The Limitations and Uses of Bandos

[TheAncient]

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.

[Mdeoxys]

Well someone crushed my dream of buying Bandos.

Naw just kidding it actually safes me some money, but if Bandos armor would be cheaper I'd buy it for the looks. :) ;)

[Bladewing]

Disagree with proselyte > bandos for slayer. I can do ANY task in full bandos and firecape and have enough prayer potions to turmoil the entire task. 12k for 1.75 minutes = 400k/h. Anyone can make 400k an hour, so you just proved that bandos is efficient.

 

Even factoring in the fact that slaying speed is not linearly correlated with max hit, Bandos would only have to save 0.2 minutes per hour for it to be efficient at a 5m/h income (TDs with steel titan), so I think I'll keep using it.

 

--

 

However, for most people bandos is overrated, especially for people who buy bandos armor, but still use glory and no berserker ring.

[Aiel]

Disagree with proselyte > bandos for slayer. I can do ANY task in full bandos and firecape and have enough prayer potions to turmoil the entire task. 12k for 1.75 minutes = 400k/h. Anyone can make 400k an hour, so you just proved that bandos is efficient.

 

Bandos would only have to save 0.2 minutes per hour for it to be efficient at a 5m/h income (TDs with steel titan), so I think I'll keep using it.

this. Not that I have enough money for bandos <_<

[xSxqPowerx]

Disagree with proselyte > bandos for slayer. I can do ANY task in full bandos and firecape and have enough prayer potions to turmoil the entire task. 12k for 1.75 minutes = 400k/h. Anyone can make 400k an hour, so you just proved that bandos is efficient.

Agreed. Would have to be a lot more expensive than that for me to consider giving up the extra damage, however small it is.

[Ermy]

You haven't included anything about taking extra damage while wearing the proselyte.

[AndJusticeForOne]

You haven't included anything about taking extra damage while wearing the proselyte.

Some other things to consider

-- I didn't take into account any non-maxed players. But the trend is obvious.

-- 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.

[Lep]

Bandos is actually better for slayer, however, for pvp, barrows > bandos. My 475+ slash defense > opponents bandos. Maybe 1% of the time I'll get hit a 700 with ags but the other 99% I seem to win. I try not to fight ancients, as I don't use them myself because of the cost. It actually really makes me mad to no end because anyone who sucks ass automatically becomes pro and overpowered when using ancients.

[Rudyaard]

Disagree with proselyte > bandos for slayer. I can do ANY task in full bandos and firecape and have enough prayer potions to turmoil the entire task. 12k for 1.75 minutes = 400k/h. Anyone can make 400k an hour, so you just proved that bandos is efficient.

 

 

 

I can't do that slaying, and I'm 100% positive I'm not the only one

[Logdotzip]

If you can afford to use bandos and turmoil tasks to begin with, you can afford to use 1 - 2 extra potions per trip, and you absolutely make over 400k per hour.

 

Bandos is best at DKS for it's higher range defence than Torags, Prayer and Strength bonus. DKS, TDS, and Bandos all benefit from using the gear, and those are arguably the most profitable bosses to kill that you can melee. It's also top to use at Frosts, which is probably the best guaranteed profit in game.

 

Bandos also still has quite excellent melee defence, so consider that in Proselyte you'd have to spend extra Prayer Points Deflecting Melee.

 

 

I really don't see the argument here.

[SirIzenhime]

Disagree with proselyte > bandos for slayer. I can do ANY task in full bandos and firecape and have enough prayer potions to turmoil the entire task. 12k for 1.75 minutes = 400k/h. Anyone can make 400k an hour, so you just proved that bandos is efficient.

 

 

 

I can't do that slaying, and I'm 100% positive I'm not the only one

 

You're also not maxed combat with turmoil and extremes.

 

At your levels, bandos is not worth using if you're praying on tasks. But for those of us with Maxed combat, turmoil and extremes, it is.

[DarkDude]

I personally use Veracs for slayer, has decent defence + prayer bonuses and as I don't have Soul Split and occasionally on tasks I do need more healing than just a familiar I think that works best for me but I've never looked into it.

[Squisher_33]

4dose ppots are like 7k these days, heck even if i compare bandos + fire cape to prossy + sw cape and call it 3 more ppots/h, then heck thats 20k and saves me 2-3 minutes on a task

 

the pvp advantage that bandos has is more ko potential

 

other than those 2 i agree

[stonewall337]

In some cases, I'd trade off a little bit of efficiency for looks, if merely slaying with bandos. However, since I also solo bandos, and DKS, besides other bosses, bandos is well worth the price for the ranged defense.

