Introduction

Brains? Braaaains! It is I, Zombie Columbus, come to fill your braaains with more information about the Rune-keeper! Unlike the other class diaries, many of you will have never even played a Rune-keeper when you read this. I will do my best to take that into account. Reading the 1-50 diary I wrote will help as well.

The Rune-keeper’s three Trait Sets were designed to be fairly straightforward as to what aspects of the Rune-keepers gameplay would be enhanced (instant damage, induction damage, or healing), yet still present some interesting possibilities for hybridization. The first bonus of each Trait Set is more useful while in the opposite attuned direction as the rest of the set, and the third in each line is beneficial to any attunement direction (more details below). This, plus a number of traits in each set that are useful to either damage dealers or healers, is intended to give flexibility to a more experimentally inclined Rune-keeper.

Trait Sets

Solitary Thunder

"When alone, a Rune-keeper’s stormy nature is allowed to run rampant."
This trait-line primarily modifies Wrath of Storm skills and some Chill of Winter skills. As such, it focuses on spiky damage, quick abilities that are useful while foes are wailing on you, minor debuffing, and random chance. It is mostly geared toward the solo player (although dealing quick burst damage can be useful while grouped) and enables the Rune-keeper’s fairly weak disabling abilities to become more viable.

Traits in the Set:

Two traits will give Wrath of Storm skills the ability to put debuffs on your targets that increase damage dealt to them. Another will empower Epic Crash to remove those debuffs and deal additional damage. Other traits will increase the power of survival skills like Shocking Touch and Chilling Rhetoric.

Trait Set Bonuses:

Each of the Rune-keeper Trait Sets starts with opening up a skill to be usable at all attunement levels. Solitary Thunder will open up Chilling Rhetoric, a great skill for dealing with adds or to open a fight with. While it can normally only be used when Battle attuned, this Trait Set will allow it to be used while Healing attuned.

The third bonus of each Trait Set has an effect tied to attunement of both directions. Solitary Thunder will give Rune-keepers a bonus to critical magnitude of all skills (damage and healing) for each attunement step past the Steady state. This means a Rune-keeper who has gone down this Trait Set will still have some bonuses (specifically increased heal criticals) if he needs to switch to healing mid-combat.

Capstone Skill: Vivid Imagery

Wrath of Storm skills are all about single target attacks, but not Vivid Imagery. This long cooldown skill will shock a number of enemies adjacent to the Rune-keeper with images of their demise. This leads to a short, random duration daze, similar to Shocking Touch.

Legendary Capstone Trait: Perfect Imagery

When the top of the Trait Set is achieved, Vivid Imagery can be upgraded to perfection. The skill not only does more damage and can be used more frequently, but the daze duration is doubled. This skill becomes a powerful tool for escaping from tricky situations, or just damaging multiple enemies at once.