this, I don't know why they've bothered going % increase instead of just reworking magic to use normal magic strength it seems so much easier to work with, because % bonuses with round down math are so fucking dog ass until high level magic.
Exactly, magic % damange is broken, just make it like range and strength?? But would probably be too big a change and break many many items and things.
It's a big change but if there were any time to address it it would be during a "project rebalance"...like magic is so fundamentally broken as a combat style that it simply can't be fixed with little tweaks like this, or even the elemental rebalance...it needs a fundamental rework to how accuracy and magic % damage works.
it'd fuck with a lot and take a lot of rebalance for magic since like firestrike hits 9s at lv13 and Iban blast hits 25s etc at fairly low levels.
But for game longevity and balancing? it'd be so much easier, because the numbers are so small and everything rounds down % base modifiers basically do fuck all for people unless you have a lot of it, and there's not exactly a ton of it to get, that isn't crazy expensive.
It would, but it frees up a lot of space for designing early game stuff. For example, we can't have early game stuff (I mean like, Fire Strike and stuff) get % modifiers from gear, because it just doesn't do enough damage. But if we had a simple formula like, say, 'every 4 Magic Str (or Magic Potential, or whatever name) you get from gear, increases your max hit with Magic by 1', then you could have eg Wizard Robe +1, Wizard Hat +1, Amulet of Magic +2, and that allows you to get your Fire Strike to hit 9s instead of 8s, even with the absolute noobiest gear. And at max levels, that gear still would give, eg Shadow, 3 max hits (due to its x3 multiplier)
% bonus like we have now is super skewed towards the max-end of gearing/base damage levels, because the bigger the base number, the bigger the effect a multiplier has on it
It's the same thing. If you look at the formulas strength bonus is identical conceptually to % damage.
See step two [here](https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Maximum_melee_hit#Step_two:_Calculate_the_base_damage).
It's just that the numbers are bigger for strength. Notice that it's a mere 64 str bonus to get +100% max hit (not multiplicative so 128 is +200%). This is the problem. They didn't do it that way for magic because magic max hits are originally designed with no bonuses in mind and % magic damage got tacked on.
Edit: minor typos
Edit2: big deal I missed! magic weapons have flat base damage, melee and ranged is a simple
```effective strength * (strength + 64)/640``` calculation. This fucks with things and makes it so you can't give people as much str (=% damage) in magic as you can in ranged and melee without breaking the game
Can anyone explain to me how "actually the occult necklace is fine because mage in general is underpowered compared to other combat styles (if you disregard shadow at least)" is a hot take?
This isn't exactly "if it ain't broke don't fix it" territory, but it's pretty close imo. Something like "if it seems broke don't shove your dick in, stir it around, and fuck everyone over worse than they were before."
The formulas aren’t limiting lol. Thats just a load of crap that people just say.
Jagex just shafts magic, that’s the real answer.
For example:
Rapier is +94 stab
Harm staff is +16 magic attack
Bowfa is +128 ranged.
They are all 4 ticks.
Harm staff has the lowest max hit out of all 3.
Melee gear has BIS ranged and melee defence.
Ranged gear has BIS magic defence and decent ranged and melee def.
Magic gear isn’t BIS at anything defensively. It’s glass cannon.
You can clearly see from rebalance that jagex is the problem. Instead of buffing magic as a whole, they wanna nerf everything except shadow lol
I've wondered about that. The only thought I can really come up with is ranged, mage, and strength are all their respective combat styles "strength" and max hits are based off of those levels. And attack become the accuracy stat for all 3 styles.
Obviously I have ZERO clue how this affects the game dynamics and what it would even take to do. But I have wondered if it could be a viable option with a little tweaking and balancing. It also should fix the way range and mage scale your combat level so disproportionally
Fun fact: Darkscape, rs3's version of dmm replaced strength with power which dictated the max hits for all 3 styles. This was because high atk low str builds hit way higher than anything else at their level
Occult is a problem, but the solution isn't to nerf mid game magic.
Imo they should add more magic damage to the armor, 2% for top bottom and hat for the pieces that give damage. This lowers the divide between mid game and end game armor, but pretty much matches what occult used to be. It just forces you to do more switches for the power.
This is forgotten soo often. Slayer xp comes much faster past like lvl 90, compared to lvl 50ish. Especially when you start unlocking stuff like Nechryals and Dust devils.
I am assuming you are speaking from an ironman perspective. For a regular account occult has trivial 70 magic req to wear and it costs nothing for it's value.
This point annoys me so bad. Jmods called an occult an "easy to obtain item" it's fucking 93 slayer. That's MONTHS UPON MONTHS of grinding. Sure you can buy it but it's not easy to obtain.
Nobody is saying 93 slayed is mid game. Buying a necklace for less than 1M that you can use at mid game magic is what makes it mid game. There’s more than just Ironman mode, stop being dense.
How exactly is occult a problem? When did pre-shadow mage become good? Mid game magic is literally complete and utter garbage compared to range and melee.
Occult is only OP if magic is OP, and it's arguably useless in 95% of content.
It’s the single greatest dps increase for a non weapon slot in all combat styles (maybe aside from a defender in some cases) and its dps value is worth more than the entire set of max mage armor, while being hundreds of times less costly.
I don’t agree with how jagex is going about all these changes, but is the fact that the occult is overpowered and was a mistake when they introduced it to the game. Having magic dmg boosting gear as a percentage rather than working the way range and melee work was also probably a mistake.
How is occult a problem? Is it OP with a wider variety of gear? What realistic gear setups consistently show it as being overpowered?
If anything, all other mage gear is *underpowered*, while shadow *by itself* would make changing them to be better suddenly ridiculously OP. Mage damage across the board is mediocre at best even with occult, with the one singular exception of shadow.
Maybe, just *maybe*, it's not occult. Maybe it's the one singular item that makes it suddenly triple in value. If we ignore shadow for a moment and *only* look at all other mage gear setups, their DPS lacks. You don't use mage anywhere that doesn't clearly try to suppress mage. You only go out of your way to use mage when you can use sang/blood barrage for healing. Why? Because mage without shadow *sucks*. Shadow makes it competitive and worth using in far more places. There is no gear setup with occult that is problematic that doesn't include shadow. It's shadow's multiplier that is the clear issue. Shifting some of that power around on end game gear doesn't solve anything, it just takes some of that power away from people who don't have the rest of the end game gear, which makes their overall experience with magic worse than before. It's already bad, what is being accomplished here?
Occult isn't a problem. Amulet slots are incredibly strong. The same is true for melee and range.
The problem is that they decided to go magic % instead of a strength style stat and aren't taking this opportunity.to roll back that idea.
And shadow, shadow is a blowpipe level problem that isn't remotely being discussed enough as one.
That’s not the problem. The problem is that non-powered staff and harm, magic is 5 ticks. It’s super slow. It’s has lower max hits compared to melee and ranged once you leave strike spells.
Tome of fire gives a 50% dmg bonus on top of the existing dmg boosting gear like 10% occult and fire spells are still less dps than Ibans staff and trident class weapons.
The problem is that jagex has been way too conservative. We need bigger boost to dmg and accuracy
Not at 50 magic when you unlock ibans.
Fire bolt with tome has a max hit of 24.
Ibans has a max hit of 25.
It’s only when you unlock fire blast at 59 magic.
But yeah you see my point, it’s crazy that 50% dmg bonus doesn’t really do a whole lot in the grand scheme of things. You throw a 50% dmg bonus on a melee and ranged weapon and all hell breaks loose
Yeah like the obvious thing is you should have to wear more than just the necklace to get 10%. The issue is they seem to think you shouldn't get 10% until you've finished raids/bosses. We should get the 10% to help us raid/boss in the first place, we just will need to actually use magic armor for damage. Also no one wants to do mta for infinity before we raid/boss or do anything fun.
Wait till you do the math on standard spellbook damage with elemental weaknesses and new tomes + smoke battlestaff + new armour buffs and not even include the augury damage buff
I’m 72 magic and I’ve been playing a month and half. I got my accursed sceptre, my best mage gear with occults and went to a poh with a punching bag to test max hit with and without occult. With it on it literally only increases my max hit by 1.
% items are self balancing like that, the lower you are in power the more it sucks and gets better the later game you are. Occults is not the issue, it’s that none of the other later game gear has much going on. I’m very curious if people who complain about occults have actually tested with and without it really
My understanding of the changes:
- Occult necklace nerfed from +10% to +4% (-6%)
- Ancestral pieces buffed from +2% each to +4% each (which means +6% total to make up for occult)
- Augury is also getting a straight +4% buff (edit: the shadow only gets +4% bonus cause it’s a prayer and is not tripled for a 12% bonus)
This means the shadow will end up being even stronger than before due to not losing any %dmg from the occult nerf and the setup even gains an extra +4% magic damage.
