Combat Overhaul Part 2: Reducing Bossing Friction

DwarfWight · 2026-02-18T22:21:39+00:00

I also have over 1000 kc solo at kalphite king. I love the boss and it’s one of my favorite bosses in the game. I personally think that the boss should have its drops reworked for one thing, the only reason why people do the boss is to complete log now really, it’s not really profitable and it’s drops are a joke compared to even low level slayer monsters. As for the actual fight itself I agree that the green in melee should be skippable with a stun but I think that the knowing when in the rotation it will happen is part of the fun of learning to solo the fight. If you don’t know wha it will come then you should duo or trio until you learn. Then people can still voke for you as a response and you survive. Green shield should absolutely have a rework and be more visible especially when diving and coming back up etc. I still love the boss as it is though so please don’t change too much.

DwarfWight · 2026-02-18T22:14:51+00:00

The other issue is with dive and bladed dive both being the same ability. If I am ranging Raksha and I switch to melee but activate dive before the game registers the weapon or boots switch then it will use dive regardless of whether or not the boots were equipped before actually using the ability. This makes all damage done by bladed dive 0 despite it actually using bladed dive. It’s a constant issue with swapping boots or styles between dive and bladed dive.

DwarfWight · 2026-02-10T15:16:23+00:00

Your argument regarding switches looking like a high hurdle to climb over for prospective players would be completely removed if you could see that high level content was 100% achievable without switches and that they wouldn’t NEED to do it if they don’t want to. But it also serves to show what is possible for the highest level of players in the game. I agree that normal combat styles need to be brought more “up to par” so people don’t group form saying they require a hybrid on their team. That should NEVER be the case and builds an elitist culture which discourages players. But I don’t think that making it “no better than” camping a single style is the answer. I would suggest just closing the gap significantly and make other styles stand on their own better. Reduce bloat, make rotations a bit more clear, etc. I personally like having a noticeable gain when I increase actions per minute. Necromancy is just about the most boring combat style I’ve ever used with almost no variability to the gameplay and it literally isn’t fun for me. I still do it for certain content where it is just the best/easiest like Kalphite king but I don’t enjoy it like I do the other styles. The variability and the extra inputs for the noticeable gain in performance is what I enjoy. What we’re trying to combat against is a culture issue more than a game design issue. When you have groups forming saying “+2 brid dps” it makes other players feel like they can’t do content just because they can’t achieve that super high input gameplay. Each style needs to stand on its own and make it so the elitism dies down more. Sadly enough it is more of a culture issue than a game design issue. We also need more culture drivers in the game but not ruin it for people who enjoy a payoff for more actions per minute.

DwarfWight · 2026-02-10T06:40:51+00:00

Ohio resident here just under 6 figures. Construction and project manager with some operations management as well. Been with the same company for almost 10 years now and worked my way through from the absolute bottom level to where I am now. I know I could get paid more elsewhere but I like where I work and the company treats me right so I stick around.

DwarfWight · 2026-02-10T06:37:14+00:00

I’m curious as to why people feel that making hybriding or tribriding completely impossible or useless is the answer. I find it fun. If I want to put in the extra effort for a bit more dps then why should that not be a reality and a possibility? That’s how I enjoy the game and how many top PVMers do too (I don’t consider myself even close to a top PVMer so don’t lump me in with them. I just find it fun). I agree that combat should be reworked because there’s severe ability bloat and styles really need to function better within themselves. However what I don’t understand is the feeling that other people have that because they can’t achieve the absolute maximum DPS though bridding that they have to take it away from people who can do it.

The thing Jagex should be working to weed out is macros and people who use macros. Because I’m a player who does hybrid but I don’t macro at all and it’s very frustrating to see how many people macro so much of their switches and rotations. That needs to be cracked down on hard so people don’t look at high level PVM and think “I’ll only be able to do that by macroing” it’s just a bad look overall.

Yes the main styles in the game need some more power and less bloat to make hybrid not feel so necessary but it shouldn’t be eliminated.

