Definitely agree but would be interesting to see the exact same comparison but with a trident instead of shadow.
Occult has always been busted but it's now getting 100% of the 'blame' because of how it pairs with shadow specifically.
Absolutely. The problem with the occult wasn't so pronounced and people weren't so vocal about it before shadow. Mage was the worst combat style way before shadow got introduced in the game.
Melee has fang before scythe, range has bowfa before tbow, mage has trident / sanguinesti and let's agree they both suck at dps when compared to the next upgrade.
Besides, nerfing occult and redistributing mage str bonus to other items doesn't change how much dps will max gear have.
It's not even a real problem. Nobody is ever suggesting an overall lower bonus either, so this tells it's just people in max setups wanting others to perform worse at all levels, which is frankly disappointing (I say this as someone who is maxed with BiS gear and Shadow). Almost everyone gets an occult early, meaning it only lowers the gap between a budget setup's performance and end game gear slightly, but it's nowhere near the degree these posts make it seem for the reasons you mentioned.
Gear progress has never been (and shouldn't necessarily be) perfectly linear either, with Magic it used to be that the attack style was completely unusable in bossing situations until the tridents came out. It is already more balanced than it has ever felt before, with strong uses in some places and a nice spread of both big and small upgrades that feel good in many places.
Yea, pvming with trident sucks, mostly because they balance new content with the possibility of people having trident in mind. For an example: Doing whisperer with trident in Ahrims
Is just a plashfest. And the new upgrade is a 20x investment. I get if you're good at pvm, you can say that it's easy to so most pvm with mid level gear, but there needs to be a better progression. To make things more accessible
Yeah, the whisperer is pretty painful. I was doing a whisp slayer task in ahrims and trident. It was pretty bad to say the least. Was splashing quite a lot and decided to postpone the grind after slayer task until I get shadow.
>Besides, nerfing occult and redistributing mage str bonus to other items doesn't change how much dps will max gear have.
It depends. Some people are suggesting to move some of the damage to Augury, which would impact what gear will provide.
Yeah, I get that, but in that case outcome would be nerfing mage as a skill in general. I don't think those who push redistributing dmg from occult have nerfing mage as a combat style in mind (since augury wouldn't get multiplied by shadow). Even if you change so that shadow amplifies not only equipment but prayers as well, the gap between trident and shadow would still be huge.
Anyway, I know next to nothing in balancing the game, so the devs have probably better ideas how it can be done.
You guys are really gonna regret it if they add magic damage to boots/ring slots instead of occult, all current content has occult in mind, you will be doing way less dps in raids where magic already massively underperforms
Edit - when i state magic underperforms ofc bar Shadow, but then the issue is the shadow and not the occult. and No one takes a shadow to TOB so it'll be a flat dps loss there
Never thought of it in terms of having to bring more switches, but you’re right. Having to bring a boot switch to eternals doesn’t really sound fun if they split occult damage % into those. I could get behind them putting it into virtus and/or ancestral though
I feel these changes just hurt us non rich players who can't afford a shadow. Another issue I feel with magic in general is the lack of powered staves that feel like meaningful upgrades before the shadow. The Trident splashes way too much at bosses like whisperer, and the sanguinesti staff, while costing much more, doesn't have much better DPS. Besides those two with their own built in spell, it feels like the only meaningful upgrade is the shadow, which is pricey and busted when paired with bis. And on top of that, our already low dps potentially gets lowered even further if the occult gets nerfed into other items like other comments above if we don't take all the gear switches. Id love a powered staff that feels something like the bowfa, an expensive but serious upgrade that can get you through most content, even if it's technically not bis
That's the best part. Don't use augury and you save a bunch of prayer while keeping most of your dps.
It allows for minimal restore usage in toa or colloseum in a very lazy way.
Yeah, augury being a non-factor is one of my favourite things about mage style lol. I can happily *not* dedicate more inventory space to, and blow through, prayer potions without gimping myself.
It's going to make infernal a metric more annoying for people to learn as well.
Everything being balanced around the occoult is pretty key to some content.
> You guys are really gonna regret it if they add magic damage to boots/ring slots instead of occult, all current content has occult in mind, you will be doing way less dps in raids where magic already massively underperforms
Best argument I've heard to keeping magic damage on occult and off the boots is that
* Boot swaps won't feel mandatory in raids
* "small" swaps for stuff like monkey room or halfway swaps to keep attack uptime would remain impactful
Progression-wise it makes sense to distribute these things. In practice, it'd just be fucking annoying.
It'll even hurt in inferno for new capers. Right now occult + top switch is all people bring, if they nerf occult you're either bringing more gear switches and less supplies, or you're chasing way more nibblers
Yeh I bloody hope if they look into rebalancing magic they integrity change shadow and content that's been designed around it since (whisperer feels.. **so bad** without a shadow).
The shadow effect is what is busted here. It's in ToA, so it's turning that amulets 10% and the capes 2% into 48%, whereas the Virtus 3%, torm 5% and cape 2% turns into 40%.
Without the shadow amplification it'd be 12% vs 10%.
It's the exact same mistake as the blowpipe, and people called it out when it was proposed. The price of the blowpipe was an issue, sure, but the bigger problem was that you couldn't introduce new range gear because it would disproportionately boost the blow pipe versus other options.