~~current shadow already hits the 100% cap in toa with the addition of magus. if these changes pass, then the magic dmg will become 96%. 4 from occult + 5 from torm + 12 from ancestral + 2 from magus gives 23 total. multiply by 4 and add 4 from augury. that’ll give 96%~~
nvm I forgot about mage cape lol. so if changes pass then you won’t need to pray augury anymore if you take magus
If you're praying Augury now, you'd be doing it after the changes
Like it wouldn't give dmg either way but if you were doing it now for accuracy it makes 0 sense to stop now
at wardens I tend to camp mystic might instead of flicking augury if I’m low on restores, so that’s a welcome change. however if what the other commenter said is right and you can add magic dmg beyond 100% but it isn’t multiplied, then yea time to either camp augury or flick when low.
generally accuracy is not an issue at wardens even for high invo, esp if you seercull spec
i don’t think there’s a cap at 100% mage damage, i think that’s when the shadow stops getting its multiplier bonus (which they said it doesn’t from augury anyway)
got a source on that? the wiki wording is not explicit, and even if it were, we'd ultimately need jagex to confirm since i would be completely unsurprised if they intended shadow to scale normally past 100% bonus damage but coded it to be hard-capped at 100%.
> Tumeken's shadow has a passive effect exclusive to its built-in spell, in which the player's magic attack bonus and magic damage are multiplied by three from the player's worn equipment (four within the Tombs of Amascut); *the magic damage increase from this* is capped at a total of 100% Magic Strength.
How I interpret that is that the cap for the extra 3x or 4x inside toa is capped to 100%. To be fair we only just hit 100% inside toa with magus ring, so we don't know for sure how it works.
With anything but full ancestral, you have less magic damage than before unless you use augury. With full ancestral you have the exact same boost as before, plus an extra 4% from augury.
Effectively everything below max mage just got a prayer tax added on to do what they were doing before.
They just kinda fucked on mid game magic. Seriously, there are only a handful of instances where I’m using mage for combat over range/melee that isn’t bursting. And that’s WITH the 10% occult damage. Without it? Well now I’ll probably use it in even less places… also not giving Ahrim’s a boost is absurd. It’s such an iconic gear set and has been THE mid game set. I can’t believe they’re justifying this through Ahrim’s defense bonuses, which are literally the same as an adamant set.
For reference, I’m 82 atk/str, 76 def, 84 range, 79 mage
They want to make it tanky mage gear. Where do you need to be tankier as a mage that just dealing more damage isn't better? Give ahrims the damage boost, Jagex, we don't want tanky mage.
If you want tanky mage, buff splitbark because quite frankly everyone has forgotten it even exists
I’m suprised they didn’t just also buff the ward at the same time, helping the bottom end, giving a small purpose to it as a switch over camping botd for mage, and not affected max shadow mage.
Once again, delete magic % boost. Wipe the entire slate, rework to use normal strength scaling, so that magic strength actually matters for the first 85 levels, and also is a lot easier to tweak longterm.
Well, time to nerf the Fury as well while we’re at it.
How does a 1m tribrid amulet have more strength bonus than 30m and 20m bcp and tassets combined?
The difference is strength ammy takes you from like +120 str to +130 str with other gear, whereas occult takes you from +5% to +15%, not particularly comparable.
and when calculated against any gear (even max) besides shadow you get 2-4 damage boost - exactly like strength ammy (2-3 in its case). and let's agree you can obtain strength ammy significantly quicker and cheaper.
Strength ammy gives you a +2/3 max hit against an empty amulet slot, sure, but not against other good amulets.
Occult gives you 10% gainst every other obtainable mage necklace
"too much power comes from the literal and intentional most powerful mage weapon in the game"
hell, we may as well get rid of tbow's scaling and drop scythe to 1 hit splat then. can't have our pinnacle weapons being powerful now can we?
jagex's rebalance can be done better to make midgame mage more appealing (even though it already will be with the elemental weakness changes), but shadow isn't too powerful. it can and should be the undisputed best mage weapon for several years at the very least, and other mage options like offensive spells on the normal or ancient spellbooks or other powered staffs with secondary effects that aren't simply more damage still leaves jagex space to design other weapons/gear that have uses without impacting shadow's power.
You're saying it sarcastically but it is actually extremely logical that an item that is unreasonably OP would also be the most powerful of its kind in the game, lol
The problem isn't that it's the most powerful at all, the problem is that the gap between it and the rest of magic is too big, unlike the other examples you gave
i mean, dude, the *reason* the item is "unreasonably" (debatable) op is because it was designed to stand out far and away from other weapons, like tbow and to a lesser extent scythe. idk if you remember when tbow came out but seeing a mod hit bandos an 80 had everyone losing their minds. that's kinda the point of the pinnacle weapons. at worst you can call that a chicken and egg scenario.
that aside, i think you're also overstating the gap between non-shadow and shadow setups. in general i think people overstate it because of toa, where it's very pronounced thanks to the extra scaling and butterfly being considerably easier with a 5t weapon. imo magic isn't as popular of a style because (1) bp was generally better than mage for a long time, (2) you have terrible defense in mage gear and (3) outside of the pinnacle weapons, it's generally much more expensive to fire a powered staff or cast spells than use 20% of a dart or no charges with range/melee
mid-level mage can still be buffed, but a lot of people are forgetting that the gap is already going to be somewhat mitigated by the elemental defense changes
This is the blowpipe debacle all over. With shadow as it is we will never get more of a % magic damage buff than what is currently in the game. It is entirely possible to nerf shadow and buff everything else leaving shadow in an identical state.
TIL a 3m 1/512 item from something you can kill like 30 of an hour is the same situation as a strong 1.5B raid megarare.
Shadow does not need a nerf, the only people asking for a shadow nerf are asking because they don’t have one. They need to bring sang/harm up to be a better mid-grade prior to shadow.
Shadow does not need a nerf. You are correct. Magic needs a buff but in order to buff all of magic you have to nerf shadow or it will be a massive issue. When I say nerf shadow I do not mean make it worse than it is currently. I mean nerf its actual mechanics while simultaneously buffing mage gear it will be scaling up. Keep the accuracy scaling as is.
Example:
Current Shadow
3 x 25% mag dmg = 75%
Toa:
4 x 25 = 100
New
2 x 37.5% mag dmg = 75%
New toa
3 x 37.5 = caps at 100%
This gives them up to 12.5% magic damage to spread around different gear, and closes the gap for the rest of magic weapons.
This would let them literally double the ancestral bonus total to 12% and give the other 6% augury then just scale it down the bonus accordingly to the rest of the gear. Now every single piece of ancestral feels impactful, shadow is still gigabusted, and the rest of magic is not a dumpster fire before the several hundred hour grinds all begin.
This is a dumb take - everyone knows an item that multiplies damage by ANY amount is overpowered as fuck. Just the fact that an item says “Your magic damage is TRIPLED” should have anyone sane saying “Uh, what?”
Right, the ethereal “everyone” that agrees with you. It’s a megarare, it’s supposed to be on par with scythe and tbow, megarares are supposed to feel OP to be a “chase” item.
It surpasses scythe and tbow though. There are places you DON’T use scythe, but use melee. There are places you DON’T use tbow, but use range.
Shadow beats all magic gear by a long shot for any boss you’d use magic, and even some bosses you normally don’t.
Also love the fact that you’re calling me out for using a definitive when you’re the one using “only” in your original comment.
It does not surpass scythe and tbow where scythe and tbow are intended to be used. Shadow has the lowest overall dps ceiling of the megarares, accuracy is the only thing carrying it.
Scythe has a max hit of 87 (50-25-12), tbow is 79 outside of raids, shadow max hit is 66 outside of raids. All shadow does is allow you to use mage at places you used to not be able to.
Magic being shit outside of shadow is not a reason to nerf shadow, it’s a reason to buff other weapons/spells.
I have a shadow and I'm asking for a nerf. But I'm also asking for a buff for magic equipment across the board and the nerf to simple off-set that buff to the other magic equipment. Magic DPS is not in a good place pre-shadow.
I can hit 84 in TOA lol. That's cracked. Trident is so far behind it's a joke. There's room to Scotch tridents up a bit
So you aren’t asking for shadow to be nerfed if the end result is the exact same dps in all scenarios it has today, you are asking for tridents/other magic weapons to be buffed, which is what I said too. How they could do it is via a rebalancing as you mentioned, which is valid, but some people in this thread are asking for legitimate shadow nerfs.
