Combat Update & Thok's Smashing Buffs- This Week In RuneScape

Combat has always been one of the core activities of Runescape. It touches on multiple facets of the game, from bossing and Slayer to questing and all the other challenges in between. With the release of our 4th combat style Necromancy, we've been tweaking how combat functions throughout the game. Now those tweaks have cooked in Beta for the last few months, we're ready to bring them to the live game!

A quick general summary of some of the major changes:

• Combat made more fluid - improvements for the original three combat styles to modernise them closer to Necromancy.
• Clearer tooltips, labels and descriptions to help you understand combat and make decisions in the moment.
• Overhaul of accuracy, so it impacts damage rather than chance to hit, removing splashing from RuneScape. Never miss an Ultimate again!
• Improvements to Critical Strike and the damage ranges of abilities so that you are more consistently in control and less at the mercy of RNG.

Check out our Dev Diary below for more of an overview, or dive into the recent blog to find out more!

Head to the Patch Notes section further down for a full list of the changes!

With the launch of the Combat updates, Thok the (self-proclaimed) mightiest warrior in Gielinor wishes to help you scrawny humans be better warriors, like Thok. To this end, he has convinced War and Death to help him train you!

From today until 23:59 Game Time on March 11th you'll be able to find Thok hanging out at War's Retreat, where he's brought a bundle of buffs to help you learn the new ways of combat.

Buffs

To get you smashing and thrashing your way through the bosses and beasties of Gielinor, Thok is generously supplying the following buffs:

• All the way from Daemonheim, we have three mighty metal cauldrons full of homemade Overload Potion! You'll find two of them near the portals and one near Thok himself. Take a sip and get the effects of Elder Overload boosts.*
• If you're already able to craft your own Overload Salve Potions, you'll instead gain the effects of an Elder Overload Salve.*
• Death has graciously agreed to waive all Death Costs for the duration of the event.
• Members will respawn at a nearby hub instead of Death's Office.
• Tier 4 Luck is active throughout the event.* We have no idea how Thok managed this, and to be honest it's a bit scary.
• Sign of Life cooldowns will reset upon entering a Bank area...
• ...Including the Sign granted via the Defence Skill Cape perk!
• Combat Auras will immediately reset their cooldown when they end.
• You will be able to choose your Soul Reaper task and it will credit you double the points. **
• Slayer Masters will offer a choice between two tasks without paying Slayer VIP Tickets.

* These buffs are not available for use by Ironman players.

** Ironman players will receive the choice of Soul Reaper task but not the double points bonus.

Recently we’ve been taking a look at how the Oddments Store functions, and assessing players’ general engagement with the system. With all the information we’ve gleaned, we’ve decided to try out a new spin on the formula. Gone is the static store – instead we’re bringing in rotating stock! We’ve also distilled the store into two available tabs: Consumables and Cosmetics.

The Consumables tab is broken down into two sections, Static, which is the first three spots and will play host to your Keys, Lamps and Stars – these will not be rotating and will always be available. The other section, Daily, will rotate every 24 hours and will also contain useful items such as Cinder Cores/Pulse Cores, Silverhawk Down Dwarven Toolboxes and so on. The prices of these items have not been changed from the live game.

The Cosmetics tab, meanwhile, will contain between 3-5 items and rotate weekly, updating on a Wednesday (there will be an update this week on Wednesday March 6th). This tab will contain cosmetic items from a variety of previous events and sources, including pets and outfits.

We welcome your feedback on this system – how does it feel to you? If there are any items from the older system you would like access to on a regular basis or hope to turn up in this rotating stock, let us know!

Starts March 5th | Ends March 6th | Genie's Wishes

Be careful what you wish for... you might just get it! Find Karima in your chest to make your wish come true – or enhance your next wish for even greater rewards!

Starts March 7th | Ends March 13th | Academy of Heroes

To celebrate the updates to combat, the Academy of Heroes will open their doors once more for an All Star event! Not only will all the bosses make appearances throughout the run, but on the final day all of them will be available to fight! Each boss brings with them three combat overrides, including a brand new one per boss!

