#Combat Styles Improvements - Ranged Beta.

1 messages · Page 5 of 1

timid olive
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It is not the core of ranged, it's the meta that developed for high end ranged because the moment it got to do anything, people treated it as the only thing that mattered

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multi-hit "identity" and focus has little to no existence in the live game right now until the actual end of it

true nimbus
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Right and now that meta is being brought down to lower levels, so I assume that means bolg as well

timid olive
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BK bolts are literally 99 equips, bolg's an endgame 95 hard boss unlock (or pay billions)

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oh it's this again

vale palm
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ranged generally has had much less of an identity than the other styles, it just got a bunch of effects to juggle recently

timid olive
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not even having this discussion

true nimbus
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The prototype is a possibility but they are pretty much saying that is the identity of range

timid olive
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"oooohhhh the entire identity of melee is uh barge assault. All of ranged is wen and bolg, we should at t1 wen arrows"

vale palm
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idk what you're talking about because they've done nothing even remotely resembling bringing bolg down to lower brackets of ranged

true nimbus
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But that is the identity of range overall, so it's likely they will

vale palm
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the only "multihit" thing they added was just a straight damage boost for multihits, which were already the higher priority abilities other than snap shot (which after using splinter shot is not that much lower priority)

timid olive
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bolg isn't the identity of ranged, the high end live game identity is "multi hit", which is something that bolg interacts with

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and they're bringing "multi hit" to the forefront in this draft

true nimbus
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It's both. Both are needed for the identity to work

timid olive
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you're reading what you want to read

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you could delete bolg right now and "multi hit" could survive just fine

vale palm
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other than that, they added snipe as a hypothetical single big hit, but with a high cooldown and relying on a single ability, with a not short cooldown, to reduce it

true nimbus
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Multi hit would make 0 sense without bolg. Many people have complained about this

vale palm
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yes that is the problem with what they've shown

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there has been no mention of bringing bolg down

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nor is it the solution

true nimbus
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Wen arrows would be

timid olive
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it'd make sense without bolg, you'd be fishing for on-hits by hitting as many times as possible, applying flat effects, bypassing hitcaps, etc

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which is what ranged did before bolg with bolt effects and what made grico so good

true nimbus
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I don't think that's the vision

vale palm
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no one knows what the vision is thats why people are complaining about it

timid olive
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it's the entire kit in the beta

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they didn't add any bolg-like, they added more on-hit effects and things to improve the ability to hit multiple times

true nimbus
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Beta has free stuff, I mean they could add level 1 Wen arrows and level 100 if they wanted

timid olive
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they didn't even adjust wen arrows for the new not-thresholds to work with them

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they didn't add it, they didn't approach it from the angle of "all of ranged is about bolg and wen :)"

vale palm
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i think they only work with deadshot and specs now

true nimbus
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The beta has plenty of bugs, so I wouldn't worry about it

vale palm
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well no the problem is that you're imagining intentions based on vague words and things that aren't there

true nimbus
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And range is sniper crossbow, bow bolg/arrows I assume

true nimbus
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The prototype is the beta and includes multi hits. The endgame already showcases multi hits and bolg. Multi hits are being brought down. So why is bolg not being brought down? Like that is the question

vale palm
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the only aspect of "multi hits are being brought down" that exists is rico becoming grico

true nimbus
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Snap shot and deadshot are core to the kit too

vale palm
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snap shot already was

true nimbus
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Now you can use it all the time

vale palm
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deadshot is in the same position it was before, useless without a zuk cape

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so it's not "being brought down"

timid olive
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it's better now

true nimbus
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Still more multi hits for a lot of people without cash

timid olive
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but snapshot's numbers are too high

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snapshot's numbers are so high that a lot of the ranged kit can't compete in terms of specs or ults

vale palm
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also this is why bolg is not being brought down

Our aim is to embrace this multi-hitting identity at the core of the style, introducing built-in payoffs that reinforce this gameplay

timid olive
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multi-hit is the focus, not bolg

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multi-hit is not reliant on bolg existing

true nimbus
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I mean it is

timid olive
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if you don't understand this, you'll be confused about literally anything

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okay case in point

true nimbus
vale palm
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there is basically no implementation of these so-called built-in payoffs yet, but if they were just going to copypaste bolg as a passive they would have said so

vale palm
timid olive
true nimbus
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Already mentioned wen arrows

vale palm
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so you proved yourself wrong

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and then reiterated your self-proven-wrong statement

true nimbus
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I'm just talking casually, I'm not going to say bolg or wen arrows every time

vale palm
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any way, multi-hit doesn't need bolg

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or wen arrows for that matter

true nimbus
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But that is like, the main complaint about the beta

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That 1 half of the core is missing

vale palm
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its more that they talked about cooking up a meal, showed up with a bottom bun, and the endgame stuff is the patty toppings and top bun

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even if you add all the stuff you're used to, it's not a meal

timid olive
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ammo effects not existing because of tierscape is issue 1 with that, and they haven't fleshed out effects that an earlier-level player will actually care about

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if you have no on-hits, it doesn't matter if you hit 1000 in 1 hit or 10 hits of 100 at once

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the first on-hit is the splinter effect

true nimbus
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Wen arrows are simple enough is all

vale palm
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adding some awful lesser bolg and wen effects to the style, upgrading every whatever tens of levels, would be a disaster

timid olive
vale palm
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point is, they can add other things that care about the number of hitsplats, it doesn't have to be like wen arrows or bolg

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not to mention, those effects as style passives provide no gameplay benefit or difference whatsoever

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wen arrows just reinforce the relationship of basics and thresholds

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it's just literally the same system, with a different skin, thrown on top

timid olive
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bolg and wen arrows also work without multi-hit btw, you just save up your stacks and spend them when it matters most, without having to tie in a game of Nim on top of it

true nimbus
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It's going to be similar to bolg I imagine since bolg procs were mentioned in what is being brought down

vale palm
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you use basics to make your thresholds stronger, just like you already use basics to build adrenaline and have access to thresholds

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it's not something that you bake into gameplay

true nimbus
timid olive
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where did they say bolg procs are being brought down

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do not say that news post

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that is not what it says

vale palm
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meanwhile, despite you always praising it bolg has been criticized left and right for encouraging spreadsheet gameplay and basically no one uses ranged at endgame

true nimbus
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That the endgame is being brought down, they described what the endgame is and 1 half is in the prototype

timid olive
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no, it describes "multi-hit" and "on-hits", the on-hits do not need to be bolg

true nimbus
vale palm
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no, the little I've heard of people doing high level combat achievements they were hybridding magic and melee or necro

true nimbus
timid olive
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if it's raining, are the roads wet?

true nimbus
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I dunno man, I feel like they just forced enchanted bolts in the blog post for the mid levels to understand it

timid olive
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If it's raining, are the roads wet? (no technicalities like magic water resisting roads or tunnels)

true nimbus
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So I'm right and that's a yes :p

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But I dunno if they would have included on-hits if bolts weren't there

true nimbus
timid olive
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If you can't grasp A means B, but B might not mean A, there's no conversation to be had

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and we're done

true nimbus
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I just feel like it's vague so that's fair

civic tree
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Imagine this

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A bow... Besides bolg

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I know, very ambitious. 2 DIFFERENT bows that do different things? Inconceivable

timid olive
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Well duh it won't be Bolg, it'll be another bow/passive on the player where every X number of attacks fires a bonus hit based on the proccing hit, the news post said so, bolg passive IS ranged, nothing else gnomechildblush

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They COULD do that, which would feel like a mistake, but there's no obligation to go all in on a single effect in the whole game as "what it's all about", even if they gave it as an example of an effect that interacts with existing ranged stuff.

true nimbus
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Someone thought about adding more ideas to base range around ecb. I just think bolg has more structure

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We're trying to find something that fit as style identity

barren bane
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Tbh, multihit/on hit on its own doesn't constitute a style identity

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Like we see lengs/dw melee dipping into that so called identity

visual grail
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You need to buy a new grim, yours is broken
(I blame bleeds instead of sgb piercing :^) )

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Wonder if you can apot there now that you got the new dagger eof instead of claws

barren bane
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It's tempting to say ezk or magma tempest or omnipower are multihit, but it'd be not quite true, whilst it uses multiple hits to deal damage, there's no expansion of that.

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Whilst with grico you're rolling the 10% bolt proc chance over and over

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It's just, that on its own isn't quite enough to make a style identity

true nimbus
barren bane
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Or getting an accuracy spike from bsa

true nimbus
barren bane
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I think they've leaned into procs enough, what's more important is shaping bolts to be impactful

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Or tuning down ful arrows

true nimbus
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I think it's fine how they are standardizing procs. So what the beta is missing is bolt buffs we think?

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And reworks

barren bane
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I think ful arrows break the multihit identity

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And they gotta get reworked

true nimbus
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That would be fair, especially if wens remain bugged

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I feel like a lot of people are upset that this seems like just a beta for standardizing the style instead of introducing something new

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Like the gameplay being kinda the same or slightly worse some places

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Like, something new is always more exciting instead of fixing the early game, stuff like that

visual grail
visual grail
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Have fun doing nothing but auto attack 🥲

2025-12-29-140908.png
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Rapid fire also sitting there at level 70 🤷‍♀️

hybrid moon
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I guess I should explain my thought process behind "BolG is a sniper-identity weapon". The way the passive works encourages timing massive attacks like Snipe or Gloomfire 3rd to land every 4 hits in your rotation. Obviously there's nothing stopping you from spamming a massive number of attacks (Deadshot 6 I think? Grico 7, Rapid 8) and "skipping over" a cycle, but I feel like trying to play that way "on the fly" is effectively trying to count the bullets coming out of your machine gun. Hit-spam rotations with the BolG have to be 99% planned beforehand. However, if you stick to mostly few-hit abilities such as Snipe, Piercing Shot, and counting Grico as "-1 hit" then it becomes a lot easier to figure out when to use the big hits, especially at bosses where you need to use Debilitate or something and that messes up your stack count.

TLDR: There's nothing stopping you from dumping an absurd amount of arrows out of your BolG, but it has to be "spreadsheet planned". It's much harder to manage the calculations on the fly if you're trying to both optimize cooldowns and avoid wasting BolG procs. If you mostly use Sniper archetype big, few hit abilities then it's much easier to improvise your rotations, and Ranged desperately needs some variety even in the main game.

true nimbus
true nimbus
visual grail
true nimbus
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I would like snap shot to be something that you combo into pretty early which would be good. There's definitely something like touch and finger missing from earlylevel

visual grail
true nimbus
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Yeah, I dunno if the other styles should express their difficulty over Necro at that stage though

visual grail
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Comparing it to the live game where you don't need to wait until lvl 4 etc. to unlock more than 1 more button 🥲

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visual grail
true nimbus
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Like, should it already be more difficult than Necro that early or should it be the same difficulty in early levels

visual grail
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I don't think giving players more than 1 or 2 buttons can be considered "difficult". Rather it allows for them to actually play around with the abilities and have fun

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You can still have a higher skill floor without culling players ability to play

barren bane
# visual grail Idk what you mean with multihit identity, but ful as an alternative for no stack...

When it's said multihit identity, at its core it means leveraging many hits to do more things

So that may be building bik stacks
Draining defences via black stone arrows
Rolling for hydrix procs
Rolling for crit procs to do deathspores buffs
Not just do many hits = get damage like a ezk or a omnipower.

The problem is Ful just opts out of that system with a flat dmg boost, denying the identity, we already have primal arrows at a base level for that sort of thing, ful arrows should be the step up like other arrows of the same level.

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Ful collapses the meaning of opt-out, undermines the ability design, & fractures the identity.

hybrid moon
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I basically never use Ranged on the main game, only occasionally for slayer. I have the Eternal Magic Mk. 5 and I use Ful Arrows, turn off brain 😛
I hope once this update rolls out I can actually have fun with the style.

true nimbus
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Or the process in which you find that out. Like, what is next?

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Multi hits... what for?

hybrid moon
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I was planning to get a gloomfire when it was 100m flat but that same day two youtubers made vids on it so the price skyrocketed

barren bane
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Multi-hits, what for? Well who knows, find out when you unlock bolg, and elder god/bsa/deathspore arrows.

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Well, okay crossbows are better in this regard, slightly

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They at least have the ammo side of things covered.

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But they're left with nothing otherwise because the base kit is drowned out by bolg.

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Can't add anything in at the early game cause it would clash with bolg.

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Even identified the issue a week ago, where bolg passive would have to be split out into the base kit and then bolg would modify how the base kit works, because otherwise multihit just never fully fulfils until Lv 95

true nimbus
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One technicality is that bolg already exists in the beta, so why would there be 2 bolgs? Even if they intend this

barren bane
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Just refactor current bolg?

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It still works the same

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In this vision for the game anyway

visual grail
visual grail
barren bane
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You know, that's a good point.

visual grail
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And the flat damage ability also does that a little bit I think

barren bane
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Yeah, but it's really hard to notice unless you're a math guy ngl.

visual grail
true nimbus
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Hmm, it has to be satisfying as well. 3 stack volley is pretty satisfying

visual grail
visual grail
vale palm
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this allows "multi-hit" to be an actual conscious choice the player makes, with a drawback

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the death's swiftness proposal also adds some movement mechanics for what is supposedly an agile style but actually just plays the same as magic

barren bane
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I'm half and half on that post, I like some of it, and heavily dislike others.

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I've spoke about it on the parts that I like though, do think a transformation to death swiftness is needed, and playing around with distance is maybe cool.

vale palm
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I care most about making mulihitting/raising hitsplats an actual choice and making movement matter, making distance matter for 1 or 2 abilities is also cool since that also makes movement matter

silk pumice
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ricochet should bounce like death skulls, rather than spreading to all other targets at once

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if the multi target aspect, is to remain

vale palm
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just do chain hit instead

visual grail
silk pumice
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because splintering isn't a ricochet

visual grail
vale palm
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ricochet is getting renamed in the event that it doesnt get the multitarget back

barren bane
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I don't want ricochet to be multitarget, I think it should be a little harder overall for range to access aoe and no one can give a reason that makes sense to make it multi target, hitting scarabs at amascut???

Same for just make frag shot stronger? Why tho?

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It's not even a fulfilling avenue for the combat style.

vale palm
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the problem is it does two things now, one that everyone cares about and one that's just utility, i say it should be split into two abilities so they can both matter

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having a separate ability that is basically chain hit (the special attack of the rune throwing axe) and is affected by caroming I think would be better for everyone

spark ermine
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rework the t85 lava strykewyrm ones to be this

barren bane
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I would sooner see range get things like the venator bow

visual grail
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Old beta javelin hehe

vale palm
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eh thats just worse or better chins

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which is fine I guess for actual aoe/multitarget clearing

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the point of chain hit would be the utility of luring

barren bane
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That's what I've been saying about making ricochet multitarget.

vale palm
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instead of having nothing in your kit

barren bane
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Wow you've just made chins worse.

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Why?

vale palm
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and chins aren't good for luring

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equipping an entire other weapon just for the utility of luring is also bad

barren bane
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Tbh, if ricochet is the luring ability, we need a different ability.

visual grail
vale palm
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that is literally what I said

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i made one

true nimbus
barren bane
atomic isle
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they should just make what rico is and what grico is dif abilities tbh

vale palm
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there is literally nothing interesting about making the whole of ranged work more like ecb

true nimbus
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That was the other half of the post though

vale palm
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of what post

true nimbus
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The thing from pvme

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I mean if ecb is that boring, what else are we standardizing the style around other than bolg

vale palm
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it's like talking to a pile of bricks

vale palm
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of course if that's attached to the grico functionality being locked behind the codex that's a fat no from me

vale palm
atomic isle
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Hmmm... i mean it would also be cool if players could somehow choose whether all rico/grico hits disperse or hit the same opponent

vale palm
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it's basically just another "bring endgame mechanics down" in that since endgamers don't use food otherwise, they would for dps benefits under this temp buff

true nimbus
vale palm
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neat concept but the result is just punishing players for not being hench enough to not use food

true nimbus
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There were other things too

atomic isle
vale palm
vale palm
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not entirely sure what "secondary activation" is supposed to be

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so I can stop going back and forth

true nimbus
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Like click swift again for 30 adren or something

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It says 1 tile there instead of whole swift

vale palm
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so spectral scythe secondary activation

true nimbus
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Eeh I guess for buffs

vale palm
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but yeah the issue is in order to fill up your adrenaline you have to stop healing from food, that's an unnecessary gate

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and to make up for that what, you have to use it again for whatever amount of adrenaline?

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it's a weird interaction to anyone who isn't at the endgame

true nimbus
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I do think range has a fairly scary vibe in general, hmm wish they would keep tendrils if they went for this though

barren bane
vale palm
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oh wait I misread it

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the secondary activation hurts you for doubled adrenaline

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so yeah it's just garbage all around

true nimbus
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Everything else in the post is like, mostly number adjustments and pvm quality of life things though

barren bane
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Potentially hurts you, random spawn, 5 rangers all use the same move

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Fun times

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The damage is negligible though

vale palm
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since it damages you I'm going to assume the mechanics of the first activation also apply

atomic isle
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so bleeds are increased from ur enemies cause they step on a trail of blood u leave?

vale palm
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for something like that to completely replace incendiary shot is to have a pretty big gatekeep built into ranged as a style

true nimbus
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They don't seem to like multi-hits either, so trying to think of something that has depth I suppose

barren bane
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Burning blood, my first thought is why isn't it an aura? As in an area of effect centred on the player

atomic isle
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how does melee get burning blood? sounds like something magical or something

barren bane
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Uh zerk ki power

atomic isle
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or even more in lines of necromancy

true nimbus
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I think it's meant to make the enemy walk around, kinda like with slaughter

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Slaughter is my favourite beginner meleer interaction ngl

barren bane
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Yeah, enemy walking is fun until its amascut

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It's a nice low level interaction

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But it falls off hard

vale palm
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too much of the game doesnt care about walking

true nimbus
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My team certainly wouldn't like it when I base aod

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It seems like you also want to lure the target to follow you along the trail

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That would look cool at least

barren bane
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Yeah maybe

true nimbus
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Pretty nice to see on stream, boss walking around for no reason

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Accidentally dragging someone outside sunshine

vale palm
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neat but doesnt really sound like something that should be built into melee

true nimbus
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It would be most in-depth with melee, since you gotta like turn run off and then move

vale palm
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I mean conceptually, that sounds more like a vampyre weapon or armor effect

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the game already has it, it's called haemalchemy

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if it were some talent tree ability unlock related to vampyre content, I can see it

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but as of right now the triangle styles are just going to get random unlocks from level ups

true nimbus
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Good thing vampire content is coming

atomic isle
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I do like the idea of melee getting adre or reducing cooldowns through hitcaps and such

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Even tho bleeds have lots of issues in the game, i think their concept is really cool and it does feel like something melee like

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could do something like salt the wound but for melee

true nimbus
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Maybe crit buff redesign are what are gonna be standardized across the whole game instead

timid olive
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"Walking" things like bleeds should require them to keep moving. "Bonus damage if their location doesn't match their location since the last tick of damage" mugger

prime panther
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Bleeds should be a debuff on the target with fixed damage, and instead of replacing them players should be able to stack intensity up to a limit.
Pretty much make them all different variations of abyssal parasites

hybrid moon
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Having a stack cap though means you’ll reach it pretty much immediately in group encounters which is already the glaring weakness of DoT builds: multiple players trying to use the same bleeds will hinder each other. Jagex should go the reverse direction: make bleeds/burns/Dark Magic aura/etc. calculate separately for each player so you can actually stack them on the same target. It makes no sense that currently, having 4 mages light up the same target is the same effectiveness as one.

timid olive
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they have to decide what they're supposed to be. Is a "bleed/burn/dot" JUST a normal attack that takes a few seconds to go through? Should they be buffed by everything, should they stack, how long should they last, etc

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Not all of them should have the same rules/application, but right now they're all different cases acting weird, with content and numbers chosen on those for better or worse

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So we have things like "we keep making dots instant instead of over time which defeats the point", gchain semi-mistakenly (it makes sense with how debuffs work, but it breaks the rule of the attack) full damaging with dots instead of 50% damage, passage gloves boosting their damage generously on the assumption most things won't boost them, etc

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Maybe the ideas on a lot of the existing dots (some of which appear to be on the chopping block) should just be redone entirely. Maybe bleed and burn damage should just be their own thing, similarly for poison if it got adjusted, attributed to no one as a debuff on the target, maybe there should be TMW-style ones where anyone can stack it and it just extends and recalcs the per-tick damage, maybe some SHOULD be locked to "one at a time" so you keep some level of coordination/not making it too strong, etc

prime panther
# hybrid moon Having a stack cap though means you’ll reach it pretty much immediately in group...

On the flip side having stack caps allow for team work where one player may not be able to sustain it alone but a well balanced team would without issue. Masses aside they don’t count and are game breaking as it is.

There should be a clear distinction, and mechanical differences that classify them. Maybe bleed could stack, and burns could be a per player basis. But each type of the same type should function the same. All burns behave as burns, all bleeds behave as bleeds, and all dot (renamed to something else like curses or something) behave the same. Theres already a difference between multi hit and channeled abilities so thats clean enough for now.

timid olive
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A multi hit attack is just any attack that causes multiple hits, like DDS, claws, or havoc. A channel is a period of time that you have restrictions on your actions, attacking during or after the channel, so those aren't even the same thing.

mellow frigate
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bleeds and burns only 'exist' as distinct things in principle

timid olive
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Various forms of dots would need to account for whatever the core design is. If you made a system like "bleeds are one singular thing everyone contributes to", you'll end up with something like parasites where it is a flat value and scaling won't matter, or how Puncture stacks awkwardly shift their power based on who last hit

mellow frigate
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in current gameplay burns are just bleeds by a different name

timid olive
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if you made "melee bleeds" one thing, like every melee bleed attack just added to a timer ticking on the target so nothing is lost, then they can all only play by that one rule, no variation, since their identity is lost after contributing to that pool

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I mean we can also just cut the design aspect on how these damage types could work, we all know where the "change bleed" topic is going, where they need to stack, work with all the damage boosts, apply all onhits, crit, yada yada

hybrid moon
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I like what you said earlier about a TMW-style rework to group bleeds where it calculates the total damage that would be dealt, adds it together, then "rounds it out" over time. It might break the Soul Split interaction though, as that currently heals whoever last applied whichever bleed to the target. It might even run into the 30k hitcap if (for example) several Melee players GBarge at the same time or if like 6 players all Roar of Awakening spec the same target.

prime panther
hardy mango
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After playing around a bit on the beta I just have a few feedback points to add. Overall imo this already feels a lot better to play with than current ranged does on live and it will DRAMATICALLY improve ranged's usefulness pre-bis basically everywhere in the game, making it useful on my GIM, which is hype.

  1. Maintenance buffs are not something I think belong in combat systems. Splinter shots is always worth having up, so it just becomes a maintenance buff. I think this could be made into a leveling passive for ranged and tune up every 5-10 levels all the way to 120, slightly increasing over time to further incentivize training past 99. It would need to be weaker than it is on the beta to compensate for not costing adren and a GCD but imo this is the dramatically more fun route and further cements multi-hit as ranged's "thing"

  2. I think making incend into a turbo-charged version of inspiration aura would be more fitting for the style than its current status as a crit buff

  3. Slightly reworking dracolich to play into this new version of incend instead of giving a crit buff would probably go a long way towards making the style feel complete at endgame. Leaving it as a crit chance buff would feel very weird assuming incend does get reworked

  4. Extending bombardment's range by 1 tile would go a long way in making it feel better to click

  5. Taking death's swiftness off of the world wakes is 100% the right call, it makes it much more reasonable for new players to do quests in order of the story without completely kneecapping their combat capabilities. this is something that actually REALLY bothered me on my GIM recently, I felt forced to complete TWW well before I was ready to story-wise

hybrid moon
#

The Blightbound Crossbows are 99% obselete in today's game for two reasons: they are tier 92, and their passive effect has no impact on DPS. Similarly, Blight Bolts are just weaker Primal Bolts which take significantly longer to farm. I have some suggestions which will make these weapons significantly more viable and which also will tie into the "multi-hit" identity of the Ranged style, freeing up the BolG to fulfill the Sniper archetype. (BolG is designed for massive, methodically planned hits, but people end up trying to use it as machine gun anyway as there's no other usable weapon.)

