The BEST or the WORST Leagues in OSRS?


Date	2026-04-23
Type	news-opinion
Video	youtu.be/8Teya9Oz78Y

Summary

At the one-week mark of Leagues 6: Demonic Pacts, Gnomonkey reviews the pact skill tree, the week-one balance and respec changes, Echo bosses, weapons, relics and the many bugs. He loves the tree and the slower pace but misses a true endgame, and still ranks Raging Echoes as his favourite Leagues.

Outline

0:00 Introduction: one week into Leagues 6 and the changes from Jagex
0:27 The demonic pact tree and Gnomonkey's seven-tile halberd blind bag build
1:25 Elemental mage, thorns and ranged build options and raiding with different builds
2:49 Respec changes: five respecs and why unlimited respecs would be worse
4:19 Task points and the four bonus points added in the update
5:23 Neutral node buffs and Echo boss defence drops
6:24 Free reset and Hueycoatl reset to unstick new players
7:51 Leagues as a place to experiment with game design
9:23 Slower pacing and the lack of a true endgame (Echo Sol, Yama)
11:31 Echo bosses and Echo weapons critique
13:51 Mega rares feel weak
14:55 Relic choices and the flask regret
16:16 Bugs and launch issues
20:50 Tedious questing and desire to bypass quests
21:45 Conclusion: not his favourite Leagues, but worth it

Topics covered

Leagues 6: Demonic Pacts

(0:00) One week after Leagues 6 launched, Jagex released a set of changes to the league, which Gnomonkey discusses in this video.
(0:31) Gnomonkey considers the huge pact skill tree one of the best things about Leagues 6, a very cool system for combat, and recommends it to people on the fence about playing.
(7:51) Gnomonkey thinks Jagex should always stick with a skill-tree system for future Leagues, since it adds complexity, strategy, engagement and player choice.
(9:23) Gnomonkey finds Leagues 6 much slower than the previous Leagues, taking him three days to finish his halberd and begin using the melee build, and says the slower pace grows on him because decisions matter more and feel more rewarding.
(20:21) Gnomonkey considers the Leagues 6 questing very tedious and hopes the next Leagues lets players bypass quests, like the buyable quest unlocks in Shattered Relics.
(20:50) Gnomonkey was annoyed that the quest for Echo Moxie, the first Echo boss, was required, and that Sins of the Father was required for several pact points.
(21:45) Gnomonkey says Leagues 6 is not his favourite Leagues; he prefers Raging Echoes for its endgame potential with Echo Sol and more impactful Echo weapons.
(22:14) Gnomonkey predicts the next Leagues will be the best ever because Jagex spent so much effort making the pact tree that it dropped other focuses like Echo bosses and an uber endgame boss like Yama.
(22:41) Gnomonkey believes Leagues 6 was worth it and not a waste of time, because the tree system gives Jagex many avenues to test items and ideas that provide value to the main game, even though some people are bummed about two seasonal modes in one year (Deadman and Leagues).
(23:12) Gnomonkey planned a stream to kill Zuk through his healers with his melee build and a seven-tile halberd.

Leagues 6: Demonic Pacts

(0:27) Gnomonkey's Leagues 6 build uses a seven-tile halberd, the same range as a ring crossbow, which gives a damage and accuracy bonus at full max range.
(0:27) Gnomonkey's build uses a blind bag, which gives a chance to pull a heavy weapon from the inventory and swing it with one-tick attack speed on every attack.
(0:59) In his build, melee attacks have a chance to trigger ranged damage echo splats, which cascade into more ranged splats because he specced into the ranged tree, producing procs on procs.
(0:59) Gnomonkey says there are about 10 different minor builds in the pact tree, including a light weapon spec melee build and a thorns melee build that makes enemies damage themselves.
(1:25) In the pact tree, earth magic drains defence and adds damage based on the defence drained, fire ricochets to other enemies, water heals a lot (up to about 180 total hitpoints), and air full maxes every hit with enough prayer bonus.
(1:25) In the pact tree ranged section, crossbows are guaranteed to max hit but much slower, while double chin builds throw faster.
(1:53) Gnomonkey likes that builds in the pact tree will all be viable for most end-game content, with some tuned for specific content, such as a clip of a thorns build AFKing the six Jad challenge.
(1:53) Gnomonkey finds the pact tree much deeper than past Leagues, where the approach was to shove points into one style, and says it feels like playing old Diablo.
(2:22) Gnomonkey notes that a fire mage's ricochet damage is typeless and one fire mage can clear the entire Nylocas room in Theatre of Blood.
(2:22) Gnomonkey says building teammates into different builds for different roles is a cool part of raiding in Leagues 6.
(7:51) Gnomonkey has minor nitpicks about the balance of some trees, finding some weaker than the others, and says that Jagex clearly had an idea how players would spec.
(8:23) Gnomonkey thinks Leagues is a free opportunity to experiment with systems such as a thorns piece of equipment or ricocheting magic, which could become future raid rewards.

