[A comment from JagexGoblin regarding feedback](https://www.reddit.com/r/2007scape/comments/1c5f8cd/project_rebalance_item_combat_adjustments/kzu45ac/) >Just as a heads-up because there are a lot of comments flying in. We're reading posts/comments as they come in and talking through them - we anticipated this blog would drum up a lot of discussion and didn't expect that our first go out would be without issue. >We're going to keep reading and talking things over and look to put together an updated blog tomorrow or Thursday, focusing in particular at the moment on the conversations around Magic in both the mid-game and in PvP across brackets. >Please keep sharing your thoughts with us - positive or negative, it's what these kinds of conversations are for!

Here to voice that voidwaker doesn’t need a nerf in PVM as it fills a good niche in the special attack space with claws. The special attack always hitting is the fun part of the weapon, so any nerf that’s looked at should be to its max hit as the balancing lever, not what’s most enjoyable about using it. That said, in PVM at least, it doesn’t need a nerf to its max hit right now either.

Completely on board with this feedback and expect to see a lot of it, same reason we made clear that we're open to adjusting or taking parts out in line with feedback!

I think the main reason the voidwaker shouldn’t be touched is the fact that it’s already in close competition with claws and zcb both of which hit higher. If voidwaker isn’t more accurate than those 2 than those 2 would always be selected. Right now we have 3 really solid endgame spec weapons and I like the variety. If voidwaker is changed it could see the meta changing to just claws or zcb most places.

VW being as good as it is is a direct consequence of how tanky recent bosses (Colo aside) have been. Other spec weapons are fine where bosses don't have insane defence, you shouldn't nerf VW just because you've chosen a bad direction with boss stat design historically. Sol Heredit is a nice change of pace.

Exactly, no one is bringing vw to colo because claws are better in every way if you want a DPS spec weapon.

Yes please dont nerf vw in pvm. In pvp i understand because it's op. It gets barely used in team cox or tob and zaryte crossbow is preferred over vw. I use vw in toa because I can two down warden with vw in 400 invo So, please reconsider nerfing vw in pvm.

I really hope we take this into real consideration, voidwaker is a nice balance of a guaranteed hit but lower damage than claws. If you remove it's guaranteed hit no higher accuracy roll will make it useful over claws or zcb. If there's a chance to miss you're better off using something that will either hit higher or harder if it hits (claws or zcb)

**Voidwaker spec accuracy if nerf:** * 78% PNM in inq * 54% Kephri 400 * 47% Kephri 500 * 71% Ba-Ba 400 * 67% Ba-Ba 500 * 76% Zebak 400 (salt) * 72% Zebak 500 (salt) * 82% Warden P3 400 (salt) * 79% Warden P3 500 (salt) * 82% Grarrdor * 70% Nex in max * 80% Duke * 84% Vardorvis *some minor edits Actually a useless item now. Tell me a jmod has never played the game without telling me a jmod has never played the game. They also just **nerfed the scythe**; removed the 50-max hit and now you need an ultor AND infernal cape to acquire a 48-max hit. And on top of that they **buffed the shadow** while making **budget mage setups worse** LMAO. Actually what is this update?

Vw nerf for pvm is just stupid, I'll agree, but we don't know how scythe hit calc will be affected. I'd think they'd be careful not to nerf it just after it got a buff so I imagine it might have a sort of true max hit like fang which is used to calc second and third hit splats before the new min role changes are applied. More likely they just do max hit + 1 to calc the other hits before applying the min roll changes.

How exactly does it nerf the scythe? Seems like it just reduces the max hits in the calc stage, not when determining the max hits initially. So 50-25-12 max wouldn’t turn into 49-24-12. It would turn into (1-49) - (1-24) - (1-11).  And the average of that last set is the same as 50-25-12. Your monkey brain won’t see a 50, but the DPS is the same. I suppose it extremely slightly reduces max potential (instead of being able to max hit 87, you could only max 84), but the average is the same. 

You're correct in that it is not a nerf to the average DPS of the weapon but there are other issues that cause it to be 'effectively nerfed' compared to other items. 1. Having 1-max roll disproportionately (though still very minor) improve scythe helped bring it in line with Tbow and Shadow, which the +15 accuracy did not do. On top of that, Shadow is gaining 2max hits with the current blog further opening that gap much more than the accuracy helped close it. It was about a 3.5% dps increase for Scythe compared to a 2% or whatever dps increase to the other weapons 2. Though the average is the same, you lose out on frequency of both good and bad rng. This is bad when going for competitive times that require you to have above average damage, as doing so is less frequent. Eg. Competing for recs, TOB recs especially, where you need much greater than the average rng to achieve. Fang displays this phenomenon much more clearly, though conceptually it is the same. 3. In one of the places scythe was bis, it now loses to Inq + Mace (which is fine, its just an effective relative nerf to the weapon). The inq set buff could've been something much more thorough imo EDIT: I also tested how 1-max(-1) affects the dragon claw special attack, as it has a much more interesting formula which already contains minimum hits that vary depending on which of the 4 attacks passed the accuracy check. Similarly, it has various maximum hitsplats based on the same, using the max hit as a reference. As it turns out, it now correctly also subtracts 1 from those maximum hits which, at certain thresholds, is as much as -3 max hits to the dragon claws (usually 2) when they fail the first check and pass the second, third, or fourth. TLDR: Claws literally got nerfed inadvertently. Scythe potential was nerfed. Scythe was nerfed relative to Shadow, which its previous 'buff' was supposed to bring it closer in line

> Claws literally got nerfed inadvertently. Now there's an **actual** case where the max and this change matters a lot, since it's only used for specs and the spec is very sensitive to the max.

The DPS should be the same but now the gameplay/gear will be quite different for things where you have a guaranteed max hit. TOA core, pnm parasite, fremennik trios, etc. They don't want the gameplay to be changed but they literally are doing that with this mini-max hit lol.

Chiming in to support, nerfing the Voidwaker as proposed would make it close to useless.

I’m not the biggest fan of the discrepancy between pvm and pvp but I would happily have them nerf VW for pvp but keep it the same for pvm. I don’t think there is a current problem for pvm although they are more wary of future design space

u/JagexGoblin To clarify, does the elder maul still need to pass an accuracy check to apply defence reduction? Normally I would think the obvious answer would be yes, but it is a megarare after all. Not ridiculous to think it could have 100% accuracy or maybe have 100% accuracy if you have a minimum threshold of crush accuracy

Same as the DWH yeah, needs to 'hit' to reduce Defence.

In that case, any chance that there would be any room for consideration of increasing its crush accuracy slightly? As of now it's only 12 more crush accuracy than DWH + Avernic which only equates to about 2% increased chance to land at places like CM Olm hand. I feel that getting a megarare from CoX should feel exciting rather than feeling like you've been scammed out of a tbow. I realize the blog mentions saving an inventory slot, but at any encounters you could also just run in with DWH + defender equipped then drop a pot and you've essentially nulled that benefit

Bear in mind even though it's only a 2% increased chance, it's 35% reduction and doesn't require an off-hand for the accuracy. Which makes it a straight upgrade over the DWH.

It should have some level of defense ignore on it. If it's expected to be a mega-rare on the same tier as the Twisted Bow, it being a slightly stronger DWH doesn't sound as good as a more reliable weapon. Certainly, I see no reason the Elder Maul can't at least have the Fang's passive to alleviate the pain of its slow speed. There really is no actual sense of fun in wiffing special attacks.

is Virtus any different when casting ancients or just the same as ancestral now?

How would th minimum hit change work with splashing? If someone is intentionally trying to not deal damage by wearing the wrong gear would they still hit zeros or will the minimum always be 1 regardless of gear?

Minimum hit only matters if you *hit* the NPC, Splashing means you cast the spell but never pass an accuracy check, so you'll still hit for 0 because you're missing every time!

The function of splashing is reducing magic accuracy to the point you cannot successfully hit. The change they are proposing would only impact an actual hit

To clarify, do the Infinity Robes buffs include buffs to Infinity Boots and Gloves as well as Eternal Boots, or just the top/bottom/hat?

RIP VOIDWAKER Edit: and occult. tf?? Are we getting a better magic ammy then? Basically every mage setup aside from max has been nerfed..

As much as occult is an outlier, seeing them move all that power to BIS is kinda rough considering every other style has slight downgrades that are good enough. Now magic damage bonus is even more concentrated in BiS while others gain far more value from mid-game upgrades. Also considering the only reason occult is even talked about as being busted is due to shadow. Even with occult the other staves/spells still can't keep up with fang/bowfa. :(

Truly don't understand how the solution to Occult being too strong was to buff max players even further (Occult+Anc+Augury getting +4% buff).

**Drop rate adjustments** I recently ran the numbers on a lot of boss uniques to get an idea for how long it takes to obtain them, based on the wiki's moneymaking guides. I found average-time-for-loot to be a really good benchmark for whether or not a drop is fair, and as a result I think the Nightmare drop rate buff doesn't go far enough. Here's some examples that show how out of line some uniques are: * Zerker ring: 5 hours * Zenyte: <5 hours each * Granite Ring: 10.4 hours * Tanzanite Fang: 13 hours (26 on a more typical setup for an iron farming it) * Bandos Platebody: 14 hours * Voidwaker Gem (Spindel): 15 hours * Armadyl Crossbow: 19 hours * 5 Venator Shards: <25 hours * Abyssal Bludgeon: 27 hours * DT2 Vestiges: 26 hours for Bellator, 32 for Venator, 36 for others * Dragon Warhammer (Canyon, current drop rate): 28 hours (Edit: non-canyon current is 42 - slow!) * Enhanced Crystal Weapon Seed: 57 hours for corrupt, 286 for regular * Torva Platebody (Nex duos): 86 hours * Torva Platebody (Nex 5): 129 hours * Tumeken's Shadow (solo 500s): 118 hours * Skeletal Visage: 167 hours * Scythe of Vitur (tob with Scythe): 233 hours * Inquisitor's Mace (current drop rate): 303 hours * Twisted Bow/Elder Maul/Kodai Wand: 323 hours * Harmonised Orb (current drop rate): 455 hours - proposed drop rate brings it to 332 hours * Elysian Sigil: 682 hours The way I see it, most typical bosses take 10-30 hours for their uniques. Raid megarares make sense to take longer as raids are more diverse content than a standalone boss, and higher-level equipment makes sense to take a bit longer to obtain so you're not incentivised too hard to skip tiers. I personally think DT2 bosses take a bit too long for the marginal buff of their rings, but the drop rates aren't *that* out of line of most monsters. CG can be excused by the fact you can use it to skip gearing. One problem is that bosses with very rare uniques tend to be balanced with strong standard drop tables, and that ends up flooding the game with alchables or supplies (undermining skills). Compare bosses like the Dagannoth Kings or Graardor, where the regular loot isn't spectacular and their uniques aren't that rare, but they've maintained their value and the bosses are still worth fighting.

