Welcome to the second half of “What I Want from Skill Reworks in RuneScape.” Last week was the non-combat, non-120 skills, so this week I’m covering the combat ones.
Attack/Strength – I’d like to see Attack and Strength combined. Magic and Ranged don’t have two separate skills, so why does melee? Mash them together into either Strength or Melee. Skillcape perk: Attack increases the chance of critical hits, while Strength reduces the cooldown of certain abilities. If combined, the base cape perk would be that Dismember’s timer is increased (the current Strength cape) and the master cape perk would be that items have a 7% chance not to degrade (a buffed version of the current Attack cape).
Constitution – I’m fine with leaving this as just more hit points, though throwing in a few new abilities would be great. Skillcape perk: Food heals an additional 200, stacking with expensive spices.
Defense – Not too much to add here other than new abilities. Skillcape perk: Sign of life/Defense cape timer decreased to 30 minutes.
Magic – Only one thing for this: new spells. It could be another spellbook or an extension of the current ones. Jagex has shown that they are capable of balancing combat and skilling spells, so I look forward to seeing what they could do with this. I really would like to see combat spells on the Lunar spellbook as well. Skillcape perk: 1/8 chance to save runes on all spells, stacking with abyssal weaponry and the staff of light.
Prayer – Sigh. I really want this to have a training method beyond burying bones and scattering ashes. I’d like this to be the “hybrid” combat class, using all three sides of the triangle but deal typeless damage. As usual, it would be 15 levels below the tier of weapon, but not needing to switch weapons would be nice (think the reforged Sunspear, but one version). This deserves its own article, so that may happen. Skillcape perk: Regenerate prayer points over time.
Ranged – Ranged as a skill really doesn’t need too much touching up. To reiterate from Fletching, though, I want a tier 70 weapon that doesn’t degrade and requires no ammo (as the Staff of Armadyl and godswords allow for nondegradable, ammoless combat), as well as a shielded crossbow as an alternative to a shieldbow. Skillcape perk: Snipe now shoots at 1.2 seconds.
Summoning – The whole system needs to be reworked. Cut the number of shards each pouch needs and make it so that gold/green charms are low level combat/skilling respectively, and red/blue charms into high level combat/skilling respectively. You could instead have low level start with gold, then green, then red, then blue at high level instead of scattering familars that need each one throughout the skill. Skillcape perk: Each shard has a 5% chance to be saved.
The article’s a little shorter this week, since there’s only a few skills to go over. These changes are not very likely to happen in the next 5 years or so, as they’re fairly balanced as is in the game. I can see a rework of Summoning and perhaps Prayer within that time because they’re the problem children of the combat skills, and I can definitely see Summoning going to 120. It may take a long time, but I look forward to Evolution of Combat 2. Have a good whatever!
