Artificing/Theory

For many actions the player takes, a corresponding rune is triggered in the background. A runic tileset consists of 3-5 different runes, and activates if those runes are triggered on the player in that sequence, giving the player a buff to damage and healing. There can be other runes triggered on the player, but those will decrease the strength of the buff gained from the tilesets.

Tileset Buffs
The strength of the buff can be as high as 10% damage increase and 5% healing increase, but triggering unwanted runes in-between lowers the strength - see the section about interference for more details about this.

The duration of the buff a tileset applies depends on the number of runes in the tileset:
 * 3 runes: 4 seconds
 * 4 runes: 6 seconds
 * 5 runes: 8 seconds

There can only be 3 tileset buffs on a player at once - if a new tileset is activated, the buff will override the oldest tileset buff. A tileset can activate again even if its boost has not run out yet - that means, a player can gain all 3 buffs with only a single tileset.

Interference
Interference lowers the boost to damage and healing when runes in-between your tileset runes are activated. Every piece of interference takes 1% off the damage boosts and 0.5% off the healing boosts - this means, a tileset that activates with 10 or more interfering runes applies a buff that gives no boost at all.

→ See also: Scott's notes on timing and interference

Examples

A Runemage is using only the 3-rune tileset ᛟ ᚨ ᚢ, which is activated by hitting an enemy with the spells Affliction (ᛟ), Frostbolt (ᚨ) and Fireball (ᚢ) in that order.


 * Tileset: ᛟ ᚨ ᚢ
 * Triggered Runes: ᚦ ᛟ ᛁ ᚨ Ƶ ᚢ
 * Interference: 2 runes Damage: +8%, Healing: +4%

Keep in mind that the tileset begins activating as soon as the first rune is triggered.
 * Tileset: ᛟ ᚨ ᚢ
 * Triggered Runes: ᚦ ᛟ Ƶ ᚢ Ƶ ᚢ Ƶ ᚢ Ƶ ᛟ ᚨ ᚢ
 * Interference: 8 runes Damage: +2%, Healing: +1%

Activation Timing
After the first rune of the tileset activates, you have 6 seconds to activate the rest of the runes. If the 6 second timer runs out without all runes being activated, the tileset does not trigger at all.

Examples

Here, the 6 second timer for tileset activation runs out, making the tileset start from ᛟ again:
 * Tileset: ᛟ ᚨ ᚢ
 * Triggered Runes: ᚦ ᛟ ᛁ ᚢ ᛥ ᚢ Ƶ ᛟ ᚨ ᚢ
 * Interference: 0 runes (first activation attempt times out, tileset is not triggered) Damage: +10%, Healing: +5%

Picking Runes
Use the List of Artificing Runes to see which runes you need, and how they are triggered.

Runes that people like to use in tilesets are:
 * Runes triggered by your attacks
 * Delay runes
 * Attack Speed runes
 * Heal rune (ᛏ)

Avoid using these runes:
 * Hit multiple enemies
 * All runes that require you to get hit (but Tanks can use ᚹ)

Rune Order
Now you know the runes you need - but putting them into a good order is the most important thing.


 * Find a rune that is unique but still happens often enough to use as the first tile. Delay runes (Ƶ or ᛁ), or attack speed runes (ᛗ, ᚾ, ᛈ or ᛢ) work great at the start.
 * Using runes that occur often as a starting tile will lead to high interference. For example, the heal rune (ᛏ) should never be used in the beginning - it triggers constantly because of healing of Musketeer renew or Bard passive heal.
 * As only 3 buffs can be up at once, you do not need 5 tilesets - in fact, having extra tilesets with high interference is actually bad and can hurt your damage output. Keep in mind that you can also get multiple buffs from the same tileset, if it takes you less time to proc it than it takes for the buff to run out.
 * Try to keep your tilesets short (3 runes) - long tilesets are generally weaker than short tilesets, as some things during actual combat trigger additional runes and create interference (like getting hit (ᚹ, ᚥ) or getting healed (ᛏ)).
 * For longer tilesets, the 6 second activation time can also run out.

Further Notes

 * If more than one tileset procs on the same action, they will activate in the order they were applied.