The Evolution of Combat: BETA discussion

[Estoc]

Then how come they mainly focus on getting skillers and not player killers into the wilderness?

 

Just because that's the only thing you experience as a skiller does not mean it's the only thing pkers ever do. I suspect that if you even bothered to look into pking, you'd be very surprised.

 

EDIT: I can't even believe you cited rune rocks pking as a means of vilifying pkers. Seriously? It's not like there aren't at least a dozen different safe spots available to them or anything. And if you get pked on f2p while at rr by anything less than a clan then you deserved to die. I mean, wow. I didn't know this was still a problem in 2012.

 

What? I'm vilifying Jagex for situating things like the wilderness agility course, King Black Dragon, Chaos Elemental and abyss among other things in the wilderness to essentially stock a shooting gallery for pkers. I said nothing to suggest that pkers cause this, and really couldn't care less if they want to kill me if I step into the wilderness to pk. However, I have a problem for example with Jagex making the forinthry dungeon multi combat so that 15 mages can burst in and kill me in two seconds flat for a couple 1 dose potions because they find it *fun*. Because of this I'll 1 item with only an attack strength and prayer potion. This of course means I have no chance and get a death approximately every 15 minutes. This is not risk, it's just annoying, and since "wilderness is for killing players", I shouldn't even be there in the first place.

[Zerker_Jane]

I think the wilderness being non-dangerous for close to 3 years has really shown its effects. In the past you'd worry about 4 iteming when you had a co-ordinate clue to do ... and then later somewhere along the way people expected to be able to get their wildy pengs without any fuss at all.

 

I remember the day when Bounty Hunter was released. Some guy had planted over 50 flowers outside the BH crater. That would have been unthinkable by any stretch before then, whereas now ...

 

I agree, revs were a complete joke, the best of them would splash constantly on my 45 defence with some D-hide slapped on. I can imagine it would be annoying to have those wildy-based activities returned to the difficulty Jagex originally envisioned for them.

[Estoc]

Surely you're trolling right there.

Ok then. A *significant amount* of updates and/or features related to the wilderness focus on creating risk for skillers which directly benefit pkers.

[Zerker_Jane]

Surely you're trolling right there.

Ok then. A *significant amount* of updates and/or features related to the wilderness focus on creating risk for skillers which directly benefit pkers.

 

A direct contradiction of your previous statement, but correct.

[strilmus]

Well, those updates do seem to be essentially putting up salt licks for deer so that hunters can wait nearby and shoot them. One man's business become's another man's deathsport.

 

While the deer does see some sort of benefit to the salt lick, they probably don't find it fun or enjoyable or exciting. It's not like some sort of extreme sport to them.

[Saradomin_Mage]

Beta opened to F2P.

From a quick run-through, F2P players only get 1 action bar, and like half the abilities :P

[Platinum_Myr]

Surely you're trolling right there.

Ok then. A *significant amount* of updates and/or features related to the wilderness focus on creating risk for skillers which directly benefit pkers.

 

A direct contradiction of your previous statement, but correct.

 

How is this a contradiction? Unless you mistook the original post as referring to all updates, which it clearly was only referring to updates relating to the wilderness.

[decebal]

Might as well post this here.

 

Finally allowed into the Beta as an F2Per, here is some information I was able to acquire and some personal thughts, without much editing for grammar and spelling, so it will look bad. I admit, my sample size was low and I only fight one creature, so take my numbers with a grain of salt:

 

[spoiler=A lot of notes]Available Abilities:

• Attack:

o Slaughter

o Slice

o Overpower

o Backhand

o Smash

o Sever

• Strength:

o Kick

o Punish

o Fury

o Cleave

• Ranged:

o Snapshot

o Piercing Shot

o Dead Shot

o Binding Shot

o Fragmentation Shot

o Ricochet

• Magic:

o Asphyxiate

o Torture

o Omnipower

o Impact

o Combust

o Chain

o All strike, bolt, blast, wave and surge spells

o Old body rune debuff spells

o Bind, Snare (Finally!) and Teleport Block

o All teleports (I’m not joking, tried teleing to Camelot, told me I am supposed to be on a member’s server, but I still got the task completion for teleporting there)

o Other spells are the standard ones from F2P, with the addition of Level 5 (Dragonstone) Enchant.

• Defence/HP:

o Anticipation

o Bash

o Freedom

o Rejuvenate

o Momentum

o NOTE: no tank spells, such as the taunt.

