Ranking the BEST RUNES in The Binding of Isaac 

Hagalaz idea is actually pretty smart lol. Dagaz makes a lot of sense too, but it might make broken hearts a little too easy to remove in that case. And yeah I definitely like my mapping too, I was fighting against it in the video because ig I value the free health more but both of them are usually nice to see.

I like this idea a lot lol

Thanks! I expected 0 views forever so the amount of views we are already getting on these vids feels huge! It's nice seeing so many people enjoy the lists.

@@turtier never lose yo passion fam✌

Thanks a bunch! Glad to know people enjoy them

​@@latermanner keep going I learn a lot about the game from your vids

I'd like everyone to know that I was the one who thought of the library point LOL. I will happily weaken my own argument if it gets us closer to the truth! XD I still think perthro is better just because rerolling devil / angel / secret rooms is crazy strong, especially since you can reroll key piece in angel or reroll chests / beggar payouts in secret room. But before I thought this made perthro significantly better since eden didn't have similar tricks, but turns out stuff like libraries, having options items, etc, while they won't happen all the time, there are enough of those synergies that it has helped eden close the gap, so I agree with it being right behind perthro now.

I commented this at the start of the video, I had no idea it would be a bid debate lmao

YOU INDIRECTLY CALLED ME A BAD PLAYER LOL I will NEVER forgive this! XD (but yes dagaz is indeed good)

@@turtier Infact ive been trying to unlock rock bottom, curse of the lost on depths 2 with about 1 and a half minutes left. I did not make boss rush..

Dagaz is a nice thing to use right away, it's useful

I love dagaz sm. Its always good

Maybe at some point. I'm actually not sure if I'd have a lot to say though. I focus a lot more on how good the effects in the game are rather than how tough the bosses are, and also its possible to figure out a placement for items that I haven't used as much purely through logic, but you can't do that for a boss list.

Difficulty is a bit hard to talk about I think. Boss design is something I can get behind, Like Delirium is the hardest boss but only because it's the worst designed. A boss like Dogma would be rated high tier for having good attacks to dodge despite technically being easier.

That's why it's INSANE!

It's INSANE!

Thanks for the comment. Good to know that we weren't completely off base with soul of J+E since that was a bit of a theoretical placement for us. I mostly go mother runs which is why I honestly forgot about using jera on chest LOL, I do find that sometimes its hard to find the right situation for jera but it still does give some good benefits fairly often. I will almost always value items, particularly high value items (such as rerolling in devil / angel / secret room with perthro) to be much better than consumables though, but still the occasional crazy jera play really can do a lot. Good to see that you agree with the eve and azazel spot too. It's a bit harder to compare the combat runes vs the utility runes because they kinda do entirely different things (utility runes give impact the rest of the run but the combat rune is huge impact for 1 room, but that room can often be the final boss), so that was another one where the placement looked right to me but I wasn't entirely confident.

Good points! Tbh I do think I rated Beth a little too highly, I just give a lot of benefit to the runes that you get a good benefit from using it right away, rather than needing to save it. I've never had the birds go away but I assume its consistent since both you and Turt are saying the same thing. But yeah either way I think as long as they are right next to each other they are in super good spots.

