jwalke

If black dhide is going to protect as well as it does against mage, then it should have a much greater strength penalty. Like I have said above, with as hard as a dds hits, and the fact that it has 4 specials, and the fact that black dhide protects against mage, it only takes one "break through" of the "freezing" spell and the mage is dead.

I agree with you about blitz. One of the reasons I don't like it is that usually the first time I realize that I splashed is when a guy is in my face with a dds slashing me to death. To me, the "hit" looks very like the "miss."

Serephus - In terms of mages "owning" the other classes, I haven't found that to be the case - in fact, I have found the opposite to be the case. (I wish mages DID own the other classes, since I am a high level mage, but I've gotta call it like I've see it.) I don't think anyone who has done any serious pking/staking would disagree that using "modern" magic is not very effective for winning a fight. Modern magic is very useful for team pking, of course, especially if your team has the other team outnumbered, because you can teleblock and entangle, and also get some good hits in. If you are solo, though, you are ALWAYS going to get killed by good rangers, and you are FREQUENTLY going to get killed by strength pures who are wearing black dhide (I get the fact that rune conducts magic spells, and makes spells more powerful, but seriously, it has been years since I've seen any strength pure in the wildy in rune - everyone wears dhide for a good reason). We should all be able to agree that if a mage fights a strength pure toe to toe, the mage will lose. Therefore, a mage's ability to win depends entirely on whether or not the mage is able to keep the meleer at a distance. The problem with modern magic is that you can't autocast entangle, and that if you fail on even one entangle, you are most likely DEAD. Once the meleer has broken through your defenses, they are going to hit you with repeated DDS specials, and even if you hit them with entangle again right away they'll be able to hit you again as you are running away, thus getting in at least two, and most often three, DDS specials on you. As you point out, this can pretty much be a one hit kind of deal. There is no margin for error, and a mage has to deal with lots of clicking, since you have to click on every spell, and go to a different screen for food. Ancients are better, especially in the duel arena. Frankly, I have a hard time winning in the duel arena with modern magic, but I do much better with ancients, especially since lots of strength pures, for whatever reason, seem to leave their dhide in the bank when dueling. Ancients autocast, which is great, and if you get far enough away from the opponent you can just freeze them to death. Same rules apply, though, which is that if they DO break through, you are most likely dead. My experience is that Ice Barrage is much better than Ice Blitz. However, in the wildy you can't barrage in multi when you have friends "helping" you, or you risk killing your friends. So you are stuck with blitzing, and I have had many strength pures in dhide break through my ice blitz even when I am potted to over 100 mage, prayed up and wearing full mystic. Go figure.

That sounds good, but my point is that things don't work that way in the "real" world. Although every style has strengths and weaknesses, some strengths are stronger, and some weaknesses are greater, than others. Anyone wanting to confirm this can do a simple test. Go to the duel arena and use only mage versus meleers with essentially equal skills who are wearing dhide. The meleers will kill the mages about half the time. That's what my real world tests have shown over about 100 experiments. I was surprised at the results too, given that everyone says that "melee is weak to mage." When we say that one style is "weak" to another style I think what most of us think that means is that the "strong" style will defeat the "weak" style the vast majority of the time, like 95% of the time. That's not the case with melee vs mage. It is the case, however, with range vs mage, and with range vs melee. There are many reasons for this, lots of which involve the mechanics of the gameplay that mages have to use vs what meleers and rangers have to deal with, but I won't go into that here. Also, ancients are different, as I said...

Gtacrackhead is right. Everyone else is wrong, and the Jagex "party line" that every skill is weak to some other skill is wrong. Here is why, and if you don't believe it then just check it out in the dueling arena or the wildy. I have, many hundreds of times. Mage is weak to range. That is clear, and nobody can honestly dispute that statement. A ranger's armour protects from mage attacks, and the mage's most potent weapons - the binding, entangling and freezing spells - have no effect on a ranger's ability to attack a mage. If two players fight, and one is a certain mage level and the other is the same ranged level, and they each have armor commensurate with their level, the ranger will win 95 times out of 100. Therefore, only a foolish mage fights a ranger, especially since the mage, to have any hope of being effective, has to carry stuff that is at least 10 times more valuable than what the ranger has to carry. If a mage fights a warrior, the mage's success almost entirely depends on the mage's ability to "freeze" the warrior in place using bind or (in P2P) entangle or ancients. A big problem with this is that these "freezing" spells, other than ancients, can't be autocast, and I don't care what level mage you are, and what you are wearing, these spells miss frequently, especially against someone wearing range armor. What people have figured out is that wearing good range armor does not reduce your melee skills very much, and any reduction is much more than offset by the mage protection you receive from wearing the armor. Put another way, if you wear good ranged armor and wield a good melee weapon, the mage WILL misscast the "freezing" spell on you - you may just have to sit there and patiently eat while you wait for the mage to miss. When the mage misses, you WILL break through the mage's defenses, and you WILL (as gtacrackhead says) put the mage in a mode where he/she has to do nothing but eat to save his live, thus being unable to bind you ever again (the mage won't even have time to get his/her "spell screen" up to click on the spell because they will have to be on the "backpack" screen eating as fast as they can). The mage will die. This is true no matter what level mage you are - I pot to over 100 mage and have some pray so I can use some of the mage prayers, and this is true of me, so I imagine that it is true of others. To give you an idea from "real" world experience, even if I am fully potted and prayed and fighting a strength pure that is NOT wearing ranged armor - they are either wearing rune or nothing - if they break through my "freezing" spells, which they do over half the time, I am toast. (You ever been hit with 4 dds specials in a row by a potted up strength pure? What mage pure has the hp to withstand that, even eating as fast as possible?) I don't think that you can say that a skill, like "melee," that wins at least half the time to mage is "weak" to mage. Once meleers start losing to mages 95% of the time, like mages lose to rangers, then I think we can properly say that melee is weak to mage. Same is true in F2P and P2P. I won't go into all the pros/cons with teleblock, ancients, etc. here since this is the F2P forum, but the matter is no different there. Bottom line is that when people are risking their stuff, they do what works, and learn quickly what doesn't work and stop doing that. You just have to open your eyes and look at what people are actually doing and how they are actually fighting and winning to see what works and doesn't in RS. So, first, you won't see many pure mage pkers in edgy or elsewhere, second, you won't see nearly as many pure mage pking videos as you do melee and range videos (even the most famous pkers only use mage as part of their attacks, to freeze someone long enough to whip them to death, for example) and, third, if you go into the duel arena and see who is winning the stakes, it isn't going to be the pure mages (unless they are high level ancienting - and that's another story entirely, and is different in the duel arena than in the wildy with its own pros and cons). The winners are going to be the strength pures and the pure rangers. Period. End of sentence.