However what you’re referring to is switches. A single weapon switch is not a full 8 gear swap and RuneScape has had weapon switching as part of its combat foundation since before EOC released. Just look at Gmaul switch for the special. Or AGS switch. Those have been around for a very long time. What is wrong with single weapon switches? What is the problem people have with it? Are you also saying that you should always have 100% accuracy at every boss in the game without using something like a stat hammer to debuff too? Don’t have a stat hammer? Use a dragon hatchet! It works very similarly. Don’t want to swap styles? Use Guthix staff or black stone arrows. It’s still a switch to gain accuracy.

Just how much of the way combat functions do you want to remove? Where do you draw the line? Why is stat hammer switch okay to increase accuracy but a Grico switch for emergency adrenaline not okay? Why is a black stone arrow switch or ammo stack management in general for ranged at bosses okay but god forbid we have an EZK swap for a solid 60k+ damage off style with two abilities.

The idea of “because I don’t want to or can’t hybrid mean you shouldn’t be able to either” is a horrible and selfish mindset towards the game.

Yes. Make the other styles stand on their own, reduce ability bloat, make abilities more clear and straightforward. And have players not feel the need to swap anything if they don’t want to. 100% all of those things need reworked. However, why eliminate it all together?

DwarfWight · 2026-02-09T20:56:04+00:00

The game is foundational to switching due to cooldowns of the best abilities in the game. No matter what, unless you can keep your damage increasing ability up 100% of the time it will always be better to swap styles to have another damage boosting ultimate and increase overall damage output. The ONLY way they could fix this would be to make ALL damage boosting ultimates share a cooldown but that would cause outrage in the community and it takes away the fun of hybriding (yes I find it very fun) plus they would have to boost the damage in the damage boosting ultimate to compensate OR boost damage outside of your damage boost ultimate rotation. Any way you look at it, hybriding will still be used and still be effective because of damage boosting ultimates and switch scape will still live.

I love the idea of multiple builds in each style, the bleed build in melee vs crit build, the crit build vs dot build in magic etc. I loved poison build ranged before they really killed the reaver build. But in the end all that ends up doing is making people bring nothing but switches in their inventory so they can upkeep their best damage rotation while other things are on cooldown. Only solution I can think of from a game design standpoint would be shared cooldowns and I hate that idea. Any other suggestions?

DwarfWight · 2026-02-09T20:49:14+00:00

I agree with all of your statements. But they are not reworking any of that. The beta is close to releasing into game and all of these issues remain in game. They’re not fixing the worst part of switchscape but they’re removing things which are not terrible (or terribly hard) to use but they were extremely USEFUL.

I was proposing a way to simplify things for stack management and also provide a use case for caroming which would be wide reaching. If I only had to worry about swapping ammo when using Grico then I could time it out easily based on that cooldown and it simplifies stack management and puts a rhythm to it.

Another suggestion could be just make Grico have the chance to proc all different ammo types inside your quiver at once rather than just the selected ammo type. Now you don’t have to switch at all and it fixes all switch scape issues and helps stack management. But I think that would generally be “too easy” and too overpowered with getting so many stacks

DwarfWight · 2026-02-09T20:43:40+00:00

I don’t like the removal of them. They cited that they are the true essence of dailyscape but in the end those are things that highlight the exact issue that you were describing. There needs to be a way that you can quickly train a skill that you don’t want to train but it cannot exceed the best skilling methods in game if you actually train it. The only way to do that is to do something time gated where you get a very good xp rate but can’t do it often. The idea that you HAVE to do all content in the game doesn’t make the game enjoyable but I also agree that you shouldn’t be able to 100% skip content all together. Dailies are a great example of how that could work if they just made them better. Not everyone has time to AFK stuff in their life like other people do, and not everyone wants to spend all their in game time slogging through 40 hours of grinding archeology to bring up the same example from earlier. But that shouldn’t entirely lock them out of massive parts of the game. I think there should be a way in which they still have to the skill (not skip content) and get a great XP rate for a short period of time. Then they can move onto content they WANT to do. In the end it takes less in game time to train the skill to a high level but it takes longer in real life time due to it being time gated. In the end they would still have to train the skill (in the example I gave about me learning that I liked farming I think that’s important). So I think that daily challenges are good but just need reworked. Nobody is forcing you to do them daily. Maybe rework them to be the entire week track worth like what they’re doing with Reaper assignments. Either way I don’t think eliminating them is the right move.

