Runesmith (Rune/Defense) Advice needed

[justdnd]

How would you skill a Runesmith character? What skills would you max first? What has priority?


I've never built a proper Defense Character before, nor a Rune Character, so advice is apreciated. Thanks

[stiros19]

I would also like to know.

[Kirsha]

Here's some food for thought that I found on another forum, but I don't know how good it is...

https://www.gog.com/forum/titan_quest_anniversary_edition/my_level_50_runesmith_build_runes_defense

[joj0.st4r]

why not try to find out what works for you
why do you need the get spoonfed builds?

[SolenyaZX]

I'm currently playing this mastery combination as well, and I must say it seems to have good solo play potential. I'm only at lvl 13 right now, Normal difficulty, still early days for this character, but looking at the masteries, there seem to be a number of aspects that could work well together.

Defense is great for melee builds when you don't have other players or pets to help keep the aggro off of you, so it's a solid choice if you're going solo. With the added Thrown weapons that are 1 handed, having a shield alongside a ranged weapon is nice, so they make a good situational weapon choice. So in Ragnarok, defense is viable for both melee and medium-range attack types.

But in this case, adding Rune mastery gives you access to elemental damage boosts to pick up some of the slack in Defense Mastery's damage potential, and abilities like Sacred Rage which make tanking all the more fun when your HP actually drops below 40%. The extra damage absorption is great for hard hitting enemies, and the speed is always nice if you have a weapon equipped with Life Leech.

All in all, a good combination, but according to your tastes, there might be better combinations with Defense. And Rune mastery has some other nice combos as well.

[Atomic Kid]

i currently have a lv64 runesmith with 0 deaths its one of the tankiest combos in the game if built right.

the biggest weakness is you will be spliting poiints in all str,dex, and int for me i did 1str/1int and did 1 dex/int until my str and dex were good..then continuing to up int and occanionally add to hp here and there...

core skills is the entire rune weapon tree, quck recovery, battle awareness tree (except the base skill). also rune:feather is vital since you will be equipping melee weapons...from the defense tree also the 3 passive dual hits, thunder stirke and seal of fate...ya so many skills lol...it took a long time to get to this point and mage gear takes a long time to reach decent stats...

with maxed focus, a good shield, massive cooldown (the most vital gear in the game for runesmith is archmage clasp for good reason for -40% recharge which makes quick recovery drop so much that you will always be albe to use it before it turns off..also the archmage clasps effects things like rally and most def aderline (which causes you to skip the cooldown skill on adlerine itself as the cooldown will hit 6 sec without even trying with mage gear) and archmage clasp comes with +30% atk speed which rune smith wants as well..most def spend your upgrade from this and hope for good mods..

i tried energy shield but rune+defense does not have enough mp to make it work..highest i got my mp was 1100 which results in 1000+ absorb..not the 6000+ absorb a 3000mp cost one can cast so its more for mage+rune then warrior+rune...

but overall its about as tanky as guardian with infinite quick recovery and even a backup if enemy removes all your buffs cause rune:absorb reduces the shield coodlown a lot and a lot of runes good movse are passives...

and this isnt even counting sacred rage which stacks more tankness and more cooldown reduction making even collous form come back in record times lol....

rune explode and rune mines i find are garbage and the stones skill isnt very good either and runesnith is strapped for points so i left that at 0 and left batter at 0 cause i rather spam rune weapon...

these 2 have such amazing synergy and make an amazing tank that even though you are in mostly mage gear with some 452 str gear here and there and most def archmage clasp...hes unkiallable most def and passes 1000+ int without even trying so even without +to elemental damage he hits hard and if you get those he will hit harder though my terrible luck i havent gotten that far yet...

from what i noticed he cannot reach the dps numbers of dex builds and his aoe is a mess as he really only has seal of fate though thats still a good move but it takes forever to go off..but hes prob the top tier tied with guardian as highest survivability in the game, once you get archmage clasp and good mixes of warrior+mage gear, the enemy wont be able to kill him very easily.

and ya this is a late game super tank build, hes much weaker then all other defense builds even the other int types until you give him good gear and his stats are all over the place until like lv58 or so...but he does pay of with a close to unkillable char that kills things back about the speed of the guardian with his pet buff

edit: here is a pic of my char
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1354870380
still in epic so has epic lv stuff but i did hand him gear from my conquerer...he prob could hit much harder if he had legendary level wepaons or i got a lucky purple

int without rune weapon is 596 and it shoots up to 1226 with max stacks..