I feel like soul of eden is only really impactful if you can get several items in the same room to reroll, in which case I will prefer it over perthro (assuming that all my items aren't in a secret room or something). Otherwise you overwhelmingly just reroll it into a treasure item anyway. Without any of the extra tech that perthro has to GUARANTEE items of a specific pool, soul of eden starts to feel comparable to black rune to me. Sure, its objectively good when I don't want whatever item is offered, but I'm not expecting too much. Although I think a reroll is almost always higher value than black rune so that's why black rune is bottom of huge and soul of eden would be top of huge. You say soul of eden is +1 item a lot of the time, since what you had before would have been kinda meaningless, and I can agree with that. Ehwaz is also +1 item a lot of the time, its an item from treasure pool which is the same as what soul of eden will probably give you, so I consider these kinda comparable too. Soul of eden is more consistent and CAN highroll, so it's better than that, but not significantly enough to be a whole tier above imo. I also put my main priority on just winning. No need to get a massive win, just do good enough to have consistency. This might sound irrelevant but it relates to perthro vs soul of eden quite a lot I think. For perthro, you might save it for your devil / angel deal, and get an average item from the pool. In that case, your run is going as expected, the average run is very winnable so what you got is probably good enough. You could try to reroll it for something a little better, but you probably don't actually need to. Since devil / angel are arguably the highest impact item pools in most runs (consistent to find and give higher impact items on average), it means that low rolling that pool puts you more at risk of falling behind the power curve compared to any other low roll. In this situation, perthro is easily better than soul of eden, since perthro will give a pretty good chance to at least get a decent item from the pool, while soul of eden will most likely just give you an average treasure room item. In the scenario of rerolling any other item pool that isn't devil / angel, it is less likely to make a massive impact on the run. You can comfortably afford to get a low impact item room, it doesn't matter. Soul of eden will perform a little better than perthro in that scenario, sure, but it's just a less important scenario, and it still requires soul of eden to actually highroll for it to be really impactful. So if you want to force a big impact, then perthro can GUARANTEE items from a certain good pool that did not exist otherwise (namely spawning beggars/machines/chests in secret rooms, and angel key pieces), meanwhile soul of eden needs to high roll to achieve that effect. And if you want insurance against bad luck, perthro provides important insurance in the event that you low roll on the pool that arguably matters most, meanwhile soul of eden will give a much lower expected output in that scenario. I really do think perthro is above it on so many levels. That being said, I'd be interested in doing the math behind chaos and soul of eden at some point, maybe the rates for good pools are higher than I think. But at least from experience its a treasure room item most the time and I'm just not super impressed with only having a chance at high rolling. Btw, chest item pool no longer has crickets head and such, its just full of a bunch of boss items in repentance, basically just a smaller 2nd boss pool.

Great discussion, enjoyed reading these comments a lot!

I was thinking the same thing! Your points perfectly symbolize why I feel like it's top 3 for sure. You can get so many high rolls on many mid item pools. Angel key piece rerolls are literally the only thing that brings pertho above imo. Also being able to immediately use Soul of Eden over waiting for a good room to use perthro is a super big point for eden by a lot.

@@turtier Eden is better in item and boss rooms, giving it much higher highs since it can turn a bad item into a god item, whereas perthro wont be used to turn a BAD item into a good item

@@latermanner Feel like you missed my points a bit. Since devil / angel room are the highest impact rooms in the game, having the ability to rerolls these are more important, its more likely to matter. How many runs have you had that were struggling until you got a particularly good devil / angel item and it was easy afterwards? And how many runs have you had where you really needed something good but then you got delirious and now your behind the power curve? At least for me, both of those happen a fair amount, definitely way more than it does for any other item pool, because devil / angel are just that important. Perthro fixes the latter example much better than Eden does. You WILL be rerolling a bad item into an angel room item. And there's so many high impact items in that pool that you have a chance to instantly win from 1 good reroll, the same way that soul of Eden can, except this is way more in your control and also a lot likelier. Half the time, my boss item or treasure room item being bad does not matter, I'm not banking on those items really carrying me. So the situation you use soul of eden is not a dire situation, but the situation you need to use perthro is potentially way more important. Sure, soul of eden can bail you out too, but you do NEED to highroll. It'll be a treasure room item most of the time. You never even really NEED to highroll with perthro because even if it rerolls you into the average angel room item, that's usually good enough.

