Weapon Ranking Guide Introduction: "Godswords are only good for the specials." "Granite maul is way too slow." "The whip is the best weapon in the game." "There's hardly any difference between a Saradomin Sword and a dragon scimitar combined with a rune defender." "Dragon longsword is much worse than a dragon scimitar." "Dragon mace ftw!" Heard any of these statements or similar ones throughout your Runescape career? You probably have. I have heard these types of statements from people and wondered which of these are true and to what extent. All of these statements, I think, have a biased notion and can only be based on personal opinion or experience. To counter such statements spurs discussions/arguments that include arbitrary terms such as "faster," "hits more," "more accurate," or "slow." Tip.it's combat guide defines weapons to have "fast" or "medium" speed and "high" or "medium" strength, but how accurate are these terms? This guide is meant to disambiguate any questions of which weapons are better than others. This guide will clearly define and rank common weapons by killing efficiency. I have found out through scientific process which truly is the best weapon and how much better some are than others. Therefore, this guide can influence which weapons you choose to train with. Explanation: The area that this guide is most relevant to is training, or situations where you are not going to lose health very rapidly and are going to spend (hours) attacking monsters. Therefore, is it safe to say that the most effective and efficient weapons are the ones that kill the monster the fastest. We all know that weapons have an attack bonus and a strength bonus, as well as other bonuses. The attack bonus is important because you want to be able to do damage on the monster, and the strength bonus is important because you want to do lots of damage to the monster. Hitting the monster frequently with highly damaging hits kills the monster fastest. So, accepting that information, it can be inferred that weapons with higher attack and strength bonuses are better. One might be led to the conclusion that a rune two-handed sword is better than a dragon scimitar because it has higher numbers. This, however, is where the ambiguity steps in. While Jagex gives us clear, defined numbers for attack and strength of a weapon, it does not tell us exactly how long it takes between hits of the weapon. For this, I had to turn to other sources, and the perfect one was shown to me by nubbycubby. I found it here. My formula: Since efficiency is a balance of strength bonus, attack bonus, and hit time, I divided both bonuses by the hit time and averaged them to get one final number per weapon. I rounded that number as well as the att/sec and str/sec values to one decimal place to make things easier. No two weapons were closer than two tenths apart in weapon efficiency, so there is no need for more decimal places. The numbers don't really mean anything in and of themselves; they are meant for comparative purposes. Variables: Please again note that weapon special attacks are by no means taken into account here. Nor were any other bonuses that could affect one weapon more than another. However, one important and easily incorporable variable is the rune defender. Combining it with certain weapons dramatically increases weapons' efficiency rating. The defender is also important because it can only be used with one-handed weapons. I have taken this into account in my data. So, without further ado, here is a table of data that I have collected and calculated regarding a few common weapons in Runescape. Data: Analysis: From the data, it is concluded that an abyssal whip used with a rune defender is the most effective way of training. For strength training, the best option would be a Godsword followed by a Saradomin sword. Feel free to comment.