[Atomic Kid]

now that im even stronger i have even more recondmendations...for base str you want only a mere 80-100 ya very low lol as the best sword in the game doesnt need much str and shields will be reduced to 0 str req with good gear and dex you want around 350 for the best fire sword...

the sword all rune chars want no matter what is levateinn...its has
224-228 raw a 40% phys damage increase, hits fast, 110 fire damage, 660!!! burning damage, 20% reduced resistances on enemies hit and grants a skill that burns enemies ontop that...really op and has pretty high req of 440ish str and 350ish dex...thats the stats you should shoot for but most of the str req will be droped by other gear and also the dex req is very reachable esp if you have reduce all req though runesmiths want enough dex so their da and oa isnt awful so you still want to add to dex after getting enough dex for the endgame swords...

head slot you prob want tiresias guide, -10% all equip req, 150 oa, +20% int, -15% recharge +150 da, 150 less energy reseved (Removing all of it pretty much)...that or tracker hood is pretty good esp since swords also have 10% pierce ratio..i also tried things like visor of the shadowlord which is an amazing helm with a reasonable str req if you can get plenty of equip req down %

chest slot i found plate of toutaris (only if your base str is liek 150 like me >_> it has +1 defense skills, +25% shield block!!!!, +25% da!!!!, -10% total speed <not a big deal>, and high bleeding and fire and pierce resist and 767 armor rating) or the next best option mantle of sa'jun (massive boost to all resistances in game and has a low str req...not a bad armor overall...and despite how good mantle of sajinn is, you can get it in act 3 epic and its common so ya you should have it by the time you reach act4 epic if you farm until it drops

shield:prob a green from those valkries (if only i could get a good one) or the act 4 ant shield green (both give good mods and can roll for others), for purples i cannot think of anything better then aionios...massive +60% resist in both poison and pierce and all emental, +200 da and +20% armor protection ontop that...

boots:demonskin walkers..+1 all skills, massive 60% posion and pierce, 30ish elemental resit and bleeding and +20% all elemental damage, prob the best mage boots in the game imo..if you cannot get that then leggings of the defiled is much more common and has lower resists overall but also offers 100 oa and 150 da and very high bleeding res...farm hades in epic for leggings of defield and him again in legendary for demonskin walkers, the better boots do take awhile to drop though since they are better

gloves: has to be archmage clasp or runesmith starts to fall off later on...he really needs that badly lol for +40% atk speed,+90-100% casting speed, -35%-45% recharge...vital for all runemaster builds...you prob want to be certain it at least has 40% recharge as if its too low your cooldowns wont be low enough to get infite rally and quick recovery.

artifact:thoths glory:maxes out all your shutdown resists even if enemy strips your buffs, +1 all skills, and the most important part...-20% all requirements which stacks so well with other things...other good ones are sigil of bast or star of ishtar for +20% dex and str but i feel thorths glory was built for runemaster builds

amulet: anything with resists so amulet of hygeia and blessing of gods are quite easy to get, higher tier ones are myrmodons pendant or torc of cernunnos and those should be the endgame ones you shoot for...

rings:it can be whatever, i switched these around a lot, hale/plato rings arent bad early game when you are struggling with low int and str, later on chirons loop for pierce/poison res, celestial bond for elemental res, crest of murong for all resists getting a small boost, ring of the dragonlord seems built for runemaster, and so many more, test many rings out and switch out as needed and leave some in inventory to switch your resistsances up based on matchup.

overall by the end of the game with gimped str (went too high with 150 base i think 80-100 is prob the right amound) runesmiths hit for 10k-13k (13k is when aderline with maxed defensive reaction goes on...rally will have a lower cooldown then duration so that'll always be up, same for quick recovery so those 2 buffs will always be on you unless you forget, and ya prob one of the most unkillable toons with good endgame gear but ya he needs archmage clasp and 1 more -15% recharge somehwere to become really good but he is amazing if you do get that...ya about -55% rechage or more is when he realizes his potential, higher means moves come back even sooner though you dont have to go for -90% coodown reductions

and ya hes one of the chars if you are patient enough to get the hardcore achivements with though conqueror prob can get it easier until runesmith gets to about lv55+ and has good gear.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1360667622

though i prob have to start over now that i know i botched my str and have endgame gear if i do restart >_>

[Atomic Kid]

also if you arent going to use rune weapon...going rune master is pointless as ya lol thats the core skil that makes everything work well other then rune:feather which allows you to equip melee and a shield with almost no str req esp stacked with reduced to all equip req (you can hit -100% all str req on shield pretty easily and quite high on the rest with armor handling adding a lot of str - % ontop of that...)

