The Role Of Rune Fencer

It may be a bit to early to ask, but what do you guys see RUN's role will be with in a group. As the game is, I can't see it filling the tank role as SE suggests. It comes across to me as more of a DD with emphasis on magic defence.

I've just returned to the game because of the new expansion and would like to know what you think before I decide to take a dive into this job.

(\_/)
(0.0) o
(> <)/

Just speculation but I imagine they designed a fair amount of the new content around RUN tanking, like the new HNM bosses that appear to be specific elements. We'll see if it actually turns out like that and not just Aegis PLD tank with RUNs as a DD that can withstand heavy magic damage.

I hope it finds a nice solid role within the new expansion. I would hate to see a newly released job go the way of the PLD.

It's a DD that does both physical and magical damage while being difficult to kill. It's what would of happened if you gave RDM a A+ Great Sword skill and much better gear, but with a really good JA instead of Tier IV nukes.

Honestly any DD can *tank*, it's not that hard, just smack sh!t really hard and really fast. RUN's got enough offensive power to cap CE pretty quickly then maintain capped CE throughout a fight. As long as f8cktards don't go around full timing MDT / MDB gear.

honestly i don't see run as a tank at all, not even close really. they wear light armor for one thing, that doesn't exactly scream that it can take hits. sure it has decent eva skill and a high parry skill, but i don't see that being a deciding factor for it being able to tank hnm class mobs.

personally i see it as a DD/support type job, it has from what a friend reports decent ws dmg with resolution and pretty good dmg with lunge at 3 runes stocked as well. it casts enhancing magic for buffing pt members and itself, as well as most of it's abilities are defensive in nature against elemental dmg types.

so say a mob is known to use primarily ice type magic, the run stocks up 3 ignus runes and DDs till he sees a high tier ga spell coming, uses that ability that grants the pt resistance to the type of magic his stored up runes are strong against. the appropriate bar spell is more than likely already up as well if your whm is on point, so you probably won't take alot of dmg from said aoe spell. and being that using defensive abilities doesn't waste runes, the run can immediately use lunge right after the spell, then follow it up with a resolution for a quick chunk of dmg.

this is all theory to me, but seems the most logical in my mind. but i could be completely wrong too, and just not seeing SE's "vision" for the big picture.

This is exactly the type of mindset I'm seeing with the job. I honestly thought at first it would get heavy mail gear for it like phorcy's and such. But they went light armor with it which is strange if they want it as a tank class. The more I play it though it seems more like a DD support class which is fine by me. Being able to dish out damage and help my party out is a plus in my book.

RUN is great against magic mobs. PLDs will still be top tank for most everything still, But RUN excels in Mag def for the entire party which pld cannot do and making mobs weak to magic. I haven't done Legion but I heard a lot of mobs kill you with big AoEs so run would prob do great there.

Aegis.
Breaks cap.
Can block.


Rune can give other people elemental stuff though, I guess, that's coo.

True but maybe I should have said excels in mag def for the entire party which pld cannot do.

RUN recast on the JAs to help with party mag def is high. So hope they add merits for it soon to lower recast.

RUN is meant to tank mobs that are caster types that dont hundred fists you to death. The abilities themselves draw immense amounts of hate and then you have Lunge which you can MB to give yourself more hate via damage or you can use it stand alone for less enmity.


Its a nice mix, i personally dont like its armor choices for DT-...but meh.

What about its role as a DD?

when you cant tank (ie on mobs that are solely physical damage) You DD and provide resistance. It is NOT a zerg DDtank.

Couldn't it be SE developed content to allow DDs to keep on meleeing mobs without the supports of PD and Embrava we had gotten used to, while not backing up to the "oldschool" type of tanking that implied DDs going in for brief windows of opportunity?

In that case, it'd seem understandable to have a DD, capable of gaining some extra survivability without sacrificing too much damage dealt, cover the role of "tank".

i think it'll be used as a dd support on magical heavy mobs like Samrusk to make it easier for DD to not use or greatly reduce the need of hybrid DT gear and make fights safer. I think the idea is that if the DD's magic resistance and defenses are so great with certain fights you bypass the need for a PLD or a defensive strategy by replacing your 3rd DD slot with a hybrid such as this.

I think it'll shine best in lowman and smallgroups like neo salvage vs dvergr, I can't speak of bigger stuff such as legion however.

it has access to Abilities that alow it to not only Nullify, but ABSORB Magical damage.

I'd say despite Aegis' Awesomeness, I wouldn't brush the jobs magic defense aspects so easily. though the job will likely take on a DD Support role, since it has an A+ Greatsword.

Tbh I think RUN looks like a job that will be a solid Co-tank together with a PLD.
Can toss up magic shields to help out migrating dmg for the main tank, deal decent damage and take minimal magical damage to help out healers.

Don't forget people, SE added full JA's to sch once the AF came out (addendum JAs as well), like sublimation and had an AF piece enhance it, so there might be full sets of JAs still that SE has in store for run

I have high hopes for the merits. If they make runes go from 10 seconds to instant i'd be so happy :<

Then they can fix pup's durations of maneuvers toooooooo right? (see: both jobs do suffer from serious JA bog-down) /praying for T3 merits for pup lol...


Also on topic, honestly, I can see there being "rune stack+1" or "ability to stack an additional rune" on 2 pieces scattered throughout AF/2/3, much akin to samurai's meditate gears. Now THAT would be sick. 4-5 rune resi boosts or Lunge.

I can see Run fitting into the subpar heavy dd department with Drg. I would also rate it more highly than Drg.

Both jobs are plagued with ja delay (more so Run). Both jobs are dependent on sub job for dd buffs. Stardiver and Resolution are similar in quality.

Run gets the advantage of having some extra dd buffs it can apply to itself and the ability to function as a tank.

tl;dr Run is probably a better dd than Drg. (Although the bar wasn't set too high.)

I am expecting one of the run merits to be Enspell Damage+. BTW has anyone checked to see if the hollow earring works on their rune enspell damage?

Now now, let's see what becomes of it and not condemn it to drg status just yet. I love drg, and I think it's useful, although the world disagrees with me, so it's swept under the rug and "loldrg" once again.

And you don't have an ethereal, why? :P

I got it back when Enshaving was still possible using ceremonial Daggers and never bothered to change it with the level cap increase.

I never said it wasn't useful. I said as a heavy dd, it rates above Drg, but less than real heavy dd's like Drk, War, and Sam.

It does have its own place for party elemental protection. This combined with barspells may be useful for mobs that do massive single element magical damage.

A+ greatsword doesn't mean much when you have no attack boosting traits/abilities (no native melee stuff at all for that matter), use an attack penalty ws, and have way less attack on ws gear due to being on light melee armor not heavy.

I would hope for a really useful mythic ws, because RUN is not suited to use resolution at all. It's probably better off using axe/axe (or axe/sword?) and ruinator in most situations as it is now.


Seems much worse on paper.

Having dual wield wont matter. Better off using /war for Fencer. That is, assuming you arent using /war already for berserk,warcry,attack bonus,and DA.

I wouldn't discredit dual wield so readily.

Dual Wield with Enspells! shame, and a blessing, that Geo cant use KC.