JAGEX RUINING EARLY GAME PVM (OSRS)


Date	2024-04-18
Type	news-opinion
Video	youtu.be/P5yHDSocecY

Summary

Gnomonkey reacts to Jagex's second Project Rebalance blog, criticising the mage damage redistribution onto Eternal boots and off-hands, the planned Voidwaker special nerf, and the ink armor changes, while approving the minimum hit change. He says Jagex ignored the real issues and cherry-picked fixes, and lists what he thinks still needs changing.

Outline

0:00 Project Rebalance blog number two: mage damage redistribution
0:57 Eternal boots and the problem with more gear switches
3:11 How switch efficiency matters in PvM and speedruns
4:58 Minimum hit change
5:24 Voidwaker special attack changes
8:21 Nightmare ink armor dupe protection
9:45 Inquisitor and ink armor changes
12:29 Elder maul and Glaive
13:23 Tombs of Amascut monkey room changes
13:47 Conclusion: what still needs changing

Topics covered

Update: Project Rebalance

(0:00) Jagex published a second Project Rebalance blog that redistributed mage damage onto off-hands, Elder Chaos druid robes, Blue Moon and Blood Moon-style pieces and Eternal boots, while reducing damage on Ancestral pieces.
(0:00) In the video description Gnomonkey says Jagex ignored the real issues with its original blog and cherry-picked a few things to fix rather than looking at the overall problems with the original proposal.
(0:00) Gnomonkey says the mage changes are in shambles with no real direction, calling them numbers slapped in random places that will hurt late-game players and learning or returning PvM players.
(4:58) Gnomonkey praises the revised minimum hit change, which clamps any zero damage roll up to a one and leaves max hits unchanged, saying it is exactly what he had suggested and buffs early game without hurting late game.
(4:58) Gnomonkey says getting rid of the earlier formula that reduced max hit and put zeros at zero was a good move, and that zeros becoming ones is a perfect change.
(13:49) Gnomonkey hopes Jagex does another revision that locks down what players want and takes real feedback instead of advice from Reddit posts.
(13:49) Gnomonkey says the initial proposal was probably fine and only needed a small mage buff; he thinks Augury's damage is great and does not see the point of splitting damage across Eternal boots and extra pieces.

Opinion: Mage damage on Eternal boots and off-hands

(0:57) Gnomonkey says that on paper adding damage to Eternal boots sounds good, since a dead equipment slot is bad design, but in practice it encourages bad switching problems.
(0:57) Gnomonkey says once boot switches matter, players are pushed toward nine-way switches, and with damage also added to off-hands like Mage's book, Malediction ward, Ancient wyvern shield and Arcane spirit shield, mid-game players would be encouraged to do up to ten-way switches.
(1:58) Gnomonkey says nine-way switches are so difficult he put his pegasian boots back in the bank and stopped using them in Coliseum speedruns, even though they were worth it.
(1:58) Gnomonkey finds it bizarre to encourage nine- and ten-way switches right after adding hybrid gear from the Moons update to get people into PvM.
(2:30) Gnomonkey says primordial boots being the only useful boots is for a good reason: boot switches become a nightmare, and he rejects the argument that it is just 2% damage and optional.
(3:11) Gnomonkey says in raids and speedruns every inventory slot has value; in CM speedruns he values each slot down to the second in time saved and drops the item with the least time save as new items come out.
(3:11) Gnomonkey gives the example that if Eternal boots gain damage, a Tombs of Amascut Voidwaker plus claws switch for Akkha may no longer be worth it, so players would swap in the boots and face nine-way mage switches.
(13:30) Gnomonkey says Jagex should not put mage damage on Eternal boots or off-hands, because encouraging more switches for mage damage is not the way to make mage usable and large numbers of switches are extremely annoying at a high level.