Battle your way through Zamorak, Arch Glacor and Croesus to get your hands on the new Chaotic Assault, Azure Hurricane and Fungal Death's Swiftness overrides – or past favourites Chaotic Swiftness & Hurricane, Azure Sunshine & Berserk and Fungal Tendrils & Assault...

Schedule:

March 7th and 8th: Echo of Zamorak and Chaotic Overrides

March 9th and 10th: Echo of Arch-Glacor and Azure Overrides

March 11th and 12th: Echo of Croesus and Fungal Overrides

March 13th: All of the above!

Finding and killing a boss will yield you a full set of overrides – here's a look at the new ones:

Necromancy

• Reduced the rate at which moonstone appears in Thalmunds store.
• Increased the drop rate of moonstones from ritual disturbances.
• Increased the drop rate of moonstones from ghostly implings.
• Thalmund now sells impure essence in its noted form.

Quest Refinement

• Reinstated Betty's 'Hand in the Sand' dialogue option when the quest is complete, so she can sell additional pink dye.

General

• Fixed an issue that caused the Dolorous gloves to make player's character head fully or partially invisible depending on the worn head armor or cosmetic override.

Combat Update

• Damage Potential
• Replaced the 'roll to hit' system with the 'damage potential' system for Melee, Ranged and Magic combat against NPCs.
• Removed a number of hidden buffs that increased your hit chance when using special attacks or ultimate abilities.
• Reduced the minimum hit chance required to damage an NPC under the new system.
• 25% → 1%
• Critical Strikes
• Modernised the 'critical strike' system for Melee, Ranged, and Magic.
• Players now have a base Critical Strike Chance of 10%.
• Players now have a base Critical Strike Damage of 10%, increasing with levels up until 50% at level 90.
• Adjusted the damage of guaranteed critical strike abilities such as Shadow Tendrils and Smoke Tendrils to take into account their extra guaranteed damage.
• Reduced the adrenaline gain from the critical strike buff from Meteor Strike, Incendiary Shot, and Tsunami to account for the player's additional base critical strike chance:
• 10% → 8%
• Damage Hit Cap
• Damage cap: 10,000 → 30,000
• Removed and replaced several effects from items that affected the hit cap or were affected by the hit cap as they were no longer relevant.
• Channeled Abilities
• Added a 'Channel bar' component to the top-level interface that is now displayed when using a channeled ability.
• Removed channeled ability presence from the buff bar.
• Channeled abilities cast out of range will now cause the player to run into range and cast as expected.
• Fixed a number of issues with revolution being slow to act after finishing a channeled ability.
• Action bar Improvements
• Action bar slots will now highlight briefly with a gold outline when interacted with.
• By default, action bar slots will now show their cooldown with a centred timer.
• Note: This feature can be moved to the top right of the ability bar slot or toggled off/on via: Settings → Combat & Action Bar → Action Bar.
• Global cooldown will no longer display the ability cooldown in text form, to remove visual clutter.
• Removed the white flash that occurs at the end of the global cooldown rotation graphic.
• In the future, we would like to add something subtle. But for now, this is to keep flashing relevant to the specifics of abilities as opposed to having your entire action bar light up.
• Action bar slots that have no relation to the global cooldown will no longer display it unnecessarily (e.g. 'Teleport War's Retreat').
• Action bar slots will no longer flash unnecessarily when swapping weapons after having been used in the current play session.
• Reduced the size of key bind information as it was taking up a large amount of real estate when only contextually relevant.
• Shortened modifier keys (e.g. Alt-C → a-C):
• Alt → a
• Ctrl → c
• Shift → s
• Hitsplats
• Hitsplat fade delay: 70 (1.4s) -> 60 (1.2s) client cycles.
• Hitsplats will appear as expected, allowing newer hitsplats to always replace older hitsplats if all slots are full.
• Damage Clarity
• Removed all linked damage rolls such as 'Snapshot', 'Greater Ricochet' & 'Snipe' (with Enchanted Nightmare Gauntlets).
• These abilities' damage will now interact as expected with various damage buffs.
• Removed damage per level granted by boosting Melee (Strength), Ranged and Magic stats.
• Note: Potions will still boost accuracy and damage, however it won't be done via two different systems.
• Ability damage ranges have been rebalanced to account for the loss of DPL (damage per level).
• Removed skewed damage rolling from all abilities, such as 'Dismember', 'Fragmentation shot' and 'Combust'.
• Note: The average damage of these abilities will now be higher than before.