Respecs

(2:49) In Leagues 6, players can now get five respecs in total; it was three before the update.
(2:49) Gnomonkey says some builds, like the seven-tile halberd, are weak early since there is only a rune halberd, so players may start with double chin builds to train Slayer quickly and respec later.
(3:18) Gnomonkey says double chins are good for Slayer, Fight Caves or the Inferno, but not as good in raids, so different builds suit different points of progression.
(3:18) Gnomonkey thinks unlimited respecs would have been annoying because players would be encouraged to respec for every new boss, such as the Colosseum.
(6:52) The update gave everyone a free reset from the start, in addition to the three resets from the first three Echo bosses, plus another reset for killing the Hueycoatl.
(7:19) Gnomonkey says the extra reset opportunities are a really good change for new players who are stuck with a weak, slow build and cannot kill an Echo boss.

Leagues 6: Demonic Pacts

(4:19) Pact tree points in Leagues 6 are unlocked by doing specific tasks in each region, which range from easy ones, like killing a troll in Asgarnia, to extremely hard ones.
(4:19) Some final-tier region tasks were extremely long, for example full Oathplate in Kourend, or ranger boots in Asgarnia (about 200 medium clues), while the Kandarin final task was easier.
(4:50) Some tier tasks require 25 Chambers of Xeric and 25 Theatre of Blood completions to get a single point on the tree.
(4:50) The update added four bonus points, so there are now 44 obtainable points for a cap of 40 points, letting players skip some tasks.
(5:23) The update added easier point tasks such as equipping a piece of Moons armour or an obby cape.
(5:23) The update buffed many neutral nodes with more accuracy across the board and more prayer penetration, and percent damage nodes now also give accuracy.

Echo bosses

(5:56) The update dropped Echo boss defences dramatically: Echo Moxie's ranged defence went from 200 to 40, Echo Thermonuclear smoke devil's from 900 to 90, and Echo Dagannoth Kings' from 255 to 100.
(5:56) The first, second and third Echo boss killed each gave one reset point, for up to three total.
(9:57) Gnomonkey says Echo Sol was removed as the main Grandmaster-style Echo boss and replaced with Echo Moxie, which makes sense because the first area needs an easier Echo boss.
(10:28) Gnomonkey wishes Echo Sol had become accessible, for example through an orb, once players reached the third area, to serve as an endgame fight.
(11:31) Gnomonkey says Echo bosses were his favourite feature from the last Leagues, and that almost all of them are unchanged this time, with some dropping different items and Echo Moxie being the one new one.
(11:31) Gnomonkey thought Echo Moxie looked boring in the trailer but finds it an excellent boss fight, where dodging attacks gives permanent instant attack speed that rewards slow weapons.
(11:58) In the Echo Moxie fight, a crossbow build works really well since players get two-tick attack speed at the end of the fight regardless of weapon.

Echo weapons

(11:58) Gnomonkey considers Echo weapons in Leagues 6 generally much weaker and less central than in Raging Echoes.
(11:58) Gnomonkey says Echo Thermonuclear smoke devil's item effectively enables the elemental builds for mage, is almost required and heavily buffs damage, and is core to that build.
(12:31) Echo Hunllef's blessing still works for mage this time, making it solid for all builds, and many players run the crystal armour.
(12:31) Echo Dagannoth Kings' helmet is fairly weak but gives a chance to null damage, which is okay for the thorns build, and most players did not pick Fremennik jewellery.
(12:57) Echo Kalphite Queen still drops the Drygore blowpipe, but throne weapons are not as good as crossbows with the new builds.
(12:57) Echo Sarachnis drops a fire dagger, which is a light weapon that procs fire damage like a melee-fire hybrid, but Gnomonkey has not seen anyone use it.
(13:24) The Grotesque Guardians drop the Lithic sceptre, a trident that charges up an AoE like the Soul Spear last time, but Gnomonkey calls it a weak little cousin of the Sunlight spear.
(14:24) Gnomonkey says the Echo King Black Dragon crossbow is also very strong and enables the crossbow build.