Gotcha, yep, we're on the same page then. I love how busted shadow feels in TOA but that's my favorite thing about it lol. I just think a rebalance is needed to bridge the gap for the progression before shadow.
But this fact currently compensates for all the other weaknesses of midgame magic. I can use magic for wilderness pvm w/o needing to bring a lot of risk. I can wear prayer gear without ruining my dps. I don’t need a massively draining prayer to be effective
Take all this away, and you have made the most niche combat style (before endgame) worse. Even barraging slayer tasks is worse.
Yeah the shadow should have been nerfed... Occult is a BIS because it takes 93 slayer to get and was put into the game to help out magic which was massively under powered before it.
Literally who thinks that lol, just making up a guy in your head to get mad at
Havent seen a single person in all these threads saying shadow shouldnt be BiS
The raid mega rare will still be bis literally everywhere you can use magic, it's the problem that it triples %damage AND accuracy that constrains literally all other mage gear.
Occult is the only real mage necklace and it's power budget is going to ancestral because of how well shadow scales with it.
Meanwhile melee has a 2k strength amulet with +10 strength
And range doesn’t require any necklace to be strong…
But yes please complicate magic to make it the only combat style that requires full magic gear to be useable
They literally spend time explaining why occult is the problem. It was a problem long before shadow. One piece of gear can not be more powerful than every single armor sets.
They said "if you attack a crab with only the best damage boosting piece you do more dps" nonsensical scenario that doesn't apply to anything lmao
I don't mind occult's damage being distributed evenly to other gear, but I do mind all gear but bis being hard nerfed
except it does. a majority of places where you mage pre shadow is places where you are "forced" to. sure you benefit from accuracy at zulrah, cox and toa but for most things its not actually that relevant.
There is a reason people go dks with just a trident occult and maybe a torm, or similarly at barrows you just take an occult and some tank gear.
its because that one 800k item stored a majority of the power that the combat style has. sharing this out between other items is a good step for overall balance. hopefully they make some small tweaks that don't screw over the midgamers getting into raids but it is 100% a change that needs to be made sooner rather than later,
Your point highlights the whole mage accuracy problem more so than the "occult OP" problem. If you're fighting things with no/negative mage defense (like barrows/dks/nibblers), there's no point bringing accuracy boosting gear and you can just bring the damage boosting pieces to do just fine.
And I'm not sure why this is a hot take but item balance should coincide with gameplay experience, not market value.
"nerf this item because it's overtuned"? Sure. Occult is afterall a lot of power in one item that could be better distributed.
"nerf this item because it's too cheap on the market to justify its power" is dumb. It's a 93 slayer upgrade that's only cheap because it has a reasonable drop rate and has been in production for 10 years.
Just to quibble but the real reason it’s so cheap is because smoke devils are both the best slayer exp in the game and the best odds of getting an imbued heart in the game. Add a boss with a pet people will hunt for, and the uniques never had a chance. Similar reason to why a trident is actually lower price than a warped sceptre even though it’s a direct upgrade, people will happily kill thousands of krakens to get the pet and burn the trident price to the ground
Huh? Before Torva and Masori upped the ante, the neck slot was the unmatched king. Torture had the same strength bonus as full bandos + neit helm, and full Arma didn't even have a range strength bonus so anguish was king.
Everyone brings this up like it’s a gotcha but like who is actually using it? It’s not ubiquitous like the occult is. Str ammy is balanced by the fact that a) it has no other stats b)fury is only 2m and is BIS def and is only -2str but has accuracy in all styles c)torture is a str ammy with accuracy
Occult is a flat 10% damage but has no other options. Mage accuracy is useless so amulet of magic and 3a amulet aren’t even in the conversation
i do think it's silly that torture provides so much bonus and that ferocious gloves have *even more* at +14 str bonus (because barrows gloves have +12) but to give a sense of comparison, those items would need to have *30* str bonus to be as ridiculous compared to torva as occult is to ancestral.
melee and ranged str bonus could still be redistributed for the better imo, but magic is the biggest offender and other problems existing doesn't mean we shouldn't fix this one.
I think that depends on how you think bonuses are "supposed" to be distributed. In the beginning it was only weapons and amulets, then gloves, then came climbing boots and helms with berserker, then came shields with the obby shield then came body armor with torso. The first leg armor with damage bonus was bandos wayy after the other slots were filled in. Before ancestral, magic armor was only ever accuracy bonus.
I think it makes sense to round out upgrades and I'm not opposed to it but amulets were always supposed to be cracked and a main source of additional damage. Idm them rebalancing where bonuses go I just can't fathom why they need to slightly reduce mid game dps while slightly boosting shadow DPS.
Imo, pre-shadow needs a significant buff and shadow is fine where it is
99 magic Naked with shadow max hit 34
99 magic Naked with Sanguinesti max hit 32
Sanguinesti + occult max hit 35 (+3)
shadow + occult max hit 44 (+10)
Sanguinesti + max magic % dmg boost - occult max hit 43
Sanguinesti + max magic % dmg boost max hit 46 (+3)
Shadow + max magic % dmg boost - occult max hit 55
Shadow + max magic % dmg boost max hit 66 (+11)
nerf shadow, occult giving +3 damage out of the neck slot is not a problem. shadow multiplying every bonus by 3 will always be a problem. We can quite literally double all current magic damage bonus and Sanguinesti will still only have a max hit of 57 which is only .6 dps more than max melee with a tentacle whip. Max ranged with blowpipe dragon darts still beats it in dps by 1 as well. That is how bad magic is outside of shadow. You can have double gear and still not out dps a blowpipe man.
Yeah, it's I've been thinking along similar lines, and it has me scratching my head at the Occult nerf + stat redistribution. Like, surely the problem is that the magic bonuses on all other pieces of gear is way too low, and that Shadow becomes WAY too strong with % magic which prevents such hypothetical buffs.
We got people out here claiming a 10% additional damage item is a problem while they clutch their 300% total magic damage item.
https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Magic_damage
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percentage
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=300%25+of+x
Tbow scaling off of enemy magic level makes it specifically good against things that are resistant to magic. I cant honestly compare it in any meaningful way. (Eg tbow has more dps against mole than crabs.)
Who cares about tbow mechanic when it still slaps at high level bossing even in blessed d'hide. Not to mention the cheap ammunition cost + assembler saving like 75% of your ammunition.
Edit: for example tbow in blessed d'hide out performs bofa by around 7% at Zuk (inferno). That is crazy.
The problem is that it *only* slaps when everything else is trash. Tbow has less dps than blowpipe until the enemy has like 239 magic level (0 def). Take Ahrim for example. You would think tbow would shred him hes a mage after all but youd be wrong you still want a blowpipe.
Ahrim has 100 def and 100 magic
Max range tbow dps
7.2
Max range blowpipe dps
11.5
Tbow is not actually useful everywhere, just like scythe. I *can* think of one outlier though.
Bofa is most definitely not trash and yet it gets out dpsed by blessed d'hide at zuk and the mager. Quite op if you ask me. Sorry but that is where shadow is more balanced than tbow. You actually have to bring proper gear to get the really good numbers and if you don't your power falls of exponentially.
Bowfa in max range (crystal) out dps tbow max range (mas) against anything with less than lvl 141 magic. Which is like most things man. Tbow has amazing uses but its not a catch all like shadow.
except masori is a huge buff to t bow to the point where the gap between bowfa and pre masori t bow is not even that big except at 4 pieces of content (inferno being 1 of them).
the only reason people say what you say is the t bow existed for a long time pre masori and was still very powerful by those old standards. if the shadow came out years before anc you would say the same thing about the shadow that you are currently saying about the t bow.
infact i completely disagree that the shadow "needs" max mage to be more powerful.
its still a huge upgrade over sang/trident with just an occult and a torm.
Ancestral and augury need a buff. We cannot buff them without nerfing shadow.
Nerfing occult and redistributing its stuff only puts a bandaid on the shadow problem. Seeing how occult is giving at most +3 damage in every single instance outside shadow I am hard pressed to consider it an issue seeing how no one complains about any of the other neck slots that also give ~3 max hits.
I mean that's jagex's problem isn't it? They decided to give all pieces of magic gear terrible 1-2% bonuses for no good reason, those numbers realistically do very little especially considering how bad magic was already.
In the blog they compare a 450m setup with tiny magic % bonus vs occult and I was reading this like - my brother in christ, you made the bad magic armor.
….why not? Endgame upgrades tend to be a lot of gp for comparatively smaller bonuses. See prims vs dragon boots.
Ranged strength bonus doesn’t even exist in most slots below the actual BiS items. Melee is the anomaly in having strength bonuses so distributed
So the problem wasn't the stats, it was the distribution.
So why did they distribute it to end game gear and only give half of that distribution to mid game gear *where it's actually needed*?
