Does it even work? Invoke uses runes' names. Same runes have the same names. Can you choose specific runes?
The ability says so. It doesn't speak about rune types but runes.
Also this is like saying the Magus has no identity, it skips one step in casting magic by rolling them into one action for 2 actions. The Runesmith has weapons but it's core identity is Runesmithing and invoking ancient words of power/magical runes. If we remove that then it's just rebranded Thaumaturge and I don't think we need Thaumaturge 2.0 where it is focused around striking and sometimes using your Runes., keeping it this way makes it feel super unique
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Taking all your issues at fixing them would cripple this class completely.
It's identity is quite obvious it's runes along with how creatively you can use them.
It's clear they intend a routine of laying on runes then detonating them.
I also think strikes being optional is a good thing.
This all said it needs plenty of tune up.
Why does it need a tune up for? I am missing it other then people thinking runes deal to much damage but they are melee touch spells, so like what do you expect a resource where each rune can only be applied once, is that what you actually want? Can you imagine being able to trace only 1 Rune of Fire then needing to "Refocus" to use it again for 10 minutes, that would wreck the flavor of the class.
Why does it need a tune up for? I am missing it other then people thinking runes deal to much damage but they are melee touch spells, so like what do you expect a resource where each rune can only be applied once, is that what you actually want? Can you imagine being able to trace only 1 Rune of Fire then needing to "Refocus" to use it again for 10 minutes, that would wreck the flavor of the class.
Tune up doesn't mean buff. But rather, fixing.
My personal instinct is that the class just has too much going to have both the weapon proficiency progression of a martial and legendary class DC for their pseudo-spellcasting (and whatever else they pick up via archetyping that uses class DC). It lacks meaningful specialization. "I get to do fake casting that doesn't even cost focus spells or I can be a martial!" means "I get to violate niche protection!" I don't think you should get to be a martial warlock and do whatever you want to within the hand economy constraints—constraints which can, frankly, be abused to their breaking point with bucklers and free-hand weapons and 1+ hand weapons and so on because Runesmith doesn't have the thaumaturge-style hand restrictions.
Honestly, yeah, that's what this is. A warlock that targets saves and also gets martial weapon proficiency and gets to blow up as many blasts as they want at a time. Why does that exist?
In general, I look at this class, look at the kineticist, and ask myself if they even looked at the kineticist for reference. Despite its blatant similarities to the kineticist, almost nothing is in line with pre-existing benchmarks in that or any other classes.
If they were to clean this up, it'd likely need doctrine-style subclasses that properly supported each intended playstyle with different proficiency advancement rates instead of just letting you do whatever and hoping it would sort itself out. And, well... to fix that ridiculous single target damage.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Which I don't propose btw. While SuperBidi seems to want removing pure RUNEsmith gameplay.
Please don't put words in my mouth ;)
I'm all in for a lot of playstyles. I was just stating that pure RUNEsmith is broken. And also that, from a balance point of view, it should be weaker in terms of damage compared to weapon Runesmith as weapons ask for more things (high Strength/Dexterity and a fully runed weapon).
So I'm all in for a lot of playstyles but also balanced playstyles. As imbalanced playstyles just push everyone to the same playstyle.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
... Runes ask for Int. ...
I totally forgot this class was an INT class.
Beyond being the stat for their class DC, the only single thing I can find that references INT is that Intensity rune... which is going to be a dead pick when 99% of the time the opportunity cost of placing that rune would be better served by using a damage rune.
Even the transpose shenanigans using it would only be a trade gaining a small bit of extra up-front burst instead of more booms that would happen on turns 2 or 3.
Beyond that, it really is just the crafting features that technically care about your INT score.
.
Has any other class ever used their "supposedly" KAS to this small of a degree before?
Like, wow.
Thaumaturge? You only use exploit vulnerability once per enemy, and it's not very important that it be maxed out, not crit failing is more important than succeeding. Many implements don't require DC checks.
Investigator? Int only applies to some RK skills, and only to at most one attack per round, and often not that. It's important that you max it, but you won't always actually use it.
Inventor? I fall asleep too fast trying to read or remember that class, but I don't recall a lot of int based checks every round.
At least runesmith might be making 2-3 class DC checks per round when using damaging or debuffing runes.
Hmmm
.
