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Combat Beta

Hey guys,
This thread has been created to address the most common topics of discussion regarding the beta. We'll let you know what we are working on as well as document the changes we have made to the beta in answer to your feedback.
Like the FAQ, we'll continue to add to this thread, so make sure you check back every now and then.
Other threads of interest:
The Uber Combat Beta FAQ Patch Notes Your Feedback - Changes Known Issues

04-Jul-2012 17:30:16 - Last edited on 13-Aug-2012 14:37:06 by Mod Emilee

Common Topics

This post addresses the most common topics of discussion and feedback that we may implement.

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Prayer and potions are not as good as they used to be and need to be buffed.
We won’t be changing Prayer, however, we are currently evaluating potions.
Poison damage is far too low.
We’ll be increasing the damage from poison and will review it at a later date to see whether anything more can be done.
The dragonfire shield is a melee shield and applies a nerf to rangers and mages.
Our plan is to provide mage and range equivalents.
Tormented Demons no longer have desirable drops.
We’ll be looking at buffing them up a bit.
Difficulty in seeing auto-attack hitsplats.
We’ll be making them a lot more obvious.
Gear is too "samey".
It’s not intentional that all items feel “the same”. We want to make sure that your offensive power comes from your weapon and your defensive power comes from your armour. However, we are going to be looking at distinguishing the more unique items (like prayer armour and void) during the beta.
I don’t understand what armour does now.
All armour gives penalties when using the wrong style. This isn’t currently well explained so we’ll be looking at communicating this more clearly.
Abilities do too much of my damage.
At the moment we’re comfortable with the ratio of damage done by your “auto attacks” and damage done by your abilities. However, we’re going to be keeping a close eye on this during the beta. Do give us feedback on this issue.

09-Jul-2012 15:15:12 - Last edited on 12-Oct-2012 09:27:50 by Mod Emilee

Beta update: 04/07/12

Feature changes:
● Cape and Jewellery beta shop added.
● Karils ammo now in beta shops.
● Players killing NPCs on a Slayer target should get full combat XP from killing the NPC regardless of the level/difficulty difference.
● Prayer should drain as expected.
● Movement/metamorphosis abilities cannot be used whilst holding the banner in Castlewars. Furthermore, the banner gives negative armour making the flag runner easier to hit.
● Adrenaline is only lost on PvP target switching in the wilderness.
● Godwars killcount reduced to 10.
● Damage over time effects should now not hit NPCs you don't have the Slayer level to wound.
● Feedback changes to NPCs such as black demons and many slayer creatures have had their lifepoints reduced to bring the killtimes to where we expect. We will continue to monitor and change these as we go through the beta.
● Sheathing has had a massive engine update. Animations that previously hide your left/right hands would have hidden sheathed items (Such as using a tinderbox to light a fire). This has now been updated so the sheathed items do not clip/disappear if your hands are seen as free.
●You can now switch gear freely as quickly as you like but suffer a 2 cooldown ability penalty. This is now shown via cooldown clocks on the actionbar
● Rare items are now untradable on beta worlds. Flowers will always be red, the seal emote will always show seal #1.
● Bunyip now does a percentage heal rather than an absolute value.
● NPC vs NPC was not working as expected - Things that are meant to be immune to familiars (such as certain bosses) were taking incorrectly taking damage.
● A mechanic that powers the tanking abilities was not working correctly and some NPCs got stuck hunting the wrong target (such as the corporeal beast stuck trying to attack someone outside the room). This should now be resolved.
● You can no longer generate adrenaline through defensive abilities outside of combat.
Boss update: Nex
Nex suffered from a few of the issues we've fixed elsewhere this week (such as familiars damaging when they shouldn't have). Such external issues should be resolved. Further to this we've updated her mechanics to make her as potent as you'd expect. If you are returning to Nex this week expect her to be much more adaptive, clever at giving chase and controlling her damage intake - as well as being reactive to it!
It is worth mentioning that Nex' hunting mechanics have been changed and she is now the first boss that fully supports the incite and provoke mechanics. Further information on these will be provided in another thread for those who wish to know more.
Ability changes:
Attack:
● Overpower cooldown is now 30seconds, down from 1 minute.
Defence:
● Anticipation has an added effect of making the player immune to stuns for the next 10 seconds. It has also had it's cooldown increased to 25 seconds.
● Freedom can now be used whilst stunned and has had it's cooldown increased to 30 seconds.
● Rejuvinate and Immortality now require a shield.
● Rejuvinate now only restores drained stats (it was previously lowering boosted stats).
● Rejuvenate shows healmarks when active.
● Rejuvinate now heals 40% total lifepoints over time, down from 50%.
● Immortality has had it's cooldown increased to 2 minutes.
Magic:
● Detonate charge speed has been doubled.
● Metamorphosis now gives +50% damage output, (previously 25%).
● Omnipower cooldown is now 30seconds, down from 1 minute.
Ranged:
● Ricochet has had it's line of sight issues resolved that prevented it's use in certain environments.
● Deadshot cooldown is now 30seconds, down from 1 minute.