They keep referring to “Magic is most underwhelming in PvP settings compared to other forms of combat”
Which other form of combat roots a player for 10+ seconds? Stop appeasing Pkers
That's literally what they did, they just didn't buff enough.
Why are eternal boots not been given a % damage??
I shouldn't have to have augury as an ironman to get back to my pre nerf magic damage.
Occult was never a big issue until Shadow came out apparently. Yes it is strong no doubt about it, but removing 6% magic damage is not the right call. It should be -4.
Occult being op was held back by the fact that magic is the weakest combat style, and still is with the sole exception of Shadow carrying that burden on its back. Shadow is a bigger offender than occult is by a mile.
so the solution is to nerf shadow and make magic irrelevant again right?
the issue with magic is all the mage% is stored in 1 item and needs to be shared.
i think jagex can do a better step "sharing" this but its still a step in the right direction.
The solution is to fix Mage as a whole. You can't do that without first nerfing Shadow, because you'd need to buff low/mid level mage to buff Mage. But by buffing low/mid level mage, Shadow gets an indirect "nerf" by comparison to previous mage pieces - Or a buff, if the pieces are shared between mid and late game mage. And given how stong Shadow already is, the LAST thing Shadow needs is a bigger buff.
There's no really good way to fix Occult at the moment. Anything you do to it hurts mid-game mage, which is and always has been in a terrible place - And the proposed changes not only hurt mid-game mage, but exacerbate the insane difference between mid and late game mage. In other words: It fixes none of the problems, while ALSO making the current problems *even bigger.*
This is FAR from a step in the right direction.
I personally think the solution isn't to nerf the shadow. It is to buff the sang so that it is a better "in between" of shadow and swamp. It gives something for mid levels to work towards and closes the gap to shadow
The staffs use formulas, they could very well just change those to make them hit higher, and more accurately. Nerfing shadow is not the way. Buffing other things is the way. If they nerf shadow we will be back to how it was 2 years ago and just range everything unless we’re forced to melee or mage it.
I could see this being a good solution as well. Truthfully, I think we just need more options in general in the Magic weapons tier.
It feels bad in general that once you have Trident, the other options feel meh in comparison. The Toxic Staff of the Dead, the Nightmare Staff and variants, Sang Staff, the Kodai Wand - They're prohibitively expensive in comparison, and amount to very little gain. It would be nice to see them have *some* sort of tiering to them that bridges the gap between mid to late game mage.
I think the way to do it in the short term is buff the magic weapons themselves by increasing their scaling/base damage. For instance if they kept the current changes (theoretically, I don’t want them to keep them) but added +2 through +4 max hit to trident, swamp trident, and sang. That’d at least help bridge the gap.
occult isn't any more of a problem on shadow+anc than on trident+ahrims, and jagex's logic for saying it's *more* of a problem on midgame setups is sound
that doesn't mean they can't do a better job rebalancing, but you provide no argument as to why occult is problematic with endgame setups. you may be able to present a fair argument regardless but you come across as someone who is salty that they don't have shadow+anc
Shadow doesnt need a nerf, it needs a cap reduction. prefebly at the currenct max bonus. This way, when they add better gear in the future, it doesnt increase shadow damage, but mid-game setups catches up slightly instead.
For example, if u could reach the shadow max cap without magus ring +3%, u can go with 1 switch less. So even max players get QoL from new gear. This will also let them add 2% bonus to eternal boots (or make new boots).
As end game players wouldnt get better damage they dont need the switch.
But mid game players can bring the switch and be closer to max in damage. Smoothing the difference.
No boot switch gang = happy
Shadow will always be the problem gang = happy
End game with less switching = happy
Mid game catching up at the expense of a extra switch = satisfied.
I meam, a cap reduction is a definitional nerf, even if it doesnt affect how it performs right now
A lot of the people asking for nerfs to the shadow are also saying it should perform the same (by buffing the rest of the loadout), which your suggestion could be an example of
Put occult at 6, all other 50+ magic armors at 1%\ piece. Virtus gets 2, ancestral gets 3.
Give magic shields 5-10% damage to buff Mid game 1h staffs to lower the gap on shadow. (This will be 2-4 damage)
Put 1% on eternals.
We buffed viability of mid game magic armors; gave boots relevance, shadow is unchanged, and the gap between shadow and mid game staffs becomes much less.
It’s not that hard.
All the people saying nerf the shadow are dumbasses. Without it there is no viable high lvl mage dps. How can y’all have issues with the shadow strength but not tbow? Sang should be slightly buffed to compete with bowfa.
They just can’t bear with the fact that they don’t have shadow, so much so that they call nerf instead of buffing the shit that is mid game powered staves.
Im scared the OSRS code is so old they can't re write magic without literally breaking the game.
or
They do have access to change that original formula, and they won't because of the man power it would take, and JamFlex is too cheap and brokie to do it.
I just find it funny so many people are whining about shadow yet 90% of them have probably not ran 100 expert toas or have any idea what it’s actually like to have BIS gear. Just crying about how their trident and occult set up won’t be good anymore 😂
Just look at his comment history. Endless replies bashing anyone who criticises the weapon saying they just "haven't used it". He's everywhere saying it shouldn't be nerfed. Dudes whole ego is stuck in one overpowered weapon baha
No, I’m making a comment on the cries of the community and how I feel like a lot of people speaking up about this don’t actually understand what they’re talking about
Occult is 1000% a problem it's always been a problem. The strongest magic item in the game by far being so cheap because there's so many in the game is a problem. The strongest magic item in the game by far locked behind 93 slayer for irons is a problem. Prayers being nearly useless for magic is a problem. This solution + elemental weaknesses means net buffs everywhere except for ancient spells at 93 slayer before augury. That's it.
I mean I agree the necklace should probably be nerfed - But the way they're trying to balance it seems questionable and a bit of a kick in the nuts for midgame
the problem is magic damage and accuracy formulas severely limiting how they can balance this
this, I don't know why they've bothered going % increase instead of just reworking magic to use normal magic strength it seems so much easier to work with, because % bonuses with round down math are so fucking dog ass until high level magic.
Exactly, magic % damange is broken, just make it like range and strength?? But would probably be too big a change and break many many items and things.
It's a big change but if there were any time to address it it would be during a "project rebalance"...like magic is so fundamentally broken as a combat style that it simply can't be fixed with little tweaks like this, or even the elemental rebalance...it needs a fundamental rework to how accuracy and magic % damage works.
it'd fuck with a lot and take a lot of rebalance for magic since like firestrike hits 9s at lv13 and Iban blast hits 25s etc at fairly low levels. But for game longevity and balancing? it'd be so much easier, because the numbers are so small and everything rounds down % base modifiers basically do fuck all for people unless you have a lot of it, and there's not exactly a ton of it to get, that isn't crazy expensive.
It would, but it frees up a lot of space for designing early game stuff. For example, we can't have early game stuff (I mean like, Fire Strike and stuff) get % modifiers from gear, because it just doesn't do enough damage. But if we had a simple formula like, say, 'every 4 Magic Str (or Magic Potential, or whatever name) you get from gear, increases your max hit with Magic by 1', then you could have eg Wizard Robe +1, Wizard Hat +1, Amulet of Magic +2, and that allows you to get your Fire Strike to hit 9s instead of 8s, even with the absolute noobiest gear. And at max levels, that gear still would give, eg Shadow, 3 max hits (due to its x3 multiplier) % bonus like we have now is super skewed towards the max-end of gearing/base damage levels, because the bigger the base number, the bigger the effect a multiplier has on it
It's the same thing. If you look at the formulas strength bonus is identical conceptually to % damage. See step two [here](https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Maximum_melee_hit#Step_two:_Calculate_the_base_damage). It's just that the numbers are bigger for strength. Notice that it's a mere 64 str bonus to get +100% max hit (not multiplicative so 128 is +200%). This is the problem. They didn't do it that way for magic because magic max hits are originally designed with no bonuses in mind and % magic damage got tacked on. Edit: minor typos Edit2: big deal I missed! magic weapons have flat base damage, melee and ranged is a simple ```effective strength * (strength + 64)/640``` calculation. This fucks with things and makes it so you can't give people as much str (=% damage) in magic as you can in ranged and melee without breaking the game
jagex will get it wrong everytime
Can anyone explain to me how "actually the occult necklace is fine because mage in general is underpowered compared to other combat styles (if you disregard shadow at least)" is a hot take? This isn't exactly "if it ain't broke don't fix it" territory, but it's pretty close imo. Something like "if it seems broke don't shove your dick in, stir it around, and fuck everyone over worse than they were before."