First and foremost: raise the tier of the Blightbound Crossbows and Bolts to t95, up to t100 with a Shard of Genesis Essence.

The current passive effect of the crossbows is "25% / 50% chance to save a Bakriminel Bolt on activation." Not only does this ammo-saving effect have no impact on DPS, it doesn't even work with the "intended ammo" of Blight Bolts. The new effect should be "1.5x / 2x chance of bolt special effect activation" (yes, a massive jump, but these are t95s, they're meant to be that strong). This multiplier would also apply to the chance of (elite) Sirenic giving free bolt effects.

Give Blight Bolts an effect: "X % chance per hit of applying a stacking Blight DoT to the target" (similar to Abyssal Parasites or a Super Wyvern Crossbow) with no maximum. This effect would give Blight Bolts heavy synergy with the Crossbows (double chance = double Blight damage) and incentivize spamming multi-hit attacks. Blight Bolts would excel in longer encounters while allowing teams to contribute to the total DoT without hindering each other. Near the end of the encounter, where adding additional Blight won't do much damage before the boss dies, players can always switch to Hydrix Bolts for the final DPS dump.

vale palm
#

well no being t92 doesn't really mean anything, it's entirely because of passives and specs

#

if neither eofs nor bolg or god arrows existed blightbounds would still be obliterated by ecb

#

but i generally agree with raising pretty much every t92 to t95 if only to also add legendary-esque specs and passives to them

prime panther
vale palm
#

the historical ones, scourge also obliterates half of them because it was released way later when they decided passives were a good idea

#

hell t88 lengs probably does

open bloom
#

Hard mode Solak that drops t95 upgrades for blightbounds, which cause bak bolt passives to trigger 100% of the time

#

Rapid Fire with Ruby Bolts nukes both you and the enemy

hybrid moon
# open bloom Hard mode Solak that drops t95 upgrades for blightbounds, which cause bak bolt p...

I would not go all the way to 100% activation chance because then several bolt types become absurd:
Onyx: All attacks are boosted 25% and you heal for 25% of every hit, up to 2500 healing from hits that do at least 8K base damage.
Hydrix: every single hitsplat now gives you an extra 10% adrenaline. With the upcoming Incendiary Shot changes giving even more adrenaline on every hitsplat, you'd probably be able to Gloomfire EoF almost continuously for 30 seconds.
Surprisingly, Jade is also broken at 100%: 4.8 second stun on every single attack. 4000% Telos is now AFK.
There are some very good reasons we don't get 100% bolts. I had originally written 2x / 3x bolt chance but after some thought decided even that would probably be OP.

open bloom
#

The buff DW Ranged needs gnomechildblush

mellow frigate
#

could borrow the zaryte xbow spec and have a guaranteed proc

vale palm
#

since bolg is jagex's magnum opus it should copy bolg except the extra hit is a guaranteed enchanted bolt proc

timid olive
#

actually, you could do something like that, where if you branched part of ranged away from multi-hit-only, you could do something like "every Xth ability (not hit) gets a forced proc" so you'd be making a decision to opt into sniping your guaranteed onyx bolt proc or whatever

hybrid moon
#

If auto-attacks are going to be changed to a Basic Attack on GCD, it should really benefit from Fury of the Small and Impatient. I know Invigorating exists but if Basic Attack is going to cost a GCD then it should benefit from bonus to Basic Abilities.

timid olive
#

does it need to? It already gives 9 as a base, and if there were more sources of adrenaline like that it might reduce how much power is loaded into just those as must-haves

#

the new basics themselves also give +1 by default compared to what they were before

hybrid moon
timid olive
#

it's not about the adren being 1:1, it's a question of if the effects need buffs when we already got compensation and it's generally buffs all around at the base

spiral frigate
#

how do i access the beta if the link on the post don't open

timid olive
#

neither link works? One is for jagex launcher, the other is for normal client

spiral frigate
#

yeah neither

#

i am running steam client rn

timid olive
#

try completely closing the clients first, that's all I can think of

spiral frigate
#

it don't want to open lol

#

ahh well i suppose

visual grail
true nimbus
#

Ngl I've used the auto to align my bolg stacks so many times now

barren bane
#

The new or old one?

true nimbus
#

In beta n stuff

#

I got a few seconds pb over my record on live game too

atomic isle
#

You guys are all awesome for sharing your thoughts and feedback about the game we all love. Lot of really cool ideas going around. Hope y'all have a super amazing New Year!

true nimbus
#

Same to you :]

open bloom
#

I hate this game

barren bane
#

Died at telos?

open bloom
#

no, just taking umbrage with the assumption that I love this game

true nimbus
#

Got a flight skip with heightened senses @visual grail

#

Prebuild feels way more cringe in beta and slight nerfs like with deadshot would give me more incentive to use gloom bow I feel which I can fit into the rot most times I think

true nimbus
#

I think I can get gloom bow in regardless actually tbh. Just crit buff issues rn

rustic storm
#

Imo, they should move away from prebuilding.
Feels clunky and unintuitive.
If they wana keep it it needs to be streamlined so it feels better/worthwhile to use.

true nimbus
#

If they can highlight the part of pre-building where you click 3 buttons in the same tick (target cycle, spell release, next ability), sometimes multiple times before the fight, then that would be amazing. Absolutely keen to have pre-building have a visual like the extra action button that shows the stored ability that can also be keybound instead of a spell and have the stalled ability be kept outside of combat too.

#

And the issue here is also that it just feels bad to start a range rot without a pre-build. Unlike mage and melee that just get things going with incite fear stacks and barge

#

I'll probably try a tsunami heightened senses start on the boss tomorrow and see how that goes

hybrid moon
#

The Loadouts tab really needs to take bonuses from equipment into account. I can be wearing full elite tectonic, biting 4, reaver's ring, erethdor's grimoire, and a fsoa, and it will still say 10% crit chance 50% crit damage. It also doesn't take into account accuracy bonuses from equipment such as the Stalker's Charm. Both critical and accuracy bonuses still work as intended, but they don't "show up" in your Loadouts tab.

rustic storm
#

My hope is they give ranged an adren juice that isnt incen. Somethign that works without needing deathspores or isint tsunami

hybrid moon
#

just make wen arrows even stronger and don't give people adren before 95

faint bridge
#

I was thinking Passive combat perks for the 3 original combat styles, Maybe in form of ability to make the combat triangle more relevant. Small passive boost that's disabled by an attack it's weak to. for example + 20% crit damage, disabled by melee attack. 3 min cooldown.

hybrid moon
true nimbus
faint bridge
#

terper124 if you are ranged, you are weak to melee so melee attacks disable the bonus crit damage for let's say 3 minutes, the numbers aren't important just made those up on the spot. Basically strong ability that can be cancelled by melee. Talking mainly ranged

visual grail
#

Btw, why not dummy after entering the instance, before joining the fight?

visual grail
true nimbus
barren bane
#

Use a grico cause you need more adrenaline?
Punished.
Needed caroming gchain to pull a group of mobs? Punished.

#

Needed to hammer/quake to drop the boss defence? Punished again.

#

The primary issue being if it's just an always on passive, you're getting rewarded for doing nothing.

If you wanted to enforce a little more non-hybrid gameplay you'd add more to do within the style to empower the players rather than taking away..

true nimbus
#

Coe is better if brining tsunami into the fight I think

rustic storm
# visual grail > they should move away from prebuilding. They never "moved to" prebuilding, an...

They never moved to it themselves. The players however, did.
Because of that and other things (treasure hunter) keeping much needed changes and buffs coming into the game. Thats just kind of how it fell.

I just dont think such a clunky method of increasing your damage should remain in the game.
Id rather they make all the styles feel better to use and add ways to do things such as prebuilds and adren juicing in the base kits without having to jump through so many hoops.
Im all for rewarding people for preping kills to get faster times.
I just feel its a bit lopsided in what each style requires for such things.

As it is now the only style that has adren juicing in a good spot that dosent require massive prebuilds and switches is magic with the 20% cost tsunami from incite fear.
Magic feels very good to use throughout its entire progression.

I want something like that for other combat styles that dosent require crit buffing with another style, stalling, or having to count using deathspores.

true nimbus
#

Ranged is almost as easy as magic due to deathspore and melee stops needing dagger eof spam after ezk upgrade. With that and vestments, melee is at a decent spot

#

Not ideal pre endgame I suppose

rustic storm
#

In its current form ranged is very heavily backloaded towards endgame with all the eof switches and not everyone wants to cont bolg stacks.
Pretty much the same for mele with all the upgrades needed, less so for mage but more early game crit chance would be nice.
I just want clunkyness removed. Stalling and prebuilding feels clunky and unintuitive.
Streamline things and either remove them to keep things consistent or polish and add them as proper game mechanics.

true nimbus
#

The beta in it's current form dials back on eofs a lot. There's always wen stacks too, those are easier

Tbh I don't think it's necessary to tinker with pre-building and at all. Ultimately it wouldn't affect many players. If wanting to keep world record content, you usually have to accept that it's going to be clunky and unintuitive. That's how it ends up in most games

visual grail
# rustic storm They never moved to it themselves. The players however, did. Because of that and...

I agree with you on other styles access to adren generation/crit buff is kind of lackluster, but

keeping much needed changes and buffs coming into the game
Which changes were kept from the game because of it?

I just dont think such a clunky method of increasing your damage should remain in the game.
It's not a thing for any of the new bosses, nor a thing you have to engage with if you don't enjoy it. Removing it from all the old bosses too for no reason serves no purpose but to make the game less fun 🙂

visual grail
visual grail
rustic storm
# visual grail I agree with you on other styles access to adren generation/crit buff is kind of...

Skill changes and rebalances, skilling buffs and tweaks.
All because th was a major reason things where ballence the whay they are. Alongside auras, they made combat what it is today.

And thats why i said remove it or add it as a proper feature.
There are options available to make everyone happy.
I said i dont think a clunky method of damage should remain in the game.

Stalling in my eyes is clunky because it adds another thing for me to forget.
I need to get X, Y, Z buff and then throw this and that out already.
May main gripe is theres no indicator that i have something stalled.
And that i have to use another spell to actually use the stalled ability. Yet another thing for me to forget.
Ontop of that ability stalling is still a "bug" meaning newer players have to actively go and look up how to do it if they even know it exists in the fist place.

Tho. Alot of my gripes could be fixed by a couple things.
making stalling an actual dedicated ability or item so its more accsessable and dosent requrie janky mechanics.

And making the styles, mele and ranged spesififly, feel better. Spesificly by moving adren juicing/crit buff off of incin/meteor. So i dont feel like i have to use stalling in order to do the same kind of damage rotations.
Mele spesificly feels terrible becaues it has become so adrenaline hungry with ezk, dagger, ect.
And without meteor you just dont have enough adren.

#

And no "just use tsunami" isnt a valid solution.

visual grail
# rustic storm Skill changes and rebalances, skilling buffs and tweaks. All because th was a m...

All because th was a major reason things where ballence the whay they are
Did they ever say so? I doubt that they saw th/stalling existing and then decided to not make "much needed" changes to combat

You seem to be conflating stalling with stalling and releasing on another target, which are two entirely different things. Your gripes seem to be with the latter.

newer players have to actively go and look up how to do it if they even know it exists in the fist place.
That's okay, releasing on another target is an optional thing to do, required literally nowhere, and only used in high level / end-game gameplay.
It is also much more than just bringing a crit buff into an instance. Using it mid-fight adds more possible depth and skill expression to fights, and makes them less "clunky".
I wouldn't advocate for it's removal just because you consider it "clunky", or "unintuitive" – especially considering your/other people's gripes seem to be with the way adren generation works

true nimbus
visual grail
true nimbus
#

Gloom bow more likely after beta I think. Sgb less necessary for the price is all

visual grail
true nimbus
#

Less bad yeah and same with snap shot. Gloom bow can be more awkward to time on main game since you are less likely to end up on stack 1 I feel

visual grail
true nimbus
#

Hmm, I think a rot is usually like, swift, grico, bolg, rapid fire sgb or something and then you gotta deviate to get your gloom bow spec in

gentle flame
# visual grail > All because th was a major reason things where ballence the whay they are Did ...

There's obviously a few applications to stalling but lets not pretend that the most common and egregious of those isn't to smuggle a free ultimate into every counter. Majority of people I see at wars who aren't necroing almost always do the little two step off the adren crystal. It's common because it takes literally zero effort. You can completely profit a free ultimate in a single GCD and with the interaction being a single button press and two mouse clicks. Complexity and depth may well exist in some applications of stalling but it simply doesn't for this - press a whopping 3 buttons at the start of your fight and there you go, you've just done two ultimates for the price of one. It's at the point now where like why wouldn't someone spend the less than literally 2 seconds to stall something on their way past the adren crystal anyway. It's so widespread that there's no way content won't be created with that in mind and that is definitely a problem when the 'mechanic' is a pure spaghetti code byproduct and is a case of if you know you know.

visual grail
# gentle flame There's obviously a few applications to stalling but lets not pretend that the m...

Why is it "egregious"? It helps you with issues styles have getting crit buffs, which in itself should maybe get looked at. But starting with crit buff only makes the fights smoother for people, as opposed to having to spend 3 abils into nami before starting your dps rotation

no way content won't be created with that in mind
Can you get me a citation of a jmod that they design fights with crit buff at the start of them in mind?

true nimbus
#

It's not a huge damage loss either

visual grail
rustic storm
visual grail
rustic storm
#

I just dont like how it feels to me it feels bad.

visual grail
#

Okay

rustic storm
visual grail
#

I mean, I could also ask for necro to me, because I just dont like how it feels to me it feels bad.
But would it be a suggestion good for the game?

#

(but seriously fix necro please)

true nimbus
#

It feels cool to me as someone who likes world records. I have to watch the boss make a specific spawn animation until I have to press 3 buttons extremely precisely

rustic storm
true nimbus
#

Removing it doesn't buff average player damage that much. All that would do is ruin world record content

#

It's not even a net negative. Just only a negative

visual grail
rustic storm
#

Ehh... in the end i just want the game to feel better.
Its hard to explain.
Certian moments durring combat dont feel like they have that bite and having to use stalling to feel that bite just dosent feel good to me.

#

Austistic brain replacing explanations with feelings again

visual grail
rustic storm
#

Yes, i heard you the first three times.
Please stop repeating yourself.

visual grail
#

Sorry, I was hoping to get through to you 😔

rustic storm
#

You already have. Given me a few things to think on.

visual grail
#

👍

rustic storm
#

Thinking about what exactly makes it feel bad to me and trying to come up with exactly what needs to be fixed to make it feel better

visual grail
true nimbus
#

I like the part where you press 3 buttons in the same tick but I don't think they want to make new content that is that complex

visual grail
#

(just a random example of replacing what stall releases currently do, other things ofc possible too)

rustic storm
#

I want that sort of ease of use with the other styles

visual grail
#

Agreed, Ranged deathspores are so horrible, made even worse in the beta (hopefully they'll rework deathspores/ranged adren)

rustic storm
#

Hopefully, with the core styles getting new "identities" (or leaning more heavily into crit in mages case) we will get ways to adren juice that dont require stupid high amounts of crit chance to make use of for mele and ranged.

#

Do know alot of high end players would be a bit... upset, to see the crit buffs from other styles removed.
But i dont think people should be relying on endless switches and buffs from other styles to do there big damage.

true nimbus
#

They should let deathspore buff grant access to incend at any adren for sure. Melee is mostly fine though, I think it feels better to play without crits

visual grail
#

Theoretically speaking melee already has jaws, which I find horrible to use though 🥲

rustic storm
#

Oh absolutely. Jaws is just... gross

#

Mele definitly needs to be big hits by default.
With bleeds as support.
Like with abyssal armour spikes.

true nimbus
#

Jaws felt better before the ezk change where you could just focus on bleeds for awhile as you were getting all your adren back + flurry

#

Right now it's a bit of a shame, the place it's in

visual grail
#

And crit buff optainability shouldn't be locked to a certain ammo+weapon type imo

rustic storm
#

I think right now mele is kind of in a state where, if you arent in zerk. It feels kinda... meh

#

Basics just dont hit hard enough. And bleeds, unless you walk em, dont feel good.

true nimbus
true nimbus
visual grail
rustic storm
#

When compaired to something like gconc, grico, corruption shot/blast. The definitly feel like they are falling short.
Specially if you are using caroming or roar/ode

true nimbus
#

Hmm, they could buff rapid fire crit chance for sure

#

I think Splinter should do that

rustic storm
#

Plus. Theres alot of just... alota useless mele basics. No ones using slice or punish.

visual grail
#

Either way I assume that they won't end beta without a change to it, considering they are already reviewing incend

rustic storm
#

Im expecting another wave of changes to the beta sometime soon. Once everyones back from the holidays

true nimbus
#

I think incend needs to remain that prevalent though. Like rapid fire piercing incend is just a cool combo

#

Playing around with abilities

visual grail
rustic storm
#

They where saying they wanted to move the adren buff from incen. Would be intresting to have it reworked into something new.

visual grail
#

And it clashing with Wen arrows with wenspores removed makes it feel really bad imo

true nimbus
visual grail
rustic storm
#

I think splinter should be something besides an upkeep ability.
Dosent really feel good to have to spend 40% every 40 sec or youre just dealing less damage.
Make it like an aspect or a leveling benifit.
Just, not something else to spend adren on that feels mandatory.

true nimbus
#

It has to have a high adrenaline cost though, can't have something with high powercreep be an aspect

#

And something like this is good for encouraging players to play into multi hit

silk pumice
#

's kinda the point that it's a multiplier upkeep though

rustic storm
#

I do agree. Its a good idea. Dosent have to cost adren tho.
Not everything needs a cost.

#

Like the idea, just not the implementation

silk pumice
#

then there's no actual upkeep

#

just benefit

#

the cost, is the tradeoff

rustic storm
#

So? Whats the problem with that?
Theres already SO much upkeep in this game. Its not guna hurt to have one upgrade that isint eating away a resoruce at all times.

true nimbus
#

The cost is like a sunk cost. You are invested into multi hits and no cost would feel worse like ghost upkeep without risk

silk pumice
#

giving it a proper cost, opens power budget

#

it's adrenaline you don't spend on other damage boosts

rustic storm
#

Im just sick of upkeep.
Seems like everything needs to be charged and maintained.

#

upkeep for ranged is supposedly guna be getting worse anyway with the ammo changes.

true nimbus
#

Hmm that's fair

silk pumice
#

rebalanced isn't worse necessarily

rustic storm
#

Supposedly. We dont know how things are going to be changed in the final version.
As it looks now tho we are getting a net nerf to arrow consumption.

#

Id prefer upkeeping arrows to upkeeping a buff that ill forget every time.
I already forget enough as is.

true nimbus
#

It could feel more cool or thematic to multi hits for sure, so naturally less likely to forget

rustic storm
#

Maby.
Im just prone to forgetting things cause i focus so hard on dealing damage.
That i forget the little buffs and things that will make me deal more damage.

#

I just want less to forget.

true nimbus
#

Overload cauldrons might help with that

rustic storm
#

I did sugjest ovl chugging.
Drink a full vial/flask for the full timer.

#

Im just hoping auras will go away so i have one less thing to forget as well.

#

I always forget they exist.

#

The beta definitly feels better in that regard.

true nimbus
#

I feel like Splinter is supposed to be something thematic like swiftness. I didn't fully expect this reception to it

foggy bluff
#

Splinter in the current itteration is extremely boring and doesn't feel good

#

It's a forced 100% uptime buff if you wanna deal okay damage, but doesn't do anything with multi-hits at all

timid olive
#

It's boring because it's 100% uptime and you're going to do the rotation you would have done anyways. It categorically DOES do things with multi-hit (it's far better with grico than snipe, it's stronger with gloom/dark bow than single shot autoattack bows, etc), but it won't change what you're doing and most of the kit is multihit anyways so it's just "free damage with upkeep", compared to if it was a cheaper shorter buff like "next 3 ability casts" and you were using it to maximize your incoming hits of grico + sgb + deadshot.

atomic isle
#

Just a thought but if bleeds are really that much of an issue to work with/fix. How about melee sticks with the burst damage identity and then it can also have a specific defensive/shield subclass. It goes well with the whole knight and tank identities melee has in general throughout culture and media

#

I will say there are 2 or 4 new offensive shield abilities I think would be pretty darn cool if they existed. These could relate more to melee or the other styles too. I say 2 or 4 because they could be implemented in various ways.

  1. Shield barge, which i have already seen talked about. You barge/smash into an opponent with your shield from a distance.

  2. Shield swipe, a conal shield attack (like cleave)

  3. Shield roundhouse sweep, strike with your shield in a circular motion, hitting all opponents who surround you.

  4. Shield throw/ricochet, yes like Captain America, throw your shield from a distance to strike an opponent, perhaps it hitting multiple opponents in the process and have it return to you.

I really like how spectral scythe works with necromancy. It starts with a swipe, then all around, and finally a large slam. This could be how shield offensives work. This what i mean as to how all these 4 abilities could be implemented into 2.

The current bash could be made to work like spectral scythe. Starting as just a single strike, then a conal sweep, and finally a roundhouse strike.

When bash is done from a distance, the shield could just be thrown, and each consecutive bash after the first one could just hit more opponents when done from a distance. First bash when done from a distance hits 1 opponent, second up to 3, and third up to 8. This would add a bit more of realism to bash when done with range/mage/necro. Not saying this should only happen with just these styles but whenever the player is at a far distance, including with melee. It could be a neat way for melee to aggro monsters from a distance.

empty frigate
#

Its not an issue to work with. Jmods just do not want to overly powercreep bleeds.

They have already said what theyd probably do which is just have the bleeds stacks

#

like bloat 1 does 1k damage per dot hit. bloat 2 would add 1k to that dot until the dot duration is complete

#

what would be trickier to do is add a dot on top of the remaining bloat 1 and the variable damage but im sure thats not too insane to work on. the bigger issue would be the bugs that might be introduced tbh

hybrid moon
#

Oh the same player stacking bloat would be insane powercreep with necro. Every 20% adrenaline is now 15k damage or something, compared to 60% for 20k with Finger of Death.

hybrid moon
#

Actually, stacking Bloat would be similar adrenaline efficiency to Zuk Death Skulls 😮

hybrid moon
#

Early game players learning combat is in a really rough spot, with the three styles not really coming into their own until you get endgame boss loot (which I know the beta is attempting to address). Revolution works fine everywhere until about level 80 bosses, and then players with t75 GWD1 gear and zero knowledge are confused why OSRS click-and-wait doesn’t work anymore. With a bit of a tweaking to the dialogue, The Blood Pact quest is an opportunity to really introduce the core concepts of RS3’s combat system like adrenaline and ability timings.

Since new players now drop in Lumbridge again, they should make The Blood Pact heavily suggested by Lumbridge NPCs. “Hey I heard that a girl was kidnapped near the graveyard. You look like a rising hero, go save her!” It would help its visibility as a combat tutorial.

