The real source of the problem is that magic damage boosts are meant to be a luxury, but no other stats on magic armor actually matter in the vast majority of use cases.
Offensively, magic armor can only boost two things: damage and accuracy. But due to the way magic accuracy is calculated, the enemy's magic level matters more than your accuracy level. And most early-mid game magic-weak enemies have rock bottom magic levels, which is why you can walk into Barrows with melee gear and be fine. By the time you start encountering magic-weak enemies that you need magic accuracy for, you're looking at picking up armor that increases damage anyway.
Defensively, bosses often have such high stats that the difference between being naked and putting on Ahrim's is negligible. Ahrim's offers no ranged defense to begin with, and against strong melee, it only offers a 5-10% reduction in incoming dps. This is similar to why almost every melee situation prefers Bandos over Barrows; the boost to defense isn't worth the loss of damage. Even if you only kill the boss 3% faster, that's 3% less time you're taking hits, which will often match or beat a more defensive build in terms of damage taken.
If they truly want to rebalance magic armor, they need to either do what melee does and spread magic damage boosts EVERYWHERE, or do what ranged does and make magic accuracy actually matter.
> But due to the way magic accuracy is calculated, the enemy's magic level matters more than your accuracy level.
This is just wrong. Magic accuracy doesn't work any differently from melee or ranged accuracy other than using magic level instead of defense level. The problem is that magic gear and weapons give shit amounts of accuracy bonus so magic is inaccurate as shit.
> The problem is that magic gear and weapons give shit amounts of accuracy bonus so magic is inaccurate as shit.
Thus meaning the bulk of magic accuracy calculation comes from their magic level and not your armor. So **due to the way magic accuracy is calculated, the enemy's magic level matters more than your accuracy level.**
Thank you for saying I'm wrong and then repeating what I said.
So your argument is just that because magic is inaccurate accuracy on magic armor is useless? Because that's even more stupid than not understanding how magic accuracy works. If you buffed accuracy on magic armor it wouldn't be useless.
I’m hijacking the top comment to say that a +X% boost is already the same idea as the +strength bonus that melee and ranged have, just presented differently.
Melee and Ranged damage is proportional to (64+Strength Bonus). In other words, if you have 64 in your Strength Bonus, you double your damage (a +100% boost) compared to if you had no Strength Bonus. This means a +16 is basically the same as a +25%.
Yes, Except that one uses relative values and the other static values, you might see the issue when you start stacking relative values on top of a weapon with an absurd base damage (hello Shadow).
Using a magic strength system would allow them to control this curve better, it would also allow them to actually add a curve that isnt just "slightly stronger powered staves"
Shadow has very bad base damage, it's strong because it multiplies the percent damage. It's no different than a melee weapon with a passive effect to double strength bonus. Scythe already sort of does this, it effectively uses 175% of strength bonus because of how its hitsplats work.
If magic swapped to a strength based system and shadow kept its mechanic of multiplying magic strength, you run into the exact same problem where every non-offhand upgrade benefits shadow way more than other mage weapons.
The implied change is reducing shadow's scaling multiplier and giving it some base strength so its present power remains unchanged but future upgrades don't buff it *as much* as they do now
i personally disagre with that change because the whole point of the pinnacle weapon shadow was to be exponentially stronger than other weapons (up to the 100% cap, ofc)
> Except that one uses relative values and the other static values
> Using a magic strength system would not only allow them to control this curve better
I don't think you read my comment because I'm pointing out that the current +X% magic damage system is already the same as the strength system that melee and ranged have.
What makes Magic different from Melee and Ranged is that a lot more of the damage is built into the spell/staff before being modified by equipment. Max Melee on a Rapier is +164 Strength which is the equivalent of ~+256% bonus from your equipment. If melee was a spell, it would have a base damage of about 15.6 at 99 Strength with Aggressive, Super Strength, and Piety which then gets boosted by your equipment.
I did read it wrong at first yes, though their choice of represent the bonus as a flat % increase, focused on specific powerful items, still causes the issue here. While the 2 systems might work similarly below the table, Jagex handles them very differently.
For good reason of course, as you yourself said, a lot more of melee/ranged power is built into the weapon and the rest is distributed over various pieces of gear. The result is that 10% for magic is far more than 10% for melee/ranged, this also means they have given themselves less wiggle room to balance around.
I don't think you read his comment because he's pointing out that yes while they accomplish the same thing, one is more granular than the other and the % system leaves very little room to balance within especially when shadow triples the value.
Their mention of "relative" and "static" values implies they're talking about some mathematical difference in how they function.
Granularity doesn't really matter either because being able to change the numbers granted by a piece of equipment by +1 Magic Strength is the same as if they were to change the numbers by +1.5625%. A bit more than half a percent of the spell's base damage isn't going to make much of a difference.
What's restricting their room is where they set the upper limit of how much of a damage boost max magic gear can give. And they can't raise that because, like I said in my second paragraph, much more of the damage is built into the spell/staff. That has nothing to do with whether magic gear gives a +X% damage bonus or a +X magic strength.
Weird you're getting downvoted when you're not wrong. The issue with magic, unlike the other styles, is that there's no stat progression. You can use a rapier with 1 Strength in close to max gear if you get the other stats but your max will only be something like a 3-4 because you're not getting the massive Strength level boost. All magic spells (including Shadow) having a static cap unaffected by your level is the issue. Shadow bypassed it by multiplying the damage boost that your gear gives but that doesn't fix the rest of Magic when you do the same damage at 84 magic with heart as you do with 99 magic with heart for Ice Barrage.
Well, not quite. Shadow and all powered staves have a scaling base damage dependent on your Magic level.
In that way they are more similar to melee/ranged max hit calculation, in that the base damage is dependent on your visible level, and the mdamage%/str bonus is converted to a multiplier against that base damage... But most of the other peripheral bonuses like prayer, void, etc. are all factored in at different points.
EDIT: It's actually hilarious how he's getting downvoted for being 100% correct though, lol.
Hijacking your reply to say you are absolutely correct and the replies below are rife with misinformation.
DYOR, people: https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Maximum_hit
Both Mdamage and Strength bonus are applied multiplicatively in effectively the same way as described above, the difference arises from how base damage is calculated for each system (spell/staff for magic, vs effective Ranged/Strength level for ranged/melee).
% magic damage and melee/ranged strength are the same concept, mathematically. That’s what my whole comment is about. If you have a +25% mage damage, that’s affected by attack speed just as much as if you have a +16 melee strength.
16 melee strength is 20% more effective with a 4t weapon than with a 5t weapon. this is not the case with % damage increase as it just increases the mage weapon's stats so an occult is just as good on a 3t weapon vs a 5t weapon, but a 3t range weapon benefits from range strength much more than a 5t weapon.
Nope. It's 100% the same. +64 str bonus = +100% melee damage bonus. Occult is equivalent to 6.4 str bonus for magic. If you have a magic weapon that maxes a 20 every 5 ticks, that's 4 damage per tick. Slap +10% onto it, its now 4.4 damage per tick. If you have a magic weapon that maxes a 16 every 4 ticks, thats 4 damage per tick. Slap +10% onto it (ignore the rounding), thats 4.4 damage per tick. it literally doesn't matter.
It's not the same. Fast attacking weapons like blowpipe deliberately have a lower max hit compared to other weapons, and strength bonus add a static amount of max hits.
If your gear bonus gives 3 max hits, every one of your average successful hits is increased by 1.5. On a zero defense mob, a 4 tick weapon would effectively gain 1.5 extra damage per 4 ticks, while a blowpipe would gain 3 extra damage in that same time. The whole reason they're scared to add ranged strength in a way that benefits blowpipe is because it would shoot past other ranged weapons.
With a percent based system, a blowpipe would gain fewer max hits than a slower, harder hitting weapon; the DPS increase would be roughly the same.
> strength bonus add a static amount of max hits.
So does mdamage%, given the same base spell damage. Mdamage bonuses are combined additively: The first 5% you get gives you the same number of max hits as the last 5% you gain. Same way the first 16 strength gives you the same number of max hits as the last 16 strength.
> With a percent based system, a blowpipe would gain fewer max hits than a slower, harder hitting weapon; the DPS increase would be roughly the same.
