Endeavoring To Awaken --A Guide To Rune Fencer

Note that Pflug only applies to statuses/spells that are affected by Resist traits. Some spells/WSs also have perfect accuracy and can only be resisted in unique ways, if at all.

Ok, not *all* protection is gone, but the base protection from runes is. And the opportunity to use liement to counter a powerful elemental boss move is ruined when you're stuck holding on to dark runes (I get a lot of satisfaction watching my party's hp refill from liement). Also, when you use liement, all the elemental protection from valliance/valliation is wiped, so that also matters if you're stuck reapplying dark runes right after instead of whatever protective runes you were using before for v/v.

I think you're overestimating runes' basic protection and/or underestimating Wards' usefulness. Wards give us the flexibility to change runes while retaining our defenses. Use Vallation/Valiance/Pflug to keep your resistance, change runes, use Pulse/Gambit/Rayke as needed, then change back. Such a change will hardly get you in trouble if you raise your defenses before.

Liement is cool but more a panic button than anything. Since it overwrites Valiance, it's a matter of choice. To me, Valiance's lasting protection is more useful than Liement's emergencial aid and I hardly find myself in a situation where Liement could really save the day. It's very fun when it happens though. Anyway, I think one interesting way to use them is rotating them plus One For All. We can almost full time protect our party this way.

And thismakes no sense at all. If you have just used Liement to counter some nasty attack, you already know you'll have no protection in a few seconds. Why change runes then?

I think most of us will agree that this is the way to go. I also assume most of us, on a major fight, tend to pre-buff with Vallation, initiate/pull with Flash, toss out Liement, and then follow with Valiance. Also fun to delay the use of Wards to save Liement when fighting a predictable enemy like Gin or Taelmoth.

As my group tends to lowman things, I often have mages in my party who might benefit from fc, or geos or whm stuck in range who benefit from elemental protection, so I'll pre-buff with valliance on whatever rune counters the element we're most likely to get hit with. Then I switch to tenebre but I'm basically stuck riding those until the geos get their bubbles set up and the sch has their sc going, at which point I can rayke / gambit and switch back. But given how long I'm riding runeless and vulnerable during that application time, that's when I usually hit OFA. But there's also the time when I'm using a revitalizer right after, and have to keep those dark runes on even longer. Or when a NM hits a certain hp tier or ja and you have to worry about charm. And those are the cases where I definitely do miss being able to use other runes as needed for emergencies, like gelus for Call on Teles. I wish timing v/v/OFA was as easy as you make it sound, but sometimes you're just stuck waiting for a sch to have strats ready or a NM to use a predictable move or to hit a hp tier, and cant switch to those protective runes right away.

This is what I use for Reso:
ItemSet 349318

Averages ~32k. Has spikes up to 48k as RUN/DRK. Hits 40k+ quite often.
Ogma's Cape: STR+30 ACC/ATK+20 DA+10.
Herculean Boots: ACC+1 ATK+1 WSDMG+5 STR+8.
Adhemar: B

Would probably do better with STR+TA boots, but I haven't gotten around to augmenting them due to laziness.

I'm just curious but wouldn't seething +1 be a better choice over knob in the ammo slot due to reso being a multi-hit ws? The wsd only applies to the first hit if I'm correct?

You're correct but Knobkierrie also has Att+23.
We all know how Att is vital for Reso's damage, and we all know how RUN naturally gets ***att.
Following this I wouldn't be surprised to se Knob beat Seething+1 in a situation with very little buffs.

I would agree but benefits from Seething +1 are:

STR 1-5 (unity) which is reso's ws modifier,
13 att (+3-4 moreish from the 5 str) for 16-17 att (7-8 att less than knob)
13 accuracy

the only benefit I see really using knob is

+6% wsd (only for initial hit) and +7-8 att but the loss is pretty significant for the ws overall comparatively.

Seething is STR+1~5

oops! misread bouncing around! Made adjustment.

I still use Seething in all my sets because the difference was so small I couldn't be bothered to make specific niche sets, but again, I wouldn't be surprised to see Knob slightly ahead of Seething+1 in some low buff situations.

If you trust spreadsheets knob is superior dmg wise, the acc on seething makes a big difference.

Is there a public/updated spreadsheet for RUN out there somewhere?

Don't think it's been updated in a while. Last time I used it, I realized that /DRK Smite and Last Resort JA Haste wasn't weren't being added.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/183eOFF6UcGMVd8sclJD3fo-2u_4_nJ-ItAyS8TDbf9E/edit#gid=655655911

I was actually wondering the same.

