best time, such as fuller AP bars), it does promote burst damage, which is a big pro for certain careers (particularily melee). Scoop this one up.

Ancestor’s Blessing

• (Tactic): Your heals have a chance to increase the target’s AP by 50, though you can’t increase your own AP (as if it mattered).
  • Unless 50 is a base value, or the effect stacks, I don’t see this being an effective use of a tactic slot.
  • One exception could be a dedicated role healing melee, with a focus on Grimnir to improve the two best healing abilities for that task and the Master Rune of Adamant, and then placing points in Grungni just for this tactic. Even then, I’d still recommend against it.

Rune of Fortune

• (Ability): Rune of Striking v2.0. Heals your defensive target for the amount of damage you deal, for only 5AP more per cast.
  • Not much to say here, it’s a well-designed (apart from all but replacing an ability) ability that lets you damage and heal at the same time.
  • More target switching, but better rewards. Take it if you can.

Rune of Nullification

• (Tactic): Critical attacks on a target debuff their healing taken by 100% for some number of seconds (it’s bugged).
  • There’s been discussion on the forums about it, and there’s two sides to the argument: It’s too good, probably won’t make it into release at 100%; and it’s nice, but situational/random and therefore not that great.
  • Personally, I don’t think it’s anything to focus on, since it takes the career in a direction it’s not designed to head at first glance – pure DPS. If you find yourself doing a lot of damage anyways, it’s worth picking up and swapping in for RvR.

Rune of Binding

• (Ability): Instant cast 3.0 second stun that deals a tiny bit more damage than Rune of Striking (or Fortune at this point) on a 20.0 second cooldown.
  • With Rune of Sundering (and possibly Immolating Grasp) being the only other CC options, it’s an amazing ability to pick up.
  • If you went this far, it’s probably to get this ability.

Rune of Ending

• (Rank 4 Morale): Deals 1040 damage to enemies within 30 feet, healing group members for the amount of damage dealt.
  • If you hit 6 players with this ability, each of your party members (yourself included) will be healed for [6 * 1040] = 6240 life.
  • Most players haven’t been liking the effectiveness of the Rank 4 morale abilities, because in the time it takes for them to charge, you could’ve let off several lower-ranked morale abilities. However, in the Runepriest’s case, I feel like this could play in quite nicely.
  • First, Alter Fate (AoE rez + heal) and the other Mastery Morale abilities are the only options for Rank 4 Morales currently, and I don’t feel Alter Fate is a viable choice (ie, if my party is dead, it’s cause I went down first).
  • Secondly, with as many points in as Rune of Binding is, you’re not left with many other good options lower in on the other two paths.
  • Third, in an organized groups members should be staying relatively equal in terms of health, due to AoE being so effective and watching for assist trains, and a party heal shouldn’t be as wasted as some might think. It’s an incredibly powerful instant cast PBAoE that is more than capable of finishing players off, and of healing an entire party of six players to full. Not to mention letting it off in a crowded room or hallway that contains a zerg.
  • It’s conveniently half the damage of Rune of Skewering, but I would write off the versatility (DPS and healing) of Rune of Ending as the superior.
  • It’s Ramapaging Siphon’s bigger brother, so you can use that to see if you like this.

The Path of Valaya

“An arguably more subtle mastery, the path of Valaya is focused on effects which continue to linger after they’ve been invoked. A master of this path prefers to stick to tested, tried, and true slow-and-steady abilities, whether he’s building up his allies’ strength until they become unstoppable, or whether he’s grinding his enemies down with inevitable and unescapable doom.”

The following is a review of the mastery path, its abilities, and its playstyle.

WARDB Career Builder
At the link above you will see the layout of the Valaya Mastery path. The first pieces of the path to look at are the Valaya Core abilities. The abilities are:

• Spellbinding Rune
• Rune of Shielding
• Rune of Immolation
• Rune of Mending
• Oath Rune of Iron

And in more detail, the usefulness of the abilities, and therefore the usefulness of any improvements to them:

Spellbinding Rune

• A casted silence ability paired with a fast-acting DoT.
  • A 30.0 sec cooldown allows you to get a few uses out of the ability per fight, and it becomes more powerful as the fight size decreases. While the silence portion is pretty straightforward, the DoT portion is what really makes the ability shine.
  • It does 80% of a Rune of Immolation’s base damage, but in a third of the time. Therefore, a net edge in DPS over Immolation by 240%; balanced by the cooldown.
  • For burst damage, this is another nice one to improve.