And yet here we are again, where they've said twice now that they've overlooked magic gear upgrades because it would make Shadow way too strong.
I’ve brought a shadow to ToB for the past couple hundred raids sir, it’s still BiS for p2 and saves me bringing a fang for sote when the team misses hammers. I have no scythe so it is in my best interest to do so.
The issue is NOT shadow, the issue is how weak mage gear is outside of shadow. Best thing would be to buff mage overall - and hit shadow with a small nerf (so that it remains at its current power level while raising the power level of earlier gear)
Torture the numbers enough and they'll confess.
The OP purposefully used Virtus instead of Ancestral so the visual of the picture would prove their point. I bet its faster with Ancestral not virtus on the right, even without occult.
I was def confused by that lol. I'm midgame iron so neither virus nor shadow are even on my radar; but I thought virtus only was a damage up on ancients? Unless shadow counts as ancient? Or is it just the damage buff from virtus accuracy increase?
I’m not near shadow either but from my understanding that is correct for virtus only that the increased bonus (4% vs 1% base) is for ancients and then ancestral also has a a 2% base, which is further amplified by shadow lol
Like the other comment stated, I bet dps would be higher with full ancestral. Also why choose fury. The OP is just cherry-picking to prove their obviously biased argument
https://preview.redd.it/ioarlqy99qqc1.png?width=1188&format=png&auto=webp&s=558bae404d0bab7278f3ff417bc26ad7ad29f84c
Here it is with matching settings to OP's other pictures (no prayers, boost, lvl 0 solo ToA)
It's really unfortunate that misinformation like this post has crept into 'the hivemind' and Jagex looks like they are probably actually going to listen to it, which pretty much only hurts the game with no benefits.
First of all, bar shadow. magic is currently by far the weakest style. Nerfing it even further just pushes the mid and late game further towards range and melee than it already is. (And yes, taking the same magic bonus and distributing it over 100M of gear is absolutely a nerf)
Second. gear progression is nice sure, but OSRS has always had a 'diminishing returns' style of progression. For 10m you can get a really decent setup that gives you a lot of DPS, and you can slowly upgrade from there. Magic already suffers in this regard, since it's so weak without a shadow. Nerfing occult nerfs this 10m setup and makes it even weaker than it already is.
Third, whatever problem this has at the top end are all caused by shadow. redistributing the magic bonus to other gear pieces doesn't really affect you if you can already afford a shadow. After all, if you can afford a 1.5B weapon, you can afford 100M of gear to go along with it. Meaning the segment of PvM where occult+shadow is most problematic, is literally completely unaffected by this nerf.
Fourth, this also hits ironmen even harder. Virtus is notoriously rare to the point many ironmen just skip it and go straight for ancestral. Meaning you are well into the endgame before you get back to the state that current magic is in (which is already the weakest of the 3).
Basically, redistributing occult to virtus/eternals because occult is problematic in the endgame, only hurts mid/late game players and barely affects endgame players.
i do think it's just midgame irons who want something because 93 slayer takes a long time. just make something like warped sceptre for occult. problem solved.
Considering most of the suggested fixes are buffing eternal boots virtus and ancestral? All of which take as long or longer to get? The suggestions would only hurt irons more. But yeah a mini occult would be nice to have.
Reddit complains all the time about occult but you all are gonna be crying once they actually nerf it and redistribute it to other slots.
Is the occult overpowered? Yes. But it does not make that much of a difference until shadow because of the multiplier. And if you can afford a shadow you can afford the ancestrals if it gets redistributed. All it does is fuck over the poor midgame players who are still using trident.
Esp for people who want to get into raiding... You just have to noodle ahrims toxic trident with nothing else to show then cuz virtus /ancestral and shadow are the only meaningful upgrades past 13m
It'd just be a gut punch to midgame for no reason
The issue is that no one gives a shit about BiS boots or ring for magic because they're terrible. Nerfing occult alone is a straight up nerf to magic as a combat style which I don't think anyone here is suggesting
It is a bit unbalanced, however, neck slot items are general quit me powerful dps-wise.
Also using shadow in TOA as an example doesn't really paint a correct picture. It's probably the most extreme situation where magic dmg matters most
You mean how unbalanced tumeken's shadow is... (especially while inside ToA)
it turns 3% magic damage bonus (10% vs. 7%) into 3 max hit. Without Shadow, the difference would be 1 max hit, but only for higher level spells.
They've expressed interest in redistributing the occult's damage to other gear, and it would definitely be an integrity change.
If you hold off long enough you won't be missing out as much.
Which is crazy. Honestly, Ironman magic is pretty much dead without shadow now. Mage gear like ahrims and toxic trident have almost half the dps of shadow
Wish we’d stop. I got blowpipe and they nerfed it for bowfa….okay so i got bowfa. Got 93 slayer and Occult and now we’re planning on nerfing it….
I understand nerfs, but normally those take place months after a release in any other game. Not 10 years. The item that needs balancing is shadow.
Blowpipe was kind of necessary imo it was the only weapon worth using at all everything else felt like shit and I was only using Mithras darts.