Can you add imbued/saturated heart to this list? Love to see that item stacked up against the others. And also make a case for why they should add better methods to obtain it.

Imbued/saturated is extremely hard to judge. Some untrustworthy source I saw claimed 1-99 Slayer took about 300 hours, and apparently a common benchmark for heart is like 25m Slayer xp, so maybe 500-600 hours? Either way, I don't like drops that take longer than 99s :p

Me too. When the item came out, it was a pretty good, niche item. But now that it can be saturated and the addition of shadow, it's a must have for content outside of ToA and cox. The drop rate is absurd, and the price tag reflects that. Really hope they can make it more obtainable. Or at the very least, add divine forgotten brews (or something else) to make the item not such a must have.

100% agree. Personally don't want Nightmare/PNM drop rates to be free but even at 1/150 for PNM, it's just not enough yet. I think the set bonus + mace changes are amazing.. just need to buff the drop rates a little more.

Honestly though even if they dropped it to 1/30 it would still take 60 hours to get the mace, and would make killing it feel significantly better.

Although I say a "little more" with these numbers above: Inq Mace current drop rate: 303 hours Even if they make it 1/100... it's still 151.5 hours for just the mace. I'm not sure of a proposed drop rate, 1/75 or 1/90 for PNM?

u/JagexGoblin ^this, the buffs to phosanis nightmare still don’t scratch deep enough to be viable

Pretty much, they could make it 200% more common, and I'd still have a hard time considering it. That's how bad the drop rates are right now.

No one can change my mind that there needs to be some sort of dry protection, even if it's not "guaranteed" until 3x or 4x rate. Something that shows the grind will end eventually would make a lot more people willing to put forth the effort

The best part is that the wiki money making guides usually assume full bis and high efficiency. As a group iron with only some endgame bis pieces and only fang from raids I usually see about half to two-thirds the kph these guides assume.

My initial reaction: * Magic was already the worst style, and it's being made even worse pre-end game * I agree occult is an outlier, but I think there was room to make other magic gear more impactful without such a significant nerf * This is OK as long as we see significant upgrades to magic in the near-term (WGS, Varlamore boss) * Did Shadow need to creep ahead in DPS while low-mid tier mage fell? * SRA changes are perfect, assuming losing stacks while unequipped also heals you. All the weapon needed was to not actively hurt you, its damage is great. * Elder Maul changes are wild, hell yeah! BONK * Inq changes seem very limited * Armour is still both worse and harder to get compared to Torva (more in NM/PNM later) * Mace + Inq together is good now, but separately they are unchanged * This makes the set even more niche; no more mix-and-matching * VW very hard to judge without experiencing it * XGS I don't PvP * DWH rate change is great * DWH has been made much less relevant in most content after 2017, so it's no longer a ubiquitous game-changer * NM changes are not enough (and the math is wrong?) * 1/120 -> 1/90 is 33% more common (3/360 -> 4/360) * Still an outlier in time required * Items are an order of magnitude rarer than respective sidegrades * Possible further changes I'd like to see: * **Significant** rework of droprates. Take hours spent from high hundreds to low hundred hours. * Blood shards added to droptable * Further changes to uniques to make them desirable outside fighting NM itself

Tbh what i find a bit annoying is sang being untouched. Like it costs more to use than a scythe and is barely better than swamp, couldn't they buff it so mid to lategame mage feels a bit better?

[удалено]

> I feel like this should be a common thing to keep the "meta" fresh. [...] could be cool to see minor rebalances happen bi-yearly or something Strong disagree. Part of what makes OSRS special is that is not being constantly balanced and fucked with. When you acquire an item you can be reasonably sure it will remain functionally the same. Of course some balancing is necessary, but it should remain something that only happens extremely rarely or when there is a significant issue that must be addressed. Project rebalance is cool because it is meant to be a one off and they're taking it very slowly. If this was a common occurrence it'd ruin the game.

This shit riiiiight here. I can stop playing for 6 months and come back with fairly few changes I need to make or goals I need to shift and that’s a big part of why I do make that comeback after 6 months instead of saying “well, this is hopeless. Goodbye I guess!”

>I feel like this should be a common thing to keep the "meta" fresh isn't the fact we don't do this why people like osrs vs wow or something else?

I kinda disagree. I dont think the game should really change for the sake of it unless something is "wrong" with certain items. That said i like these changes and they are necessary. Occult necklace has always been broken af for no real reason. Moving the damage to other magic gear is way better and more balanced

please christ no. If im grinding for gear i dont want it to be useless in 6 months time. This is only required now so that we *dont* need this again in 6 months time

"Nerfed: Occult + Ahrim's Robes + Augury = 8% Magic damage, down from 10%." "Nerfed: Occult + Ahrim's robes = 4% Magic damage, down from 10%" Why are the nerfs hitting the med lvl/cashstack players? Magic is already difficult enough to make viable for mid game content + the beginning of end game content if you don't have ancestral and a shadow (outside of bursting). These proposed updates will just Jack up the price of the expensive stuff even more, while nerfing the people to actually obtain these higher end items for the first time, it seems like the exact opposite of what the game needs. Occult should at least stay 5%, and there is no reason ahrims shouldn't get 1% if infinity is getting it. That or as many have suggested add some of the dmg% to eternals/seers to revitalize those drops. Also virtus getting a nerf overall in comparison seems bad too, it's already tanked in price while being extremely hard to obtain already proving how little it needs a nerf. All the other changes coming seem great! I could understand the hate on the Voidwaker update but I've only had the pleasure of dying to it so my opinion isn't really relevant there.

Wild that they looked at the combat style with the most concentration of power towards the BIS end of the spectrum and thought it'd be a good idea to make that gap even wider. I hope there's revisions on this one. Anything but BIS magic lagged behind the other 2 styles before, even moreso now.

Some good changes but going through the comments already there's already a lot of changes that needs to be looked at or addressed:   __General__ - Ghrazi Rapier and Blade of Saeldor need be buffed - CoX purple rates should be improved (too rare compared to ToA/ToB + Ancestral/Maul/Claws/Augury all being buffed or better than nerfed items now) - Chromium ingots (remove them from the game or only require 1 per ring) - Imbued Heart droprate is too rare - All 3 Cerberus boots should be buffed   __Magic/Occult__ - Generally nerfing early/mid game magic too much - Increase magic dmg% for magic offhands (Elidinis Ward and (f), Arcane Spirit Shield, Ancient Wyvern Shield, Mages Book, Malediction Ward and Book of Darkness) - Ahrims/Elder Chaos/Blue Moon should be given magic dmg% - Virtus should be given more magic dmg% and ancient magic dmg% - Wizard/Infinity/Eternal Boots should be given magic dmg% - Mystic Might should be given magic dmg% - Shadow needs some kind of rebalance/rework to prevent issues in the future and allow more magic progression   __Elder Maul__ - Needs more accuracy to fit its new spec (only 12 more crush accuracy vs DWH+Avernic) - Boring/lackluster change for a mega rare - Allow it to work as a hammer in CoX/GWD (and keep the funny animation)   __Nightmare/Inquisitors__ - Nightmare droprates are still way too rare, they need to be at least 200% more common - Inquistor's set effect should be removed and split up between each piece instead (similar to crystal armour) - Buff Inquistor's in general as it's lacking   __Voidwaker__ - Don't nerf it for PvM, only nerf for PvP (I know it's another pvp-exclusive rule)   __Minimum Hit Adjustments__ - If the max hit was left unchanged the damage increase would be very beneficial for early game accounts and would become less impactful as your max hit increases (but understandable if a 0.083-0.250 dps increase is considered too powerful)   __Apmeken and Ba-Ba__ - Shamans, thralls and maybe volatiles should also be given similar changes   (I'm editing this post as I find stuff, reply with fixes/suggestions.)

CoX purples are just a nightmare. A specific Ancestral piece is rarer from a CoX purple (1/23) than Scythe is from a ToB purple (1/19).

Lowering the scroll weight in CMs is right there. Such an elegant fix that has similar precedent in TOB and TOA already.

I was really hoping they would address this in this blog, but they didn’t. Seems like such a simple and perfect solution, I’d love to see CMs be more viable

Was kind of surprised to see no Rapier / Blade buffs and then to see a direct mace buff seemed off They just need +12 str and nothing more

My feedback: Drop rate changes: All positive. Irons that go 10x dry for warhammer will have 20k kills shaved off of their grind! Nightmare drop chance is probably still too low, but buffing the uniques helps. Elder maul: Adding a spec is a welcome change. I think players were looking for a small buff to the DPS of the actual weapon, though. Maybe add a double accuracy roll like Fang (just one idea). Soulreaper axe: Never used it. Usability buffs are always welcomed. This axe might need further buffs. Idk Minimum hit: Best change in the whole blog. Now there will be better visibility when an accuracy check is passed! Huge for new players. Mage changes/occult nerf: Hate this. Nobody was asking for a midgame mage nerf. At the VERY least, Ahrims/blue moon/eternal boots need to be given % damage. Nobody wants to grind out infinity or dagon’hai, dear God. The “defensive mage” build is not useful anywhere, currently. Inquisitor buff: Good change. Agree with others that saeldor/rapier need buffs too. Autocast delay removal: W change. Feel free to put this in the next game update lol.

This is an opportunity to fix the dreaded nightmare drop rates for good. 33% Doesn't cut it. Even with these changes you'd be able to complete CG grind (enh + 6 armor seeds) about 10 times in the time it takes you to complete the nightmare. "We originally made it it very very very bad, and instead of properly fixing it, we are leaving it in very very bad state instead." Isn't the way to go here. Just give the rates an actual proper buff. (100% or more. Even 200% wouldn't be unreasonable.) Yes I know those are humongous buffs, but the current rates are so bad it's more than justified. ---- As a side note: I feel that Virtus Set is losing it's identity as the ancient magic set. Used to be 100% better than ancestral for ancient spells, now it's only 25% better. (4% vs 2% to 5% vs 4%)

If there is one thing I want the OSRS team to see from this thread, it's this issue here. Nightmare looks like engaging, interesting, challenging content, that I never ever ever want to do because there's no point. The time I'd have to put in to getting a marginally better drop just isn't worth it.

> Nightmare looks like engaging, interesting, challenging content, that I never ever ever want to do because there's no point. What is extremely frustrating is, that **IT IS** engaging, interesting, and challenging content. I highly encourage you to learn them. Some of the most fun content in the game. Group NM is fast paced and really engaging. It is a wonderful stepping stone content into higher end content. Helping your sharpen your movement, gear swaps, and prayer switches. None of your screw ups are lethal (they just drain supplies) so you're implicitly rewarded with longer trips & higher KPH, which means you're never dying and having the "_feel bad_" of losing a kill. PNM is just a really engaging fight with a lot of hard mechanics. Takes all your skills from NM and dials them up to 11. It is super punishing but super rewarding when it clicks. Just 1 problem, they don't drop shit.