09-Jul-2012 15:15:27 - Last edited on 09-Jul-2012 15:47:51 by Mod Emilee

Beta update: 13/07/12

Auto Vs Ability damage
Auto attack damage vs Ability damage has been redistributed. You should find you are far more effective if you want to follow a less intensive combat route. Clicking and waiting should result in far faster kill rates that previously, bringing them closer in line with the existing game.
As a side effect of this we have now separated the auto attack and ability delays meaning you cannot do both at once (previously your auto attack damage always occured in the background). Now if you use abilities, you have to wait as your weapon's attack rate before it will begin auto attacking again if you wish to go from higher intensity combat to lower intensity. Use of abilities in combat will still result in faster kill times.
The only exception to the above is that ultimate abilities won't delay auto attacks to replicate how players use special attacks in the existing system.

Levels and Items
Your levels, weapon and armour obviously factor into how you hit/be hit. The weighting they contribute has been shifted following a lot of feedback regarding difficulty fighting/being hit. You should now notice a shift in this. We have also used this to address the issue with shields being considered overpowered. Having a shield will still give you advantage, but it shouldn't be as large as it was previously.
XP:
Following player feedback and monitoring kill rates we've decided to remove the XP nerf for being 30 levels away. You should now get full XP for any kill you make. Furthermore we've increased the rates in beta dramatically following some key calculations being a bit off. This should also effect Slayer, bringing the Slayer XP per monster inline with what you'd expect.
Expect bosses to be giving quite a lot of XP for now. We will monitor and reduce as necessary.
Targetting (Advanced users)
We always planned to have this ready for release but we've now managed to finish the first version of our targetting system. This allows you to pick a target when out of combat, to open with abilities (such as barge and snipe which work best on an target you want to surprise). Targetting now functions as follows:
You can press the [ and ] keys to scroll through NPC targets (not rebindable for now). If you are in a PvP zone it will also include players in the checks and target if applicable. It won't target someone you are already targetting and you WONT auto-retaliate against something that isn't your target if it is attacking you. We'll monitor feedback on this but hope this allows for some smooth gameplay such as the following example:
-Fighting the corporeal beast, a dark core spawns. You can hit ] to target it, quickly shoot "binding shot" to stun it, then ] to re-target the corporeal beast with little downtime.
As part of this we've also removed the dreadnip interface/targetting side panel. Dreadnips first click option will instantly deploy against your current TARGET. So again, if I am fighting NPC A I can quickly use ] to target NPC B, Deploy the dreadnip (which will go after NPC B) whilst I press ] to retarget and carry on fighting NPC A.
Targetting will show a small arrow pointing diagonally above your current target. When you engage this target it will disappear (to maintain the look of the live game). If you target whilst it combat it should appear on a different target (if there are more targets in the area) for you to switch targets quickly.
This is only the first iteration of the targetting system. Expect it to get smoother as we continue to work on it.
Dungeoneering:
Dungeoneering is now less strict about combat triangle hitchance enforcement. This should help resolve issues solo players were having with coming up against something that was incredibly strong vs their attack style.
To help bring magic in dungeoneering in line with where we expected (damage and accuracy) All "Generic" staffs in dungeoneering - for example the gravecreeper basic staff now count as omni-elemental staffs to make magic more accessible in Dungeoneering and solve an issue we had with limited elemental staffs in Dungeoneering.

