115625-how-to-fix-the-rune-system

== Content ==
			
Let's face it. The rune system is broken. The upcoming changes to fix the rune system are also broken. I shouldn't need a BA in mathematics just to rune out my gear. God forbid I ever get a new piece of gear (that's another whole story) and have to try and maintain rune sets with what RNGesus has granted me. Honestly, all of the above is daunting and makes me fear the changes.
 
Now that the cold hard truth is out of the way let's discuss the current system.
I truly appreciate the design of the current rune system. The way the elements are tied into your gear and correspond with the lore is truly incredible and I can appreciate the thought and hard work that was involved with making the rune slots. 
But's it's RNG on top of RNG, coated in RNG, dipped in RNG, baked in RNG, cooled on special RNG cooling racks, then finally frosted with RNG. This RNG system from hell needs to be rethought from the ground up.
 
Let us talk briefly about how the current system works.
Get your gear to drop - if it's a Superior quality piece, you're in luck. If it's Superb, go buy a lottery ticket the day it drops for you.	Pray it has the correct number of rune slots you want.	Pray that each of those rune slots can be filled with something beneficial to your role and class.	Navigate the complex materials and various types of runes that can fit in each slot.	If the stars align and all of the above criteria is met, you just got yourself 1 new rune. 
Now here's where it gets a bit tricky. If your gear is all fresh and nothing has any runes in it, you can start filling your gear with whatever General Rune Sets, Eldan Rune Sets, PvP Rune Sets, Class Rune Sets, Attributes, and PvP Atributes your heart desires.
Hopefully you have a goal with 1 of the various rune sets and you should have no problem reaching at least 1 set bonus. 
 
Disclaimer, there are 6 different sub-categories of runes per element and then tons more various attributes and sets within those sub-categories. Effectively this gives you 40+ choices for 1 individual rune slot. Multiply that by 7 elements and you just found yourself trying to navigate 280 rune combinations.  
 
So hopefully you have all your gear 'runed out' and can start your next tier of PvE content. But suddenly, you win the role on an upgrade. The stats on this new piece of gear are better, but sadly you lack a degree in mathematics of any type, so you're not quite sure if the rune slots are better in both type and quantity.
Off to the forums to check your class guide! 
 
After a couple minutes research you realize that you have different types of rune available with these new rune slots in this upgrade and unfortunately 1 less slot than you had before.
Because of this, you must contact an MIT professor and begin the tedious min-maxing to try and maintain your current 'bare-minimum' set bonuses, while also providing attributes that can benefit you in some way. 
 
You must accept this life and do this for every possible upgrade from this point on... Welcome to WildStar, cupcake.
 
 
Now let's fast-forward to the "Upcoming Rune Changes". Your life may have gotten a bit easier.
First off, you now have no hope of remembering what rune sets and attributes can fit into each element slot. There's just no way one person can remember all of that information.
You can add rune slots! Finally, no more RNG on the quantity of rune slots I have. This is a huge plus.
You can re-roll rune slots! This sounds amazing in theory until you see that it's going to cost you hours of farming, tons of gold, and patience you don't have, all for a chance at picking 1 of 2 rune slots that might not be upgrades. 
 
Yes, maintaining rune slots will be easier, but at the cost of an impossible matrix of available runes that is needlessly complex and the last bit of patience and time you had. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
As with any good complainer I offer unto you a solution. 
 
3 rune slots. Yes just 3. 
Assault - containing attributes such as assault power, all of the current DPS runes, and all of the current DPS rune sets.
Support - containing attributes such as support power, all of the current healing and tanking runes, and all of the current tanking and healing rune sets.
Utility - containing PvP attributes, PvP rune sets, and a funky mix of both assault and support sets (not all that are available in either of their respective slots).
 
Now here's how one will obtain rune slots in Psyknis' Master Rune Revision.
When you obtain a piece of gear from either Adventures, Dungeons, PvP vendor, etc, they will come equipped with 0 rune slots available to you at the start. 
Each tier quality of gear will be able to hold 2 slots, 3 slots (crafting), 4 slots (PvE content), 5 slots, and 7 slots.
 
To unlock the first rune slot you must complete a simple task, like the imbuements we currently have today.
The first slot you unlock in a Superior drop from WotW, for example, might be to obtain a silver or gold medal from veteran WotW. When you unlock this rune slot you get to choose what slot type it will be.
You are a mighty fine healer and want this piece to be part of your healing set, so you promptly choose the rune slot to be a Support Rune Slot, forever. 
Now you create and add the respective rune (you decide to choose the attribute focus recovery) and this action unlocks the imbuement quest for unlocking the second slot. 
This time you must obtain a silver or gold medal from veteran Crimelords of Whitevale. 
This will continue until you have unlocked all 4 slots in that item. 
 
A Superb item that drops in Genetic Archives might require defeating various bosses within Genetic Archives and completing various Dungeons or Adventures with specific medals (obviously nothing that is too redundant and #hardcore).
Gear from PvP would work the same as PvP imbuements currently work as well.
 
Perhaps an alternate system could be implemented where it would cost Elder Gems instead of completing imbuement tasks. In a perfect world you could do either or and still get the slots you want.
Unlocking the first slot would cost 50 Elder Gems, the second 100, the third 150. This would help people skip content they don't excel at (I hit every tornado in STL, don't judge me). 
 
This will not only simplify the rune crafting system immensely, but also provide replay value to dungeons and adventures once you have 'passed' the content, gear-wise. 
 