Rune of Shielding

• Shields your target, preventing damage and set-back as long as the shield holds. When the shield is broken, the target will be healed slightly.
  • The story with bugs and this ability remains: the cooldown is oddly short, and there are issues with the cast time being incorrect, causing the cast bar and UI feedback to not display correctly.
  • This ability is quite nice, though, as it allows a target whose health is going down to suddenly spike in the opposite direction.
  • The duration shielded while under fire is around 1-2 seconds at Rank 1, while the ability can usually only shield a single hit by Rank 4. Don’t count on this for set-back prevention, in other words.
  • The main reason to use this is due to its high hps and h/AP values. It has a superior un-sustained hps and hp/AP value to all other “direct” heals. The cooldown is the limiting factor here, so most likely this is supposed to be a 20 second cooldown like it’s Zealot cousin.
  • That all aside, you should be using this every cooldown, so its a great ability to improve.

Rune of Immolation

• A standard DoT.
  • There’s not much need to explain this one; its the best offensive ability you have.
  • Of all the offensive mastery core abilities, this is the best one to improve.

Rune of Mending

• A two part, combination direct heal and HoT.
  • Due to the way over-time abilities are so effective right now, this is going to be your “go-to” heal later on in the game. (Rune of Shielding and Grungni’s Gift currently are effective, but it is reliant on Rune of Shielding staying at such a low cooldown.)
  • Rune of Mending currently seems to be working off two Willpower coefficients for each part of the ability. While this is common in other MMOs, in WAR the ability seems to be “double-dipping” and pulling from Willpower twice; as opposed to pulling from it once and then splitting it between the two portions of the ability. Effectively, Rune of Mending scales twice as well as single-portion abilities.
  • You want to let the whole duration of the HoT run, since the spell has poor efficiency, and a large AP cost that can drain you quite fast if you spam it. The HoT portion also heals more, anyways.
  • Of all the defensive mastery core abilities, this is currently the second best one (because of Shielding) to improve.

Oath Rune of Iron

• Increases your chance to dodge, chance to disrupt, your overall healing, and decreases your chance to be critically hit. The granted ability is a potent single-target DoT.
  • This is the Oath Rune you’ll want to use on yourself in group situations. The Willpower, and therefore overall healing, is the main reason for doing this, while the the extra survivability (particularily against an already easy to counter ranged attacker) is icing on the cake.
  • Other support characters should be given this, but there are usually better Oath Runes for other archetypes. Unless you run into an encounter or a group of enemy players (not as big of an issue in RvR as Order) stacking both physical ranged and caster ranged (use Warding for caster-only), of course.
  • Group Willpower/healing buffs are few and far between, you’ll use this Oath Rune on yourself for most of the game, and the granted ability is the most universally potent.
  • Definately worth the improvements.

Onto the unlocked abilities and tactics.

Immolating Grasp

• (Tactic): A chance on immolation ticks to snare the target considerably and drain their AP.
  • The AP drain is the big part of this tactic, since you don’t have any other AP drains as a Runepriest.
  • Immolation gets used a lot, and is typically on multiple targets, so this is a great tactic for small group skirmishes, and is quite nice for large fights to sow chaos throughout the enemy.
  • However, in a larger group, you’ll most likely be assisting targets to death one by one, and that means you’ll have more capable debuffers on your target. Regardless of a focus on healing and assisting targets though, if you have time to DPS you’ll be throwing out Rune of Immolation on other targets, so the tactic is still not that bad.
  • The overall effectiveness of this talent will depend on how much your group forces you to rely on the core “defensive” tactics (Ancestral Inheritance, Regenerative Shielding, and to a lesser extent, Discipline) based on how well they defend you.

Master Rune of Speed

• (Ability): Places an 65ft range aura that eminates from a stationary point. Master Rune of Speed reduces ability build-up by .25 seconds.
  • Note, some testers are thinking it is -.25 second per 1.0second of the cast (so a 3.0 second cast becomes 2.25), which would make this Master Rune incredibly effective.
  • As it is though, this has the most use in a RDPS or Support-heavy group, since those characters have many more casted abilities.
  • If you don’t like this Master Rune, just skip it: you’ll typically have enough points to pick up Fury or Adamant from the other trees.