Thaum
gets to use CHA for it's Lore stuff, including Diverse Lore to use CHA for all RK. There are a lot of CHA skill things integrated into some Implements, like Regalia, as well as feats, like Divine Disharmony.
The bonus Investment limit scales w/ your CHA, there's the feat to "use class DC instead of item DC", etc, etc. A whole lot.
.
Investigator
has all their out of combat investigation stuff, though not all those PaL skills are INT, some are CHA.
Alch Sci grants VVs = INT per day, Empiricism is +1 INT skill & free action RK,
Class has RK class feats, the Athletic feat lets you use INT for some DEX & STR maneuvers, I'm stopping there.
Yeah, there's loads in Investigator
.
Inventor
their primary action Overdrive is literally a Craft check.
Class feats for Repair action, many Crafting check feats like I Created You, Helpful Tinkering, and Tamper,
and everything that affects/boosts/invokes Overdrive still cares about your INT for those interior Craft checks.
Oh wow, L16 feat to turn literally any "1 minute or less" skill check into a Craft check via RPing that you use a gizmo to assist. I think that includes things like Trip. (once per hour)
.
I did miss another RnSmth feat that does invoke your INT mod, the 2A healing Invoke one puts your INT into it.
But yeah, it seems the class is surprisingly bereft of INT stuff.
|
I did miss another RnSmth feat that does invoke your INT mod, the 2A healing Invoke one puts your INT into it.
But yeah, it seems the class is surprisingly bereft of INT stuff.
Just finding a way to leverage Crafting checks more would increase the value of INT.
And I think there are a few things where requiring Crafting checks could help with balance.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Yes, there's all these rare uses that you can sometimes use with feat and money investment. They aren't comparable to "lol, I blow you up, roll 1-3 saves every round."
If you want a greater diversity of runesmith uses of intelligence, fine, I guess. If you want a greater frequency I think you're misguided. They'll be using it more often than a Wizard does.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The worry is that the 0 INT options may create problematic incentives/ builds that abandon the DC runes.
It also makes archetyping much more "dangerous" if PCs don't need investment to get Runesmith's power.
While the present focus is on the blasting dmg runes, and for good reason,
there are already a lot of no-DC runes with serious power behind them.
It's the same reason that a Kineticist Dedication (wood) is actually kinda a balance problem, thanks to things like Timber Sentinel and Fresh Produce having 0 penalty for ignoring the Kin prof / DC upgrade feats. Anyone can dip Kin get some incredibly good scaling abilities that likely outperform their own class options.
Something like Fortifying Knock (or Runic Tattoo) could become a "must get" for shield builds, etc.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The worry is that the 0 INT options may create problematic incentives/ builds that abandon the DC runes.
It also makes archetyping much more "dangerous" if PCs don't need investment to get Runesmith's power.While the present focus is on the blasting dmg runes, and for good reason,
there are already a lot of no-DC runes with serious power behind them.
It's the same reason that a Kineticist Dedication (wood) is actually kinda a balance problem, thanks to things like Timber Sentinel and Fresh Produce having 0 penalty for ignoring the Kin prof / DC upgrade feats. Anyone can dip Kin get some incredibly good scaling abilities that likely outperform their own class options.
Something like Fortifying Knock (or Runic Tattoo) could become a "must get" for shield builds, etc.
Yeah, it would be pretty disastrous if someone could pick up this kind of burst from archetyping—especially someone with Legendary class DC, like a kineticist. Even if the archetype is limited to invoking once a combat and gets fewer runes, runes are still better than a single-target kinetic blast. Not a fan.
And as you pointed out, a lot of other runes have cute tricks that don't rely on DC scaling. I would assume the archetype won't be able to etch any runes, but if it gets even a single etched rune, it can give a character 2 persistent bleed damage per damage die on every hit with an etched weapon—pretty good, depending on the amount of feats required to pick it up.
Not directly related to the OP, but wouldn't it be simpler for the level-heightening on those runes to just be +1d6 per level, instead of +2d6 per 2 levels?
On-topic: yeah, the burst potential is really strong, to the degree where you could probably even afford not to use a weapon and instead Trace Runes with your free hand whenever possible for lots of burst damage. I don't know yet if that's necessarily too strong, as the Runesmith is a martial class and their burst does require more setup than most, but something tells me it's likely to get tuned down in the release version.
