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Did you know that Adslahnit has already started a Runepriest handbook?

community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/758...

I would disagree fairly strongly with your view on Word of Binding.  It may not deal much damage, but at-will immobilize is something almost no other class can do (druids can with a power-specific feat) and that with a runic bonus on top is pretty nice.  In particular, it lets the runepriest (who's really quite durable) both pretend to be a defender when necessary and lock someone in place to suffer from adjacency effects (the Rune of Destruction +1 to hit for your allies and so forth) or any negative terrain effects and/or zones that you may have been able to drop the enemy in.

Additionally, there are a few feats, PP features, and so forth, that really get quite a lot of juice out of having immobilized enemies.  Being able to immobilize at-will gives them a lot extra to work with.

More to the point, though, it can completely shut down skirmishers.  Sure, if you only got to pick one power, you might not want to have it be this one - the immobilize is a bit situational - but it's a solid second power if you intend to use the other as your workhorse, and it's a *stellar* third power for any human runepriests that may be out there.  (and I'm not just saying that because they only have 4 at-wills.  I expect that it will remain a stellar third pick even as runepriest powers accumulate)

Mar 27, 2010 -- 1:51PM, obsid wrote:

Word of Diminishment - basic normal 1[W] +str attack
      Destruction - Vul 2 to all damage from your whole team is cool, amazing if your focusing on a solo.
      Protection - Good if your alone fighting something, that way if they hit you, they dont do much damage, and you get your damage bonus next attack.

Word of exchange - basic normal 1[W]+str attack
      Destruction - Much better compared to Word of binding destruction.  You get the damage roll, and your friend gets extra temp hp.
      Protection - -2 to all defense of the target, cool think of astral seal.  Rather then giving healing like astral seal does, it gives a very nice boost in AC for one turn, and you get a full damage roll+str attack

With regard to Word of Exchange, consider that when you switch to the rune state of protection you lose out on the +1 to hit from the rune state of destruction. The protection version thus only offers a net +1 to hit vs. word of exchange (destruction) or word of diminishment (destruction). Depending on the situation, the extra damage from say, WoE(d) (about 4 damage at heroic with a 50% hit rate) might outweigh the benefit of the added +1 and damage reduction.