Other changes:
● All boss monsters have also been given minimum hitchances.
● The "Snapshot" ability is now availble for duel wielders or single ranged weapon users. It was previously locked to 2handed ranged weapons. In a response to rangers needing more abilities we have decided to allow this ability (and rapid fire in the future) to be non-weapon locked.
● Rapid fire has been updated so it fires more... rapidly. It's damage per hit has been toned down to account for it's new speed.
● All "Combo" attacks (attacks which you can click and they do multiple hits over time) will now start instantly. Previously you had to wait a second or two before abilities such as Flurry, Axphyxiate and Unload began but they will now begin immediately. Stunning your opponent to stop a combo ability should still function as expected.
● The "Hit and miss" spark effects were stopping some more awesome impact effects (Such as omnipowers impact) from playing on the target. The way this works has been refactored so they should now show.
● Staff spell damage buff was incorrect and too low. This has been increased to our expected value.
● Drops from bosses weren't acting as expected and hence not giving a drop. This should now be resolved.
● Barrows passive attacks (Such as guthans healing effect) should now function as expected
● Some Slayer helmets were un-statted and have been updated
● 2handed crossbows were mis-statted and have been updated
● Frost dragons should now have initial stats in place and be considerably more challenging
● Fire vs ice strykewyrms should be much more effective now. (this will be rolled out to Glacors next)
● Dark beasts attack code has been updated to make them do expected damage outputs.
● Reflection in PvP was showing the wrong players headbar, making it look like your opponent had your health
Boss changes:
The corporeal beast has been looked at. You can now use stunning attacks to prevent the darkcore from attacking. Be sure to plan this carefully with your teamates whilst your stun is on cooldown to keep him under control! Prayer drain in this fight has also been modified to mimic live behaviour.

09-Jul-2012 15:48:16 - Last edited on 13-Jul-2012 17:31:59 by Mod Emilee

Beta update: 20/07/12

Auto Vs Ability damage
Last week we made some significant changes to how the damage is split between Abilities and Auto-attacks and introduced abilities actually stalling the auto-attacks to seperate the two. We are keeping this, but people who use abilities should notice the stall between the two is far less that it was last week and related to the ability used itself - it will feel a lot more like it did on inital beta release.
Minigames opening:
-Fight kiln
-Troll invasion
-Temple trekking
-Shades of mortton
-Phoenix lair
-Mage arena (Will know unlock "Divine storm")
-Fist of Guthix
-Stealing Creation
-FFA Clan wars
Other changes:
● Auras were causing some annoyances when you sheath weapons. For now, we've disabled the Auras graphical appearance when sheathed. Auras positioning with some mis-aligned weapons (like bows) will be addressed in a future update.
● Similar to last weeks update to Ice Strykewyrms, Glacors will now take vasty increased damage if hit with fire spells or fire-based abilities.
● Added some new animations for drinking potions in and out of combat
● Dreadnips were running off to early, they now react correctly to you being in combat and thus should stick around longer as expected.
● PvP drops weren't acting correctly in regards to who saw what. This should now be resolved.
● The Hit bonus of weapons on the equip screen wasn't displaying correctly and now should.
On the topic of hitbonus it has been noted that some people are reporting lower chances to hit certain monsters. This is mainly due to the shift in contributions from last week. Before we make any changes, please remember some NPC's may have shifted weaknesses from what they have in the live game - so check the combat side panel for their weakness and see if that gives you the hit chance you expect if used against them.