Not directly related to the OP, but wouldn't it be simpler for the level-heightening on those runes to just be +1d6 per level, instead of +2d6 per 2 levels?
Kineticists uses the same basis. The most probably reason is to not make a progression different from spells (that most of them heightened every 2 levels). It's just a convention IMO.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
This is definitely intended to be a burst class in the purest sense.
Your meant to stack runes and detonate multiple.
However, instead of cutting invoke scaling in half. I think it would be healthier for the class to give invoke the flourish trait or a once per round limitation.
Then if damage is still too high, you simply lower the die of the invoked runes to d4s, but don't reduce them to 1d6.
My reasoning is this. If you cut scaling in half, but don't limit invoke to one per round. You end up with a class where people will spend every available feat, resource to getting 2 invokes on one round because *optimal*. This takes a very freeform and expressive class and encourages it to find very set in action routines.
If you instead limit invoke to once per round, not only have you halved their very high burst (and let's be honest, nuking one target with 3-4 damage runes as it currently is, is good burst). But you encourage a more varied use of their runes she actions. Suddenly there is greater incentive to also use runes for other purposes then damage because you can hit your damage *cap* more reliably.
Whether you limit invoke to once or round or leave it as is, people will optimize their nuking. I'd rather that nuking be hard capped in exchange for keeping current or close to current single nuke burst and allowing more breathing room for other actions.
re: Kineticist damage comparisons
The kineticist has more range and much easier access to AOE than the runesmith, which is very short range and single target focused. At 9th level you do get the AOE diacritic, but it eats into your repertoire and only works with damage - kineticist AOEs include debuffs, hazards, buffs, and utility stuff.
Given all the extra stuff that the kineticist can do, the runesmith being ahead of single target, close in damage doesn't seem an obvious problem for comparing the two infinite resource "not a spell" classes.
Personally I hope that runesmith single target damage is reined in and class gets more diverse. More damage types, saves to target, area options, less restricting hand issues, etc.
The damage isn't even that bad sine at higher levels many monsters have a ton of fortitude save. Even if you make Invoking once per turn that doesn't stop it honestly but if you don't want rune damage so high, I mean the Fire rune is just a none-aoe fireball and I don't really think fireball is that powerful single target wise. Both of the runes are weaker side by side then a rank 1 spell, Thunderstrike or whatever. Now if you made invoking one rune at a time you would probably make it balanced, that way they are more in-line with casting a spell.
If you half the damage to being 10d6, what's the point of playing a Runesmith where in order to deal the same damage as a Fireball you need both a Rune of Fire & Rune of Thunder then invoke them both as 1 action, bringing up the fact that now not only would you make Engraving Strike mandatory but now it's 3 actions to match a 2 action spell in damage if you don't use it. There by doing this it is now once again useful to bring a weapon.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
The damage isn't even that bad sine at higher levels many monsters have a ton of fortitude save.
While the basic damage runes in the playtest target Fortitude, it seems quite likely that there will be runes that target other saves (frankly, I'm a bit confused as to why the Whetstone rune doesn't target Reflex). We shouldn't be basing damage considerations solely on the basis of Fortitude targeting, especially since existing spell damage doesn't seem to weight for high-save prevalence for the purpose of damage balancing.
Both of the runes are weaker side by side then a rank 1 spell, Thunderstrike or whatever.
A single damage rune invocation deals 0.78x as much damage as a max rank thunderstrike or acid grip (single target save spells) at all levels. More than 3/4 damage of a max rank spell is too much damage for an at-will ability, even with the range restrictions.
We should be comparing to other at-will abilities anyways. Invoked damage runes start at about 1.4x damage compared to single target save cantrips, which seems pretty fair given the either touch range or extra action. But, the scaling is such that, by 3rd level, runes are dealing 1.87x cantrip damage, by 5th level runes are dealing 2.1x cantrip damage, and they continue to increase up to 2.55x.
Ultimately, I think 2d6 + 1d6/(2 Levels) is the proper balance. It keeps the rune damage at 1.4x cantrip damage across levels and makes rune damage as a fraction of max-rank-spell damage scale as 0.78x at 1st, 0.58x at 3rd, 0.52x at 5th, and gradually down to 0.43x at 19th.