Available Equipment:

• Magic:

o Wands and books up to bat.

o Armours up to Batwing

o F2P elemental staves

• Ranged:

o Bows up to maple

o No offhands other than shields

o Armour up to blue dhide

o Arrows up to adamant, bolts up to bronze

o No c’bows except the two that are already F2P.

o No thrown

• Melee:

o Armour up to rune

o Offhands available

o Weapons up to rune

• Other:

o Team capes

o Only one of the action bars. I don’t get this one at all.

o Mind runes, body runes, and chaos runes are now the main runes for the enfeeble-style spells

 

What I found:

 

Melee:

• Killing lessers with shield and scim takes around two swordfish and it takes a bit over 1:10 up to 1:55 to kill at combat level 174, giving 697.5 or so xp. Average time seems to be around 1:30. A LOT of missing. Weakness is bolts, seem to use magic. Good news, for a loss in exp,

o Priority used:

 Overpower>Slaughter>Sever>Slice>Fury>stun+punish>Anticipation

• Shield and auto attacks kills demons in 2:30 – 3:50 min . A LOT more missing than with abilities. Abilities have to be used once a minute to get momentum going.

• 2h is pretty damn fast, though take longer overall. 30-60 seconds in fact. No downtime where I’m waiting for cd’s done.

o Priority used:

 Overpower>Slaughter> Slice>Sever>Cleave> Smash>Fury>kick+punish

• 2h afk is weaker. 1:50-4:00 per lesser. Auto-Attacks do not give adrenaline sometimes for some reason

• Dual Wielding (yes, it is available to F2Pers for now) kills a lesser in about 1:00-1:30. Rotation that can be used is the same as sword and shield. Without member’s abilities, 2h is better.

• AFK dual wielding kills in around 2:00-2:30, I find it to be slightly faster than 2H, but I may be wrong as my sample size is small.

• With just 70 ranged, lessers drop quick with just iron arrows + maple shortbow, killing them in a bit over 30 seconds. Comparable to 2h, if not slightly faster

o Priority: Deadshot>Snap-Shot>Fragmentation Shot>Binding Shot>Piercing Shot>Ricochet

• Afk ranged is good, killing a lesser in 1:20.

• At 70 magic and earth wave, Dual wielding magic kills really fast, with a record of 24 seconds in one fight, however the average was 40 seconds.

o Priority: Omnipower>Asphyxiate>Impact>Torture>Combust>Chain

• Batwing Shield offers great bonuses, while only sacrificing 50 hit bonus. Comparable with book in damage, but offers more defence.

• Dual wielding afk magic kills in around a minute, but it costs a lot of cash, I think I went through 300 of each rune on one lesser >.> .

• With a staff of earth, the average is 50 seconds. A lot faster than I expected, but slower than dual wielding.

• AFK, a staff kills in around 1:20, twice that of dual wielding, but at a much better cost.

 

My cb level: 174 (83 ATT, 92 STR, 80 DEF, 87 LP, 70 RNG, 71 MAGE)

Fighting boots have no stats. Haven’t checked the colourful ones

Amulet of Strength unavailable at general vendor. Does it still exist?

In full rune armour, I have 6281 health, 3616 armour, or 5156 health, 2016 armour.

In blue dhide + green dhide coif (blue is still mems), I have around 4600 health with shortbow, 5000+ with longbow (forgot to check)

Batwing dual wielding is 5368 health, 2208 armour

Batwing shield is 6495 health, 3808 armour (more than full rune, probably because of the boots).

Batwing + staff is 5368 health, 2208 armour (same as dual wielding)

Staves only give 10 hit bonus, compared to 90 for batwing wand, compared to 450 for wands

swordfish heals 900 with 87 hp, 800 for lobster, 600 for tuna.

Shield only gives me only two new abilities: bash and rejuvenate

Lesser demons are level 100

Adamant arrows cannot be used in F2P, even if they are an F2P item. Maple bows do not accept them.

If one equips armour that offers less max health, your health is not reduced to match the new max health.

Later on, I went 2h in the forinthry dungeon. Greaters are level 118, hellhounds are level 132. Hellhounds are the easiest to kill for me for some reason, and are still aggressive. Also have the lowest health.

Revenants still use old values for healing. Smoked ‘em.

While there, I was attacked by a 177 ranger in blue dhide. Fight lasted a couple of minutes, but I only had to eat twice, while he had to jam as much food down his throat as possible. He wasn’t even a match, and I didn’t even use any defense abilities, just the offensive rotation.

 

Personal Thoughts:

The abilities are too spammy. At one point when magic dual wielding, I just smacked my hand on the keyboard with the abilities I will be using on the bar, and I did fine.