24-Jul-2012 11:25:39

Beta update: 17/08/12

More Content Available:
Today sees the release of the biggest update to the Evolution of Combat Beta to date! The following features are now available for testing:
● All Quests!
● Dominion Tower
● Barbarian Assault
● New and improved ability book interface
● New Ability: Momentum
Quests
All quests are now available for testing. Players will be able to start and complete any quests available to their live character. Players wishing to play a particular quest multiple times will be able to do so by re-importing their save to the beta after completing the quest on their beta character (assuming they don't complete it on their live character in the meantime.)
Dominion Tower:
The Dominion Tower - along with its full collection of boss monsters - is now available for testing. Bear in mind that the requirement to have completed a boss's associated quest still remains in order to face that boss in the Dominion Tower, so now is the perfect time to test out some quests in the beta and see if you can defeat the Dominion Tower!
Barbarian Assault:
The Barbarian Assault minigame is now ready for testing, featuring an updated set of mechanics. Previously those in the Attacker role had to switch between different combat styles (Aggressive, Controlled etc.) or different arrows/spells in order to overcome the vicious penance. In the new combat system, this mechanic no longer worked for melee players, so we have changed the way the Attacker role works slightly. While playing a wave, Attackers will notice 4 new abilities appear in the Constitution section of their ability book. These abilities represent different fighting stances and the correct one must be used to overcome your penance foes. These four abilities are shared across all three combat disciplines (melee, range and magic), so rangers and mages no longer need to worry about changing ammunition or spells. The four new abilities are:
● Reckless Stance
● Balanced Stance
● Defensive Stance
● Aggressive Stance
These abilities can be dragged to your action-bar for easier use. However, bear in mind that they only function within Barbarian Assault.
New Ability: Momentum:
Speaking of new abilities, we have introduced one new ultimate ability, linked to the Constitution skill: Momentum. This new ability is designed to help players embarking on long Slayer assignments. Once you have built up enough adrenaline you can use Momentum to increase your auto-attack damage by a significant amount. However, using another ability will deactivate Momentum. The idea behind this new ability is to give players a less input-intensive way to grind through long Slayer tasks.
New Ability Book Interface:
With the introduction of all these new abilities, what better time is there to introduce the new ability book interface? After listening to your feedback about the old ability book, we have taken the opportunity to completely re-design the ability book to make it more user-friendly and prettier to look at!
Your feedback while playing the beta is vitally important to us, and we are not afraid to make big changes (such as the redesign of the ability book) based on your feedback. Please - keep on playing and sending us your thoughts!

18-Sep-2012 12:37:49 - Last edited on 18-Sep-2012 12:42:27 by Mod Emilee

EoC - Beta update 14/09/12

Gameplay changes
Armour & Constitution : Previously constitution contributed 10% of your lifepoints, whilst armour contributed 90%. This was making it hard for players without armour to take damage (like from random environmental sources or just exploring) We've changed this so now Armour contributes 60% of the your lifepoints. This essentially means each Constitution level now grants 40LP instead of 10. Sum lifepoint values will remain unchanged.
Armour value is distributed across a full set of armour. Previously Shields took quite a significant percentage of this weighting. Following extended monitoring, player feedback and the reception of shield-specific abilities, we've decided to shift these weightings so the lack of a shield isn't as "punishing" hitchance wise.
Following more player feedback, we are now trialling Threshold draining adrenaline in the hope for less massive combo-ko and more tactical use of thresholds and basics in general. For now, we have thresholds still requiring over 50% adrenaline for use but they'll now drain 15% on use. You can of course, still use basics to generate to a high adrenaline level if you wish to combo thresholds.
Direct targeting has been added. There is now a new component on the top-left area of the actionbar if you wish to use your mouse, or you can press the "T" key to change to a targeting cursor for you to pick your target with.
XP code has been revised following feedback and a few bugs. You should find finishing off NPCs that were in combat with other NPCs now no longer rewards ridiculous xp! Furthermore the rates have been tweaked for fighting easier/harder than expected fights. Please let us know your thoughts on combat and slayer XP rates!
The summoning icon can now be dragged to your actionbar and interacted with.
Combat level is now only displayed when you are in combat, in a PvP area, or have your weapons unsheathed. Outside of these circumstances you will display your total skill level.
The Worn stats interface has had a complete redesign, hopefully making it clearer to understand your combat stats and effectiveness, let us know what you think!
Godwars equipment has been changed from level 75 armour to level 70, making it on par with Barrows but without the extra set effects/degradation. (Nex armour remains unchanged at level 80). We've also added the new Godwars revamp into the beta.
Other improvements/changes

• Polypore spell is back!
  
• Dragonbreath has had it's frontal cone attack tweaked and can now be used from a bit further back
  
• If you move from a familiar to it's owner in PvP your adrenaline won't be drained.
  
• Normal critical hits on auto attacks have been updated to be more potent and dynamic
  
• Magical spell critical hits were not functioning as expected and have been tweaked to work as melee/ranged are.
  
• Abilities now have the power to hit higher than the hit cap if they critically hit
  
• Stuns now have diminishing returns.
  
• Surge boxes in Dungeoneering are now wielded in the quiver slot!
  
• Ancestor spirits and Aegis auras should now function as expected
  
• Mindspike staff should now be able to change styles as expected
  
• There is a new defend animation out of combat to prevent the combat defend animation looking like it snaps.
  
