Why thief rune?

[Eight Samurai.6840]

I’m looking at the new meta builds for core warrior and the elite spec Berserker. Why is it better now to have thief runes as opposed to scholar runes for raids and fractals? I just don’t see how the thief rune provides more dps than scholar runes. Can anyone explain the reasoning?

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

SnowCrows covers it on the Warrior page...https://snowcrows.com/raids/guides/warrior/warrior/banner/ (search for "Scholar vs Thief")

• If you have a Druid (and therefore Spotter), Superior Rune of the Thief will practically always perform better
• Without Spotter, performance is similar

The main reason: 10% bonus damage while flanking, vs 5% bonus with high health. Basically, if you can flank as often as you retain 90% health, "of Thief" is as good or better than "of the Scholar." And if you can flank more often, you'll do much better.

[KelyNeli.4516]

Rune of strength to rule them all.I dont like builds where people gives minimal window for human or latency caused errors.Fluctuantes during following your own rotations could have a major impact on your performance leaving you losing might during fight due to might duration going out separately for each stack of might, you could quickly end up losing about 20 stacks when you forget yourself when you dodge or engage in other active deffense could cause you to lose more damage than any rune could actually give you.25 stacks of might equals to 1000 power for warrior, so it is pretty important if you have way to maintain these stacks at any cost, thats why i also sigil of strength in weapon for extra might so i could easily keep up to 19 stacks thanks only to that sigil and runes by just critting, maxing out might stacks with some utility on the other hand.It is pretty lame that all the tests and damage analysis are done purely on a golem with permament bonuses taking for granted max stacks of might. There is no way warrior could keep 25 stacks at 100% uptime without anything that could affect its duration or generation.

[Eight Samurai.6840]

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:SnowCrows covers it on the Warrior page...https://snowcrows.com/raids/guides/warrior/warrior/banner/ (search for "Scholar vs Thief")

• If you have a Druid (and therefore Spotter), Superior Rune of the Thief will practically always perform better
• Without Spotter, performance is similar

The main reason: 10% bonus damage while flanking, vs 5% bonus with high health. Basically, if you can flank as often as you retain 90% health, "of Thief" is as good or better than "of the Scholar." And if you can flank more often, you'll do much better.

Thanks for the link, that was an interesting read. It seems as though thief rune only has a benefit if you attack from behind. I guess I would rather stick with scholar runes for my build because I play almost all game modes of gw2 and thief runes would be extremely situational, while scholar runes might provide slightly less dps, they still give a dps stats if I am at lower health.

[cryorion.9532]

@KelyNeli.4516 said:Rune of strength to rule them all.I dont like builds where people gives minimal window for human or latency caused errors.Fluctuantes during following your own rotations could have a major impact on your performance leaving you losing might during fight due to might duration going out separately for each stack of might, you could quickly end up losing about 20 stacks when you forget yourself when you dodge or engage in other active deffense could cause you to lose more damage than any rune could actually give you.25 stacks of might equals to 1000 power for warrior, so it is pretty important if you have way to maintain these stacks at any cost, thats why i also sigil of strength in weapon for extra might so i could easily keep up to 19 stacks thanks only to that sigil and runes by just critting, maxing out might stacks with some utility on the other hand.It is pretty lame that all the tests and damage analysis are done purely on a golem with permament bonuses taking for granted max stacks of might. There is no way warrior could keep 25 stacks at 100% uptime without anything that could affect its duration or generation.

But those benchmarks are for group setups, where might is provided by support (druid, firebrand, ...).It is completely normal and realistic to get permanent 25 might on encounters where group stays together.Also, those benchmarks don't take into account damage bonus from broken defiance bar.It is just a guideline to tell how well a certain build can perform under perfect, uniform conditions relatively to each other (with some exceptions, e.g. confusion/torment builds).

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@"Eight Samurai.6840" said:...if you attack from behind."Flanking" in GW2 is "anywhere except from right in front of the foe," which is most anywhere. If you're part of the team, it's a trivial requirement once you train yourself to avoid looking for the whites of their eyes.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@"KelyNeli.4516" said:It is pretty lame that all the tests and damage analysis are done purely on a golem with permament bonuses taking for granted max stacks of might. There is no way warrior could keep 25 stacks at 100% uptime without anything that could affect its duration or generation.tl;dr these are benchmarks, your mileage might vary

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These are "benchmarks," not "realistic values for real world conditions, averaged over all potential situations that we might think of." The idea is to remove all variables and compare builds under the most equivalent situations as possible. It is intended not designed to be achievable in the real world consistently; the goal is to be 100% replicable for those trying to learn the rotations.

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There are four scenarios they could use:

• No boons or buffs,
• Self-generated boons,
• "Reasonably maintainable boons," based on GW2 Raidar reports to determine what is typical in raids.
• All boons or buffs, which is what the organizers use.

The first and second are unrealistic & useless, because these builds are designed for coordinated content: no player is ever without buffs generated by someone else in that context. The third sounds like what you think should happen. The problem is that it's a moving target that doesn't exist in nature: there is no "this is what everyone does," because, as you note, there's unpredictability.

The fourth has the following advantages:

• It's easily set at the golem; no need to compare to a website to see if it's the same.
• Everyone can agree what it is; it's not a moving target, it doesn't need to be debated for accuracy.
• Some people actually come close to the idealized situation, particularly those who run the benchmarks. (I can't do it and it's impressive to me that they can.)

And finally, "benchmarking" in general is an idealized process. When car manufacturers describe "0-60mph in under six seconds," they don't expect any consumer to actually manage it (it wouldn't be safe). It's a measure of just what the engine can do, in ideal circumstances. And, in theory, any car owner can try to match it, if they can get to a race track.

In GW2, it's easy to replicate the mechanics required to replicate the benchmarks. That leaves player skill/learning as the only variable.