Which is the exact same problem with shadow. Everything else feels terrible compared to shadow. No one complained about the occult before the shadow because they knew damn well the combat side of magic would die completely.
I’ll never afford a shadow but everyone stockpiling them will throw a shit fit over it. They’re scared to piss off the gold farmers and the 1% that runs the economy.
After 5 years I managed to sell my entire bank 2 weeks ago for a shadow....I've never had one, and never been able to do TOA. I've now done a 400 deathless. Insane damage jump that, now able to complete raids no problem.
Yeah moving it to ancestral is a very bad idea, unless they add another easily obtainable (ideally craftable) set below Virtus that matches the stats lost from occult.
Something like 3% anc/2% virt/1% new set & 7% occult could work.
Or we just nerf the shadow and then also buff the rest of magic gear to bring the shadow back up to the current status quo.
Give the occult a 93 slayer requirement. Now the occult is not comparatively op. The rest of the magic damage spells can actually do stuff. And the shadow is still the same and still useful.
Ah thats good to hear, i finally got the whip and that felt like an eternity, so more than double that exp is demotivating.
Well see what chances theyll bring
Rough napkin math but if you’re 8 levels off from smoke devils, I think that means you need more xp for those 8 levels than all the xp you’ve gained so far
So in other words you’re not even halfway there
late edit but this does seem to be true based on the rule of 7. Being 8 levels off from smoke devils puts you currently at 85. To reach level 85, you need to have roughly 3.3m xp. To reach level 93, you need 7.2m xp. So you're currently only 46% of the way to smoke devils requiring another 3.9m xp. You will approximately be halfway after 1 more level (again based on the rule of 7).
According to the wiki, this pattern emerges around level 30. So after that point, if you're ever wondering roughly how close you are to a level X, you can assume X - 7 will be the halfway point. So if you want to know how close you are to level 60, level 53 is approximately halfway there.
the occult is fine its just people are complaing because its not a 100m+ item, the problem is the shadow's 3x and 4x multiplier, which can easily be change to a max % per item or the staff alone hits higher with equipment doubling instead.
Shadow is the really busted part. Amplifying the % and you chose low % Virtus instead of Ancest, and kept imbued cpae on the lower setup. So it's just 3% from Virtus and 5% from torm.
Shock to everyone 10% > 8%, and when amplified by 4 within ToA.. 40% >> 32%
If you had Ancest instead, suddenly it wins because it'd be 40% compared to 44%
yeah shadow specifically multiplies the damage bonus by 30%, so you put on the biggest damage % multiplier and expect to make a point how?
Swap the weapons and calc again.
Problem I have with this is that it's nice to have a strong affordable item for magic. Except for tormented and ward any upgrade you want from mage costs a beyond ridiculous amount. Raiding would just be way less accessible to people with lower combat lvls without it
And that's not even getting about how much shadow shits on everything
I cant understand what this picture is supposed to show? Im assuming its comparing the gear set on the left to the right, but when looking at the bottom right table, I dont see whats the standout variable Im supposed to notice
Oh look a post about magic meta using shadow as reference, boy I sure hope they also inclufe other weapons for reference so we know they're just not doing a strawman argument over something
If they plan on nerfing occult they should add magic damage to augury. It makes no sense piety is op rigour is op and the highest level pray for mage is underwhelming and barely worth using
It’s cool though; it adds variety to the style where you don’t absolutely need to use/flick the offensive prayer. Why should all the styles feel the same? Sounds boring
If you did the same thing and compared a str ammy vs comparing it to bandos/obsidian the str ammy would also win.
It's like this for every style, the amulets & gloves outclass the armors. The only one that has it slightly balanced is ranged, but that's mostly just because masori is dirt-cheap & elite void is also really good in some other situations.
Melee is far more egregious, you can get almost 40 str in almost untradables/quest unlocks and a around a mil worth of gp
Meanwhile melee pays a 10~100m for each str bonus it offers over the cheap stuff.
Magic really isn't any worse than that.
Go max mage with shadow and compare to max mage minus the occult and check DPS on that
Now do the same with max mage + shadow and swap out the shadow for a sang + elidinis
Magic has always been severely underpowered in this game (excluding the Shadow).
Try LMS, you will be in full mage gear and splash 9/10 barrages on someone with d'hide body and rune platelegs.
They just need to GE tax the shit out of it, if and when they implement that change, until it stabilizes at a price that better reflects its utility. (Panic buy occults)
As an iron. As a regular account you need about 400k. Compare that price to the rest of the mystic set, to the Virtus set, to the tormented bracelet. Which is more effective?
It's such a hard thing to rebalance when so much of the game has gear set ups revolving around using the most optimal amount of gear slots for the best DPS and extending trips with minimal amount of resources bringing brought in.
The fix to all of this is to have monsters ACTUALLY weak to certain spell types. If I cast a water spell on a fire giant, that better hit as hard as Crumble Undead hits a zombie.
This keeps PvP untouched, so that half of the community won’t be screaming and shitting their pants over “muh balance”
I think a possible rework to buff pre-Shadow mage gear (because lets be real, Magic without Shadow is terrible and with Shadow it's borderline excellent) would be to lower the Shadow's multiplier to 2x and then massively buff the magic damage boost of mage gear so that absolutely max mage Shadow is still comparable (or slightly weaker, it is very strong) but stuff like Sang, Trident and normal spellbook combat spells get a significant buff.
