How does damage in EoC work exactly?

[The88shrimp]

So coming from a long time OSRS player with an account relatively close to max, I decided to give RS3 a try a while ago but as an ironman to not only avoid MTX and Double XP but to also help with learning all the new progression systems and to actually do content rather than sit at the G.E and buy stuff and AFK all day.

So far I've actually really enjoyed it:

The better balance between the combat triangle

The methods of combatting inflation

The Mining and Smithing rework I think is actually done incredibly well along with the
rebalancing of combat gear tiers

The quests feel more enjoyable, especially that Resident Evil inspired one.

Even the new skills are a breath of fresh air and are fun to train, especially dungeoneering.

Anyway back to the question,
When it comes to damage I understand that you still have auto-attacks which appear as just the text without a hit splat colour. Do these auto-attacks continuously attack regardless of ability usage or do abilities interrupt the timer for them? If not or If so would I be better off going with 2h range weapons like MSB or Rune 2h Cbow rather than dual-wielding due to those weapons having a damage bonus? or would the much faster rate of auto-attacks on the Dual Cbows out DPS the slower 2 handers?

Also are there any other nitty-gritty details I might need to know about the combat system that I might not know? I know there is a sense of power creep as it feels like you need to break thresholds with accuracy when fighting higher level mobs which feel like huge DPS increases.
I tried out legacy which was fairly familiar obviously then went to full manual but now I've switched to revolution for adrenaline building abilities and just manually trigger any large abilities when needed. If I'm doing or perceiving something wrong please let me know, thanks.

[Sir Protagonist]

There are 2 main styles to RS3 combat, being legacy which is the old style of combat. You get a flat damage buff from switching to legacy but thats about it.
And then theres EoC which itself has 2 styles, revolution, which will take some of the abilities that you select and then autocast them during combat, and full manual which you have to select each time.
You can play legacy mode for like, 99.9% of the game, and the only time you really need abilities is for some late game bosses. (ive personally used legacy and rarely switch off it, so im not sure about the details of EoC combat)
but from my understanding, EoC abilities do interrupt your auto attack, however 90% of the abilties will deal more damage than your auto anyway with some extra bonuses. As well as some abilities being locked behind using certain weapon types, its more of a preference thing from my understanding.

[Aquasword480]

Auto-attacks happen at the start of combat, every attack if you are on manual and not activating abilities manually, and if you are on revolution so that abilities trigger automatically then auto-attacks happen between ability cool downs (it also seems to throw some auto-attacks in to help build adrenaline). Also only auto-attacks consume runes and ammo abilities don't.

The way it works is 2H tends to be better for group damage as most 2H weapon set ups get access to AoE abilities. While dual wielding is how you get the best single target damage in styles. Now in say magic where it doesn't have as many AoE abilities compared to melee things like the various secondary effects of the staffs such as infinite runes of a type are meant to be part of the appeal on opting to them them over a wand and off-hand magic item of some kind. But general gist is AoE you got 2H and Single you go double. What you don't do is a camp a shield, shields are only put to quickly use defensive abilities then swapped back off because they kill your DPS.

Now another nitty gritty thing you should know is how magic damage works. In order to make spells no longer just out class one another spell damage scales, to an extent. A spell can scale to the max damage potential of the highest of its family. So if Fire Surge has say a base damage of 298 then Air Surge which is learned much later can also deal a base damage of 298. What determines if the damage will scale is your weapon.

Your weapon tier not just for magic but in general determines your base damage cap from which the rest of the damage formulas will work from. Now for melee this doesn't really matter because it doesn't use ammo or spells, A T70 melee weapon is going to deal T70 damage. But with magic you have spells and with range you have ammo, the spells and ammo have their own tiers. With range if you are using say Barkiminel bolts those are T75 bolts and will deal T75 damage (okay actually enchanted ones are T99 because of reasons and could theoretically deal T99 damage but let's not focus on that) BUT they will only do that if you are using a T75 weapon or higher. So if you're using say a T50 rune crossbow the max damage of your bolts will be capped to dealing T50 damage.