The damage is fine. No one envies a caster dumping their top level slots into blasting, we pity them for playing suboptimally. But they can have a little damage a little above average for extra actions and resources sometimes, as a treat.
The proper comparison is to how much damage other martial classes can do, and how much support/utility the runesmith has left vs those classes other abilities if it focuses too hard on too many damaging runes.
The fighter can hit hard and accurately, and also shield itself, knock people down, grab them, interrupt their actions via a reaction, etc. If the runesmith is just constantly dumping actions into the same three rune cycle (which is going to be painful when high fortitude saves, physical resistance, fire immunity, or lightning resistance shows up) we don't have much to worry about.
The damage is fine. No one envies a caster dumping their top level slots into blasting, we pity them for playing suboptimally. But they can have a little damage a little above average for extra actions and resources sometimes, as a treat.
I've seen blaster casters work great on many occasions, dealing tremendous amounts of damage, especially when they were able to target weaknesses or get around resistances that martials typically cannot. And in those moments, the other players have envied the casters, we just have to remember to weight at-will abilities against nova bursts.
The proper comparison is to how much damage other martial classes can do, and how much support/utility the runesmith has left vs those classes other abilities if it focuses too hard on too many damaging runes.
While it's true that you can't consider damage in a vacuum as the end-all-be-all of a class, it's not true that runes should be compared to martial damage output alone. Martial Strike damage frequently has to contend with high AC or with physical resistance that reduces much of their actual damage potential. Runes grant access to different damage types and will almost certainly allow you target different saves (I'll eat my words if they end up only being able to target Fort saves, but that would feel awful mechanically and for verisimilitude).
Yeah I'm not much of a debater but as is, I firmly believe the class does too much single target damage. Keeping in mind you can pre-set runes, the action compression options available, and the current damage output of classes, I just don't see 20d6 runes happening. Maybe, maaaybe if the three main damage runes are the only ones we ever get since they only get you three damage types all against the same save, but I doubt it even then.
I know developers want to be hands off while the playtest runs, but in this case I do hope a dev intervenes if the damage is a mistake. People get real attached to nuclear builds.
|
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
The one thing I just want to be sure and say is that I am not interested in playing a Runesmith as a blaster. I want to play it as a competent martial who can provide meaningful party buffs and other support. I would expect to get more value from etchings than from invoking.
This isn't to say that I don't want blasting to be viable -- because I hope it is able to support that playstyle for people who want it. I just hope that the power curve on the blasting isn't *so* high that they have to weaken the parts of the toolkit that I am actually interested in to keep its overall power in line.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The one thing I just want to be sure and say is that I am not interested in playing a Runesmith as a blaster. I want to play it as a competent martial who can provide meaningful party buffs and other support. I would expect to get more value from etchings than from invoking.
This isn't to say that I don't want blasting to be viable -- because I hope it is able to support that playstyle for people who want it. I just hope that the power curve on the blasting isn't *so* high that they have to weaken the parts of the toolkit that I am actually interested in to keep its overall power in line.
Thank you.
When one imagines a martial Runesmith, do high explosives enter the picture? Heck, does tagging Runes on enemies themselves as one's default attack routine spring to mind? Right now, free hand + shield w/ boss/spikes is the best supported build.This whole blaster aspect, esp. at will and competitive, boggles me.
The damage is fine. No one envies a caster dumping their top level slots into blasting, we pity them for playing suboptimally. But they can have a little damage a little above average for extra actions and resources sometimes, as a treat.
The proper comparison is to how much damage other martial classes can do, and how much support/utility the runesmith has left vs those classes other abilities if it focuses too hard on too many damaging runes.
The fighter can hit hard and accurately, and also shield itself, knock people down, grab them, interrupt their actions via a reaction, etc. If the runesmith is just constantly dumping actions into the same three rune cycle (which is going to be painful when high fortitude saves, physical resistance, fire immunity, or lightning resistance shows up) we don't have much to worry about.
Unique strengths are fine, but "trivializes encounters with moderate and low fortitude saves by superbooming them" is probably not the kind of unique strength that belongs in this game. It is both excessively narrow and excessively dull. You're basically just trying to set up metamagic-enhanced Fungal Blisters memes from 1E, or something. It's not good there, and it's not good to see here. The single-target damage ceiling is pretty firmly established.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Runesmith only generated an image on someone doing runes. Beyond that the identity is paizos to create. This isn't a barbarian here or a wizard.
