Realmstrikes change

[hardy moth]

Realmstrikes damage output in pvp is now 20% less. Wondering what the reason is, over performing? New endgame damage skills in future? This nerf is also applied to RS2?

[cyan kettle]

Yeah, for a skill that easily zeroes out with Golems Fortitude nerfing it seems stupid.

RS 2 is also affected

[glacial inlet]

I thought nobody consider realmstrikes as an OP skill. Don't know why it get nerfed 🤔

[mortal flower]

"one shot meta"

[glacial inlet]

The one shot thing for realmstrikes is because of an OP augment which has nerfed

[brisk sierra]

For PVP, even in a place where defense is lowered adding health to counteract and give more place to M2 skills, M1 skills still get on top simply because of consistency of dmg between the defenses deity and a Heretic.

In one hand, Heretic might have low defense (i'm only accounting for base stats, not gear), so a M2 skill would work on it. But also would an M1

On the other hand, Deity has a lot of defensive capabilities (again, only counting base stats, even if it can get all the other gear), so even with the defenses reduced % wise. M2 will deal significatly less dmg than an M1 skill would

If people make M1 skills one-shot (almost) everything (Ara Vesta, SS, BP, Sortie, ...), why even bother using M2 skills?

Either way, if this change makes it to life, we will just continue to use M1 skills to one-shot and continue with this meta 'till the end of it

It sucks, but whatever

[hardy moth]

Not sure what your saying so I'll try add up. You told to not use the almost only high damage skill for melee in the game and replace it by broken M1 magic skills?

[livid yarrow]

I'm no RS, but I have never heard of people struggling against realmstrikes in pvp

The nerf to it was really surprising

[brisk sierra]

I said that in PvP, in paper, M2 skills/spells should dominate, but they don't, so nerfing and M2 spell leaves the M1 spell meta to continue

[hardy moth]

Alright.

[grizzled radish]

While I don't think this nerf is that bad to Realmstrikes (it's only a nerf to M2, not M1, so it works out to be less than a 20% damage reduction) I also don't really see a reason for Realmstrikes to be nerfed when other 1-shot mage spells exist and are being left untouched.

Edit: it is an M1 nerf, Odie's terminology confused me

Realmstrikes's meager M1 of only 0.75 leaves it faltering pretty quickly against anyone with decent defense.

[elfin crescent]

i agree.. it is more a raid nerf as strikes is way too unreliable in pvp

[grizzled radish]

Its only a PvP nerf, PvE Realmstrikes's M1 is staying the same

[brisk sierra]

Maybe if more insight was given at the moment of changing something we would know what made them think that that change would be needed

[tiny ocean]

Yeah, a bit odd. I don't mind it since I only used realmstrikes in PVP if I knew the person was relatively new to t10. Once they're geared and have some ascensions it's not worth it unless you proc a defense debuff.

[real widget]

It’s still a challenging skill cause with all the debuf immunity items that are needed in PvP it is a challenge to slot RR gear to prevent the 1/5 downside of strikes

[marsh dagger]

There's also a 15% chance to miss.
This can make me miss for 6 times in a row.

[elfin crescent]

still can't get into my head that the two things are unrelated now 😅

[elfin crescent]

been there

[hardy moth]

English is not my first language so maybe I don't understand it well. But penetration is what we call M1 right?

[brisk sierra]

Yes

[fathom pewter]

Sortie in only midrange M1 these days lol

Compared to skills being released across deity, Gilga, Beo, heretic celestials

If data shows that realm strikes is used a lot in PvP, it could be because a lot of players don't intuitively understand the penetration issue, and expect it to always be the best performing skill like in pve

Sooo let's do extra hidden nerf for pvp YES

Is the description updated? "May not work so well against players"

[hardy moth]

This means M1 is nerfed not M2 right?

[brisk sierra]

Yes, it has even less penetration

So you deal even 0s more easily

[hardy moth]

@grizzled radish it has less M1😅

You get zeroed very easily then

[grizzled radish]

Oh, I mixed up what Odie said because M2 is sometimes called the multiplier

Alright yeah then this change is kinda bad and will kill Realmstrikes for PvP 😬

[brisk sierra]

I mean, it was already an M2 skill, so it was seeing less play in later stages of T10/T11

[grizzled radish]

It was still usable T1 with Realmswash

Now it won't be for that either

[hardy moth]

Then we agree on that haha

Maybe Lord @trim rune has something to add here. It would hurt his favourite spec Swash really hard 😅

[grizzled radish]

It's possible the goal was to kill Realmstrikes for PvP, which I guess could be understandable if one of the goals of this patch was to also make Ultima not nearly as good for PvP?

[brisk sierra]

I didn't say it was unusable, I said it received less play as defense stats tend to vary a lot between players

[brisk sierra]

Ara Vesta still can deal lots of DMG in PVP, and as far as we've seen, also BP or other M1 skills

In my experience, I've seen more sortie in RS PvP than Realmstrikes

[grizzled radish]

I have a Swash setup with over 11k attack, and with that Realmstrikes has still been very effective for territory claiming. If second chance kicks in it is next to useless though, so yeah I'll usually swap to either Sortie II or Guarding Strikes III

Realmstrikes really shines against people who build more toward ward than defense.

If this M1 nerf goes through I don't see it even being particularly useful at that

[brisk sierra]

Well, it makes sense since M2 skills benefit more from high att than M1 skills, so it makes sense that with Swash it would have been effective at using Realmstrikes

[tall condor]

Being a swash nerf is the only reasoning I can think of for this change

But as a swash, I gave up on realmstrikes a long time ago for pvp

Build full crit and use the highest m1 skill you have

Even that will zero on the most defensive players after second chance/dc

But just move on to the next fight