Spells get more complicated because as I said can scale to an extent. Air Surge is a T81 spell and Fire Surge is T95 spell but since they are both surges Air surge can scale up to T95 damage as that is the max Fire Surge can be. If you use a T85 weapon Air Surge can only scale up to T85 damage but Fire surge will be scaled down to T85 to. If you equip a T95 weapon (which doesn't exist highest we have it T92) then Air Surge and Fire Surge can both deal T95 damage.

Weapon in essence determines both your accuracy and your damage. You have already touched on the effect that accuracy can have on the damage you deal and that's what separates the spells to. If you are fighting a creature without a specific weakness to an element then it doesn't matter what elemental spell you use, you could use Air or Fire surge and will get the same damage. But if you are fighting a creature with a specific weakness like say it was weak to water then you'd want to use water surge for the higher hit chance. So when accuracy doesn't matter use the most cost-effective spells and when accuracy does matter use the most accurate ones.

On top of all this something else different is how armor and accuracy are handled. In RS3 armor does not boost your accuracy (except for like elite void) rather it penalizes your accuracy. Melee armor will put a range and mage accuracy penalty on, mage puts a range and melee, etc... It's a penalty inflicted per piece so if you say try to melee in full dhide you will do absolutely garbage DPS. Hybrid armor doesn't inflict any accuracy penalties BUT its stats are roughly 15 tiers lower than armor of its Tier so T70 hybrid armor would have T55 tanks/power armor stats.

As for combat you've got the general gist. You use auto-attacks and basic abilities to build up your adrenaline then once you hit X-amount of adrenaline (like 50%) you can start using thresholds which cost a little adrenaline to use but are much more powerful than basics. Lastly when you build up 100% adrenaline you can use ultimates which will consume all your adrenaline but deal a very powerful attack/effect of some kind. The optimal way to fight on revolution combat is setting up your bar to fire off basics automatically while keeping your thresholds and ultimates out of the revolution bar setup so you can manually activate those yourself. In this way you aren't struggling to build adrenaline because revolution is firing off your thresh's and ultimates as soon as it can. Though on trash mobs like in slayer it's totally fine to have threshes and ultimates in revolution since it doesn't really matter for weak stuff, just higher end bossing and PvM.

[The88shrimp]

Originally posted by Aquasword480:

Auto-attacks happen at the start of combat, every attack if you are on manual and not activating abilities manually, and if you are on revolution so that abilities trigger automatically then auto-attacks happen between ability cool downs (it also seems to throw some auto-attacks in to help build adrenaline). Also only auto-attacks consume runes and ammo abilities don't.

The way it works is 2H tends to be better for group damage as most 2H weapon set ups get access to AoE abilities. While dual wielding is how you get the best single target damage in styles. Now in say magic where it doesn't have as many AoE abilities compared to melee things like the various secondary effects of the staffs such as infinite runes of a type are meant to be part of the appeal on opting to them them over a wand and off-hand magic item of some kind. But general gist is AoE you got 2H and Single you go double. What you don't do is a camp a shield, shields are only put to quickly use defensive abilities then swapped back off because they kill your DPS.

Now another nitty gritty thing you should know is how magic damage works. In order to make spells no longer just out class one another spell damage scales, to an extent. A spell can scale to the max damage potential of the highest of its family. So if Fire Surge has say a base damage of 298 then Air Surge which is learned much later can also deal a base damage of 298. What determines if the damage will scale is your weapon.

Your weapon tier not just for magic but in general determines your base damage cap from which the rest of the damage formulas will work from. Now for melee this doesn't really matter because it doesn't use ammo or spells, A T70 melee weapon is going to deal T70 damage. But with magic you have spells and with range you have ammo, the spells and ammo have their own tiers. With range if you are using say Barkiminel bolts those are T75 bolts and will deal T75 damage (okay actually enchanted ones are T99 because of reasons and could theoretically deal T99 damage but let's not focus on that) BUT they will only do that if you are using a T75 weapon or higher. So if you're using say a T50 rune crossbow the max damage of your bolts will be capped to dealing T50 damage.

