TheAncient

You won't get laughed at using CLS for MH - that's the only place where it is potentially useful.

Are you really going to be using Zuriel staff whenever you mage? That sounds highly impractical. 490 vs 465, roughly. 35 lp extra damage is worth it.

You can't ignore the fact that on cannoned and familiar tasks (which should be a large proportion of your tasks) the figure approximately doubles. Also the figure is only a baseline - you should include a roughly 1.25 - 1.5X multiplier to incorporate losses associated with getting the task, walking around during the task, picking up drops, etc - all time that isn't combat. Adding any protection prayers also introduces a 1.5X multiplier. I think I made it clear that my point is Bandos is good for people with soul wars cape and turmoil but NOT piety and no soul wars cape. A lot of people don't make 1M/hr yet they still use Bandos. You'd be surprised at how many people fight melee vs melee. Stupid, I agree, but it happens a LOT. Plus even for bridding you will get into lulls of melee vs melee, when both brids need to rest a bit. It's important to know what the best setup is for those lulls too. Also, I brid a lot better with torag's than Bandos. It's really a matter of personal preference. The only two selling points for Bandos are ranged defense and strength bonus. The ranged defense is only 1 more than each barrows counterpart, and whether or not the strength bonus makes up for the defense loss is personal preference and has to do with when you switch into melee gear.

Not really. IF: Premise: (we want defense xp, we want money, we want fun) THEN: Frost dragons is a better method than irons because you make more money, get more defense xp, and is still fun. Feel free to disagree with me that frost dragons aren't fun - but that's kind of silly, the game mechanics for killing both frosts and irons are about the same.

Yeah, soul wars cape is pretty much beast - it's a lot more important to get it for slaying than full B And like I said about KO's before: Sure, Bandos will hit like 3% more damage on each hit - but he will also get hit a lot more often. It's a lot easier to tank a single strong hit than a couple slightly weaker hits back to back. If we were talking about a smaller difference in accuracy I would agree with you, but 6-7% is pretty substantial. As for the point about flipping: Flipping an item doesn't mean you have to use it. Plus you can flip non-Bandos items

More realistically, even with good teams, you will in the long run average about 40K-50K xp/hr. Even 30 hours is a lot... it's at least 1-2 weeks work of nolifing.

I think it's pretty evident at this point that the clues aren't as predictable as before, and instead of writing guides that provide you concrete solutions to the clues, it would be better to write a guide that focuses on the methodology of how to do them. Example: For the compass (spinning arrow) clue, use a divide and conquer search (binary search) algorithm. Teleport between cities - first cities far apart, and then closer together - and when you feel like you're close, start running around, until you find that the compass is moving rapidly. If your compass is moving more often you are getting closer. etc etc

I think there's a very clear divide in the types of people that skill and people that do combat. Skillers tend to be more community-oriented and are more "casual" about the game. They are the players you see talking about random things in CC's, and who talk to each other while skilling. Combat-oriented players tend to be more competitive and "serious" about the game. It's not my right to say that one is, in absolute terms, better than the other. It's a matter of personal preference. But with that said, I personally prefer combat. And I would prefer a community that is more combat-oriented. I am of the opinion that an MMO should be more competitive and less community oriented. Also, I think it's hard (but doable) to interact with people online who you will likely never see in real life.

I didn't realize it at the time, but the original post is a troll. But trolling isn't necessarily bad - a lot of arguments have been fleshed out in this thread, and I think (or at least hope) everyone understands each other. That's not a bad thing. That was one of my original intentions with this tread and I think it's shown through.

Whether or not I take one particular kill (the first one) is kind of unimportant... crashing "politely" is still crashing. Sometimes I'll steal the first kill, sometimes I'll tell them that I'm about to crash them - it doesn't really matter, I think, because ultimately I'm still what you call "stealing" their spot. Also, like I said before - your attitude to what I do is your business. I'll try to make things easier for you, but if someone's going to complain, I won't stop them, and I surely won't listen to them if I feel their complaints are unreasonable.

Do W117 until you get a feel for the skill. Once you know how to run a dungeon, read a dungeoneering guide (there's one in my sig!).

Another option is to get 85 DG and then train at frosts. They give you charms, effigies, and lots of money. They aren't too hard to hit if you have a rapier and decent attack level.

