Well, I've been less than active lately, but I still have a general idea about everything in the Beta. However, I hardly know whether the changed items are still any good and how they compare to the items now - I'm still figuring out how to use the combat system.

 

Items like; godswords, dragon claws, bandos (including boots/gloves vs dragon boots and culm gloves), spirit shields.

 

Honest opinions. Thanks.

Dragon claws are useless.

Turmoil/Piety seems quite useless to me now, it only increases your max hit by 20 or something. In comparison, abilities do over 1000.

Barrows gloves (as they will always be known as) are outclassed by class-specific gloves such as Bandos gloves, Armadyl gloves, etc.

I'm pretty sure that Dragon boots are simply outclassed by higher level items.

Claws and defenders are useless, apparently. Claws needed their spec to be anything but a weak dragon weapon, and defenders are now offhand daggers with a tiny health boost.

 

Bandos and godswords got a huge buff, they're now second to Torva and the chaotic maul, respectively (Boots too). Arcane and elysian shields now have the divine effect and they're tied to different classes. Spectral doesn't have anything special yet, so it's just a very good generic magic shield. Barrows gloves are outclassed by class-specific gloves as Pen said, but they aren't limited to classes, so you can use them if you want to hybrid. The best class gloves are the dominion gauntlets, so there may or may not be a reason to get spellcaster gloves now as well.

When does the new combat come out?

When does the new combat come out?

Jagex said they're expecting it to be released around September, but it depends on how much stuff they need to fix.

Turmoil / Soul split seems not as useful now as if you have your ability bar setup right you can easily beat someone who is using turmoil and soul split.

 

I don't know how powerful turmoil and soul split are on the actual game, as I've never had them but whilst fighting against a friend in the duel arena who had turmoil and soul split on and he was maxed cb. I beat him most times because I had some good things on my ability bar.

Soulsplit is still useful, but turm is pretty bad.

Pretty much all armor pieces that currently give str/attack bonus...

Staves

Pretty much all armor pieces that currently give str/attack bonus...

 

That's not entirely true seeing as Bandos is most definitely better than Barrows still, just for different reasons.

On which note deffo worth grabbing Bandos boots asap, they starting to spike already because they are better than dragon in the new combat.

Defenders count as offhand weapons and they give lifepoint boosts. They don't function as shields, however, so you can't use dual wield and shield abilities at the same time. It would be incredibly awesome if they did.

I think that would be a reasonable change to it, even if they lowered the stats on it a bit. Make it a jack of all trades sorta thing that gives you the utility of shield + HP + offhand.