OG Blog: Tradition and Challenge

[Ammako]

In pvm, don't believe anyone who says they have 95 prayer unless you look them up

I believe that might be why we have Quick Chat :P

 

Edit: Ok, I understand now with the second part of the post. What if the level 4 has 99 defence though? He'd be 102 combat with a steel titan and the best tank gear.

The Lv. 102 can't be Lv. 4, and vice-versa.

 

This game is going to be extremely hard on players who aren't already maxed after this update. Unless the new abilities work to make you much more effective in combat without good stuff like turmoil/extremes/etc.

ITT: We Complain Because They're Making It Harder Even Though We've Been Complaining About Them Making It Too Easy

 

Inb4 more hybrid armor is released. |^_^|

Woop woop

Anyone else thinking "Splitbark" there?

 

Inb4 the game is ruined...

inb4 all the nostalgia-blinded fools complain about the game being ruined.

wait...

[Quyneax]

This game is going to be extremely hard on players who aren't already maxed after this update. Unless the new abilities work to make you much more effective in combat without good stuff like turmoil/extremes/etc.

ITT: We Complain Because They're Making It Harder Even Though We've Been Complaining About Them Making It Too Easy

What he means is that a level 200 without prayer will be expected to train on level 170 monsters just like totally maxed people. With the difference that prayer adds about 30-40% dps depending on the defence of what you're fighting (32% straight up dps from strength boost + 29% from attack, totalling 1.32*1.29 at most).

[Platinum_Myr]

This game is going to be extremely hard on players who aren't already maxed after this update. Unless the new abilities work to make you much more effective in combat without good stuff like turmoil/extremes/etc.

ITT: We Complain Because They're Making It Harder Even Though We've Been Complaining About Them Making It Too Easy

What he means is that a level 200 without prayer will be expected to train on level 170 monsters just like totally maxed people. With the difference that prayer adds about 30-40% dps depending on the defence of what you're fighting (32% straight up dps from strength boost + 29% from attack, totalling 1.32*1.29 at most).

 

But that's only in the current system. Prayer may not add that much dps in the new system. We just don't know yet.

[Sir_Squab]

Inb4 more hybrid armor is released. |^_^|

 

Hopefully enough hybrid, maybe even tribrid armor will be released so that armor switching isn't necessary, and keep it weak enough compared to regular armor that it doesn't outshine it.

[Gradeskip]

Aww i wont have time to get 95-98 def in a week! Goodbye lv138 dream, will go from 137 to 196. :(

 

Edit: this update is coming out in September only? Yayyyy :D

[Robert_R]

So a player with every single combat 99 and a player with 99 defence and 99 mage will both be the same combat levels. Totally makes sense.

[xSxqPowerx]

So a player with every single combat 99 and a player with 99 defence and 99 mage will both be the same combat levels. Totally makes sense.

It makes sense if all combat classes truly are about the same strength, and if hybridding is discouraged through the use of cooldown penalties.

[Hedgehog]

This game is going to be extremely hard on players who aren't already maxed after this update. Unless the new abilities work to make you much more effective in combat without good stuff like turmoil/extremes/etc.

ITT: We Complain Because They're Making It Harder Even Though We've Been Complaining About Them Making It Too Easy

What he means is that a level 200 without prayer will be expected to train on level 170 monsters just like totally maxed people. With the difference that prayer adds about 30-40% dps depending on the defence of what you're fighting (32% straight up dps from strength boost + 29% from attack, totalling 1.32*1.29 at most).

It's not 15% + 14%, it's 1.15*Level + 14 + 8 + style bonus. The same goes for strength (except the max boost is 9).

[Quyneax]

This game is going to be extremely hard on players who aren't already maxed after this update. Unless the new abilities work to make you much more effective in combat without good stuff like turmoil/extremes/etc.

ITT: We Complain Because They're Making It Harder Even Though We've Been Complaining About Them Making It Too Easy

What he means is that a level 200 without prayer will be expected to train on level 170 monsters just like totally maxed people. With the difference that prayer adds about 30-40% dps depending on the defence of what you're fighting (32% straight up dps from strength boost + 29% from attack, totalling 1.32*1.29 at most).

