Rune of Protection

[MistressOhm]

That could be said for any of the pool powers.

 

Hasten, for example, used to be THE key power to nearly every build, because of the global recharge buff. 

 

 Likewise the Leadership pool, because of Tactics as a global +ToHit (and in order to get it you had to grab either Assault or Maneuvers).  

 

We won't go into the absolute necessity that was the Fitness pool... now pushed to an Inherent set that everyone can slot as they please, because before that point, if you didn't put picks into Fitness you were gimping yourself. 

 

Keep in mind, we're limited to four pool choices.  The above was three of them, and if you didn't want Super Speed as your travel power, your travel power was your forth pool pick.  

 

The "origin" pools are interesting in that they offer a themed set of powers, attacks, protection/buffs, AND travel, all keyed to an origin.  Sorcery is the Magic pool, just as Experimentation is the Science pool.   if you select one of these, you have a little Swiss Army knife of tools in one power pool, not spread out among several pools.  That's a BIG QoL improvement.  

 

I won't go to the point of saying "Wanting" = "Needing", because that's just not the case.  We all have needs, things we absolutely cannot do without, whereas what we want is usually over and above what we need. 

 

In terms of a build, "need" covers those things that make the build work at its core, without which the build itself would be broken.  "Want" is the stuff that one can use within the build to make it better, but without which it still works overall.   If in your case, Rune of Protection is a keystone of the build, then yes, the build needs it.  If you can get by without it? Then it's a "nice to have" add-on that embellishes the build but does not define it.

[Snarky]

I use Rune of Protection on some of my Dark/Dark Brute builds.  It is another layer of mitigation.  Dark twists logic about how to build for survival into pretzels.  Normally Def>Res>Heal and you build mostly to prioritize defenses.   But Dark has almost zero native Defense and no DDR.  So I build for resistance   Then I rely on Dark’s non suppressed Stealth, to bit debuffs, mag 2 fear aura, mag 2 stun aura , great resistance and the best heal in the game up every 8 seconds on my build.  With the Tank I do not need Rune of Protection but with the Brute it closes the gap to perfection during hard combats

 

Other than this I rarely use it on any build unless it us a handy mule to slap.  This would be when i have the extra power pick (rare) and I can slap a global defense proc in there that i would have placed elsewhere.  Effective to save one enhancer slot on a build at the cost of a power pick I did not “need”

Edited October 20, 2022 by Snarky

[Doomguide2005]

     I've taken it once for the mez protection aspect on an Empathy defender.  For that purpose it was definitely not worth the power picks.  Too much downtime, ended being nearly as reliant on inspires while solo.  But like most of my support characters they're built for teaming and usually higher recharge and mez not really an issue while teamed.

     As to its use as a resistance buff for rough encounters well the computer went belly up before I really started working on incorporating it in builds (in game or Mids) to get a solid handle on that aspect of RoP but definitely foresee more use there even in a team setting.

     So yes, it looks potentially highly useful for some builds, much less so for others.  On a Dominator most likely while solo I'd want permaDom in part specifically for mez making RoP useful as a resistance buff depending on build needs.

    

[Clam Leader]

My most played AT is defender and controller and I've literally never used RoP.

 

Need is a very strong word and using it undermines your own statement as people will focus on it rather than the meat of what you are trying to communicate.