Ozan, Ariane, and the Raptor all show up in the Burthorpe Troll Cave killing the style of troll they are strong against. When talked to, they will give you a horribly inefficient Revo bar and just send you on your merry way without explaining what each style really is about. Move them into the Lumbridge Catacombs after The Blood Pact, so that people will actually see them in their first hour of gameplay. Additionally, rework them into proper combat teachers who give you an in-depth description of their respective style, for those players who take a liking to one of the three styles after the brief introduction during TBP.

torn shore
#

i would suggest not getting rid of any existing abilities.
add more abilities and buff the ones that already exist so they can compete at a necro lvl for dps.
also can you add a ranged equivalent of the magma tempest ability.
i noticed in your ranged beta you removed dazing shot and salt in wound, i enjoy having these abilities and would be sad to see them go. i would recommend making 1 or 2 other abilities give puncture stacks so players can use salt in wound with dual wield.
ranged is my favourite play style it requires a lot of messing around to tune it for decent dps,
just buff it.
buff the abilities.
buff the gear.
and make deaths swiftness move with the player!! it being stationary limits it so much and i often feel like its wasted Adrenalin . nothing sucks more than dropping deaths swiftness then having a boss keep you off that tile for the majority of its duration.
these are the changes i would like to see with ranged. also dont touch tendrils!!!! without tendrils i am nothing!

true nimbus
mortal meteor
#

Finally getting around to checking this out, let's see how it goes.

true nimbus
#

2 things I still want to know is if they want to have beginner level god arrows but it wouldn't make sense to have beginner and high level god arrows in the beta store

And I want to test how it feels to level range from level 1, which we can check by resetting our stats in the beta

mortal meteor
open bloom
#

finding the real issues 💪

rustic storm
# torn shore i would suggest not getting rid of any existing abilities. add more abilities a...

Sadly ability bloat is a very real issue.
Many of them could be compressed such as giving stuns multiple charges.
Mele has the most with both attack and defence abilitys. Slice and punish arent used ever.
Storm shards and shatter are poorly designed. They need a rework.
Onslaught hasnt been touched in years.
Detonate feels horrible without the boots and now adays you want tumikens boots.

true nimbus
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You are underestimating melee basics a bit :p punish is a high tier basic when accounting all styles

timid olive
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Reworked punish is used

rustic storm
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Wait, its been reworked?

timid olive
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It's high damage (for a classic basic) against targets below 50% with a longer CD

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Slice's damage is high enough to pretty much be melee's necro style auto attack (every other attack) even if the stunned target thing isn't really relevant

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But slice punish aren't 3s CD copies with like 40% average damage anymore

rustic storm
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Huh. Guess ive just not touched em since they where trash

timid olive
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The 3 OG style basics of slice piercing shot wrack all got their base damage upped during fort forinthry

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Along with some related ability changes

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Like piercing shot hitting twice

true nimbus
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Melee basics are stacked when you check them out.
Punish is basically your best melee basic when it comes to upfront damage post 50% while is a good while.
Ezk Smash/gop buff is almost as good.
Barge is responsibility for like 20% of your overall damage while berserked, maybe even more.
Chaos roar basically equal to 30-60k damage, the % depending on fight progression but not upfront.
Fury is a really good combo one but tricky to time right.
Even Backhand with flanking, it's crazy op with desert amulet and new Keris at Amascut/ED5
Dismember utility too

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which is good while*

rustic storm
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I duno. Theres just something about mele basics that isint feeling right damage wise.
Outside of zerk they dont feel good to me.

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Maby its me being spoiled by leagues mele.

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I think its that i dont like how it feels when im building. Feel like im not doing enough.

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Me being concerned about the feel of abilitys and not the damage.
Its weird.

true nimbus
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Hmm, it's fair to say that they don't feel fun while not bursting

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Unless maybe you are getting a fury overpower in off-zerk, an occasional ezk smash or behind target backhand

rustic storm
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I find that mage and necro basics feel fine while building.
Cant say anything bout ranged since i dont use the style enough to say.
But mele just dosent have that feeling of satisfaction when i use basics.

open bloom
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That's so nebulous and vague I'm not sure what you expect anyone to do with that information

hybrid moon
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One thing I really like about the magic and melee ability kits are that they have really diverse animations. Range is just drawing your bow over and over, while necro is just waving your arms all over the place. That's probably why range and necro are my least favorite styles to play, they just don't look visually interesting to me. Hopefully the beta introduces some new, unique animations.

rustic storm
open bloom
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well... can't really work on fixing a problem if you can't actually describe the problem

rustic storm
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Thats what im trying to do. Find the actual reason. Cant really say much else till i find it.

civic tree
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perhaps runescape needs a bit of hitstun baked into its animations Glorp

true nimbus
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High level specs are kinda cool on range. Sgb, gloom bow and bolg

rustic storm
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Maby the audio is off or the damage.
There's just something

civic tree
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It's a very simplistic way to add weight to the action but there's a reason it's so common. If it's not there, the combat feels floaty, like your character is swinging styrofoam props

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Obviously RS doesn't have hitboxes for realtime collision detection, but they could probably tune the animations a bit to try and replicate a similar feeling

rustic storm
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I think that combined with the damage of mage basics has made them feel lackluster

hybrid moon
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I mean most monsters play an “on-hit” animation when being attacked, which often overrides other animations such as movement. Animation stalling/rubberbanding can be incredibly frustrating to play around especially with monsters like Jad that have instant melee attacks but which normally attack from a distance and can be flicked.

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So adding more “hitstun” will probably exacerbate that especially with quick attacks like Rapidfire or GConcentrated.

rustic storm
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I think audio would help alot for me. Alot of the hit sound effects dont have much impact ot them. And since theres no flashy spells. No explosive animations or burn effects.

hybrid moon
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Currently, NPCs will only move on your screen if they are playing their walk animation, which is often overridden by basically any other animation they can play. I think the easiest solution to animation stalling is to just make NPCs slide around on your screen if their position is changing from one tick to the next, even if they are playing a different animation instead of the “walking” anim. For example I think if you walk away from Kerapac, even during his auto attack, he will still slide toward you even though his legs aren’t moving during his attack animation. I think making this visual movement global would really help make positioning in combat more intuitive.

civic tree
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Also, it is almost always absent on ranged attacks and spells.

civic tree
timid olive
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Melee needs a channeled strike that just wipes the opponent from the face of the earth in raw power like beta Snipe, but better

spark ermine
true nimbus
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Hmm, the issue with deathspore tbh is that it's reliant on so many crit upgrades

true nimbus
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Set my range level to 1 and went to level at troll cave. first impressions
Basic attack 1-4: Felt a bit slow
Snap shot 4-8: Ended up liking the wait because of the massive power and leveling speed increase at 4. Felt fast and satisfying to start bombing the trolls with spender.
8-13 Snipe: Snap shot got a bit old when spamming it at low cost. Snipe mixed it up a little by being just as good as snap but no adren cost (though still have fears that Snipe with no other synergies will get outshined by snap most cases due to no channel, double hit crit adren/damage)
13: Piercing: Looks cool but not too much better than the basic attack. This ability will be a bit confusing until players are able to use Splinter and Proc management gameplay I feel. I guess the Snipe cd reduction is meant to distract the player to think it's fine?

fleet wharf
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Aesthetics are important in building a connotative identity.

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Synergistically melee is also in an odd spot, because despite its lack of range beyond specialised weaponry it doesn't have the oomph associated with that power fantasy.

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It's definitely a less debated and spoken aspect of it, but it is an ancillary aspect of how the style feels to use, and how you as a player feel to use it.

vale palm
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oh yeah, giving melee hitsplat-accurate animations would be pretty cool

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those soundeffects are p ass too

fleet wharf
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When you use a magic ability, even if there isn't an immediate feedback through the big numbers displayed or a knowledge that they will come, you're still seeing a visual clearly representing that e.g., GConc, detonate. With melee? Smack, smack, slice.

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An occasional stab to add to the mix, and then weak visuals (compared to other styles) it's harder for sure to make them stand out without having to specialise them to the weapon (melee already has by far the most animations because of weapon types).

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So really, it just goes back to it being the black sheep. I do think it's entirely solvable, but it would require several times the effort as it would for ranged, or magic.

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Hitsplat accurate animations plus new sound effects with more diverse animations would greatly help adding to the perceived power of it, and how it feels as a style.

true nimbus
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Smash ability has a screen shake effect I think. With ezk at least

vale palm
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these are soundeffects

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very soundeffect

fleet wharf
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I think in terms of objectively good sound effects for melee and visuals we have: EZK (pulverise), meteor, destroy, gbarge (simple but very effective), and quake.

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But slice, cleave and the ilk feel underwhelming compared to basics you see otherwise. Though I think a case could be made that ranged has some contenders too like needle strike's sound effect. It's also not just a case of 'it bad' it's a case of it being partly a child of its time and partly that it's been built upon since, and what was in the past was untweaked to match the modern day in the same way.

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Smash I would say is an odd one since it does match the sound effect, but the attack is arguably lackluster compared to other styles as a basic.

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I think globally hitsplats and some of the worse sound effects or weak visuals should be reworked to be distinct in their own right as minor updates intermittently, a bit like how magic's combust animation was randomly updated.

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Magic in general has done this extremely well, and has been adjusted in various patches like in its projectile heights and speeds, minor patches like this less as a content release and a minor ninja fix (rip ninja team) would more than likely be the most manageable approach to it.

rustic storm
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Just a soft thud for a heavy overhead 2h swing just dosent feel good.

prime panther
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Any chance we can get back to the combat 120 talk. This inverted cape thing isnt for me.

vale palm
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?

wise moon
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this is the combat styles thread

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the other thread is for this week's update

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the cm will always make a new thread for each week's update to collect feedback

rustic storm
civic tree
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I like spear sounds the most, they have a nice stabby sound with good impact. The animations are very repetitive though.

timid olive
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we need some slower attacks that can warrant a good whack effect

tender topaz
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Once I enter the beta, how do I return to the normal game?

timid olive
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fully close the client and open it normally

hardy mango
true nimbus
true nimbus
# true nimbus Set my range level to 1 and went to level at troll cave. first impressions Basic...

Finished leveling at troll caves. Now leveling at cows.
13-28 Snipe cd and Deadshot: I definitely started feeling like I was playing around Snipe more than anything else due to Piercing shot reducing it's cd. Knowing that I will always have the adrenaline for Snap spender, piercing became my constant first priority to reduce Snipe cd and actually gain adrenaline from doing damage instead of spending it

This obviously loops back to Deadshot, as players are gonna be wanting to focus more so on Snipe rather than spending on Snap as the looming Deadshot cd is always in focus. What this gets across quite well is that you are gonna want to focus on building more than spending but not necessarily on Deadshot.

As an endgame player, I keep having these thoughts that Snap is gonna get easier and easier to spend due to crit buffs while Snipe as your rotational foundation is going to get less and less important (with arrow design becoming the other foundation). I wonder if that's intentional.

28-33: Binding shot: This isn't important for leveling, as you are mostly trying to find enemies that you magic instead melee enemies that try to get close. Maybe it's a good spot for Binding when considering quest bosses?

Deadshot definitely feels underwhelming and uninteresting pre-zuk cape. If constantly going for Deadshot, you are only getting 1 snap shot in your rotation while waiting on snipe cd and piercing cd. With Zuk cape, you might get 3 Snaps and that makes all the management more interesting.

Other thoughts:
Struggled finding enemies with high hp and an arrow weakness. Ended up going to Banshees after cows.
Ability queing makes the auto attack way less annoying to missfire with. Always been a fan of ability queing personally

spark ermine
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would be nice if SNIPE was a sub-style for range to be explored. right now, i think, we have a high intensity gameplay for (pretty much) all styles - with consideration for hybrid switching - and it might be nice to explore one that is slightly lower intensity and requires some "precision"

true nimbus
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We talked about a precision type idea here but it got some dislikes on pvme. There was some miscommunication about it though

spark ermine
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haven't explored pvme chat. is it one of those chat that just downvotes anything that might even hint of changing the meta that they've accustomed and invested themselves so heavily into that any form of change that shifts the entire way they play is instantly rejected like a plague?

true nimbus
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Hmm, it depends on the tone of the post I suppose. That's the vibe I got so far

barren bane
true nimbus
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I favour having 2 different type of autos co-exist I suppose

barren bane
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I would love for pvme to work with jmods in finding some place for losing autos but gaining complexity elsewhere, but there's been near zero appetite for it.

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It's been really unfortunate imo

true nimbus
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Someone mentioned like having an attack that makes you wait a gcd to then fire 2 gcds in the same tick to preserve the skill ceiling of timing your 4TAA. I like this but probably still makes most sense to keep this as an alternative auto and then still keep the normal auto as your fall-back

civic tree
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Theyre very disingenuous about it too

timid olive
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I don't think it was PVME at the time, but at least a bunch of crossover people between groups that essentially did the same thing, but tons of update considerations like MSR, weapon diversity, FSOA, 4t, etc got brigaded to the point a bunch of rules about emojis and autoflagging were from that period

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"I think I'd prefer something else for magic besides 4t being its identity" (instantly several dozen wheelchair emoji reacts)

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there are plenty of valid arguments to be had on the topics but that's not what we're talking about

barren bane
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Remembering the fsoa beta

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And the legions of people who didn't even try anything, just logged in to downvote.

timid olive
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"it's valid feedback"

civic tree
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Even this, is valid feedback

timid olive
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technically something so bad that you don't need to try it could be valid feedback

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but that's what it was constantly like, just show up and try to shout it down

true nimbus
spring thistle
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How do I access the beta? I'm not seeing any option in the Jagex launcher or beta worlds to hop to etc.

timid olive
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go to the newspost on their site for links to click to open up the client directed at the beta stuff, for launcher or normal client

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be sure to close the jagex launcher entirely if using that before trying to switch to/from, since people had complained about that in the past acting weird

spring thistle
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Thanks! I'm in 😎

spring thistle
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This might be out of scope for the feedback wanted, so sorry if that's the case but there's a good amount of room for improvement I think.

Something is borked with the Auto-setup action hotbar option. I'm getting 2x Tuska's Wrath + 2 moves (where the melee ones are in the screenshot) copying over from whatever hotbar I swapped from (ie, those 2 become magic abilities if coming from that one).

I don't know how the auto setup works / if it's optimal based on all abilities I have unlocked, but if there are smarts here, I'd also love to be able to pick how it's optimised:

  • single- or multi-target
  • picking if to include adrenaline-consuming abilities / ultimates + the order of them (right now if snapshot is on the bar with no cooldown, death swiftness being after it means it will literally never be triggered)
  • I know there's a setting for not letting revo abilities consume adrenaline - but to include them where they are, binding shot + piercing shot are pushed out of my revo' section
  • option to omit abilities that are on secondary/tertiary/etc bars (see second screenshot has anticipate/freedom despite them being on the bottom bar here)
image.png image.png
timid olive
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previous bars/auto setup won't work properly because it's not actually fully changed

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they kept the "removed" abilities in the game, just made them inaccessible, and the UI doesn't like that

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so you should just put the new ranged stuff on a bar manually after clearing it

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you might not even need revo with how linear a lot of it is now. The autoattack necro-style does okay damage, and most of your big abilities spend your adrenaline too much to be worth auto-firing, along with some of the basics not being "use whenever they're available" anymore

spring thistle
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Alright, that makes snese for the non-ranged abilities coming through - feedback still stands for the rest tho' ^^

barren bane
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We should probably delete that

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Remembering former Mod Pi saying we made it bad on purpose to encourage players to make their own bar

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I guess auto setup might work going from the beta onwards if you limited it to the 3 basic abilities?

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That would likely put it in a better position than it would be in live game

hybrid moon
barren bane
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Yeah, I never tested that cause it's not worth using at any point.

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One of those, significantly detrimental game experiences.

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Even in live.

spring thistle
barren bane
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Yeah everyone else got mad about that at the time as well.

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Cause it's like, I get encouraging players to make your own, but that's never gonna happen if you give players a bad action bar.

hybrid moon
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Still hoping Sunshine boosts burns once they release the magic beta. I would also like to see some sources of secondary crit payoff beyond just tsunami (not very useful until EoF spam) and FSOA (a very late game upgrade). Eclipsed Soul is just too weak compared to SS, maybe change it to instant HP on every crit or allowing the regen to stack if you crit multiple times. Currently the “flat regen if you’ve crit recently” is heavily limiting your healing capabilities compared to the theoretically infinite scaling healing of SS.

true nimbus
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I think they need to make bleeds into like a full substyle or just decide to do with them when it comes to melee before they make any early game changes since bleeds usually have nice synergy outside ults but it's not intuitive at all

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Range beta just deleted bleeds, so technically that clarifies some parts of it

barren bane
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I'm 50:50 on that, I'm not sure that magic needs bleed buffs

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It more needs players to engage with what exists or needs ways to enhance engagement opportunities.
Like stacking gsonic is very strong with soulfire right, but no one uses it because the opportunities aren't there

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I'm also not sure we can even have a bleed buff conversation while people are able to overwrite my bleed damage with a lower dmg worse bleed

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Player A uses a bleed that does 14k dmg per tick due to item/ability buffs
Player B uses the same bleed that does 7k dmg per tick, overwriting player A's bleed.
Literally the worst mechanic in the game.

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It should work like that in pvp

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Because PvP would be pretty non functional if you could pile people with bleeds

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But pvm? It's just frustrating

uneven lintel
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just want to throw this one out there since this is for combat changes
a passive healing source like necro ghost might be a good deal.
food can be used ofc, but the feeling of safety that comes from a passive source of healing instead of prayer flicking soul split or spamming jellyfish/saradomin brew is what dos it for me with necro.
If I go to seiryu with 50% or lower hp with necro, I think "I'll heal from him, I don't need to resupply". With ranged, its more like, "I don't want to go with less than 100%hp, even if I can heal midfight with soul split and food".
This goes downhill with melee, with "I'll probably insta die", but we are here for ranged.
It just goes from chill with necro, to I'll gonna die quickly if i don't focus.

This is coming from a casual player, who wants to chill while playing, not try to get max damage and lowest time score, but try to bank and resupply as low as possible,

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also for bleeds for ranged and magic, I avoid them like the plague, since not all damage increases work on them, like death swiftness and corruption shot.

this is not because the bleeds are bad, even though I think they need to be buffed since the damage is not instant(not necessarily with damage, can be done via new abilities that affect them, hence, substyle), but more because of the idea itself that not all my buffs will work with this particular ability for some reason.

timid olive
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"It just goes from chill with necro, to I'll gonna die quickly if i don't focus."
If you're doing appropriately leveled content, especially a boss, and there's no agency because you'll just passively heal so much you don't need to focus, that's a problem with necro, not ranged

hybrid moon
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Maybe with Havenhythe we could get like “vampire fang arrows” or something, although that won’t really help early game sustain.
On the side of magic, blood spells need to heal you from abilities in order to be viable. Currently Blood Barrage will heal you 5% of damage dealt from autoattacks, which trigger on 20% of your ability casts. Since autos deal less damage than any single ability, using Blood Barrage is healing you for less than 1% of your damage output which is pitiful.

timid olive
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in beta the AA is better and heals you for 5% along with AOE damage

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and you can combo it with animate dead in magic's case so you get so much durability that the heals are worth a lot

hybrid moon
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It’s been said a thousand times but the gripping system needs to be updated. In addition to being unintuitive to use, some of the information is just bad. For example it recommends a group of five players for Kalphite Queen of all things.

arctic shale
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Have we gotten any further info on this from mods since it dropped? Would think there would be some sort of response to feedback or future plans after almost a month

vale palm
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latter half of january.

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like everything else, things kick off on and after jan 19th

prime panther
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Not soon enough, but what can we do but wait

barren bane
prime panther
civic tree
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i hope in the next beta update they delete death's swiftness

true nimbus
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I would have agreed before but Monado brought up some good points that swiftness makes rotation priority a bit more varied due to it's cooldown. Also if straight up deleting it, range would probably have toooo much adren, just gaining like 100+. I'm not too sure on it at the moment

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It's probably reasonable to lower it's adrenalien cost though

terse vale
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(Since I have a lot to say, I've also collected my feedback in a Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQGQNicDBc0kZw5Svsw0F9kbQXG8WOf84u_v3CM5XYqxy-cjhR6kgWAjeEOYT7amK_PDC8niHAT6u2G/pub But that doesn't integrate with Discord's message reply and search functionality, so - mods permitting - I will post it here directly.)

I want to talk about the potential in and problems with this beta version of Ranged in a way that will hopefully be helpful for the other styles as well. To that end, I will present observations about Ranged followed by suggestions for the design process to prevent these problems, not just for Ranged itself. I will then present an example Ranged ability set that makes use of these ideas, including requested suggestions for Incendiary Shot and Corruption Shot.

Observation 1: Poor Fit to Fight Requirements

Suppose that a new player is interested in bossing and is using Ranged as their combat style, so they go to fight the Giant Mole in F2P as the only early taste of boss fights with actual mechanics. (Just because experienced PvMers have long outgrown the Giant Mole, that doesn't keep it from being the face of bossing to brand new players.) Let's say that they're enthusiastic about and well-practiced in bossing from other games, so they're trying this at level 40 in Ranged, Constitution, and Defence, along with level 43 Prayer for Protect from Melee, and they have tier 40 F2P gear.

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(Base 40 stats may sound too low, but it's entirely adequate in raw stats for a skilled player - Melee is perfectly capable of doing this with level 40 Attack and Strength, Magic is perfectly capable of doing this with level 40 Magic. I'm forced to use Revo for my basics due to current modifier key handling interacting poorly with a disability, and I can still do it with those stats, it's just going to be very slow and actually challenging. In Catalyst League I could do it before picking a style relic pretty comfortably, simply because the innate 20% hit chance buff provided so much extra DPS at those levels.)

Quite frankly, even with the currently live version of Ranged they're going to have a terrible time with this.

  • They have no AOE at all for the mini-moles (Ricochet is level 45 and won't even hit all the adds, chinchompas are members only and start at level 45, Bombardment is level 55 and its cooldown is far too long, Incendiary Shot is level 66 and its cooldown is even longer, Corruption Shot is members only and level 70).
  • They don't have enough stuns to break the berserk state, especially when the timing becomes erratic in the final phase - Tight Bindings is a threshold, which they may not have the adrenaline for, and they sometimes need to use Binding Shot to roll their GCD.
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In the beta version, they're going to have a similarly terrible time with this for slightly different reasons.

  • Since Ricochet is no longer an AOE, they have to wait until level 55 to have any AOE capability for the mini-moles, at which point they're already starting to outgrow the Giant Mole as a matter of raw stats. While Bombardment no longer has a cooldown, having to spend 5 basics' worth of adrenaline on it means that on average it can't be used more often than every 6 GCDs without adrenaline potions or self-buffs, and that's while forsaking Snipe's damage in order to build adrenaline.
  • And while they can now hold Binding Shot for stunning purposes, they've lost Tight Bindings entirely, so they can no longer back-to-back stun regardless of their adrenaline.

In both versions, every mechanic that asks them to attack in a specific way is one they can't do properly, not because of any weakness as a player but because the style has not given them the tools to engage with the boss. At best, they will have a terrible time and learn nothing; at worst, they will either quit the game or learn to ignore the mechanical cues that might teach them concepts later on, actively hampering their later learning. This is unequivocally a design failure.

Moreover, this is a pervasive design failure, with the Giant Mole merely being a low-level case. As a high-level example, the inability to back-to-back stun is even worse at the Sanctum of Rebirth, where both Kezalam and Nakatra present pairs of scarabs that must be stunned and the effective damage taken for failure is much higher. Players shouldn't be told "if you don't have the DPS to skip this mechanic on this style, don't bring the style to the boss at all" or "if you don't have the DPS to skip this mechanic on this style, you can't do the boss's perfect kill Combat Mastery Achievement on this style" by the game!

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So how can we avoid these design failures?

Style design and fight design are hand in glove, so the styles and the fights must be designed to fit together.