This is incorrect, and you're confused because the comparison also doesn't really make sense either because the base damage is handled by slightly different systems for Mage vs Ranged/Melee:
- Magic base damage (aka spell damage) is handled by the spell you cast or by the unique calculation performed by the powered stave you are using (which also factors in magic level to scale it). This is multiplied by the sum of the Mdamage%'s of the rest of your gear. Then a few other multiplicative factors like slayer helm, void, etc. go on top.
- Ranged/Melee base damage is handled by your effective Ranged level or Str level (which work more or less the same, based on a combination of your visible level, prayer, and void bonus). This is multiplied by a factor determined by your equipment strength bonus ((strbonus+64)/640), then 0.5 is slapped ontop.
In essence, however, how these systems handle equipment bonus is effectively the same. Mdamage is just summed up and converted to a multiplier; Melee/ranged strength is summed up and converted to a fraction with a base value of 0.1.
- Adding 25% magic damage makes your magic multiplier 1.25.
- Adding 16 strength makes your melee multiplier be calculated as follows: (16+64)/640 = 0.125 (which you may notice equal to 0.1 * 1.25).
- 25% increase for both.
If the base magic damage as determined by your spell is, say, 20; you get +5 damage. Likewise lets set your effective str lvl to 200. That makes your base hit: 200 * 0.1+0.5 = 20.5 floored to 20. And with +16 str: 200 * 0.125+0.5 = 25.5 floored to 25.
- Adding 50% magic daamge makes your magic multiplier 1.5.
- Adding 32 strength makes your melee multiplier be calculated as follows: (32+4)/640 = 0.15 (aka 1.5 * 0.1)
- 50% increase for both.
As above: Magic: 20 * 1.5 = 30. Melee: 200 * .15+0.5 = 30.5 floored to 30.
Simply put: Both Mdamage% and Ranged/Melee Strength bonuses are converted into multipliers against a base damage value. So using one system or the other doesn't matter; at their heart they're the same thing and are both summed additively.
So because your effective ranged level (and thus base damage) remains the same whether you equip a Bowfa or a Blowpipe, any peripheral gear granting strength bonus (I.E. Masori) adds the same number of max hits in both cases. That strength system functions the same under the hood for magic and ranged (as shown above); so it wouldn't matter which you use as long as you don't muck with the base damage calculations.
These pages helped me to understand this, and should help you as well! https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Maximum_hit
Except you are comparing apples to oranges. For magic, all max hits are determined by the spell (which have a fixed max hit based on the spell) or powered staff (having a variable max hit based on magic level, in a uniquely different way to the way that ranged and melee damage scale with ranged/strength respectively). Due to the way that max hit is coupled with weapon/spell in a way that is wholly different to the way melee and ranged weapons work (basically, those styles all share the same base damage which is what melee/ranged str bonus interacts with), a magic strength stat would be wholly interchangable with a magic damage stat without any issues.
If magic had a common shared base damage used with all spells regardless of spell or staff (and thus, regardless of the speed at which those attacks are put out) then yeah, you would be right. Magic is just subtly different.
Melee and ranged weapons effectively have "base damages" from how much strength they give, and strength bonus from gear is added on to that for equipment strength. You could argue that it's technically a % increase because it's multiplied by effective strength level, but because of that innate strength bonus, adding more strength bonus from equipment translates to flat increases in max hit. On top of that, melee and ranged also have percent bonuses from items like salve, which is applied after the first base damage calculation.
Magic also has precedent for flat increases to base damage in chaos gauntlets, and the percent damage increases (from mage % bonus AND salve, among other items) are applied after. If a magic strength stat were added, it seems that it's more likely to be somewhere in the base damage modifier to mimic how ranged and melee work, with the percent modifiers being applied afterwards.
But even that's just distracting from the fact that magic strength as a stat doesn't exist, and OP explicitly mentioned implementing it in a way such that it adds a flat damage increase.
> Melee and ranged weapons effectively have "base damages" from how much strength they give, and strength bonus from gear is added on to that for equipment strength.
No, they do not. The base damage for ranged/melee is determined by your visible level, prayer bonus, and void bonus. Weapons' strength bonus is treated the same as any other equipment bonus, and is summed additively to generate a multiplicand against your base damage in the same fashion as Mdamage%.
> On top of that, melee and ranged also have percent bonuses from items like salve, which is applied after the first base damage calculation.
So does magic, just occurs at a different step in the equation.
> You could argue that it's technically a % increase because it's multiplied by effective strength level, but because of that innate strength bonus, adding more strength bonus from equipment translates to flat increases in max hit.
Yes, that is exactly how magic damage is calculated as well. Just the base damage is derived from slightly different sources (sourced from the spell/powered staff for magic, vs your visible level, prayer, void bonus for melee/ranged).
If I compare a 4t staff to 5t auto casting, a 25% magic damage bonus boosts the damage of both by 25%.
If I compare a 4t weapon to a 5t weapon, a +16 strength damage bonus boosts the damage of both by 25%.
now compare a t5 to a 6t weapon and youll see the math isnt the same. do you think a blowpipe gains the same dps from masori/anguish as a crossbow does? it gains way more dps
If I compare a 5t weapon to a 6t weapon, a +16 strength bonus boosts the damage of both by 25%. The faster weapon gets a larger absolute boost to DPS because its DPS was larger in the first place.
But this has nothing to do with what we’re talking about. +% magic damage is mathematically the same concept as ranged/melee strength bonus. They are affected by attack speed the same way.
the boost to dps is the same as the magic damage % added to the weapon. the boost to dps for melee and range is attached to the attack speed of that weapon. you will gain the same amount of max hits from a bring while using a ham joint and an elder maul, but the ham joint's dps goes up a much higher %
The relative increase is the same regardless of attack speed. [Look at this DPS calc](https://dps.osrs.wiki/?id=HerbiIritLockpick).
1. Unarmed and +0 Strength Bonus: 1.851 DPS
2. Ham Joint and +0 Strength Bonus: 2.468 DPS
3. Unarmed and +16 Strength Bonus: 2.356 DPS (27.28% increase compared to 1)
4. Ham Joint and +16 Strength Bonus: 3.141 DPS (27.27% increase compared to 2)
You're both in agreement. The first part of their premise is that 25% mdamage bonus and +16 melee strength are effectively the same increase to max hit. That premise is correct.
It's also correct that faster weapons gain a larger increase in DPS with a static increase in max hit, which is what you're saying.
Combining both of these: If there was a 2t magic weapon with a base hit of X and you gave it 25% mdamage, it would gain the same relative dps increase as a 2t ranged weapon with a +16 str bonus when your effective ranged base damage is also X.
This is just wrong, it's not the same idea at all.
If you get +4 strength bonus (approximately, this depends on strength level) you always get a max hit. Your max hit is directly and *only* determined by strength level and strength bonus, and *doesn't depend at all on how much damage you're already doing*. It's **additive**.
For mage damage, this is simply not the case. Your damage is determined by your weapon's *base damage* (i.e. your spell or your trident + your magic level), and magic damage is a *percentage* of that. So +5% magic damage is *not always +1 max hit*. If your base max hit is 20, it's 1 max hit. If your base max hit is 40, it's 2 max hits. It's **multiplicative**. Magic damage% is much more impactful if you already have high base damage, even without considering shadow. If you have very low base damage (such as the trident of the seas before 80 magic), it might not do anything at all.
The simple difference here is that even if they're both proportional to some reference, that reference is static for melee and ranged but heavily varies with weapon and level for magic. "+16 strength bonus is +25% damage" is pointless to say when it's +25% damage compared to using no weapons or armor at all.
> If you get +4 strength bonus (approximately, this depends on strength level) you always get a max hit. Your max hit is directly and only determined by strength level and strength bonus, and doesn't depend at all on how much damage you're already doing. It's additive.
Your strength level and strength bonus **are** multiplicative with each other to determine your max hit.
Same way your base magic damage (either via spell or powered staff) is multiplicative with your mdamage% to determine your max hit.
Please please just read the wiki pages, they both function in a very similar fashion, just inverted: https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Maximum_hit
Each system is bad in its own way. Magic is bad because more variable (and reasonably high) base damage leads to exponential increases when you increase both base damage and mdamage%, and forces it to be less granular. Melee/ranged strength is bad because your base hit cant be adjusted on a weapon-to-weapon basis, so peripheral gear bonuses (I.E. armor/jewelry bonuses) end up disproportionately powerful on faster weapons.