Food could become obsolete for shield users, however for others, the amount of food used will be increased.

Melee AFK numbers look low.

2H is godly.

 

[Pretzel]

A couple interesting things to note for f2p beta.

 

For magic

Law/Nature staff seem to be the best non-degradable staves with a hit bonus of 530 each (Gravite staff still wins out with a hit bonus of 550). Also, Caitlin's staff is still one handed (probably a glitch), still gives unlimited air runes and has a hit bonus of 50 (regular elemental staves have a hit bonus of 10). It can be used with a tome of frost to get completely free water spells. It appears that the higher level attack spells (surge, wave etc) have also become f2p.

 

Range

Nothing too interesting that hasn't already been mentioned, except for the fact that the gravite shortbow has a lower damage bonus than the maple shortbow while having a higher hit bonus. Accuracy vs damage I guess. Also, Kayle's sling has changed to Kayle's chargebow and looks like the old training bow. I guess f2p aren't getting any decent thrown or crossbow range weapons.

 

Melee

Again, most things have already been mentioned but it is weird to see that there are no offhand gravite weapons but there are offhand weapons for rune and down.

[Saradomin_Mage]

Did a quick test on an f2p account, didn't import stats/save file.

Went from 3 to 55 combat in about 40 minutes training on chickens, then killed some warped cockroaches with melee.

 

There's very little incentive to train on anything higher than the warped cockroaches/chickens, as they're easy fodder for (respectively) melee and magic, and offer 74XP for each kill, whereas something barely more challenging, like the corpse spider, has 3x the amount of HP and offers only about 4XP more.

 

Sadly there doesn't appear to be an equivalent ranged-weak monster at level 2 - chickens actually laugh off attacks from Kayle's chargebow (or maybe also because it's 15 hit bonus instead of 50 like the other two).

 

And just for fun, dual-wielding with Wind Bolt was netting me a theoretical 150k Magic XP/hr on chickens. Lol.

[Platinum_Myr]

Did a quick test on an f2p account, didn't import stats/save file.

Went from 3 to 55 combat in about 40 minutes training on chickens, then killed some warped cockroaches with melee.

 

There's very little incentive to train on anything higher than the warped cockroaches/chickens, as they're easy fodder for (respectively) melee and magic, and offer 74XP for each kill, whereas something barely more challenging, like the corpse spider, has 3x the amount of XP and offers only about 4XP more.

 

Sadly there doesn't appear to be an equivalent ranged-weak monster at level 2 - chickens actually laugh off attacks from Kayle's chargebow (or maybe also because it's 15 hit bonus instead of 50 like the other two).

 

And just for fun, dual-wielding with Wind Bolt was netting me a theoretical 150k Magic XP/hr on chickens. Lol.

 

So they haven't balanced xp for lower level monsters yet.. I am hoping they can balance the numbers so that what you fight scales well with your level.

[Leon S]

Spell damage scaling needs to be completely reworked. It doesn't make any sense right now. Here's the damage of all four strike spells from level 1 to 10. I didn't use a weapon, potion or prayer.

 

Wind Strike: 52, 64, 78, 90, 104, 116, 130, 142, 156, 168

Water Strike: 22, 34, 48, 60, 74, 86, 100, 112, 126, 138

Earth Strike: 0, 4, 18, 30, 44, 56, 70, 82, 96, 108

Fire Strike: 0, 0, 8, 20, 34, 46, 60, 72, 86, 98

 

Wind Strike does almost twice as much damage as Fire Strike at 10 Magic...

[Platinum_Myr]

Spell damage scaling needs to be completely reworked. It doesn't make any sense right now. Here's the damage of all four strike spells from level 1 to 10. I didn't use a weapon, potion or prayer.

 

Wind Strike: 52, 64, 78, 90, 104, 116, 130, 142, 156, 168

Water Strike: 22, 34, 48, 60, 74, 86, 100, 112, 126, 138

Earth Strike: 0, 4, 18, 30, 44, 56, 70, 82, 96, 108

Fire Strike: 0, 0, 8, 20, 34, 46, 60, 72, 86, 98

 

Wind Strike does almost twice as much damage as Fire Strike at 10 Magic...

 

I'd be ok if they did the same damage... better if they unlocked at the same levels (with minor buffs for all of them at the inbetween level) because its odd that one type is better, yet we're supposed to use the air-earth-water ones on some monsters.. seems pretty unbalanced if one does more dmg base than the others..