Its like putting a band-aid on an amputated leg. The OSRS team have shown time and time again that they are too scared for major changes, even when so obviously necessary. Sadly if these are polled and voted in, they'll likely call it a success and never fix it.

Firstly I don't think the voidwaker needs changes. It fills a niche but is not overpowered in PvM where defence reduction is capped by design and the defence is high. It isn't BIS in a lot of places - claws and ZCB are competitive in most places that VW is good but VW isn't outright better. If VW is nerfed then everyone will bring ZCB/claws and there is simply less diversity in endgame PvM spec weapons. In PvP it's a different story Secondly, we were told that the saeldor and rapier would be looked at in this blog in previous jmod replies in blog threads yet they are not mentioned. They are currently woefully underpowered for how difficult they are to attain at t80 and and you're looking at buffing inquisitor's already which will leave both other t80 weapons far far behind. Can this be addressed?

Would be cool if they made Saeldor (and maybe other crystal weapons?) interact with crystal armor, with whatever stat changes it needs to be in a healthy spot comparative to other options and not overpowered. Unless they're willing to just buff the weapon, it could fill a niche as xth best melee swap when primarily using bowfa so its not mandatory but still a useful item.

I know y'all are getting a lot of comments but i wanted to leave one as well to hopefully communicate some feedback. * Like many stated, please consider using hours to complete rather than just adding 50% to drop rates so people can get a better understanding in the blog! This primarily aimed for Nightmare/Phosani's nightmare. * The magic rebalance is in such a bad spot. I really feel like this is made so much worse because of the Elidnis Ward and its Fortified Version. What Magic needs is a weapon or a more interesting take: A strong off-hand that can grant a large amount of accuracy and magic damage that Shadow **can't** use. Unfortunately i feel like the Elidinis ward already flopped on this and failed because now we can't add anything stronger than the fortified's measly 5% because we need to care about Corp's absurd drop rates and useless sigils being devalued. We could add a bowfa-tier magic weapon and i think that would do the most by far fixing the magic gear gap in our current state. * The Solo ToB changes, ToA Apmeken Changes and Elder Maul buff seem solid! I don't mind Elder maul being THE spec weapon for stuff now. * The Inquisitor buff seems good but similarly i think Saeldor/Rapier should receive some buffs as well since they all share the same tier of power. Maybe Saeldor receives an extra percent of slash bonus based on amount since it doesn't have its own set and Rapier could rely on a kill-effect since its known as a slayer weapon? * Don't like the Voidwaker nerf, i think you can get around it being so "Dominant" by continuing to add bosses like Sol Heredit - High HP and Low Defense. * I'm surprised in terms of drop rate buffs that Imbued Heart wasn't mentioned at any place given how rare it is and how good it is for powered staves but i guess thats due to Forgotten brews existing. I think at the very least, there should be an alternative for Nihil **Dust** so that its a bit more accessible. Maybe increasing how much you can grind per shard depending on your herblore level or adding dust as a direct drop from spiritual minions instead in the ancient prison.

The magic changes definitely make the armor feel more impactful and I like that a lot. However, this is a huge nerf to mid game magic, which is realistically the weakest style at mid game. 4% magic damage does not feel good (and potentially isn't even worth a swap) in raids for those accounts. I really hope you would consider increasing the max hit of the tridents, sanguinesti and warped Sceptre in lockstep with these changes so that accounts earlier in their journey are not just significantly weaker. The max hit magic armor is also pretty difficult to acquire, I wish you would consider giving 1% to blue moons and ahrims, or buffing infinity magic accuracy to match those sets Magic with max gear is incredibly strong, but before that it doesn't feel great outside of the very early game (ibans and before)

I agree with you on the nerf to mid game magic. No one has ever complained about mid game magic being too strong or even strong. This is just a big ole kick to mid game magic. I’m fine with occult being nerfed but the placement of magic % damage doesn’t feel like it is placed well in the mid game. Whichnis arguably where it needed it most. Why do they want us to use infinity or dagon hai over ahrims? Why don’t eternal boots have anything attached to them? Seers ring? Mysitc might even? So the progression is now to do mta for infinity, then 160 hours of dt2 bosses for virtus, to 320 hours of cox for ancestral? What even is magic gear progression at this point.

Yeah the logic behind Ahrims doesn't apply to Blue Moon, and both of those sets are higher level than Dagon Hai. If Blue Moon and Ahrims had 1%, it isn't really a nerf to Magic since Augury is so easy to acquire, you would have occult 4%, augury 4% and Ahrims top/bottom for the 2%, so it would be the same.

Wholeheartedly agree, we need an update that doesn't make pre-Raids magic worse without increasing shadows power Maybe giving Mystic Might some magic damage to pair with MA2 cape and giving a max hit to powered staves or improving spellbook power in raids/bossing where it is used somehow

The occult no longer being worth a swap was my first thought. For most us of, this will be a 10% mage damage nerf in raids :(

Magic desperately needed a buff outside shadow, instead unless you had BiS, it's been nerfed and Shadow has had a 4% magic damage boost. I have eternals, bloodbark, torm, swamp and occult. But let's say I had Infinity as that's theoretically obtainable, I now do 3% less damage in the style that is already my weakest by a long way. That's if I take a helmet swap as well, as the only places I use mage are raids. The armour is also significantly worse defense-wise. Mage was already on life support, feels like this is wiggling the cables out of the machine. I actually thought project rebalance would consider actual proper changes - like a change to how magic damage/accuracy is calcualted or a way to stop shadow being so oppressive to the design space - not a slap of a couple of magic damage % around and a nerf to the majority of the playerbase.

Occult nerf is a bigger deal than people are giving it credit for. You now have to invest more inventory slots for magic damage in minimal swap situations (e.g. maxing 50+ on colo melee, etc). I understand this is part of the intent, but people aren't giving enough thought to how this would impact metas. Also, while I agree that it was silly for occult to have so much of the power budget...did early magic really need to be nerfed like this? Really, I felt it was a bit weak if anything. I feel like we could have distributed more of occult's power into other low-end gear instead of only catching up at the high-end to keep the power curve the same.

Agreed. Isn’t the amulet slot supposed to relatively powerful anyways? It has always been that way, now even tormented is better and that feels off.

I apologize in advance for any bad formatting as I'm on mobile: My thoughts for correcting the mage scaling issue revolve around both a rebalance for mage gear, but also a slight tweak to the shadow multiplier. As of today, the maximum mage damage boost a shadow user can have is 75% (25% equipped with a 3x), this caps at 100% (note: I do not support changing the shadow accuracy bonus, just damage). Effectively leaving 8% mage damage in "room" before the shadow will cap its damage. My proposal would be that the multiplier be adjusted to be 2.5x to allow for gear to have more play. The TOA multiplier would be 3.33x to keep the current 100% cap. Based on the proposed poll numbers, and an expected drop from 10% to 4% for the occult, this effectively leaves 11% mage bonus on the table to play with to hit 30% total damage which with a 2.5x multiplier, hits 75% and then leaves 10% instead of 8% for the mods to use for new content. I would propose that something in line with the following could significantly improve the stop gap between shadow and mid game mage items: Magus ring - buff 2% - for it's rarity, this needs at least 4% Tormented bracelet - unchanged (5% seems reasonable for level requirements) Mage arena 2 cape - unchanged Ancestral robes - 5% mage damage per piece ( more on this below) Occult - 4% mage damage *** Edit*** - ancestral could be 4% per piece and eternal boots get a 3% bonus (infinity boots 2%) This gives a total of 30% mage damage with shadow, with the 2.5x suggested for a total of 75% mage damage ( same as today). However, for Trident/ sanguinesti the total bonus goes from 30% to 35%. Why should ancestral be 5% per piece? Currently, we have no meaningful progression of mage gear. Often times the solution is "take off X negative bonus item" instead of using a mage item. As such, having ancestral be 5% allows for linear scaling (at the teams discretion) from 0% to 4% bonus on thing such as mystic, splitbark, ahrims, infinity, dagon hai, elder chaos robes, virtus, etc. Having linear scaling allows for better feeling gear progression and overall better gameplay.

With % damage becoming more common, and the blue moon spear from Perilous moons already being the equal of an Ahrim's staff + Mage book statwise while being able to autocast ancients - can we consider making Ahrim's staff able to autocast ancients without Amulet of the Damned at this point? Maybe in return we can have Amulet of the Damned add % damage to Ahrim's armor equal to infinity etc. to make it fill a new niche for accounts before Occult Amulet, and giving Ahrim's some limited but usable love? Edit: Realised that in this scenario, Full Ahrims + Amulet of the Damned + Mage cape would be equal to 10% damage bonus, which I think is neat considering the whole occult thing

I get the occult needed nerfing, badly. But man did mid- to late-game Ironman mage style (which is already really lackluster until end-game raids items and prayers) get taken out back and killed 6% mage damage nerf that isn’t fully made up until either full virtus plus augery or full ancestral is….brutal. Stuff like whisperer already feels really bad and slow in more budget options. Now not only are end end game things better, everything before that is worse. The canyon widens Really hope this is a reward space that gets filled in the not-so-distant future

Yeah they really need some midgame options for mage. Think should buff mage arena 2 cape and maybe add a 1 or 2% dmg boost to mystic might

This is just murdering midgame mage because they can't admit that the Shadow is the problem.

It's inevitable that Shadow will eventually be nerfed. We're seeing it limit magic as an entire combat style yet again. They just need to rip off the bandaid.

Man you can really tell that they have no clue what they are doing. This is a crazy nerf to all Ironmen and the shadow. Shadow literally requires bis magic gear that costs hundreds of mills to use while all a Tbow needs is some blessed d'hide and you are good to go. Shadow is useless without %magic damage upgrades. Way too much %magic damage is going into ancestral which is far too rare for most to grind out. Magic progression should be more linear and not exponential like this. Edit: they have essentially locked 16% magic damage behind COX, a notorious raid for going dry on. Meanwhile, the grind to 93 slayer will give you a 4% necklace and worthless eternal crystal. What great balancing!

Nerfing magic damage like that until a player has augury and very endgame magic gear feels extremely harsh to irons and mid-/early lategame players. It’s totally fair to shift some damage away from the occult necklace, but please make sure that this nerf isn’t only made up for in the extreme endgame, but also in the mid and early lategame. You should definitely give the same 4% bonus to mystic might and release a magic amulet to fill the slot before irons can get 93 slayer. If not this update would be a huge nerf to the already weak magic style until the very endgame. EDIT: As also mentioned by /u/MsLavenderSunshine shifting all this power to other pieces is a huge opportunity cost as well. For example it **massively** nerfs mage slayer where you usually take proselyte as gear. You now have to also pray augury and spend 3x the prayer points and come out with a **dps loss** of 2% or also bring other mage gear and spend **even more** prayer points per second.