Melee

• Core Systems
• Abilities now respect the true center of NPCs (e.g. using an attack that hits the target and enemies around the target within 1 tile will correctly hunt in a 5x5 area if the NPC is size 3x3).
• Reworked ability priorities to reduce/remove the idea of 'hidden' attacks where mechanics were not correctly synced up with their animations.
• Modified various hit timings to better match the visuals.
• Rewrote all melee abilities to be easier to adjust and work with.
• Note: This is a buff to development and allows faster, more efficient changes going forward.
• Channeled abilities now allow movement while remaining within attack range of the target.
• Updated Damage Ranges
• Slice: AVG 95% → 105%
• Punish: AVG 75% → 85%
• Sever: AVG 112.8% → 120%
• Barge/Greater Barge: AVG 75% → 85%
• Havoc: AVG 94.2% → 110%
• Decimate: AVG 111.8% → 120%
• Bladed Dive: AVG 75% → 85%
• Kick/Backhand: AVG 60% → 70%
• Cleave: AVG 112.8% → 120%
• Chaos Roar: AVG 75% → 95%
• Flurry: AVG 225.6% → 260%
• Greater Flurry: AVG 376.8% → 440%
• Assault: AVG 525.6% → 560%
• Destroy: AVG 451.2% → 520%
• Frenzy: AVG 610% → 730%
• Hurricane: AVG 265% → 285%
• Stomp/Forceful Backhand: AVG 120% → 130%
• Quake: AVG 131.4% → 145%
• Hit Timings
• Tuska's Wrath
• Hit splat is 1 cycle faster.
• Quake
• Hit splat is 1 cycle slower.
• Overpower
• Hit splat is 1 cycle slower.
• Dive / Bladed Dive
• Weaponry is no longer hidden during the dive animation.
• Fury
• Fury now hits once, and is no longer a channeled ability.
• Amended its damage to account for this:
• AVG Damage: 120%
• Increases the Critical Strike chance of your next melee ability by 25%
• Cooldown: 5.4s → 15s.
• Greater Fury
• Increased base damage to correctly act as a Greater variant of Fury.
• AVG damage: 105% → 130%.
• Increases the Critical Strike chance of your next melee ability by 25% → Your next melee ability within 15s is guaranteed to Critically Strike.
• Cooldown: 5.4s → 15s.
• Sever
• Cooldown reduced 15s → 5.4s.
• Shard/Sliver of Leng
• Replaced the old special attack, set effect, and passive effect of the Leng swords (both Tier 85 and 95).
• Added new main-hand passives:
• Frost (T85)
• Attacks have a 5% chance to apply a 'Primordial Ice' stacking buff with each hit.
• Endless Frost (T95)
• Attacks have a 10% chance to apply a 'Primordial Ice' stacking buff with each hit.
• Added new offhand passives
• Chill (T85)
• Attacks have a 1% chance to apply a 'Primordial Ice' stacking buff with each hit. Whenever you apply a 'Primordial Ice' stack gain “Frostblades” for 6s
• Frostblades: Attacks deal an additional 24% of your ability damage stat on-hit.
• Boundless Chill (T95)
• Attacks have a 2% chance to apply a 'Primordial Ice' stacking buff with each hit. Whenever you apply a 'Primordial Ice' stack gain “Frostblades” for 9s
• Frostblades: Attacks deal an additional 24% of your ability damage stat on-hit.
• New 'Icy Tempest' special attack.
• T85 mainhand now also has access to the 'Icy Tempest' special attack
• 30% adrenaline cost reduced by 12% per stack of ''Primordial Ice''
• Hits Primary target for AVG 110% damage
• Hits AOE on all targets around the player for AVG 165% damage (including the primary target)
• Consumes all 'Primordial Ice' stacks when activated.
• Deals an additional 20% damage to enemies for each primordial stack.
• 15s Cooldown.
• 'Primordial Ice' stacks up to 10 times.
• Note: Single target 0 stack special = 275% damage for 30% adrenaline (27% with vigour)
• Note: Single target 1 stack special = 315% damage for 18% adrenaline (15% with vigour)

