As such, we are hoping that a slight rework of the Completionist cape (chaos) will solve this problem, while still allowing for fast boss kills and adding extra opportunities for other weapons.
I know that many of you are not a fan of nerfs (especially when it's about the best-in-slot combination of equipment in many situations), but this wouldn't just be a nerf. It would also be a major buff for other top tier weapons to put them right where they belong. In some cases, this would result in slower kills, but we will partly compensate this by further lowering the defence on a number of bosses to minimize the impact and to make sure that the overall damage per second (DPS) output for our best-in-slot (BIS) ranged setup remains pretty much the same.
The idea is as follows: the weapon speed increase of the Completionist cape (chaos) is no longer just +1 tick, but +0.5, +1 or +2 ticks depending on the base attack speed of your weapon:
- The attack speed of 3 tick weapons (Toxic blowpipe, knives and darts) is increased by 1 tick every 2 attacks (alternating between attacking at normal speed and attacking at a +1 tick speed increase), thus +0.5 ticks on average.
- The attack speed of 4 and 5 tick weapons (whips, Ghrazi rapier, Scythe of vitur, ...) is increased by 1 tick (same as before).
- The attack speed of 6+ tick weapons (Twisted bow, Dark bow, Chaotic maul, Elder maul, Godswords, Battleaxes, Warhammers, Dharok's greataxe, ...) is increased by 2 ticks.
- General Graardor
- Commander Zilyana
- K'ril Tsutsaroth
- Kree'arra
- Dagannoth Prime
- Crazy archaeologist
- Chaos fanatic
- Kalphite queen (both forms)
- Kraken
- Barrelchest
- Demonic gorilla
- Giant mole
- Cerberus
- Lizardman shaman
- Vorkath
As for the Lizardman shamans, we will increase their droprates on the Dragon warhammer with 40% (7/10,000 instead of 5/10,000), which should more than compensate for slower kills with the BIS ranged setup.
On the other hand, Skotizo will receive a buff to its defence (but obviously no higher than in OSRS) as the new Twisted bow + Completionist cape (chaos) would otherwise make it much faster to kill than before.
The overall result is that the weapon speed increase by the Completionist cape (chaos) will be far more balanced for all our weapons, we won't have to start making exceptions for any top tier weapons and the BIS ranged setup is still about as good as it was before (except the Toxic blowpipe will be replaced by the Twisted bow as BIS weapon in most cases, as it should be).
Please understand that it is not, nor has it ever been, our intention to make monster kills slower on PkHonor. Our players enjoy fast kills and obtaining the Completionist cape (especially in combination with a Whip of chaos) is something that should result in one of the strongest pieces of equipment in the game. We do not want to take that away, but we do believe that an appropriate rebalancing is in order.
To illustrate, we have run a number of simulations on several of our bosses to assess their DPS before and after these changes will be made. This is the current situation (the numbers displayed are DPS or average Damage Per Second with the best possible gear):
And this would be the new situation with the Completionist cape (chaos), also taking into account the removal of the -5 offensive bonuses and lowering the defence of the monsters listed above (less than 100% in the last column means slower kills, over 100% means faster kills):
As you can see, with the appropriate defence nerfs, a lot of kills get close to being as fast to kill as before this change. For the few exceptions where kills are quite a bit slower than before in BIS gear (Barrelchests and Lizardman Shamans), we will apply the appropriate changes as stated above to compensate.
In addition, the chart below illustrates how the boss defence nerfs affect the speed at which you can kill each boss before and after the changes to their defence (see "Scythe new vs old"), as well as how much more DPS you will be able to get out of a full Dharok's setup when combined with the Completionist cape (chaos) because of its speed buff (not that I would recommend using it against bosses, but you get the point):
In other words, this change also provides a great opportunity for powertraining melee with Dharok's greataxe, as the combination of full Dharok's with the completionist cape (chaos) will outperform most (if not all) other melee setups in terms of DPS when used at 1 hitpoint.
It is also apparent that when not using the BIS ranged setup, many bosses (such as General Graardor and Demonic gorillas) will become significantly faster to kill (up to 40%, this applies to any setup, not just the Scythe). As such, we do not believe that a change to their droprates is in order. This additionally makes many bosses easier to kill for newer players, which is also a bonus in its own right.
Please note that this poll is merely meant to get an indication of where the majority of the community stands on this matter. It is still up to us to make the final decision. Constructive feedback is always welcome, of course.