Hi again 'Scapers
Over the past few months, we’ve been running a series of betas to give you hands-on access to our planned Combat Modernisation update. Each beta has helped us gather your feedback, make meaningful changes, and significantly improve Combat Modernisation with every iteration.
The Combat Modernisation update was originally scheduled to release next week, but we have decided that, to make sure it launches with the quality you expect, we want to extend our beta tests by one week. This means that the Combat Modernisation update will now launch on the 2nd of March and not on the 23rd of February.
We believe an additional week will capture the majority of remaining feedback, while avoiding a cycle of endless testing that results in the update becoming vapourware.
What are we testing during this current week and what will we use the extra week for?
- This week's focus:
- We want to lock in the feel of each style and resolve any outstanding feedback from previous betas. That includes a main focus on changes to melee, with some tweaks to magic and ranged.
- Next week's focus:
- Next week's update to the beta will be the final few days of the test. This will be largely used to identify and resolve any outstanding bugs and it will be as close to our final go-live update as possible. It will be our final opportunity to iron out any remaining issues before the official launch.
- Note that once the Combat Modernisation update launches, we will continue to support it with regular bug fixes and future improvements. It is not a one and done update that we immediately move away from after launch.
General
The beta has progressed well, and your feedback has been invaluable in shaping where you want combat to go. This iteration strengthens each style and addresses key concerns you've raised.
Adrenaline Clarity
It's clear from your feedback that zero adrenaline abilities didn't quite fit, partially due to the lack of visual feedback from the adrenaline bar staying static, this issue was compounded by the number of zero-adrenaline abilities available, so we're moving a number of abilities out of this bracket and back into 'basics' or 'spenders' but keeping zero costs for a few key abilities that make sense.
Fast Weapons
We have moved all basic attacks to fire every 3 cycles. Originally we explored letting fast weapons attack every 2 cycles, however frequent feedback stated this felt clunky and out of rhythm with the rest of the combat system. As a result we have also removed weapons speeds from their tooltips.
Skill Cape Perks
As part of this upcoming update, Attack, Strength, Ranged, and Magic are being raised to level 120, and we’re planning to add new perks to the 120 skill capes. We’ve been exploring a few ideas, things like QoL-style perks similar to Necromancy, Archaeology, or Thieving capes, or even extensions of the current 99 cape perks, but nothing’s locked in just yet.
So we want to hear from combat-focused players about what you’d actually like to see from these cape effects. One thing we’re really keen to avoid is adding anything that feels mandatory, we don’t want it to shift from “this is a nice bonus” to “I can’t do combat properly until I hit 120.”
Share your ideas for these skill cape perks over on Discord and in the Reddit threads, we’d love to hear what you come up with!
Beyond
It's worth noting that whilst this beta, pending your feedback, largely represents the majority of the Combat Styles Improvements release, there are still further improvements we want to make, and more importantly that you want to see. Some of these, particularly those that clearly need addressing (e.g. Blast diffusion boots need a new effect), will be in next week's beta.
To get ahead of the questions, here is a list of some of the changes not in this current beta iteration that we will be addressing, or are currently Work-in-progress.
- Ability book improvements
- Icon changes (currently WIP).
- Accuracy tweaks to accuracy per level & base npc affinities.
- Splinter arrow changes.
- Fleeting boot changes.
- Blast diffusion boot changes.
- Scare tactics changes.
- Further VFX/animation improvements.
- PvP adjustments / pass.
Even beyond the beta, we'll be continuing to improve combat and, of course, addressing your feedback, whether that is system improvements, visual improvements, or directly combat improvements.
Melee
Style Identity
Melee previously has always had a bit of an identity issue. However we think the addition of Bloodlust and rebalancing in the last beta has lined it up nicely.
Melee is a self-sufficient style that wins through raw numbers. Its abilities are simply stronger than their counterparts in other styles. Whether thats generating more adrenaline, dealing higher base damage, or offering built-in bonus effects. This extra value offsets its core weakness: being forced into close range, and we think this fits the style well!
Ability Modification
Following the last beta, we understand that while you liked the idea of Bloodlust, its execution left some room for improvement. As a result, we've made some changes across the board to make it feel more responsive and more impactful to consume.
Bloodlust now generates from basic abilities, while Rend (formerly Pressing Blow) generates 2 stacks.
This allows for increased choice throughout the fight; reducing the feeling of 'wasting' a global cooldown on a basic attack, when you could be empowering a better ability.
We're further leaning into the power fantasy of a berserker here, ensuring that stacks are generated frequently enough to impact your gameplay, while offering adequate choice.
