I am quite new to this game and yet to fully understand the usage of different runes but this is my take if you think I am wrong please comment and feedback thanks. Basically the heros are divided into 2 groups tanks and casters. And the tanks are sub-divided into cavalry, archer,infantry right? I am still not familiar on the different gold and purple troops so maybe there if some of you seniors would be kind enough to share with me? So... lets get started will name the rune then the class its best suited followed by its function.
1. Guildmaster-Adept : Infantry
Increase skill damage
2. Retaliation-Bane : Cavalry, infantry and archers
Increase physical damage
3. Trance-Focused-Intenseness : Mages
Increase magical damage
4. Eagle-Hawkishness-Preciseness : Mages
Increase hit rating
5. Superiority-Advantage : Cavalry, Archer and Infantry
Increase critical hitting rate
6. Destruction-Eradicator-Infalability : Cavalry, Archer and Infantry
Increase break rating
7. Wall-Resistance : Cavalry, Infantry
Increase block rating
8. Agility-Nimbleness : Cavalry, Infantry
Increase dorge rating
9. Cunning-Phantom-Dexteriousness : Infantry, Archer
Increase resillience rating
10. Crusade-Partisan-Righteousness : Cavalry Infantry
Increase morale
11. Vigor-Vitality : All classes
Increase Max HP
12. Tactics-Flintness : Cavalry, Infantry
Reduces skill damage taken
13. Mountain-Mesa-Burliness : Cavalry, Infantry
Reduces physical damage taken
14. Tranquility-Messiness : All classes
Reduces magic damage taken
PS if unsure put the rune in the hero circle if your power does not increase chances its not ment for your class unless its moral somehow power don't increase but it hits faster.
At the start concentrate on Physical Damage for non Mages. As the game progresses and you start to get sets of 6 equipment that allows your hero to keep some of the morale then add Skill damage. Mages should have Magic attack first and Hit Point next for attacking.
For defense Dodge is the most effective rune followed by increase Max HP.
There really is no difference on the runes that you use by hero type other than Mages and non-Mages.
A tank is one that you concentrate on defensive runes and equipment upgraded. It does not have to be any specific kind of hero, but Cavalry usually works best. My main is an Archer and I have him build up as a tank and it works very well. It allows me to have more attackers.
I must say, it's a very good guide.
Only problem with WBs is that even when Shayd has a hit rating +130 she misses a lot.
In the normal fights she doesn't miss very much.
Same with the crit and the dodge runes (have dodge rating of +100 on all my hero's) but no crit and very less dodge during the fights...
Maybe some runes don't work normal in a fight against WBs....
Can you update the guide up to level 12?
+Hit also works great for all AOE hero's regardless of Mages, Archers, Or Calvary types.
Morale is very important to the characters that have sweeping slash/piercing thrust/cleave strike and thousand strikes as well as Bloodstorm's continuous rage and many new NPCs just recently added. If you can get your 3 hits on the first attack of the first round for example you get the early edge whilke there are still five enemies. Waiting 4 rounds and you waste the skill attack on a single enemy.
At higher levels these rune seem more useless than at lower levels. The system is set up so it takes an ever increasing expense of time and effort to get minimal gains. Think of this if you do 42,000 damage on every attack, the benefit of having a higher critical hit % or a higher start moral or being able to dodge or block (and get an extra attack) is vastly more important than getting an extra +1,000 damage from your rune. Also defense is even more important than offense in this game. It doesn't matter how much + to your damage if you opponent dodges every attack you try or has defenses to out weigh your attack
I have one real question that no one seems to know. What runes increase the chance of hitting by Mages, and what increases their likelyhood of Stuns (Cianna, Shayd, etc.) Does Hit Rating increase their chance of hitting? Does Critical increase the chance of Stunning? For example - a base Catherine has an HR of zero, and a Base Mehivdan has an HR 20. Mehvidan hits just slightly more than Catherine. If HR is useless for mages then why does Mehvidan get the HR bonus. LIkewise a base Shayd has HR of 20 and a Dodge of 20. I've tried doing statistcal sampling for these things but my data sets are way too small to draw any conclusions. For example in Baal from a few days ago I had started taking data after noticing a lot of misses This i what I got (Shayd is the first to attack in each round) I tracked the last 25 Shayd got 5 misses (20%), 9 Hits w/out stunning (36%) and 11 hits w/stun (44%) and she has a HR of 115 and a Critical of 42. This means that on that fight for those last rounds only - She got 80% hits (averaging 38k-43k damage each time) and when she hit (20 times total) she stunned 55% of the time. Its hard to do comparisons since I increase power every day in some respect. And even harder since they just recently changed things. I can't draw real conclusions but that would be the equivalent of Ball being able to avoid getting hit at 65% of the time if not for the HR gain and avoiding getting stunned after a hit 62% of the time if not for the critical hit rating.
Now let me continue - My Mehvidan character (I haven't used in a long while but keep getting cards for in the Tavern, so I keep updating him - was mortal with no chance of saint upgrade prior to the changes in November) is now Half Angel II. His saint bonuses are - Skill Defense +1376, Resilience +15, Break +15, Block +15 Magic Attack +819, Magic Attack +880, Magic Attack +940 and Magic Defense +578. He has the same HR of 20 when he started and has 5 stars yet he has shown no discernible improvement in his hitting ability since when I first got him several months ago. Since the system knows he is a Mage and has't given him Physical of Skill improvements then why would it give Block +15 if blocking is useless to a mage as people seem to imply.