That's fair, but in general items are better than pure stats

It's planned. It'll be a long one though XD

Its been recorded 👀

@@latermanner let’s fucking go 👀

This is the 2nd comment about soul of J+E backing us up that it's good, which is a relief because yeah we basically had to place it purely on logic and how its theoretically good. I'll give it a bit more attention next time I play because it's clear that for whatever reason both of us have slept on it and barely used it lol. I've come around a little on soul of eden. I still think it's below perthro, but in the vid I said it's significantly worse, but now I agree with it being 1 spot below. I still think if you are using them on a singular item then I think eden feels underhwhelming to me, but just like how perthro can be used to cheat out guaranteed angel or secret room items using the key piece, chests, beggars, etc, eden can cheat out value in other ways that I hadn't thought about, for example libraries, or it being generally more useful if you have one of the more options items. Eden is the king of multi reroll while the other reroll effects are much better for single reroll imo.

@@turtier Didnt even mention the utility that J+E has with extra uses on devil beggars/sac room/blood dons, add J+E with lovers card, surprisingly strong combo and all possible with the lost + t lost. I didn’t even think of Soul of Eden in a Library, thats actually really strong, will keep that in mind!

He knows it gives you a damage up, he meant that it fades way too fast so to buff it he would make it fade slower. I guess it's good for getting out of a situation where you are almost guaranteed to be hit though.

​@@turtierAh I see, didn't catch that

Honestly I'm kinda happy that mother doesn't have chests in front of her because I want the game to be harder. That being said I think I'm probably in the minority with that opinion lol.

Interesting 🤔, think we would just talk about which floors are the most useful?

Good point actually! I knew there would be a bad hit in there somewhere! Granted I don't even think bobs brain is that bad but it definitely can be annoying sometimes.

I did not know this! I plan to do a file with optimal unlock order at some point so this is actually a great tip, thanks. I wonder if I'm crazy enough to unlock perthro and nothing else XD

You are so right lol I never even realised. Now that I think about it the same can be said for the slot machine and shell game discussion in the machine list XD

@@turtier fr my bro

Nvm talked about 5 seconds later

Also the melee swing can grab consumables behind rocks I think? In that case I definitely agree with it's current placement, almost exactly actually. I do think I'd just prefer hagalaz most of the time.

It's minmax potential I think is way to low to raise it any higher, I still just value it as a early game boss nuke, which at least has it's uses. I think it's in a good spot.

Yeah, I'm happy that I decided to quickly check in game cause I would have been real annoyed if we missed that.

Yeah my b lol

That's only really true for 2 heart deals. 1 heart deals are potentially detrimental to take. Even a 2 heart deal can backfire if you get something like lord of the pit while you already have flight. Angel deal however you aren't spending anything, so even if you whiff, at least you didn't also spend red health for it. Not to say that blind devil deals are un-takeable or anything, but I do find it hard to justify sometimes, meanwhile angel deal there is almost no risk.

thats d1 im pretty sure

@@Gregariousness1 Well fuck me you're right

Also latermanner is a soul of apollyon hater, its really not that bad, turt brought up good points at the end about it

THANK YOU OMGGGGGGGG

@@HerOwnKnife Yeaaaaaah, in hindsight it probs should be right below the soul of sam, defo doesnt do anything too game changing but it CAN nuke first 2 floor bosses, wheras sam can do first four

@@latermanner yes exactly where i would put it too

I can't help it lol it's probably my favourite niche minmax mechanic in the game. I used to find d4 effects really boring and never bothered with them, because presumably I intentionally grabbed some of the items I already have so why would I want to reroll them? But d4 exploit opened up an entire new strategy for me where yes I'd lose what I had already worked for but I gain the ability to transform all my future items into an different item pool. It's so prevalent to me that I've got in the habit of almost always taking my boss item after my devil / angel room, so any future d4 effect I get will have already effected a few of the boss items (I'm not crazy enough to d4 exploit my entire floor before getting a d4 effect though, but you theoretically can). You told me to shut up about d4 exploit and I used that as an opportunity to talk about d4 exploit, checkmate! XD