Quote Originally Posted by Bradegor View Post
And totally agree about passives, please take OCMR, OCPR, Agility away from our runestones. Or just give stats to an offhand so more and better itemization (i wouldn´t mind if that means losing the DPS of a 2 hander).
I know it's been mentioned before, but we don't have a two-handed weapon. We have two one-handed weapons that happen to take up one slot on our character panel. Despite in-game references to our runestones consistently being in the singular, our runestones are most certainly a plurality. We carry an identical one in each hand. If we reach into our satchel and pull out a different weapon to equip, we are equipping two new stones.

I think that a simple fix for the issue of the perplexingly random fixed stats on our LIs is to allow us to equip two different one-handed stones. Obviously, our main-hand stone would remain our LI, albeit with no fixed stats and appropriately adjusted DPS values. Our off-hand stone could then be any of the non-legendary runestones that already exist in the game, fixed stats intact, and again, appropriately adjusted DPS value.

It's somewhat mystifying that runestones with an equippable level of 51+ exist at all. I've only been around for a year or so, so I don't know if these items served a purpose at some point in the past or not. I can think of a few logical explanations that might explain the existence of these items:

1) The stones are vestigial items from a time before the legendary item system was implemented. If this is the case, developers mistakenly left these items in the game. This hypothesis loses credence when considering the level of the non-legendary runestones in the game. They are craftable from barter recipes up to level 65. This might help explain why there are no non-legendary runestones craftable at the Westfold tier. However, it fails to explain why non-legendary stones can still drop from mobs killed in the environment.
2) The stones were left in the game for casual players who haven’t the time or the inclination to figure out the LI system.
3) The stones are still around because at some point in the future, Turbine plans to unveil a class in the future that uses runestones as an off-hand or ranged weapon. Off-hand obviously wouldn’t make sense, as the stones are ostensibly two-handed weapons from an inventory standpoint, unless…
4) Runestones were at some point intended to be one-handed weapons that would function in a manner that complemented each other in a manner described above, basically. Supporting this hypothesis is the fact that the RK clearly is holding two stones, not just one. Is it possible that, because of the current (i.e. pre-Update 6) state of elemental affinities, the devs had to scrap the idea of dual stones due to the complex issues that might arise if runestones of different affinities were equipped? If this is anywhere near the mark, a strong case could be made for the implementation of dual-wielding one-handed stones in the Riders of Rohan expansion this fall, now that affinity will no longer be determined directly by the runestones themselves.