Revised my OP and main point. Like the title suggests, the OP now focuses on which situations where Bandos is better and which situations it isn't.

If they are chopping logs. The fact that Yew or Magic logs have not deviated from their natural curves while hatchets have, means people buying them are using their hatchets to cut Ivy or willow logs. If there was a steady increase in the number of people buying hatchets for chopping trees there should also be a increase in the number of logs produced (and thus a lowering in price of the logs). But I don't see the price of logs lowering on any chart (except maples: See Kingdom bug). So all I can see is people buying hatchets for Ivy. The thing about stuff like hatches is, where the heck would you lose them? The only way they would exit the game is if people chopped with them in PvP worlds or Botters using them were banned. If the majority of people using them were cutting ivy, then its just a saturation of the supply in hatchets. It has no increase in net effect because the value of their hatchet for resale has decreased since they purchased it. Regardless, I could just say better hatchets mean more people are getting higher WC levels, thereby achieving personal goals and producing utility; the decrease in price will effectively just be their sunk cost for training WC. The exact reasoning isn't that important - the main idea is that by making more better objects, you allow more people to get what they want. This should be considered to be preferable. So full line of reasoning: 1) Crashing --> Higher efficiency per monster spawn --> More good items produced --> More people can achieve personal goals --> Net positive effect on society 2) Crashers can crash you and there's nothing you can do about it (other than luring, etc) 3) Crashers have more of a right to a monster spawn for the above 2 reasons. Counter-argument: 1) Against: "Crashing makes the community more argumentative / antagonistic:" Response: an overly friendly community is not necessarily appropriate for an MMO, where the main point of the game is to stimulate success. Furthermore, crashers are not entirely responsible for the crashee's attitude. If you really cared about community, you could make friends with the crasher.

Likewise, not crashing someone only benefits the person I didn't crash, at my own cost. Why is efficiency a bad standard? I am happier finding joy in efficiency rather than joy out of laziness.

Efficiency is always good for an individual, but not always for a group as a whole. Dragon hatchets have been steadily falling in price the past 12 months (and took a rather quick jump down at the clue update). If you become so efficient at cutting down trees, before you know it you have cut down the whole forest. The same thing is happening with items like the dragon hatchet where people are killing them to the point they wont be a valuable drop anymore. DK's were never designed to have 60-70+ kills an hour while standing in the center, but now it can be done with ease. Sometimes you need inefficient people killing something instead of only efficient people to keep drops at the value they should be. This is an issue that wont be fixed until Jagex releases higher level boss monsters. Not necessarily monsters like corp that hit 500's though prayer, but bosses you can barley stay an hour with a yak, unicorn, overloads and maxed gear. More dragon hatchets at a cheaper price means more people woodcutting more efficiently means more logs are coming into the game which means more people can do what they want with the logs. You are producing more net wealth and utility per hour. The net effect is that more people get what they want. (which doesn't mean some people don't get what they want) Who says it isn't? Business is all about efficiency. And business is what feeds us, houses us, provides us with basically everything. Unsurprisingly, business is also pretty cold - sometimes even evil. Totally agree with the last line and glad you realize that, but i find it pretty hard to justify evil. Bad business practices was what caused the US recession. There's a reason why ethics are good in the world. That's because those businessmen were being shortsighted and did not consider the net effect on society rather than their own personal gain. Also, being selfish is not being unethical. In fact, being selfish is a core part of ethical egoism. In the context of MH: -- RS society incurs a loss of "worse community" at the benefit of producing more net wealth. I would say, in this context, more net wealth is more important than community - because like I said before, most people that play RS don't play it for the community. And if you seek to be part of a real community, why not do something in real life? The point of an MMO is ultimately to simulate success.

Ironically, I do use chaotic weaponry :P My gear is good enough that I can crash/anticrash, but bad enough so that I don't risk anything over 30M I just don't understand the people who are on their 2nd CLS (and it always happens to be a CLS, never a rapier or maul ;) ). What in the world would be worth risking 50-100 hours of work for... I wouldn't be surprised if some people used having to re-obtain a chaotic weapon as an inscentive to get some more dungeoneering experience actually. It does seem extremely wasteful though. This reasoning would make sense if there were incentive (other than resource dungeons and hiscores) to train dungeoneering... but dungeoneering is basically useless outside of its token rewards.

