I've been following the price of arma armor, and I was just curious as to why its crashing so hard. I get that the royal d'hide is new armor and such and is better than black, but arma is still the best range armor short of Pernix (I think thats the range one). So why is arma crashing so hard?

Not only is it because of royal dragonhide, it's also due to the anticipation of the Combat Evolution Beta test coming up. People are speculating drastic changes in the combat system, so popular armor and weapons' prices are topsy turvy at the moment.

So Arma crashes and Bandos shoots up?

There is the factor of the combat evolution of things being rebalanced to be right for their levels.

 

Armadyl is lvl 70

Royal d'hide is level 80

 

Therefore it is likely royal d'hide will be better than armadyl post rebalance.

Bandos shooting up is because people still assume str bonus will be king (even though a lot of things will change, including armour stats) and therefore want to invest before Bandos potentially gets much harder to obtain, a flaw in this logic is the 65 level req which would mean Bandos when rebalanced has the potential to be worse than barrows armour.

I think you make good points Sy but I also assume that Jagex will do something to 'rare' armours and drops to make them better than more easily obtainable things. If they totally rebelanced things to be as good as the rest of things in there defensive tier it would break a lot of the moneymaking PvM methods currently in game. I hadn't realised Bandos had shot up ;( Should've heald on to it while I've been DGing.

Well the combat changes are game changing as it is, gonna make huge difference to PVM, money making etc. anyway. They could easily be repurposing stuf eg the 4 main GWD bosses could be becoming more mid-level type bosses opposed to high-end stuff. It's not even like all 'rare' drop armour/weapons items are all that amazing anyway I mean think Brine Sabre, Dragon Spear, Dragon 2h, Dragon med, D kite, D plate etc. The 'special' status Bandos, Armadyl etc hold is purely player invented because they happened to work out as the best gear. And seeing as how half the purpose of this update is to make it so there's more variety and choice without missing out on the best it kinda implys Jagex aren't overly concerned with making items retain the status players gave them thus far.

http://www.tip.it/runescape/index.php?item1=7104&item2=12240&rs2item_tools=&compare=&submit=Compare

http://www.tip.it/runescape/index.php?item1=10492&item2=12241&rs2item_tools=&compare=&submit=Compare

 

If you go look at those links you will see armadyl and royal d hide are almost identical with royal chaps actually being better and royal body being worse by 1 range att bonus 1 prayer and 13 magic def with higher range def and better absorb stats. With the stats so similar and Id almost give the edge to royal d hide you can not justify paying tens(now could probably get top and bottom for less than 10mil) for a set of armor that really is any different than a set that is a few hundred k at most.

^ you're comparing armadyl chaps in the second link, rather than the armadyl chainskirt. The chainskirt is still better than the royal dhide chaps.

^ you're comparing armadyl chaps in the second link, rather than the armadyl chainskirt. The chainskirt is still better than the royal dhide chaps.

 

Well thats embarrassing... Heres the correct link http://www.tip.it/runescape/index.php?item1=7105&item2=12241&rs2item_tools=&compare=&submit=Compare

 

Still extremely similar, Id say enough that it doesn't justify buying armadyl anymore unless you have a ton of excess money which most of us probably dont. Plus royal d hide doesn't have negative melee bonuses for those slayer task or whatever where you need that extra magic def while using melee.