Haven't touched the RUN sheet in a while. Will probably catch it up to the BLU sheet once that's stable, but after that I may not do any updates aside from gear for a bit. Have a little project in the works that I'd like to push forward on sooner than later.

Thanks for the spreadsheet... I'll work on adding in Smite and the haste for Last Resort and post it for everyone to use.

Unless Nightfyre already has one that's ready to go that is.

Either way, check back soon.

could use a little clarification as several sources on the web offer contradicting data.

Valiance/Vallation offer protection to elements.. what runes do I harbor to resist fire - unda or Ignis? (using fire an example)

Rayke/gambit lower resistance/defense to elements... what runes do i need to harbor for my mages who are nuking to fusion - Ignis or unda?

Where do you find contradicting data?
I think the in-game description of the JA and wikis are pretty clear about it?

Ignis deals fire damage, if used in conjunction with Rayke/Gambit will increase fire elemental damage received by the target you use them on. Ignis protects against ICE damage. Likewise if you use Lunge or Swipe, they will deal FIRE damage on your target, with Ignis runes.

If you want to protect yourself AGAINST fire damage, you need to be using UNDA (which deal water damage)

In regards to what they do defensively, you could always just check your equipment screen lol

equipment screen doesnt show val effects but thanks for trying

ty Sechs, that was my hunch but I wanted confirmation.

/facepalm.

The defensive properties of wards match the elemental resistances of the runes active when they were triggered. Those resistances are visible in the equipment screen.

If a rune gives you water resistance, then using Vallation with that rune up would reduce water damage. Likewise, using Pflug would grant resistance to waterbased status(poison, atk- etc.)

Any word on the RUN DPS sheet updates? I just finished my Lionheart and want to start improving my DD sets.

Anyone have an updated dimidiation set?

Hey guys, came across some questions regarding my steadily improving Run. Hope I didnt miss them somewhere here in the thread.

1) Does Pflug help with charm?
Did Ambu Vol 1 yesterday and Gutter charmed me a couple of times but I feel as well like I resisted a couple of times with Pflug and Light Carol up (do Carols even help with status effects? guess not...) Had too many filters on to say for sure. Was wondering if Pflug helps with Charm or if its only "Resist Charm" gear (and maybe Resist all Status Alignments gear?).

Srry that was 3 questions disguised as one haha

Anyways 2) I know discussion was up before but Im still pondering on how I should use Embolden. I feel like its not worth using it on Shell as Im most likely caped on MDT with gear + Shell V anyways. Spells like Refresh or Phalanx would be nice be the duration reduction hurts too much. I tend to use it with Protect but if the Whm Ninjas in a Protrectra V while you cast Stoneskin...
So whats you guys thought on Embolden?

3) What would you guys focus on to improve my current tanking set:
ItemSet 348268

The set has DT-20, PDT-28, PDT II-5 and MDT-7(Dark Ring is PDT/MDT-4...I think haha). So while the set lacks 2 PDT to cap it should cap MDT with Shell V.
Obvious improvements would be HQ Tathlum, that UNM Neck thingy with DT-6 and probably Herc Head/Hands with DT augs. But as they are painful to get Id like to avoid the Herc gear in my DT set.
Did I miss anything else?

Yes, plug works on charm, assuming you used the correct runes with it. I usually use embolden with Temper.

As for tanking gear, you already listed the obvious upgrades. You can replace the dark ring with a vocane ring, which I personally love for every job. If you feel that you're lacking in HP, you can change your earrings out to Odnowa and/or Odnowa +1.

Thx for the feed back!

Good to know Pflug works. So how about light carol? Never quite certain whether bar-element spells help with status effects.

About embolden: never really tried but does it only work with actual enhancing magic? Or does it work with buffs like songs as well? Does it work with Haste?

Yeah, elemental resistance will greatly increase resistance to status effects (even more so than bar-status spells).

My status -DT set I'm using currently looks like this:

ItemSet 350138
(Herc -DT 4%)

It has as much elemental resistance, status resistance and meva as I can manage while still hitting pdt/mdt targets.

There's some more 'Resist Charm' stuff you could throw in there, too: http://www.ffxiah.com/search/item?&jobs[]=4194304&description=Charm#adv

And yeah, I also usually don't use embolden unless it's with Temper... or I'll use it on Prot 4 when recovering from a death while I wait for the WHM to reapply Prot 5.