edit: rune weapon tree is prety much what saves runemaster from being underwhelming, of course looking at the skill point req to cap the tree it takes forever to max out which doesnt help matters much and ya you have to max it all to see it at full power...you prob wont see it maxed out 100% until lv55 which is when runemaster starts to become ridicous with 1000s of int with stacked rune weapon and all its addons as well and with good gear casting spells with that boosted int and wiping mobs out..even hitting the enmy with 16 points in the all elemetal dps up add on does a ton of damage cause that gets multiplied by your int and % to all elemetnal damage though it costs 6 mana though another add on higher up the tree mana steals so you wont run out anyways..

and transmution makes a lot of weapons really strong esp at +4 all skills where it makes 99% of your weapon base into elemental which is really good..it wont go above 100% so ya its quite good

and even if you go int warrior, rune offers seal of fate which wipes everything out cause it hits 1300 all elemental per hit with +4 all skills maxed (1300 fire, ice, and lighting at the same time so 3900 damage geez and thats before int modifier and % to all elemental damage modifer which rune mastery will raise into the 1000s with ease so it hits like a truck) and lowers resists ontop of that about 70% all resists down for 3 sec,with high cooldown it will be up before it goes off which is great...so even runemaster has something to use once his rune weapon stacks are capped and pure mage with rune has more things to toss at the enemy

[Billy Pilgrim]

I've played a runesmith through the whole game. It's a very strong character good defences and can get a lot of damage done, actually insane amounts of damage.

Please, please don't spend any points in strength, doing that would waste one of the strongest aspects of this class: wearing T1 shield without any investment! Runeword feather + armour handling takes care of that for you.

Doing this lets you focus on int + dex, basically your dex breakpoint will be stonebinders req. So about 400ish can get away with less if you have -req gear, but I like to have that much anyway because of the extra DA it provides.

Tunnel the rest of your attribute points into Int and some health, the one downside of runemastery is it only provides 640hp at 32 points I'd compensate a bit for that get at least 400hp extra (about 10 pts).

Skills:

Levelling: Magical charge. Period. Max this and run through the game, its actually so hilariously good you don't even need a magical weapon any white very fast base will do!

I preferred shield charge over thunderstrike, it does more damage and the charge is faster, but everyone has their different taste. Don't take rune word explode, its additional effects don't proc with melee, and the shield procs from defence are all very good anyway.

Rune mastery:
Apart from the rune weapon line: choose between runic mines or seal of fate. I took seal of fate for the resist reduction (1 point into seal and maxed aftershock), do this especially if you're going the transumation route (which is basically the only reason you pick runesmith). But runic mines provides some decent CC if you prefer that instead. You want rune of life and rune word absorb too.

Defense:
I ignored the adrenaline line untill I was lvl 70+ and looking for places to spend point, the only synergy it gives you is total speed %. With transmutation %phys doesn't scale your damage. I'd say Rally, quick recovery, all the shield procs, armour handling and colossus form are staples. And the previously mentioned shield charge.

For equipment just focus on the best int gear you can wear (I suggest armour of the magi) other than that there are a bunch of great shield ainoios comes to mind especially. But any shield with good resists will do, and stonebinders. You want +4 skills to get 100% chance of a shield proc.

Weapons:
Any very fast base, basically I would go: normal difficulty A3: sabertooth A5: enhenjars fate, do this for every difficulty level. Very fast attack base is important because your damage comes from shield procs = more attacks more procs.

Its simple, fun and effective build. I highly recommend it, also easy to farm items for, and doesn't rely on anything special.

[Atomic Kid]

i def agree that magical charge is busted on normal..max that first for rune weapon even over transmution and watch normal mode melt...and ya its funny when enemies hit you and it reflects all 3 elemets (fire,ice,lighting) and it 1 shots them...it prob should be the 2nd move you max after rune feather...though id do say seal of fate with 1 point and max addon is still good (you prob wont be maxing seal of fate until lv65 since you have too many other things to work on so its more a resist nuke then dps early on..

and ya rune:explode is awful and rune:,mines isnt good but 1 point for the aoe slow isnt too bad but not something you max until like lv75+, i find for aderline you can just skip the cooldown redcution move and the base and just max defensive reaction as cooldown equips will make it hit 6 sec since it stacks and with just 1 point in cooldown reduction addon and cooldown equip it will hit the cap of 90% cooldown and thus always be on so its only a 10 point investment so i usually do that after maxing rally tree and quick recovery...its more the % total speed not the phys % that makes it good imo...