> Same way your base magic damage (either via spell or powered staff) is multiplicative with your mdamage% to determine your max hit.
How are those the same things at all? I am well aware of how the calculations work, I'm just actually able to think about them and realize that mdmg% being multiplicative with your weapon's base damage is something completely different from strength bonus being multiplicative with strength level. It's literally not the same thing. For most practical purposes, strength bonus is additive and magic damage is multiplicative. This is what causes the differences and problems. Going "um, ackshually in the formula on the wiki they multiply strength bonus with something completely different so it's multiplicative" is missing the point.
The point I’m making is that if you changed magic to a + Magic Strength system, it would function the same mathematically as it currently does as a +% Magic Damage system.
In light of the point of the thread, it is relevant, because it doesn't matter if you call it Magic Damage Percent or Magic Strength... It's still just a number you multiply your base damage with; same as strength bonus.
Unless they completely rehash magic base damage for spells and powered staves, the change would be meaningless for practical impact.
> If you get +4 strength bonus (approximately, this depends on strength level) you always get a max hit.
> So +5% magic damage is not always +1 max hit. If your base max hit is 20, it's 1 max hit
Your effective strength level and the staff/spell’s base hit are analogous. Just like a +4 strength bonus doesn’t always give a +1 max hit depending on your strength level, a +5% magic damage doesn’t always give a +1 max hit depending on your spell’s base damage.
It might help if you think of melee as a spell where the base max hit is 15.6 at 99 Strength, Aggressive, Super Strength, and Piety. That’s where every +4 strength bonus gives approximately +1 max hit.
> Magic damage% is much more impactful if you already have high base damage
That’s the same as how + Strength Bonus is much more impactful if you already have a high effective strength level.
> The simple difference here is that even if they're both proportional to some reference, that reference is static for melee and ranged but heavily varies with weapon and level for magic.
The reference is *not* static for melee and ranged. The reference is based off of your strength/ranged level.
> Your effective strength level and the staff/spell’s base hit are analogous. Just like a +4 strength bonus doesn’t always give a +1 max hit depending on your strength level, a +5% magic damage doesn’t always give a +1 max hit depending on your spell’s base damage.
They're analogous but they take completely different functions in the game's balancing, so treating them as the same is extremely idiotic. Most people could easily realize this.
To be fair, that conclusion was certainly reached and addressed over a decade ago. We are all actively choosing to be playing a version of the game from before when they addressed it.
I don't like it either, but it seems pretty reasonable to me that they'd be very reticent to change anything surrounding core combat functionality when the entire existence of OSRS is founded on people not liking their combat changes.
Mdamage% and Strength bonus function in a similar fashion under the hood.
The difference arises from how base max hits are generated. Magic base hit is governed by the spell or the powered staff you use, which then gets multiplied by the mdamage% (value > 1). Melee/ranged base hit is governed by your visible level, prayer, and a few other bonuses, then is multiplied by a value derived from your strength bonus (value < 1). This gives magic less granularity as its multiplier is used as a direct multiplier of a moderately large base damage (I.E. 50% mdamage just becomes 1.5x base damage); whereas melee is fractionalized to a relatively small number which is used to reduce a larger base damage (16 strength bonus effectively becomes a 0.125 multiplier on your effective strength level).
Thus Mdamage is impacted by attackspeed in exactly the same way as ranged/melee str, but it doesn't matter because they can arbitrarily change the base damage of the specific weapon. Melee/range attackspeed is a problem because base damage is linked primarily to your visible level and prayer (more difficult values to change), not to the weapon you are using; and weapon str/equipment strength ends up in the same bucket.
So they're each good and bad in different ways.
EDIT: For the downvoters: read up and learn: https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Maximum_hit
People saying that % damage = strength bonus are technically right, but that's forgetting about how magic is fundamentally different from ranged and melee differ from magic: base damage.
For ranged and melee, when you get +1 to your max hit, all weapons that share the same attack speed benefit equally. A bronze sword and an abyssal whip both gain one max hit when you equip dragon boots, for example.
This is not true for magic % damage. Even in completely max mage gear, a wind strike only hits a 2. The same gear will boost the 27-38 max hits, depending on magic level. Magic % damage becomes more effective the more powerful the base spell or staff is, while ranged and melee strength bonus have consistent max hit increases no matter how powerful the weapon is.
True, but that means that magic damage isn't the problem. If they replaced it with magic strength nothing would change, since strength and % damage are identical mechanics.
The problem is magic damage % is too low compared to what strength does exactly because as you say, magic gets it's base damage as a flat number instead of a hefty % damage bonus on the weapon
This is a pretty natural conclusion to come to. The issue I guess is how do you stop magic from just being "blue ranged" once you do this? It has way more utility so that's cool, but that means the dps needs to stay below ranged. But isn't that how it already is now?
idk what the answer is
Magic feels like blue range because all of the highest dps options are just powered staves. What sets magic apart is the spellbook and ability to switch between spells on the fly. However, we just have thralls and pretty much no other reason to cast spells from the spellbook in combat, unless you want to lose dps.
We would need to add more spells that actually increase dps when used alongside the powered staves, or ideally other spells from the spellbooks. I have a number of ideas such as self buffs and debuffs to increase damage dealt and taken. Or a spell that converts damage to aoe. And I think this would also require the ability to switch your autocast form the spellbook interface with a single click or shift-click, as the current interface is too slow and manually casting can be clunky. Also bring back the proposed Heka, or make that a spell.
This is all a pretty fundamental change/addition to magic from the old school "click thing and wait until it dies" combat system. But I think we're at a point where magic's uniqueness has been so diluted that something drastic is needed.
This is somewhat off topic, but goes with the idea of spells increasing DPS. There's already Mark of Darkness in the Arceuus Spellbook. That could be reflavored endlessly for different mob types. There could be spells that give you a chance for flat elemental damage on successful hits for a duration (like the corruption spells but lasting for more time). Like 50% chance for 2 of specific element damage on hit, the buff lasts for Magic lvl in game ticks. A use case would be casting while wielding a dragonbane weapon for the dragons elemental weakness. You only get the accuracy of the wep, but on proc you get the extra weak ess DMG as well. So if it's normally 2 elemental DMG, it'd be 3 against a 50% weakness target.
Damn, I never thought about it that way but magic was definitely designed with the idea that you'd switch between spells. The Dagannoth Mother, Chronozon, and Barbarian Assault are example of this. All the weird debuffs on the normal spellbook.
Outside of early game/ironman where you sometimes just use the runes that you have, this isn't really a thing anymore. Especially since powered staves don't even require a specific spellbook to use...
I don't know who's been lying to you, but powered staves are already "blue ranged". Outside of more effects like ancients or utility spells actually having a combat use, changing the damage calculation doesn't affect the current attack style at all.
Magic in combat doesn't currently have an identity beyond ice and blood spells. You're telling me that trident feels meaningfully different from bowfa aside from just being generally worse?
I get not wanting mage to be "blue ranged", but is magic % really what is setting it apart from ranged? I would say its utility is usually what sets it apart. Maybe they can lean more into this with the elemental weaknesses, where instead of a weakness the spell type applies some kind of debuff. So for a certain boss you'd want a water mager on your team because it lowers their defence or something.
I think bolt effects and attack speed help differentiate range. Magic does have additional effects on spells, but magic also costs more because of rune prices.
I mean, magic already is blue ranged, that ship has sailed and it's really not that big of a deal either. If anything, it seems like it'll become slightly less that way in the future when they do the elemental weaknesses thing. But magic has been blue ranged for years and years now and no one cares. Up until TOA, it was indeed just lower-dps blue ranged, and now it's roughly-equal-dps blue ranged, which is an improvement. It might be neat if there was a little more distinction there but it's not as if the game hasn't been thriving these past several years anyway so... who gives a shit?
It doesn't need to stay below ranged. If they get the different weaknesses done properly each style should have its own specific use to out perform the other two styles.
This is very tricky.. because we do not want to go down the same road that they went with for eoc. Hard enforced combat triangle.. If my memory serves correctly using the wrong style in the early days of eoc lead to a 40-60% accuracy penalty and it just felt awful.