Spells get more complicated because as I said can scale to an extent. Air Surge is a T81 spell and Fire Surge is T95 spell but since they are both surges Air surge can scale up to T95 damage as that is the max Fire Surge can be. If you use a T85 weapon Air Surge can only scale up to T85 damage but Fire surge will be scaled down to T85 to. If you equip a T95 weapon (which doesn't exist highest we have it T92) then Air Surge and Fire Surge can both deal T95 damage.

Weapon in essence determines both your accuracy and your damage. You have already touched on the effect that accuracy can have on the damage you deal and that's what separates the spells to. If you are fighting a creature without a specific weakness to an element then it doesn't matter what elemental spell you use, you could use Air or Fire surge and will get the same damage. But if you are fighting a creature with a specific weakness like say it was weak to water then you'd want to use water surge for the higher hit chance. So when accuracy doesn't matter use the most cost-effective spells and when accuracy does matter use the most accurate ones.

On top of all this something else different is how armor and accuracy are handled. In RS3 armor does not boost your accuracy (except for like elite void) rather it penalizes your accuracy. Melee armor will put a range and mage accuracy penalty on, mage puts a range and melee, etc... It's a penalty inflicted per piece so if you say try to melee in full dhide you will do absolutely garbage DPS. Hybrid armor doesn't inflict any accuracy penalties BUT its stats are roughly 15 tiers lower than armor of its Tier so T70 hybrid armor would have T55 tanks/power armor stats.

As for combat you've got the general gist. You use auto-attacks and basic abilities to build up your adrenaline then once you hit X-amount of adrenaline (like 50%) you can start using thresholds which cost a little adrenaline to use but are much more powerful than basics. Lastly when you build up 100% adrenaline you can use ultimates which will consume all your adrenaline but deal a very powerful attack/effect of some kind. The optimal way to fight on revolution combat is setting up your bar to fire off basics automatically while keeping your thresholds and ultimates out of the revolution bar setup so you can manually activate those yourself. In this way you aren't struggling to build adrenaline because revolution is firing off your thresh's and ultimates as soon as it can. Though on trash mobs like in slayer it's totally fine to have threshes and ultimates in revolution since it doesn't really matter for weak stuff, just higher end bossing and PvM.

Wow, thanks for this essay of a reply haha, so basically what I'm understanding is damage on a weapon like magic and ranged are more or less damage potential when using the best ammo / spell you can use rather than being a flat damage upgrade. I've been using a mystic air staff to save on runes but I've got a good amount anyway due to me getting RC up enough to make a heap with my wicked hood.

At what point should I start doing low level bossing like barrows and what not? I've got around 50 in all combat stats now so boss weapons and armours seem a bit out of reach so it's more or less for fun at this point. Should I wait until I get all styles in T60 or so before bossing?

Thanks again for the detailed reply, it's what I was hoping for.

[the evil one]

"At what point should I start doing low level bossing like barrows and what not? I've got around 50 in all combat stats now so boss weapons and armours seem a bit out of reach so it's more or less for fun at this point. Should I wait until I get all styles in T60 or so before bossing?

Thanks again for the detailed reply, it's what I was hoping for. [/quote]


Giant mole normal mode is prob your best bet for now to get a taste of bossing

https://runescape.wiki/w/Giant_mole/Strategies

[The88shrimp]

Originally posted by the evil one:

"At what point should I start doing low level bossing like barrows and what not? I've got around 50 in all combat stats now so boss weapons and armours seem a bit out of reach so it's more or less for fun at this point. Should I wait until I get all styles in T60 or so before bossing?

Thanks again for the detailed reply, it's what I was hoping for.


Giant mole normal mode is prob your best bet for now to get a taste of bossing

https://runescape.wiki/w/Giant_mole/Strategies

Yeah looking at his mechanics he seems pretty easy. Thanks.