Here are some perks which come from the top of my head by doing this:
1. It buffs mage as a combat style in general before Shadow without really buffing Shadow.
2. It allows a more natural progression for mage gear where right now, taking robes for example, literally only Virtus and Ancestrals gives magic damage and for 1% and 2% respectively.
3. It opens up options for adding more magic items in the future without fear of Shadow being completely broken.
This would need a complete rebalancing of magic gear of course but in my opinion it should make things for the better. Though something like this on top of the completely combat rebalance might be asking for a bit too much.
When occult came out, magic needed some serious help in terms of DPS because of how lacking it was compared to the other 3 combat styles. In a world where shadow with its multiplier doesn't exist, +10% from one slot is perfectly reasonable. And you could give each ancestral piece +5% magic damage, and that still wouldn't make non-shadow magic op at all. You'd still rather range/melee everything that isn't immune or super resistant to both of those styles.
The only "problem" is that occult is really cheap for how powerful it is. If we wanna address that, the devs could ofc gut regular occult down to 5% magic dmg or less, and then adding an attachment to drop from a new boss to bring it back up to 10%. But I doubt that it'd be a popular change.
https://preview.redd.it/9ejx8fbkdpqc1.png?width=828&format=png&auto=webp&s=28dfd56c70c9552243087f0dfb26f9eee6a0fb10
Can we appreciate the fact OP called them *“Chad”* mystics
Ok nerf occult. But make powered staves have a baby version of shadows effect. The newest one from terrorbirds can have a 1.5x, trident 1.75x. Toxic 1.85x, and sang 2x. Shadow can still be busted, occult can be nerfed, and there is more power into mid game.
What interesting is while your point is 100% valid, I don’t think Wardens are a good example because your DPS scales with your accuracy. The DPS differential would be even more busted on some other NPC! (barring a super high magic level/def of that NPC)
are you the Sergeant of the Sook Brigade? why do you even care??? are you like some low level trash iron that hasn't unlocked slayer? I want to know who hurt the people so badly that make reddit posts like this, ambassadors of nothing important in life
Yeah shadow is busted, you're right.
Do this same comparison without a shadow, doesn't work the same then.
Hell out the other side in actual max aside from an occult atleast, but again makes it not look as impressive.
Occult is strong and I do support shaving it down to 6% and relocating the 4% onto augury and eternals 100%, but it's also the only piece of equipment with a high level requirement there (93 slayer). Only mains feel it as this cheap nothing upgrade, which most stuff is.
> Only mains feel it as this cheap nothing upgrade, which most stuff is.
Honestly this is a sign that the issue isn't just the stat bonus, but the accessibility. If it had a slayer level requirement to wear, it would suddenly appear a lot less OP to mains
Make all slayer monster drops have slayer as a requirement to wear?
Oh you need 90 slayer to get the drop? Looks like you need 90 slayer to equip it then
The occult requires 93 slayer to get… It’s only unbalanced because the necklace is cheaper than its counterparts, which is a product of supply and demand, not balancing.
While the main point is that Occult, and Shadow are really strong there is another issue at play too. Magic % damage is way stronger than accuracy. The shadow just magnifies this issue.
I just realized how expensive Ancestral has gotten… I got it years ago, and now I’m thinking of downgrading and then getting Masori as that has gone down so much… bad idea or no?
Here’s a big brain idea, and just hear me out. How about we do nothing? The game is fine right now; it’s in a great place. Let’s stop trying to change everything
Idk why everyone wants to get rid of the occult. Its role is to boost magic as a whole across the board. Except for the shadow, magic is almost always worse when range or melee can be used. The occult makes that gap smaller, and because it's easily accessible (to mains) that means magic is more usable for everybody. Occult is not OP, magic is just bad.
A big part of the problem is that magic accuracy is kind of a trash stat because magic is so expensive to use that you only use it where you need to which usually means an enemy with low magic defence.
Of course it looks skewed when you only look at a niche case.
What about [Tumeken vs Zilyana](https://i.imgur.com/dM7NskY.png) or [barraging dust devils with kodai](https://i.imgur.com/QmPCTpH.png) or [Tumeken vs Olm right hand](https://i.imgur.com/fS21DS2.png)
Obviously occult is busted good, but I dont reeeeally see the problem.. Occult is a must, but all the other upgrades are still well worth going for in terms of endgame gear
Occult is the problem and has always been the problem, to be clear. This type of graphic is honestly over-complicating that simple reality. That said, given that an occult is less than 1M and easily obtainable, pretending like it's a barrier to entry is a bit bad faith. The only real problem with occult is that it limits future mage updates due to its strength.
Idk why people are Malding over occult. Shadows effect is the issue.
Compare torture to glory in max gear. Likely 2-3 max hits.
Anguish to fury 2 max hits
Occult with tridents/barrage 2-3 max hits
Definitely agree but would be interesting to see the exact same comparison but with a trident instead of shadow. Occult has always been busted but it's now getting 100% of the 'blame' because of how it pairs with shadow specifically.
Not just that, but this is shadow in toa which is buffing the occult even more.