To implement this system with our current gear it would be simple. Just convert our existing rune slots to this new system and a one-time choice of what we want our current slots to be. To unlock slots further than what we have one would only have to complete the imbuement required or pay the Elder Gems respective to that slot. 	
----
			Very well written and thought out post!  If the devs are truly listening they need to take a look at this thread right here.	
----
			Like the ideas and it's also scalable for when better gear comes because the way to add the rune slot can be attached to different level dungeons / raids etc.	
----
			
I may not agree with the solution, but it is absolutely thought provoking. I'm used to holding large data sets in my head so the new rune options and sets for each element seemed like pure glee to me... but I do see your point how that could seriously wreck folks ability to plan their moves using a few simple rules.
 
I particularly like a questing/activity based alterative for unlocking rune slots - I'd like if we had a 'pay coin or go commit heroism' choice to make as we prep and dress our gear.
 
I have seen offhanded mention that in the future some gear will have an automatic number of Omni-slots which should save you at least one call to your MIT buddy. I think they're going to cling to the Lore tie-in very hard, but steps can be taken to mitigate the surrounding constellation of layered, confusing choices.
 
oh, and...
 
{| class="blockquote"
(I hit every tornado in STL, don't judge me).  
----
			
That would take ages to implement.
 
We just need an option to change rune slots as often as we want and to whichever rune slot we want. As much as I like omnislots they are actually bad for the game. If we really need to keep them just give them flat stat bonus and remove the penalty for the 2nd, 3rd... etc. slot.	
----
			
Nice ideas and ideally it should have been implemented much similar to a system like yours from the start, but at this point there is only realistically one thing left:
 
- allow players to re-roll runes as often as they like and without a ridiculous cost.
 
The new rune system leaves this critical strong RNG aspect left in, when the whole rest of the patch was meant to be reducing the insane amount of RNG in the rune system. Why?
 
In addition, it significantly reduces confidence that the slew of incoming itemization changes (the single most important part of Wildstar's design) will actually offer strict upgrades from higher level content. Just because someone in the new system will now roll on an item on the off-chance it may eventually be an upgrade, does not mean they will equip it, including after they have been forced to work their ass off to optimize it as much as possible - therefore it many cases it will not be an upgrade soley due to runes.	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I may not agree with the solution, but it is absolutely thought provoking. I'm used to holding large data sets in my head so the new rune options and sets for each element seemed like pure glee to me... but I do see your point how that could seriously wreck folks ability to plan their moves using a few simple rules.
 
I particularly like a questing/activity based alterative for unlocking rune slots - I'd like if we had a 'pay coin or go commit heroism' choice to make as we prep and dress our gear.
 
I have seen offhanded mention that in the future some gear will have an automatic number of Omni-slots which should save you at least one call to your MIT buddy. I think they're going to cling to the Lore tie-in very hard, but steps can be taken to mitigate the surrounding constellation of layered, confusing choices.
 
oh, and...
 
 
...had me laughing until the tears rolled down my face. I know that feel.
----
			
I like the drop 3 rune system.      
      
I don't know if the changes to material drop rates will make re-rolls affordable, but that's my only potential issue at this point.       
        
You don't need a degree in math to get good use of your rune slots. You might have to do some research to squeeze out the absolute most of your available rune slots. But, the same holds true for gear selection in general, gear specials and imbuements, all the numbers involved in player LAS abilities, rotations and so on.       	
----
			
I like the drop 3 rune system also.
 
99% of the complexity issues up to 'Solid Raider' level can be solved by writing things down on a piece of paper. For each element: What runes I want, which elements are best. For a gear set: What slots I have. For runemaking: What runes I'll make, shopping list to make them. It's about half an hour minmaxing out a whole gear set and ten-fifteen minutes for one piece.
 
Once drop 3 hits, the complexity will change, but be easier to get a good set, because you'll look at elements and go "is this one of my worst 3 elements? if yes, reroll, otherwise think about it, weigh pros and cons."
 
This stuff is NOT DIFFICULT for being ENDGAME MINMAXING.
 
---------------------------------------
 
I'll just run with your suggested change to Assault/Support/Util slots... the gear will already be optimized for assault/support/util/pvp so choosing will be meaningless in nearly every situation, so they might as well just be those slots... and at that point it's just a matter of 'how many slots do i have?' - why not just make them imbuements? or gear set bonuses? why bother at all? Why not just make all gear give Str, Agi, and Int, and just gray out the ones your current spec doesn't have as mainstat?
 
-------------------------
 
All that being said, the imbuement system should get a lot more love all throughout the game.	
----
			
Well you need some RNG in MMO, otherwise game would simply be boring and "fast".
No. of slots problem will be solved and I really like the solution.
Element problem is semi-solved, they have replaced one RNG with another costly RNG (you have 2 rolls, but you can still roll badly), it would be fine, if re-roll cost would be smaller and probably you would have more tries, but with presented system I would say, that it should be possible to choose any element except fusion, no more RNG, but you will still need time to farm gold/resources for each re-roll and on minimum (without some crazy good luck) you will need 2 re-rolls every item, so with my serv current prices over 100 plat or 50h farming, it's fair enough value, if you add time required to acquire eq in the first place and time to get maximum slot number.
 
So from my perspective they should only make re-roll without RNG and it would be fine.	
----
			There's also the RuneMaster addon that helps.	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I like the drop 3 rune system.      
      
I don't know if the changes to material drop rates will make re-rolls affordable, but that's my only potential issue at this point.       
        
You don't need a degree in math to get good use of your rune slots. You might have to do some research to squeeze out the absolute most of your available rune slots. But, the same holds true for gear selection in general, gear specials and imbuements, all the numbers involved in player LAS abilities, rotations and so on.       
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
There's also the RuneMaster addon that helps.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
You're comparing a list of a few to a list of hundreds. I'm not saying you're wrong, I just believe the rune system is needlessly complex. 
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I shouldn't need an addon to play the game is the problem. Not that I'm against addons, but it really detracts from the game if you NEED an addon to be able to complete X.
----