Earth’s Shielding

• (Tactic): While a Rune of Shielding is active, any attack made against it will debuff a random stat of the attacker by 120 for 10 seconds. There’s no hidden cooldown on the debuff effect.
  • It’s unreliable, and Rune of Shielding only lasts for a hit or two, meaning that even if there’s lag, only perhaps 3-4 stats will be debuffed. Of those four, only two will really be of any use, assuming Wounds can even be debuffed.
  • If Rune of Shielding is supposed to be only a 2.0 second cast with a 6.0 second or less cooldown, though, you could keep refreshing it and debuff quite a few stats.
  • PvE monsters appear to possess stats, so depending on which stats they possess, and which can be debuffed, this may have some use. -120 Toughness on a raid boss could amount to quite a bit of additional raid DPS, for example.
  • Overall, there are better uses for the tactic slot.

Rune of Burning

• (Ability): A channeled DoT.
  • Currently the chance to be set-back while channeling is not working according to beta testers, who also say that it is slated to be fixed in the near future.
  • It has a poor d/AP ratio that gets even worse when you are hit. There is also the inability to perform other actions while channeling it.
  • However, the dps of the ability is astounding. At rank 25, Rune of Immolation is 28 dps, while Rune of Burning is around 173 dps un-sustained (if sustained, that number would be approximately halved).
  • Frankly, the true usefulness of this ability mostly comes down to whether or not you can afford to spend at least half of your time DPS’ing.
  • Most have said it’s a nice ability to have for those few times you really need to finish someone off or pump out some damage, and it makes solo PvE quite easy (getting most monsters down to 50% life by the time they reach you).

Efficient Runecarving

• (Tactic): Ticks of one ability give you a 20% chance to proc a bonus effect the next time you cast the other.
  • Rune of Immolation is already cheap, and there is only about a 60% chance to proc the effect due to Rune of Mending’s short duration. Rune of Mending is also quite expensive, if you’re using it over a more appropriate heal for the sake of getting a proc. The AP savings are one of the reasons to use this tactic, but Restorative Burst is a much more universal option if you have AP issues.
  • Rune of Mending is only a 2.0 second cast. If you think that you have a use for it to be instant cast, them most likely you aren’t playing how you should be.
  • Overall, the benefits of this tactic are poor when compared to other tactics.

Rune of Fate

• (Ability): A vampiristic DoT.
  • With such a long cooldown and duration, it is a convenient “fire and forget” ability.
  • It does around twice the damage of Rune of Immolation, at around twice the duration; while healing for 100% of the damage dealt, pushing its efficiency over Rune of Immolation. It even has the same low AP cost of 30.
  • If you went this far, this is a great ability to pick up, as it is useful no matter if you’re healing or DPSing.

Valaya’s Shield

• (R4 Morale): An AoE group HoT that restores 25 AP/sec.
  • The only strictly-healing/utility T4 morale ability currently available for Runepriests.
  • The big reason for getting this is for giving your group essentially unlimited AP for 15 seconds.
  • The heal portion is like giving your entire group a slightly more powerful version of Rune of Regeneration. Which of course can stack with Rune of Regeneration. This is quite a nice morale ability to have in situations where you want to quickly pre-HoT your whole group, such as deciding to stand and charge of AoE characters/monsters.
  • It suffers from some issues as all other high-rank morale abilities do (notably, trying to hold onto your morale without using it on multiple lower-ranked morales), but if Alter Fate isn’t for you and you’re this far into Valaya, it’s a good choice.

The Path of Grimnir

“This path is concerned with runes which affect large, sweeping areas as they unleash their innate power. A specialist in this path is an expert at changing the ebb and tide of combat by either bolstering his allies’ entire front line, or by sending vast swaths of crushing power across the enemy masses.”

The following is a review of the mastery path, its abilities, and its playstyle.

WARDB Career Builder
At the link above you will see the layout of the Grimnir Mastery path. The first pieces of the path to look at are the Grimnir Core abilities. The abilities are:

• Rune of Might
• Oath Rune of Warding
• Rune of Serenity
• Blessing of Valaya
• Rune of Cleaving

And in more detail, the usefulness of the abilities, and therefore the usefulness of any improvements to them:

Rune of Might

• Your standard PBAoE.
  • Early on, you’ll use this a bit, and it remains useful for AoE farming throughout your leveling. However, it’s only marginally useful for RvR, and come endgame you’ll be healing a lot more anyways.

Oath Rune of Warding

• Resistances against all three types of spell-based attacks. The granted ability is an AoE DoT.
  • The resistances are pretty straightforward, and are really only useful in certain situations.
  • You’ll find that you use this ability primarily for the granted effect, which, in an organized group, is simply brutal.