Who says it isn't? Business is all about efficiency. And business is what feeds us, houses us, provides us with basically everything. Unsurprisingly, business is also pretty cold - sometimes even evil.

I never said "don't call me a d-bag" - I'm saying if you think I'm a d-bag, you're being too sensitive: Maliciousness is bad, but hurting people isn't always bad. If I can do something, and it yields a net benefit for me and the world (including the loss associated with making someone else hop), then it is okay to do it. It is the crashed person's fault for being unhappy. I said this in the OP: you can either whine about it, or you can swallow your pride and forget about it. How you deal with your emotions is not my responsibility. Try not crashing and let the person have the kill, and then simply telling them their gonna be competing with you. Then be a little less happy that u didn't rudely steal someone's kill, but happy that you supposedly found a world that you can take over, leaving the other person a little less unhappy than if they got their kill jacked AND was forced to hop. I'm sure there's a bunch of other solutions. Use your brains. It's probably easier than spending your life trying to max so you can crash ppl. I do exactly this when I crash. I never advocated to crash and make fun of the person you're crashing, or to steal the first kill. When I crash, I just say " I am crashing you now, you have the choice to hop or not".

Grimy's DPS calc which uses the same formula as mine (slightly adjusted) Like you said, in those situations just replace proselyte legs with verac's. And for higher levels you should have access to good enough summoning/gear (EE/SGS) to offset that. This is not true. Safe PvP is an important part of the game, and it's not the best in that context. I speak out of both lots of experience (as a clan wars vet) and through my calculations/

I already stated my assumption which is that you have a high enough summoning/defense level such that you don't need to deflect melee. No, the point of this thread is to highlight where Bandos is good and where it's not. I didn't do a good job highlighting where it's bad for Slayer. I will revise my point when I do more calcs. Saying Bandos is situationally better for PvP for KO is somewhat valid, but that leans more to an opinion than a fact. The only hard numbers we can pull out at this point strongly point to barrows being better than bandos. You will hit the person wearing bandos a lot more often. These combos will lead to more KO's than an extra 2-3% damage. Even a perfect switcher can't avoid all mage and ranged damage at TD's. Speaking out of experience, magic defense is definitely needed at TD's even with perfect switches. Plus it would be absolutely ridiculous to switch weapon, body, and legs (you need range boosting gear), and time your titan specs correctly. Yes, I realize it's easy - and common - to do 6-7 item switches in PvP (and my PvP setup uses a 6-switch), but to switch like that for an hour straight, basically nonstop, is really tedious.

I am finding it hard to source any actual arguments pro-crashing? Other than the repetition of 'better gear, higher levels = god given right' which is cynical. Furthermore I find it interesting the lengths people go to defend their perfectly reasonable act of crashing. :thumbsup: The argument is simple: Whoever can utilize a spot to maximum efficiency has the right to monster spawn.

I thought about my post after writing it, and let me emphasize: The 400K/hr figure is under absolute BEST conditions for Bandos. I should re-do the calculation for a lower-leveled slayer using sub-par gear, a whip, and piety, and the figure will probably go up significantly. While I agree for slaying Bandos might be good for absolute maxed players, proselyte is much more economical for mid-low level players. Also don't neglect the point about multi-combat & combat familiars. You should always calculate gains with respect to increased efficiency (percentage) rather than absolute. Let's say you do 100 damage with proselyte. 100 extra damage with cannon. 5 extra damage with Bandos. W/o cannon: Bandos has a 5% increase in damage -> you save 60 - 60/1.05 minutes = 2.78 minutes W/ Cannon: Bandos has a 2.5% increase in damage -> you save 60 - 60/1.025 minutes = 1.46 minutes So w/ a cannon, Bandos is about half as effective. It's pretty marginal and not worth the huge disadvantage you get from sacrificing defense. Bandos's ranged defense is 1 more than Barrows. Lol. I already agreed with you about Frosts, DK's and Bandos. And if you're using Bandos at TD's youre doing something wrong.