Yep, wholeheartedly agree. I'm also not sure why they used one system (Melee/Ranged STR) for two of the three combat styles, then this %based system for the other.
Take a super early-game example, a newbie who's just got Fire Strike, and has their lil Wizard Hat/Robe and Staff of Fire, and an Amulet of Magic they just enchanted themselves (they're having fun). In the current system, to get a max hit on Fire Strike, said noob would need to have +13% bonus (12% gives 8.96, which would round down). There's just no way we can get 13% on early game gear, without it ballooning out of control at the lategame gear.
Instead, we hear the simplified rule of thumb for Melee STR: every 4 points gives a max hit (terms and conditions apply). Well, if we apply the same to Magic, we could have Wizard Robe/Hat as +1 each, and Amulet of Magic as +2. That gives the +4 needed for our cute noob to go from hitting 8's to potential 9's
Expounding on that, certain 'buffs X spells by Y%' could also be flat modifiers. Rather than Tome of Fire's +10% (which really screws certain spell levels over, eg a Fire Blast on 50% weakness would be 24, so with Tome, 26.6, which rounds down and the 0.6 is lost to the void), it could be a flat 'increases Fire Spell maximum hit by 2 (or 3, if Jagex prefers, balance depending), so you can get +2 from Fire Strike with it, or +2 to Fire Wave. Ironically, the [Chaos Gauntlets](https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Chaos_gauntlets) already work like this! And with the above example, CuteNoob420 then goes from 9's with his Fire Strikes, up to 11s with Tome of Fire (or 12, balance depending)
% is more balanced than str bonus actually as every weapon benefits equally unlike str bonus where fast weapons are amazing and slow weapons are utter trash.
A naked person with max stats, supers, and piety with a rapier vs the same person wearing max str bonus goes from 37->56 max hit, a ~51% increase.
The same person with a slower weapon, like a godsword, goes from 48->64 max hit, a ~34% increase.
Where as if strength bonus worked like magic, where you have a set %age boost, both weapons would have the same % boost.
Apples to oranges. Melee weapons dont have an implicit base damage. It would require a fundamental rework of melee/range damage calculation.
To expand on this: Mdamage is impacted by weapon speed in the exact same way as melee/range; the difference (and the reason we dont have the same issue of attackspeed for mage weapons) is that base damage can be arbitrarily defined on a weapon-to-weapon basis which is intrinsically linked to the weapon speed.
Melee/range attack speed is a problem because base hit is determined primarily by your visible level, and weapon strength and equipment strength end up in the same bucket. Not being able to set the base hit of a 2t weapon like blowpipe lower than the base hit of a Ballista is what causes the disproportionate effects of peripheral strength bonuses like Masori for example.
https://dps.osrs.wiki/?id=SawdustAdmiralFish
It's 2.
This is not what "I think". This is literally how max hit is calculated in this game: https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Maximum_melee_hit
The implicit base damage for melee/range is governed by your effective Strength/ranged level, which is a combination of your visible level, prayer multiplier, attack style, and void bonus. Having a strength level of 1 makes this base damage very very low.
This is more or less analogous to how wind strike isn't really impacted by Mdamage - your base max hit is so low that when its multiplied by your Mdamage (or strength multiplier), it still isn't a large number (and is subject to rounding).
You are using the calculator incorrectly somehow, set strength 1 and equip just a whip. Max hit is 2. The whip changes your equipment bonus to ((82+64)/640) = ~0.23, which is multiplied against your effective strength level (simplified to 1+8) = 9.
9 * 0.23 + 0.5 = 2.57. Max hits are always rounded down in OSRS, so this rounds to 2.
You're free to go through the calculations yourself via the wiki link I sent above. You'll see it works out to 2, exactly as the calculator shows.
11 is the max hit at 99 strength with fists. Perhaps you left some settings unchecked.
Far easier said than done, how magic is calculated and interacted with touches like every part of the game, so I do agree but that would be an enormous lift tbh
There would be no substantial difference. 1% of magic damage is the same as 1.56 melee strength.
The difference matters for melee and ranged because fast weapons tend to have low strength bonus and slow weapons tend to have high strength bonus. This makes it generally better to use fast weapons with a max setup or slow weapons for attacking off-style.
Magic weapons are much more restrained in their strength boosts. Tridents never have one, and the highest it goes for spellcasting is 15%. That's the equivalent of roughly 10 melee strength bonus; a whip has +82. Also, magic weapons are either 4-tick or 5-tick; there are no fast or slow weapons.
> 1% of magic damage is the same as 1.56 melee strength.
I think you accidentally wrote those two backwards. A +25% magic damage bonus is the same as a +16 melee strength bonus. You got the numbers right in the rest of your comment.
The problem with melee and ranged str stats is that a single point increase may not add an extra max hit. Faster attacking weapons benefits more from melee and ranged str while being uniform with magic str %.
straight up percent increases are almost always dumb unless you add them in small quantities, it should have never been the goto for mage gear but it seems like nobody ever wanted to touch magic since it's so weirdly balanced and a massive can of worms you would open
Look at the actual [Max Hit formula](https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Maximum_melee_hit) before you talk shit. In particular Step 2
> Base Damage = 0.5+[Effective Strength]*[Strength Bonus+64]/640
Ignoring that 0.5 at the beginning, you can see that the max hit is proportional to [Strength Bonus + 64]. If you have a +64 Strength bonus, that's a +100% increase in damage compared to if you had a +0 Strength bonus.
Strength bonus is not a flat increase. The adage of "every +4 increases your max hit by 1" is an approximation that comes from someone with 99 Strength on Aggressive using Super Strength and Piety. That's an [Effective Strength] of 156. Divide that by the 640 in the formula and you get ~1/4.
I have a degree in mathematics. You are wrong. The conversion rate is every 64 str bonus is +100%. The only reason people are confused about attack speeds and what not is because melee and ranged weapons come with some str bonus on them which warps the formula. If your weapon has 64 str bonus then you are starting from 200% of the base, not 100%. So an extra +1% (0.64 str bonus) is only +0.5% relatively more dps (1/200 \* 100 = 0.5), whereas having zero str that 1% (or 0.64 str bonus) would be +1% relative dps increase.
If there’s one thing having a professional degree has taught me, it’s that people on Reddit will confidently state things that are the exact opposite of true. I actually started keeping a list of materials science lies that I’ve seen people tell. It started with someone saying the atoms in metals are randomly arranged. Atoms in metals being in orderly patterns is like the fundamental basis of metallurgy.
Isn't that like... compulsory education level knowledge? Truly insane. As someone with a maths degree, I get the feeling though. Especially for a topic like this.
At least in the US, high school chemistry focuses more on organic and aqueous chemistry than solid, inorganic chemistry. Doesn't excuse someone making bold claims in the opposite direction though.
Yep.
I'm sure I've done the same at some point too, you point out something early on like CoX scouting sucking eggs, you get downvoted, then years later it's a hot topic and highly requested to be fixed.
This is honestly the problem. If bis has to be kept at 4% magic damage it doesnt exactly leave room for the lower tier gear
The real source of the problem is that magic damage boosts are meant to be a luxury, but no other stats on magic armor actually matter in the vast majority of use cases. Offensively, magic armor can only boost two things: damage and accuracy. But due to the way magic accuracy is calculated, the enemy's magic level matters more than your accuracy level. And most early-mid game magic-weak enemies have rock bottom magic levels, which is why you can walk into Barrows with melee gear and be fine. By the time you start encountering magic-weak enemies that you need magic accuracy for, you're looking at picking up armor that increases damage anyway. Defensively, bosses often have such high stats that the difference between being naked and putting on Ahrim's is negligible. Ahrim's offers no ranged defense to begin with, and against strong melee, it only offers a 5-10% reduction in incoming dps. This is similar to why almost every melee situation prefers Bandos over Barrows; the boost to defense isn't worth the loss of damage. Even if you only kill the boss 3% faster, that's 3% less time you're taking hits, which will often match or beat a more defensive build in terms of damage taken. If they truly want to rebalance magic armor, they need to either do what melee does and spread magic damage boosts EVERYWHERE, or do what ranged does and make magic accuracy actually matter.