Mega rares in Leagues 6

(13:51) Gnomonkey thinks mega rare items feel weak in Leagues 6, for instance the Tumeken's shadow being bad for the mage build, where the Sanguinesti staff is better DPS because it is one tick.
(13:51) Gnomonkey says elemental spells are basically the mage mega rare, so killing Echo Thermonuclear smoke devil gives the endgame weapon.
(13:51) In blind bag melee builds you stack scythes in your inventory, perhaps trying to get five, which is a lot of scythes and does not feel as impactful as getting a scythe in the last Leagues.
(14:21) Gnomonkey says the Twisted bow is not that good for ranged since a bow build is not the strongest, with players mostly looking for a zaryte crossbow or the King Black Dragon crossbow.
(14:21) Gnomonkey feels you get some mid-game weapons online and that is your endgame, and wishes the Shadow were better than the Sanguinesti staff and that mega rares were as impactful as last time.

Leagues 6: Demonic Pacts

(14:55) Gnomonkey thinks the Leagues 6 relics were solid compared to the last Leagues, with no obviously wrong choice like Fairy's flight in Raging Echoes.
(15:20) Butler's Bell versus Transmute was a big discussion point because both were very good, and the clue relic remains very good for getting points.
(15:20) Gnomonkey's only relic regret was his tier eight pick of the Minion relic, which picks up loot, has damage boosted by giving it Zamorak items and can do AoE.
(15:48) Gnomonkey says the Flask relic has tech where stalling with NPC Contact extends the invincibility frames, allowing maze skips and hitting Bloat repeatedly while invincible.
(15:48) The Flask relic was bugged against bosses in walls such as Ulm and Verzik, which was fixed in the update so it now works on everything, which was why Gnomonkey took the Minion.

Leagues 6: Demonic Pacts

(16:16) Gnomonkey says Leagues 6 was probably the buggiest Leagues, which is saying a lot, with really annoying bugs.
(16:45) Players told Gnomonkey that Doom of Mokhaiotl deep delves had very low drop rates; he could not confirm this and did only delves one through eight for drops.
(16:45) Perdu is not in every region; without him there was no way to get the ectophial in Morytania, and one task to get Morytania legs 2 required using an ectophial, which has since been auto-finished.
(17:14) Gnomonkey says getting the Ivandis flail was much harder without Perdu and that Perdu should always be in the starting area of a Leagues.
(17:14) Many tasks were bugged; Gnomonkey chopped about a thousand redwood logs for the chop 250 redwood logs into shafts task, a free 200 point task, but it never completed.
(17:47) For several days the total level achievements did not unlock, apparently because Sailing was stuck at level one, which was fixed fairly early.
(18:18) The Transmute relic, supposed to auto-transform resources every five ticks, stopped working whenever the player was doing anything else such as chopping, fishing or mining.
(18:50) The quiver extra slot would not regenerate ammo, which broke the ranged tree and crystal blessing crossbow builds; this was fixed on the day of the video.
(19:20) Many regions did not unlock the Slayer tasks they should, and Gnomonkey skipped around 2,000 points of tasks trying to get Hydras, which appeared only after telling the Slayer master he would do hard tasks, at combat level 121.
(19:52) Gnomonkey credits Jagex for fixing basically all of the listed bugs, though he says it sucks to take a week to fix them, and says the slower pace helped him actually benefit from the fixes unlike in the last Leagues.

Endgame in Leagues 6

(10:28) Gnomonkey notes Jagex's relic and pact descriptions repeatedly said they would not work on Yama, implying an Echo Yama or last boss, but nothing came of it; Yama has completely default dialogue.
(10:58) Gnomonkey says it would have been fun to fight Yama as an endgame boss who saps Leagues powers, leaving only gear grinded in the regions.
(10:58) Gnomonkey says the only endgame content in Leagues 6 is the six Jad challenge, maybe the infinite Jad challenge, and hard mode raids that have always been there.