Ranged

• Updated Damage Ranges
• Piercing Shot: AVG 90% → 100%
• Snipe: AVG 172% → 185%
• Ricochet: AVG 60% → 70%
• Greater Ricochet (additional single target hits): AVG 30% → 35% / 10% → 12.5%
• Demoralise/Binding shot: AVG 60% → 70%
• Dazing Shot/Greater Dazing Shot: AVG 94.2% → 105%
• Needle Strike: AVG 94.2% → 105%
• Snapshot: AVG 265% → 285%
• Tight bindings/Rout: AVG 120% → 130%
• Rapidfire: AVG 451.2% → 560%
• Bombardment: AVG 131% → 140%
• Unload: AVG 610% → 680%
• Deadshot (initial hit): AVG 112.8% → 120%
• Salt the wound: AVG 112.8% → 120%
• Bow of the Last Guardian - Balance by Force/Perfect Equilibrium
• Stored damage AVG 42.5% → 35%
• Base damage AVG 11% → 14%
• Balance by Force (Special Attack): AVG damage 275% → 245%
• Perfect Equilibrium now stores damage before critical strikes roll
• This means you no longer double up on power if the attack that triggers 'PE' rolls a crit.
• Buff icon changes
• Increased buff bar priority so it falls closer to the front of the bar.
• Buff is no longer hidden at 0 stacks to prevent it from 'flickering'.
• Buff is no longer redrawn when the player activates the special, preventing it from shifting position.
• Special attack duration is now shown on a separate buff icon.
• Seren Godbow
• AVG damage: 140% (per shot).
• The initial shot always targets the centre of the NPC.
• Subsequent shots target tiles within a 5x5 area around the centre.
• Note: This means that 5x5 enemies will always be hit 5 times.
• Shadow Tendrils
• Shadow tendrils are now guaranteed to critically strike.
• Hit count: 2-5 → 5.
• Ruby Bolts - Blood Forfeit
• Deals 20% of the target's current health (capped at 10,000/12,000) → Increases the damage of the attack by 25-125% ability damage based on your target's current life points.
• 6s cooldown → 0s cooldown
• Deals 10% of your life points as recoil damage → Deals 5% of your life points as recoil damage
• 5% proc chance, reduced by 1% for each 1m HP your target has → 5% proc chance
• Wen Arrows
• Special abilities now also consume 'Icy Chill'
• Updated the base damage and hit chance increase for each 'Icy Precision' stack
• Threshold abilities - 2% → 3%
• Ultimate abilities - 3% (unchanged)
• Special abilities - 0% → 3%

Magic

• Updated Damage Ranges
• Wrack: AVG 90% → 100%
• Wrack and Ruin: AVG 180% → 200%
• Dragonbreath: AVG 112.8% → 120%
• Chain/Greater Chain: AVG 60% → 70%
• Shock/Impact: AVG 60% → 70%
• Sonic Wave: AVG 94.2% → 105%
• Greater Sonic Wave: AVG 115% → 125%
• Concentrated Blast: AVG 147.6% → 162%
• Greater Concentrated Blast: AVG 160.2% → 168%
• Wild magic: AVG 265% → 280%
• Horror/Deep impact: AVG 120% → 130%
• Detonate: AVG 225% → 250%
• Asphyxiate: AVG 451.2% → 480%
• Magma Tempest: AVG 96% → 220%

Special Attacks

• Special attacks now display their cooldowns and target type in their tooltips.
• Updated and narrowed the damage ranges of most special attacks.

Global Cooldown Abilities

• 'Surge', 'Dive' and 'Escape':
• Can always be cast during global cooldown.
• No longer generate adrenaline.
• Are now classed as 'Abilities' rather than 'Basic Abilities'.

Equilibrium

• Equilibrium Aura has been redesigned.
• Aura Effect: Now increases the player's ability damage stat by 12%, but prevents the player from critically striking.
• Equilibrium Perk:
• Now increases your ability damage stat by 0.5% per rank.
• This will now apply at the base level, increasing damage over time, poison and other effects.
• Has been renamed 'Eruptive'.
• The old name implies positive and negative which no longer fit the new effect.