Since we already have a large library of fights that should remain fun, and we'd rather not change them without a strong reason to, start by writing out what each fight currently expects of the player and where it fits in the player's progression. For example, the entry on the Giant Mole NM would look roughly like this:

Giant Mole (Normal Mode)
F2P Boss
Player Skill Progression: Very Early - Early
Character Progression: Very Early - Early
Level Range:
    Level 40 any style + Constitution + Defence, Level 43 Prayer, no Agility: difficult but doable (Moderate player skill required, hit chance will be quite low)
    Level 50 any style + Constitution + Defence, Level 43 Prayer, no Agility: comfortably doable once learned, expected entry point for a player with no bossing experience from other games
    Level 60 any style + Constitution + Defence, Level 43 Prayer, no Agility: easy
    Level 70+ any style + Constitution + Defence, Level 43 Prayer, no Agility: pushover

DPM Checks: None

Expectations:
- AOE groups of 4 adds that appear at [time] intervals
- Move 1 tile out of ground danger zones
- Break and/or pre-empt stuns and binds given a pop-up message [number] ticks in advance
- Stun the boss given a pop-up message at the start of the [number]-tick window, earlier in the window is better
- After doing all of these individually, combine them when they are presented randomly (allowing for back-to-back repeats) at [time] intervals
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For a boss as simple and teaching-oriented as the Giant Mole, the "Expectations" section looks a lot like a description of how to do the mechanics. It is instead what the player needs / is intended to be already capable of in order to learn the mechanics, which diverges quite dramatically for more difficult bosses. For example, the entry for high enrage Zamorak would say nothing about Edict order, and would instead include things like "stun the boss exactly on a specific tick with no advance warning, preemptively identifying the correct tick by knowing the attack rotation".

You would have to define some sort of standard for the categories of player skill progression and character progression, but then you could write this out for every boss and every Slayer mob that has mechanics. Put those entries all in progression order and you have a document of what the game currently expects the player to be capable of as they progress their character's combat tools and their own skills. (Which may or may not point out weird spots that suggest new teaching bosses or changes to existing bosses, but that's outside the scope of this beta.)

Of course, those entries will have plenty of overlap within them; lots of bosses ask the player to dodge, stun, AOE, prayer switch, ... with progressively more control. So the next step is to compress the document from a list of boss / Slayer entries into a new design document that just focuses on what expectations of the player are added in at each point in progression. This document would split the expectations into the character's skills and the player's skills. For example, "stun twice back-to-back with at most [time] cooldown" is a character skill and "use two stuns back-to-back, one on each of two adds, within [time] of the adds appearing" is a player skill. The former is about what the toolkit allows and the latter is about what the player does with it.

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What the character side of this document does is serve as a reference for designing each style's ability (and gear) toolkit, so that you can make even major changes like pruning and reworking abilities while ensuring that every style can acceptably tackle every boss it's not explicitly locked out of. (Naturally, style-locked bosses like Hermod and Rasial would only impose requirements on their locked style.) Each boss will almost certainly still have some preferred styles - or in other words, "there will always be a meta" - but using an off-meta style shouldn't be a frustrating experience or doomed attempt.

This isn't just for Ranged; for example, in my opinion even Necromancy's stuns are provided too late for a player who is raring to tackle bosses and wants to have a go at the Giant Mole as soon as their raw stats allow.

(The player side of this document mostly makes suggestions about boss design, replayable tutorials, and similar things outside the scope of this beta. However, it's useful to look at in style design in case you get ideas on how the style design might encourage player skills.)

(Naturally, this document would be kept updated as you design new enemies.)

This allows you to have a complementary design document for each style, starting with what makes the style's gameplay distinct and describing how that style provides the necessary character tools while implementing its style identity in gameplay. Constitution, Defence, Prayer, Summoning, Herblore (bombs and powerbursts), Agility (movement abilities), and even utility Magic and Necromancy of course provide part of the character's toolkit that is shared across all styles - along with ability modifiers from even more skills like Invention, Archaeology, and Farming - but making everything relevant to fight mechanics shared would heavily dilute style identity. (Not having style-specific AOE would be clearly excessive, for example.)

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By restricting this document to discussing only the style's gameplay, it flags when a style doesn't play differently enough from the others - the document becomes visibly too small and insubstantial, or at the very least lacks sufficient content regarding style identity. Moreover, it creates a step in the design process that actively prioritizes differentiating how the styles play, which counterbalances the consideration of fight requirements encouraging making the styles similar in the process of including the needed tools. If both documents are used well, the styles should wind up only being similar where they need to be, and otherwise having ample differentiation that creates the gameplay aspects of each style's identity while tying into non-gameplay aspects.

But then, what is each style's identity?

Observation 2: Unclear Style Identity

In particular for Ranged, multi-hit is not a style identity.

Multi-hit sure sounds like it's Ranged's style identity. Ammo effects, Split Soul, and the BoLG passive all openly interact with multi-hit in the live game, and the beta adds Splinter Shots to try to emphasize that. (Plus there's hit caps affecting each hit individually, but that's more a technical limitation.)

But think about how a new player would actually learn to use and think about Splinter Shots in its current form. Splinter Shots is up all the time by design and provides a flat reward of damage for each hit they inflict. So rather than thinking about each ability as inflicting the tooltip damage and then mentally doing the math of how many hits it adds and how much damage Splinter Shots will therefore add, it's easier and faster for the player to simply memorize the ability as inflicting the combined total of the fixed tooltip damage + the fixed Splinter Shots damage, removing all the tracking and impact of how many hits the ability deals. This is why Splinter Shots is boring in the beta: it doesn't add anything to keep track of.

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Likewise enchanted bolt ammo effects; the player need only keep in mind the effective proc chance provided by each ability, not how many hits it deals. Even Split Soul is easiest and fastest to think of similarly, keeping in mind only the base damage and the added damage pre-calculated with the falloff of Soul Split. (And hit caps can be thought of the same way as Split Soul, pre-calculating the lost damage on each hit with and without buffs.)

The only things in current Ranged that don't collapse like that are the BoLG passive and most high-tier arrow effects (not Jas and Ful), because they reward counting stacks to make best use of them. This encourages the player to continue thinking about the number of hits inflicted, because the reward for those hits is not fixed. So the current core of Ranged's identity isn't multi-hit, it's hit counting.

The beta version doesn't change that, because it doesn't add anything that teaches or encourages hit counting; in particular, Splinter Shots and Incendiary Shot aren't about hit counting. (I will suggest versions that are about hit counting, but after going through some more design process suggestions so you can see how those changes fit into that process.)

And hit counting doesn't appear in either version of Ranged until tier 90+; EGWD arrows (and black stone arrows) are cost-prohibitive without at least a tier 90 weapon to fire them through and the BoLG is obviously a tier 95 weapon. This causes two major issues.

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First, it fails to funnel players towards styles that suit them early on, before they make any major investments of time or GP into a style. A player who hates and/or struggles with hit counting might easily not realize that Ranged isn't for them, because they think Ranged's style identity is multi-hit and they succeed at compressing the effects of added hits into the fixed rewards... until they get a BoLG and they can't effectively use the super-powerful legendary weapon they just invested in. At which point they will most likely think they're bad at combat and seriously consider quitting bossing if not the whole game, because it's counterintuitive that the displayed style identity isn't the actual style identity.

Such a player shouldn't be playing Ranged beyond levelling it and perhaps fighting some Slayer mobs where it excels - they should choose a different style or a noncombat activity as a focus for investment - but they need to be shown that much earlier on. In contrast, a player who really loves hit counting as a reason to precisely map out rotations should be investing in learning and gearing Ranged, and to get them into the style they also need to see that in Ranged early on.

Second, a style's identity only manifesting late in a character's progression creates a poor learning progression for the player. In the case of Ranged, the player doesn't find out that the number of hits a Ranged ability or spec inflicts is truly a fundamental part of the tool until well after they have almost all of the abilities and ability upgrades, forcing them to essentially relearn the toolkit they already have all at once. Meanwhile, the earlier levels where they gain those abilities aren't being leveraged to practice hit counting, which takes a considerable amount of practice to do well in real time.

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So how can we avoid these issues, not just for this iteration of Ranged but in general? How can we decide or discover what a style's identity is in the first place?

To do this, we start by examining what a player might look for as an identity in any style. This includes preferences about gameplay, both moment-to-moment and in how to best optimize its use, and it also includes aesthetics, fantasy archetypes, lore... anything other than the style's tools to tackle mechanics, damage output, and difficulty curve corresponding to that damage output. (The excluded factors are part of balancing the styles, and therefore subject to change accordingly.) Think about lots of different player groups and consider what they might look for accordingly. The first result of this should be a huge brainstormed list of possible style identities that describes what each one entails.

But possible style identities are not just a list. They form natural clusters.

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Some possibilities fit together well, which suggests putting them on the same style. For example, I agree with giving Ranged the "sniper" sub-theme: abilities and weapon specs that have a substantial buildup (cooldowns, channels, adrenaline cost) for a small number of very large hits - ideally just one very large hit, but hitcaps become prohibitive later in progression. The reason that I agree with this is that such tools are fun and impactful to buff by lining them up with specific hit counts, so they synergize well with hit counting as the core of the current Ranged identity. (While cultural associations can be part of a cluster, in this case it's not about the pop culture; the long buildups and large single hits could equally be justified by ideas of spell casting times and spectacular magical effects. Magic doesn't work that way on Gielinor, both the combat style and the broader practice in lore, but that's a result of development choices you made, not an automatic fact.) A contrasting synergistic sub-theme I would give Ranged is leaning into tools that produce many small hits (e.g. Greater Ricochet, Rapid Fire), since those are useful to quickly reach a desired hit count. Together, these contrasting sub-themes give players the tools to "pass" undesirable hit counts / rapidly build stacks with weaker hits while using the desirable hit counts to buff strong abilities.

(Notice that the same multi-hit theme that can't stand on its own does work in the context of the hit counting identity giving the player a reason to care about it. Some possibilities only work as sub-identities or with other specific supports.)

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Other possibilities counteract each other or are mutually exclusive, which suggests placing them on different styles. For example, some players like improvising their rotation on the fly based on lots of RNG procs, while other players like not having any RNG procs so that they can map their rotation out exactly in a spreadsheet and then have that be the best sequence of inputs every time (barring RNG from the boss); both desires are valid but they obviously cannot both be fulfilled by the same loadout. Moreover, the sorts of rotation considerations that lend themselves well to rapid improvisation are different from the sorts of rotation considerations that lend themselves well to deterministic spreadsheets, so it makes the most sense to nurture these two different forms of optimization on different styles entirely. In this example, I would give the proc-based optimization to Magic with crits as a subset of procs, leaning into many of its recent additions such as its legendary weapons, Smoke Cloud, Temporal Anomaly, and Tumeken's set effect. Deterministic optimization I would place on Ranged, either arrows or the whole style, since hit counting and the systems that can be built on it are well suited to precise far-future planning. (Yes, this means reworking deathspore arrows to not be crit-based.)

As these examples demonstrate, some possible style identities fit best on certain styles due to fitting with existing parts of a style and/or cultural associations with that form of combat. It's important to be aware of this, since changing things up without a strong reason is counterproductive. (Obviously there are strong reasons to change the traditional combat styles in some way, since they have serious problems, but it's still important to acknowledge the costs of those changes and consider whether a potential change is worth it.)

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Players invest time into their abilities, both to learn how to use them and dramatically more so for abilities they've unlocked or acquired cosmetics for. The same goes for gear that affects a style's toolkit, since gear also has to be acquired. Moreover, their enjoyment of these tools is part of what motivates their investment into a style, and depending on the player even their investment into the whole game. When you rework such tools, at best those players are going to be temporarily frustrated by relearning the tool, and at worst they consider the new version unfun and/or useless and therefore their entire investment wasted. When you remove such tools, you guarantee that worst case scenario. (Just look at the other feedback you received on this beta!) Thus, reworking unlocked abilities and gear is preferable to removing them entirely. Even auras are like this; making them all earnable in-game and removing their timers would be much better than removing the auras entirely, both for existing players who have unlocked them, and for new players who are nowhere near level 120 in any combat style and would be demotivated by grinding to level 120 to have full hit chance.

And trying to fight against strong player expectations from outside the game is a thoroughly doomed battle. Questions like "do spells require a lot of standing still in this setting?" can go either way, but you'd never show a new player the names and aesthetics of all the styles and then try to convince them that Necromancy didn't involve pet systems.

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So identifying these natural clusters of possible style identities smoothly leads into assigning these clusters to styles. While doing this, also pay attention to what players might be looking for in a style that you don't plan to put there, or even don't plan to put anywhere in the game, so that you can make it clear to players early on that they shouldn't invest in a style / the combat system trying to get it. For example, if a new player likes planning around standing still to cast / channel, whether they should go for Magic or Ranged depends on how you rework the styles. But you need to tell them that Melee channels allow moving around within melee range, otherwise they might read all the tooltips and think that they should be going for Melee instead. (If they're trying to recreate something really heavy on standing still from another game, like FFXIV's pre-Dawntrail Black Mage, the tooltips and the early combat experience will at least make it clear that RuneScape doesn't work like that.) As another example, if someone is looking for a WoW-style group healer that does negligible damage, they need to be shown that Lunar Magic is not a healing spec (except as a joke) so that they figure out that this is just not a Holy Trinity video game.

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Thus, the result of this process is a design document for all styles that describes the possible style identities, assigns possible identity clusters to styles - including no style at all - and notes assignments that players might not expect in order to be extra clear about them. Being clear about what each style doesn't provide is part of funneling players away from styles that aren't well suited to them. (If you want inspiration for what sufficiently describing a possible style identity looks like, some of that has been done on the player side for FFXIV and has even been copied onto the Wayback Machine: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/493924-The-Threefold-Problem-of-Magical-Ranged-Balance-Bonus-The-Soul-of-the-Summoner . It was done because Square Enix bungled the job horribly, so there's some arguing for proper design mixed in, but that's their problem.) These cluster assignments then provide the starting point for the gameplay identity documents I described in the previous section.

(You can view this design document as a counterpart to the fight requirements document; both cover all the styles, but this one forces differences while the fight requirements document forces similarities.)

This also allows each style to have a design document that is exclusively about what that style's identities are, both gameplay and otherwise, and how those identities are communicated to players to funnel each player towards styles that suit them and away from the rest. For non-gameplay aspects of style identity, such as lore and aesthetic, the implementation and communication to players are often much the same thing, so long as these aspects are kept consistent throughout progressing the style. This document can then be a jumping-off point for concept art, animations, ...

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By restricting this document to discussing only how the style's identities are communicated, it flags when the game is insufficiently clear about the style to funnel players in or out appropriately - this document becomes visibly too small and insubstantial. There will be some overlap with the gameplay-only document, because how gameplay identity manifests will appear in both, but that's okay.

(You can view both sets of style-specific documents I have proposed as intermediaries between the identity clusters document and the fight requirements document, pushing each style's assigned identities to manifest both in gameplay and in the game's communication to players. Thus all 4 sets of design documents form a linked structure.)

As a non-gameplay example, how NPCs and quests talk about each style both shapes that style's lore identity (e.g. Ancient Magic) and can serve as part of the funnel that guides players. You could have War compare the styles in his own opinion, you have style guilds that could relay each style's origin and history while demonstrating its midgame aesthetics, you could have combat tutors, ...

Some things, like ability and spell names, icons, and descriptions, communicate both gameplay and flavour aspects of the style's identity. With these you want to be especially careful that they are accurate in all regards, like asking why Piercing Shot shows only one arrow and has a name that sounds like it hits once but hard enough to pierce through the target, yet it hits twice. Writing out how each style's identities are communicated helps with noticing issues like this.

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Observation 3: Low Skill Floor and High Skill Ceiling Can and Must Coexist

Part of the goal of style identity is to make sure that each style is loved by some players - is fun for the hundreds of hours necessary to pay off the time and money investment in learning a subscription MMO, and the thousands of hours necessary to tackle aspirational content or even become a pillar of the community. And starting from considering different possible identities before assigning them to styles helps provide diverse options for various player groups. (There's a whole concept of the "playerbase ecosystem" I could go on about, but I think you understand it so I won't make that detour here.) But to make a style deep and flavourful enough to love, you have to be prepared for other players to hate it.

Some other players will hate it no matter how good your aesthetic design and lore integration are, for gameplay reasons: they strongly prefer a conflicting optimization style, they hate working with the concepts that form the style's gameplay identity, and/or they're bad at either or both and hate feeling inept. Trying to make the same style be everything to everyone will only result in it becoming nothing to no one.

And the players who hate a style still have to level it, first for quest requirements and then for the combat benefits of the Max Cape. Therefore, making Full Manual easier to learn does not allow for making Revolution ineffective, since there are still essential use cases for Revo. In addition to levelling combat styles, we have the entire Slayer skill, and plenty of disabled players who have made their home here in part because so many other games don't have anything other than Full Manual.

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(Of course, a player using Full Manual should be able to beat Revo with an elementary understanding of their toolkit and some practice, even before adding in weapon specs since Revo can't use them. But Revo should still be passable for the players who can't or won't use Full Manual, since the only other option is pushing those players away from the game.)

Because of this, I disagree with the beta removing the cooldowns from most adrenaline spender abilities. (Removing the "threshold" 50% requirement is beneficial to make the concept of a burst phase more intuitive.) Keeping the cooldowns on most adrenaline spender abilities not only allows Revo to use them passably, it provides depth to Full Manual play by encouraging the player to juggle the cooldowns to most effectively use their adrenaline. I would take the cooldowns off only 1-2 adrenaline spenders, perhaps one single-target and one AOE, to have them serve as adrenaline dumps and the simplest spenders that introduce new players to spending adrenaline at all.

(Why does Necromancy get away without cooldowns on its non-ultimate spender abilities? Partly because of rituals being an alternate training method, and partly because in the live game, both players who need Revo to work passably and players who want high complexity turn to other styles instead.)

But can a combat style be both simple enough for casual play to work for players who don't really care about it, and complex enough for hardcore play to support the players whose enjoyment requires deep systems that have thousands of hours of nuances? Can there be a smooth learning curve and DPS curve between those two points, to support every player skill level?

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Yes, the same combat style can work for every player skill level. FFXIV proved it by pulling it off, and they don't have weapon specs or expensive ability unlocks so they had to give the most casual player and the world-class player the exact same toolkit when they did it. (Technically they used to have slightly time-expensive combat ability unlocks through the cross-class system, but they did away with that before their best design era.)

Allow me to present their exemplar of designing for every player skill level simultaneously, a very nearly perfect learning curve on a very nearly perfect job: Shadowbringers Summoner. (While some players at the time did think of the job as hard to learn, that was an issue of guides not stating their prerequisites, a demanding reputation carried over from earlier versions, and the game providing a way to level the job without playing it; players who levelled the job by playing it had essentially no trouble.) (For context, that game only asks players to level one combat job of the player's choice, so it doesn't have Revolution.) Here is the entire instruction set a casual player needed to perform acceptably in all casual content:

Press every cooldown and spender as soon as you see it available.  Keep your DOTs up.

What pet to use:
- 1-2 targets: use Ifrit
- 3+ targets: use Garuda
- you're taking too much damage: use Titan

That's not literally setting up a Revo bar and picking a familiar, but it's pretty close.

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Yet the same job also inspired one of the very best players to produce a guide purely dedicated to damage optimization in the hardest fight in the game at the time - aimed solely at players who already knew the fight and the job well enough to complete the fight on that job, therefore already had the flex title and probably the flex weapon cosmetic that are the only rewards of the fight, and were just going back in for fun: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yFVDCxkjD4v2mPT6C9UPsPWc_4a4N3H6HeogF1S4M60/ That right there is the equivalent of providing unlocked enrage at all enrage bosses and having some of the best PvMers go "there's absolutely no in-game purpose to doing 60k Zamorak more than once, but enough people are doing it anyway to have a community going and there's still lots of skill expression to be had there beyond getting the kill, so let's write a damage optimization guide just for 60k Zamorak".

Remember, every tool that world-class player was using was also at the most casual player's fingertips, and the sheer complexity of optimizing the job didn't prevent the casual players from enjoying it in their own ways at all.

(The casual players' enjoyment also didn't prevent the existence of fights and rewards that were just for midcore or even hardcore combat players. A player trying to do a Serious Raid using the casual instruction set would be failed outright by the raid boss for not doing enough DPS, if they didn't first give up on learning the mechanics or get thrown out of the party by other players for unreadiness to learn mechanics and/or do damage.)

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To be clear, I would not recommend copying Shadowbringers Summoner wholesale into RuneScape. FFXIV and RuneScape are very different games in several combat-relevant ways, so copying any FFXIV job directly would result in game-breaking mismatches. Plus Shadowbringers Summoner had a "raid buff" that increased other players' characters' damage output only part of the time, and (as FFXIV has been discovering) down that road lies madness.

What I do recommend is learning from how FFXIV supported such a wide player skill range and applying those lessons in a uniquely RuneScape way. (Which in my mind would result in Ranged specifically picking up the "deterministic system-juggler" part of Shadowbringers Summoner's identities and vibes, since hit counting already takes Ranged part-way there and having systems with tension between them makes finding the perfect plan difficult. If you want to lean into the "strategist" aesthetic / power fantasy too, go for it.) So what stands out as lessons from that game's best designs?

Those designs included lots of tools and subsystems that:

  • were easy and intuitive to get some net benefit out of, encouraging casual players to use them at all rather than ignoring them;
  • were very difficult to get the maximum net benefit out of, often by having (explicit or implicit) interactions and tradeoffs, giving the top players complex optimization puzzles; and
  • incrementally rewarded small player skill improvements, even short-term ones, encouraging players to climb the ladder.

And that is how I propose rebuilding each style's abilities.

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Example Ranged Ability Set

Let's roll with the hit counting identity cluster, and start with what I would put at the top of the Ranged gameplay identity design document for that cluster.

RNG procs: none, totally deterministic

Core Identity: Hit Counting - effects that occur on specific multiples of hitsplats, often scaled to the size of the hit that falls on that multiple.
    Sub-Identity: Sniper - abilities and weapon specs that have a substantial buildup (cooldowns, channels, adrenaline cost) for a small number of very large hits (ideally one unless hitcaps get in the way), providing strong options for the hits buffed by hit-counting effects.
    Sub-Identity: Many-Hit / "death by a thousand cuts" - abilities and weapon specs that produce large numbers of small hitsplats, best used to "pass" undesirable hit counts / rapidly build stacks with weaker hits. 

Core Design Goal: Tension between different possible objectives suggested by hit counting effects.  Varied hit counting effects should take multiples of different numbers, often coprime numbers, so that they cycle around relative to each other and the player must choose which buffs to use their biggest hits on.  In addition, the player must choose between immediate damage and quickly building up stacks.
    Subgoal: All 0-hit abilities have significant opportunity costs, such as being a full defensive, so that there is no low-cost way to hold a desirable hit count for an ability that is not yet available.
    Subgoal: All ways to advance some hit counting effects but not others are transparent about that fact, and the methods are inherently limited; for example, switching ammo can hold the ammo effect stacks but not anything else, at the cost of applying different ammo to those abilities.

Given that, the abilities (no handedness restrictions on this set):

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Level 1: Auto-Attack

(Please give this some flavour rather than just naming it "Ranged".)

Deals 3 very weak hits, resulting in low but serviceable total damage. Its primary purpose is to serve as the first many-hit option, especially compared to the other basic abilities.

As an ability, this can refresh the timer on stack buffs / debuffs despite also being considered the auto-attack.

Level 3: Snipe

Base cooldown reduced to 19.8 seconds (11 GCDs), otherwise as presented in the beta. The 1-minute cooldown is too long in the beta, creating a very samey basic ability loop. Reducing the base cooldown dramatically breaks up the flow more often.

Serves as the first sniper ability, both in name and in effect.

Level 5: Piercing Shot

(Please reflavour this to fit its double-hit nature; maybe use some of the flavour from Needle Strike.)

Reduces the cooldown of Snipe by 3.6 seconds (2 GCDs), otherwise as presented in the beta with its 5.4 second (3 GCD) cooldown. This allows for a 17-hit "short cycle" of Piercing Shot, auto, auto, Piercing Shot, auto, auto, Snipe.

Now that the rotation has some short-term structure to keep it from immediately getting boring, there can be larger level gaps between unlocks.

Level 10: Snap Shot

As presented in the beta, serving as the style's single-target adrenaline dump. Using this disrupts the earlier cycling even if the player replaces an auto-attack, since it doesn't have the same number of hits. (If hitcaps weren't in the way, this could do one very big hit to make it more clearly the adrenaline-cost counterpart to Snipe.)