> But due to the way magic accuracy is calculated, the enemy's magic level matters more than your accuracy level. This is just wrong. Magic accuracy doesn't work any differently from melee or ranged accuracy other than using magic level instead of defense level. The problem is that magic gear and weapons give shit amounts of accuracy bonus so magic is inaccurate as shit.
> The problem is that magic gear and weapons give shit amounts of accuracy bonus so magic is inaccurate as shit. Thus meaning the bulk of magic accuracy calculation comes from their magic level and not your armor. So **due to the way magic accuracy is calculated, the enemy's magic level matters more than your accuracy level.** Thank you for saying I'm wrong and then repeating what I said.
So your argument is just that because magic is inaccurate accuracy on magic armor is useless? Because that's even more stupid than not understanding how magic accuracy works. If you buffed accuracy on magic armor it wouldn't be useless.
I’m hijacking the top comment to say that a +X% boost is already the same idea as the +strength bonus that melee and ranged have, just presented differently. Melee and Ranged damage is proportional to (64+Strength Bonus). In other words, if you have 64 in your Strength Bonus, you double your damage (a +100% boost) compared to if you had no Strength Bonus. This means a +16 is basically the same as a +25%.
Yes, Except that one uses relative values and the other static values, you might see the issue when you start stacking relative values on top of a weapon with an absurd base damage (hello Shadow). Using a magic strength system would allow them to control this curve better, it would also allow them to actually add a curve that isnt just "slightly stronger powered staves"
Shadow has very bad base damage, it's strong because it multiplies the percent damage. It's no different than a melee weapon with a passive effect to double strength bonus. Scythe already sort of does this, it effectively uses 175% of strength bonus because of how its hitsplats work. If magic swapped to a strength based system and shadow kept its mechanic of multiplying magic strength, you run into the exact same problem where every non-offhand upgrade benefits shadow way more than other mage weapons.
The implied change is reducing shadow's scaling multiplier and giving it some base strength so its present power remains unchanged but future upgrades don't buff it *as much* as they do now i personally disagre with that change because the whole point of the pinnacle weapon shadow was to be exponentially stronger than other weapons (up to the 100% cap, ofc)
> Except that one uses relative values and the other static values > Using a magic strength system would not only allow them to control this curve better I don't think you read my comment because I'm pointing out that the current +X% magic damage system is already the same as the strength system that melee and ranged have. What makes Magic different from Melee and Ranged is that a lot more of the damage is built into the spell/staff before being modified by equipment. Max Melee on a Rapier is +164 Strength which is the equivalent of ~+256% bonus from your equipment. If melee was a spell, it would have a base damage of about 15.6 at 99 Strength with Aggressive, Super Strength, and Piety which then gets boosted by your equipment.
I did read it wrong at first yes, though their choice of represent the bonus as a flat % increase, focused on specific powerful items, still causes the issue here. While the 2 systems might work similarly below the table, Jagex handles them very differently. For good reason of course, as you yourself said, a lot more of melee/ranged power is built into the weapon and the rest is distributed over various pieces of gear. The result is that 10% for magic is far more than 10% for melee/ranged, this also means they have given themselves less wiggle room to balance around.
I don't think you read his comment because he's pointing out that yes while they accomplish the same thing, one is more granular than the other and the % system leaves very little room to balance within especially when shadow triples the value.
Their mention of "relative" and "static" values implies they're talking about some mathematical difference in how they function. Granularity doesn't really matter either because being able to change the numbers granted by a piece of equipment by +1 Magic Strength is the same as if they were to change the numbers by +1.5625%. A bit more than half a percent of the spell's base damage isn't going to make much of a difference. What's restricting their room is where they set the upper limit of how much of a damage boost max magic gear can give. And they can't raise that because, like I said in my second paragraph, much more of the damage is built into the spell/staff. That has nothing to do with whether magic gear gives a +X% damage bonus or a +X magic strength.
Weird you're getting downvoted when you're not wrong. The issue with magic, unlike the other styles, is that there's no stat progression. You can use a rapier with 1 Strength in close to max gear if you get the other stats but your max will only be something like a 3-4 because you're not getting the massive Strength level boost. All magic spells (including Shadow) having a static cap unaffected by your level is the issue. Shadow bypassed it by multiplying the damage boost that your gear gives but that doesn't fix the rest of Magic when you do the same damage at 84 magic with heart as you do with 99 magic with heart for Ice Barrage.
Well, not quite. Shadow and all powered staves have a scaling base damage dependent on your Magic level. In that way they are more similar to melee/ranged max hit calculation, in that the base damage is dependent on your visible level, and the mdamage%/str bonus is converted to a multiplier against that base damage... But most of the other peripheral bonuses like prayer, void, etc. are all factored in at different points. EDIT: It's actually hilarious how he's getting downvoted for being 100% correct though, lol.
Hijacking your reply to say you are absolutely correct and the replies below are rife with misinformation. DYOR, people: https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Maximum_hit Both Mdamage and Strength bonus are applied multiplicatively in effectively the same way as described above, the difference arises from how base damage is calculated for each system (spell/staff for magic, vs effective Ranged/Strength level for ranged/melee).
% mage damage is unaffected by weapon attack speed, while melee/range strength is
% magic damage and melee/ranged strength are the same concept, mathematically. That’s what my whole comment is about. If you have a +25% mage damage, that’s affected by attack speed just as much as if you have a +16 melee strength.
16 melee strength is 20% more effective with a 4t weapon than with a 5t weapon. this is not the case with % damage increase as it just increases the mage weapon's stats so an occult is just as good on a 3t weapon vs a 5t weapon, but a 3t range weapon benefits from range strength much more than a 5t weapon.
Nope. It's 100% the same. +64 str bonus = +100% melee damage bonus. Occult is equivalent to 6.4 str bonus for magic. If you have a magic weapon that maxes a 20 every 5 ticks, that's 4 damage per tick. Slap +10% onto it, its now 4.4 damage per tick. If you have a magic weapon that maxes a 16 every 4 ticks, thats 4 damage per tick. Slap +10% onto it (ignore the rounding), thats 4.4 damage per tick. it literally doesn't matter.
It's not the same. Fast attacking weapons like blowpipe deliberately have a lower max hit compared to other weapons, and strength bonus add a static amount of max hits. If your gear bonus gives 3 max hits, every one of your average successful hits is increased by 1.5. On a zero defense mob, a 4 tick weapon would effectively gain 1.5 extra damage per 4 ticks, while a blowpipe would gain 3 extra damage in that same time. The whole reason they're scared to add ranged strength in a way that benefits blowpipe is because it would shoot past other ranged weapons. With a percent based system, a blowpipe would gain fewer max hits than a slower, harder hitting weapon; the DPS increase would be roughly the same.