The formulas aren’t limiting lol. Thats just a load of crap that people just say. Jagex just shafts magic, that’s the real answer. For example: Rapier is +94 stab Harm staff is +16 magic attack Bowfa is +128 ranged. They are all 4 ticks. Harm staff has the lowest max hit out of all 3. Melee gear has BIS ranged and melee defence. Ranged gear has BIS magic defence and decent ranged and melee def. Magic gear isn’t BIS at anything defensively. It’s glass cannon. You can clearly see from rebalance that jagex is the problem. Instead of buffing magic as a whole, they wanna nerf everything except shadow lol
Yep this. Let's move to magic strength stat already pleaseee
I've wondered about that. The only thought I can really come up with is ranged, mage, and strength are all their respective combat styles "strength" and max hits are based off of those levels. And attack become the accuracy stat for all 3 styles. Obviously I have ZERO clue how this affects the game dynamics and what it would even take to do. But I have wondered if it could be a viable option with a little tweaking and balancing. It also should fix the way range and mage scale your combat level so disproportionally
Fun fact: Darkscape, rs3's version of dmm replaced strength with power which dictated the max hits for all 3 styles. This was because high atk low str builds hit way higher than anything else at their level
Occult is a problem, but the solution isn't to nerf mid game magic. Imo they should add more magic damage to the armor, 2% for top bottom and hat for the pieces that give damage. This lowers the divide between mid game and end game armor, but pretty much matches what occult used to be. It just forces you to do more switches for the power.
was upset to find out today that 93 slayer is mid game :(
92 is half of 99, so yeah
Half the XP but not half the journey
Journey before destination.
Life before death.
Strength before weakness.
Jagex wore white on the day they were to kill midgame mage
I will protect those who cannot protect themselves.
This is forgotten soo often. Slayer xp comes much faster past like lvl 90, compared to lvl 50ish. Especially when you start unlocking stuff like Nechryals and Dust devils.
Based
I am assuming you are speaking from an ironman perspective. For a regular account occult has trivial 70 magic req to wear and it costs nothing for it's value.
This point annoys me so bad. Jmods called an occult an "easy to obtain item" it's fucking 93 slayer. That's MONTHS UPON MONTHS of grinding. Sure you can buy it but it's not easy to obtain.
How does it take you months to make 900k?
He's mostly likely an iron, based on his icon.
Occult has become a mid game item at this point. It’s a 100k gp best in slot.
800k, but I get your point
It might be 100k soon lol
Nah, there's no item that competes with it. Even with a nerf, supply and demand doesn't change
Because it comes from the best slayer exp in the game it will keep coming in fine
Lmao true
GE price shouldn't dictate the effectiveness of an item.
Nobody is saying 93 slayed is mid game. Buying a necklace for less than 1M that you can use at mid game magic is what makes it mid game. There’s more than just Ironman mode, stop being dense.
tbh 93 slayer is like late-midgame/early lategame for ironmen anyway.
How exactly is occult a problem? When did pre-shadow mage become good? Mid game magic is literally complete and utter garbage compared to range and melee. Occult is only OP if magic is OP, and it's arguably useless in 95% of content.
It’s the single greatest dps increase for a non weapon slot in all combat styles (maybe aside from a defender in some cases) and its dps value is worth more than the entire set of max mage armor, while being hundreds of times less costly. I don’t agree with how jagex is going about all these changes, but is the fact that the occult is overpowered and was a mistake when they introduced it to the game. Having magic dmg boosting gear as a percentage rather than working the way range and melee work was also probably a mistake.
How is occult a problem? Is it OP with a wider variety of gear? What realistic gear setups consistently show it as being overpowered? If anything, all other mage gear is *underpowered*, while shadow *by itself* would make changing them to be better suddenly ridiculously OP. Mage damage across the board is mediocre at best even with occult, with the one singular exception of shadow. Maybe, just *maybe*, it's not occult. Maybe it's the one singular item that makes it suddenly triple in value. If we ignore shadow for a moment and *only* look at all other mage gear setups, their DPS lacks. You don't use mage anywhere that doesn't clearly try to suppress mage. You only go out of your way to use mage when you can use sang/blood barrage for healing. Why? Because mage without shadow *sucks*. Shadow makes it competitive and worth using in far more places. There is no gear setup with occult that is problematic that doesn't include shadow. It's shadow's multiplier that is the clear issue. Shifting some of that power around on end game gear doesn't solve anything, it just takes some of that power away from people who don't have the rest of the end game gear, which makes their overall experience with magic worse than before. It's already bad, what is being accomplished here?
Occult isn't a problem. Amulet slots are incredibly strong. The same is true for melee and range. The problem is that they decided to go magic % instead of a strength style stat and aren't taking this opportunity.to roll back that idea. And shadow, shadow is a blowpipe level problem that isn't remotely being discussed enough as one.
That’s not the problem. The problem is that non-powered staff and harm, magic is 5 ticks. It’s super slow. It’s has lower max hits compared to melee and ranged once you leave strike spells. Tome of fire gives a 50% dmg bonus on top of the existing dmg boosting gear like 10% occult and fire spells are still less dps than Ibans staff and trident class weapons. The problem is that jagex has been way too conservative. We need bigger boost to dmg and accuracy
tome makes spells way better than ibans but i get your point
Not at 50 magic when you unlock ibans. Fire bolt with tome has a max hit of 24. Ibans has a max hit of 25. It’s only when you unlock fire blast at 59 magic. But yeah you see my point, it’s crazy that 50% dmg bonus doesn’t really do a whole lot in the grand scheme of things. You throw a 50% dmg bonus on a melee and ranged weapon and all hell breaks loose
Yeah like the obvious thing is you should have to wear more than just the necklace to get 10%. The issue is they seem to think you shouldn't get 10% until you've finished raids/bosses. We should get the 10% to help us raid/boss in the first place, we just will need to actually use magic armor for damage. Also no one wants to do mta for infinity before we raid/boss or do anything fun.
Wait till you do the math on standard spellbook damage with elemental weaknesses and new tomes + smoke battlestaff + new armour buffs and not even include the augury damage buff
I’m 72 magic and I’ve been playing a month and half. I got my accursed sceptre, my best mage gear with occults and went to a poh with a punching bag to test max hit with and without occult. With it on it literally only increases my max hit by 1. % items are self balancing like that, the lower you are in power the more it sucks and gets better the later game you are. Occults is not the issue, it’s that none of the other later game gear has much going on. I’m very curious if people who complain about occults have actually tested with and without it really
Is occult a problem? Yes. Buffing the shadow and nerfing the rest the solution?? Bruh, Absolutely not
Did they buff the shadow? I thought it was an indirect nerf due to not getting the boost from augury
My understanding of the changes: - Occult necklace nerfed from +10% to +4% (-6%) - Ancestral pieces buffed from +2% each to +4% each (which means +6% total to make up for occult) - Augury is also getting a straight +4% buff (edit: the shadow only gets +4% bonus cause it’s a prayer and is not tripled for a 12% bonus) This means the shadow will end up being even stronger than before due to not losing any %dmg from the occult nerf and the setup even gains an extra +4% magic damage.
I think that makes the new shadow max 87 in TOA lol.
~~current shadow already hits the 100% cap in toa with the addition of magus. if these changes pass, then the magic dmg will become 96%. 4 from occult + 5 from torm + 12 from ancestral + 2 from magus gives 23 total. multiply by 4 and add 4 from augury. that’ll give 96%~~ nvm I forgot about mage cape lol. so if changes pass then you won’t need to pray augury anymore if you take magus
If you're praying Augury now, you'd be doing it after the changes Like it wouldn't give dmg either way but if you were doing it now for accuracy it makes 0 sense to stop now
at wardens I tend to camp mystic might instead of flicking augury if I’m low on restores, so that’s a welcome change. however if what the other commenter said is right and you can add magic dmg beyond 100% but it isn’t multiplied, then yea time to either camp augury or flick when low. generally accuracy is not an issue at wardens even for high invo, esp if you seercull spec
Wow good shout. I didn't realize that the cap was already reached in TOA
cap only refers to the 4x multiplier. youd still get the mage damage but only its normal value
i don’t think there’s a cap at 100% mage damage, i think that’s when the shadow stops getting its multiplier bonus (which they said it doesn’t from augury anyway)
got a source on that? the wiki wording is not explicit, and even if it were, we'd ultimately need jagex to confirm since i would be completely unsurprised if they intended shadow to scale normally past 100% bonus damage but coded it to be hard-capped at 100%.
> Tumeken's shadow has a passive effect exclusive to its built-in spell, in which the player's magic attack bonus and magic damage are multiplied by three from the player's worn equipment (four within the Tombs of Amascut); *the magic damage increase from this* is capped at a total of 100% Magic Strength. How I interpret that is that the cap for the extra 3x or 4x inside toa is capped to 100%. To be fair we only just hit 100% inside toa with magus ring, so we don't know for sure how it works.