I maintain that, at worst, at MOST, you reduce the invokes to 2d4 scaling and make invoking itself a once per round affair.
That is a marked reduction.
Going from 2d6 per level to 1d6 would just be depressing.
I suspect we will not see a lot of branching out into other saves, especially for damage. They seem to firmly regard fortitude as what's relevant to being directly bodily attacked by a rune. Only the insulation one is reflex, and that's more of a "drop this hot potato" rather than "this fundamental magical force is directly laid upon or next to you and directing itself at obliterating your body."
It almost doesn't matter if they do offer cold, acid, or sonic options. You won't be able to pick them all, and they're all going to have downsides. The the passive effects of the runes will presumably be a balancing factor to the type of evocation damage they do for resistance/immunity frequency.
And the type really matters against some enemies. Lets assume you can target all three damaging runes at level 20 in melee against a level 20 foe.
Against a Wild Hunt Monarch (first thing that came to mind for "what level 20 creature will have a bad fort save and no resistances) they've got a 10% chance to CF, 45% to fail, 40% S, and 5% CS. That's an average 59.5 x 3 or 178.5 or 40% of its HP in one round. Quite strong! On the Monarch's side it has an AOO that will crit and disrupt you 30% of the time if you have a maxxed out +3 armor rune and don't raise a shield, and an aura (with a 30' trace rune range, runesmiths are not going to have an answer for auras I guess) with a decent chance to inflict slow 1 after your first turn. Your odds of delivering all or enough of those damaging melee runes across three rounds to put it down 1 v 1 are decent, but definitely not guaranteed.
A Nessari (Pit Fiend) is a much nastier matchup. Better fort, it has a 50% S and 15% CS chance, for a usual average damage of 45.5 x 3 or 136.5 and again 40% of the HP in one round. Alas! It's immune to the fire rune, and resists the slashing from the whetstone. So it only takes on average 76, or 23% of HP (presumably someone in the party shuts down the regeneration for you). Use that fire rune for something else. And expect one of whatever you trace at melee range to get disrupted by the attack of opportunity if it hits (the jaws hit you on a 4, a 6 if you raise a shield). So you're probably not doing a melee damage dump on this guy even if on paper you have strong tools.
I'd be interested in finding some low to mid level boss matchups (probably more fey) with bad reflex where the runesmith can curb stomp things even higher level than him with a damage surge. I'm not sure they'll be that common or matter that much, but perhaps I'm wrong.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
One thing is that the Runesmith is also genuinely flimsy, what with 8 HP/level and probably the worst save progression of any martial (you top out at E/E/M). I don't think you want to hang out in danger next to anything truly scary.
I would be happy to be less of a cannon if I could be less glass as well.
It's hard to be considered too flimsy even at 8 hit diee and unfortunate saves (though, a general feat helps that)
When you have medium armor (one feat from heavy) and shield block, the ability to get an extra + to raise shield AC. And an active optional deterrent with runic reprisal.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I think "what is the identity of this class and how does it fulfill it" is a fair question for a play test. The potential damage output of this class is very high, but it takes a fair bit of alignment to pull that together. The Runesmith is going to really like the commander and want to go right after them as often as possible.
My issues with it having such a high single target damage ceiling are:
1. The class does a lot of extra stuff compared to other dedicated single target strikers. It is not commander level of support martial, but it is much better than fighter, ranger, magus, swash buckler and barbarian at support and will push champions/inventors/investigators/Thaumaturges/rogues there too. At higher levels the sheer number of runes you can have and use at any time is really high. Even if you have 3 damage runes and that is your primary combat routine, you'll have 6 all day etched runes out of 9-10 options. and that would still leave you with a handful of emergency/fun/utility ones as well.
2. A D8 HP, heavily melee-centric class with saves this bad is going to get annihilated at higher levels. So much chassis is going into martial weapon profs and Legendary class DC. But only having 1 save that grants you the Resilience/evasion-type abilities means even with canny acumen you are going to get shredded by auras/aoes and mental control abilities.
