They seem interesting, especially the weapon but the armor is a bit underwhelming, could use vigor aura for example to make it truly unique, would be a good option for weredruids.
I like them. 1 issue though, level requirement 39, Unbending Will is level 41 and far superior… more expensive so likely not a first playthrough runeword.
The armor will be nice to speed up through NM, but does it knock off say, Smoke at level 37… Speed vs Res.
I like they are giving some love to NM playthroughs with these, its what I asked for way back. SO I gotta give some props.
2 Likes
Burst of Speed as something you can proc on a weapon swap is certainly interesting. There’s an obvious survivability tradeoff with Call to Arms unless you want to deal with inventory management micro, but the massive EIAS boost may be worth it in some cases. It’s certainly something that makes me want to play around in D2Planner to see if there is a worthwhile payoff for it.
The armor feels vaguely analogous to Stealth, but for non-casters. IAS instead of FCR, and a bigger FRW boost instead of Poison Resistance. Given Stealth is so incredibly cheap (Tal’Eth), Shael’Ko’Eld feels a bit expensive for the armor effect, but not totally unreasonable. But as Revenant points out, it’s not just the rune cost, but also the level requirement. For level 39, that’s a tough sell on the armor.
No teleport, no dice. Looks like Sorc is still the main choice for a ladder starter, aka no reason so far to entice me to play next season. In good news though, Pez did respond to Onadraig on Strafe being addressed.
3 Likes
Hustle seems pretty weak overall. Would have preferred some kind of shield with bos charges on it or something so it can be paired with cta.
Pretty much just some more early game runewords.
have some potential sadly the dev holding back way too much and end to screw everything , again new runreword that end amost useless and have minimal impact in the game . not bad but also not that good
1-weapon have no damage waste , wait 2 level later you have 350% ed runeword
2- armor have no def % no resist % no DR% no dmg%
I think the Ko rune is too high of a requirement for the Hustle armor, it pretty much restricts it to late Nightmare and Hell Countess onwards.
I think it’d be better suited for early Nightmare so the rune should be changed accordingly, maybe like a Dol rune or something.
I like the idea though, my bowazon will enjoy it until I can upgrade to something better. 
Hmm, on second thought the Dol rune would be quite annoying for the weapon with the flee chance.
Everything could change depending on what happens with 2.6 patch notes though, maybe they reworked some melee stuff, we´ll have to wait and see.
The weapon seems great. The armor is a slightly stronger stealth, which is to say it’s slightly better than a weak, low level runeword.
Other than a prebuff from the weapon, and an extremely niche use in hardcore pk for the armor, i don’t see what this runeword achieves for a Ko rune.
2 Likes
Ko is common. It’s a mid tier runeword that will be strong for melee, but obviously not the best weapon they could ever use. The weapon is a total 74% IAS with burst of speed up. It will be a useful runeword. The armor can be completely ignored.
The armor is bad, and i think worse than twitchthroe. I only have one extremely niche use for it and its only relevant to hardcore pk. For everyone else, there is no reason to make this armor.
Its a cheap runeword for a Ko, but the ed is pretty weak and the only thing that is worth wasting a ko for this is a prebuff. I would never waste a Ko on this early(partly because melee is bad at start of season, but that’s a different issue). I get the attack speed is considerably buffed when it casts burst of speed, making it about 75 increase attack speed, not bad) but its still not great.
At last something interesting. It opens the door for some interesting builds.
CtC BoS should iclude armor.
Add +1 to Teleport to both and WE ARE IN HOME!
this runeword design is unhealthy for the game. the burst of speed proc on the weapon outshines the stats on the armor entirely. one will never make the armor because teh weapon by default is better. and teh weapon doesnt do enough damage, so people are just going to prebuff the item and then swap to a higher damage item… this is a buff to melee but without buffing melee and instead borrowing other class mechanics and locking teh buff behind a mechanic (ctc). why does melee need 7000 prebuffs to be decent? just buff the skills!
2 Likes
No it’s not. The weapon ED is garbage.
The armor is an inferior version of Stealth.
So you don’t know what mid tier means. Do you expect to see 250-350% ED on all weapon runewords, regardless of the runes used?
yes, actually. because otherwise, why have it? if you ahve two nearly identical runewords, but one does more damage, why would you use the less damaging one? the less damage one (hustle) just gets used for prebuffing. its a melee buff that requires you to farm runes, borrow another classes skill (btw, assassin already have bos so she gets no benefit lol, and now she has no unique passives to her class besides weapon block!) and then land a 5% ctc just to get the buff. the year is 2025. we are on patch 2.15. im playing my whirlwind barbarian, doing my 23 prebuff routine. hey i finished! oh, baal run is already over?
10/10 game design
Do you have it? Do you definitely have a stronger runeword sitting in your stash for the same tier of runes that you can use? It’s not an endgame runeword. It’s for early ladder progress, hence the cheap rune cost.
Frankly, I hope they make prebuffing more obnoxious to dissuade people from cycling through 5 different weapons for various 2m buffs before they stat to play the game. But I’m sure that will only encourage more complaining. Mix/max crown ironically stopping every 2-3m to re-prebuff for “efficiency”.
This part is definitely sad. First Fade, now Burst of Speed. (Venom too, but Venom isn’t all that special, it’s just poison damage.)
you are really missing the point. these items are targeted melee buffs. the burst of speed is a proc and not an aura on equip because they want you to use other weapons too. you are being forced to prebuff to gain access to the melee buffs. melee is so far behind casters and the melee buffs we get are prebuff a billion times. these runewords should not exist, and these buffs should be native to the underpowered melee skills themselves! casters dont have to prebuff with 5 different items. i could use every prebuff item in the game on my whirlwind barbarian and still not even compete with a cold sorceress. thats how sad melee is. and now you have to do a 3 minute ritual every game to get stronger, while sorceress is already on the next game.
2 Likes