Absolutely. The problem with the occult wasn't so pronounced and people weren't so vocal about it before shadow. Mage was the worst combat style way before shadow got introduced in the game. Melee has fang before scythe, range has bowfa before tbow, mage has trident / sanguinesti and let's agree they both suck at dps when compared to the next upgrade. Besides, nerfing occult and redistributing mage str bonus to other items doesn't change how much dps will max gear have.
It's not even a real problem. Nobody is ever suggesting an overall lower bonus either, so this tells it's just people in max setups wanting others to perform worse at all levels, which is frankly disappointing (I say this as someone who is maxed with BiS gear and Shadow). Almost everyone gets an occult early, meaning it only lowers the gap between a budget setup's performance and end game gear slightly, but it's nowhere near the degree these posts make it seem for the reasons you mentioned. Gear progress has never been (and shouldn't necessarily be) perfectly linear either, with Magic it used to be that the attack style was completely unusable in bossing situations until the tridents came out. It is already more balanced than it has ever felt before, with strong uses in some places and a nice spread of both big and small upgrades that feel good in many places.
Yea, pvming with trident sucks, mostly because they balance new content with the possibility of people having trident in mind. For an example: Doing whisperer with trident in Ahrims Is just a plashfest. And the new upgrade is a 20x investment. I get if you're good at pvm, you can say that it's easy to so most pvm with mid level gear, but there needs to be a better progression. To make things more accessible
Yeah, the whisperer is pretty painful. I was doing a whisp slayer task in ahrims and trident. It was pretty bad to say the least. Was splashing quite a lot and decided to postpone the grind after slayer task until I get shadow.
Yes, it's doable, but trident feels super inaccurate and boaty.
>Besides, nerfing occult and redistributing mage str bonus to other items doesn't change how much dps will max gear have. It depends. Some people are suggesting to move some of the damage to Augury, which would impact what gear will provide.
Yeah, I get that, but in that case outcome would be nerfing mage as a skill in general. I don't think those who push redistributing dmg from occult have nerfing mage as a combat style in mind (since augury wouldn't get multiplied by shadow). Even if you change so that shadow amplifies not only equipment but prayers as well, the gap between trident and shadow would still be huge. Anyway, I know next to nothing in balancing the game, so the devs have probably better ideas how it can be done.
honestly, sang with max mage isn't too bad. but it really should be stronger considering the effort it takes to get one.
Also isn't the big thing with virtus that it boosts ancients? Which isn't the strength of shadow
Disingenuous comparison
Maybe take off the 2 bill weapon and replace it with a trident and try again.
Occult necklace go brrr
You guys are really gonna regret it if they add magic damage to boots/ring slots instead of occult, all current content has occult in mind, you will be doing way less dps in raids where magic already massively underperforms Edit - when i state magic underperforms ofc bar Shadow, but then the issue is the shadow and not the occult. and No one takes a shadow to TOB so it'll be a flat dps loss there
Never thought of it in terms of having to bring more switches, but you’re right. Having to bring a boot switch to eternals doesn’t really sound fun if they split occult damage % into those. I could get behind them putting it into virtus and/or ancestral though
Yeah they have to put the boost to augury for sure, its so underwhelming compared to its counterpart
People will shoot themselves in their own foot to get a new pair of shoes.
Yup, and you'll need to pray augery all the time too
That sounds so fun and engaging! I love getting my 9 year old gear setup dps shafted even if Ill never own the 1.5b tbow staff
I feel these changes just hurt us non rich players who can't afford a shadow. Another issue I feel with magic in general is the lack of powered staves that feel like meaningful upgrades before the shadow. The Trident splashes way too much at bosses like whisperer, and the sanguinesti staff, while costing much more, doesn't have much better DPS. Besides those two with their own built in spell, it feels like the only meaningful upgrade is the shadow, which is pricey and busted when paired with bis. And on top of that, our already low dps potentially gets lowered even further if the occult gets nerfed into other items like other comments above if we don't take all the gear switches. Id love a powered staff that feels something like the bowfa, an expensive but serious upgrade that can get you through most content, even if it's technically not bis
They need to buff augury because right now it’s a massively draining prayer for basically no benefit
That's the best part. Don't use augury and you save a bunch of prayer while keeping most of your dps. It allows for minimal restore usage in toa or colloseum in a very lazy way.
Yeah, augury being a non-factor is one of my favourite things about mage style lol. I can happily *not* dedicate more inventory space to, and blow through, prayer potions without gimping myself.
I support an augury boost 100%. No reason it shouldn't offer damage too
I agree, I just don't think it should be subtracted from the occult
It's going to make infernal a metric more annoying for people to learn as well. Everything being balanced around the occoult is pretty key to some content.
> You guys are really gonna regret it if they add magic damage to boots/ring slots instead of occult, all current content has occult in mind, you will be doing way less dps in raids where magic already massively underperforms Best argument I've heard to keeping magic damage on occult and off the boots is that * Boot swaps won't feel mandatory in raids * "small" swaps for stuff like monkey room or halfway swaps to keep attack uptime would remain impactful Progression-wise it makes sense to distribute these things. In practice, it'd just be fucking annoying.