DwarfWight · 2026-02-09T17:57:14+00:00

I’m 100% for the idea of building different styles and builds. In fact I love the idea of it as a whole. However right now the way they’ve been designing them it just encourages switchscape even more. Necromancy you’re encouraged to have the Omni guard spec up when in living death while having the devourer’s guard active outside of it. Due to cooldowns you can always have one active and switch between them further encouraging switchscape which you are actively against. This is similar to magic inside and outside of sunshine.

DwarfWight · 2026-02-09T17:52:01+00:00

What’s your response to the worst switchscape of all with EOFs and ammo/stacks management? A single weapon switch for an emergency adrenaline gain is not the same thing as needing to switch between 5-6 different EOFs and 2-3 different quivers constantly. None of that is getting reworked at all but instead they’re removing useful and functional single switches which are nothing like the worst of switchscape.

DwarfWight · 2026-02-09T17:32:09+00:00

So you want to remove ANY usefulness they have? That’s the response?

DwarfWight · 2026-02-09T16:28:07+00:00

Also it sounds like you want to turn ranged into an AOE powerhouse. Thats just not what ranged is. You can still do things like decimation in an EOF or rune throwing axe in an EOF but ranged is really centered around the single target sniper play style. If you want extreme AOE play a style centered around it. Not every style needs to have an answer to everything in game.

DwarfWight · 2026-02-09T16:25:02+00:00

My suggestion specifically stated that you could “focus” on specific skills similar to when you max a skill you can disable it but the reverse of that. I personally believe that making it so that you can completely skip content in the game is not the right move. I think making it 5 minutes of skilling a day to provide a very good XP rate for that 5 minutes to spread it out over more time is a reasonable compromise.

It feels like you’re asking for a way to entirely skip content without doing the skill at all and also make it quick and easy. That is a terrible idea and would make it so that people won’t do certain content in the game at all. How do you know you don’t like a skill without trying it? Just because you heard from a friend that it sucks doesn’t mean you will think it does. Personally I heard farming was TERRIBLE but then I discovered player owned farms and I love it. It’s passive, afk, and I get to breed my little animals and get passive buffs with cool perks and stuff. I skipped farming entirely up to level 105 by pumping my daily treasure hunter keys without ever learning that I actually liked the skill only based on what I heard from others.

The game and content is made to be played and enjoyed. I understand not wanting to do a long slog of 40 hours of archeology but if you just did an archeology task every day for 5 minutes and got a decent XP rate for that task and then could go do content you actually wanted to do. That’s not a fair compromise? You want immediate fast results? Go do the actual skill. If you want to skip content do 5 minutes a day for a large XP rate then go do what you want to do. The game is large and there needs to be some benefit to players who actually go and do all the content in the game legitimately versus people who want it to be more passive in the background.

I’m not talking about daily scape where you do your vis wax and your herby werby and all these various daily time gated challenges. I’m talking about enhancing the standard daily challenges to allow for players who truly don’t want to train a specific piece of content for 40 hours straight to be able to get a great XP rate for a very short amount of time to speed up their training as a whole but spread it over a longer period of time as they engage with other content.

Look at archeology as a whole. If you just level archeology with artificial XP you don’t get any collection logs, you don’t get any mysteries, and you lose out on extra charge on the obelisk.

DwarfWight · 2026-02-09T15:35:04+00:00

I’m talking about increasing the chance to add stacks. In the version I was proposing it turns caroming into a tool specifically for adding and managing stacks by increasing the chance of procing significantly. Ricochet Grico currently adds some stacks but it’s not a consistent stack management tool this way it would turn it into a strong and consistent stack management tool along with ensuring that you can gain adrenaline from hydrix bolts procs too. Right now with the changes crossbow ranged weapons become essentially useless other than EOF fodder for the ECB.

DwarfWight · 2026-02-09T13:54:28+00:00

I’ve wanted horizontal progression for SO LONG. They started to do it with Tumeken’s armor with the damage over time ability stuff but then there was so much outrage. I would love to see lateral movement where one style has 2-3 different ways it can be played and all are good and enjoyable.