 

The argument that slaying with cannon+familiar reduces the efficiency of bandos is only partially true. You may only save 2 minutes a task with bandos when cannoning, compared to 2.5 without a cannon, but you are also doing more tasks total, thus INCREASING the amount of melee damage done.

 

As well, several (admittedly less logical but still actualities) are present, physiological , and preference. I am much more likely to slay when I have bandos, then when I didn't. As well, some people would rather spend less time slaying/etc, and make money with more "fun" methods.

[TheAncient]

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.

 

the pvp advantage that bandos has is more ko potential

It's pretty marginal and not worth the huge disadvantage you get from sacrificing defense.

 

If you can afford to use bandos and turmoil tasks to begin with, you can afford to use 1 - 2 extra potions per trip, and you absolutely make over 400k per hour.

 

Bandos is best at DKS for it's higher range defence than Torags, Prayer and Strength bonus. DKS, TDS, and Bandos all benefit from using the gear, and those are arguably the most profitable bosses to kill that you can melee. It's also top to use at Frosts, which is probably the best guaranteed profit in game.

 

Bandos also still has quite excellent melee defence, so consider that in Proselyte you'd have to spend extra Prayer Points Deflecting Melee.

 

I really don't see the argument here.

 

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.

[Viv]

In some cases, I'd trade off a little bit of efficiency for looks, if merely slaying with bandos. However, since I also solo bandos, and DKS, besides other bosses, bandos is well worth the price for the ranged defense.

 

The argument that slaying with cannon+familiar reduces the efficiency of bandos is only partially true. You may only save 2 minutes a task with bandos when cannoning, compared to 2.5 without a cannon, but you are also doing more tasks total, thus INCREASING the amount of melee damage done.

 

As well, several (admittedly less logical but still actualities) are present, physiological , and preference. I am much more likely to slay when I have bandos, then when I didn't. As well, some people would rather spend less time slaying/etc, and make money with more "fun" methods.

i have some expirience with this as well....

 

 

15m-like 18m exp i used prossy top/vskirt for slayer - ok defence good pray bonus also i had a sw cape sure it was pretty cheap on prayer but u gotta understand pray potions are cheaper these days too..and you got hit more and also you dont look as "elite" when you have prossy instead of bandos.

 

then i used prossy/firecape it wasnt too much less prayer pots and +4 was a pretty good increase in max hit for me

 

then i used bandos top/firecape/ver skirt it was a pretty good increase in max hit for me too and i noticed that i still wasnt having that many problems with prayer

 

then i used full bandos /firecape and had some problems with prayer on certain task but still it doesnt take much time to bank lol.

 

and with bandos you often use less pray tanking and using soulsplit instead of protection prayer and turmoil i dont protection pray anything now...

 

and 400k time value thats lower than i thought i imagine that its about the same comparing a firecape to soulwars cape so around 800k-1.2m timevalue for prossy/sw cape versus bandos/firecape in which case i think all slayers that can do frost dragons can do slayer bandos/firecape the only task i wear prossy at is spiritual mages as oops i lie i pray mage on those.

[Logdotzip]

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.

 

the pvp advantage that bandos has is more ko potential

It's pretty marginal and not worth the huge disadvantage you get from sacrificing defense.

 

If you can afford to use bandos and turmoil tasks to begin with, you can afford to use 1 - 2 extra potions per trip, and you absolutely make over 400k per hour.

 

Bandos is best at DKS for it's higher range defence than Torags, Prayer and Strength bonus. DKS, TDS, and Bandos all benefit from using the gear, and those are arguably the most profitable bosses to kill that you can melee. It's also top to use at Frosts, which is probably the best guaranteed profit in game.

 

Bandos also still has quite excellent melee defence, so consider that in Proselyte you'd have to spend extra Prayer Points Deflecting Melee.

 

I really don't see the argument here.

 

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.

 

It's +1 each, and As far as I can tell, that makes it better in terms of ranged defense. You also lack any prayer or strength bonus using barrows, which adds up heftily over time. And to bring up aesthetics only, you look so much hotter with Bandos. I see you fail to recognize anything regarding proselyte and prayer wasted deflecting melee.

 

The point of this thread was to say Bandos has no real amazing uses, and already it's better for Slayer, which encompasses most PvM, and for bosses, with Barrows *situationally* being better. I could just as easily say Bandos is situationally better in PVP for the KO potential.

 

And yeah, Bandos would probably be a better choice over Torags at TDS, neither being the best choice.

[Bladewing]

If you are pro at prayer switching at TDs, and are using a steel titan, I think bandos might be best.

[jettrider]

Couple of things about the calculations for Slayer:

 

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.

 

I haven't seen your DPS calculator (link?) so I can't comment on any calculations involving those figures. I'm also not sold on dividing max hit by 2 to find average damage done per hit.