PvP Damage Effectiveness

• Volley of Souls
• 55%
• Death Grasp
• 40%
• Overpower (Igenous cape)
• 60%
• Omnipower (Igneous cape)
• 65%
• Icy Tempest (Leng swords)
• 70%
• Balance by Force (Bow of the last guardian)
• 70%

Miscellaneous Changes / Bugfixes

• Updated magic's animation priorities.
• This should lead to more fluid animations, and reduce attacks firing whilst hidden/without animations.
• Combat dummies
• Updated 'Max hit' mode to guarantee critical strikes.
• Updated how the player who modifies the mode is stored so that the dummy remembers who they are if they logout.
• The combat dummy at War's Retreat will now correctly play a defend/flinch animation with each hit inflicted.
• Vestments of havoc's increased adrenaline no longer works with non-melee styles.
• Fixed several issues with Magic ability animation priorities.
• Revolution no longer delays the player after casting channeled abilities such as 'Greater Concentrated Blast'.
• Fixed an issue with Guthix's Blessing and the Brief Respite invention perk where the maths was being calculated incorrectly.
• All targets affected by Greater Chain will now benefit from the additional hits granted by Wrack and Ruin's secondary Combust extension buff.
• Auto-attack damage range: 0-100% → 20%-100%.
• Mobile perk / Shadow's Grace no longer cause 'Barge'/'Greater Barge' or 'Bladed Dive' to generate half adrenaline.
• Blood Tendrils
• Cleaned up how self-damage was calculated.
• Hits added through the Spear of Annihilation now get appended to the end of the ability, instead of placing them in front of the double damage initial hit.
• Greater Barge / Barge
• Greater barge no longer forces channeled abilities to attack every four cycles and instead uses the same rate the ability would naturally do.
• Now uses the correct barge animation rather than the kick animation.
• Berserk has been updated to be a multiplicative modifier as opposed to an additive modifier.
• Flurry now deals full damage in both single-target and multi-target scenarios.
• Assault has had the animation updated to better match the ability and hit timings.
• Magma Tempest targeted variant now applies an auto-attack delay when cast to match standard ability casts.
• Wrack and Ruin combust extension effect is now stack-based, benefiting from abilities such as 'Greater Chain' that cause it to hit multiple enemies.
• Metamorphosis has had its damage bonus increased from 62% → 66% (PvP: 31% → 33%).
• Greater Dazing Shot
• Hit Chance Debuff: Now active for the full 4.2s and is not cleared on-attack.
• The hit chance debuff is now reapplied when the ability is used – previously it wouldn't, which meant it could time out.

Quest Bosses

• Increased the base hit chance of all the following bosses to use the standard base hit chances.

As an example 'Bouncer' had a 10 base hit chance when fought with magic; this has been increased to the standard 45.

Community Showcase

Runetube

Scapers' Screenshots

Pink Skirts Player Events

Each week the Pink Skirts put on a selection of fun activities that everyone can join. Here are the main events this week:

Mega Duck Hunt

• Hosted by: Steve20058, Mega Duck & IcyLove
• Date/Time: Friday March 8th, 19:00 Game Time
• World: 39
• Location: Falador Park
• FC: Mega Duck

Skill n Chill

• Hosted by: Princess Rae, Firesteal918 & Spirits of Arianwyn Clan
• Date/Time: Monday March 4th, 03:00 Game Time
• World: 116
• Location: Fort Forinthry

Nex - Angel Of Death

• Hosted by: Pippyspot & Boss Guild
• Date/Time: Friday March 8th, 20:00 Game Time
• World: 88
• Location: God Wars Dungeon - Ancient Prison
• FC: Boss Guild

If these don't take your fancy, take a look at the full events schedule here. There’s sure to be something you’ll enjoy!

Community Spotlight

One Small Adventure

The adventure continues over on the Official Discord – check out the #server-events channel to take part! This week Fast Sc team up with Skilling to perplex you with an enchanting letter puzzle.

Last week people had been tasked with yelling back at the barbarians to see how they liked it.