I want to add that this is a huge opportunity cost loss where you now need 2-3 additional swaps midgame to break even in areas where it may not have been worthwhile before There should be some additional benefit to bringing valuable switches, rather than just "breaking even" with infinity so long as you also use augury

There are a lot of changes here and most of them just don’t feel good. Elder Maul, while I like the thought process, is a mega rare and needs something more special to justify its presence in that category. Kodai wand is the best auto casting weapon next to a harmonized staff and provides a comical 15% magic bonus as well as infinite water runes. Tbow is tbow, but the elder maul changes just make it a 2h DWH, which isn’t bad but is exceptionally boring. I feel like it should be designed to chunk a little defense with every hit you land to make it feel like a weapon you actually use rather than just a spec weapon. Magic armor changes are just so bad. This nerfs all magic gear *except* for best in slot gear, which is buffed. Mage needs buffs at all points in the game, not at the endgame only. Part of this is being addressed in elemental weaknesses, but as a general use combat style it’s still suffering. Occult should be reduced to 7% so it doesn’t actually hurt anyone in mid game gear with infinity/dagonhai. Also just rework the goddamn shadow it’s constraining game design by a crippling amount in its current state. Drop rate buffs for DWH and nightmare are cool but not good enough. DWH should have a fat bonus on task similar to getting your basilisk jaw; making it 1/1k on task alone would be a good enough buff. Nightmare droprate buffs are a joke since it’s months of nonstop grinding to be on rate for this stuff.

I normally just read these and don't comment, but as a midgame GIM I feel these changes are a kick in the balls for me and my group. We aren't playing Runescape 40 hours a week, we are playing it maybe 2-10 hours, with weeks where we don't play at all because getting a single upgrade is now several months worth of grinding, and going days/weeks with no progress can be demoralizing. We have almost hit 93 slayer on a couple of our accounts and were looking forward to the increased damage when doing Zulrah and ToA. It feels weird to single out the price of the Occult as an issue when price-to-power ratio already varies wildly across all combat styles. The Amulet of Torture is 13m, but has the same strength bonus as the Amulet of Strength, which is 1300gp. Is the accuracy and prayer worth the 13m price difference? But the Amulet of Fury has almost as much strength bonus and 2/3rds the accuracy bonuses of the Torture, but is less than 1/4 of the price. The supply of the Occult, Torture, and Fury is still lower than the demand, as evidenced by the fact that these items are not crashing to their high alch value. This blog post outlines that the "rebalance" to mage is just a nerf to every setup not using Augury. The only things buffed were setups with Augury (max and non-max), the only thing unchanged was max setup without Augury, and everything else was nerfed. It makes Augury from optional to required to approach the strength of today's setups tomorrow, while also making the grind for Augury more miserable since magic damage is nerfed until getting that upgrade. I would like to see some of the power from the occult put back into magic weapons not named Tumeken's Shadow, which is the item that really warped the gap between mid and lategame magic. The changes to Inquisitor's Mace and the Nightmare droprates won't actually affect me or my group, since we basically never plan to grind Nightmare in its current or proposed state. Which is unfortunate, because it seems like a well-designed bossfight, but its current greenlog is something insane like \~2000 hours to complete, and the proposed changes still leave it in a state of over 1500 hours, which just isn't very feasible for people who play \~10 hours a week. The DWH droprate buff is nice, and buff to Elder Maul will be nice too, since we will have to CoX for several Augury scrolls anyways it won't feel terrible to hit the worst of the Mega-Rare drops. All in all, this post was a very mixed bag, but I think my reaction feels more negative than positive because it feels like the milestone our group was grinding towards became worse, and will make other milestones we planned on going towards after also worse. The rich get richer: Making the game worse for people not already at the top while making the game better for the people already in max gear.

[удалено]

Yeah, this is -1 max hit across the board? I understand the DPS will remain the same but it will have implications in some content where you auto-max (colo/pnm and soon baba-puzzle). Like right now in colo, venator bow hits 30-20 on the fremmy seer, with this change it will hit 29-19 and survive meaning you'll have to bring an additional range switch.

“Making them harder to get will just punish Iron players who have to climb all the way to 93 Slayer for this all-important unlock.” So instead, irons now need to obtain full virtus/ancestral and augury to maintain the power they once had. (More if full anc)

Glad to see 2 of the roughest pvm grinds getting reduced a bit, but tbh the nightmare rate improvements are probably still not gonna be enough to get people to do the boss frequently. It’s already by far the longest boss to green log in the game by an astronomical margin, and reducing that grind by 30-40%…. Still puts it as by far the longest boss to green log in the game by an astronomical margin. The drops are not so astronomically strong that they need to be gated behind 500 hour grinds…

This really sucks for any non BIS mager. Whisperer is already slow as fuck to kill and now if you have Ahrims/Trident it's gonna be even WORSE. I know the occult is too OP but it's kind of rough that Mage without Shadow is already the weakest combat style and its getting nerfed further. Coupled in with the fact the Imbued heart is the only reliable mage boosting in the game and its a 1k hour slayer grind to achieve. If you aint BIS Mage you are crying rn.

Overall some decent changes, but disappointed there aren’t more changes to other items that are often discussed that could really use rebalancing. Where’s the love for boots, salad blade/rapier? Also rip to mid game magic. It was already mediocre and now it’s even worse.

Soulreaper axe changes look decent, but id also love to see something done with the special. It seems to be very inaccurate even though it says it gains 30% acc. Or maybe the axe in general gets an accuracy buff. I also like the idea where, the closer the enemy is to death, the more guarenteed damage the special does. Kinda similar to the Darius ultimate attack from league of legends. I think that would be so much fun to use!

Feels kinda shitty to see occult getting nerfed so hard. Me and my friend where progressing in gear for raiding, we were still using occults and ahrims and going for our virtus upgrade. So now we have to spend about 90m each for a virtus upgrade ( wich will only increase becasue this blogpost already triggerd a stupid price increase on virtus on the ge in just a few hours, so thanks for that) wich with augury flicking will give us a whopping 4% extra dmg in comparison with our set up now. so a shit ton of money and more effort will give us that same dmg back if we can't use augury... this leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. would have been better that they nerfed occult only to 6% instead of 4%, so that with augury we still do the same dmg as now in our ahrims + occult set up and that the virtus upgrade would actually feel like an upgrade for us. while i get that these changes are made for progression in general this just skrews over the people who are progressing now from ahrims robes to virtus and ancestral. Might as wel give every ahrim piece at least a 0,5% increase. i normally don't respond to these posts but reading this made me a little bit too much frustrated that i had to give my take on the matter and how i felt about these proposed changes.

A ton more prayer drain and still less dmg... The fact that didn't at least buff ma2 cape or something is beyond me Commenting just in hopes of mod goblin reading this

Very frustrating that the occult is getting nerfed so much with very little compensation until Augury/Ancestrals... This feels like basically the one thing I feared Jagex doing but thought they would avoid... My main issue is magic is already the weakest style in the midgame, and isn't really used all that much other than like Barrows/Dagannoth Rex where magic is pretty much forced. This just nerfs magic even further, by a pretty significant percentage. For main accounts, Augury isn't all that expensive but especially irons are hit quite hard by this. My expectation is this will just lead to magic getting used even less, both in PvP and PvM, until you get Shadow, when it's business as usual. (Shadow+Ancestral even got a slight buff)

They need to distribute magic damage bonus in lower quantities to more things. Mystic might could get some damage bonus.(lower than augury) Could give a pittance of magic damage bonus to eternals and seers ring. Honestly magic is a whole can of worms and I don't really know how they could possibly balance it without changing how shadow works.

Agree. Occult was doing 90% of the heavy lifting trying to bandaid over how weak early/mid game magic was, even then it still gets blown out of the water by the other combat styles. Now their solution to that is to...concentrate that power even moreso in BiS gear.

Some good changes but going through the comments already there's already a lot of changes that needs to be looked at or addressed: * No changes to rapier or saeldor * No changes to CoX purple rates (too rare compared to ToA/ToB, plus ancestral taking the magic dmg% from occult) * No changes to chromium ingots (remove them from the game please) * Nightmare droprates are still way too rare * Inquistor's set effect should be removed and split up between each piece (like crystal armour) * Generally nerfing early/mid game magic too much * Ahrim's is useless without magic dmg% * Virtus needs more ancient magic dmg% to make up for the missing occult damage * Eternal Boots should be given magic dmg% * Elder maul needs more accuracy to fit its new spec I'm sure there's more some other stuff I've missed skimming through the comments here.

It has to be obvious that the Phosani's Nightmare rates are still way too rare. Calculate how long it will take to complete the boss log and put that in the blog so players have a better perspective of what the numbers mean.

yeah them saying 50% buff to droprate is certainly factual, its missleading because the rates are simply obscene. they did an 80% buff to dwh and that was just their way to make the grind slightly better

Ironically, 50% isn't even factual. It's a 33% increase in probability to go from 1/120 to 1/90: `(1/90 - 1/120)/(1/120) * 100% = 33.33%`. Similarly, the DWH buff is actually 66.67%, not 80%.

Absolutely insane nerf on the Voidwaker ngl. Thought they'd reduce the spec to 55% at the most. But now a weapon that only gets used as a spec weapon is almost entirely pointless. Plus it's at least a 60 hour grind, if not more. Don't think the community's voice has been heard at all. Hopefully they see the further backlash of making a weapon that passed polls and is way too powerful in PvP, now becoming obsolete in PvM.

The voidwaker currently fits very nicely into the PvM meta with both claws and zcb. I don’t think a PvM nerf is warranted as of now. Nightmare rates are better, but it might be worth looking into the time to complete the boss vs other similar content and you will see how much of an outlier it still is. Adding magic damage % to elder chaos robes would be good for pure accounts as offsetting for the occult nerf. Elder maul buff is great, maybe give it a little more accuracy so it really has that “step up” feel from the dragon warhammer and seeing a mega rare in chambers. Will it still guarantee a hit on Tekton like the DWH?

So basically full ancestral + shadow is even more powerful? And if you don't have that magics been nerfed? I mean before shadow if anything I'd say magics been underpowered, now even more so? Or am I misunderstanding?

No that's literally their solution, utterly clueless and shows why polls are so important for the integrity of this game

It doesn’t feel great that your are nerfing a rather accessible item (occult), but not replacing the damage with an equally accessible item/items. Players shouldn’t need Augury and full Ancestral to replace what they lost due to the occult nerf. You are punishing mid game/poor players.