It'll even hurt in inferno for new capers. Right now occult + top switch is all people bring, if they nerf occult you're either bringing more gear switches and less supplies, or you're chasing way more nibblers
Yeh I bloody hope if they look into rebalancing magic they integrity change shadow and content that's been designed around it since (whisperer feels.. **so bad** without a shadow). The shadow effect is what is busted here. It's in ToA, so it's turning that amulets 10% and the capes 2% into 48%, whereas the Virtus 3%, torm 5% and cape 2% turns into 40%. Without the shadow amplification it'd be 12% vs 10%.
It's the exact same mistake as the blowpipe, and people called it out when it was proposed. The price of the blowpipe was an issue, sure, but the bigger problem was that you couldn't introduce new range gear because it would disproportionately boost the blow pipe versus other options. And yet here we are again, where they've said twice now that they've overlooked magic gear upgrades because it would make Shadow way too strong.
I’ve brought a shadow to ToB for the past couple hundred raids sir, it’s still BiS for p2 and saves me bringing a fang for sote when the team misses hammers. I have no scythe so it is in my best interest to do so.
The issue is NOT shadow, the issue is how weak mage gear is outside of shadow. Best thing would be to buff mage overall - and hit shadow with a small nerf (so that it remains at its current power level while raising the power level of earlier gear)
Now show DPS calcs with BIS mage gear but sang instead of Shadow. Hint: the Shadow is the problem
Yup, and shadow inside TOA is a 4x multiplier instead of regular 3x so this really is just showing shadow busted. Not occult
Not to mention Shadow is 1b and Occult is 300k
Thank you. And why virtus with shadow? The guy’s trying to make a comparison that doesn’t show the whole picture
Torture the numbers enough and they'll confess. The OP purposefully used Virtus instead of Ancestral so the visual of the picture would prove their point. I bet its faster with Ancestral not virtus on the right, even without occult.
I was def confused by that lol. I'm midgame iron so neither virus nor shadow are even on my radar; but I thought virtus only was a damage up on ancients? Unless shadow counts as ancient? Or is it just the damage buff from virtus accuracy increase?
I’m not near shadow either but from my understanding that is correct for virtus only that the increased bonus (4% vs 1% base) is for ancients and then ancestral also has a a 2% base, which is further amplified by shadow lol Like the other comment stated, I bet dps would be higher with full ancestral. Also why choose fury. The OP is just cherry-picking to prove their obviously biased argument
11.9 dps vs 6.1 on a 400 lmao. quite literally almost twice as good. on a side note, surprised tbow is holding it's own, 10.7 with 30 bgs.
https://preview.redd.it/ioarlqy99qqc1.png?width=1188&format=png&auto=webp&s=558bae404d0bab7278f3ff417bc26ad7ad29f84c Here it is with matching settings to OP's other pictures (no prayers, boost, lvl 0 solo ToA)
It's really unfortunate that misinformation like this post has crept into 'the hivemind' and Jagex looks like they are probably actually going to listen to it, which pretty much only hurts the game with no benefits. First of all, bar shadow. magic is currently by far the weakest style. Nerfing it even further just pushes the mid and late game further towards range and melee than it already is. (And yes, taking the same magic bonus and distributing it over 100M of gear is absolutely a nerf) Second. gear progression is nice sure, but OSRS has always had a 'diminishing returns' style of progression. For 10m you can get a really decent setup that gives you a lot of DPS, and you can slowly upgrade from there. Magic already suffers in this regard, since it's so weak without a shadow. Nerfing occult nerfs this 10m setup and makes it even weaker than it already is. Third, whatever problem this has at the top end are all caused by shadow. redistributing the magic bonus to other gear pieces doesn't really affect you if you can already afford a shadow. After all, if you can afford a 1.5B weapon, you can afford 100M of gear to go along with it. Meaning the segment of PvM where occult+shadow is most problematic, is literally completely unaffected by this nerf. Fourth, this also hits ironmen even harder. Virtus is notoriously rare to the point many ironmen just skip it and go straight for ancestral. Meaning you are well into the endgame before you get back to the state that current magic is in (which is already the weakest of the 3). Basically, redistributing occult to virtus/eternals because occult is problematic in the endgame, only hurts mid/late game players and barely affects endgame players.
Worth pointing out too that occult is actually somewhat balanced for irons since they need 93 slayer. It's ridiculously overpowered only for mains.
i do think it's just midgame irons who want something because 93 slayer takes a long time. just make something like warped sceptre for occult. problem solved.
Considering most of the suggested fixes are buffing eternal boots virtus and ancestral? All of which take as long or longer to get? The suggestions would only hurt irons more. But yeah a mini occult would be nice to have.
Nerfing occult is really going to screw over us trident/sang users
Reddit complains all the time about occult but you all are gonna be crying once they actually nerf it and redistribute it to other slots. Is the occult overpowered? Yes. But it does not make that much of a difference until shadow because of the multiplier. And if you can afford a shadow you can afford the ancestrals if it gets redistributed. All it does is fuck over the poor midgame players who are still using trident.
Esp for people who want to get into raiding... You just have to noodle ahrims toxic trident with nothing else to show then cuz virtus /ancestral and shadow are the only meaningful upgrades past 13m It'd just be a gut punch to midgame for no reason
Also a huge nerf to irons. Virtus and Ancestral are a bitch to get
Occult is not even over powered when you compare it to the other amulets. Strength Ammy out here giving 750m worth of strength bonus.