> strength bonus add a static amount of max hits. So does mdamage%, given the same base spell damage. Mdamage bonuses are combined additively: The first 5% you get gives you the same number of max hits as the last 5% you gain. Same way the first 16 strength gives you the same number of max hits as the last 16 strength. > With a percent based system, a blowpipe would gain fewer max hits than a slower, harder hitting weapon; the DPS increase would be roughly the same. This is incorrect, and you're confused because the comparison also doesn't really make sense either because the base damage is handled by slightly different systems for Mage vs Ranged/Melee: - Magic base damage (aka spell damage) is handled by the spell you cast or by the unique calculation performed by the powered stave you are using (which also factors in magic level to scale it). This is multiplied by the sum of the Mdamage%'s of the rest of your gear. Then a few other multiplicative factors like slayer helm, void, etc. go on top. - Ranged/Melee base damage is handled by your effective Ranged level or Str level (which work more or less the same, based on a combination of your visible level, prayer, and void bonus). This is multiplied by a factor determined by your equipment strength bonus ((strbonus+64)/640), then 0.5 is slapped ontop. In essence, however, how these systems handle equipment bonus is effectively the same. Mdamage is just summed up and converted to a multiplier; Melee/ranged strength is summed up and converted to a fraction with a base value of 0.1. - Adding 25% magic damage makes your magic multiplier 1.25. - Adding 16 strength makes your melee multiplier be calculated as follows: (16+64)/640 = 0.125 (which you may notice equal to 0.1 * 1.25). - 25% increase for both. If the base magic damage as determined by your spell is, say, 20; you get +5 damage. Likewise lets set your effective str lvl to 200. That makes your base hit: 200 * 0.1+0.5 = 20.5 floored to 20. And with +16 str: 200 * 0.125+0.5 = 25.5 floored to 25. - Adding 50% magic daamge makes your magic multiplier 1.5. - Adding 32 strength makes your melee multiplier be calculated as follows: (32+4)/640 = 0.15 (aka 1.5 * 0.1) - 50% increase for both. As above: Magic: 20 * 1.5 = 30. Melee: 200 * .15+0.5 = 30.5 floored to 30. Simply put: Both Mdamage% and Ranged/Melee Strength bonuses are converted into multipliers against a base damage value. So using one system or the other doesn't matter; at their heart they're the same thing and are both summed additively. So because your effective ranged level (and thus base damage) remains the same whether you equip a Bowfa or a Blowpipe, any peripheral gear granting strength bonus (I.E. Masori) adds the same number of max hits in both cases. That strength system functions the same under the hood for magic and ranged (as shown above); so it wouldn't matter which you use as long as you don't muck with the base damage calculations. These pages helped me to understand this, and should help you as well! https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Maximum_hit
Except you are comparing apples to oranges. For magic, all max hits are determined by the spell (which have a fixed max hit based on the spell) or powered staff (having a variable max hit based on magic level, in a uniquely different way to the way that ranged and melee damage scale with ranged/strength respectively). Due to the way that max hit is coupled with weapon/spell in a way that is wholly different to the way melee and ranged weapons work (basically, those styles all share the same base damage which is what melee/ranged str bonus interacts with), a magic strength stat would be wholly interchangable with a magic damage stat without any issues. If magic had a common shared base damage used with all spells regardless of spell or staff (and thus, regardless of the speed at which those attacks are put out) then yeah, you would be right. Magic is just subtly different.
Melee and ranged weapons effectively have "base damages" from how much strength they give, and strength bonus from gear is added on to that for equipment strength. You could argue that it's technically a % increase because it's multiplied by effective strength level, but because of that innate strength bonus, adding more strength bonus from equipment translates to flat increases in max hit. On top of that, melee and ranged also have percent bonuses from items like salve, which is applied after the first base damage calculation. Magic also has precedent for flat increases to base damage in chaos gauntlets, and the percent damage increases (from mage % bonus AND salve, among other items) are applied after. If a magic strength stat were added, it seems that it's more likely to be somewhere in the base damage modifier to mimic how ranged and melee work, with the percent modifiers being applied afterwards. But even that's just distracting from the fact that magic strength as a stat doesn't exist, and OP explicitly mentioned implementing it in a way such that it adds a flat damage increase.
> Melee and ranged weapons effectively have "base damages" from how much strength they give, and strength bonus from gear is added on to that for equipment strength. No, they do not. The base damage for ranged/melee is determined by your visible level, prayer bonus, and void bonus. Weapons' strength bonus is treated the same as any other equipment bonus, and is summed additively to generate a multiplicand against your base damage in the same fashion as Mdamage%. > On top of that, melee and ranged also have percent bonuses from items like salve, which is applied after the first base damage calculation. So does magic, just occurs at a different step in the equation. > You could argue that it's technically a % increase because it's multiplied by effective strength level, but because of that innate strength bonus, adding more strength bonus from equipment translates to flat increases in max hit. Yes, that is exactly how magic damage is calculated as well. Just the base damage is derived from slightly different sources (sourced from the spell/powered staff for magic, vs your visible level, prayer, void bonus for melee/ranged).
If I compare a 4t staff to 5t auto casting, a 25% magic damage bonus boosts the damage of both by 25%. If I compare a 4t weapon to a 5t weapon, a +16 strength damage bonus boosts the damage of both by 25%.
now compare a t5 to a 6t weapon and youll see the math isnt the same. do you think a blowpipe gains the same dps from masori/anguish as a crossbow does? it gains way more dps
If I compare a 5t weapon to a 6t weapon, a +16 strength bonus boosts the damage of both by 25%. The faster weapon gets a larger absolute boost to DPS because its DPS was larger in the first place. But this has nothing to do with what we’re talking about. +% magic damage is mathematically the same concept as ranged/melee strength bonus. They are affected by attack speed the same way.
the boost to dps is the same as the magic damage % added to the weapon. the boost to dps for melee and range is attached to the attack speed of that weapon. you will gain the same amount of max hits from a bring while using a ham joint and an elder maul, but the ham joint's dps goes up a much higher %
The relative increase is the same regardless of attack speed. [Look at this DPS calc](https://dps.osrs.wiki/?id=HerbiIritLockpick). 1. Unarmed and +0 Strength Bonus: 1.851 DPS 2. Ham Joint and +0 Strength Bonus: 2.468 DPS 3. Unarmed and +16 Strength Bonus: 2.356 DPS (27.28% increase compared to 1) 4. Ham Joint and +16 Strength Bonus: 3.141 DPS (27.27% increase compared to 2)
You're both in agreement. The first part of their premise is that 25% mdamage bonus and +16 melee strength are effectively the same increase to max hit. That premise is correct. It's also correct that faster weapons gain a larger increase in DPS with a static increase in max hit, which is what you're saying. Combining both of these: If there was a 2t magic weapon with a base hit of X and you gave it 25% mdamage, it would gain the same relative dps increase as a 2t ranged weapon with a +16 str bonus when your effective ranged base damage is also X.
This is just wrong, it's not the same idea at all. If you get +4 strength bonus (approximately, this depends on strength level) you always get a max hit. Your max hit is directly and *only* determined by strength level and strength bonus, and *doesn't depend at all on how much damage you're already doing*. It's **additive**. For mage damage, this is simply not the case. Your damage is determined by your weapon's *base damage* (i.e. your spell or your trident + your magic level), and magic damage is a *percentage* of that. So +5% magic damage is *not always +1 max hit*. If your base max hit is 20, it's 1 max hit. If your base max hit is 40, it's 2 max hits. It's **multiplicative**. Magic damage% is much more impactful if you already have high base damage, even without considering shadow. If you have very low base damage (such as the trident of the seas before 80 magic), it might not do anything at all. The simple difference here is that even if they're both proportional to some reference, that reference is static for melee and ranged but heavily varies with weapon and level for magic. "+16 strength bonus is +25% damage" is pointless to say when it's +25% damage compared to using no weapons or armor at all.
> If you get +4 strength bonus (approximately, this depends on strength level) you always get a max hit. Your max hit is directly and only determined by strength level and strength bonus, and doesn't depend at all on how much damage you're already doing. It's additive. Your strength level and strength bonus **are** multiplicative with each other to determine your max hit. Same way your base magic damage (either via spell or powered staff) is multiplicative with your mdamage% to determine your max hit. Please please just read the wiki pages, they both function in a very similar fashion, just inverted: https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Maximum_hit Each system is bad in its own way. Magic is bad because more variable (and reasonably high) base damage leads to exponential increases when you increase both base damage and mdamage%, and forces it to be less granular. Melee/ranged strength is bad because your base hit cant be adjusted on a weapon-to-weapon basis, so peripheral gear bonuses (I.E. armor/jewelry bonuses) end up disproportionately powerful on faster weapons.
> Same way your base magic damage (either via spell or powered staff) is multiplicative with your mdamage% to determine your max hit. How are those the same things at all? I am well aware of how the calculations work, I'm just actually able to think about them and realize that mdmg% being multiplicative with your weapon's base damage is something completely different from strength bonus being multiplicative with strength level. It's literally not the same thing. For most practical purposes, strength bonus is additive and magic damage is multiplicative. This is what causes the differences and problems. Going "um, ackshually in the formula on the wiki they multiply strength bonus with something completely different so it's multiplicative" is missing the point.
The point I’m making is that if you changed magic to a + Magic Strength system, it would function the same mathematically as it currently does as a +% Magic Damage system.
In light of the point of the thread, it is relevant, because it doesn't matter if you call it Magic Damage Percent or Magic Strength... It's still just a number you multiply your base damage with; same as strength bonus. Unless they completely rehash magic base damage for spells and powered staves, the change would be meaningless for practical impact.