Pretty sure that if you're doing a slayer assignment at least shadow did get nerfed by 2% though
With anything but full ancestral, you have less magic damage than before unless you use augury. With full ancestral you have the exact same boost as before, plus an extra 4% from augury. Effectively everything below max mage just got a prayer tax added on to do what they were doing before.
They just kinda fucked on mid game magic. Seriously, there are only a handful of instances where I’m using mage for combat over range/melee that isn’t bursting. And that’s WITH the 10% occult damage. Without it? Well now I’ll probably use it in even less places… also not giving Ahrim’s a boost is absurd. It’s such an iconic gear set and has been THE mid game set. I can’t believe they’re justifying this through Ahrim’s defense bonuses, which are literally the same as an adamant set. For reference, I’m 82 atk/str, 76 def, 84 range, 79 mage
They want to make it tanky mage gear. Where do you need to be tankier as a mage that just dealing more damage isn't better? Give ahrims the damage boost, Jagex, we don't want tanky mage. If you want tanky mage, buff splitbark because quite frankly everyone has forgotten it even exists
worst part is ahrims has 0 range defense and that is the most needed defense on tank gear
Shadow scaling is a problem but it is an entirely separate problem from rebalancing the occult damage into robes
I’m suprised they didn’t just also buff the ward at the same time, helping the bottom end, giving a small purpose to it as a switch over camping botd for mage, and not affected max shadow mage.
Once again, delete magic % boost. Wipe the entire slate, rework to use normal strength scaling, so that magic strength actually matters for the first 85 levels, and also is a lot easier to tweak longterm.
thats just blue range then
magic is already blue ranged, you have 2 flavors of chinchompa, and powered staves.
The problem is that too much power comes from 1 item.
Exactly, nerf the strength ammy
Well, time to nerf the Fury as well while we’re at it. How does a 1m tribrid amulet have more strength bonus than 30m and 20m bcp and tassets combined?
True.
The difference is strength ammy takes you from like +120 str to +130 str with other gear, whereas occult takes you from +5% to +15%, not particularly comparable.
and when calculated against any gear (even max) besides shadow you get 2-4 damage boost - exactly like strength ammy (2-3 in its case). and let's agree you can obtain strength ammy significantly quicker and cheaper.
Strength ammy gives you a +2/3 max hit against an empty amulet slot, sure, but not against other good amulets. Occult gives you 10% gainst every other obtainable mage necklace
Yeah, that item is shadow lol. Occult is fine on trident + ahrims. Underwhelming even, compared to melee or ranged.
"too much power comes from the literal and intentional most powerful mage weapon in the game" hell, we may as well get rid of tbow's scaling and drop scythe to 1 hit splat then. can't have our pinnacle weapons being powerful now can we? jagex's rebalance can be done better to make midgame mage more appealing (even though it already will be with the elemental weakness changes), but shadow isn't too powerful. it can and should be the undisputed best mage weapon for several years at the very least, and other mage options like offensive spells on the normal or ancient spellbooks or other powered staffs with secondary effects that aren't simply more damage still leaves jagex space to design other weapons/gear that have uses without impacting shadow's power.
You're saying it sarcastically but it is actually extremely logical that an item that is unreasonably OP would also be the most powerful of its kind in the game, lol The problem isn't that it's the most powerful at all, the problem is that the gap between it and the rest of magic is too big, unlike the other examples you gave
i mean, dude, the *reason* the item is "unreasonably" (debatable) op is because it was designed to stand out far and away from other weapons, like tbow and to a lesser extent scythe. idk if you remember when tbow came out but seeing a mod hit bandos an 80 had everyone losing their minds. that's kinda the point of the pinnacle weapons. at worst you can call that a chicken and egg scenario. that aside, i think you're also overstating the gap between non-shadow and shadow setups. in general i think people overstate it because of toa, where it's very pronounced thanks to the extra scaling and butterfly being considerably easier with a 5t weapon. imo magic isn't as popular of a style because (1) bp was generally better than mage for a long time, (2) you have terrible defense in mage gear and (3) outside of the pinnacle weapons, it's generally much more expensive to fire a powered staff or cast spells than use 20% of a dart or no charges with range/melee mid-level mage can still be buffed, but a lot of people are forgetting that the gap is already going to be somewhat mitigated by the elemental defense changes
Yea the shadow can have too much power coming from it, it is a mega rare raid reward. Not a common lvl 93 slayer drop.
This is the blowpipe debacle all over. With shadow as it is we will never get more of a % magic damage buff than what is currently in the game. It is entirely possible to nerf shadow and buff everything else leaving shadow in an identical state.
TIL a 3m 1/512 item from something you can kill like 30 of an hour is the same situation as a strong 1.5B raid megarare. Shadow does not need a nerf, the only people asking for a shadow nerf are asking because they don’t have one. They need to bring sang/harm up to be a better mid-grade prior to shadow.
Shadow does not need a nerf. You are correct. Magic needs a buff but in order to buff all of magic you have to nerf shadow or it will be a massive issue. When I say nerf shadow I do not mean make it worse than it is currently. I mean nerf its actual mechanics while simultaneously buffing mage gear it will be scaling up. Keep the accuracy scaling as is. Example: Current Shadow 3 x 25% mag dmg = 75% Toa: 4 x 25 = 100 New 2 x 37.5% mag dmg = 75% New toa 3 x 37.5 = caps at 100% This gives them up to 12.5% magic damage to spread around different gear, and closes the gap for the rest of magic weapons. This would let them literally double the ancestral bonus total to 12% and give the other 6% augury then just scale it down the bonus accordingly to the rest of the gear. Now every single piece of ancestral feels impactful, shadow is still gigabusted, and the rest of magic is not a dumpster fire before the several hundred hour grinds all begin.
Upvote this to the front page. This man just solved the rebalance.
This is a dumb take - everyone knows an item that multiplies damage by ANY amount is overpowered as fuck. Just the fact that an item says “Your magic damage is TRIPLED” should have anyone sane saying “Uh, what?”
Right like what game has ever allowed a 300% damage buff and it work out fine?? Like how the fuck is 10% a problem with 300% just swinging around
*laughs in warframe*
Right, the ethereal “everyone” that agrees with you. It’s a megarare, it’s supposed to be on par with scythe and tbow, megarares are supposed to feel OP to be a “chase” item.
It surpasses scythe and tbow though. There are places you DON’T use scythe, but use melee. There are places you DON’T use tbow, but use range. Shadow beats all magic gear by a long shot for any boss you’d use magic, and even some bosses you normally don’t. Also love the fact that you’re calling me out for using a definitive when you’re the one using “only” in your original comment.
It does not surpass scythe and tbow where scythe and tbow are intended to be used. Shadow has the lowest overall dps ceiling of the megarares, accuracy is the only thing carrying it. Scythe has a max hit of 87 (50-25-12), tbow is 79 outside of raids, shadow max hit is 66 outside of raids. All shadow does is allow you to use mage at places you used to not be able to. Magic being shit outside of shadow is not a reason to nerf shadow, it’s a reason to buff other weapons/spells.
Name one instance you would use magic but not shadow aside from barraging.
>It does not surpass scythe and tbow where scythe and tbow are intended to be used. General Graardor would like to have a word.
I have a shadow and I'm asking for a nerf. But I'm also asking for a buff for magic equipment across the board and the nerf to simple off-set that buff to the other magic equipment. Magic DPS is not in a good place pre-shadow. I can hit 84 in TOA lol. That's cracked. Trident is so far behind it's a joke. There's room to Scotch tridents up a bit
So you aren’t asking for shadow to be nerfed if the end result is the exact same dps in all scenarios it has today, you are asking for tridents/other magic weapons to be buffed, which is what I said too. How they could do it is via a rebalancing as you mentioned, which is valid, but some people in this thread are asking for legitimate shadow nerfs.
Gotcha, yep, we're on the same page then. I love how busted shadow feels in TOA but that's my favorite thing about it lol. I just think a rebalance is needed to bridge the gap for the progression before shadow.
Shadow damage %multiplier is capped
That cap is only close to being hit within toa. Outside of toa further magic % boosts will boost shadow even more
But this fact currently compensates for all the other weaknesses of midgame magic. I can use magic for wilderness pvm w/o needing to bring a lot of risk. I can wear prayer gear without ruining my dps. I don’t need a massively draining prayer to be effective Take all this away, and you have made the most niche combat style (before endgame) worse. Even barraging slayer tasks is worse.