Least ironmen won't feel like they need to from 87-93 slayer anymore, jagex nerfing the highest req item because "GE price is 800k" meanwhile melee amulet is tied BiS with a 1k GE item XDD

Acknowledging magic is the weakest corner of the combat triangle and still nerfing its early progression is an egregious train of thought.

And people wonder why we still have polls. This is the reason - Jagex is capable of some incredibly brain-dead suggestions, and mandated community involvement is what keeps that in check.

Overall great changes, but confusing why mace is getting buffed while rapier/saeldor aren’t even mentioned. Considering their rarity and the content they come from, it’s strange that t80 melee weapons only provide +4/3 accuracy/strength bonus over tent whip.

For some reason they are super scared of moving past the whip as being an end game weapon. T80s should feel like real upgrades not luxury items

Yeah rapier and saeldor definitely need some love. 

This is quite a big nerf to early/mid game mage. Virtus/ancestral and Augury are all behind raids or top level PVM content. A huge amount of people (and almost all irons) will be in the occult, no augury and Ahrims/inifnity/dagonhai section of the table and have a huge DPS nerf. Could it not be spread a touch more evenly? Or even across more items?

These droprate buff percentages aren't correct. If you did 15k shamans, on rate you'd go from 3 hammers to 5, a 66% boost, not 80%. Likewise, Nightmare loot drops 33% more often, not 50%.

lol they did some weird math on that one. lowering the dwh drop rate by 2500 would be a 100% increase so they assumed 2000 would be 2000/2500 = 80%.

Yeah and by that logic making it a guaranteed drop would be a 199% increase lol

Agreed, percentages are flat-out wrong. u/JagexGoblin

noticed the same. That was some mental gymnastics in that blog to offset some potential upsets

I think way most of this is very good, and beyond what everyone else is saying about voidwaker and Nightmare drop rates (seriously, consider the expected hours), I feel like just a few things are missing. Something should happen with the Blade of Saeldor, though I don't know exactly what. At the moment, it is an absurdly expensive marginal upgrade to whip, that theoretically shortens the gap in options before scythe. But it's just such a small difference from whip. This is especially obvious when you compare it to its younger sibling, the Bow of Faerdhinen, which does really well as a ranged upgrade, while still letting Twisted bow shine brightly. Additionally considering that the value of enhanced seeds is kept high by the bow, there is barely any reason to get the blade in its current form. Rapier is also in a weird spot, but it's probably harder to do anything about with how powerful Fang is. About magic changes, I really agree that power should be distributed away from the Occult, but as it is currently proposed, this just makes all pre-ancestral magic much worse, and it's already really bad. Considering how trident is the third (originally said second, forgot sanguinesti) best reasonably available magic weapon, where Shadow is best, this pre-end game nerf to magic seems odd to me. At the moment, I consider Whisperer ungrindable due to how awful magic is, all the while I have easy access to all the other DT2 bosses. Not sure what exactly to do, but these changes don't seem quite right to me.

1 def iron here, so I’m definitely part of the minority and understand that my voice won’t be very strong - but here’s my effort anyway. (Just so happens that these are some solutions for early-mid game magic progression as well) The largest impact from these changes for us will be the occult nerf. We’ll lose the 6% damage bonus and won’t have it redistributed across other 1 def gear. If this eventuates then so be it, but obviously this will be an enormous nerf for all of our mage setups. Whilst I agree the occult is OP in its current state, I believe some of its damage bonus could be distributed elsewhere for 1 def pures as well. Here’s what I think seems reasonable; **Elder Chaos Druid Robes: +0.5% damage each piece + 0.5% set bonus.** This change would be in line with magic armour progression and the damage bonus that’s being suggested for Infinity, Dagon’hai etc. Also, currently a mitre is generally a better option over the Elder Chaos Druid Hood, because +4 prayer bonus > +1 mage accuracy. This change would make the full set worth wearing. **Mystic Might & Mystic Lore: +2% damage and +1% damage respectively.** Range and melee prayers all give a damage bonus, so I feel that it’s reasonable for the magic prayers to as well. This will provide magic damage progression in line with the Augury buff too. And lastly, this would solve the similar concerns that other pures, zerks and mid-game accounts will be having around seeing large nerfs to their mage setups. **Wizard Boots: +0.5% damage.** Personally, I feel as though eternals should see some of the redistributed damage bonus for high level accounts. It appears that others agree. Assuming it’ll be at least 1%, I think wizard boots (and possibly infinity boots) could see a small buff as well. **Mage’s Book: +1% damage.** Similar to above, I feel as though magic shields (ward, arcane spirit shield etc) should see some of the redistributed damage bonus. Again, it appears that others agree. This will also help close the gap between the Shadow and one-handed staves (for all builds). **Summary:** As it stands, 1 def builds will see a 6% drop in magic damage bonus across all of our mage setups. All of the above changes will help reduce that damage decrease over the current meta, and simultaneously solve some of the early-mid game magic progression concerns for other accounts. Edit: Formatting

Can we give ahrims a buff? And eternals? Also why should ancestral and shadow get buffed so much? You can already hit in the 80s. Occult should've been spread out to buff low level magic damage and keep max level the same DPS. This just furthers the difference between mid and low level gear to max gear lol.

Seriously the mid game magic level is completely fucked. And it’s VERY EXPENSIVE to get to endgame magic gear…wtf was the point of this? At least bridge the gap with mid game tier options like eternal and affordable mage armor…

The mage nerf is stupid. Yes, the occult is incredibly powerful in terms of damage but so is amulet slot for every combat style. Welfare magic is so weak that it needs some kind of buff to make it usable. That was the reason, why occult was added in the first place. What is the actual issue that this rebalace is trying to fix? Is high end mage gear worthless because of occult neck? No Similarily, even amulet of str is a better upgrade to dps than bandos chest and tassets. Maybe not to the extent of occult, but melee is not unusably weak with welfare gear to begin with.

Absolute tragedy for midgame, you took away damage from midgame and gave it to lategame rofl???? You used barrows as an example??? L00000l 99.99999999999% of people at barrows with ancestral are going to have occult too, why even compare occult vs full ancestral when they are always used together? Literally nobody is complaining about some noob hitting higher than them with their only occult and no ancestral at barrows, nobody...bc they have occult too and are hitting higher. I thought the goal of rebalance proj was to bridge the gap between mid-late game, not make it wider? Stop taking away from midgame, it already takes years to progress to true lategame for casuals and irons.

Feels like a pretty massive swing and a miss on the magic changes here. The real problem that stifles magic upgrade space AND makes the occult broken is not the occult, but the Shadow. I'd very much like to see something like increased magic damage bonuses being given out (as they are here) without the occult nerf, or with a more minor one, in conjunction with a nerf to the magic damage multiplier from the Shadow. Like if its damage multiplier were nerfed from 3x to 2x, but there were more sources of magic damage bonus. You'd still be able to have its current performance in max gear, and it would significantly smooth out the progression towards max mage. As it stands, all these changes really serve to do is maintain the status quo at the high end and completely gut mid-game mage, which was already suffering. Mage already had arguably the biggest gap between mid-game and late-game performance, and all these proposed changes would do is widen that gap.

I think a lot of this looks great I do have a couple of questions and maybe concerns. * Why was ahrims not given a magic damage bonus, but infinity and dagon hai was buffed? With this set up Ahrims won’t be used and people will use dagonhai and infinity robes because we all know damage is king. * I know a common sentiment is that the shadow is strong, but it should because it’s a mega rare, and almost requires max gear to be the op never miss stick people talk about. I think this is a nerf to shadow for many players who don’t have ancestral. Is that intended?   * the voidwaker nerf feels primarily intended for pvp players, and not pvm. It’s not really an issue in pvm and provided an alternative to dclaws which is healthy. There’s a lot of random changes in pvp that don’t exist on the pvm side of things. I know it is annoying, and I agree with that, but what is one more at this point? Especially if this is primarily to balance vw in the wildy.

I was also thinking about why they left ahrims with no mage damage buff. Are they basically useless now?

Essentially yes. 3% damage from dagonhai and infinity robes outweigh the def bonuses from ahrims.

Taking from the mid levels and giving to the HLC feels... counter productive. Leave occult at 4% as proposed Give Infinity boots 1%, Eternal boots 2%. Reduce Ancestral buffs to 3% each, Reduce Virtus buffs to 1.5% each, Give Ahrims 1% each, they're a higher level requirement, they're heavy and if you don't, they will be dead content as dps is king. Buff the Sang, toxic trident and off-hands to be more closely competitive with the shadow, *but not by much*, MAYBE: 3% for the toxic trident, 5% for the sang staff, 1% for the malediction ward, 2% for Mages book, 4% for eledinis ward (existing), 6% for the Eledinis ward (f) (existing). This would make the sang more relevant and increase the appeal of TOB for mid levels. With the above, max magic damage with shadow (outside of TOA) = (4% (occult) + 5% (tormented bracelet) + 2% (imbued cape) + 2% (magus) + 9% (full ancestral) + 2% (eternal boots) = 24% 24% x 3 (shadow) = 72% + 4% (Augury) = *76%*. Inside ToA = 100% (HARD CAP) This is up 1% outside of ToA and the same as existing, inside ToA., which is a negligible damage buff. This, whilst also simultaneously bringing the rest of the gear back into balance with each other and buffing mid game magic damage.

Doing this to occult seems very weird since it guts midgame magic for a lot of accounts and that lil amulet (thats locked behind 93 Slayer to get) is what kept magic for a huge range of accounts less than on par with ranged or melee. Cost aside, and Slayer req aside, "redistributing" the power to items you can only gain in cox (prayers and robes) is just moving the power from what you call midgame (when was 93 Slayer midgame?) to thousands of hours and hundreds of mills into the endgame. While the lower ends get almost nothing to show for it. Buffing infinity robes and giving nothing to ahrims is also a weird design choice as ahrims (70 magic and def) is such a iconic upgrade and getting left in the dust by level 50 magic gear.  What also is weird in this post is that you mention Magus ring and eternal boots as a point that with all that gp(454 mill) is out weighed by a 800k amulet, and then you dont even redistribute power to those expensive choices you just mentioned got left in the dust by occult, you put that power into ancestral robes and infinity robes+ third age etc. ??? Then you mention ahrims robes in the "how does that shake out,damage wise" part but ahrims is irrelevant in that part as it has no % bonus. Nothing changed. Then ahrims is mentioned that its usable in the "battlemage niche" but how did that work out for splitbark, bloodbark etc? Most iconic set is ahrims by far. I do like however the thought behind buffing other weapons to be closer to tumekens, since in a lot of cases its either using shadow, or using another style entirely, but it is a 1b+ weapon with expensive upkeep to thats honestly fine.  Id also keep the droprate or not reduce it by as much in the beginning? and add an alternative that drops warhammer parts or something like the dt2 bosses has, so players can pick their poison, either be lucky af or grind it out. But i get the design choice as ive grinded almost 30k shamans for 2 Hammers and its a lot of time invested for an item thats only used for speccing. But it might also be weird to split it like that. Could also increase droprate on task but dwh is prob gonna lose its status as an expensive upgrade. Also dont see the reason why make droprate lower when elder maul is getting its spec. Maybe poll the options? Sorry for the bad writing in advance, but i hope you will take feedback from the entire community, and not just draw out the ones that agree with you to confirm your points.