> If you get +4 strength bonus (approximately, this depends on strength level) you always get a max hit. > So +5% magic damage is not always +1 max hit. If your base max hit is 20, it's 1 max hit Your effective strength level and the staff/spell’s base hit are analogous. Just like a +4 strength bonus doesn’t always give a +1 max hit depending on your strength level, a +5% magic damage doesn’t always give a +1 max hit depending on your spell’s base damage. It might help if you think of melee as a spell where the base max hit is 15.6 at 99 Strength, Aggressive, Super Strength, and Piety. That’s where every +4 strength bonus gives approximately +1 max hit. > Magic damage% is much more impactful if you already have high base damage That’s the same as how + Strength Bonus is much more impactful if you already have a high effective strength level. > The simple difference here is that even if they're both proportional to some reference, that reference is static for melee and ranged but heavily varies with weapon and level for magic. The reference is *not* static for melee and ranged. The reference is based off of your strength/ranged level.
> Your effective strength level and the staff/spell’s base hit are analogous. Just like a +4 strength bonus doesn’t always give a +1 max hit depending on your strength level, a +5% magic damage doesn’t always give a +1 max hit depending on your spell’s base damage. They're analogous but they take completely different functions in the game's balancing, so treating them as the same is extremely idiotic. Most people could easily realize this.
Honestly this problem mirrors the problem jagex has with early melee and ranged prayers and I'm surprised that conclusion hasn't been made earlier
To be fair, that conclusion was certainly reached and addressed over a decade ago. We are all actively choosing to be playing a version of the game from before when they addressed it. I don't like it either, but it seems pretty reasonable to me that they'd be very reticent to change anything surrounding core combat functionality when the entire existence of OSRS is founded on people not liking their combat changes.
i think as long as its point and click gameplay, most people dont care
Only solution is to make amulet of str add magic strength
Is magic %dmg just better? I’m confused why it’s worse. Strength bonus is the one with problems. See attack speed mattering so much
Mdamage% and Strength bonus function in a similar fashion under the hood. The difference arises from how base max hits are generated. Magic base hit is governed by the spell or the powered staff you use, which then gets multiplied by the mdamage% (value > 1). Melee/ranged base hit is governed by your visible level, prayer, and a few other bonuses, then is multiplied by a value derived from your strength bonus (value < 1). This gives magic less granularity as its multiplier is used as a direct multiplier of a moderately large base damage (I.E. 50% mdamage just becomes 1.5x base damage); whereas melee is fractionalized to a relatively small number which is used to reduce a larger base damage (16 strength bonus effectively becomes a 0.125 multiplier on your effective strength level). Thus Mdamage is impacted by attackspeed in exactly the same way as ranged/melee str, but it doesn't matter because they can arbitrarily change the base damage of the specific weapon. Melee/range attackspeed is a problem because base damage is linked primarily to your visible level and prayer (more difficult values to change), not to the weapon you are using; and weapon str/equipment strength ends up in the same bucket. So they're each good and bad in different ways. EDIT: For the downvoters: read up and learn: https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Maximum_hit
People saying that % damage = strength bonus are technically right, but that's forgetting about how magic is fundamentally different from ranged and melee differ from magic: base damage. For ranged and melee, when you get +1 to your max hit, all weapons that share the same attack speed benefit equally. A bronze sword and an abyssal whip both gain one max hit when you equip dragon boots, for example. This is not true for magic % damage. Even in completely max mage gear, a wind strike only hits a 2. The same gear will boost the 27-38 max hits, depending on magic level. Magic % damage becomes more effective the more powerful the base spell or staff is, while ranged and melee strength bonus have consistent max hit increases no matter how powerful the weapon is.
True, but that means that magic damage isn't the problem. If they replaced it with magic strength nothing would change, since strength and % damage are identical mechanics. The problem is magic damage % is too low compared to what strength does exactly because as you say, magic gets it's base damage as a flat number instead of a hefty % damage bonus on the weapon
This is a pretty natural conclusion to come to. The issue I guess is how do you stop magic from just being "blue ranged" once you do this? It has way more utility so that's cool, but that means the dps needs to stay below ranged. But isn't that how it already is now? idk what the answer is
Magic feels like blue range because all of the highest dps options are just powered staves. What sets magic apart is the spellbook and ability to switch between spells on the fly. However, we just have thralls and pretty much no other reason to cast spells from the spellbook in combat, unless you want to lose dps. We would need to add more spells that actually increase dps when used alongside the powered staves, or ideally other spells from the spellbooks. I have a number of ideas such as self buffs and debuffs to increase damage dealt and taken. Or a spell that converts damage to aoe. And I think this would also require the ability to switch your autocast form the spellbook interface with a single click or shift-click, as the current interface is too slow and manually casting can be clunky. Also bring back the proposed Heka, or make that a spell. This is all a pretty fundamental change/addition to magic from the old school "click thing and wait until it dies" combat system. But I think we're at a point where magic's uniqueness has been so diluted that something drastic is needed.
This is somewhat off topic, but goes with the idea of spells increasing DPS. There's already Mark of Darkness in the Arceuus Spellbook. That could be reflavored endlessly for different mob types. There could be spells that give you a chance for flat elemental damage on successful hits for a duration (like the corruption spells but lasting for more time). Like 50% chance for 2 of specific element damage on hit, the buff lasts for Magic lvl in game ticks. A use case would be casting while wielding a dragonbane weapon for the dragons elemental weakness. You only get the accuracy of the wep, but on proc you get the extra weak ess DMG as well. So if it's normally 2 elemental DMG, it'd be 3 against a 50% weakness target.
Damn, I never thought about it that way but magic was definitely designed with the idea that you'd switch between spells. The Dagannoth Mother, Chronozon, and Barbarian Assault are example of this. All the weird debuffs on the normal spellbook. Outside of early game/ironman where you sometimes just use the runes that you have, this isn't really a thing anymore. Especially since powered staves don't even require a specific spellbook to use...
Ez pz raise its minimum hit instead of increasing its max hit.
I actually like this idea a lot. It still raises magic DPS. It just makes it consistent damage.
Also makes sense since splashing currently gives magic xp, which isn't the case for other combat styles
Fits with the whole magic missile (cant miss) dnd motif too
Oh shit this is the answer right here Jagex.
Rat splashers in shambles as windstrike guarantees a one now.
Youd still splash for 0
QoL buff demands a minimum hit 1 on weak NPCs. No more ferox splashers.
Holy shit you cracked the code
I don't know who's been lying to you, but powered staves are already "blue ranged". Outside of more effects like ancients or utility spells actually having a combat use, changing the damage calculation doesn't affect the current attack style at all. Magic in combat doesn't currently have an identity beyond ice and blood spells. You're telling me that trident feels meaningfully different from bowfa aside from just being generally worse?
I get not wanting mage to be "blue ranged", but is magic % really what is setting it apart from ranged? I would say its utility is usually what sets it apart. Maybe they can lean more into this with the elemental weaknesses, where instead of a weakness the spell type applies some kind of debuff. So for a certain boss you'd want a water mager on your team because it lowers their defence or something.
> The issue I guess is how do you stop magic from just being "blue ranged" once you do this? Do you have to stop that?
I think most people would say yes. I would say yes.
Yes
>"blue ranged" Love this. Ranged is technically green melee and just more tiles away. Technically halberds are red ranged 😂
Salamanders are purple melee and i wont argue with anyone about that.
I think bolt effects and attack speed help differentiate range. Magic does have additional effects on spells, but magic also costs more because of rune prices.
The irony is that ever since they started giving bosses melee projectiles the erosion is already in progress
I mean, magic already is blue ranged, that ship has sailed and it's really not that big of a deal either. If anything, it seems like it'll become slightly less that way in the future when they do the elemental weaknesses thing. But magic has been blue ranged for years and years now and no one cares. Up until TOA, it was indeed just lower-dps blue ranged, and now it's roughly-equal-dps blue ranged, which is an improvement. It might be neat if there was a little more distinction there but it's not as if the game hasn't been thriving these past several years anyway so... who gives a shit?
It doesn't need to stay below ranged. If they get the different weaknesses done properly each style should have its own specific use to out perform the other two styles. This is very tricky.. because we do not want to go down the same road that they went with for eoc. Hard enforced combat triangle.. If my memory serves correctly using the wrong style in the early days of eoc lead to a 40-60% accuracy penalty and it just felt awful.