the stones skills are garbage too cuase you arent a petmaser, you wont be getting gear with bonus to all pets so leaving those at 0 is a good idea esp in epic and legendary

i havent tried keeping str at 50 but with 80-100 you can at least equip str based gear thoughout normal when rune is very squishy still and then transistion to int based gear in epic when they are good...even the really good stuff like the templar gear that req 280-300 str since rune+Def gives so much str on 64 points in mastery...and a maxed armor handling makes equiping low str gear possible even in the early game when this build is very squishy still which is a long time lv1-55...

edit: in fact i'd say that you should max a majoriy of rune weapon tree (only leave the one that gives life steal at 1 for awhile) then max the 3 defense dual wields...of course the first thing you max is rune feather or going low str wont work if you are going all int gear thoughout the game then ya i guess you can leave the str at 50 the entire game though i find str based gear all though normal makes it a lot easier...and with a mere 82 str i can equip act 4-5 normal str gear without a problem with maxed armor handling helping which makes dying as runesmith when hes the most frail (no infinite rally or quick recovery) not as bad, when i was wearing all int gear in normal pre infinite rally/quick recovery, i was chugging potions like crazy cause ya hes not tanky until later on

maxing the dual wield moves of def 1st wont allow you to put your high int to good use and ya it makes rune seem weak when it should be strong so rune weapon tree def takes proity though 1 point in a lot of the defense tree def helps a lot esp things like collousus form and 1 point in each dual weild still at lesat makes you dual hit 18% of the time and level 1 all rally gives +15% all resist (it'll be +50% all resist later on with 5k healing) and 1 point in seal of fate and add on (max addon later) gives a resist down nuke and maxing seal of fate way later makes it kill things

a lot of moves are going to be 1 pointers while you work on rune weapon tree except the hp steal move and then the dual wield of defense passive takes awhile to max...so ya rune does take awhile to get going..

i still think archmage clasp is better then stonebinders esp since a lot of gear comes with +1 to all skill or +2 and you only need +4 to get max level skills...and archmage clasp makes infinite rally and quick recovery possible and gives massive casting speed and atk speed bonuses ontop that

[mrsmjau]

Thank you for all your advice on this class build.

[Atomic Kid]

one more thing...if you wont use mantle of sa'jun then you'll prob use tunic of the magi in your armor slot and instead of throths glory will be using knot of isis or sigil of bast for your artifact..

imo tunic of the magi is a weaker form of mantle of sa'jun with lower armor rating and boosts to the same resistances so it could work but lower armor might get you killed...the +10% total speed and +200 or so da on tunic of the magi is good though...mantle of sa'jun only has +50 da, 5% more block chance, and small +15 to str,dex, and int and 80 more armor rating

going 50 base str is def doable after playing runesmith a 2nd time but you have to rush to max rune:feather or you will get gear that you cannot use really fast and you'll be going through runemaster before unlocking defnse resulting in your str going up pretty slow...if you raise your str to 82-100 and use plenty of reduction to all gear and hopefully get the act 4 + to str quests a couple times (usually by about epic after you finish both str boosting quests both in normal and epic you get enough str) you can wear the better mantle of sa'jun or you will be forced to settle with a weaker version of tunic of the magi...and maxing armor handling is vital to making mantle of sa'jun usable and + to all skills to make it req less str

i mean tunic of magi is good enough and you save about 8-13 points from str but you lose so much armor rating, extra shield block, lower resists compared to just adding very little bit of str to get 82-102 str (preferably 82) and wearing the better version of pretty much the same armor except one req str and other req int

you might have to wear a hale ring in 1 slot until you get to act 4 epic and finish the str boosting quest or maybe even till act4 legendary to get those str boosts again to get enough str to wear mantle of sujinn all the time...im not sure on what mods these 2 can roll on the blacksmith quests but you could techically get decent mods on it from that..

but the main reason to raise str to 82-102 is to make the early game a lot less of a headache, being forced into mage gear pre tunic of the magi you are so squishy and you have to get so close you will come close to dying a lot with only things like sacred rage kicking in to save you a lot...with str gear at least until early epic you wont seem as squishy and the small str build can wear the mantle of sa'jun so doing that is def not a waste. and the mastery points and armor handling will allow you to equip most str based gear that will increase surviability.