Bandos armor is overrated. It is good, but only in certain contexts. Let's talk about two contexts: safe/dangerous melee vs melee PvP and Slayer. Melee vs Melee PvP In PvP, let's compare Bandos versus Torag's. Now, assume the best other gear - fury, onyx(i), dragon boots, etc, as well as maxed melee stats, turmoil, and extremes (I realize there aren't extremes in PvP worlds, but if anything extremes benefit Bandos, which is damage-oriented, rather than Torag's, which is defense oriented; extremes, which boost both attack and strength, benefit damage more than defense, which boosts only defense). Let's assume that both the Bandos and Torag's fighters are using a Chaotic Maul, which is the best weapon against high defense. The Bandos player is using a neitiznot helm and a Berserker(i) while the Torags player is using an onyx(i) and Torag's helm (in the same vein of strength vs. defense tradeoff) Here are the figures I used for the Bandos/Torag's setups. Bandos: Str 200; Crush 190; Stab D 254; Slash D 240; Crush D 269 Torags: Str 183; Crush 190; Stab D 321; Slash D 320; Crush D 305 Using my DPS calculator (which I explained in an earlier post), here are the calculated DPS. Torag player against Bandos: 36.1 DPS Bandos player against Torag: 34.0 DPS The player in Torag will, in the long run average, do ~6% more damage to the Bandos player than vice versa. 6% is significant and is most likely out of the error range of the DPS calculator. Now, what about other weapons? Barrows + CLS + DFS vs Bandos + CLS + DFS: 27.5 DPS vs 20.5 DPS Barrows + CLS + DFS vs Bandos + Maul: 34.9 DPS vs. 28.3 DPS Barrows + CLS + DFS vs Bandos + CLS + Defender: 32.3 DPS vs. 21.8 DPS Barrows + Maul vs Bandos + CLS + DFS: 29.9 DPS vs. 23.9 DPS Barrows + CLS + Defender vs Bandos + CLS + DFS: 29.7 vs. 22.7 DPS In every one of these scenarios, Barrows is SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER than Bandos. I did not include Rapier because CLS and CR DPS are extremely similar in these situations. Hence, any conclusions drawn from CLS can be extrapolated to CR too. Slayer Bandos is often praised as useful slayer gear. However, Bandos is actually less efficient than a much cheaper set of armor - Proselyte - for slayer, under certain conditions, and more efficient in others. The main reason behind this is that, in every scenario, for maximum efficiency, you should use turmoil or piety. However, Turmoil and Piety drain a significant amount of prayer, so prayer conservation is clearly quite important. Ultimately, by wearing bandos you are trading off cost and trip length (by saving prayer potions) for increased damage. But is this increase in damage ever worth it? Let's calculate. Most slayer monsters have such low defense that you never miss. Let's assume that slayer monsters have zero defense. If anything, this benefits the damage-oriented Bandos set. For Maxed Players Now for the sake of simplicity, let's assume the slayer has maxed melee stats, turmoil, and extremes. Let's also assume the player has a chaotic rapier and uses a defender. For these calculations I found max hit using Tip it's max hit calc (instead of my own), divided max hit by 2 (to find average hit), and divided max hit by 2.4 (the speed of a rapier). Let's assume a black mask. The absolute maximum DPS with the Bandos set: 136 DPS (148 Str Bonus) The absolute maximum DPS with the Proselyte set: 131.7 DPS (141 Str Bonus) Thus, Bandos does approximately 3% more damage than Proselyte. You will save 1.75 minutes every hour if you use Bandos rather than Proselyte. Now, let's calculate how many prayer points you will drain in an minute. I used RHQ's Prayer Drain calculator. Assume the player has a soul wars cape. Prayer drainrate with Bandos: 18.3 PPM (19 Prayer Bonus) Prayer drainrate with Proselyte: 15 PPM (30 Prayer Bonus) Thus, in one hour, you will drain 198 more prayer points with Bandos than with Proselyte. Each prayer potion will restore approximately 120 prayer points at 95 prayer. Thus, you will use 1.65 additional prayer potions every hour with Bandos. It will cost you approximately 12K for these additional potions. Hence, in the most ideal case, at the very least you will have to make about 400K per hour for Bandos to be better than proselyte. However, real-world slaying does not reflect maximum DPS, nor is your damage based solely on melee damage. If you are using a steel titan or cannon, it will likely be more economical to use Proselyte. Assuming you do approximately