It's not 15% + 14%, it's 1.15*Level + 14 + 8 + style bonus. The same goes for strength (except the max boost is 9).

I know I know, just an approximation at 99 strength. The +8 is a fair difference, ok. So properly it maxes (at all 99s) at 135/107 and 141/110 for attack and strength respectively (on agressive), totalling 61% max.

[JanRabbit]

Anyone think the formula is kinda simple?

[Hedgehog]

This game is going to be extremely hard on players who aren't already maxed after this update. Unless the new abilities work to make you much more effective in combat without good stuff like turmoil/extremes/etc.

ITT: We Complain Because They're Making It Harder Even Though We've Been Complaining About Them Making It Too Easy

What he means is that a level 200 without prayer will be expected to train on level 170 monsters just like totally maxed people. With the difference that prayer adds about 30-40% dps depending on the defence of what you're fighting (32% straight up dps from strength boost + 29% from attack, totalling 1.32*1.29 at most).

It's not 15% + 14%, it's 1.15*Level + 14 + 8 + style bonus. The same goes for strength (except the max boost is 9).

I know I know, just an approximation at 99 strength. The +8 is a fair difference, ok. So properly it maxes (at all 99s) at 135/107 and 141/110 for attack and strength respectively (on agressive), totalling 61% max.

You forgot about potions. They're applied before prayer.

[demby123]

So wait, exactly what armors will get hp boosts? will it be only the highest level of armors similar to the boosts torva/pernix/virtus have now? or will every armor set have certain bonuses?

[Platinum_Myr]

It appears that every armor will give boosts, but higher leveled armor will give more boosts.

[Hedgehog]

What if the hp boost depended on your hp level? Like, an armor boost lp by 5k, plus 50% of your hp level. Then the skill wouldn't be totally useless.

[Sorator]

[bleep]ing love this. Seriously. I've always hated feeling penalized for being a relatively evenly-rounded player, and I've also hated that despite having magic as my highest skill, it's horribly inefficient to actually use it as a primary combat method. In almost every RPG I play primarily as a mage, it's just my style. Finally looks like I'll be able to do that on RS too!

 

While I can empathize with pures who will now feel like they've wasted a ton of time... for what it's worth, you got to have your fun, and you invested a lot of hours into something that was always a little unstable, being a constantly updated game, and basing that work on a loophole in the game mechanics to gain a mildly unfair advantage (in my eyes). If that advantage is taken away from you to leave an even playing field? I'm perfectly fine with that. (And you knew some massive changes were in the works since they announced the combat overhaul anyway; if you didn't expect some nerfs to pures, you were being unrealistic.)

 

For those complaining about Prayer being removed from combat levels - for one thing, you gotta admit it makes cb level calcing much simpler, and that's a good thing in my eyes. For another, we have such a small amount of info on the new abilities they'll be adding - it seems to me that while having Turmoil is an advantage, it'll be much less of one when you also have to tactically manage gear and abilities in combat. It'll probably be much more useful for those who don't use the combat abilities, or use them minimally, and stick primarily with the auto-combat. For those who actually use this combat bar and such, it'll still be a nice passive boost, but being smart with your abilities will matter a great deal more. (And do we know yet that they won't be changing prayers around at all? I think they will at least tweak them, in addition to adding some new ones for range/mage, and we don't know what that will look like.)

 

And as for Constitution and Summoning, I think they've explained those pretty well - Const will be much less important than your gear (which is visible when you wear it), so there's not much need to have a convoluted system to include Constitution. And it sounds like Summoning is gonna be majorly nerfed just by not being included in the update (for the time being), so it also becomes much less important. And with those three skills playing much smaller roles in combat, it's a lot safer to remove them from combat level entirely. I'm not wild about that, but at least our combat levels will make sense for once, and for that I'm willing to sacrifice some minor things.

 

Also, I like the idea of getting less xp from training on lower-level enemies; I always thought the whole rock crab afk stuff was just silly. Yeah, it means more work for anyone not maxed in those skills already, but I'm okay with that because I might actually enjoy it, and that's just crazy talk. (And I'm glad that it's less xp instead of no xp, like what was originally stated. You should be getting something when training Slayer, even if it isn't the full amount. I'd be okay with Slayer being an exception to this rule as well, might even prefer that, but this works too. And who knows, they might fiddle with the slayer masters so they assign stuff closer to your level more often.)