[Quyneax]

Spell damage scaling needs to be completely reworked. It doesn't make any sense right now. Here's the damage of all four strike spells from level 1 to 10. I didn't use a weapon, potion or prayer.

 

Wind Strike: 52, 64, 78, 90, 104, 116, 130, 142, 156, 168

Water Strike: 22, 34, 48, 60, 74, 86, 100, 112, 126, 138

Earth Strike: 0, 4, 18, 30, 44, 56, 70, 82, 96, 108

Fire Strike: 0, 0, 8, 20, 34, 46, 60, 72, 86, 98

 

Wind Strike does almost twice as much damage as Fire Strike at 10 Magic...

So it's +12 for odd levels, +14 for even levels, and -30/-60/-70 for water/earth/fire respectively... I don't get it.

[decebal]

Was your target weak to certain elements?

[Leon S]

They were weak to fire, but that doesn't really matter. You don't get a damage increase if you attack monsters with the right attack style or element.

 

Anyway, I'm still testing and I've discovered a couple more things, which I'll post later on when I'm done.

[Hedgehog]

Does magic really have a different formula from ranged and melee? That's dumb.

[Leon S]

Spell damage is increased by 12 for odd levels, and 14 for even levels. When you reach the next tier of an elemental spell (say Wind Bolt), Wind Strike will only increase damage by 2 per level and onwards. So from level 1 to level 16, it's damage is increased by 12 - 14 and from level 17 and onwards, the damage is only increased by 2. With Water Strike, it's damage is increased by 12 - 14 until you unlock Water Bolt. Then it's damage is increased by 2. Same thing for Earth and Fire Strike.

 

What's also weird, is that once you unlock Wind Bolt, Wind Strike still does more damage! At level 16, where you unlock Wind Bolt, it does 180 damage, but Wind Strike does 248 damage. The same counts for Water, Earth and Fire. It's completely messed up.

 

Oh, also, Augury gives a bigger damage boost than Torment. I get a whopping 4 damage bonus from Torment(!!) and 11(!!!) from Augury. Who on Earth is responsible for this mess?

 

This really needs a full rework...

[Alg]

This really needs a full rework...

Yeah, the way magic works just doesn't make much sense.

 

I've been taking advantage of the beta being open to F2P (With a fresh level 4 account), and I seem to be doing considerably more damage with wind strike than with ranged and melee. I do next to no damage with melee or ranged, regardless of what I'm fighting.

[Den]

I tried doing the Blood Pact on a fresh account. Didn't get the Troll Warzone tutorial as it was a F2P account. Was impossible to kill the first guy with bare fists. The npc's in the quests are impossible without weaponry, but a joke if you have a weapon.

[Tres]

i dont know if its already mentioned but its possible to access OLD tuorial island in Beta only...need some trick done but i seen many ppl there already enjoying retro trees and stuff lol

Though those that done real tutorial before, can access it further but those not done any tutorial before, cannot take tasks from tutors

[RU_Insane]

There's no way Jagex can expect to release a beta that's in serious need of a rework for F2P. I don't think it'll be released this month, at this rate.

[Ruinous Edge]

i dont know if its already mentioned but its possible to access OLD tuorial island in Beta only...need some trick done but i seen many ppl there already enjoying retro trees and stuff lol

Though those that done real tutorial before, can access it further but those not done any tutorial before, cannot take tasks from tutors

I glitched upon logging into beta on my ftp account, without importing save. Appeared in a house that come to think of it did look a lot like it was starting location on Tut. Island, had no tabs to open at all (all blanked out and empty) no log out button when I pressed the little 'x' or no life/prayer/summ. icons near map. Then my browser crashed and when I logged back in next time was in normal lumby getting to choose my appearance from the pre-set builds.

[Patch_umz]

There's no way Jagex can expect to release a beta that's in serious need of a rework for F2P. I don't think it'll be released this month, at this rate.

EoC is planned for November, but also "When it's done", so it could be delayed.

[Den]

i dont know if its already mentioned but its possible to access OLD tuorial island in Beta only...need some trick done but i seen many ppl there already enjoying retro trees and stuff lol

Though those that done real tutorial before, can access it further but those not done any tutorial before, cannot take tasks from tutors

I glitched upon logging into beta on my ftp account, without importing save. Appeared in a house that come to think of it did look a lot like it was starting location on Tut. Island, had no tabs to open at all (all blanked out and empty) no log out button when I pressed the little 'x' or no life/prayer/summ. icons near map. Then my browser crashed and when I logged back in next time was in normal lumby getting to choose my appearance from the pre-set builds.

Same happened to me.