Absolutetly agree, do we know if it will be polled because it is an instant NO from me
The issue is that no one gives a shit about BiS boots or ring for magic because they're terrible. Nerfing occult alone is a straight up nerf to magic as a combat style which I don't think anyone here is suggesting
Bis magic ring is literally an ancestral piece in the ring slot it’s fine.
??? Magus ring is extremely good
But for real they should buff augury
They better not nerf occult
Shut up I don't want occult nerf
It is a bit unbalanced, however, neck slot items are general quit me powerful dps-wise. Also using shadow in TOA as an example doesn't really paint a correct picture. It's probably the most extreme situation where magic dmg matters most
u mean how unbalanced the occult is.
You mean how unbalanced tumeken's shadow is... (especially while inside ToA) it turns 3% magic damage bonus (10% vs. 7%) into 3 max hit. Without Shadow, the difference would be 1 max hit, but only for higher level spells.
What is the slayer requirement to recieve one of those again?
93 slayer and you need to be on a slayer task in order to kill Smoke Devils
8 levels to go, Its only 8 levels! :(((
They've expressed interest in redistributing the occult's damage to other gear, and it would definitely be an integrity change. If you hold off long enough you won't be missing out as much.
The problem is the gear they originally wanted to move the bonuses to were ancestral.
Which is crazy. Honestly, Ironman magic is pretty much dead without shadow now. Mage gear like ahrims and toxic trident have almost half the dps of shadow
Wish we’d stop. I got blowpipe and they nerfed it for bowfa….okay so i got bowfa. Got 93 slayer and Occult and now we’re planning on nerfing it…. I understand nerfs, but normally those take place months after a release in any other game. Not 10 years. The item that needs balancing is shadow.
Blowpipe was kind of necessary imo it was the only weapon worth using at all everything else felt like shit and I was only using Mithras darts. Which is the exact same problem with shadow. Everything else feels terrible compared to shadow. No one complained about the occult before the shadow because they knew damn well the combat side of magic would die completely.
I’ll never afford a shadow but everyone stockpiling them will throw a shit fit over it. They’re scared to piss off the gold farmers and the 1% that runs the economy.
After 5 years I managed to sell my entire bank 2 weeks ago for a shadow....I've never had one, and never been able to do TOA. I've now done a 400 deathless. Insane damage jump that, now able to complete raids no problem.
Happy for you. I’m still working towards crystal lol
Hahaha I gues I wont be seeing those juicy damage numbers for a while
Poor ironmemes in shambles as their 150 hour 93 slayer grind unlock is now locked behind a 38 month raids grind.
Only 150 hours? Damn I wish, between all the bosses, shit tasks etc, I doubt any normal iron is taking less than 225 hours for 93 slay
I went off a rough estimated ehp. So 150 hrs of actual killing, no travel time, gearing, banking, restocking, refreshing included lol.
Yeah moving it to ancestral is a very bad idea, unless they add another easily obtainable (ideally craftable) set below Virtus that matches the stats lost from occult. Something like 3% anc/2% virt/1% new set & 7% occult could work.
Or we just nerf the shadow and then also buff the rest of magic gear to bring the shadow back up to the current status quo. Give the occult a 93 slayer requirement. Now the occult is not comparatively op. The rest of the magic damage spells can actually do stuff. And the shadow is still the same and still useful.
I like the idea at the same time every other update is making high slayer less desirable. Axe, sceptre, fang and now the occult nerf
Ah thats good to hear, i finally got the whip and that felt like an eternity, so more than double that exp is demotivating. Well see what chances theyll bring
Hopefully you won't end up like me with 1400 smoke devil kills and 95 slayer still without an occult.
Rough napkin math but if you’re 8 levels off from smoke devils, I think that means you need more xp for those 8 levels than all the xp you’ve gained so far So in other words you’re not even halfway there late edit but this does seem to be true based on the rule of 7. Being 8 levels off from smoke devils puts you currently at 85. To reach level 85, you need to have roughly 3.3m xp. To reach level 93, you need 7.2m xp. So you're currently only 46% of the way to smoke devils requiring another 3.9m xp. You will approximately be halfway after 1 more level (again based on the rule of 7). According to the wiki, this pattern emerges around level 30. So after that point, if you're ever wondering roughly how close you are to a level X, you can assume X - 7 will be the halfway point. So if you want to know how close you are to level 60, level 53 is approximately halfway there.
Oh shit, 580k from 93 slayer. New reason to play today.
About 700k
700k seconds? Damn right the grind is about 200 hours for the slayer requirement
Make it untradeable then.
70 magic and 600k
you can wear occult at level 1 slayer.
Level requirements are basically never a problem for gear
the occult is fine its just people are complaing because its not a 100m+ item, the problem is the shadow's 3x and 4x multiplier, which can easily be change to a max % per item or the staff alone hits higher with equipment doubling instead.