Voidwaker

(0:00) Gnomonkey says in the description that 400% accuracy still leaves the Voidwaker less than 60% accurate on current best-in-slot locations, and that it is still useless after a nerf, so players will bring claws if the number stays.
(0:00) Gnomonkey says it feels like one Jagex mod is pushing an obsession with nerfing the Voidwaker, and that nobody wants it nerfed.
(5:24) Jagex's second Project Rebalance blog raised the Voidwaker's proposed special attack accuracy bonus from plus 200% (triple accuracy) to 400% (five times accuracy), after feedback that it had barely any use compared to the Zaryte crossbow or Dragon claws.
(5:54) Gnomonkey says the Voidwaker is still not useful even with 400% accuracy at Kephri, Nex or Chambers of Xeric, calling the change taking it from completely useless to completely useless.
(6:52) Gnomonkey says the point of the Voidwaker is to bypass defence on very tanky targets rather than roll against it, and that if you must roll against defence you just use claws or the Zaryte crossbow.
(7:19) Gnomonkey says claws are better than the Voidwaker when rolling against defence because they max higher and are already very accurate against slash.
(7:19) Gnomonkey argues Jagex should just leave the Voidwaker alone and let it bypass accuracy, rather than raising the number to plus 600%, 800% or 1000%.
(7:50) Gnomonkey says Voidwaker was good on the Nightmare, Kephri and Nex, but is not used there anymore, and thinks whoever designed the change misunderstands its purpose in PvM.

The Nightmare

(8:21) Jagex proposed dupe protection for the Nightmare's ink armor: after getting one piece such as the legs, the next ink armor drop would be the helmet or chestplate, and after two pieces the next would be the remaining one.
(8:21) Gnomonkey is torn on Nightmare ink armor dupe protection: he says ink armor is a good item to trial it on because the pieces are all roughly the same price, but that dupe protection would not work for a drop like Graardor's, where players would leave once the next piece is due to be Bandos boots.
(9:15) Gnomonkey does not see why the game should be balanced around cloggers and irons, though he likes drops being more common in general and does not think dupe protection would be bad for the game.

Ink armour

(9:45) Jagex's revised proposal gave each piece of ink armor plus 2.5% damage and accuracy when used with the ink mace, instead of requiring the full set, so it can be used on Slayer tasks.
(10:25) Gnomonkey says ink armor was designed before Torva existed, is very rare and not very useful, and should compete with Torva and be better than Bandos in all use cases because it is much rarer and from a harder boss.
(10:25) Gnomonkey suggests removing its adamant-equivalent defence bonuses, making it about Bandos-level or a little worse than Torva, raising its crush accuracy bonus a lot, and removing the negative stab and slash bonuses.
(11:25) Gnomonkey says ink armor's main use is buffing your hammer's accuracy, but players in places like CM use Torva instead, because Torva does much more damage and ink's negative slash and lower strength hurt a scythe.
(12:15) Gnomonkey says the crystal armor style set bonus for the ink mace does not change when anyone would use it, and he thinks ink armor will still be useless except at the Nightmare.

Elder maul

(12:26) Jagex proposed giving the Elder maul special attack an extra 25% accuracy, citing feedback that its accuracy was still low and not much better than the Dragon warhammer.
(12:46) Gnomonkey says the Elder maul is already a far more accurate special than the Dragon warhammer and does not need an Avernic, and that he never saw anyone call it inaccurate, so the change seems weird.
(13:08) Gnomonkey says the Glaive is still ignored and left useless next to the Elder maul, and that the Glaive still needs a buff.

Tombs of Amascut

(13:23) Jagex clarified that baboon shamans, volatile baboons and cursed baboons would not have increased health or other changes under the raid path changes, and players still attack them with normal weapons with no guaranteed max hits.
(13:40) Gnomonkey is happy with the monkey room clarification and glad their health does not scale with raid level.

Theatre of Blood

(14:41) Gnomonkey says Jagex forgot the red crabs at Verzik P2 in the Theatre of Blood: their lightning damage was untouched, and he wants it reduced in line with solo hard mode so you can solo it and carry on when teammates die.
(14:41) Gnomonkey says the Theatre of Blood red crab lightning damage change at Verzik P2 is pointless unless that damage is reduced, so that players can still complete a kill when teammates all die.