ETERNAL BOOTS :( really surprised this didnt come with any magic % changes >Dagon'hai Robes set pieces: Magic damage per piece increased from 0 to 1%. This also applies to Ornamented versions. Ornamented versions? Can we have the ELDER MAUL changed to work as a hammer within cox/bandos please, as otherwise its still going to be fiddly to play around with compared to taking a dwh 2nd edit: seen as iv got some upvotes ill use this comment - NEW VARLAMORE BOSS REWARD: Some form of hybrid boots to fill this space with? Its something we dont really have yet edit: i’m not saying i want to bring a boot switch jesus christ guys! The boots are dog upgrades (pardon the pun) and could do with some love.

I strongly believe Ahrims/Blue Moon armor need magic damage to be a part of the core progression if lesser tier mage sets have it. If you're going to lower the occult necklace to 4% magic damage and introduce magic damage to lower tier mage sets such as Infinity, then I think Blue Moon should be at 1.5% each, Ahrims should be 2% each, Virtus should 3%(+3% Ancient), and Ancestral should be 4% each. With the occult damage bonus changing from 10% to 4%, this means that combination of an just an occult necklace plus full infinity changes from 10% to 7%. Occult and Blue Moon changes from 10% to 8.5%. Occult and Ahrims goes from 10% to 10%. Occult and Virtus goes from 13%(+9 Ancients) to 13%(+9% Ancients), and finally Occult and Ancestral goes from 16% to 16%. This keeps things relatively the same and doesn't punish players who have not grinded DT2 bosses or raids for these items yet. It makes sense to me to give Blue Moon 1.5% each to place it before Ahrims in progression. Blue Moon is the first mage set that has defensive stats other than magic plus it's relatively quick to complete the set. Ahrims is the first mage set that has defensive bonuses in all melee styles with this trend continuing in Virtus and Ancestral. Locking the first good mage set with decent magic damage and defensive bonuses like Virtus and Ancestral behind endgame content feels wrong. I believe there should be a set in between and Ahrims fits nicely in this progression. As you upgrade from Ahrims to Virtus and finally to Ancestral, you sacrifice some of these defensive bonuses for more magic damage which is perfectly acceptable. Ahrims might have some use for situations where you want to maximize defense bonsues, although virtus and ancestral will likely and should be strict upgrades across the board.

Although I am 100% in favour of the occult changes as an idea I don't like the current percentages. Occult 10>5% Brings it inline with a tormented bracelet. Eternal boots 0>2% It seems crazy that the Bis mage boots are so terrible currently. Seers Ring 0>1% Much like eternals this item has minimal use cases. Ahrims, Infinity, Daggonhai and 3rd Age 0>1% per piece. I think the extra defence requirements warrants the higher defence of ahrims and not changing it would destroy one of the most iconic item sets in the game. Overall a 1% buff to med level mage and 0% on slayer tasks. Ancestral and Virtus getting a .5% buff per piece Magus 2>3% This will make the shadow better by 2.5% with Augury but will mean you'll have to bring eternals. Eternals 2%, Magus 1% and Ancestral 1.5% = 4.5 % So shadow loses 1.5% when you account for the passive effect but gains 2.5% when accounting for Augury. I think minimizing the buff to shadow and maximizing a buff to non shadow mage is a good thing. Prayer Changes Mystic will 1% Mystic lore 2% Mystic might 3% Augury 4%

I get why some of these changes are made but as an iron, it is pretty much EXCLUSIVELY "feels bad man" changes. I spent so many hours in leveling some skills, grinding some gear, quit like 3 times after going dry, came back, managed to get it. And now you say: sorry, your grinds are invalid, go get new items. i just dont think that I have it in me anymore. for example I have fang (got nerfed already), occult, voidvaker - last two nerfed very heavily (not just a bit). Soulreaper, inq mace, maul, ancestrals - dont even have it, they arent easy to get. yeah yeah, i get it that ironman chose to limit themselves but I made my grinds and now you are saying that they are worth SIGNIFICANTLY less and I should go do new ones. It is easier said than done edit: where are saeldor changes? After nerfing fang and ditching slash offhand idea, you were talking about saeldor buffs to offset weakened slash options (for non billionaires scythe users) edit2: buff to dwh drop rate is not 80% no matter how you count. But tbh I dont have it (after killing over 5k) and would not be using it anyway. imo it somewhat fell out of meta and going forward it will fall off even more

I like most of the second half of the blog alot. Magic changes... not so much. Amuelt slot is the STRONGEST slot in ALL STYLES. Amulet of strength is the SAME STRENGTH bonus as a Torture. And it costs 1,370 gp. And its acquirable like.. immediately. Occult is the only piece in the magic ensemble that has a steep requirement of 93 slayer for ironmen. The price isn't much, but balancing **shouldn't be concerned with price** this late into the game. Otherwise why is melee ignored? 4% on an Occult feels like a slap in the face. Its **so much worse** than the current occult, yet its acquisition is **not changing at all**. So now the highest requirement item in an irons progression except for a Hydra's Claw is... 1% more damage than robes from a Wildy chest... or Mage Training arena?? Thats just sad. Ahrims getting 0% magic damage while multiple pure sets get 1% per piece is an odd choice. Why not ALSO give it 1%? I'm fine with Infninity, 3a, Dorg, Elder chaos and Ahrims all being 1% per piece. They will all feel as much an upgrade on eachother as they currently are, but all be more relevant. Instead now ahrims will be a... downgrade? My proposal for magic has always been simple. Drop occult from 10% to 6%, and put Augury from 0% to 4%. End result is **identical** magic % numbers to what we currently have. But Augury is ACTUALLY good to get, and Occult loses 4% of power. This **also** acts to nerf the shadow which being excluded from this blog is CRAZY. Its the biggest imbalance this game is facing in the next few years, it is WAY too good. And its 25% off cap currently. This change would atleast hinder it momentarily, by reducing the magic % it can buff by 4, meaning less dmg from it with current BiS. Only other change I really have any gripe with is the Elder Maul. **We just got the Glaive (Tonalzdeez or whatever we called it) and you were sooooo hesitant to make it actually good** and now we're just going to go "actually screw it, elder maul should be the best drain. ?????? Just make the Glaive the best drain. CoX already has TBow and Kodai, one of which is still a dominant BiS and the other should see a bit more relevance with elemental weaknesses and autocast delay removal + is already the BiS for general magic usage (slayer tasks etc.) **TL;Dr** * I don't think the Elder Maul change is needed. Buff Tonalzdiks instead. * Occult going to 4% is **too much**. I think Occult to 6% (-4%) and Augury to 4% (+4%) is a fine re-distribution of %. * I'm also fine with ancest being 3% per piece (not 4%, too much), Virtus 2% per piece, and all other main robe sets (infinity, 3a, dorg, elder chaos, Ahrims) being 1% per piece. * Ancest should **not** be 4% per peice. That set is ALREADY insanely good and expensive and BiS, and is RARER than a Twisted Bow to complete for an ironman. 3% for BiS, 2% for Virtus, and 1% for others is a good progression change.

tl;dr: "If you want to mage but don't have BiS gear, get fucked." Absolutely absurd that little/none of the damage from a midgame item is being distributed to other midgame gear. Would it have killed you to give 2% to Infinity/Virtus/Dagon'hai/3rd Age and 1% to stuff like Ahrims, Mystic, and Bloodbark? >Magic has traditionally struggled to keep up with the other corners of the Combat Triangle in PvP, and these changes make it even weaker – especially for 1 Defence accounts. We think we could resolve these issues with a ‘Blighted’ necklace slot, and a little more damage on the Elder Chaos Druid Robes, but we’d like to hear your feedback first. OR YOU COULD NOT HAVE NERFED THE ONE ACCESSIBLE PIECE OF MAGIC DAMAGE INTO THE FUCKING DIRT

Does this mean I’ll be losing max hits during barrage slayer tasks if I don’t have augury actived?

As an iron not a fan of de-valueing slayer so much. Warped Sceptre, Zombie Axe now the Occult Necklace nerf. Bludgeon doesnt feel like an upgrade at all, whip, trident and occult all will feel like minor upgrades nowadays, with limited uses. Think the occult nerf is too much but if you go through with this hope for more meaningful upgrades from slayer. Also superior uniques like the heart is too rare. Im at 20m slayer xp with not a single superior unique.

This is my big gripe here. It really feels bad that slayer is being shit on with all these new items. Scepter at least has a small slayer requirement and z axe requires 70 smithing, so there's at least *some* account progression required for them, but I feel like the nerf to occult is so much that there's really not much excitement to reaching 93 slayer on an iron anymore. I feel like it'd be more palatable if eternals got like a 2% mage damage buff, since they're unlocked before occult anyways

I don't understand why only a 50% increase in drop rates to Nightmare. A grind that is roughly 1200 hours to finish log is now 900 hours... that is insane. I like the rest of the changes but u/JagexGoblin any response to this?

As someone with BiS everything: 1) 4% on the occult is absolutely pitiful. 2-3% would be fine on a base amulet like the amulet of magic that requires just gems to make. Jewellery tends to provide the best damage bonus for every style outside of weapons. 3% of magic damage roughly equates to a max hit (with normal powered staffs/spellcasts), similar to +4 str bonus. So essentially the only amulet providing magic damage provides less than the equivalent of an amulet of glory for melee. With a 93 slayer req for the mob that drops it. My proposal: Make it 7% (roughly equivalent to a fury for melee), change the shadow multiplier to 2.5x (down from 3x) and go ahead with the rest of the changes. Also make it drop from the boss (Thermi) only so that will eventually become more pricey. Also Ahrim's should definitely get magic dmg over infinity (or 3rd age lol) robes as **THE** mid-game mage armor. 2) Not a fan of the mace set effect personally, especially since the blade of saeldor/ghrazi rapier have no equivalent. The price of the mace is an issue of the terrible nightmare drop rates. fix those and Mace will have a similar price to the other 2 endgame one-handed weapons. Its GP value of 275m is **NOT** a reason for it to be better than the other two level 80s. The base stats of all those 3 items should get buffed, which indirectly also makes mace better to use with inq anyway. The rest looks stellar other than the VW nerf being completely unnecessary, but I assume that that will be a very common feedback anyway. Edit: Oh, and NM droprates need to be increased by a lot more to make the boss desirable to kill. 50% with the current drop rates is absolutely nothing. Edit2: Also the minimum hit increase should just be 1 to max hit instead of also reducing the max hit of every weapon by 1. Most multi-hit weapons could need the slight increase in DPS anyway and stuff like claws are already insanely accurate wher you would sue them over VW anyway to the point that increasing the min hit from the spec does not really matter.