 

I also have to say that 2 prayer potions is almost entirely negligible for a person training slayer in Bandos. Few tasks require much longer than an hour, and those that do are in single combat, allowing additional prayer potions to be brought in a BoB. Slayer itself will provide enough income per hour to offset that efficiency difference. I'm also not sold on the assumptions about how much damage is done by cannon/Steel titan.

 

As for the rest, I do want to talk about this:

 

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.

 

Proselyte has considerably less defence than Bandos armor which is generally offset in one of two ways. First, the task will be done with an overhead prayer/curse on constantly. I agree that Bandos offers negligible benefits for a huge cost difference when you are using turmoil AND a deflect curse/protection prayer. But for tasks where defence matters, the only way to offset bad armour is to flick soulsplit more often (and the gear used is commonly Proselyte top with Verac's plateskirt, sacrificing +1 prayer for about +50 defence). If you're trying to disprove that Bandos is the best option for the average player, being able to flick a level 95 curse without losing extra prayer points should not be an assumption.

 

Healing familiars...Bunyip is enough to cover you at some monsters even in proselyte. At others, absolutely not; unicorn could help at these monsters at a higher cost (healing aura scrolls do cost money). This would have to be done on a monster by monster basis.

 

Is Bandos the best endgame gear for almost every combat situation? Yes. Is it necessary for Slayer? Absolutely not...you're better off using the money saved from using cheaper gear to flip more expensive (and/or profitable) items in the GE. For people who don't want to do that or who don't need that money, Bandos is always a worthy buy.

 

 

Side note for TDs...with a Steel Titan and Chaotic Long, I still get stuck on the ranging part much more often than the melee part. Steel Titan scrolls are incredibly helpful and speed up TDs, but they *do* hit quite a lot of 0s and sometimes I go through 3 scrolls before my bolts finally switch the prayer. Adding a small strength bonus on top of that would not speed up TDs much at all if bringing more balanced defensive gear would allow you to squeeze in extra prayer potions or another overload. Already you have this tradeoff between bringing DSS/ESS/DFS and rune defender; I use both interchangeably and both save time in the end, the difference (if it exists) being too negligible to notice.

[TheAncient]

It's +1 each, and As far as I can tell, that makes it better in terms of ranged defense. You also lack any prayer or strength bonus using barrows, which adds up heftily over time. And to bring up aesthetics only, you look so much hotter with Bandos. I see you fail to recognize anything regarding proselyte and prayer wasted deflecting melee.

 

The point of this thread was to say Bandos has no real amazing uses, and already it's better for Slayer, which encompasses most PvM, and for bosses, with Barrows *situationally* being better. I could just as easily say Bandos is situationally better in PVP for the KO potential.

 

And yeah, Bandos would probably be a better choice over Torags at TDS, neither being the best choice.

 

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.

 

If you are pro at prayer switching at TDs, and are using a steel titan, I think bandos might be best.

 

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.

[TheAncient]

I haven't seen your DPS calculator (link?) so I can't comment on any calculations involving those figures. I'm also not sold on dividing max hit by 2 to find average damage done per hit.

Grimy's DPS calc which uses the same formula as mine (slightly adjusted)

 

As for the rest, I didn't see you take defence into account.

 

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.

 

Is Bandos the best endgame gear for almost every combat situation? Yes.

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/

[jettrider]

I haven't seen your DPS calculator (link?) so I can't comment on any calculations involving those figures. I'm also not sold on dividing max hit by 2 to find average damage done per hit.

Grimy's DPS calc which uses the same formula as mine (slightly adjusted)

 

As for the rest, I didn't see you take defence into account.

 

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.

 

Is Bandos the best endgame gear for almost every combat situation? Yes.

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 apologize for those things. I was still in the process of editing my post when those were posted.

 

PvP is a different category altogether. I should have said PvM combat. There's a fascinating blend of offensive and defensive stat necessities in PvP as well as the mixing of combat styles that go along with them. I didn't want to get into that whole discussion.

 

Gear choices are certainly an integral part of RS but still a controversial topic. I've always believed that the best method to train is to go out and train instead of standing around in a bank thinking about slightly more efficient gear. Saving minutes on the hour is really only important to endgame players (I will be one when I decide it's best to finish up Slayer) and you're absolutely correct that it's overemphasized as a necessity. However, for those endgame players, Bandos is an essential part of gear if you're going to more than just TDs/Corp.

[Squisher_33]

if the price of bandos goes down next update i will give you a cookie

[TheAncient]

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.

[Aneron]

this actually raised my opinion of bandos; I'd figured it was entirely useless and slayed in pros top + v skirt. However, I can probably say that I value time at well over 1m/hour so I might have to rethink that