This is especially problematic for the folks that want to play the class heavily into a martial support role and use weapons and shields with traces mostly for ally support. Minimally, being able to trade down that Legendary class DC for better saves would be a good idea for a subclass option, because otherwise, not building to offensively use runes is just so costly with the trade off you are getting for the DC.
So the Runesmith is a sugar-glass cannon oozing with support narrative, but you get heavily pushed into playing as essentially a melee blaster with out of combat support options that will pretty much preclude you from using a weapon if you don't want to die quickly.
3. The feats want you to use a weapon. The art says use a weapon. But then the class features say use a shield and blast with your runes and actually make it pretty difficult to use those weapons anywhere near as effectively as just blasting with runes. It seems like people really want the class to be a hybrid magical martial and not feel like it is just secretly the best all day blaster caster in the game, but only if you are willing to take an intense beat down.
All I know is if the class gets turned into
Runic strike, recharge, I'm gonna be pissed.
Personally I think given the current rune scaling there probably shouldn't be an option for a 1 action trace.
This would still leave the class doing decent damage but not quite so overwhelming.
It would also make their action routine incredibly boring
2 action trace>something
2 action trace>invoke
Repeat
That best thing about this class right now is yes versatility and creativity with it's action compression. It's the exact opposite of a Magus and that makes it great.
I maintain invoke being once a round and scaling in 2d4 would be enough.
But I'd cave to 1d8/6 scaling to keep this level of interactivity and creativity.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Those are all feats and they help but still a pale comparison overall
Heck without feats and etchings a ranged AOE is 5 actions
I'm starkly against diminishing it's action economy for power retainment.
Fine, I’ll compromise - lower the damage to 1d12 per rank.
I wanna try something fun.
Let's pretend a cold invoke rune exists for this hypothetical to work. At level 20, a Runesmith with Shades of Meaning, a pre-buffed weapon that has Whetstone and Corrupting, and an unarmed strike with Whetstone and Intensity, they could:
Tracing Trance -> Stride -> Engraving Strike (Fire + Preservation) + Thunder (Intensity) + Cold (Intensity)
Next turn:
Invoke -> Engraving Strike (Thunder + Intensity) + Invoke
That is 8d8 + 6d6 + 24 + 8 persistent + 140d6 + 6d4 persistent + 24 damage, or 607.5 damage over two turns.
I wanna try something fun.
Let's pretend a cold invoke rune exists for this hypothetical to work. At level 20, a Runesmith with Shades of Meaning, a pre-buffed weapon that has Whetstone and Corrupting, and an unarmed strike with Whetstone and Intensity, they could:
Tracing Trance -> Stride -> Engraving Strike (Fire + Preservation) + Thunder (Intensity) + Cold (Intensity)
Next turn:
Invoke -> Engraving Strike (Thunder + Intensity) + InvokeThat is 8d8 + 6d6 + 24 + 8 persistent + 140d6 + 6d4 persistent + 24 damage, or 607.5 damage over two turns.
Not trying to gate guardian here but accuracy and saves matter. Average dice damage is not actual DPR. It'll always be worse in analysis space because you'll have lost 45 to 40% on your strikes and some other % on save effects. So for simplicity let's say over 2 rounds you do 50% your damage you listed. That is ~150 dpr per round. Fighters are doing 120+ per round with pretty basic builds. But the big difference is you mostly just loaded up 300 damage on one enemy in round 2. This is of less value than the fighters damage because damage sooner can kill off enemies before they get a second turn and you have multiple strikes that can be redirected to enemies if your primary target dies. Thus the runesmith totally pasted that one enemy bits,but lost say 30% of the damage to overkill. So you can easily do more damage on paper but but be less effective than someone that does less damage. That metric is often called time to kill and is a better measure of effectiveness than DPR.
All that being said I just gave you handwavy numbers (I suspect they're pretty close to reality). But we should wait for real numbers before we judge.
It would be around 179 damage per round if we're dealing with a PL+0 creature with High AC and High Fort saves yeah, so you're close.
With that said, you could do something similar on round one by doing Engraving Strike (Fire + Preservation) -> Trace (Thunder + Corrupting) -> Invoke. This does about 150 damage on average on round one if the Runesmith is benefiting from flanking, plus an extra 45 on the next turn with Preservation. If we also invoke Whetstone on round one, it's about 195.