 

I'm excited. Very excited. I might actually enjoy combat after this, and I've always hated combat in Runescape so that's a very foreign concept for me. (I do kinda hope we'll get some extra bankspace to handle the potential needs of more equipment, especially for well-rounded players with several sets to choose from, but then I never have enough bankspace so meh.)

[Sly_Wizard]

This saddens me IMMENSELY. The old system isn't broken; just keep it. Granted I don't PK much anymore, but I essentially like how Jagex is giving me the middle finger and adding 90+ combat levels to my character because I happen to have 99 range/mage and 99 defense.

[Deletion]

[bleep]ing love this. Seriously. I've always hated feeling penalized for being a relatively evenly-rounded player, and I've also hated that despite having magic as my highest skill, it's horribly inefficient to actually use it as a primary combat method. In almost every RPG I play primarily as a mage, it's just my style. Finally looks like I'll be able to do that on RS too!

 

While I can empathize with pures who will now feel like they've wasted a ton of time... for what it's worth, you got to have your fun, and you invested a lot of hours into something that was always a little unstable, being a constantly updated game, and basing that work on a loophole in the game mechanics to gain a mildly unfair advantage (in my eyes). If that advantage is taken away from you to leave an even playing field? I'm perfectly fine with that. (And you knew some massive changes were in the works since they announced the combat overhaul anyway; if you didn't expect some nerfs to pures, you were being unrealistic.)

 

For those complaining about Prayer being removed from combat levels - for one thing, you gotta admit it makes cb level calcing much simpler, and that's a good thing in my eyes. For another, we have such a small amount of info on the new abilities they'll be adding - it seems to me that while having Turmoil is an advantage, it'll be much less of one when you also have to tactically manage gear and abilities in combat. It'll probably be much more useful for those who don't use the combat abilities, or use them minimally, and stick primarily with the auto-combat. For those who actually use this combat bar and such, it'll still be a nice passive boost, but being smart with your abilities will matter a great deal more. (And do we know yet that they won't be changing prayers around at all? I think they will at least tweak them, in addition to adding some new ones for range/mage, and we don't know what that will look like.)

 

And as for Constitution and Summoning, I think they've explained those pretty well - Const will be much less important than your gear (which is visible when you wear it), so there's not much need to have a convoluted system to include Constitution. And it sounds like Summoning is gonna be majorly nerfed just by not being included in the update (for the time being), so it also becomes much less important. And with those three skills playing much smaller roles in combat, it's a lot safer to remove them from combat level entirely. I'm not wild about that, but at least our combat levels will make sense for once, and for that I'm willing to sacrifice some minor things.

 

Also, I like the idea of getting less xp from training on lower-level enemies; I always thought the whole rock crab afk stuff was just silly. Yeah, it means more work for anyone not maxed in those skills already, but I'm okay with that because I might actually enjoy it, and that's just crazy talk. (And I'm glad that it's less xp instead of no xp, like what was originally stated. You should be getting something when training Slayer, even if it isn't the full amount. I'd be okay with Slayer being an exception to this rule as well, might even prefer that, but this works too. And who knows, they might fiddle with the slayer masters so they assign stuff closer to your level more often.)

 

I'm excited. Very excited. I might actually enjoy combat after this, and I've always hated combat in Runescape so that's a very foreign concept for me. (I do kinda hope we'll get some extra bankspace to handle the potential needs of more equipment, especially for well-rounded players with several sets to choose from, but then I never have enough bankspace so meh.)

 

I agree with you in some ways, and disagree with you in others. I like that it sounds like the combat triangle is going to be much more balanced. Range and (debatably) Magic are, at the moment, generally inferior to Melee in most situations, including situations where they should be better based on the combat triangle. But in most places Melee is superior even if one of the other styles should be stronger. There are, of course, exceptions such as in a Dungeon, DKs, Fight Kiln and places where some styles are nerfed (Glacors, Ice Strykes and Gano's come to mind) and it will be nice to have all of Runescape like this. Where different Slayer Monsters require different combat styles, techniques, equipment etc. Though, it sounds like if you do only use one combat style you're still going to be massively penalised in the fact you can only effectively fight enemies that melee.