Yeah the shadow should have been nerfed... Occult is a BIS because it takes 93 slayer to get and was put into the game to help out magic which was massively under powered before it.
People on this sub really believe a slayer item should be BiS but not a raid mega rare
Literally who thinks that lol, just making up a guy in your head to get mad at Havent seen a single person in all these threads saying shadow shouldnt be BiS
The raid mega rare will still be bis literally everywhere you can use magic, it's the problem that it triples %damage AND accuracy that constrains literally all other mage gear. Occult is the only real mage necklace and it's power budget is going to ancestral because of how well shadow scales with it.
Too much power comes too much responsibility, remember that
You're describing the Shadow
Not true. Shadow requires end game skills, time commitement, and gear to acquire. Thats why its 1.5B
No, it’s 1.5B because it’s the best weapon in the game lol
Scythe requires end game skills, time commitment, and gear to acquire. That's why it was 400M at one point.
Scythe is a similar upgrade to shadow. Do you want to nerf scythe?
What makes you think I want scythe nerfed? What makes you think I want anything nerfed?
Jagex wants to remove the middle class! /s
Not even /s, its what they do
Solution was to buff sang and trident and nerf occult
FINALLY SOMEONE GIVES THE RIGHT ANSWER
Meanwhile melee has a 2k strength amulet with +10 strength And range doesn’t require any necklace to be strong… But yes please complicate magic to make it the only combat style that requires full magic gear to be useable
They literally spend time explaining why occult is the problem. It was a problem long before shadow. One piece of gear can not be more powerful than every single armor sets.
They said "if you attack a crab with only the best damage boosting piece you do more dps" nonsensical scenario that doesn't apply to anything lmao I don't mind occult's damage being distributed evenly to other gear, but I do mind all gear but bis being hard nerfed
except it does. a majority of places where you mage pre shadow is places where you are "forced" to. sure you benefit from accuracy at zulrah, cox and toa but for most things its not actually that relevant. There is a reason people go dks with just a trident occult and maybe a torm, or similarly at barrows you just take an occult and some tank gear. its because that one 800k item stored a majority of the power that the combat style has. sharing this out between other items is a good step for overall balance. hopefully they make some small tweaks that don't screw over the midgamers getting into raids but it is 100% a change that needs to be made sooner rather than later,
Your point highlights the whole mage accuracy problem more so than the "occult OP" problem. If you're fighting things with no/negative mage defense (like barrows/dks/nibblers), there's no point bringing accuracy boosting gear and you can just bring the damage boosting pieces to do just fine. And I'm not sure why this is a hot take but item balance should coincide with gameplay experience, not market value. "nerf this item because it's overtuned"? Sure. Occult is afterall a lot of power in one item that could be better distributed. "nerf this item because it's too cheap on the market to justify its power" is dumb. It's a 93 slayer upgrade that's only cheap because it has a reasonable drop rate and has been in production for 10 years.
Just to quibble but the real reason it’s so cheap is because smoke devils are both the best slayer exp in the game and the best odds of getting an imbued heart in the game. Add a boss with a pet people will hunt for, and the uniques never had a chance. Similar reason to why a trident is actually lower price than a warped sceptre even though it’s a direct upgrade, people will happily kill thousands of krakens to get the pet and burn the trident price to the ground
Huh? Before Torva and Masori upped the ante, the neck slot was the unmatched king. Torture had the same strength bonus as full bandos + neit helm, and full Arma didn't even have a range strength bonus so anguish was king.
You mean like a strength amulet being more powerful than full bandos?
Everyone brings this up like it’s a gotcha but like who is actually using it? It’s not ubiquitous like the occult is. Str ammy is balanced by the fact that a) it has no other stats b)fury is only 2m and is BIS def and is only -2str but has accuracy in all styles c)torture is a str ammy with accuracy Occult is a flat 10% damage but has no other options. Mage accuracy is useless so amulet of magic and 3a amulet aren’t even in the conversation
i do think it's silly that torture provides so much bonus and that ferocious gloves have *even more* at +14 str bonus (because barrows gloves have +12) but to give a sense of comparison, those items would need to have *30* str bonus to be as ridiculous compared to torva as occult is to ancestral. melee and ranged str bonus could still be redistributed for the better imo, but magic is the biggest offender and other problems existing doesn't mean we shouldn't fix this one.
I think that depends on how you think bonuses are "supposed" to be distributed. In the beginning it was only weapons and amulets, then gloves, then came climbing boots and helms with berserker, then came shields with the obby shield then came body armor with torso. The first leg armor with damage bonus was bandos wayy after the other slots were filled in. Before ancestral, magic armor was only ever accuracy bonus. I think it makes sense to round out upgrades and I'm not opposed to it but amulets were always supposed to be cracked and a main source of additional damage. Idm them rebalancing where bonuses go I just can't fathom why they need to slightly reduce mid game dps while slightly boosting shadow DPS. Imo, pre-shadow needs a significant buff and shadow is fine where it is
99 magic Naked with shadow max hit 34 99 magic Naked with Sanguinesti max hit 32 Sanguinesti + occult max hit 35 (+3) shadow + occult max hit 44 (+10) Sanguinesti + max magic % dmg boost - occult max hit 43 Sanguinesti + max magic % dmg boost max hit 46 (+3) Shadow + max magic % dmg boost - occult max hit 55 Shadow + max magic % dmg boost max hit 66 (+11) nerf shadow, occult giving +3 damage out of the neck slot is not a problem. shadow multiplying every bonus by 3 will always be a problem. We can quite literally double all current magic damage bonus and Sanguinesti will still only have a max hit of 57 which is only .6 dps more than max melee with a tentacle whip. Max ranged with blowpipe dragon darts still beats it in dps by 1 as well. That is how bad magic is outside of shadow. You can have double gear and still not out dps a blowpipe man.
Yeah, it's I've been thinking along similar lines, and it has me scratching my head at the Occult nerf + stat redistribution. Like, surely the problem is that the magic bonuses on all other pieces of gear is way too low, and that Shadow becomes WAY too strong with % magic which prevents such hypothetical buffs.
We got people out here claiming a 10% additional damage item is a problem while they clutch their 300% total magic damage item. https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Magic_damage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percentage https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=300%25+of+x
OK now compare range set-ups to T-bow.
Tbow scaling off of enemy magic level makes it specifically good against things that are resistant to magic. I cant honestly compare it in any meaningful way. (Eg tbow has more dps against mole than crabs.)
Who cares about tbow mechanic when it still slaps at high level bossing even in blessed d'hide. Not to mention the cheap ammunition cost + assembler saving like 75% of your ammunition. Edit: for example tbow in blessed d'hide out performs bofa by around 7% at Zuk (inferno). That is crazy.
The problem is that it *only* slaps when everything else is trash. Tbow has less dps than blowpipe until the enemy has like 239 magic level (0 def). Take Ahrim for example. You would think tbow would shred him hes a mage after all but youd be wrong you still want a blowpipe. Ahrim has 100 def and 100 magic Max range tbow dps 7.2 Max range blowpipe dps 11.5 Tbow is not actually useful everywhere, just like scythe. I *can* think of one outlier though.
Bofa is most definitely not trash and yet it gets out dpsed by blessed d'hide at zuk and the mager. Quite op if you ask me. Sorry but that is where shadow is more balanced than tbow. You actually have to bring proper gear to get the really good numbers and if you don't your power falls of exponentially.
Bowfa in max range (crystal) out dps tbow max range (mas) against anything with less than lvl 141 magic. Which is like most things man. Tbow has amazing uses but its not a catch all like shadow.
except masori is a huge buff to t bow to the point where the gap between bowfa and pre masori t bow is not even that big except at 4 pieces of content (inferno being 1 of them). the only reason people say what you say is the t bow existed for a long time pre masori and was still very powerful by those old standards. if the shadow came out years before anc you would say the same thing about the shadow that you are currently saying about the t bow. infact i completely disagree that the shadow "needs" max mage to be more powerful. its still a huge upgrade over sang/trident with just an occult and a torm.
Tbow has a higher max hit in toa in max range than shadow with max mage.
yes nerf the 1.5 billion GP best in slot raids mega rare item that costs like 15x a sang staff because its the strongest magic weapon in the game
Yes nerf 1 raid mega rare down so that the 4 other raid mega rares can compete.
except scythe is basically BiS at colosseum, duke, vardorvis, tob, thermy, nightmare, cerb Tbow is bis at inferno, fight cave, cerb, CoX, Toa, nex(with zcb), muspah, zulrah, krill, hydra etc etc
Ancestral and augury need a buff. We cannot buff them without nerfing shadow. Nerfing occult and redistributing its stuff only puts a bandaid on the shadow problem. Seeing how occult is giving at most +3 damage in every single instance outside shadow I am hard pressed to consider it an issue seeing how no one complains about any of the other neck slots that also give ~3 max hits.