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Level 15: Splinter Shots

(Perhaps rename this. Definitely put it in F2P.)

Still a self-buff that provides the first strong clue to the style's identity, but otherwise completely unlike the beta version.

  • Either a levelling benefit or a long self-buff with no adrenaline cost and a cooldown matching its duration, so that Revo can keep it up perfectly without overusing it. (If you want to keep the total ability count down, make it a levelling benefit and make sure the details are stated in the interface.)
  • While active, every third hitsplat heals the player character for a small flat percentage of maximum LP, plus an additional small percentage of maximum LP that scales with the average ability damage of the triggering hit. (Note that this is not affected by the character's weapon, whether the triggering hit crits, or the damage variance of the triggering ability; the healing is completely predictable should the player choose to map it out.) Arguably LP boosts should affect the maximum LP used in this calculation, since increased self-healing is a pretty logical effect of tank gear and this is already how Enhanced Excalibur works.
  • Buffs to the ability (e.g. Death's Swiftness) boost the healing, while buffs to the stats going into the base damage calculation (e.g. overloads) don't. (And this should be explicitly stated in-game, which may require some new terminology for clarity.) It rewards the player's rotation, not their gear and consumables, thus especially benefitting players who are trying to play well without having expensive gear and consumables.
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Why a healing buff? Because healing is readily appreciated by beginners while revealing hidden depths by interaction with later tools - even if the maximum possible healing amount is less than the Necromancy ghost while being much harder to reach.

  • For a beginner, having some healing baked into the style is comforting and makes them feel less fragile. (They don't need a lot of healing, since they aren't tackling fights that deal a lot of damage yet.) Notably, they will likely see immediately that they can always get a small heal by using their auto-attack, but they get a bigger heal if they can line up that third hit with something hard-hitting.
  • For an intermediate player, it makes them less reliant on Soul Split and less frustrated by not being able to leverage Soul Split as well as the top players. This encourages them to attempt more difficult bosses. It also provides a ready hook for interacting with a new / reworked familiar that provides the old blood reaver poison build functionality.
  • For an advanced player, they can incorporate it into their plan for exactly how much healing and what defensives they need in a given boss fight and where, including staying at low LP to leverage the Berserker's Fury relic if they choose to. For Ranged specifically, they've also given up a lot of their other healing capability to use Split Soul, and despite that they probably will prioritize other hit count effects over the healing because they're very good at using their defensives.

For this reason, I would suggest that Melee and Magic also get their own healing self-buffs very early on that show their style identities. I've placed this at level 15 specifically to be symmetrical with Death's Swiftness at level 85, but in general I would put it no later than level 20.

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Level 20: Bombardment (stage 1)

Adrenaline cost reduced back to 15% (and damage output lowered accordingly), otherwise as presented in the beta. This change enables it to serve not only as the style's AOE adrenaline dump, but as the style's only AOE (without chinchompas) for some time, which requires versatility to clear out fragile enemies that spawn frequently while still being useful for Slayer.

Counts as inflicting one hit for player-character-side hit counting effects like Splinter Shots and BoLG stacks, regardless of the number of enemies hit. For enemy-side hit counting effects like Bik arrow stacks, counts as inflicting one hit to each enemy hit.

Level 25: Binding Shot

No longer has a strict cooldown; instead gains a charge every 12 seconds and stores up to 3 charges. (The exact charging time can be tuned to make sure that no other stuns are necessary to tackle any fight.) Does less damage than the auto-attack, effectively sacrificing some damage and two hitsplats for the stun and bind effects - and casual players can tell that the latter is a sacrifice because it's presented after Splinter Shots showing that hitsplats are useful to the style. Intermediate players may burn charges to manipulate their hit count, but they have to consider when they will need the stun function of the ability.

(Notice that at this point, the style already has all the tools needed to tackle the Giant Mole, giving the player time to practice with the tools before they have the raw stats for the boss.)

Scare Tactics codex reworked to provide a version of this ability with knockback added in the Constitution ability book, sharing the cooldown with this and the Magic counterpart.

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Level 30: Rapid Fire

As in the live game, except reduce its adrenaline cost to 10% and remove the "threshold" 50% adrenaline required to activate it. (The damage per hit may need to be bumped up slightly.) In this version, it serves as a moderate damage adrenaline spender that Revo can somewhat effectively use, since the same rate of hitsplats is available from the auto-attack and the cooldown prevents Revo from spamming it.

Level 35: Dazing Shot

Revised to serve as a consistent "mini-defensive", thus prompting the player to anticipate boss mechanics beyond the Anticipation ability almost exclusively being used for stun prevention. (The rotation structure provided by Greater Dazing Shot is no longer needed due to Snipe's reduced cooldown providing rotation structure instead.)

Cooldown increased to 36 seconds (20 GCDs), target's 10% hit chance reduction for 4.2 seconds changed to 10% damage reduction for 4.8 seconds. (Multiple uses from multiple rangers stack, both with each other and with the corresponding abilities on the other styles.) Unlike Debilitate, the damage reduction is not limited to the character using the ability, so groups can coordinate mitigation using this and/or corresponding abilities on other styles, creating a defensive reward for bringing and coordinating a group. (If you want to prevent large groups from gaining too much defensive power, set a limit to the stacking and/or make the stacking multiplicative so that it has diminishing returns.)

Does the same damage as the auto-attack, this time trading the two hitsplats for the enemy damage reduction. (The longer and stricter cooldown than Binding Shot makes it less useful as a tool to manipulate hit count, so it doesn't need to do less damage than the auto-attack.)

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  • For a beginner, they mostly won't use this ability, but its presence encourages them to think about when they might use it as they learn bosses, both to blunt boss mechanics and as an alternate option to manipulate their hit count.
  • For an intermediate player, they likely will use this for both purposes, especially if their Resonance is on cooldown or they are saving Resonance for a typed damage mechanic they can heal off of.
  • For an advanced player, where they use this will be part of their rotation map, both for mitigation and hit counting purposes. In group bosses, the presence of this ability makes defensive planning a group endeavour without being as powerful or APM-intensive as Barricade-Intercept strategies.

Level 40: Bombardment (stage 2)

Adds a second combo hit, similar to Necromancy's Spectral Scythe combo. This second hit costs 20% adrenaline and does more damage accordingly.

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Level 45: Ricochet

I see the point of focusing on Greater Ricochet's single-target rotation use, but a style shouldn't have just one innate ability relevant to AOE, even if it is a cool one. And the name strongly suggests that the ability's effect should involve bouncing in some form. Therefore, a revised form of the ability.

Deals 3 hits to the target (increased by Caroming like the current version), all but the first of which can first 'bounce' off of a nearby enemy. These bounces do not damage or aggro the other enemies, but instead apply a debuff that makes Bombardment do more damage to those enemies and hit them even outside the 1 tile radius. (The exact length of the debuff and radius of the effect can be tuned as needed.) This way, both the single-target and AOE uses of Ricochet work, and the player can avoid undesired aggro intuitively by not using Bombardment in single-target scenarios.

Does considerably more damage than the auto-attack, encouraging players to substitute it in for the auto-attack on cooldown even before they get Caroming. Once the player does get Caroming 4, this becomes the only 7-hit ability in the style's toolkit, placing it firmly in the many-hit sub-identity.

Greater Ricochet codex revised: like the beta, increases base damage of the hits. The added damage should feel good because it buffs what the player is already using as a rotation staple, not by turning an ability from purely AOE into a rotation staple.

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Level 50: Incendiary Shot

The second strong clue to the style's identity, revising the adrenaline self-buff to reward hit counting rather than crits. Because it becomes such an important signal of style identity, it also gets moved to F2P to reinforce that identity for all players.

  • 1 minute cooldown, 1 minute 9 second duration, allowing the player a little leeway to refresh the buff before dropping it and losing their stacks. Unlike the original, this is meant to be kept up all the time, both to add another layer of constant hit counting and to add medium-term structure to the rotation since it can be refreshed opposite Death's Swiftness. This also prevents the player from being incentivized to hybrid / bring an offstyle weapon for the sake of adrenaline generation.
  • While active, every 5th hitsplat grants a flat amount of adrenaline plus additional adrenaline scaled to the average ability damage of the triggering hit. (Just like the revised Splinter Shots, the adrenaline gain is completely predictable and independent of gear.)
  • Since 3 and 5 are coprime, between this and Splinter Shots the state of the player's hit counting buffs will cycle around every 15 hits without needing any ammo effects, let alone a BoLG. This also allows the player to create a "simple loop" by using Snap Shot to shorten the 17-hit "short cycle" into 15 hits - but the "simple loop" will be disrupted by any other ability including Incendiary Shot itself.
  • Adrenaline cost set low enough that it obviously more than pays for itself even to casual players, to encourage players to use it without giving it no cost and thus making it "the thing you pop right before Death's Swiftness".
  • Deals one hitsplat. (Alternatively, could be a pure self-buff, with its long cooldown and adrenaline cost keeping it from easy use to hold desirable hit counts.)
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Like healing, adrenaline is a system that is readily appreciated by beginners but has lots of interactions with other tools. The healing self-buff comes first because it's actively comforting to beginners, but at level 50 the player should have more familiarity with the style and the game.

  • For a beginner, they can watch their action bars to see when they have the adrenaline for an ability they want to use, gaining more adrenaline than they spent without having to plan their rotation in advance.
  • For an intermediate player, they can try to squeeze more adrenaline out of the buff by using their biggest hits with it, often trading off against getting more healing from Splinter Shots. This encourages them to start thinking about how much healing they really need, and by extension about how they can reduce damage taken.
  • For an advanced player, they can map out their rotation including the gained adrenaline, accounting for and minimizing adrenaline wasted to overcapping.

As with Splinter Shots, I would suggest revising the Melee and Magic adrenaline buffs similarly to further show their style identities. (Tsunami might not need much change if it's used to show the crit RNG subtheme of Magic, though in that case it should probably give a crit buff rather than being reliant on the mostly-endgame crit sources.)

While I haven't outright blocked hybrid use of adrenaline buffs, the focus on each style's identity is intended to make each style far better at leveraging its own buff than any of the others. As with the current versions, each style's adrenaline buff would overwrite the others while being compatible with Natural Instinct, so hybridding would still be possible but would no longer confer a major adrenaline advantage.

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Level 55: Mutated Dazing Shot + Salt the Wound (Shattered Worlds unlock)

Mutated Dazing Shot makes two additions to the base Dazing Shot:

  • Damage reduction raised to 15% and expanded to 1 tile around the target, giving it Slayer utility against moderately hard-hitting enemies.
  • Adds a Punctured stack to the target, up to a maximum of 10. (The cap can be changed if needed.) Punctured no longer acts as a DOT, expires, or benefits from splintering arrows; it exists purely to add damage to Salt the Wound despite the dramatically increased cooldown of Dazing Shot.

(Since this isn't just "the same thing but stronger", I'm using the original "Mutated" term to help clue the player in that the upgrade adds new effects. I'm using "Greater" only for ability upgrades that simply strengthen an existing effect numerically.)

Salt the Wound acts as in the live game, except that the "threshold" 50% adrenaline activation requirement is removed and the damage is rebalanced to account for the slower rate of generating Punctured stacks. This makes it an adrenaline spender that gains value as the player continues to fight the same target, so Revo can use it at all but will use it poorly compared to manual activation. This also provides the biggest buff to players who are not killing their target quickly (so could probably use a DPS boost) and are incorporating Dazing Shot into their rotation regularly.

Level 60: Bombardment (stage 3, members only)

Adds a third combo hit, similar to Necromancy's Spectral Scythe combo. This third hit costs 25% adrenaline and has a 2 tile radius around the target.

The added tile of radius makes Bombardment AOE distinct from using chinchompas for constant 1-tile AOE; since F2P doesn't have chinchompas, not having this third combo hit has the side effect of preventing F2P Revo users from accidentally drawing in more enemies.

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Level 65: Deadshot / Unload

Hitcaps prevent a direct damage ultimate from being effective with just one hit, so can we merge in the flavour of Unload since that makes more sense for a many-hit ability?

Functionally, as in the beta, with the result of guaranteeing a partial adrenaline refund from Incendiary Shot and at least one heal from Splinter Shots. This is also the only 5-hit ability in the style's toolkit, and the only currently relevant Ranged weapon spec that matches it is ideal use of the SGB.

Level 70: Corruption Shot (Mazcab Ability Codex / Teci unlock)

As in the live game, except:

  • Counts as dealing a hit to its initial target for all hit counting effects, preventing it from being used to "hold" a desirable hit count. (The live game counts it for Wen arrows but not for the BoLG passive.) Alternatively, extend the DOT to total 6 hits and count all of them for hit counting effects, thus making this the only 6-hit tool and distinct in that the hits come in gradually over the duration of the DOT.
  • Multiple players using this cannot overwrite each other, they instead generate their own copies of the debuff. DOTs overwriting each other is obnoxious in general and discourages players from forming groups.
  • When an enemy with the Corruption debuff is hit by Bombardment, that enemy also counts as having received a hitsplat for player-character-side hit counting effects, overriding the base behaviour of Bombardment.
  • What buffs apply to the ability is completely clear from reading tooltips carefully. Regardless of arguments about what buffs should apply to DOTs, players should not be misled about how their tools work by the game. (I would say that "let all buffs apply to DOTs" is an entirely reasonable power level in the tier 95 era, but at least be clear.)

This allows the player to very quickly build hit count in AOE scenarios, making it primarily an AOE ability through the Ranged hit counting identity.

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Level 75: Tendrils (requires The Dig Site)

Revised to be one ability in the Constitution book that feeds all three traditional combat style identities. (Cooldown retained, "threshold" 50% adrenaline requirement removed, adrenaline cost can be adjusted as needed for balance.) The combination of style identities furthers the lore reflection of Zaros's power and creativity.

  • 4 hits that ramp up in damage -> all 4 hits increment the Ranged hit counting effects, providing the only 4-hit ability the style has and lightly rewarding the player for buffing the later hits.
  • Guaranteed crits -> Magic crit subtheme.
  • Considered a DOT, allowing the player character to move during it -> Magic and Melee DOT subthemes. (With DOT buff clarifications as described under the revised Corruption Shot above.)

Self-damage effect revised and clarified to prevent intermediate players from being unnecessarily scared to use the ability. (Beginners won't use it regardless, since they lack the fight knowledge and confidence to spend any LP, which is fine for a free unlockable ability so long as they fully understand what it does when they get it.) Self-damage is inherently scary, setting a high bar for clarity to get players to use it.

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  • Self-damage calculation changed to be either a fixed amount of LP or a percentage of base LP before boosts (like Life Transfer), and stated as such on the tooltip. (Remember that Splinter Shots doesn't heal extra based on how strong the character's weapon or consumables are, and neither would corresponding self-healing buffs for the other styles.) (Tank gear makes it easier to handle the self-damage, which is logical.) While this has the unfortunate effect of making the tradeoff better for players with good gear and consumables, it also has the important benefit of making it possible for the player to learn the LP cost exactly without relying on reading the tooltip mid-fight, which helps them use it with justified confidence even if they are using switches and/or their buffs change.
  • Total amount of self-damage similar to current usage of Melee's Blood Tendrils (lower than the rest), but taken in a single hit at the start of the ability. The ability should be worth using in ~tier 80 gear.
  • Again like Life Transfer, this ability will not fire if the character does not have the LP to spare on that tick. (Which should be stated on the tooltip for both abilities.) This prevents the player from killing their character in the obvious way by using this ability, which would not be so cleanly doable if the self-damage was broken up into multiple hits.

This revision eliminates a lot of concerns that a reasonable player might have about the self-damage from reading their tooltips in the current game. They no longer have to worry about damage variance, accidentally increasing the self-damage by using buffs, whether the self-damage also crits, or killing their character while already at low LP. They know exactly what they're signing up for when they press the button, which reduces the fear of using it.

(Alternatively, remove the self-damage effect entirely, though that removes the avenue for skill expression in spending LP for damage output.)

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Level 85: Lesser Death's Swiftness

Both the players who want The World Wakes to have impactful unlocks and the players who want the concept of a burst phase to be introduced regardless of quest status have good points. (In particular, if you're trying to get former FFXIV players, they will be inclined to do quests in story order, which makes a long road to The World Wakes.) Therefore, a compromise.

Lesser Death's Swiftness lasts 22.2 seconds and is unlocked just by levelling. The World Wakes now grants a second permanent +7.8 second length boost. So a character with exactly one of (The World Wakes complete) and (Planted Feet / Death's Swiftness upgrade codex) has normal Death's Swiftness with the 30 second duration it has in the live game. A character with both upgrades has Greater Death's Swiftness just like the live game.

This concludes the abilities.

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Example Ability Set Analysis

Note that this list doesn't include that many more ability buttons than the beta does. If you want the whole thing to fit on one action bar including the unlockables, make Splinter Shots a levelling benefit and extend the "automatically trigger the Basic Attack ability" setting to Ranged. If you allow a second action bar for Constitution abilities that are related to damage - and given the existence of abilities like Cease, Tuska's Wrath, and Storm Shards + Shatter, I don't see why you wouldn't - the Ranged-specific abilities fit comfortably on one action bar, leaving room for a "swap ammo" ability to go with the Pernix quiver.

Moreover, none of the abilities on this list are difficult to grasp for what they individually do, and the low-level abilities are especially simple to provide a gentle start to the learning progression. A casual player could read their tooltips, watch their abilities light up, and have a good time.

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Yet this version is much more complex to optimize than the beta, almost entirely because the abilities interact more with each other - and with other tools - through the hit counting identity. It already has substantial depth even for a player who has made no investment in gearing the style, and adding in ammo effects and/or a BoLG turn it up further with more layers of hit counting effects. (Wen arrows also encourage the player to get to 15 stacks, but the way their activation is tied to spending adrenaline makes it difficult to avoid having them drift relative to the Splinter Shots - Incendiary Shot 15-hit cycle. The 8-stack BoLG passive is coprime with that cycle, so players who don't use the spec have their cycle length turned up to 120 hits. During the BoLG spec the cycle is instead 60 hits, and exactly where the cycle starts depends on when the player uses the spec. Bik arrows prioritize the many-hit abilities, which now the player has more choice in, encouraging the player to build to 200 stacks quickly and then switch their rotation around to maintain stacks while mostly using other arrows.) The existing Ranged weapon specs also fit into this structure, since almost all of them have hitsplats of their own and Split Soul encourages the player to get any healing they need from defensives and Splinter Shots.

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And it still works passably with Revo! The intuitive Revo bars, assuming that Splinter Shots is a levelling benefit and so doesn't need to be activated:

  • Adrenaline builders and adrenaline-neutral abilities only, spending adrenaline manually: Snipe, Piercing Shot, Ricochet, auto-attack
  • Revo++ single-target, no unlockables: Incendiary Shot, Lesser Death's Swiftness, Snipe, Piercing Shot, Ricochet, Rapid Fire, auto-attack
  • Revo++ single-target, all unlockables, high LP target: Incendiary Shot, Greater Death's Swiftness, Snipe, Mutated Dazing Shot, Piercing Shot, Ricochet, Salt the Wound, Tendrils, Rapid Fire, auto-attack
  • Revo++ AOE, no unlockables: Incendiary Shot, Lesser Death's Swiftness, Ricochet, Bombardment, Snipe, Piercing Shot, auto-attack
  • Revo++ AOE, all unlockables + damage-boosting hit count effect (BoLG / Wen / something new): Incendiary Shot, Greater Death's Swiftness, Corruption Shot, Ricochet, Bombardment, Snipe, Piercing Shot, auto-attack
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Miscellaneous Suggestions

If we're removing the threshold ability type, then Limitless needs to be reworked. In my version, where most adrenaline spenders still have cooldowns, the most natural new version of Limitless would allow the player to ignore the cooldowns on non-ultimate adrenaline spenders for the duration - it retains the idea of temporarily bypassing a limitation to do something powerful.

What if every style had an Aspect of Power that furthered its style identity, like Magic has with Temporal Anomaly? (Tying into my example ability toolkit, a Ranged DPS Aspect could boost the ability damage of every 7th hitsplat.) Splintering arrows are so sorely useless right now that maybe they should become the consumable for the Ranged aspect rather than being an arrow type.

While we're talking about ammo effects, could we get some relevant mid-level arrow effects so that bow users have ammo effects worth considering before level 90? Rework deathspore arrows to not rely on RNG, perhaps providing their adrenaline cost refund based on hit count instead? (And with a multi-layered hit counting system like I've described, maybe the top players would be okay with removing Wenspore so that each use of an ability has exactly one ammo type applied.) Would you be open to reworking bolt effects to also be totally deterministic, so that the optimization style isn't thrown off by RNG as soon as you release a tier 95 crossbow? (And maybe that would stop "hydrix GRico is an apot with a 15 second cooldown", especially Melee using it.)

Could we get a new Invention perk that either sidegrades or obsoletes Relentless? Currently Relentless forces RNG procs into the meta for every style, which hampers both style differentiation and deterministic optimization.

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Please put style gauges directly in the video game without relying on Alt1. They're so nice for communicating what the player should be tracking on a style and helping the player learn, without limiting the underlying complexity of the style at all.

Plus you can use the visual design of style gauges to further the aesthetic identity of the style. For example, a Ranged style gauge could have its primary component look like a sniper scope, with the currently equipped ammo in the middle and the various hit counting effects visualized as concentric rings that loop around every time that effect is triggered. (The secondary component would then show all the style buff timers, such as Incendiary Shot, Death's Swiftness, and ammo stacks, as lines rather than just numbers so that the player can get a rough idea of the remaining durations at a glance.) It would be cool seeing the rings line up on the hitsplats that have multiple buffs applied, reinforcing the power added to those hits without spelling everything out for the player.

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Conclusion

First, I discussed the problem of Ranged lacking the character tools that are needed to correctly handle mechanics at various existing bosses, therefore making it impossible for the player to perform those mechanics perfectly without skipping them - and some such mechanics are unskippable by design. To prevent this problem not just for the next iteration of Ranged, but all future iterations of all combat styles, I suggested first creating a design document that tracks the character tools and player skills that the fights in the game expect; this document serves as a reference when designing the styles to ensure that every style offers the player the tools they need to succeed at every boss the style is not explicitly locked out of. This reference would then be utilized when creating and updating style-specific design documents that start with the style's gameplay identity before describing how both that identity and the tools for fight mechanics are implemented in its toolkit, preventing the styles from becoming homogenous in the wrong places.

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Second, I discussed the problem of unclear style identity, including failure to quickly funnel each player away from styles they won't like and towards styles that suit them. As a particular case for Ranged, I examined how "multi-hit" is not a style identity, since players can simply learn the benefits given to every additional hit as if they were baked into the ability or buff. Instead, hit counting effects like the BoLG passive and most EGWD arrows form the core of Ranged's current style identity, since their effects occurring on specific numbers of hits rewards the player for continuing to track the hits dealt by each ability and weapon spec - and these effects only appear at tier 90+ after the player has substantially invested in the style. To serve a diverse playerbase while clarifying style identities from a developer perspective, I proposed a design document that lists possible style identities for all styles, clusters them, and assigns them to styles to be used for style-specific designs. I then proposed a set of style-specific design documents that are all about what that style's identities are and their communication to players, thus creating a design step that prioritizes the creation and maintenance of the funnel keeping players from investing in styles they will not enjoy.

Third, I discussed the necessity of supporting a wide player skill range, from the top-end players who need richly complex styles to players who cannot or will not use Full Manual and therefore wind up on Revo. I then noted that this is possible, since FFXIV has previously pulled it off with spectacularly wide skill ranges, and summarized some observed techniques from their job designs that succeeded in this regard.

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Fourth, I presented an example Ranged ability set that tries to utilize these principles without having access to your development intentions, leaning into hit counting as the core Ranged identity and expanding it to be a constant part of the gameplay from low levels. As you requested, this includes suggestions for Incendiary Shot and Corruption Shot. I then briefly discussed both its depth to fully optimize, particularly combined with high-end weapons and ammo, and its provision of passable Revo bars for various common scenarios.