Rune of Serenity

• A bouncing HoT.
  • “fire and forget” setup means you’ll be getting a lot of use out of this heal.
  • This is of the big (or few/only) reasons to put points into Grimnir at the moment.

Blessing of Valaya

• Your standard AoE heal.
  • To be used when two or more group members are missing life.
  • No special set-back rules (like Rune of Restoration) means that you will find some success casting this during combat to save yourself and your party, but for the most part, try to be be proactive with healing.

Rune of Cleaving

• A supplemental AoE attack to Rune of Might. Line AoE style, and it’s also deals its damage as a DoT.
  • If you’re AoEing, you’ll want to keep this DoT ticking, but for the most part, you’re not designed to AoE that well.

Finally, the unlocked abilities and tactics.

Extended Battle

• (Tactic): It does what it says.
  • And isn’t good. Skip it, unless the group you run with really needs a sub-par AoE’er or you run with an AoE farming group.

Master Rune of Adamant

• (Ability): Places a 65ft range aura that eminates from a stationary point. Master Rune of Adamant periodically heals allies slightly, provided they are in range.
  • This has the potential to be a powerful Master Rune, but it is almost dependent on group composition and coordination.
  • You’ll find that melee careers often run out of range, and the cooldown prevents you from re-placing it as often as you’d need to in a melee-heavy group. A ranged-heavy group will usually stand close to one another, although there is by default a variance of 50 feet between Support and RDPS, so there is only a certain amount of variance before someone is at a poor range for their archetype/playstyle.
  • Assuming that endgame PvE-encounters function remotely close to existing MMOs, this ability will be easier to use effectively in PvE.
  • Overall, it’s nice, but you’ll need to formulate strategies and coordination with your group to work around the range limitations.

Concussive Runes

• (Tactic): AoE targets will be randomly debuffed and do 50% less damage to you.
  • Mostly the same deal as Extended Battle; don’t take it unless you’re in an AoE farming group.
  • Overall quite poor: if you’re taking damage, you really shouldn’t be AoEing.

Rune of Battle

• (Ability): A freindly target you buff will gain a pulsing AoE damage aura.
  • It’s effective, but limited by the cooldown. Again, for (the tank of) AoE farming groups.
  • For the amount of use you’ll get out of this in your average day of play, it’s not worth it.

Ancestor’s Echo

• (Tactic): Does what it says.
  • There are conflicting reports of whether or not it it heals on HoT ticks. If and only if it does, it will become pretty useful, but by itself it’s not really worth it.
  • In particular, this high up in Grimnir you’re likely going to be using the Grimnir abilities to heal, which means you have Blessing of Valaya, which is quite situational (among its other drawbacks).
  • The shield is again, one or two attacks, and should just be treated like an additional heal effect.
  • Of all the mastery tactics, this is the only viable one to replace the core tactics for a support-oriented Runepriest.

Grimnir’s Fury

• (Ability): A group ressurect that heals to a higher percentage than other ressurects, and gives a brief damage increase for those ressurected.
  • The situational nature of this ability means that quite likely, you won’t get as much use out of this as you’d like to. Alter Fate is a close relative to this ability, if you need it to be instant cast at the cost of the health restored and the damage increase.
  • At only 2.0 seconds of a longer cast than Rune of Life, restoring 30% more life at ressurect, and giving the ressurected some extra damage to work with, it’s quite useful. It is also better to use than Rune of Life for single targets if you’re not going to use it again for a while.
  • Any time you focus on ressurection as a staple of your build (this, Alter Fate, or On Your Feet!), make sure you’ll be able to get some protection from Warband members so that you can get your party up and running again.
  • This ability is one of the closest things you’ll have to a second Rank 4 morale on a separate cooldown, but overall, situational.

Rune of Skewering

• (Rank 4 Morale): A highly damaging line AoE attack.
  • While other careers have morale abilities that come close to, or surpass, Skewering in terms of single target damage, Skewering has a definiate advantage in overall damage potential.
  • The range is quite far, but careful aiming is paramount, given the amount of investment to be able to use it.
  • When AoE farming, this isn’t super effective unless you can quickly move from pull to pull (which is hard to do when you’re pulling the entire camp) and stay in combat to build morale.
  • It’s one of the few options for excessive burst damage you have as a Runepriest, but overall, AoE and DPS are both things we don’t do that well.

 

Source: WAR Forums

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