Pressing Blow
- Renamed: Rend
- Generates 2 Bloodlust stacks
Punish
- Ability → Basic Ability
- Generates 4 Bloodlust stacks → 1 Bloodlust
- No longer generates 20% adrenaline against targets below 50% HP
Chaos Roar
- Ability → Basic Ability
Meteor Strike
- 40% adrenaline cost → 60%
- 6% adrenaline every 0.6s → 4.5% adrenaline every 0.6s
Basic attack
- Bloodlust effect: Removed
Backhand
- Stuns and binds your target for 1.2s → 1.8s
Assault
A lot of bloodlust effects felt like they had application in the late game through minor effects like critical chance, but it left them feeling unimpactful in the early game. As a result we're swapping the assault effect to something that has early application with some niche use cases late game, and also gives melee some much-needed sustain.
- Bloodlust: +15% Critical Strike Chance → Heals you for 275 + 4% of the damage dealt
Hurricane
- Bloodlust: Increased cooldown reduction → deals an additional hit to your target and up to 9 additional enemies (85% AVG)
Flurry
Flurry was odd. On paper Berserk reduction sounds good, but in reality it often did nothing as players wanted to wait for other important buffs to line up. We're moving the effect over to something a little more useful.
- Stuns and binds your main target for 3.6s by default
- Reduces the cooldown of Berserk → each iteration (note: not each hit) extends the duration of Berserk by 0.6s
- Bloodlust: Stuns and Binds your main target for 3.6s → Deals 2% additional damage for every 1% HP you're missing, to a maximum of 50%
Berserk
- Maximum number of Bloodlust stacks are increased by 4 (total: 8). Abilities still consume 4 Bloodlust stacks
- Generates 4 Bloodlust stacks
- Basic attacks and Basic abilities generate 2x Bloodlust stacks
- Now reduces the cooldown of Overpower to 9s
Dismember
- Recast 1 renamed to Slaughter
- Recast 2 renamed to Massacre
Slaughter
Slaughter was lacking in damage slightly, given the removal of its 3x walk. While bleeds are unaffected by Berserk, we've increased its base damage to match live, plus given it a little extra to account for Berserk's changes last beta.
- AVG damage per hit: → 125% per hit
Massacre
"We want this to sit slightly differently as a longer duration bleed: Something that you situationally use during longer encounters. We've increased its overall hit count allowing it to scale slightly better with the Masterwork Spear of Annihilation, and allow you to benefit from bleed boosting effects for longer."
- Hits every 1.2s → 2.4s
- Hit count: 5 → 7
- Damage: 125% → 100%
Ability Additions/Removal
With the introduction of the Hurricane cooldown reduction and some changes to bloodlust, we feel that Melee has enough AoE within Adaptive Strike, Hurricane, Flurry and Meteor Strike. As a result, we've re-removed Quake. We understand the concerns with early game accuracy, which we'll be tackling separately.
Magic
Style Identity
Magic at its core has a lot of utility and a lot of AoE potential. Late game the style develops and opens up options to build around critical strikes; with natural payoffs for more damage, and built-in payoffs to start spamming big abilities, but it also has a sub-theme forming, focussing on the opposite, damage over time, big value abilities.
We're happy with where Magic sits, the AoE, utility, and build focus gives it clear purpose and ways to progress the style.
Ability Modification
Following the removal of Metamorphosis and re-tiering of Combust from basic, players building around Song of Destruction (Roar of Awakening's set effect) had lost a fair bit of power. So we're making some adjustments aimed at improving Magic as a whole, but with specific sights on the burn-build.
Combust
Combust was key to the burn build, so we're returning its basic status, but we're keeping it deliberately powerful and extending its total lifetime to allow more Dragon Breath casts whilst it's active and tweaking how certain effects interact with it.
- Ability → Basic ability.
- Damage down from 30-40 per hit for 10 hits → 27-33 for 10 hits.
- Now hits every 1.2s → 1.8s
Song of Destruction (Roar / Ode)
- Reduced stacks required for bonus damage to activate from 25 → 10
- Increased Bonus damage from stacks from 100% → 300%
- Reduced stacks required for adrenaline generation to activate from 50 → 25
- Increased adrenaline per 0.6s from 0.5 → 1.
Exsanguinate
Last week we tried out a replacement for wrack and ruin in the form of Sanguine Charge; costing HP for reduced Runic Charge cooldown, while we think this was neat, we could see players getting confused around its effectiveness, as well as struggling with a HP cost added to their standard use spell.
Ultimately we think simplicity is best here, we don't think it was needed from a spell that gives a sizeable damage buff, so we're pocketing it for now.