Finally, I made some miscellaneous suggestions that relate to but don't fit in the previous sections.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. 😛 Here's to a good 2026!

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(the start of my feedback is at #1450511863589900410 message )

terse vale
empty frigate
terse vale
barren bane
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I know jmods have mentioned the stun issue.

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Not keen on emphasising deterministic expression or eliminating player moment to moment decision making to prop up revo++

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I'm also not keen on turning splinter shots into an always on buff when it would narrow player expression and reduces future combat flexibility.

mellow frigate
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always-on buffs driven by ability use rather than being mutually exclusive with something else generally don't need to exist

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they're ok as small, discrete rewards to content but need to not be overdone

barren bane
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I get that always using splinter shots is the correct move in the right here and now.
But if you consider a future where that isn't true, ranged opens up to new possibilities that wouldn't be possible if it were to be an always on buff.

barren bane
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I'm really interested to see what comes out of splintering arrows if greater dazing shot doesn't maintain its thing.

terse vale
# barren bane Not keen on emphasising deterministic expression or eliminating player moment to...

Not keen on emphasising deterministic expression or eliminating player moment to moment decision making

I did say that some players love RNG procs while others love deterministic skill expression, so both groups can't be satisfied with the same loadout and they're better off having different styles cater to them. Right now, players who love deterministic skill expression don't have it on any style, especially if they're advanced enough to be looking at the Necromancy style rings that both have RNG procs. #1450511863589900410 message

Note that I specifically suggested that Magic get RNG proc interactions as part of its style identity, since it's already leaning in that direction.

to prop up revo++

I specifically said that even relative beginners to Full Manual should be able to outperform Revo++, but Revo shouldn't be so bad that players who need to use it are driven from the game instead. #1450511863589900410 message I fully intend for the PVME to have an absolute field day, as indicated by my notes on how to optimize each ability and their interactions in my example ability set.

nova aspen
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why tf is there 20 text walls here 😭

hybrid moon
terse vale
# barren bane I'm also not keen on turning splinter shots into an always on buff when it would...

I'm also not keen on turning splinter shots into an always on buff

Then how would you make hit counting a constant part of Ranged and ensure that all players see it early? Alternatively, what would you propose as a Ranged identity cluster that has constant gameplay implications (not multi-hit, I covered that already) and how would you make sure that all players see that early?

it would narrow player expression

How exactly would it "narrow player expression" to have something that is always there to be engaged with? If anything, it increases player skill expression, since the player always has the option to lean into the system. Do you think that, for example, Necromancy's Omni Guard passive "narrows player expression" because it buffs every 6th auto-attack? What about the BoLG passive?

reduces future combat flexibility.

Nothing would stop Jagex from making a new reward that turns off the buff in exchange for something else, just like the Devourer's Nexus does for the Necromancy ghost healing. But in this case, I've already baked in a way that stronger players will naturally shift away from focusing on the healing effect in order to gain more adrenaline and damage output.

terse vale
mellow frigate
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I didn't read your post tbh I was expanding on Nathan

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might read it tomorrow

terse vale
# hybrid moon "prevents the player from killing their character in the obvious way using Tendr...

"prevents the player from killing their character in the obvious way using Tendrils" Fun fact, there's a unique HCIM death broadcast if you die from Tendrils self-damage at the Lumbridge training dummies. Something like "playing with fireworks" or something?

I looked it up, and it is "by playing with fireworks", though the wiki specifies "Smoke Tendrils" (the Magic one). https://runescape.wiki/w/Ironman_Mode#Hardcore_deaths

That's hilarious!

But in all seriousness, you did a wonderful job in your post. I hope the devs seriously consider it!

Thank you! 😄

barren bane
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You've asserted that hit counting is the identity of ranged, which isn't totally wrong per say, but I also feel inclined to disagree as it's nowhere near as dominant as spamming multi-hit to achieve effects.
Ranged already has hit counting in bolg & wen, whilst everything else really focuses on multi-hit it's not about aiming for that one hit, but rather firing out as much as you can to achieve a proc or hit as many hits as you can within your burst window.

Adding additional hit counting in the form of splinter shots would (or so I fear) result in cognitive overload in a place where most players are already checked out of range because of its cognitive overload.
Not to mention it doesn't overlap with existing systems by aiming for every 3rd hit.
I believe players would ultimately choose to ignore one hit counting system to favour the others.

Splinter shots in its current state makes existing hits worth more without adding new things to parse, which is the real value of it, as well as adding the possibility of an identity branch.
Which is to my mind the biggest issue splinter shots currently faces as it lacks that branching identity.

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News from Mod reaper by the by.

terse vale
# barren bane You've asserted that hit counting is the identity of ranged, which isn't totally...

firing out as much as you can to achieve a proc

And how is that different from just giving different abilities different proc chances?

hit as many hits as you can within your burst window.

And how is that different from just memorizing how much damage each ability does?

Nothing you've said establishes multi-hit as a style identity in how the player thinks about the style's tools long-term. Because as I said, multi-hit by itself just compresses down to whatever the effects of the added hits are, unless the player has a reason to care about the added hits in their own right. This is why multi-hit only works as a subtheme to hit counting.

Adding additional hit counting in the form of splinter shots would (or so I fear) result in cognitive overload in a place where most players are already checked out of range because of its cognitive overload. ... I believe players would ultimately choose to ignore one hit counting system to favour the others.

Style gauges help a lot with cognitive overload for beginners and casual players, and I even described how a style gauge could look to go with the identity cluster and toolkit I gave as an example.

Casual players might still choose to ignore one hit counting buff entirely in favour of the others, which is perfectly fine - I specifically designed the new hit counting effects to provide some benefit even when not actively tracked, just like how the BoLG already works.

Not to mention it doesn't overlap with existing systems by aiming for every 3rd hit.

Yes, it's supposed to be coprime in order to complicate optimization, as I said in the design goals at the top of the example.

Splinter shots in its current state makes existing hits worth more without adding new things to parse, which is the real value of it

If it doesn't add a new thing to think about, then there's no point in having it in the style. You might as well just bake the buff into the abilities instead.

barren bane
# terse vale > firing out as much as you can to achieve a proc And how is that different fro...

Multi-hit changes how players behave even when its effects compress numerically. Players don’t count individual hits, but will still change how they play.
The multi-hit identity doesn't require hit counting to exist for a subtheme. Rather, hit counting is a refinement layered on top of multi-hit.

Removing splinter shots because it doesn’t currently add a new thing to think about isn't really valid, because its value is in its modularity and enforcement of conditional identity.
Baking the effect into abilities would permanently remove future design space, which seems to be the stated goal for splinter shots as per the blog, having splinter shots as it is right now is leaving room open for alternative identities in the future.

Your own design for splinter shots show that it’s acceptable for an ability to provide value without requiring active thought, so I don't think removing splinter shots from its supporting role for the multi-hit identity is really fruitful.

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I guess the question really becomes, do you believe jagex are able to deliver on alternative identities?

hybrid moon
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I certainly hope they can deliver on alternate identities. Another text wall if you want to read it: #1450511863589900410 message

barren bane
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Yeah magic seems to be heading in a compressing bleeds direction?

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And then crit conditional bonus hits alongside?

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I hope they can flesh that out a bit more. Like ranged has been the weakest style, but I think magic is probably worthy of the least amount of changes in this upcoming beta.

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I have no idea where melee goes tbh.

hybrid moon
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I think “main” magic will always be critical hits, but I hope they add more synergies for the wands in the future.

barren bane
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The wands have got a nice little thing/backup with the kerapac wristwraps.

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But it could use more fleshing out if anything.

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Consuming combust in the way that it does kinda feels like it interferes with itself?

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And there's no way to consume corruption blast

terse vale
# barren bane Multi-hit changes how players behave even when its effects compress numerically....

Multi-hit changes how players behave even when its effects compress numerically. Players don’t count individual hits, but will still change how they play.

Again, how is that different from just baking the compressed effects of the additional hits into the abilities? You didn't answer the question for specific cases you yourself mentioned when I asked it earlier.

If someone could write a thematic reskin that kept the same gameplay results but removed some aspect of the style, whatever aspect they can remove isn't part of the style's gameplay identity. And literally everything about multi-hit in current Ranged that isn't a hit counting interaction (or the technical limitations of hitcaps) could be reskinned as baking the effects of the added hits into the abilities.

The multi-hit identity doesn't require hit counting to exist for a subtheme.

Without something like hit counting that cares about the number of hits to grant a variable reward, why should players think about the number of hits in itself in the long term, to make that part of a style's gameplay identity? The reason hit counting can't be reskinned out of the style is that the reward isn't fixed, so it can't be baked into the abilities.

Baking the effect into abilities would permanently remove future design space

I specifically proposed a design that can't be baked into the abilities so that players have something to think about. And we have design space to trade a beginner-friendly buff for another buff later, see e.g. Devourer's Nexus.

Your own design for splinter shots show that it’s acceptable for an ability to provide value without requiring active thought

You seem to be misunderstanding the purpose of the buff, which I explicitly stated when discussing skill floor and skill ceiling, and then described how my version supports that purpose.

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Here's the specific message where I talked about the purpose of subsystems like my version of Splinter Shots: #1450511863589900410 message

Those designs included lots of tools and subsystems that:

  • were easy and intuitive to get some net benefit out of, encouraging casual players to use them at all rather than ignoring them;
  • were very difficult to get the maximum net benefit out of, often by having (explicit or implicit) interactions and tradeoffs, giving the top players complex optimization puzzles; and
  • incrementally rewarded small player skill improvements, even short-term ones, encouraging players to climb the ladder.

And that is how I propose rebuilding each style's abilities.

The point of the design is optional complexity, to allow a wide range of player skill levels to coexist on the same style. To that end, a buff that provides the maximum benefit without thinking about it actively - like the beta version of Splinter Shots, which you keep insisting on - is completely useless because the top players stop thinking about it with practice. But allowing casual players to get some suboptimal benefit out of the buff is useful, because if they are forced to take on the full complexity of a style or subsystem to use it, they will instead just not use it.

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The beta version of Splinter Shots has its complexity unfold completely wrong: a beginner has to worry about getting the adrenaline to use it in the first place and has to actively think about the number of hits on each ability even if they do use it, an intermediate player has mostly compressed down the buff into added damage on each ability, and an advanced player has long since stopped thinking about it.

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Meanwhile, my version of Splinter Shots has its complexity unfold correctly in the context of the whole toolkit, as I described when describing the ability: #1450511863589900410 message

Eventually the player is going to start prioritizing other hit counting buffs instead, and that's outright intended! #1450511863589900410 message

Core Design Goal: Tension between different possible objectives suggested by hit counting effects. Varied hit counting effects should take multiples of different numbers, often coprime numbers, so that they cycle around relative to each other and the player must choose which buffs to use their biggest hits on.

terse vale
# hybrid moon I certainly hope they can deliver on alternate identities. Another text wall if ...

I do hope Jagex can deliver on alternate / variant style identities, but tying them to weapon / ammo types is rough if one type is significantly better than another for a long time. For example, if we already had one Ranged variant tied to bolts + crossbows and another tied to arrows + bows, the bolt + crossbow variant enjoyers would have been pretty frustrated starting from the release of the Elder God arrows and remain frustrated until they got a t95 crossbow and bolts to go with it, because the Elder God arrows and the BoLG are just so much better that they would feel forced to play the arrows + bows variant to compete. (This is a thing that has happened in lots of other games, for example WoW has had lots of pressure to play the "meta spec" of one's class.)

So unless we're going to always get new power-boost releases together for every alternate identity of a style, I think the alternate / variant identities would work best as things that players can choose to use with any gear they have. Ability subthemes, cosmetic overrides, new Aspects, familiar interactions, ...

hybrid moon
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I did have an idea for a buff to bring Solak crossbows closer to the BOLG, and have crossbows be hit-spam while the Bow be hit-counting. People are expecting a buff to the crossbows, as the price has increased a decent bit since the ranged beta was announced. #1450511863589900410 message

barren bane
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The dps might be the ultimately be the same same, but the way you're thinking about your abilities changes.

Your reskin idea is super strict as a definition of identity, like you could reskin most gameplay elements out of the game like this, magic's crit chance being one of these, but they shape how players engage with the game, it's not important that players once they've internalised a mechanic they stop thinking about it because that'll happen no matter how you cut it.

terse vale
terse vale
# barren bane The dps might be the ultimately be the same same, but the way you're thinking ab...

The dps might be the ultimately be the same same, but the way you're thinking about your abilities changes.

How does your thinking about your abilities change? Why does it change?

The human brain is evolved for efficiency. What can be compressed out will be compressed out, especially for top players who are putting in thousands of hours of perfection-seeking practice. They want to compress out as much as they can so that they can spend that attention on other things that don't compress out.

Your reskin idea is super strict as a definition of identity

I said "gameplay identity", for which it's accurate because of that compression.

like you could reskin most gameplay elements out of the game like this, magic's crit chance being one of these

No you can't. I said "gameplay results", not "mean DPS".

To take the example you gave, Magic's crit chance creates:

  • DPS variance
  • adrenaline variance if under a crit adren buff, which is an incentive to use a crit adren buff
  • variance in what abilities are best to press, both from adrenaline variance and from variance in meeting damage thresholds (killing adds, phase HP, killing the entire boss)
  • interactions with other procs (e.g. t95 wand / Temporal Anomaly resets) via that variance in best abilities
  • interactions with gear that adds effects to crits (FSoA)
  • incentives to stack lots of crit chance boosts into a build, not just their individual DPS additions, in order to fuel Tsunami and FSoA

it's not important that players once they've internalised a mechanic they stop thinking about it because that'll happen no matter how you cut it.

No, it won't happen with well-designed style gameplay identities / mechanics. A top Magic player doesn't stop thinking about their procs, they think about their procs more because they can juggle all of them well. A top Ranged player thinks about hit counting more, because they can juggle BoLG stacks and Wen stacks and ammo swapping for other ammo effects on top.

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Meanwhile, we currently have even Melee players calling hydrix GRico "an apot with a 15 second cooldown". They don't think about that it does 7 hitsplats, they just care that it will probably get them a hydrix bolt proc for the adrenaline.

barren bane
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Doesn't range angle itself towards benefiting from multi-hit with crit adren? More crit rolls,, more crits, more adren, more dmg variance, more deathspore cd resets, more incentives to stack crit chance boosts.

terse vale
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In theory you could try to call "sometimes your hitsplat rolls an extra damage buff randomly, with a base chance of 10% and the base multiplier dependent on your level, and then these things buff the chance and these other things boost the multiplier" something other than "critical hits", but then the players will tell you "that's called 'crits', don't name it something else unnecessarily".

terse vale
# barren bane Doesn't range angle itself towards benefiting from multi-hit with crit adren? Mo...

That argument equally applies to Magic and to some extent even applies to Melee, because crits are overemphasized in the current design of every style but Necromancy.

You can reskin out "this does [number] hitsplats" into "this generates [probability distribution] adrenaline under Meteor Strike / Tsunami / Incendiary Shot", which removes the multi-hit but not the crit interaction. Which tells you that the crits are a part of the current style gameplay no matter what you call them, and the multi-hit isn't made a part of the gameplay by crit interaction.

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The wiki literally says about the FSoA: https://runescape.wiki/w/Fractured_Staff_of_Armadyl

To maximise the usage of the special attack, players should use abilities that hit multiple times, such as Concentrated Blast or its greater variant. A Channeller's ring, Reaver's ring, Erethdor's grimoire, and the Biting perk will give a fairly high chance of critical strikes. Smoke Tendrils provides guaranteed critical strikes while other useful abilities include Tsunami and Omnipower with the Igneous Kal-Mej.

Does that make multi-hit Magic's style identity?

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Obviously not. The thing that's a part of Magic's gameplay is the crits, which is also the thing that can't be written out in a reskin.

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Now, just because something is a part of a style's gameplay, that doesn't mean it's a part of the style's gameplay identity. The thing appearing in the gameplay at all is necessary but not sufficient.

barren bane
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Now begging the question of what is sufficient to be an identity

terse vale
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I wouldn't call it "begging the question" when I put in a whole section on deciding and/or discovering style identities. #1450511863589900410 message

barren bane
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Oh that's why you terminated the thought early

terse vale
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I covered quite a bit, which is why I didn't just post an example ability set.

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This is also why I didn't link just to the start of my example ability set, but to the start of my whole post ( #1450511863589900410 message ); the ability set won't make nearly as much sense without the broader design observations and reasoning that I put first.

cloud sky
true nimbus
# terse vale (Since I have a lot to say, I've also collected my feedback in a Google Doc: htt...

Was reading observation 1 here and my beta rotations were going a bit different. While I have concerns with snipe, I think it functions to build adrenaline instead of spending it, encouraging you to focus on piercing priority to do damage with Snipe instead of spending adrenaline with Snap. The end result being that you have built adrenaline with piercing and Snipe

When it comes to bossing, I think a single stun is absolutely an issue and has been brought up in many discussions but I didn't have too much trouble with gaining levels by fighting single target enemies. We also don't know their design vision here. If we get more early game bosses like the new Seeker boss, then those could also be f2p and not require aoe. Aoe doesn't have too many interesting interactions in my experience and it could be dangerous to use during early levels anyway. Hard for me to complain about aoe but the experience with mole is a good note

true nimbus
# terse vale By restricting this document to discussing *only* the style's *gameplay*, it fla...

Generally agree on observation 2 (except the part about keeping non-identity abilities or non-functional ones but worth talking about each one individually), though I don't think Splinter could add much since it's meant to complete the style, more so than add more hit counting on top of bolg and wen arrows. However it could have synergy with the hit counting identity. We could have it function as a beginner bolg that doesn't have a spec or we could have beginner bolg somewhere else and have Splinter add 2 hits to bolg procs instead of 1.

I do like range being generally deterministic but I'm not fully sure if hit counting counts as deterministic. There is also an element of skill expression missed here. For example, Deathspore arrows being rng means that you won't get them every time yes, so it adds pressure when you have to focus on fixing your bolg stacks after you get your deathspore. I occasionally like this rng in range but not with deathspores specifically. When you have a 99% chance of getting 5 deathspores after rapid grico, there shouldn't be a situation where it fails. Lets just say that I think fixing your bolg procs should be consistently incosistent, instead of happening 1% of the time. Rapid deathspore grico incend should just be a combo and happen every time.

barren bane
true nimbus
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Am slowly reading through that, definitely some good points

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Though some ideas probably miss the design intention and I imagine there's a design vision too

vale palm
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We're all ears just waiting for jagex to speak

crystal plover
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Played a bit around in a F2P setup:

  • I can't say much around the available abilities, nor meta setups. There's a simple set of abilities ready, some focused on multi-hits and single target, and some for AoE. Ultimates feels a bit weak compared to abilities requiring adrenaline, but I believe that has always been the case for them.
  • I've consumed about 87 arrows over 10 minutes, which would be just over 2500 hits per hours estimated, effectively being an ammo consumption of a little over 500 per hour. It sounds high, but then again I've been playing ammo-free since it's been possible in the live game, so that's getting used to I guess. Most ammo can be made in bulk luckily, but if I bring these numbers over to magic + runecrafting, I'm getting worried. Of course, this can be avoided entirely with chargebows like gravite gear (except magic, as that both degrades your weapon and requires runes).
  • I'm not a fan of ammo dropping on the ground all the time again. I know this is the result of the removal of ammo-free combat, but the ground gets cluttered pretty fast for players who do not have Ava's perk. To add to it, this mechanic + Ava's reward space feels a bit awkward now that area loot has been a thing for quite some time with a decent sized radius. You can just leave the loot window open and grab your ammo back rather easily.
terse vale
# barren bane Mhm, you present your definition of identity as objective fact, but it's a frame...

excluding damage output but including optimisation patterns as if they're not the same thing downstream.

I can tell you that they're not the same thing downstream, with copious examples from FFXIV royally pissing off players by changing a job's optimization style without changing its DPS, and even more examples from FFXIV gradually removing optimization styles from the game entirely and pissing off even players who like the optimization styles that remain, but writing an entire essay of "things I learned watching FFXIV fall" would have been wildly out of scope for my original post. It was already long enough when focusing on suggestions to Jagex and reasons for them.

How much damage a style does is a curve (over character progression and player skill) that Jagex tunes through the numbers and formulas they put on abilities, gear, consumables, etc. It has to stay fairly close to the other styles, or players feel compelled to use the stronger style instead of the style they like - witness the profusion of players using Necromancy until endgame even though they prefer another style, which is part of what Jagex is currently trying to fix. A style's damage output is part of the framework needed to enable each player to pick the style they prefer.

How the player thinks about a style to produce optimal damage output is entirely interaction between the player and the style, not between the style and the fight, so it doesn't really appear in the damage output curves; it's about how the player reaches the curve for their style. But it can still make a massive difference in enjoyment to the player, and it very much does to players with strong preferences about it.

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Some players love it when what they have to do to map out a fight in advance is fairly simple, but they can't just follow that in the fight because there are procs. They want to be improvising every time they kill the boss. That's proc-based optimization, the thing I suggested go on Magic because it's already leaning in that direction. Other players love it when what they have to do to map out a fight perfectly in advance is really complicated, but then in the fight they execute a beautifully planned rotation that allows them to set themselves up perfectly for a mechanic by how they place their abilities 5 minutes in advance. That's deterministic optimization, the thing I suggested go on Ranged because hit counting already leans in that direction. #1450511863589900410 message

Each of those has its own beauty that sings to a certain type of player, creating a strong preference. Other players have a strong preference because they struggle to effectively optimize their disliked type: they can't hold the extended plans in their head or can't react fast enough for the procs. To such players, it's very obvious that current RuneScape only supports proc-based optimization, and very frustrating to those who prefer the deterministic type. To fulfill Jagex's stated goal of growing the playerbase by making a good game, it behooves them to support both types so that both (prospective) player groups with strong preferences can enjoy the game.

There are also players who don't really care either way, whether they don't play to optimize in the first place or like both forms about equally. You might be in that group, and that's fine. But you should notice that you are confused when someone claims a difference between two things you think are the same.

terse vale
# barren bane Mhm, you present your definition of identity as objective fact, but it's a frame...

you present your definition of identity as objective fact, but it's a framework with inbuilt assumptions

We have a well-studied, intuitive theory that the human brain is evolved to choose efficient solutions to problems and choose problems that can be efficiently solved. The scientific name is "motivational intensity theory", it's one of the most replicated and most intuitive results in evolutionary psychology, and if you want to dispute it you should be starting pre-registered studies instead of arguing here.

I didn't go that deep in my original post because I think Jagex understands motivational intensity theory just fine. But since you've brought it up, I'll quote from an explanation to Square Enix: (also on the Wayback Machine) https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/493921-The-Threefold-Problem-of-Magical-Ranged-Balance-3-1-Difficulty , more easily found in https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/513214-A-Disabled-Raider-s-Review-of-Patch-7.0-Duty-Design?p=6633061&viewfull=1#post6633061 quoting it

In particular, I must explain Brehm's motivational intensity theory, which has not only been tested in video games and held up [ https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0282966 ], but overall has been replicated so extensively that Richter, Gendolla, and Wright's summary paper [ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292893391_Three_decades_of_research_on_motivational_intensity_theory_What_we_have_learned_about_effort_and_what_we_still_don't_know ] had to direct readers to narrower summary papers. For brevity and clarity despite machine translation, I will explain only the points of the theory that relate to the question of balance at hand, and I will explain via example.

(quote continued below)

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Suppose a player is considering a goal with a fixed difficulty, such as completing a dungeon. If they had to do something ridiculous to accomplish that goal, like find three other people and teach them the game in order to have party members, the player would almost certainly reject that goal and find something else to do with their time. Likewise if they had to do something blatantly impossible. This illustrates that they have a maximum amount of effort that they find worth it or possible, which we call their "potential motivation" in the context of that goal.