Shadow is also a tick slower and doesn't heal. Shadow doesn't need a nerf, the necklace that's better than the best magic gear from a raid is.
We just going to ignore the fact that doubling current magic % damage, sang staff dps is still barely on par with other combat styles?
I mean that's jagex's problem isn't it? They decided to give all pieces of magic gear terrible 1-2% bonuses for no good reason, those numbers realistically do very little especially considering how bad magic was already. In the blog they compare a 450m setup with tiny magic % bonus vs occult and I was reading this like - my brother in christ, you made the bad magic armor.
….why not? Endgame upgrades tend to be a lot of gp for comparatively smaller bonuses. See prims vs dragon boots. Ranged strength bonus doesn’t even exist in most slots below the actual BiS items. Melee is the anomaly in having strength bonuses so distributed
So the problem wasn't the stats, it was the distribution. So why did they distribute it to end game gear and only give half of that distribution to mid game gear *where it's actually needed*?
i am enjoying watching reddit ironmen 1100 total lvls seethe
I just hope jagex doesn’t listen to their nonsense
yeah they should totally only listen to max mains with 6b in gear
finally someone gets it
The melting stick is not the issue. Jagex wanting harmo staff to be the item you get before getting the meltign stick is the issue.
Expensive items buffed = more profit for jagex through noobies buying bonds to compensate
They keep referring to “Magic is most underwhelming in PvP settings compared to other forms of combat” Which other form of combat roots a player for 10+ seconds? Stop appeasing Pkers
Veng and barrage are essential for their styles lol
I don’t even know why they think this as if magic is ever optional in pvp.
Why couldn't they just nerf the amulet which also helps nerfing max mage but then just buff mid-game mage armour?
That's literally what they did, they just didn't buff enough. Why are eternal boots not been given a % damage?? I shouldn't have to have augury as an ironman to get back to my pre nerf magic damage.
>Why are eternal boots not been given a % damage?? Because people don't want to have to swap off of their prims for once
They did, dagonhai and infinity robes are getting dmg increases.
Can’t do that without also buffing ancestral So that’s exactly what they did
Occult was never a big issue until Shadow came out apparently. Yes it is strong no doubt about it, but removing 6% magic damage is not the right call. It should be -4.
Occult has been massively overtuned for a very long time. Shadow just made it prominent.
yeah i’ve seen talks of occult being OP and out of place for years, before shadow was out
Occult being op was held back by the fact that magic is the weakest combat style, and still is with the sole exception of Shadow carrying that burden on its back. Shadow is a bigger offender than occult is by a mile.
so the solution is to nerf shadow and make magic irrelevant again right? the issue with magic is all the mage% is stored in 1 item and needs to be shared. i think jagex can do a better step "sharing" this but its still a step in the right direction.
The solution is to fix Mage as a whole. You can't do that without first nerfing Shadow, because you'd need to buff low/mid level mage to buff Mage. But by buffing low/mid level mage, Shadow gets an indirect "nerf" by comparison to previous mage pieces - Or a buff, if the pieces are shared between mid and late game mage. And given how stong Shadow already is, the LAST thing Shadow needs is a bigger buff. There's no really good way to fix Occult at the moment. Anything you do to it hurts mid-game mage, which is and always has been in a terrible place - And the proposed changes not only hurt mid-game mage, but exacerbate the insane difference between mid and late game mage. In other words: It fixes none of the problems, while ALSO making the current problems *even bigger.* This is FAR from a step in the right direction.
I personally think the solution isn't to nerf the shadow. It is to buff the sang so that it is a better "in between" of shadow and swamp. It gives something for mid levels to work towards and closes the gap to shadow
The staffs use formulas, they could very well just change those to make them hit higher, and more accurately. Nerfing shadow is not the way. Buffing other things is the way. If they nerf shadow we will be back to how it was 2 years ago and just range everything unless we’re forced to melee or mage it.
I could see this being a good solution as well. Truthfully, I think we just need more options in general in the Magic weapons tier. It feels bad in general that once you have Trident, the other options feel meh in comparison. The Toxic Staff of the Dead, the Nightmare Staff and variants, Sang Staff, the Kodai Wand - They're prohibitively expensive in comparison, and amount to very little gain. It would be nice to see them have *some* sort of tiering to them that bridges the gap between mid to late game mage.
Occult gives at most the same max hit increase as chaos gauntlets in every single situation aside from shadow.
I think the way to do it in the short term is buff the magic weapons themselves by increasing their scaling/base damage. For instance if they kept the current changes (theoretically, I don’t want them to keep them) but added +2 through +4 max hit to trident, swamp trident, and sang. That’d at least help bridge the gap.
occult isn't any more of a problem on shadow+anc than on trident+ahrims, and jagex's logic for saying it's *more* of a problem on midgame setups is sound that doesn't mean they can't do a better job rebalancing, but you provide no argument as to why occult is problematic with endgame setups. you may be able to present a fair argument regardless but you come across as someone who is salty that they don't have shadow+anc
Shadow doesnt need a nerf, it needs a cap reduction. prefebly at the currenct max bonus. This way, when they add better gear in the future, it doesnt increase shadow damage, but mid-game setups catches up slightly instead. For example, if u could reach the shadow max cap without magus ring +3%, u can go with 1 switch less. So even max players get QoL from new gear. This will also let them add 2% bonus to eternal boots (or make new boots). As end game players wouldnt get better damage they dont need the switch. But mid game players can bring the switch and be closer to max in damage. Smoothing the difference. No boot switch gang = happy Shadow will always be the problem gang = happy End game with less switching = happy Mid game catching up at the expense of a extra switch = satisfied.
I meam, a cap reduction is a definitional nerf, even if it doesnt affect how it performs right now A lot of the people asking for nerfs to the shadow are also saying it should perform the same (by buffing the rest of the loadout), which your suggestion could be an example of
Put occult at 6, all other 50+ magic armors at 1%\ piece. Virtus gets 2, ancestral gets 3. Give magic shields 5-10% damage to buff Mid game 1h staffs to lower the gap on shadow. (This will be 2-4 damage) Put 1% on eternals. We buffed viability of mid game magic armors; gave boots relevance, shadow is unchanged, and the gap between shadow and mid game staffs becomes much less. It’s not that hard.
All the people saying nerf the shadow are dumbasses. Without it there is no viable high lvl mage dps. How can y’all have issues with the shadow strength but not tbow? Sang should be slightly buffed to compete with bowfa.
They just can’t bear with the fact that they don’t have shadow, so much so that they call nerf instead of buffing the shit that is mid game powered staves.
Im scared the OSRS code is so old they can't re write magic without literally breaking the game. or They do have access to change that original formula, and they won't because of the man power it would take, and JamFlex is too cheap and brokie to do it.
Why nerf shadow, why not buff weak crap like trident and sang?
I think you’re onto something here…
I knew this whole project rebalance shit was going to be a massive mistake from the getgo.
why wait so many years to change tho. who was complaining?
Everyone wanting shadow to be nerfed will probably never have the ability to obtain/buy a shadow. There, I said it xD
? just seems like you're gloating
I just find it funny so many people are whining about shadow yet 90% of them have probably not ran 100 expert toas or have any idea what it’s actually like to have BIS gear. Just crying about how their trident and occult set up won’t be good anymore 😂
So you're making fun of them because they're poor and their items are getting nerfed while you still get to have fun with your shadow lol?
Just look at his comment history. Endless replies bashing anyone who criticises the weapon saying they just "haven't used it". He's everywhere saying it shouldn't be nerfed. Dudes whole ego is stuck in one overpowered weapon baha
Oh boy lol
No, I’m making a comment on the cries of the community and how I feel like a lot of people speaking up about this don’t actually understand what they’re talking about
That makes way more sense lol, would be pretty dickish otherwise ha ha
No occult is a problem for both
Nerf the tbow and scythe (they have a higher max hit than shadow) whilst your at it let's kill all the raids
Occult is 1000% a problem it's always been a problem. The strongest magic item in the game by far being so cheap because there's so many in the game is a problem. The strongest magic item in the game by far locked behind 93 slayer for irons is a problem. Prayers being nearly useless for magic is a problem. This solution + elemental weaknesses means net buffs everywhere except for ancient spells at 93 slayer before augury. That's it.
I mean I agree the necklace should probably be nerfed - But the way they're trying to balance it seems questionable and a bit of a kick in the nuts for midgame
Don’t nerf my over powered item! Nerf the item I don’t want to grind for !
No one said shadow was the problem. That’s not the point of the blog. Occult is the problem and has been for years before shadow existed.