 

As for pures, we don't know how effective they're going to be yet. I mean sure they're going to increase the importance of defence but in reality it might even favour some pure builds. I mean flat 99's with 1 defence will be 102 combat, the same as flat 50's. Unless the person with flat 50's has somewhere in the region of 5x the health of the pure then the pure is going to walk all over them. We just don't know yet.

 

Whilst removing Prayer from combat levels makes calculating them easy, I still think it's stupid in the sense that what they are trying to do, by changing the formula, is accurately portray your combat abilities by your combat level. Prayer has a huge effect on your combat ability and it's crazy to exclude it. I draw two possible conclusions from this. Either, like you said, they're going to nerf it, which effectively makes one of the most sought after, and expensive skills in the game relatively pointless, or it's going to be overpowered.

 

I for one am going to be extremely annoyed if they nerf Summoning too, and like Prayer it's either going to be overpowered or relatively useless with the new proposed formula. Constitution level I imagine will only be important for wearing health boosting gear, hence you will be visually able to see their effective constitution level. Although an update like this really nerfs to ability of lower levels to fight higher level bosses, which I don't particularly like.

 

However, for the equipment rebalancing, I really hope they don't royally screw this up. Sure, I like that the variation of general use equipment should increase, it makes the game much more interesting. What I hope they don't screw up is how changing equipment works. If they're going to nerf hybridding they sure as hell better make us able to change gear during combat (which it seemed to be implied you weren't going to be able to do). This will make some activities near impossible.

 

Less combat xp is fine, I like that idea. But I agree they should change Slayer Masters so, if you want, you can avoid tasks where you will get reduced xp from.

 

I'm excited too. But I'm worried because there is a lot of potential for things to go wrong.

[Sorator]

Eh, I think it's less that they'll nerf Prayer and more that they'll buff everything else. Same for Summoning, except they're going to update that to work better later.

 

I'm choosing to be excited and not worried, I suppose, but I can completely understand being excited and worried, heh.

[Urza285]

Prayer was always always overplayed in content. I think jagex will still have a place for it, but ultimately I think they see that player skill is what should win out. They've provably realized that their capabilties of might end content were hindered by simple prayer mechanics. They made mention In one of their youtube blogs that they wanted to get into having players play roles such as dps, tanks and, in my opinion and foreseeable, healers. Prayer no doubt will have its place though.

[Deletion]

I meant it in the sense that making Prayer less useful than it is now = nerf. So yeah you're right. I just don't see it as a good thing, but it's pretty much inevitable since it's not being included in the new combat formula. Same with Summoning. If they aren't weakened in relation to everything else then they are going to be extremely overpowered, but if they are nerfed their usefulness decreases a lot. I don't particularly enjoy the connotation that these skills are going to be less important that equipment. But maybe I'm completely wrong, this is just my worry.

 

I'm excited in the sense that the new abilities/buffs should be a great addition to combat, and that using a variety of equipment will be rewarded. I'm just worried that these improvements are going to come at the expense of the non-combat skills that aid combat.

 

Edit: Urza. I completely agree player skill should win out, but that's why I'm worried about Prayer. By not including it in the Combat level calculations it means that if two players of the same level are fighting, the player with prayer will generally win regardless of skill (using how important prayer is now). So to make it more about player skill they're going to have to massively decrease prayers effectiveness to counter this. Which seems dumb to me. Maybe they're going to nerf it for PvP only, and make special prayer for each role and have a reason to have a person using each role rather than straight out DPSer's.

[demby123]

[bleep]ing love this. Seriously. I've always hated feeling penalized for being a relatively evenly-rounded player, and I've also hated that despite having magic as my highest skill, it's horribly inefficient to actually use it as a primary combat method. In almost every RPG I play primarily as a mage, it's just my style. Finally looks like I'll be able to do that on RS too!

