Finally, gwd.
I have some very old notes on kills/h for arma with ranged. I'm sure it's possible to do better than that, but I averaged 546k ranged xp/h and 59 kills in an instance (with ava, no raf - I did not include time to get kc beacuse of soulstone update). That seems low compared to 700k xp/h at abyss. But arma has an approximate effigy drop rate of ~1/100.
Let's analyse effigies for a bit. I'll assume probability of each pair of skills being selected by effigy is the same. So that means an average of 11250 xp per effigy per skill, plus a 48029 xp lamp per effigy. I'll consider the skill table:
Skill - xp/h - method
Crafting - 750k - black d'hide shields
Thieving - 400k - elf city pickpocketing
Cooking - 600k - 3-ticking rocktails
Fishing - 150k - C2 skilling
Hunter - 400k - Big Chin + Grenwalls
Woodcutting - 250k - evil elders
Mining - 1m - construction (all smith/mine through wbs)
Runecrafting - 230k - abyss blood runes
That's more of an estimate. Apart from fish and maybe rc/wc, the rates need not to be very accurate. I will not consider bonus from sc because it's only efficient if using alts. And well... it's against the rules.
With those rates, using the lamp on fish, each effigy saves ~0.59h of skilling. Going back to arma rates: getting 700k ranged xp at arma takes 1.28h, but you also get on average 1.28h * 59 kills/h * 1/100 effigies/kill = ~0.76 effigies, which save you ~0.45h of skilling.
So yes, it takes longer to get ranged xp at arma than the abyss. However, you save more time from skilling later, so it sounds like it's more efficient. Even if corruption shot increases the abyss rate to 800k xp/h, the numbers are still 1.47h taken for 0.51h saved, so arma would still be better (and I didn't even bother discouting raf from abyss rate).
I recently bought corruption shot, will go back to testing arma after I get soulsone. Melee (zammy) and mage (arma - dbreath increases xp noticeably) rates are better and could also replace abyss.
01-Aug-2015 22:22:48