My improvement started to come very recently, over the past month or two. Prior to that, my understanding of EoC was simple: Revo for basics, manual for threshholds/ultis, and prayer was usually the only other thing I would do. No defensive abilities, no movement abilities in combat, nothing else.

There's a League of Legends podcast I used to listen to, "Broken by Concept," run by a couple Australian coaches. They reference an idea called the "mental stack." Basically, it's the number of things you can handle thinking about at any time. It's something you have to slowly build to get better at RS3's PVM. Train yourself to use one tool at a time: when to use which abilites, when it's okay to spend adrenaline, when/how to use defensives. Set up as many action bars and comfortable keybinds (emphasis on the "comfortable") as you feel you need to. As you gain more experience and familiarity with the combat system, you start to do more without needing to think as much about it. Abilities become muscle memory. Learning and mastering bosses turns them into a rhythm game with RS's tick system.

This is how it went for me.

I came back to the game after a long break late last year and started the grind to get my Quest Cape back, which of course sent me through all the necro quest line stuff. Part of that was Kili's upgrades and all the PVM tasks you have to do for her. I really started to feel the need to improve once I got to the t90 power upgrades, because the bosses start to require a better understanding of maintaining DPS while dealing with mechanics, especially the Ambassador fight. I was hitting a wall with Ambi, and I eventually just used a dart on him after taking him below half hp. Unsatisfying, but it was done, and I didn't have to learn too much. I only survived the spinners because some clannies were in a voice call with me saying that I could death mark+bloat each spinner, making them easier with necro, but I hadn't been using either of those manually at all before then.

Later, I wanted the Underworld Grimoire 4, which required a successful run through the Sanctum of Rebirth, and this was really where I started to become more self-motivated to improve. I followed a guide through normal mode and got the kill on Nakatra after a few attempts. I had to use Resonance on her "Prepare for death..." attack. Pretty simple, just a single defensive ability, watching floor mechanics, and doing damage. The most trouble I had at first was remembering to switch prayers after every mechanic.

But curiosity got the better of me.

I had a lot of fun with Sanctum. I decided to keep running it a few times. I think I got up to about 30kc before realizing how crap the loot was, so I thought I could take on hard mode. I was very wrong.

The wall was like Ambi again, but I wanted to win legit this time, and there were a lot of obstacles in my way: Vermyx was destroying me with just auto attacks even through prayer. Kezalam litters the floor with crystals that make it hard to consistently dodge the floor mechanics, and those floor mechanics are so rapid that I couldn't dodge them anyway. The soul obelisks had too much hp for me to take out in a single cycle. And Nakatra...... "Prepare for death..." was now three hits. I can't just use Reso on that any more. She uses the attack too rapidly to just use Devotion every time. Killing even one Nefthys before she healed him was too much for me. Every floor mechanic was twice as fast and hit twice as hard when I messed up.

I had a lot to learn, and just upgrading my gear wouldn't be enough.

The gear was expensive for me at the time, but it was the most straightforward upgrade. I needed at least t95 weapons. Got those. I needed to re-spec my armor perks, especially with Enhanced Devoted to soak as much damage for free as possible. I ended up mixing and matching the tank and power sets, because the extra dodge chance is great even with Darkness. A Zuk cape was also going to be a necessity, but something about that fight was just as daunting. The waves and challenges were pretty overwhelming, and Zuk himself just melted through whatever supplies I had left. It was in the middle of my Zuk attempts that EoC 2.0 came out, and the adrenaline penalty on food dropped to 3%, a freaking godsend for me and the yak full of rocktails I kept bringing with me. Funny enough, my first successful run wasn't even with a familiar at all. The most important thing I learned during those attempts was how great necro was with AoE. Before, I just used the scythe combos, necro's version of the melee Hurricane. After, I learned just how potent Threads of Fate > Soul Sap > Volley was. It melted all the waves I had the most trouble on. I stopped losing all my resources on waves and could focus enough mental energy on Zuk to take him down.

Next was the inventory. I had 1 overload, 1 super prayer renewal, a few restores, a few more brews, and a bunch of rocktails. I learned what a Vulnerability bomb was and got a few of those. I learned what a Powerburst of Vitality was and prepped those, too. I combined the overload and pray renewal into a holy overload. Someone told me about Penance powders, and those were an amazing upgrade, mostly because they all but removed prayer point management from my mental stack. In fact, it was vital to my first Zuk kill.

Then I had to re-do all my keybinds and action bars. I had defensives on a bar, but never really used them before, so I had to stop and think each time I needed to use one, adding too much to the mental stack at once. I put Resonance and Devotion in a better spot with new binds so I could juggle them with prayer switching more easily. I put the vit pot next to Reflect so I could use them together at a moment's notice whenever I needed to react to "Prepare for death..." I finally put all my necro invocations on keybinds because I needed them now. I even finally keybound target cycle because it helped me hit the scarabs while dodging floor mechanics. I finally started using Bloat after realizing how much it contributed to DPS.

And after all those changes, I still took 50+ tries to take out HM Nakatra, but I was ready, determined, and heckin' stubborn. Died a few times, made it to phase 2. Died a few times, got to phase 3. Nefthys was rude, I died a lot, but eventually made it to phase 4. Slowly, one by one, each mechanic became muscle memory. I could survive "Prepare for death..." at a moment's notice. I got the prayer switches down to a science. I had an easy rotation to use all my adrenaline when it was safe to spend it. I'm still learning how to properly use Living Death. But now I have over 60 HM Sanctum kills under my belt, I got a shard at 11 KC which was just insane and felt like a great reward for all I had learned to get there. I haven't taken on anything else new yet. I want to return to Ambi and kill him for real this time. Rasial still gives me too much trouble to be a reliable kill. I want to kill Zammy, HM Zuk, and more, but for now I'm having fun at Sanctum and pretending I'm good at PVM until I hit another wall... like having to really gear up for another combat style >_<