- No longer provides Sanguine Charge at 12 stacks.
- Stacks now increase BASE ability damage for basic abilities
- TLDR: They'll now buff combust
Corruption Blast
- Adrenaline cost 0% → 20%
- Damage increased from 210% avg → 300% avg
Magma Tempest
- Adrenaline cost 25% → 20%
Chain
- Ability → Basic Ability
- Damage increased from 65-75% → 65-80%
- Greater Damage increased from 65-75% → 85-100%
Bug Fixes
- Sonic Wave's Flow no longer gets consumed by non-draining & non-magic abilities.
- Fixed an issue that made adrenaline exceed 100% when using a combination of adrenaline reduction effects.
- Runic Charge is no longer triggered by Revolution.
Ranged
Style Identity
In case you've not been keeping up to date with the beta progress, Ranged's style at its core excels at multi-hitting, peppering enemies with multiple small shots at a time, but getting big payoffs for doing so.
We're happy with how ranged feels on the beta, our changes here aim to just make that feel even better by making certain abilities feel better to use.
Ability Modification
Imbue: Gales
Imbue gales seemed to be a nice addition to range adding some built-in payoff for multihits. However you noted how much time the player spends not attacking and instead activating buffs, so we're moving it from a pure self buff ability to a single hit basic that applies the same effect.
- Ability renamed to 'Galeshot'
- Updated to now deal 100%-120% damage
- Buff renamed to 'Searing Winds'
- Buff now clears on death
Imbue: Shadows
- Buff renamed to 'Shadow Imbued'
- Buff now clears on death
Shadow Tendrils
- Updated to extend 'Shadow Imbued' by 3.6s
Bombardment
"Big explosion good."
- Updated damage from 150%-180% to 220%-260%
Rapid Fire
RuneScape rangers are a little more 'assassin-mobile vehicles of death', than the stand still and aim types. So we're making Rapid Fire have the old fleeting boots effect by default, to embed mobility a little more into the style. (Don't worry we will be updating fleetings to get a different effect)
- Updated adrenaline cost from 20% -> 25%
- Updated to no longer interrupt channel when moving
Corruption Shot
- Updated initial damage from 60%-80% → 90%-110% (300% AD avg total)
- Updated adrenaline cost from 0% -> 20%
Decimation
Functionally chinchompas worked pretty much identically to decimation which didn't really make sense for them, we're making chins' align more with their explosive nature, splashing enemies nearby in a fiery inferno (and bits of rodent), while making decimation a little better at hitting targets that are away from each other.
- Updated 'Locate' special attack's target count from 9 -> 5
- Note: Our plan is: Locate will get extended range allowing it to hit enemies away from the primary target. But the change didn't quite make this beta iteration.
Chinchompas
- Updated to deal 90%-110% splash damage on initial hit against the target
- Updated passive effect name and info
Invention Perks
With all the ability changes over the beta, some perks either fell short of their original power, or lost their associated abilities all together, so we're changing them to line them back up with where we think they should sit, additionally we're reducing the gap between rank 1 and rank 4 for these perks so not hitting a perfect perk feels a little less bad.
Lunging:
- 6% per rank + Movement damage reduction → 10% flat + 3% per rank (13% at rank 1, 22% at rank 4)
- Affects Dismember & Combust.
Energising
Energising has never really had much of a use case, so we're pushing for it to be more applicable in the mid-game by changing up its effect.
- Now grants 3% hit chance + 1% per rank. (4% at rank 1, 7% at rank 4)
Caroming
Caroming's old effect has been moved into the greater versions of the respective abilities, so we're switching up the effect
- Ricochet: Deals 5% + 1% bonus damage per rank (6% at rank 1, 9% at rank 4)
- Applies as bonus damage on-hit (e.g. a 7 Hit Greater ricochet at rank 4, will gain total 63% Ability Damage as bonus damage)
- Chain: Copied ability damage reduction reduced by 5% + 5% per rank (10% at rank 1, 25% at rank 4)
- e.g. Greater chain with rank 4 caroming will reduce the follow-up ability by 25% instead of 50%.
How do I join?
Ready to give the Beta a try? Here’s how:
- Jagex Launcher
- Head to the taskbar and close any running instances of the Jagex launcher.
- Click this link.
- The link will load the Jagex launcher then start loading the Beta, logging you in automatically.
- Non Jagex Launcher
- Click this link, then log in as normal.
On first login, your live save is imported into the Beta. You can re-import your save into the Beta once per hour.
Please note that this is a Beta, so not everything shown is guaranteed to make it into the live game. We’ll be working closely with players to refine these updates and bring them to the live game once they’re fully ready!