However, even if the player can complete the dungeon within their potential motivation, that does not mean that they will put forth that maximum amount of effort - they may be willing to spend an hour in the instance, but if the party completes the dungeon in twenty minutes, they will not then spend the remaining forty minutes in the same instance pressing their buttons with no targets. (They may well spend it in the same instance exploring the environment, but that is a new goal.) Rather, they will put forth the minimum amount of effort needed to accomplish the goal, and no more than that.

This theory makes intuitive sense from the perspective of conserving energy. A rice farmer who insists upon moving to a desert and constructing new rice paddies there will probably produce no rice and starve. A rice farmer who insists on hauling their harvest back and forth for no reason, not even physical training, will not put themselves in a good position either. The many experiments confirming the theory show that it is very much correct - conserving energy in this way is an evolved imperative of the human brain, and games for humans must bend to it.

barren bane
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Okay, well I've already agreed to disagree.

terse vale
#

If a style doesn't have the tools to tackle a given fight's mechanics, it is not an efficient choice for the fight and that will demotivate players who enjoy the style. If a style does significantly lower damage than other styles in a given fight, it is not an efficient choice for the fight and that will demotivate players who enjoy the style. If a style is significantly harder to play in a way that reaches that damage output than other styles in a given fight, it is not an efficient choice for the fight and that will demotivate players who enjoy the style.

Lo and behold, these are exactly the exclusions from style identity I set down for the sake of balance, the ones you called "inbuilt assumptions". I didn't assume them, they fall neatly out of psychology research.

But even without the theoretical backing, the same exclusions could be found by studying the history of video games. Pretty much every game with multiple styles to tackle in-game problems and even a moderately-sized population gets resentful players and mass balance complaints the moment that their players become aware that their styles have substantially diverged in one or more of these properties. Combat or noncombat, multiplayer or singleplayer, it doesn't really matter. (Multiplayer games have tighter balance requirements because players will pressure each other, is all.) There's an epic rant about Deus Ex: Human Revolution's ventilation system design constantly offering players an easy path, and it's the same thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgJazjz9ZsA&t=8128s Heck, even tabletop games like D&D and Pathfinder get class balance complaints if one class is significantly more efficient overall.

Trying to fight the human brain in a game designed for humans is doomed. Use balance as a framework to enable fun, or fail.

terse vale
# barren bane Okay, well I've already agreed to disagree.

I've already agreed to disagree.

Where exactly? Your statement #1450511863589900410 message

We're working from incompatible definitions of identity.

isn't an agreement to disagree, it's further disputing my methods without offering any reasoning for your objection, especially since you haven't stated any definition of "style identity" of your own.

empty frigate
#

people can disagree rationally and irrationally

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anywhosers, we do have some light with whats coming next.

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referencing all style betas for the last one

terse vale
#

And "what attributes of a style can be part of its identity in a good video game" isn't an "agree to disagree" subject in the first place. ("What attributes of a style do I personally enjoy / care about and use when choosing a style" is a personal preference subject, which is different from "agree to disagree".) Human brains exist in the world, there are plenty of objective facts about them, and a disagreement on those facts means at least one side is wrong about the state of the world.

For example, I personally have a strong preference for deterministic optimization, both because I enjoy the spreadsheet mapping and because I have a disability that wrecks my reaction time. This puts me in a good spot to point out how Jagex isn't currently offering any combat styles for that optimization style. But I observe that other people prefer proc-based optimization, I accept that, and it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that when giving game design advice relevant to optimization style.

My personal preferences when choosing a style are strongest about gameplay identity, with lore secondary and aesthetic tertiary. I've played a lot of different aesthetics across different games, it's mostly a "sufficiently bad is a dealbreaker" thing for me. But I observe that other people put more weight on aesthetics and very little on gameplay, I accept that, and it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the other aspects of style identity when giving game design advice relevant to style identity. A combat beta is inherently gameplay-oriented; if Jagex ran a concept art poll I would give very different feedback accordingly.

empty frigate
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I disagree

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I feel philosophical debates arent very helpful here. I do hope jmods read the actual feedbacks

terse vale
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well, I started with concrete recommendations and got unsubstantiated philosophical objection, so I replied with more detailed reasoning behind my concrete recommendations

empty frigate
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people can agree or disagree. thats fine

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I do hope you have a good rest of your day tho

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If anyone cares, those forwards are from mod reaper

terse vale
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If someone says "I don't really play a style for the gameplay, I consider its aesthetic really important", I don't even have a disagreement with them, because I accept other player types as part of the playerbase ecosystem. In fact, I encourage them to give feedback, because they'll probably be better at aesthetic feedback than me.

If someone says "damage output and optimization style are the same thing", they are wrong as a point of fact, the facts in question being among:

  • the conceptual distributions that English-speaking people invoke from the phrases "damage output" and "optimization style" in the context of a given larger piece of writing,
  • the process by which a player interacts with a fight through a combat style, and
  • the existence of people whose experience differs substantially based on the optimization style a combat style presents, even with the damage output curve held constant.

I still welcome such a person to give feedback, but if they state a disagreement with me along those lines, I will attempt to resolve it by presentation of facts because it is a disagreement about facts. "Agree to disagree" isn't a valid resolution to a disagreement about facts.

empty frigate
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I feel this isnt the place to argue about stuff like this. This current iteration of discourse isnt feedback for jagex.

terse vale
# true nimbus Was reading observation 1 here and my beta rotations were going a bit different....

While I have concerns with snipe, I think it functions to build adrenaline instead of spending it, encouraging you to focus on piercing priority to do damage with Snipe instead of spending adrenaline with Snap. The end result being that you have built adrenaline with piercing and Snipe

Snipe is a basic in the live game, but it's adrenaline-neutral in the beta. Its high damage output in the beta is partly justified by sacrificing the adrenaline building aspect, and partly by having to prioritize Piercing Shot in order to get Snipe more often.

I didn't have too much trouble with gaining levels by fighting single target enemies. ... If we get more early game bosses like the new Seeker boss, then those could also be f2p and not require aoe. Aoe doesn't have too many interesting interactions in my experience and it could be dangerous to use during early levels anyway. Hard for me to complain about aoe but the experience with mole is a good note

Yeah, the feedback isn't "AOE needs to be really early for levelling purposes", it's "if a fight asks a player to do something, their character had better have the tools available for the player to do that thing on every eligible style, without telling the player to grind levels / gear to a point of starting to outgrow the fight". (I do think AOE needs to be available eventually for levelling / Slayer, but the point where that becomes a real issue is after bosses start presenting adds anyway.) AOE is simply an example of that which comes up very jarringly at the Giant Mole.

My example Ranged ability set doesn't devote that many buttons to AOE, in part because chinchompas and Locate exist; it's just Bombardment, Corruption Shot, and letting Ricochet interact with Bombardment. But I pushed Bombardment earlier in the levelling process to make it available before bossing starts up, and I gave it some interactions to make it less boring to use at high levels.

empty frigate
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Can we take it to an actual channel like general?

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Or rs3 chat?

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If writing another dissertation. My answer is "ok".

indigo sun
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@terse vale hasn't said anything I disagree with. I think they're coming about this style based combat too strictly. especially at beta, phase.

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I've seen the dev's do combat, They ain't cooking yet, but I'm glad they're trying to remove the skill issue.

terse vale
# true nimbus Generally agree on observation 2 (except the part about keeping non-identity abi...

Generally agree on observation 2 (except the part about keeping non-identity abilities or non-functional ones but worth talking about each one individually)

I'm not sure where you're getting anything regarding abilities that don't contribute to a style's identity or gameplay. Could you point out what gives you that impression?

Jagex seems to be trying to reduce the button count of styles (to reduce the necessary keybinds and make styles less intimidating to newer players), so I kept the amount of buttons fairly low. Where I added abilities back in compared to the beta, it was often to rework an unlockable rather than deleting it entirely (and thus annoy the players who invested their time into the unlock).

though I don't think Splinter could add much since it's meant to complete the style, more so than add more hit counting on top of bolg and wen arrows. However it could have synergy with the hit counting identity. We could have it function as a beginner bolg that doesn't have a spec or we could have beginner bolg somewhere else and have Splinter add 2 hits to bolg procs instead of 1.

It really depends where Jagex wants to take the style as a whole; abilities can't really be designed in isolation since their interactions and the overall progression are pretty significant to a style. (Which is why I presented a whole ability set as my example, not just the abilities I wanted to make specific suggestions on.) Both of the options you listed are potentially good!

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I do like range being generally deterministic but I'm not fully sure if hit counting counts as deterministic. There is also an element of skill expression missed here. For example, Deathspore arrows being rng means that you won't get them every time yes, so it adds pressure when you have to focus on fixing your bolg stacks after you get your deathspore. I occasionally like this rng in range but not with deathspores specifically.

Yes, deathspore arrows are the one nondeterministic arrow type in current Ranged, since they count RNG crits rather than deterministic hits. They would have to be reworked in order to make arrows totally deterministic as a Ranged substyle. (As would Incendiary Shot. And Relentless would need a sidegrade or to be obsoleted, since perks affect all styles they apply to.)

I would like total determinism to appear somewhere in a way that doesn't get strongly discouraged by being obsolete, because there's a certain kind of fun that can only come from elaborate exact spreadsheets without any procs and RuneScape currently doesn't offer that in any style's endgame. I've suggested that it go on Ranged because out of the current styles' toolkits, Ranged has the best support for the sorts of rotation considerations that make elaborate spreadsheeting fun. (Necromancy is closest, since its only RNG procs are its top-end rings and Relentless, but it's not up for major changes right now.) But I'm open to having different styles be totally deterministic instead, as long as there's at least one deterministic option with real depth.

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When you have a 99% chance of getting 5 deathspores after rapid grico, there shouldn't be a situation where it fails. Lets just say that I think fixing your bolg procs should be consistently incosistent, instead of happening 1% of the time. Rapid deathspore grico incend should just be a combo and happen every time.

You raise a good point about proc chances: a chance that's too high (or too low) gets treated as a sure thing, which in turn makes the other outcome annoying. What proc chance range is best probably depends on whether the procs are immediate-use (e.g. Magic cooldown resets), stacking gradual spend (e.g. crit adrenaline), or stacking spend-all (e.g. current deathspores).

I've seen a lot of proc systems that stick to 50/50 for that reason, and good results from other systems that used up to 35% - 65% ranges. When a Magic beta comes around, I'd want to see players talk about their experiences with Temporal Anomaly (20% limit) and the Song of Destruction passive set bonus (30% chance).

terse vale
# true nimbus Though some ideas probably miss the design intention and I imagine there's a des...

Possibly! Part of the reason I presented my example ability set as an example, not as "definitely do this for the next beta round", is because we don't fully know Jagex's design intentions and vision. Of course I'd love to see it in the next beta round, I wrote it down because I think it would be fun to play, but maybe Jagex has other ideas.

That's also part of why I try to show my reasoning behind suggestions; even if the suggestion in itself isn't something Jagex can do or wants to do, I want it to be easy for them to understand the spirit of the suggestions and perhaps address the underlying problems in a different way.

hybrid moon
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I’ve said this before but I do have a few concerns regarding the combat level expansion:

  1. Players between 99 and 120 who are skilled enough to use the berserker-type auras will end up dealing less damage after the update, not even mentioning needing to relearn their combat styles.
  2. The game has limited viable training spots, which will all be completely filled with AFKers trying to get 8x as much XP as they had needed before.
  3. Future boss design being balanced around 120 stats will make certain unlocks, like the Master Quest Cape, far more difficult and require far more stats to acquire.

2 can be fixed pretty easily by adding instanced combat encounters with viable XP rates, and 3 is a problem for next decade, but 1 will be an immediate issue without a clear solution.

vale palm
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no solution, just ignore it

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unironically

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getting combat exp is very fast, it isn't really much of an issue

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it's a temporary drawback to a longterm massive improvement in quality of gameplay

empty frigate
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melee and mage goes brrrr with exp gains

hybrid moon
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But issue #2 stands. Basically every viable training spot will be filled for the foreseeable future. You could make an argument that the 99 Slayer player-owned dungeon is an instanced training spot but I feel like it’s a lot of setup to ask players to go through for private training locations.

vale palm
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#2 sounds like a non-issue, considering we're trying to get more players in the game in general

hybrid moon
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I don’t understand what you mean. More players = more crowded training…which I consider a bad thing.

vale palm
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yeah

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that is to say, it's out of scope for being addressed with combat 120s, and would be better addressed in a more general sense, like "this game needs more dungeons so midgame+ mobs have more places to be"

hybrid moon
terse vale
# empty frigate I feel this isnt the place to argue about stuff like this. This current iteratio...

Jagex has explicitly stated that they're trying to develop all the combat styles' identities as part of this beta series. Therefore, not only are proposed style identities feedback for Jagex, so is information on what can be a part of a style's identity in the first place - which is exactly what @barren bane and I were discussing. There was no problem in that discussion until Nathan pulled out the "agree to disagree" card in response to a scientific consensus.

Claiming "agree to disagree" in a question of fact is counterproductive to giving Jagex feedback for two reasons:

  1. It falsely implies that "that's just your opinion, bro", telling readers to ignore the evidence presented.
  2. It is logically rude in Peter Suber's original sense, stopping discussion by refusing to engage the objection on its merits and claiming that one's position justifies such a refusal. https://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/rudeness.htm

To rebut the false implication of 1) required me to do philosophy as part of the discourse on what can be a part of a style's identity, which thus still belongs in this thread.

If you were so concerned about keeping this thread on-topic as feedback to Jagex, you should have taken it up with Nathan for throwing a wrench in the discussion, not joined in by claiming "people can agree or disagree" yourself. #1450511863589900410 message

terse vale
# empty frigate If writing another dissertation. My answer is "ok".

If you don't want to read what I wrote, all you had to do is not comment on it. You're the one who chose to jump into an ongoing conversation.

Trying to shame me by calling one Discord message of restoring-the-discussion directed at you a "dissertation", and more broadly to shut the discussion down by:

  • bringing up a different subject in the middle of an ongoing conversation, including forwarding several messages on that other subject;
  • joining in on the "agree to disagree" false implication and logical rudeness;
  • denying the relevance of restoring-the-discussion to the dialogue so as to control the feedback to Jagex; and
  • trying to claim the last word by shaming me as aforementioned;

says a lot about your choices and nothing about the merits of my position.

true nimbus
terse vale
terse vale
terse vale
indigo sun
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I don't even use snipe in the live game, not worth the downtime of 3 seconds.

terse vale
true nimbus
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I probably skimmed through the snipe comment too fast ngl. I do think Snipe has issues as a high level addition but in the early game, it comes off as an adrenaline building teaching tool to me

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Will probably read observation 3 today

vale palm
# terse vale The alternative to combat 120s isn't "maintain the status quo", it's "remove aur...

Because auras are an unmistakeably p2w system created to keep players subscribed, and its mechanics indicate as such. Making them unlimited doesn't change this, as then any player would ask "why does this random item exist that I can just use infinitely for no cost whatsoever for a massive buff" and the answer is "it used to be p2w". It's a system that only makes sense when you have to pay for it, and the game is better off with them removed.

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Keeping them in-game but unlimited with zero inconvenience of usage just leaves their scar on the game, and doesn't really make for any remotely interesting gameplay

terse vale
vale palm
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Making them earnable in-game doesn't really change much

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it didn't make zerk auras feel any less "this used to be p2w"

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It's a common sentiment nowadays that there are too many buffs to keep track of in this game, auras are the primest of prime candidates to just nuke entirely as they serve little to no gameplay purpose and are a relic of an era this game is trying to move past

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I'd much rather "aura-like" buffs (basically the same as most buffs in this game) were given by, say, summoning familiars.

timid olive
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we don't need mah/zerk auras anymore with 120, and NOT having those auras for necromancy gave it more variety than they had

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the other issue with auras is the timer system, people don't like them

terse vale
# vale palm getting combat exp is very fast, it isn't really much of an issue

You might consider combat XP to be very fast, but for a newer or prospective player, that 8x increase in required combat XP is massive. A 99 is already a big deal to a player who doesn't have efficient setups, doesn't enjoy efficient play, doesn't have a lot of AFK time, or is used to games that give you 2 weeks to level followed by 2 years at endgame level cap. Grindiness is a very common prospective player question, and making "you have to get to 120 in a combat style to have maximum effectiveness" part of the answer is going to put a permanent damper on new player recruitment and retention.

terse vale
vale palm
timid olive
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you don't need 99s to start playing OSRS, you don't need them to start playing RS3, and in terms of XP rates 120 is the new 99 for a lot of skills in RS3 with a modestly high chance of the rates going up with more powercreep in this stuff.

terse vale
# vale palm It's a common sentiment nowadays that there are too many buffs to keep track of ...

they serve little to no gameplay purpose and are a relic of an era this game is trying to move past

You don't think there's gameplay purpose or interesting choice in

- a little more damage dealt, no downside (Mahjarrat)
- a lot more damage dealt, but you also take more damage (Zerk series)
- more hit chance, no downside (accuracy series)
- healing off of the damage you do (Vampyrism)
- less damage taken (Aegis)
- extra adrenaline (Inspiration / Invigorate)```

?  (And that's not counting the meme combat auras.)  Because that's the choice that a new player will see, neatly presented in an inventory slot to prompt them to check it when setting up for a fight.  They're not going to see "this used to be P2W" unless you tell them or they go looking for history; there's no "inherent taint" sitting on the slot.

> It's a common sentiment nowadays that there are too many buffs to keep track of in this game

The cognitive load of buff tracking could be equally reduced by converting obscure and/or no-brainer buffs (like the damage boost from the Stone of Jas) to permanent unlocks and having an in-game interface for the remaining temporary buffs.  A lot of the complaints about buff tracking would vanish on the spot if the game itself had a visual checklist where "all filled in" meant "no buffs missing, good to go".

There's no need to throw out the bathwater without checking for any babies in it.
terse vale
terse vale
# vale palm I don't consider this a problem in a game where you aren't supposed to rush to e...

Then Jagex needs to fix the factors pushing players to rush to endgame first; we can't evaluate combat 120s for that context without knowing what it looks like, and doing it in the other order would create a period of pushing new players away right when Jagex should be capitalizing on the news about restoring game integrity.

And we're always going to have newer players wanting to play alongside their veteran friends, as well as an efficiency-driven economy, so unless we get truly radical changes like level sync and rewards for syncing down, there will always be some pressure to rush to endgame. (It would be really cool if Jagex implemented and rewarded level sync, but that's a huge change to ask for.)

vale palm
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there is choice for which aura to choose before going into combat, but there is no reason for auras to exist

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I'm plainly not an advocate for the "fix first remove auras later" approach, because players are already plenty strong as it is. The only reason I want them to go to 120 is because necromancy is 120

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I'd just as well support keeping them at 99 but still deleting auras

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if necromancy is brought down to 99 that is, but that's just weird

fleet wharf
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To me, auras still don't feel like a RuneScape mechanic.

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It's a kind of blanket solution that's overpowered but only somewhat ameliorated by a time gate. But I know that's something most people wouldn't see eye to eye on.

vale palm
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the aura system was designed to leech off the game, adding some shop somewhere where you purchase them for points gained while skilling or some other similar garbage doesn't make them part of the game, the game is much better served with the system deleted and similar buffs being given to some of the vast graveyard of summoning familiars

terse vale
# vale palm there is choice for which aura to choose before going into combat, but there is ...

"No reason for auras to exist" when Vampyrism was a key part of the poison build and is still important to Slayer - both uses that want to use the familiar slot for a different buff - Aegis makes it easier to learn some bosses, ... ? By that logic, there's equally no reason for armour to exist, because it only offers choices within the system it presents. The same goes for every single worn equipment slot.

Presenting problems and systems with which to solve them is just how games work. We accept the game designers creating those things in the hope that the resulting experience of solving the problems will be fun.

fleet wharf
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Realistically I think time gating "power" in the way currently done doesn't amend the problem, but bridges the gap for later use.

As you said, its design theme is very much rooted in encouraging spending so it only adds to the thematic disconnect.

vale palm
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the in-game source and unlimited uses proposal is more for convenience of players and dev time than it is an actual solid proposal for game improvement

fleet wharf
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I think auras have been in the game long enough that quite a lot of what players would consider their norm would become difficult if not impossible by their imminent removal, though what should and shouldn't be permissable is another matter altogether.

I think auras being something that's permanent would be a step in the right direction, but also investigating possible variants within them might be interesting.

vale palm
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auras were not a system made to solve a problem, they were made to give overpowered buffs and to have the game designed with them in mind to create problems that they can be the solutions for

fleet wharf
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Very much so, and it's reflected in their design.

vale palm
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also again, you're talking about specific auras and how they work when my point is there is no reason for them to be auras

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and the reason they were auras and not summoning familiars or something in-game, is so jagex could make money off of them

terse vale
terse vale
vale palm
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sure, I support that

fleet wharf
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No, what I'm saying is a broad philosophical critique rather than a critique of your stance. I also don't agree they should be in the game. I think time gating power, as I said is a poor solution to that—in the context of auras specifically the trickle down effect I referred to in my second comment was that what used to exist as a crutch mechanised and normalised what would be impossible without them.

vale palm
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most of all I want auras removed, because they are not interesting in a way that justifies them being a separate slot when we already have potions food and summoning familiars, the justification for them being a separate slot is that they are paid items

fleet wharf
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And the problem with this is that it's much harder to convince a community to part with power than it is to ask them if they want overpowered items; the step in the right direction would be to remove it, and consolidate aspects that would be interesting.

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Things that are borderline necessary should be questioned and understood whether this is something that's conducive to a healthy gameplay loop or something of an anachronism in the system.

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E.g., thieving chances with some npcs and the qol afforded by auras there, or WC, mining and the ilk.

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I don't think that needs an "aura" I think that needs to simply become base kit, or something akin to it.

vale palm
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I agree

terse vale
# vale palm most of all I want auras removed, because they are not interesting in a way that...

Okay, let's take a concrete example.

I want the old poison build to make a return with a new poison familiar that doesn't also do a lot of healing. This wouldn't be remotely overpowered, since it's only good at high HP poisonable bosses. How do you propose to make this build possible without the Vampyrism aura to feed the damage -> healing -> damage loop, noting that the familiar slot is spoken for by the blood-reaver-replacement so you can't say "replace the effect of a Summoning familiar"?

vale palm
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make it work differently

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there's no reason to be married to how blood reaver used to work for a poison build

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it wasn't that great any way

fleet wharf
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To double check I'm understanding you correctly: you want a way to allow the use of a poison to damage converting familiar, which passively heals you?

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I think that's a solution already afforded to us by things like prayer points. And your point is exactly what I was touching on when I mentioned trickle down effects. Things like this have become entrenched into the system so dismantling it and reconfiguring it would be necessary on a case by case basis, which only complexifies the problem (that's not to say it shouldnt be assessed, but an admission that this is not an easy thing to address).

vale palm
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also, and alternative answer, powder of vampyrism

fleet wharf
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LOL

#

Ah yet another temporarily overpowered but time kept solution.

terse vale
# vale palm there's no reason to be married to how blood reaver used to work for a poison bu...

There absolutely is a reason to be married to how the blood reaver used to work for a poison build, namely the high-frequency familiar interaction of the damage -> healing -> damage loop. For players who really like pet systems interaction (including a lot of salty former FFXIV players), the constant pet interaction was the reason to play the build, not how much damage it did. In fact, I still take a blood reaver to a lot of places where I don't need the healing at all, simply because I find the interactivity fun.

vale palm
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so what you're telling me is that auras as a concept are necessary for your specific build that you like, to exist?

terse vale
vale palm
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it's fine if it doesn't work for everything, I didn't say it would fit like a glove

fleet wharf
vale palm
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anything that does or could rely on auras as a separate slot can simply be changed not to; that's part of removing mtx items, changing the game to heal the scars and potholes left behind by those no longer accessible mtx items

timid olive
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half the stuff in the "poison build" was a bug or went against the main point of the item. Reaver wasn't supposed to apply on-hits: bug. You didn't want to heal a lot, in fact you DIDN'T want to full heal, you only wanted to get as many small heals as you could so you used things like the anti-heal challenge crystal. The crystal was bugged. Poison was changed to no longer reset its timer on hit back with anachronia, cinders got around this: gray area bug/oversight/odd choice.

fleet wharf
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Pseudo complexity is how I see it tbh.

