Great Runes of Influencing

Nyxx

So I bought a Great Rune of Charity, affixed it to a piece of jewellery, wore said jewellery and went begging.... I see no discernable difference in my influencing. it takes the exact same amount of time as before even though my ego attacks are supposed to be increased. Does anyone know by approximately how much they are increased?

Tarkenton

I honestly don't know the values.  My assumption is it is similar to an oil, or performance, or a beast with the proper influence type skill.  Whenever I've gotten them in presents, they're tradein fodder for me.

Nyxx

Lucky you. I never get divine presents or such things. Ironbeard never visits me either.  

Talan

They do work just like another buff, albeit a stronger one than perfume.

The buffs work by adding to a total that factors into the strength of your 'hit', which generally results in fewer hits needed to influence a mob, but is not the same as outright reducing the number of rounds. Any given buff's efficacy is more visible in harder influence battles, for example (simplified):

Total ego damage done must be >= Mob ego.

MOB_A has 24 ego. Your influence attack does 6 ego damage. It takes you 4 rounds to influence MOB_A.
You apply a buff, and now your influence attack does 7 ego damage.
It still takes you 4 rounds to influence MOB_A.

MOB_B has 35 ego. Without the buff, it takes you 6 rounds to influence.
With the buff, it will only take you 5 rounds.

..

I'll go out on a limb and suggest that the lirangsha krokani are a MOB_A situation for you. The rune is working, but it's not quite enough to push you down a full round consistently. Further, I'll assume that you're pretty stacked as far as buffs go. Remember, they also work on a system of diminishing returns - meaning that with the rune, all of your other buffs become slightly less potent (still higher overall though).

If you want to see the difference, try other strong mob types with and without the rune. It'll be pretty easy for you to see the effects, especially if you influence harder mobs against type.

Are you sure though that the rune is having absolutely no visible effect for you now? The unsimplified actuality is that there is some internal variance in influence attack damage leading to situations where a mob type might take mostly X rounds, but occasionally X-1 or X+1. The krokani might be mostly 9 rounds, with the occasional 8. Adding a buff when you've already got several stacked buffs might make the instances where it takes 8 rounds more frequent -- which isn't much, but those 4 second balances do add up.

Anyway -- the runes sure do work in general, but if you only beg from Lirangsha krokani, and you're already buffed to the nines and seeing no difference, then maybe it is indeed not a worthwhile investment for you in this instance.

Nyxx

Aha! That was the answer I was looking for! heh Thanks Talan. I'm sure it probably is a Mob-A situation as you described then. I only counted the number of rounds for a couple of influences so it's entirely possible that it is working and I simply haven't paid enough attention yet. I'll have to watch that. Thanks!