• Auto attacks should not hit instantly following ability use
  
• Elite void has had it's stats returned
  
• The Spirit cape can now be worn by all styles, previously it was locked to being a magical item.
  
• Momentum now inflicts minimum damage values in a similar style to ability damage output.
  
• Troll invasion trolls are not as punishing if you are using the wrong attack style against them.
  
• Dragons no longer melee over a distance!
  
• Warped terrorbirds no longer go invisible after 5 minutes.
  
• Various humanoid NPCs wouldn't play death animations. This should now be resolved.
  
• Holy water is now officially awesome against demons!
  
• You can no longer fire the mithril grapple at your target. Xbow shortcuts should be working again.
  
• Various bosses in the dominion tower have had their difficulty tweaked. More fixes to come, please let us know your feedback on any bosses you feel aren't as expected.
  
• Following player feedback we've added the dragon spears pushback ability. The Ability "Kick" (Found in low level Strength) will incorporate the pushback.
  
• As ever, plenty of skillguide revisions.
  

18-Sep-2012 12:45:56 - Last edited on 18-Sep-2012 12:46:15 by Mod Emilee

EoC - Beta update 08/10/12

Gameplay changes
Single & Multi-Way Wildness Combat:
Following player feedback, we have been looking into ways we can offer both Single-way and Multi-way combat within the Wilderness. Friday’s update was postponed while we made some final tweaks to this system; this option is now offered with the use of a “Single-way Wilderness” basic ability, which can be found in the Constitution section of your ability book.
This ability has a requirement of level-25 Constitution and takes 10 seconds to activate, as shown by an overhead bar underneath the health and adrenaline bars (Note: this does not display unless the ability is channeling or has just completed). Any actions performed during this time, or attacks received against you will cancel the effect from being set and reset the 10 second activation timer.
Once the ability has been successfully activated, you will be toggled from Single\Multi way wildness combat. The effect is permanent until you choose to manually toggle it back by using the ability again. The default setting is ‘Single-Way wildness combat’, and the effects of this ability only apply to combat within the wilderness.
• Single-Way Wilderness
While you are flagged as Single-way Wilderness combat, within the wilderness you will only be able to attack (and be attacked) by other players who are also flagged as Single-way Wilderness combat.
Also while flagged as single-way combat, within the Wilderness you will only be able to enter combat with one other player at any one time. This also means that your familiars won’t be able to fight your target with you, nor will other players be able to attack your familiar.
• Multi-Way Wilderness
While flagged as Multi-way Wilderness combat, you will be identified within the wilderness with a cross-swords icon above your head and you will only be able to attack (and be attacked) by other players in the Wilderness who are also flagged as Multi-way combat.
Also while flagged as Multi-way combat, you are free to attack (and be attacked) by any number of other players, at any one time, who are also flagged as Multi-way combat, but you cannot attack or be attacked any players who are flagged as single-way combat.
• Changes to Death in the wilderness
The wilderness is not meant to be a safe place! So to balance the above changes where you now have the option to be set as Single-way combat through the wilderness, we have made the ‘skulling’ effect a permanent feature that applies to death within the wilderness.
This means that you will no longer see the ‘Skull’ above your heads, however if you die in the wilderness, regardless of being flagged as Single\Multi-way combat, you will lose all carried items. You can still use the protect item prayer however, so make sure to check your ‘items kept on death’ to see what will be protected, in case you run into an unhappy ending at the hands of a Pk’er!

You are free to toggle between Single\Multi-way Wilderness combat whenever you like, but remember this ability takes 10 seconds to activate and any actions during this time, or attacks received will cancel the ability from being toggled... so don’t go planning on quickly swapping from Multi-way to Single-way combat if you run into a PK group, as that’s not going to work
Graphical update to weapons + Re-statting:
Weapons from Bronze – Dragon have been given a graphical update, so be sure to check this out.
We have also re-statted ALL weapons to be more consistent and behave as expected, as well as following more player feedback and normalising damage for magical staves as it was WAY too high before.

Quests:
There have been a large number of Quest fixes within this update, with re-statting quest combat as well as fixing a number of issues where you were unable to cast specific spells onto objects, such as blowing up the barrels in Nomad's Requiem.
Details of the other fixes can be be found in the patch notes thread.

08-Oct-2012 15:48:07