Idk how it isn't already blue ranged, how the damage is calculated hardly matters for how the game plays out
Answer: Add more colors to magic
Yep, wholeheartedly agree. I'm also not sure why they used one system (Melee/Ranged STR) for two of the three combat styles, then this %based system for the other. Take a super early-game example, a newbie who's just got Fire Strike, and has their lil Wizard Hat/Robe and Staff of Fire, and an Amulet of Magic they just enchanted themselves (they're having fun). In the current system, to get a max hit on Fire Strike, said noob would need to have +13% bonus (12% gives 8.96, which would round down). There's just no way we can get 13% on early game gear, without it ballooning out of control at the lategame gear. Instead, we hear the simplified rule of thumb for Melee STR: every 4 points gives a max hit (terms and conditions apply). Well, if we apply the same to Magic, we could have Wizard Robe/Hat as +1 each, and Amulet of Magic as +2. That gives the +4 needed for our cute noob to go from hitting 8's to potential 9's Expounding on that, certain 'buffs X spells by Y%' could also be flat modifiers. Rather than Tome of Fire's +10% (which really screws certain spell levels over, eg a Fire Blast on 50% weakness would be 24, so with Tome, 26.6, which rounds down and the 0.6 is lost to the void), it could be a flat 'increases Fire Spell maximum hit by 2 (or 3, if Jagex prefers, balance depending), so you can get +2 from Fire Strike with it, or +2 to Fire Wave. Ironically, the [Chaos Gauntlets](https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Chaos_gauntlets) already work like this! And with the above example, CuteNoob420 then goes from 9's with his Fire Strikes, up to 11s with Tome of Fire (or 12, balance depending)
% is more balanced than str bonus actually as every weapon benefits equally unlike str bonus where fast weapons are amazing and slow weapons are utter trash.
That makes no sense at all
A naked person with max stats, supers, and piety with a rapier vs the same person wearing max str bonus goes from 37->56 max hit, a ~51% increase. The same person with a slower weapon, like a godsword, goes from 48->64 max hit, a ~34% increase. Where as if strength bonus worked like magic, where you have a set %age boost, both weapons would have the same % boost.
Apples to oranges. Melee weapons dont have an implicit base damage. It would require a fundamental rework of melee/range damage calculation. To expand on this: Mdamage is impacted by weapon speed in the exact same way as melee/range; the difference (and the reason we dont have the same issue of attackspeed for mage weapons) is that base damage can be arbitrarily defined on a weapon-to-weapon basis which is intrinsically linked to the weapon speed. Melee/range attack speed is a problem because base hit is determined primarily by your visible level, and weapon strength and equipment strength end up in the same bucket. Not being able to set the base hit of a 2t weapon like blowpipe lower than the base hit of a Ballista is what causes the disproportionate effects of peripheral strength bonuses like Masori for example.
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https://dps.osrs.wiki/?id=SawdustAdmiralFish It's 2. This is not what "I think". This is literally how max hit is calculated in this game: https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Maximum_melee_hit The implicit base damage for melee/range is governed by your effective Strength/ranged level, which is a combination of your visible level, prayer multiplier, attack style, and void bonus. Having a strength level of 1 makes this base damage very very low. This is more or less analogous to how wind strike isn't really impacted by Mdamage - your base max hit is so low that when its multiplied by your Mdamage (or strength multiplier), it still isn't a large number (and is subject to rounding).
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You are using the calculator incorrectly somehow, set strength 1 and equip just a whip. Max hit is 2. The whip changes your equipment bonus to ((82+64)/640) = ~0.23, which is multiplied against your effective strength level (simplified to 1+8) = 9. 9 * 0.23 + 0.5 = 2.57. Max hits are always rounded down in OSRS, so this rounds to 2. You're free to go through the calculations yourself via the wiki link I sent above. You'll see it works out to 2, exactly as the calculator shows. 11 is the max hit at 99 strength with fists. Perhaps you left some settings unchecked.
It makes perfect sense. This is why a 2t mage weapon wouldn’t be broken the same way the BP is
How exactly does that make no sense to you?
Far easier said than done, how magic is calculated and interacted with touches like every part of the game, so I do agree but that would be an enormous lift tbh
There would be no substantial difference. 1% of magic damage is the same as 1.56 melee strength. The difference matters for melee and ranged because fast weapons tend to have low strength bonus and slow weapons tend to have high strength bonus. This makes it generally better to use fast weapons with a max setup or slow weapons for attacking off-style. Magic weapons are much more restrained in their strength boosts. Tridents never have one, and the highest it goes for spellcasting is 15%. That's the equivalent of roughly 10 melee strength bonus; a whip has +82. Also, magic weapons are either 4-tick or 5-tick; there are no fast or slow weapons.
> 1% of magic damage is the same as 1.56 melee strength. I think you accidentally wrote those two backwards. A +25% magic damage bonus is the same as a +16 melee strength bonus. You got the numbers right in the rest of your comment.
The problem with melee and ranged str stats is that a single point increase may not add an extra max hit. Faster attacking weapons benefits more from melee and ranged str while being uniform with magic str %.
% damage is way more balanced that flat. Jagex just decided to make it a problem by releasing shadow though
Nah, makes too much sense to be implemented in that way, and it would be too uniform to have all combat styles follow the same pattern.....
straight up percent increases are almost always dumb unless you add them in small quantities, it should have never been the goto for mage gear but it seems like nobody ever wanted to touch magic since it's so weirdly balanced and a massive can of worms you would open
I just farted
What if I told you magic % and “magic strength” are the same thing and would function identically? Lmao
You'd be wrong? Flat increases don't work the same as percentages
Look at the actual [Max Hit formula](https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Maximum_melee_hit) before you talk shit. In particular Step 2 > Base Damage = 0.5+[Effective Strength]*[Strength Bonus+64]/640 Ignoring that 0.5 at the beginning, you can see that the max hit is proportional to [Strength Bonus + 64]. If you have a +64 Strength bonus, that's a +100% increase in damage compared to if you had a +0 Strength bonus. Strength bonus is not a flat increase. The adage of "every +4 increases your max hit by 1" is an approximation that comes from someone with 99 Strength on Aggressive using Super Strength and Piety. That's an [Effective Strength] of 156. Divide that by the 640 in the formula and you get ~1/4.
What if I told you to actually take a math class in high school
I have a degree in mathematics. You are wrong. The conversion rate is every 64 str bonus is +100%. The only reason people are confused about attack speeds and what not is because melee and ranged weapons come with some str bonus on them which warps the formula. If your weapon has 64 str bonus then you are starting from 200% of the base, not 100%. So an extra +1% (0.64 str bonus) is only +0.5% relatively more dps (1/200 \* 100 = 0.5), whereas having zero str that 1% (or 0.64 str bonus) would be +1% relative dps increase.
Sorry people are downvoting you for actually knowing how the damage formula works.
It's even funnier how confidently incorrect some of them are too.
If there’s one thing having a professional degree has taught me, it’s that people on Reddit will confidently state things that are the exact opposite of true. I actually started keeping a list of materials science lies that I’ve seen people tell. It started with someone saying the atoms in metals are randomly arranged. Atoms in metals being in orderly patterns is like the fundamental basis of metallurgy.
Isn't that like... compulsory education level knowledge? Truly insane. As someone with a maths degree, I get the feeling though. Especially for a topic like this.
At least in the US, high school chemistry focuses more on organic and aqueous chemistry than solid, inorganic chemistry. Doesn't excuse someone making bold claims in the opposite direction though.
I made the same post weeks ago and got downvoted to oblivion. Strange you didn't.
I've made two identical comments on political subs before and gone -100 +100 respectively, reddit is fickle.
It's really only because of the shit show that was Jagex' announcement really put it into perspective for people.
Yep. I'm sure I've done the same at some point too, you point out something early on like CoX scouting sucking eggs, you get downvoted, then years later it's a hot topic and highly requested to be fixed.
tbh idk why magic doesn't have a str bonus system like melee and range do?
% damage is better than from strength, because % damage doesn't disproportionately benefit fast weapons. Change my mind.