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From Diablo Wiki
→Updated Gamescom Info
The last example, of a rune that makes for a bigger fire attack, fits easily into the known system. It sounds like what used to be called the Power Rune. The three elemental damage types though, do not seem to have any connection to the known functions of the Multistrike, Energy, Lethality, or Striking runes. It's not known if the Hydra skill is an outlier, or if most skills now gain very different rune bonuses than they did previously.
===More Updated Bashiok Info==
Diablo III Community Manager Bashiok spoke to Diii.net about runestones shortly after Gamescom, in August 2010, and explained a lot of the lingering questions on this issue. [http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/more-changes-to-runestones/]
He clarified the Hydra rune situation. The five runes provide to Hydra: extra damage, multishot, and the 3 elemental properties. Extra damage and multishot are consistent with the previous properties. One of the elementals comes from the wildcard rune, and the other comes from what used to be the Energy rune. That rune now functions as a second wildcard in most skills, since changes to the [[resources]] made the mana-saving property obsolete. (Plus it just wasn't cool enough, in most instances.)
So Hydra isn't a total outlier; it's just got one rune, (formerly known as Lethality) that usually affects critical bonuses, that's doing something very different (an elemental damage change).
Many of the skills in the game have undergone similar transformations, in terms of their Runestone effects. The D3 Team has gone over all of them, more than 600 (20-25 skills per char x 5 chars x 5 runes) and tried to make them all awesome. Visual, interesting, exciting; not just stat-tweaking. This is a huge project, with a lot of trial and error, and it's ongoing.
The artwork and graphics were usually modified, to make so many visual changes. For instance, for a new effect to the [[Witch Doctor]]'s [[Corpse Spiders]] spell spawn a huge "mother spider" they were able to use existing artwork for monster spiders, modify it a bit, apply a new texture, change the size, and voila, it's a spider that fits perfectly with the new runestone effect.
The biggest problem seems to be balancing. How can they even out the effects and utility of so many runes doing so many different things? Bashiok admitted that was a challenge, but said that perfect balance wasn't required. As long as none of the rune properties were wildly over or underpowered, it would be find for [[PvE]] play. They might have to do more fine-tuning when it came to PvP though, since there it really does matter if one skill is slightly better than another. But they're not to the point of worrying much about that, yet.
==Rune Names==