twice the amount of damage with a titan or cannon, the figure will go up to roughly 800K-1M an hour to use Bandos rather than proselyte (for cannonable/multi tasks). Alternatively, against monsters which have significant defense, you will likely find it more economical to use Proselyte. Also, prepare to use up 1-2 inventory spaces for each task for additional prayer potions if you are using Bandos. These calculations also assume you use no protection prayers or soul split. For Average Players Now let's look at some figures for average players. Let's assume no soul wars cape, regular super potions, piety, and 80 strength. Now, let's also assume the player needs to use protection prayers to prevent damage. Let's also assume the player uses a whip. For these calculations I found max hit using Tip it's max hit calc (instead of my own), divided max hit by 2 (to find average hit), and divided max hit by 2.4 (the speed of a rapier). Let's assume a black mask. The absolute maximum DPS with the Bandos set: 86.9 (114 Str Bonus) The absolute maximum DPS with the Proselyte set: 83 DPS (114 Str Bonus) Thus, Bandos does approximately 4.5% more damage than Proselyte. You will save 2.5 minutes every hour if you use Bandos rather than Proselyte. Now, let's calculate how many prayer points you will drain in an minute. I used RHQ's Prayer Drain calculator. Assume the player has a soul wars cape. Prayer drainrate with Bandos: 40.9 PPM (19 Prayer Bonus) Prayer drainrate with Proselyte: 34.62 PPM (22 Prayer Bonus) Thus, for every hour, you will drain 378 more prayer points with Bandos rather than Proselyte. At 70 prayer, each prayer dose will restore around 22 prayer points, so a 4-dose prayer potion will restore 88 Prayer points. Thus, 378 additional prayer points means 4.3 extra prayer potions every hour. This will cost you approximately 30K. Thus, for an average player - one who must use protect prayers, who only has piety, no extremes, etc., you must make over 720K per hour for Bandos to be better than Proselyte. Some other things to consider -- Cost: Bandos is significantly more expensive than either Torag's or Proselyte. -- Bandos protects over more things than Proselyte. Wearing Bandos and Fury is already enough to protect over any chaotic weapons. -- Barrows degrade costs are extremely low compared to the potential drop in value of Bandos. -- Bandos is generally not a good investment compared to rares, so keeping it for the sake of holding value is not the best idea either. -- If you are slaying properly, you are using combat familiars and/or a cannon for slayer. In these scenarios, a portion of your damage does not come from melee, and thus the increase in damage from wearing Bandos is proportionally smaller. -- You will get hit more in proselyte than Bandos. True. However, in a lot of scenarios this damage is so low that it will barely affect your task. In other cases, you should be using a healing familiar or protection prayers to negate damage. -- I didn't take into account DPS-loss from the "death" effect (DPS is lowered for KO's, since you can't hit over your opponent's remaining health). This affects Bandos more than Proselyte. -- Your actual DPS will be lower than the maximum in all cases because of pauses to eat, run around, etc. This will affect Bandos more than Proselyte. TL;DR Final Decision Tree: Slayer -- If you are absolutely maxed, have turmoil, soul wars cape, and good healing familiars, go with Bandos. -- If you are on a task which allows you to use a cannon or combat familiar, Bandos can sometimes be worse than proselyte. -- If you do not have a soul wars cape, do not have turmoil, or use protection prayers, you should use proselyte (unless you can make more than 1M/hr). -- If you want to look cool, use Bandos. PvM -- If you are fighting: DK's, Bandos, Sara, Frost Dragons, go with Bandos. PvP -- If you are fighting melee vs melee, Bandos is a lot worse than Barrows. The difference is significant. -- If you are a hybrid who uses mage, you can consider using Bandos, as long as you know how to tank specs well.

The game is meant to be combat-focused... at the end of the day all skills are support skills for combat, in one way or another. Farming gives you herbs for Herblore gives you Boosted combat levels. Woodcutting gives you logs for Fletching bows and arrows. Construction gives you altars for which to train your prayer and so on... Plus nowadays combat is the only good moneymaker (2M/hr+) aside from merch.