#Arbiter’s Lucerne: A Weapon Concept that turns Defence into Offence

18 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

hoary acorn
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The primary objectives behind this weapon are to enable and give value to underutilized defensive gear (like justiciar), open up design space for future defensive gear rewards, and encourage future group PvM encounters designed with a dedicated tank role in mind.

By using the justiciar formula for damage reduction, this weapon turns each percent of damage reduction into additional attack and strength for the weapon (1% DR = +5 attack & +5 strength)

I made multiple slides that go into greater detail, but I can't seem to post the images, so I'll link my post on Reddit instead. I'd love for some feedback!

https://www.reddit.com/r/2007scape/comments/1rvcv4x/arbiters_lucerne_a_weapon_concept_that_turns/

jolly egret
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I mean its a cool concept but i would highly question if this would actually ever see any use. With your proposed calcs its still oftentimes more than 10% worse dps than the BiS option and people will just not wear that. Id argue that even with only 2-5% dps difference most people still wouldnt. I feel like with how efficiency minded people are nowadays its just a basically unsolvable problem unless they make content where you literally have to wear def armor to have a good chance at completing it

hoary acorn
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So that was definitely an intention of mine. I don't think the best DPS should also have the best defensive stats with melee reduction. That being said, I understand what you're saying.

The aim was to be close to on par with other t80 weapons like rapier/fang/inquisitor mace. The thing is, this also leaves room for growth in the future with higher level defensive gear, which improves the strength of this weapon, bringing more value to Justiciar, and carving a path for encounters to be designed with a tank role in mind.

Also that spec was not calculated in the DPS examples. That spec has the potential to hit big, but it does time time to build-up. It would work best in longer encounters where you take a lot of damage.

I think it gives Justiciar and tank set-ups more opportunity to have a purpose in the game.

celest ravine
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If defence is supposed to be viable then i'd rather see they make something where a defence setup is good because it's fun to tank, take aggro or block damage for the rest of your team (like it is in other games). And that it is time-efficient to do so. If your way of making defence viable and fun is to just make defence setups deal more dmg, and have them compete with regular setups, then you haven't really made a defensive setup viable in a unique way that makes you feel like the tank of the team. You've turned it into yet another dps-setup where you take less dmg.

hoary acorn
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So that's a fair argument, and I don't necessarily disagree. My only rebuttal is how do we do that exactly?

Take Bandos for example. It's one of the few PvM encounters where if you're there as a group, someone will be doing a dedicated tank role, and it sucks. Tanking all the damage, eating up resources, not doing enough DPS to compete for KC—it's all kind of a drag. Sure you could max out with BiS tank gear, but you'll never get kill credit for that.

Now that isn't the best example because that's almost 20 year old content, but it's one of the best examples we have as far as what a dedicated tank scenario looks like. I agree, that a tank should be able to do more than just damage soak, and so unique mechanics to enable that would be ideal.

But that still leaves us with a problem: we have all this underutilized tank equipment—justiciar, elysian, dragonfire shield, echo boots, etc.—how can we give them more value and utility without overstepping the max DPS set-usps in the game. THAT'S the primary objective of this weapon's design, not necessarily the encounters it will be used for, because that would have to primarily be from future designed content.

trim birch
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The Dinh’s bulwark already scales offense with your defense stats.

hoary acorn
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How about you read something other than the title before giving an opinion on something, because my suggestion does not do what the bulwark does.

trim birch
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I did read it

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I also looked at your post (kinda rude to make others go track down your homework instead of posting it here) and your graphs. It would functionally do the same thing but be even more niche if you tie it to damage reduction.

hoary acorn
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You obviously didn't read it, because I literally stated it wasn't letting me post photos. You also didn't have to track anything down, because I provided a direct link to my post. What a ridiculous statement.

It also wouldn't be "more niche." It would be "more viable" because it would allow comparable damage output comparable to other T80 weapons in max set-ups. All the information was there, you just had to READ it.

boreal tartan
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so does it only work when u also have full justiciar?

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im not a huge fan of guaranteed damage but atleast its a conditional unlike voidwaker which just always has guaranteed dmg for free

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if there was a way to lose the stored dmg before speccing (eg a counter to it, or if u misplay) that might be even better. or probably even just simply drains overtime too

keen ferry
trim birch
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All you said was the damage scaling formula, but not any base stats, attack styles, attack speed, or anything else relevant.

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Overall this weapon wouldn’t do anything to encourage a dedicated tank role, and we can see that with the Dinh’s bulwark. On top of the fact that most encounters are single-combat, the ones where a single player can choose to “tank” are even more limited. On top of that, choosing to use something other than the Dinh’s bulwark or Elysian Spirit shield would just reduce their efficacy as a “tank.” On top of that, as has already been mentioned, if it has lower damage than existing gear, it just won’t be used (and if it has more damage, it will be way too strong given that you’re already wearing defensive gear and gaining advantage from that).

Finally, based on your description, the performance of this weapon is entirely tied to wearing the full justiciar set right now, which means it’s completely useless on slayer tasks as well, and also requires a full set of armor from a raid to even have remotely decent stats.