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There's no reason other than "it op doe" to have to charge your totems every week.

timid olive
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And now I read up and apparently the hope/ask is that they not only leave zerk auras in, but make them infinite use and stacking with 120?

terse vale
# fleet wharf I never really used the build as I have an aversion to most meta mentalities, an...

Not quite. Here's how the old poison build worked familiar-wise:

  • Every time you healed your standard body (i.e. not a familiar), the blood reaver would damage its target based off the healing amount. (It still does, in fact.)
  • The blood reaver's damage used to be able to proc poison ticks and God Books.
  • Therefore, if you healed really often, through effects like Vampyrism and Soul Split (and the familiar scrolls if your standard body LP was low enough), you could get extremely frequent poison procs, each of which would do high damage due to using poison-boosting effects (e.g. cinderbanes, Bik arrows).
terse vale
fleet wharf
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I think passively healing from damage should honestly be something part of the standard gameplay loop tbh.

terse vale
# vale palm it's fine if it doesn't work for everything, I didn't say it would fit like a gl...

So you're saying that you're willing to break other players' beloved builds and playstyles, not because their presence affects you in any way but because you consider the aura slot forever tainted?

Because if you're not saying that, cough up a way to make the build work that doesn't suffer from the same "temporary buff" and "time-gated buff" criticisms you levelled against auras.

fleet wharf
#

Though I would also assume that the effects were split in their procs, so that likely also majorly synergise with the effect.

#

I think most auras should become base kit. What's more difficult to answer is things like combat auras which have strong but major effects.

#

Something I've mentioned as a way to reduce the absurdity of pre boss runs (bath, incense, etc) would be to make it something applied to the War's retreat portals themselves.

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Alongside something like that, specifying what "bonus" you would like for that encounter would make sense.

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But then that completely reduces the dimension of the system, which is a problem as it just becomes another stone of Jas buff.

terse vale
# fleet wharf Ah okay. Wouldn't a simple fix for this be then that some kind of synergy occurs...

Not quite, because some players enjoy the way that the hitsplat generation loops through and requires interaction with the familiar, which is why we want the build to return through a new familiar specifically. (The blood reaver was nerfed to not be able to proc poison and God Books because it's also the strongest healing familiar in the game and Jagex wanted to keep it that way, not because the poison-proc effect was in itself overpowered.)

vale palm
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I don't recall leaning on any criticisms of buffs being time gated or temporary, my main point is that they are a tainted system (and offer no gameplay, while having no attachment to anything in the game). Yes, I am completely fine with breaking other players' beloved builds and play styles as a consequence of getting auras out of the game

#

just as I was completely fine with other mtx lovers having their playstyles destroyed

fleet wharf
# terse vale Not quite, because some players enjoy the way that the hitsplat generation loops...

I dont think this is something that comes down to a systemic critique; I do think the synergy is interesting, but strength would obviously decide its use case, and an interaction with other elements would likely be the way it's moderated. If anything the blood reaver familiar's popularity would be interesting to investigate in regards to why and when that level of healing is required, and whether it's a case of being undergeared or the fight itself unfairly damaging the player while engaging with mechanics correctly.

#

My criticism was on buffs being time gated due to it being an implicit admission that it's felt they're overpowered, and that this is simply a way to avoid too many interactions being sustainable.

I would be happy with auras being removed, provided a thorough investigation is done and we identify use cases consistent with player identity and what RuneScape aims to trivialise or rework.

#

A lot of these scaffolded systems have major iterative interactions which have more or less decided how the structure atop of them was designed and built e.g., soul split.

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Some of these are clearly tradition, but separating the tradition that's sustainable from the one that's not is imperative to the game's health and longevity.

terse vale
# fleet wharf I dont think this is something that comes down to a systemic critique; I do thin...

What I'm saying is that there are two player groups that really like the blood reaver:

  1. Players who want a lot of healing, for whom it's worth investigating as you described.

  2. Players who want a lot of familiar interactivity, for whom the healing aspect is merely an avenue to interactivity and investigating the healing power is meaningless. This latter group is a major chunk of the players who want the poison build to return, and the most popular proposal for it is to create a familiar (or change a currently underused one) to sacrifice most of the blood reaver's healing power in exchange for the proc effect. Like, "change the scrolls from healing 1000 LP to healing 50 LP" 20:1 power ratio would make the revived poison build more fun for me, because the relevant part of the scroll effect is that the scroll counts as a standard body heal and therefore procs another hit from the familiar. (And having a smaller heal value would allow the scrolls to fire more often, because part of the familiar AI is that it won't overheal using the scrolls.)

fleet wharf
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It would make sense for the blood reaver synergy to exist, albeit the presence of the vampirism aura complexifies the issue.

In the case of familiars with unique synergies and a desire for layered interactions as you've described it would probably make more sense to make it into the base kit of that summoning familiar or alternatively to group familiars by what element they may be associated with/plane and have effects designed by that to synergise with your proposed effect.

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For example, weak lifesteal would be something provided by it in base form, and it would be something that requires adding to it in some way. Though the issue with such a solution would be that it's a major hurdle to start on before even addressing the aura concern.

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I personally have always been fond of the idea of imbuing elements to some lifeforms in RuneScape to enhance their natural abilities (like Nex). So with the release of Vampyrium a blood reaver being given a blood crystal would be able to compete with the old effect.

terse vale
fleet wharf
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I would love for Jagex to take such a direction with it, as it would certainly foster a player experience that feels far more meaningful and tailored to the player.

terse vale
#

(That example is also nice in that it's the beginner-friendly effect that isn't quest-gated, allowing the players who are most likely to need learning tools to have them.)

terse vale
# fleet wharf Things that are borderline necessary should be questioned and understood whether...

I'm happy to question auras and figure out what healthy gameplay has been built on top of those buffs on a case-by-case basis, and the impacts of different possible ways of handling each aura. As long as that healthy gameplay is retained in a way that doesn't introduce major new problems, I don't even mind doing away with the slot entirely. For example, I would be happy to see a proposal like this for getting rid of auras:

Gathering / training auras: Without a cooldown, the only reason to ever have the skill's aura off is to use another aura instead, so just make the skill aura buffs into permanent effects where gameplay has been built around them. These effects would be earned through the skill's guild or similar NPCs, as levelling benefits, or baked into the skill's success rate calculations. Five-Finger Discount -> special training through the Thieves' Guild, Greenfingers -> POF and Crux Eqal (player's choice) while converting the temporary disease prevention into permanent disease chance reduction (or protecting a patch type not already covered), Tracker -> levelling benefit, Flameproof -> change burn rate calculations, ...

Berserker / accuracy auras: Retune defenses of hard-to-hit bosses to make the auras unnecessary to reach 100% hit chance / damage potential at level 99. Adjust bosses that are too hard to hit for their point in progression (e.g. Rex Matriarchs, Arch-Glacor) while at it. Cap the contribution of base combat skills to stats at 99 (allowing Necromancy to retain its post-99 glyph unlocks) and expect some of the DPS provided by the Berserker auras to be made up for by combat style reworks, then remove the auras. (Higher tiers of Combat Mastery Achievements will temporarily get harder, but this is okay since they gradually get easier as character power is added.)

(continued)

#

Other combat auras: Open War's Grimoire to all players for the purpose of swapping between unlocked combat buffs, just like how it currently allows for swapping between unlocked spellbooks and prayer books at War's Blessing 3. Review each such aura for thematically appropriate and progression-appropriate unlock methods, with Marks of War and Slayer points as fallback options. Penance -> Ectotokens, Equilibrium -> The World Wakes, Aegis -> Defence milestone, ...

Meme auras (e.g. Oddball, Friend in Need): Convert to cosmetic overrides with appropriate unlock methods. (The cosmetic variation of Corruption / Harmony / Salvation could be toggled at a PoH / Fort Forinthry Chapel.)

XP auras (e.g. Wisdom, Jack of Trades): Allow the impact on XP rates from removing these to be absorbed by skill rebalances.

Miscellaneous: Handle on a case-by-case basis. Dedicated Slayer -> Slayer point unlock allowing the player to boost task length on a per-task basis (stacks with Slayer Introspection), Resourceful -> permanent buff utilizing all affected skills (10% bonus retained for red and crystal sandstone, smaller for general gathering), Dwarven Instinct -> permanent buff with less frequent chests as a third "Seren spirit" type, ...

A proposal like this requires a nuanced understanding of the game and consideration for different playstyles, along with a willingness to go over every single aura. There might still be disagreement, but it would be disagreement over the specific nuances of handling each use case.

What I don't like is the super-aggressive "delete all auras without considering the gameplay that's been built on top of them, and screw you if you enjoy something healthy that uses an aura" attitude. Just because they were initially designed to incentivize extended subscription, that doesn't mean there isn't a baby in the bathwater now.

hybrid moon
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I would really like to see aura reworked into Invention. For example Honed on a pickpocketing bag would replace the five-finger discount aura, and Supreme Invigorate could be replaced by making the Ultimatums perk actually work seriously it’s been 3 years since passive ring of vigor and Zuk Capes.
For things that don’t really work well with Invention, like the discussed poison build or skills that already have Honed like Fishing, new or reworked familiars could be implemented. On that last point, familiars like the Granite Lobster or Beaver have such a minimal impact that you can entirely ignore them and still get like 98% experience rates. Those familiar types should be reworked from a “passive level boost” which has extremely marginal impact into an actual percentage buff like the skilling auras.

terse vale
barren bane
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Now I'm having to make myself perfectly clear, stop @'ing me.

indigo sun
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I think they're doing something they feel is necessary for "EOC" to survive in it's current generation, I really hope this isn't just 2011 all over again.

empty frigate
# terse vale If you don't want to read what I wrote, all you had to do is *not comment on it*...

Saying i dont agree isnt a rudeness.

This is an recent updates channel not a debate team. People are allowed to disagree and you dont get to say "my subjective facts cant be disagreed with".

The problem here isnt even really the fact you have a suggestion its specifically the part when you bring up "the human brain" in an updates channel. Like if you tried to stay on topic it wouldnt be a problem.

#

I said what I did to discourage you from responding to me with a text wall. I do hope your feedback, the actual feedback portions do get looked at by the jmods

#

We do know the upcoming update for the beta will look more like the final product. At least closer to what it will be.

rustic storm
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Auras definitly need to go. 120 combats definitly need to be added.

indigo sun
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Hey, I didn't keep my membership going for years to not have every aura they made.

true nimbus
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Hmm, I should probably do some beta stuff today

visual grail
true nimbus
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I mean it kinda feels like a new boss release in the sense that I'm making new rotations ye, I kinda wanaa see if I can get a rootling skip with beta powercreep

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And re-experiencing the early game with the kit that the devs thought out. Having some interesting thoughts on it and enjoying it more than expected (even though I feel the identity is a little lacking, focusing too much on the visual part of it and seemingly leaving out procs)

barren bane
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I know it's been said they've changed the basic CD timing so that you can fire off grico and piercing without relying on the auto for adren, but any other changes at least in regard to procs are unknown.

true nimbus
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They did mention way bigger changes, so it's hard to say

barren bane
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Yeah the last beta was focused on the early game right, the next one he did say it's more complete

true nimbus
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Could mean that any addition that they do add feels fun to everyone. Adds something to the gameplay of how the style functions, the fun part of it

barren bane
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Fingers crossed

#

I think so long as they fill the gaps

#

Make it feel more complete as compared to necro, it'll probably work alright

true nimbus
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I liked bombing the trolls with snap shot but after that the identity wasn't tooo apparent. Kinda going around Snipe

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Hmm I'll probs get on beta rn

true nimbus
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reeeeeeee

visual grail
# true nimbus

Wiki has Pollnivneach Slayer Dungeon ones as weak to arrows

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If you wanna test that Smirkse

true nimbus
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I was testing level 30-40 stuff on Banshees I think

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Now I decidided to go to Mighty Banshees XD

#

I feel like I got 50-55 range in like 10 mins, I dunno why it feels so fast

true nimbus
# true nimbus Finished leveling at troll caves. Now leveling at cows. 13-28 Snipe cd and Deads...

33-36 Bombardment: This could be the point where to move away from single target leveling? Maybe not? When it comes to single target leveling, I think 2 paths are expressed. You either play slow, using only the basic attack, piercing and snipe while ignoring your spender, instead using deadshot whenever you can due to it's short cd OR you continue managing your spender adren instead of building to to 100%, which seems more efficient and feels more smooth imo.

  1. Skipping some levels here and moving from banshees to mighty banshees. Splinter: I decided to stick with my rotation from level 13 and now it feels like a mix of every aspect after 50. Building up adren, spending with snap and sometimes letting autos take over to get adren for Splinter. Felt more worth than deadshot. Often 2-3 shotting mighty banshees with splinter using snap + piercing vs 3-4 shotting without. Though not feeling as much impact from the gameplay as I hoped. Occasionally I did find myself outgrowing Snipe when I chose to hold off on using piercing on a low hp enemy, opting to take advantage of the Splinter buff to get piercing on a full hp enemy. Feels like not enough adren to spend with though.

48-54 Corruption shot: Felt more like a filler ability when didn't have enough adrenaline for spending or anything to deal damage with. Hard to say if aoe leveling is better here.

54-62 Gricoo: Stopped using corruption shot as a filler after 3-hit grico. Things finally started feeling rotationally smooth, similar to level 13, though feeling somewhat unfulfilling for the effort required compared to level 13.

  1. Skipped some levels and moved to Seeker boss. Rapid fire: Rapid fire was a nice priority to add to the rotation but felt like having even 3-hit grico as first priority got the most damage. Felt really solid to fight the Seeker boss at level 70 overall, though the rotation where you use only basics + splinter deadshot was way better than expected, almost similar dps to spender management.
#

Still feeling somewhat a lack of impact with the animations, which is where I usually suggest range (or just bows for now) have a visual theme. I also miss the rotational guidance that the endgame gear of range provides. Rapid fire deadshot, always getting your bolg stacks lined up, etc. Was struggling finding a good rotation, which was somehow more complicated than endgame gear rotations to me, though that is coming from an endgame player

rustic storm
visual grail
rustic storm
visual grail
rustic storm
stone patrol
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Still rather be playing on MY time than some arbitrary timer set by someone else for a video game (in regards to aura CDs)

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I had 3.2m LP when I returned to the game at the start of 2025, so even with me having the majority of auras, it's still shit how much they're hinged on for some content

hybrid moon
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Also it’s just bad design to force players to choose between cosmetics or gameplay benefits in the Loyalty Shop. (Just look at all the memes about choosing gear for stats in certain games.) This is why OSRS puts so much effort into making endgame gear look epic and adding cosmetic kits to further improve the look, they don’t have cosmetic overrides there outside of client-side plugins.

stone patrol
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looks at blorva

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And while it has no cosmetic kits, masori is an excellent design

rustic storm
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Exactly. I want to play on my time. Not using those time gated buffs means i can do just that and not feel like im wasting something if i only want to go half an hour or 45 min.

indigo sun
rustic storm
indigo sun
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aura's are optional, Groups aren't asking you to run high tier aura's if you're inexperienced. There's a lot of game loops to enjoy before endgame group content. Making them 120 tie ins, just limits who gets access to them.

rustic storm
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They are. But they dont feel like it. They are so strong that they may as well be a necesity if you want good rates or damage.
Im tired of feeling like i have to use them.
Tie the silling auras into leveling benifits.
And for combat, 120 are the best way to do it.
No timers, no month long lockouts. Just training like the old days.

indigo sun
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mahjarrat is the only one that offers damage, and it's 5 percent. The same change from 92-95?

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the reckless aura does 10, but you also take more damage as a tradeoff.

terse vale
# indigo sun the reckless aura does 10, but you also take more damage as a tradeoff.

That's not precise in practice, for a few reasons:

  • base damage and accuracy are multiplicative when not at 100% hit chance / damage potential, and Reckless (along with the rest of the Berserker series) boost both individually;
  • Reckless also boosts Ranged level (stacking with overloads), which contributes linearly to base damage and quadratically cubically to accuracy, for a cubic quartic impact on final damage when not at 100% hit chance / damage potential;
  • increased damage output can result in skipping mechanics entirely, which depending on the boss can result in eliminating large and/or high-incoming-damage sections of a fight;
  • the Defense drain is applied before overloads, making it a smaller percentage than stated in practice; and
  • many bosses do comparatively little damage once learned well, to the point that a sufficiently skilled player will simply absorb the extra damage without any change in their defensive and Soul Split use because they were overhealing without the aura.

Whether Berserker-series auras are a good or bad choice really depends on the player, their character progression, and the fight in question.

indigo sun
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I didn't know that 4th one.

terse vale
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yeah it's an obscure one, to the point that I went and checked in-game to be sure

hybrid moon
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On the other hand the level multiplier is applied after overloads for a massive increase. And accuracy is actually cubic not quadratic, so the total scaling is quartic (4th power).

terse vale
hybrid moon
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On leagues when your defense was boosted to 255 with the elder god book, you would get something like 30,000 base Armor stat which should make you nigh-unhittable. However, it would instead underflow the 16000ish combat number calculation to 1 base Armor and make you incredibly easy to hit LOL.

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Cubic boosts stronk

terse vale
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LOL

terse vale
# indigo sun mahjarrat is the only one that offers damage, and it's 5 percent. The same chang...

Equilibrium also directly offers damage below 24% crit chance (at level 90+, higher crit chance threshold at lower level), particularly to Necromancy which doesn't lose adrenaline to not getting crits.

On top of that, combat auras that don't directly offer damage output tend to indirectly offer damage output or even outright clearability of a fight, because they enable the player to spend less inventory space and adrenaline on food / prayer (Vampyrism / Aegis / Penance / Reverence), gain more adrenaline (Inspiration / Invigorate), or survive with poorer defensive play (Aegis for big hits, Vampyrism for chip damage).

You're right that players who keep on top of dailies tend to have plenty of aura resets unless they mostly burn them doing the same few aura-expected things, but that's a patch over @rustic storm 's equally correct observation that aura buffs have become strongly expected (both through content designed around them and through the economy forcing non-irons to compete with the meta or be locked out of sales).

Jagex has made it pretty clear that they don't want players to feel locked out of doing content due to an aura being on cooldown, but there are lots of possible ways to address that on a case-by-case basis: remove the aura cooldown, move the buff to be obtained somewhere else, or rebalance the content.

indigo sun
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I don't do content with folks that require me to be using BIS gear, If anyone with a blood dyed t95 weapon says anything about my gear, I leave. The ultra wealthy can stay amongst themselves farming kills at break neck speeds.

indigo sun
rustic storm
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My ideal situation would be auras being removed and the buffs they gave being worked into leveling benifits for skilling auras.
120 combats for zerk/accuracy auras, ect

rustic storm
hybrid moon
hybrid moon
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(Fortunately I’ve never had a toxic party but I also barely touch group bosses so)

terse vale
# indigo sun I don't do content with folks that require me to be using BIS gear, If anyone wi...

You're absolutely welcome to play in whatever gear and consumables you please (so long as you're not trying to get into a group without meeting its requirements), but even players who ignore the meta are affected by it economically and in content balancing. The prices of all your gear and consumables are driven by what the meta players are willing to pay, while the drop rates of uniques and the value of commons are driven by the players who get the most kills - which means either the fastest kills or AFK methods.

indigo sun
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I mean, I'm eating blue blubbers, and super sara-brews with a spice amulet. all of which I harvest on my own. There are alot of game loops that don't require you to interact with the community at all outside of the dungeon.

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the average player isn't in a clan, doing regular boss events. Not like the old days when gwd1 masses were rampant.

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it's mostly dedicated players, achievement farming, collection logging.

hybrid moon
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In some places like Vorago or Nex AoD you’re kinda trolling your hit chance if you’re not using elders, but for example Solak has tissue paper Defense so regular overloads will only lose you about 1% base damage compared to elders.

indigo sun
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We've got a lot of instance based bosses now in runescape, smaller teams, really rare items. They're t95's.

Alot of "massable" bosses, are no longer viable. last boss that they intended to be massed, aside from the beholder was Glacor, who's 95's were locked behind hardmode.

hybrid moon
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Aurelle I’m curious, is your PFP Jace the Planeswalker?

indigo sun
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atleast, I would hope, that was everyone's goal.

terse vale
terse vale
indigo sun
hybrid moon
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It is true that the t92 armor degradation is prohibitively expensive; Etecto, Esiren, and Melee TMW each cost about 4x an EoF to run. I only use my ET for group content; when I’m chilling at NM Kerapac I’m using unaugmented Sliske XD

terse vale
hybrid moon
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Yeah Rexes are only reasonable if you have completed Extinction (an “endgame” quest) for the Necklace of Salamancy and are also on a Dinosaur slayer task.

terse vale
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Yup, and we didn't even have the Necklace of Salamancy when they released!

terse vale
terse vale
# indigo sun Ah yes, the employed and entertained by other games.

You say that like it's a bad thing, or an audience Jagex shouldn't cater to. But "you have to devote your life to this game in order to enjoy it" is a pretty terrible pitch to prospective players, especially for an MMO that is looking to grow its playerbase in order to sustain itself off subscription fees.

indigo sun
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as an already maxxed out player, with various 100's to 120's. I have time to play other games, and reap the rewards of having a decade old account. So I'm a bit skewed.

terse vale
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Those long-term rewards of character progression are very much a part of RuneScape, so go on playing your way! But we'll need a good experience for new and returning players too.

urban wind
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i'm trying to log in for the new update but i can't figure out how to not log in to the beta, does anyone know how i get back to the main game?

hybrid moon
urban wind
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thank you!

mellow frigate
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man this roadmap has got me more excited for rs3 than I have been in a long time

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🥳

vale palm
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auras confirmed removed I have won

rustic storm
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Weeeew!

hybrid moon
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One incredibly annoying thing is the action bar limit on F2P worlds. It happens that two of my "permanent bars" that I use for all 4 styles (defensive abilities, prayer flicks, etc) are on bar 16 and 18, which means whenever I hop to a F2P world for an event or something, it swaps those bars to bars 1 and 2 since you can only access bars 1-12 or so on free worlds.

terse vale
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I'd like more action bars and more room to display action bars in general, for the sake of having "cooldown bars" (action bars optimized for one's eyes to ease cooldown and proc tracking, separate from the keybound action bars optimized to be comfortable to hit for long periods)

true nimbus
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Powercreep actually craazy, got the rootling skip even with 1 gcd leeway

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Then again, I keep saying I love bolg and making this rotation on beta was mega fun

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Did this today, beta still has old UI

unborn escarp
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And the members only bars for members only primary bar stuff

true nimbus
spring thistle
true nimbus
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It's some pretty simple design, just binding keyboard keys to ability pictures. Found it through streamers on Github I think

spring thistle
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Oooh so it's like a timeline of the moves you're using really? That's neat

true nimbus
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Mhm in real time, though there's some issues like haven't found a way to use it with hybrid

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and I think I forgot to put a snap shot picture in

terse vale
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Oh you have the ability tracker! That's something I would like to see as a plugin (or as native functionality), both to make content creation easier and because tying it directly to the game makes it much easier to support hybridding and avoid intrusive workarounds. (The original ability tracker was essentially a keylogger that had to be told which keybinds corresponded to which abilities to display, and, well...)

vale palm
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I think that's it

hybrid moon
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One big thing: when using Temporal Anomaly, when it resets the CD of a burn ability, please detonate the burn like if it was a wand spec reset. It's stupid to have to check the boss's debuff bar "did it reset with wand so I use the burn immediately, or did it reset with TA so I wait for the burn to expire and use it then?"

vale palm
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surely the spam of identical hits should tip you off

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regardless though temporal anomaly should have a noticeable sound and unique visual indicator

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if you didn't know, temporal anomaly and roa use the exact same visual indicator