 

While I can empathize with pures who will now feel like they've wasted a ton of time... for what it's worth, you got to have your fun, and you invested a lot of hours into something that was always a little unstable, being a constantly updated game, and basing that work on a loophole in the game mechanics to gain a mildly unfair advantage (in my eyes). If that advantage is taken away from you to leave an even playing field? I'm perfectly fine with that. (And you knew some massive changes were in the works since they announced the combat overhaul anyway; if you didn't expect some nerfs to pures, you were being unrealistic.)

 

For those complaining about Prayer being removed from combat levels - for one thing, you gotta admit it makes cb level calcing much simpler, and that's a good thing in my eyes. For another, we have such a small amount of info on the new abilities they'll be adding - it seems to me that while having Turmoil is an advantage, it'll be much less of one when you also have to tactically manage gear and abilities in combat. It'll probably be much more useful for those who don't use the combat abilities, or use them minimally, and stick primarily with the auto-combat. For those who actually use this combat bar and such, it'll still be a nice passive boost, but being smart with your abilities will matter a great deal more. (And do we know yet that they won't be changing prayers around at all? I think they will at least tweak them, in addition to adding some new ones for range/mage, and we don't know what that will look like.)

 

And as for Constitution and Summoning, I think they've explained those pretty well - Const will be much less important than your gear (which is visible when you wear it), so there's not much need to have a convoluted system to include Constitution. And it sounds like Summoning is gonna be majorly nerfed just by not being included in the update (for the time being), so it also becomes much less important. And with those three skills playing much smaller roles in combat, it's a lot safer to remove them from combat level entirely. I'm not wild about that, but at least our combat levels will make sense for once, and for that I'm willing to sacrifice some minor things.

 

Also, I like the idea of getting less xp from training on lower-level enemies; I always thought the whole rock crab afk stuff was just silly. Yeah, it means more work for anyone not maxed in those skills already, but I'm okay with that because I might actually enjoy it, and that's just crazy talk. (And I'm glad that it's less xp instead of no xp, like what was originally stated. You should be getting something when training Slayer, even if it isn't the full amount. I'd be okay with Slayer being an exception to this rule as well, might even prefer that, but this works too. And who knows, they might fiddle with the slayer masters so they assign stuff closer to your level more often.)

 

I'm excited. Very excited. I might actually enjoy combat after this, and I've always hated combat in Runescape so that's a very foreign concept for me. (I do kinda hope we'll get some extra bankspace to handle the potential needs of more equipment, especially for well-rounded players with several sets to choose from, but then I never have enough bankspace so meh.)

I don't understand how does being well rounded penalize you if you do anything other than pvp...

[Sorator]

Well, just the imbalance of the combat triangle means that even if I like the idea of maging while PvMing, more often than not it's not a viable option. (But you're right that it's largely a PvP-only issue, which is why I've never done much PvP.)

[Deletion]

Being a Mage isn't a well rounded character though, and solely playing using one combat style is going to, in my opinion, be even harder after the update than before. I do agree that well-rounded players got penalized in PvP though, but poorly rounded players generally were unable to successfully PvM.

[Sorator]

No, being solely a mage is not being a well-rounded character, but having the melee, range, and mage skills within 10 levels of each other and still not having range or mage as viable combat options does penalize well-rounded characters in anything that involves combat by denying options that should be available. A well-rounded character should be using all combat styles relatively equally, not using melee 70% of the time and only using range or mage when the situation is specially designed to make them useful.

 

Granted, mage has a fair bit of non-combat use, so that could be excusable. But range... range is not especially useful right now, except in specific PvM scenarios that were, again, specially designed to require it, and for using a cannon while meleeing Slayer tasks.

[Deletion]

I don't want to get into an debate with you, nor go off-topic, but you're arguing two completely different points. Penalized and less useful are two completely different things. There was never, and won't be any penalization for being well-rounded in PvM. Granted Ranged and Magic are less useful than Melee, but you are by no means penalized for having the Magic and Ranged levels. PvP is a different story, although you were never really penalized for having balanced offensive combat stats, just for having defence.

 

I believe the combat update is going to greatly reduce the effectiveness of Melee in a lot of situations, so having well balanced stats will be key to being successful at PvM. PvP, it's hard to judge at the moment.