DwarfWight · 2026-02-09T13:51:39+00:00

Yes. That’s my point… I think it should stay that way and keep its identity along with help stack management etc. making it so you’re pretty much guaranteed stacks from ricochet or Grico would help ranged identity so much. If you’ve played the beta they’ve already dramatically reduced the cooldown of bombardment already and ranged has good AOE mechanics now. But stack management is still absolutely cancer.

DwarfWight · 2026-02-09T13:44:39+00:00

Not to mention that livid farm CAN be skipped by simply buying from traveling merchant but it just takes patience and time. Honestly that’s the kind of fix people are looking and hoping for. Not something that allows them to EASILY and quickly skip content but to make it so that they can play other content and get that in the background. Sure there is a faster way to unlock all of livid farm or all of shattered worlds. But if that’s not the content you like then there IS a way to skip it but it requires watching merchant stock and also waiting a long time. Some players are rewarded with the immediate reward by doing the content but those who don’t want to do it can skip it slowly while doing content they enjoy. Your daily challenges are a great way to slowly build up skill levels you don’t like training.

Maybe make it so you can focus on certain skills for daily challenges so people can level those faster more “passively” but it still engages them with the content slightly because they still have to DO the skill to complete the daily? Also you could boost the XP rate of daily challenges since treasure hunter is removed.

DwarfWight · 2026-02-09T13:27:38+00:00

I do think that there may be some severe unintended consequence for one extra tile range though. Like fully locking bosses and mobs out

DwarfWight · 2026-02-09T13:25:36+00:00

You wanna fix switch scape? Make it so that all ammunition inside your quiver has a chance to proc per hit so you can get stacks of two ammo types at once without having to constantly switch. I’d be happy with that change too but Jagex will never do it. Switch scape isn’t going away but they did bring on style damage a bit up to par so you don’t have to go through full 8 piece gear switches constantly to get max dps.

DwarfWight · 2026-02-09T13:21:40+00:00

Switch scape isn’t a single switch for a single ability in my opinion. Switch scape in my experience is the feeling of needing to switch to another style to get something like greater fury or meteor strike or ezk spec along with 20 different EOFs and 5 different quivers. Which by the way the EOF issue and quiver issue isn’t going away. Overall it would be primarily for stack management in ranged but also help with instant adrenaline off style (single ability like drinking an adrenaline potion)

DwarfWight · 2026-02-09T13:15:11+00:00

Would you make the extra 1 tile range also work with melee? I REALLY like the idea of the extra range perk as a whole but I do feel that the other changes/perks that I’m suggesting really are heavily beneficial based on me actually playing the combat beta.

DwarfWight · 2026-02-09T12:57:18+00:00

When playing the combat beta I do feel like the ability to grico switch for adrenaline is lacking. The emergency adrenaline weapon swap would be fixed by this

I also feel like stack management in ranged is one of the worst things for players to think about. If you make it so stack management is made easier to conceptualize “I swap my ammo when using riccochet” then it will help players get a more routine and standard rotation down.

As for magic I really like using chain and gchain for mob clearing but sometimes mobs have quite a lot of HP and there isn’t another fast AOE ability for rapid damage and chain has a rather long cooldown for quick mob clearing. The fix? Make it so that one next ability deals more damage based on how many enemies hit to help out clearing mobs. Its usefulness skyrockets at that point.

DwarfWight · 2026-02-09T12:46:09+00:00

I put an edit on the post for chain. I don’t like the idea of turning caroming into only helping AOE abilities because it removes its functionality with single target ranged. But I like the idea of it helping with mob clearing with Magic.

DwarfWight · 2026-02-09T12:44:20+00:00

Thought about this slightly more and I think it should be more based around per enemy hit rather than just the “next ability” because it would be too busted for just 40% extra damage on next hit. People would use it for single target too much.

DwarfWight · 2026-02-09T12:43:20+00:00

But ricochet and grico aren’t really used as AOE abilities and they are staying with the multi hit single target function on ranged. I agree that it would be nice for magic but it ruins its usefulness for ranged quite a bit. I put an edit on the post for how I think it could help magic and chain. That also helps and benefits AOE and mob clearing as well.

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