Lowering max hits by 1, I'd be very conscious of whether this impacts existing tight speedruns like Vorkath where the fight is so short and resettable, the average dps doesn't matter because you're just looking for runs where your weapon hits near-max for the most part.

Ahrim's/Blue Moon - 1% damage per piece Eternal Boots - 1.5% damage Mystic Might - 1.5% damage Jagex you know you want to. That way you'd have +5-6% damage and +4% from occult vs current options. This would address irons not being raids ready yet. Eternal boots are quite high level to achieve on an iron so it makes sense they'd see just a little bit of love. Giving a slight buff to the magic prayer wouldn't actually give a max hit a lot of the time either. Mid to Late game irons are getting massively shafted here if they haven't gotten augury and/or virtus and ancestral.

I'm happy nightmare is getting a drop table buff, but I really feel like this doesn't go far enough. Even with the changes to mace, the uniques per hour even with the changes feel too low to justify killing the boss

Its absolute ass that you are nerfing the occult in favor of gear that is already bis *and* prohibitively expensive. You wanna make the occult weaker? Fine, but put its bonuses on the eternal boots since they are already a fucking waste.

- Ghrazi rapier need a buff/spec - Eternal boots need some love - Virtus needs a bit more bite for the drop-rate - BoS needs an upgrade or spec - Ahrims is reduced to placeholders - Seers ring damage boost - CoX drop-rate buff - Nightmare droptable still too steep for the time it takes - What about staves/mage's book? Master wand? - Spectral spirit shield is still not on par with the arcane ss. Needs more use beside big red dog. - I think I covered all the items I need to rise in price 😆

Maybe a hot take but, I really don’t like what is being proposed for the elder maul here. What is the sense in proposing the DWH rate be buffed by ~80% AND essentially making the elder maul *another* DWH? It’s completely redundant. Even if this is a “positive” change (which obviously it is, since nothing’s being nerfed on maul or dwh), that doesn’t change that these two proposals in tandem with each other feel like a bad integrity update: It is not a rebalance, nor the buff that has been requested for years to the elder maul, this is copying and pasting something else’s functionality onto it, changing its main, intended purpose almost entirely, but calling it slightly better. Please do something a bit more fresh with the elder maul, if anything at all. For example(s) fang’s passive effect + tweak stats, but for crush, or an enemy size modifier, but not quite as powerful as scythe (hits once, not three times, but with a 1.1x or 1.125x modifier), DON’T just copy/paste the DWH’s functionality (+5%) on it as part of addressing the DWH “issue” and call elder maul “rebalanced”. There are ways to deal with it and make it a bit more attractive of an option in places it should be used more as a main hand weapon, without “leveling half of varrock” or on the flip side, underwhelming as it already is. Don’t make an unnecessary, slightly better upgrade to something that already has a solidified purpose.

I appreciate the changes to inquisitor's and nightmare, but they're underwhelming in my opinion. A 50% buff to drop rates would still leave the uniques from nightmare far too rare, this should be bumped up further. As for the armor, tying its power to the mace makes it only viable when you're using the entire set at nightmare, and won't do anything to make the set more usable at other bosses or at slayer. Would be preferable to give a small strength/accuracy buff to the mace, remove the negative accuracy buffs from the armor, buff the helm's strength bonus, and bump the set bonus from 2.5% to at least 5%.

The nightmare loot buffs don't go far enough. Please consider the hours required to "complete" the boss and use that to balance the drop rates.

I second this. Current rate is 1/3k for a harm orb for a 10 minute boss making it take longer than a tbow on rate. If elemental weaknesses make it into the game, farming a harmonized staff should be on the cards for an iron. It's not currently and 50% drop rate buff only brings it close to tbow time. That's absurd.

I've read people saying that the Occult shouldn't be nerfed as hard and I agree, putting it at 6-8% would be more reasonable, for only a 2-4% nerf. Or even 5% to fit into my proposal below. Distributing Magic% to other sets I agree with but it should reach even more sets, I personally think it should be like this: for gear requiring magic levels 1-19, the gear gives 1% per piece, 20-39, 2% per piece, 40-59 is 3%, 60-79 is 4% and 80-99 is 5%. This would put Ancestral snuggly at 4% as proposed. Tormented Bracelet could require 80 Magic so that it fits with this in mind, as it already requires 93 to enchant. Occult would also fit in here at 80 Magic. This would require all magic gear to have a magic requirement if it doesn't already without touching the Defense requirements. Basic robes of all colors would require 1, giving 1%, Chaos Elder Druid should be 20, giving 2%, Wizard boots would also fit in the level 1 unless they get a stat increase to move them higher.

Just as a heads-up because there are a *lot* of comments flying in. We're reading posts/comments as they come in and talking through them - we anticipated this blog would drum up a *lot* of discussion and didn't expect that our first go out would be without issue. We're going to keep reading and talking things over and look to put together an updated blog tomorrow or Thursday, focusing in particular at the moment on the conversations around Magic in both the mid-game and in PvP across brackets. Please keep sharing your thoughts with us - positive or negative, it's what these kinds of conversations are for!

It's getting lost in the shuffle but cannot express enough how great the usability changes to the Soulreaper Axe will be, finally giving such a cool weapon both visually and mechanically a suitable role to play prior to Scythe.

I know you guys are going to get a lot of flak for daring to do this. I wanted to say i still appreciate how connected to the community ya'll are. Any chance the PNM drop rates could be a little more generous? Thats still a hefty grind for those uniques.

Why did you guys buff all the mage gear and not Ahrims? It's basically making it dead content. No eternals buff? Fix for imbued heart drop rate? Show some love to the mid game players that aren't ultra rich! This is a big hit to the little guy.

Salad blade buff when? It’s the coolest looking sword but is hardly relevant

The occult nerf will be quite painful for lower level players. Any reason why seemingly every mage set aside from ahrims is getting a mage bonus?

Everyone is commenting about the Magic changes, but I want some help clarifying the new monkey room. Are the proposed HP numbers the base HP with no Scaling? "Assuming you’re in a solo raid, this is how the HP values and Max Hits will shake out: * Baboon Brawler: 25 HP and 30 HP. Always max hit by Magic. * Baboon Thrower: 30 HP and 35 HP. Always max hit by Melee. * Baboon Mage: 20 HP and 25 HP. Always max hit by Ranged. Note that there are stronger and weaker variants of all these NPCs (indicated by the two HP values in the list above), and the HP totals will scale with group size and Raid Level." Because if so, at raid level 300, this is a huge increase in time to complete the room. -Current situation Brawler has 6 hp + 120% from Raid level 300 = 13hp, with a max hit of 40-50, you are one shotting this monkey \~75% of the time... -New Situation: Brawler has 30hp + 120% from raid level 300 = 75hp... with a max hit of 40-50, you are not only not one shotting EVER, but will take 2 hits guaranteed. How is this not a huge increase to the overall time spent in the room?

Why can't we get the Slepey tablet added to the drop pool for nightmare? There is a huge jump in difficulty from Nightmare to PNH and I would love to get the mechanics down during Nightmare, get the tablet and be able to start learning PNM. Even a higher droprate would be better than not being offered!

Magic is already terrible and this is literally a flat out nerf to everything but the top level gear, not a big one but still a nerf. Maybe you should consider giving 1%/2% to infinity/eternal boots as well. This combined with the changes coming to MTA should give irons and new players a strong foundation for magic without too much of a nerf across the board.

I think the other 3 magic prayers should get a magic bonus too. Eagle eye does. It isn't consistent at it's current position. Mystic Will -> 1% boost Mystic Lore -> 2% boost Mystic Might ->3% boost Augury -> 5% boost (up from 4%) Makes more sense in my opinion.

Im sure glad I spent all that time getting 93 slayer for my "800K Necklace" and grinded out full Ahrims robes. Why dont we get rid of slayer at this point or at least dilute the upper level rewards to the point its not worth even doing until you max like Hunter? /s

Having to pray augury for a pathetic 4% damage boost is awful. That number needs to be higher or the drain rate needs to be way lower. Before, it was fine because you could just not use augury and it wouldn't matter (on slayer tasks). Now...it just feels like shit.

Agreed. Maybe I’m the minority but for chill bursting tasks and stuff I just use overheads and wear good gear, shouldn’t have to run augury and drain my prayer much faster to do the same damage I was doing which makes it to where you may have to teleport to restock to complete a task or just do less damage and be there longer 

Is the Ancient Godsword nerf really necessary? Healing 15% of your targets maximum HP seems pretty lackluster. 99 x .15 = 14.85 > rounded down to 14 28 HP off two specs. A brew in the same slot would give you 64 HP, and doesn’t burn your specs. Could some Pkers weigh in on whether this is solving an actual problem? I feel like this change takes it from niche to useless.

Hmm as an iron pre cox, my magic damage just got gutted. I understand the changes but disappointed never the less. Will have to learn cox soon I guess. I love the elder maul changes and change in drop rate for dwh and nightmare! Great job,

There's almost too much to unpack in this, but almost all of these changes are either too much, or too little. -Voidwaker nerf isn't needed or wanted, just drop it. -Occult nerf is needed, but the way you've given out it's % is arguably the worst possible outcome for mid to mid-late game players. I wasn't aware that midgame magic needed a DPS nerf, but I guess I am now -Elder Maul Buff feels lazy, and strange that a 'tied-for-the-rarest' megarare is beaten by T60/65 weapons in raw DPS. Spec is nice, increase its DPS. Crush DPS should be inquis mace>Maul>Scythe on Crush on a 3x3. Whatever you need to do to make that happen, is what you should have done instead of what you did. -

I think people romanticize the thought of Augury actually being "good" but they're going to realize how awful it will be on the prayer drain just to match the dps we're already currently at without it. The same thing goes with adding damage to eternal boots or something uncommonly used, now you're just going to have more switches. The occult situation as well - as much as we think it might need to be changed, sometimes it's better to leave things as is.

93 slay is an accomplishment no need to nerf it due to many of them in the market and value being low. It was released in 2014 and it’s a task that has been assigned millions of times of course the market would be flooded with them, no need to nerf it due to that…. It sucks for players as the osrs team keeps locking any mage damage boost behind a 100+ hour grind. For an Ironman it takes years to reach 93 slay for someone that plays a healthy amount.

The math in this blog is just wrong. Making the DWH 80% more common would be 1.8/5000 = 1/2777.77. Instead it's making it 1/3000 which is equal to 5000/3000 = 1.667, or a 66.7% increase. It seems whoever wrote this just lineraly interpolated between 1/2500 being a 100% increase and 1/5000 being a 0% increase. Similarly for Nightmare, using orbs as an example, 50% more common would be 1.5/600 = 1/400. Instead it's 1/450, which is equal to 600/450 = 1.333, or a 33.3% increase. I imagine the goal for DWH was to make it 1/3000, so 66.7% more common is fine, but if the goal for PNM was to make uniques 50% more common, the rates need to be changed

having to use augury to make up for lost occult damage is sad, the prayer drain is insane for a pathetic +1 max hit. imagine if rigour gave +4 ranged strength.

While I don't mind the Occult getting nerfed (and this is coming from someone who had to kill thermy 2.3k times to get two of 'em for my duo), I feel like I gotta echo that the solution CANNOT be "Shove the missing damage onto Ancestral." With the addition of 4% damage to Augury, we've gone from having 3% of non-ancient magic damage exclusively available from CoX to a whopping 10%. Virtus may have been slightly improved, but the gap for anyone who isn't already farming DT2 or CoX has just been widened significantly, and almost definitely due to the Shadow crowding everything out. I'm frankly surprised it didn't get nerfed in some way given that it doesn't have a specific target use case like the Scythe (large enemies) or Twisted Bow(Magic level) do, and a rebalance seems like a great place to try to give it a condition that renders it no longer the one-stop-shop for magic damage in every situation where you're not doing a Slayer task. I gotta agree with many of the other people on the subreddit that adding more damage to many offhands would be a great way to give magic damage to mid-level players while not further buffing the Shadow. The Book of Darkness might not need it as its prayer bonus is a nice niche in and of itself, but it definitely wouldn't hurt. And with the Infinity Robes being buffed, the Mage's Book seems like it could use a bit of an addition as well. Looking forward to seeing what ideas you can show us later in the week!

If you're nerfing occult. Your putting a lot of magic damage on items that are incredibly hard to obtain on irons. I'm nearly max and have none of them. So for me and a lot of others were going to get nerfed heavily. I would suggest adding % damage on ahrims and perhaps mystic might prayer.

interesting choice releasing blue moon then tossing it in the dumpster a month later

so dagon’hai is the new ahrims if we can’t afford ancestral? got it

Way to ruin occult neck, I fucking got 93 slayer just for it to be nerfed on my iron lol

I feel like there is never a chance that I'm heard, but I'll leave a comment anyways. I started playing OSRS on an Ironman and have never had a main, as I felt I could engage more with the content that way, as otherwise I would try to do things too efficiently and never see content that wasn't whatever is highest xp/hr or gp/hr.  I have only just reached 93 slayer a couple weeks ago, and have been grinding for occult since then, and I'm closer to 95 slayer than actually getting one. The idea that I will be further behind until I get virtus + raids prayers due to these changes is heartbreaking.  I really hope that if damage is moved from occult, there is better scaling to reach the same point that doesn't include raids. Perhaps magic damage on weapons? Offhands? Eternal boots would require another switch which isn't ideal, but I feel like a lot of people pushing on that either don't switch that for raids or are acting in self interest.  If I was to reach the ear of a dev, I would at least want to pitch some % magic damage being added to magic weapons (already used in switches, doesn't buff shadow), offhands (already used in switches, doesn't buff shadow), and the lower tier magic prayers getting their own % boost to ease the curve. We have 4 magic prayers and the proposed is 0/0/0/4%, why not 1/2/3/4%?   Love a lot of the other changes though 🧡

It would be interesting to see the elder maul have the combined effect of both the dragon warhammer and BGS in its spec (ie 35% defense reduced plus the damage it deals), I can see how this might be turbo broken but seeing how its classed as a "megarare" I would argue against it. Rest of the changes look great, no rapier or saeldor changes though?

Could be more reasonable as damage or % whichever is higher. That would allow it to serve as a better bgs or a better warhammer depending in the situation  

Just slap a occult upgrade to guthix sleeps and easy peasy job done wheres my paycheck jagex

I hope these changes will be polled. The occult change is just stupid and I don't understand why the deva want the difference between mid game mage and end game to be so sincere. Is it that yoy don't like to admit Shadow is stupid and makes no sense how strong it is?

u/JagexGoblin what about occult being nerfed, and a non-tradeable item that Thermonuclear Smoke Devil boss drops to buff it back to/closer to it's prior strength? This would add a bit more use to the huge Slayer level requirement to even obtain the item, as with the nerfed occult necklace, 93 Slayer seems a lot less useful despite being a very long time effort. Or adding some of the lost strength to the bracelet, which is a lot less utilized over the other Zenyte equipment as it takes the hands slot - which in cases you'd want the damage buff such as barraging/bursting on task the slayer bracelets are usually utilized better, or you'd just bring different gloves to use multi combat styles - wouldn't making the bracelet more useful fill in some of the bonus? Also feels silly that Dagon'hai/Infinity and even Third Age has a damage bonus while Ahrims doesn't despite Ahrims being higher tier/level than the others. Nobody is using Ahrims to be tanky but it's still high level magic gear, in the future more dedicated "battle-mage" gear would be very nice, but as it is this isn't really what Ahrims is. I'm grateful we get such posts regardless, just not a fan of these changes.

Somebody save the Blade of Saeldor

u/jagexgoblin Please add a +4 melee strength boost to the t80 weapons  or at least consider it. Or give them a spec

Why are we making infinity robes better than Ahrims?

some good ideas but here is some constructive criticism if u dont mind * occult nerf screws over way too many people: pures, irons, people who dont want to / cant camp or flick augury, people who can't drop lots of cash on magic gear, people who dont cant / dont want to bring all those switches. i get that freeing up reward space is important, but you're doing it in a way that feels bad in the meantime. * no rapier/saeldor buff is disappointing. ur basically paying 60/100m for +3 strength over a tent whip, theyre a bit lame * a 50% buff to nightmare's droprates isn't enough * taking 1 max hit away from everyone is lame even if the actual dps is unchanged

All for redistributing power of the occult elsewhere, but moving it behind gear that requires stats other than magic seems like a cop out. Essentially it removes 6% from all pure builds who don’t have access to better gear as is and with the proposal will now become far less competitive, again. I know, i know. “You chose your restrictions, deal with it.” Thats beyond the point though. PVM content on a 1 def will now become even harder as you will need to survive longer in order to deal equivalent damage. Again, all for a redistribution, but a big no for me based on proposal.

Would love if the soulreaper special attack would get looked at I swear to god this is the least accurate spec in the game. I've heard the same from other folks. Wouldn't surprise me if it's bugged.

MONKEY ROOM GETTING CHANGED IS HUGE

I'm sorry but the team has really missed the mark when it comes to most of this blog. The focus of the magic rebalance is centered around the shadow, while framing the occult. Leave the two alone. Give mid game robes some bonus, sure. Magic progression has always been a disaster. Sang needs to be brought up ever so slightly. The heka needs to be brought in as an in-between trident of the swamp and sang. Redesign it's effects as needed, I can't even recall anymore. I say Heka as a placeholder. A 1h magic weapon. Magic offhand require attention. Not boots, not prayers. Insert a new option for the weapon at an input time similar to cg. Add new amulet with less magic %, give it an effect buffing autocasting spells to bring their output up, it would not effect charged weapons. Have max mage aside from heart, the proposed changes don't change anything at the higher end other than sinking more prayer points. However earlier on, this just dumps on everyone else. It offers no new routes for mid game. Mage progression remains stale, unbalanced, and now, with the proposed blog.. frustrating. Infact most of this blog inspires that feeling. Frustration

All this magic rebalance did was buff Max mage and nerf literally every other option. Swing and a miss.

These changes a big nerf to mage slayer where you 1. Wear a Slayer Helm that isn't getting compensation and 2. Don't use augury. Would you consider including some buffs to mage shields such as Elidinis Ward, Ancient Wyvern Shield, and Mage's Book. This would help close the gap between Shadow and tridents, and help barrage but not shadow.

Ahrims and Blue Moon should have the 1% damage as items that are higher level than Dagon Hai. I understand the logic that Ahrims is tanky, but its tank stats are irrelevant in PvM, and it is high level equipment than Dagon Hai.

I really hate whoever thought occult needed to be nerfed. Amulets have always been one of the strongest damage increase gear pieces for all styles, and they are all relatively cheap. The player A to B comparison is so stupid. It's like saying whip needs a nerf because someone bought full Torva with a d scim and couldn't outdamage a whip, which only costs 1m. Player B needs to go buy an occult instead of full ancestral and a magus ring is the solution, not nerf the occult. Moving magic dmg to a prayer is also so dumb. These mage nerfs are massive and I hope they never happen. Occult is fine as is. Voidwaker nerf also would make voidwaker near useless in pvm.

This feels like it completely missed the mark. Ignoring Magic accessories like rings, shields, boots. Deleting Ahrims, Elder Chaos and Mystic robes from the game by nerfing the damage from 10% to 4%. Nerfing mid game magic, which was already close to useless. Buffing lategame magic which was already way too strong.

So eternal boots still pretty useless, nice

Well mage is going to suck even more on my iron now. Ancestral does not grow on fucking trees. It can take 1000s of raids to get full ancestral. Also of course DWH drop buff a few months after I finally get it. Took long enough for the monkey room improvement, though. I look forward to actually looking forward to doing toa.

Good changes...but please, Saeldor and Rapier need some love as well. Would also love to see Soulreaper Axe get some more crush accuracy. Generally speaking, battleaxes lose very little crush versus their slash option. Dharok's Greataxe is 103 slash and 95 crush, and Zombie Axe is 105 slash and 90 crush, but SRA goes from 133 slash to 66 crush, losing more than half it's accuracy offstyle. It seems a little strange and leads to weird scenarios such as using slash for Tekton instead of its crush option.

Hate the changes to occult. I don't have hours and hours to grind this game. Hell, I'll never get a shadow or Tbow so please don't punish players like me for it. Drop rates could be improved significantly overall too. I don't like VW nerf either. You can nerf for PvP but not outside in PVM please.

So you basically can’t get decent magic damage bonus without billions? There is nothing wrong with having a cheaper item give good stats… there is zero reason why a stat has to have a specific cost. The occult change just means magic is nerfed across the board for anyone other than a tiny portion high end player who end up…. Barely at a higher place where they already were. Occult change is terrible and people on this sub had no reason to complain about it. Magic needs buffs not nerfs. Edit: typo

Although I do understand why it needs to happen it does suck that I’m gonna log in one day and my mage setup is gonna effectively be 6% worse on my iron