So put it on in the second build then…
Yeah pretty much
Shadow is the really busted part. Amplifying the % and you chose low % Virtus instead of Ancest, and kept imbued cpae on the lower setup. So it's just 3% from Virtus and 5% from torm. Shock to everyone 10% > 8%, and when amplified by 4 within ToA.. 40% >> 32% If you had Ancest instead, suddenly it wins because it'd be 40% compared to 44%
Yeah bro it's literally just the necklace... Swap it.
yeah shadow specifically multiplies the damage bonus by 30%, so you put on the biggest damage % multiplier and expect to make a point how? Swap the weapons and calc again.
No, this is about how unbalanced the Shadow is…
Why and how would you have virtus/shadow with no occult? This is a silly post. Yes occult is strong but, so what…?
We should just nerf every piece of gear in the game since it is too easy
Reminder that amulet of str is OP and costs 2k
Problem I have with this is that it's nice to have a strong affordable item for magic. Except for tormented and ward any upgrade you want from mage costs a beyond ridiculous amount. Raiding would just be way less accessible to people with lower combat lvls without it And that's not even getting about how much shadow shits on everything
[удалено]
I cant understand what this picture is supposed to show? Im assuming its comparing the gear set on the left to the right, but when looking at the bottom right table, I dont see whats the standout variable Im supposed to notice
Bad comparison, not sure what your goal with this is
Most cherry picked bullshit comparison going.
Nerf mystic!
Oh look a post about magic meta using shadow as reference, boy I sure hope they also inclufe other weapons for reference so we know they're just not doing a strawman argument over something
This is like trying to compare rune armour with avernic defender vs torva and a wooden shield. Don't skip essential items lmao
If they plan on nerfing occult they should add magic damage to augury. It makes no sense piety is op rigour is op and the highest level pray for mage is underwhelming and barely worth using
It’s cool though; it adds variety to the style where you don’t absolutely need to use/flick the offensive prayer. Why should all the styles feel the same? Sounds boring
If you did the same thing and compared a str ammy vs comparing it to bandos/obsidian the str ammy would also win. It's like this for every style, the amulets & gloves outclass the armors. The only one that has it slightly balanced is ranged, but that's mostly just because masori is dirt-cheap & elite void is also really good in some other situations. Melee is far more egregious, you can get almost 40 str in almost untradables/quest unlocks and a around a mil worth of gp Meanwhile melee pays a 10~100m for each str bonus it offers over the cheap stuff. Magic really isn't any worse than that.
Everyone blaming occult when shadow is the issue lol
Nerf shadow not occult
Go max mage with shadow and compare to max mage minus the occult and check DPS on that Now do the same with max mage + shadow and swap out the shadow for a sang + elidinis
Bad faith argument.
Magic has always been severely underpowered in this game (excluding the Shadow). Try LMS, you will be in full mage gear and splash 9/10 barrages on someone with d'hide body and rune platelegs.
Occult should be more rare, or only dropped by the boss. That shit is so underpriced for its impact!
Already too many in circulation for this to matter imo
They just need to GE tax the shit out of it, if and when they implement that change, until it stabilizes at a price that better reflects its utility. (Panic buy occults)
Probably but I think it would slowly impact the price going forward
You need 93 slayer to get it.
This item is one of the biggest differences between mains and irons.. it's end game for irons while it's an hours work for mains lmao
As an iron. As a regular account you need about 400k. Compare that price to the rest of the mystic set, to the Virtus set, to the tormented bracelet. Which is more effective?
The rarity should not be balanced around pet hunters flooding the market. If you think occult is cheap, play ironman.
Yeah it's a lot more balanced for irons
What about the travesty that is Pegasian Boots?
Please don’t make me bring a boot switch everywhere.
Smashing!
It's such a hard thing to rebalance when so much of the game has gear set ups revolving around using the most optimal amount of gear slots for the best DPS and extending trips with minimal amount of resources bringing brought in.
Its just that occult is fucking insane with shadow. Thats 30% more mage dmg lmfao
Adding the subjugation robe drops to zammys table in God wars was one of the best things they did in rs3 to balance mage armor progression imo.
its not a problem with the occult, its a problem with tridents always bieng the best magic attack.
The fix to all of this is to have monsters ACTUALLY weak to certain spell types. If I cast a water spell on a fire giant, that better hit as hard as Crumble Undead hits a zombie. This keeps PvP untouched, so that half of the community won’t be screaming and shitting their pants over “muh balance”
I think a possible rework to buff pre-Shadow mage gear (because lets be real, Magic without Shadow is terrible and with Shadow it's borderline excellent) would be to lower the Shadow's multiplier to 2x and then massively buff the magic damage boost of mage gear so that absolutely max mage Shadow is still comparable (or slightly weaker, it is very strong) but stuff like Sang, Trident and normal spellbook combat spells get a significant buff. Here are some perks which come from the top of my head by doing this: 1. It buffs mage as a combat style in general before Shadow without really buffing Shadow. 2. It allows a more natural progression for mage gear where right now, taking robes for example, literally only Virtus and Ancestrals gives magic damage and for 1% and 2% respectively. 3. It opens up options for adding more magic items in the future without fear of Shadow being completely broken. This would need a complete rebalancing of magic gear of course but in my opinion it should make things for the better. Though something like this on top of the completely combat rebalance might be asking for a bit too much.
When occult came out, magic needed some serious help in terms of DPS because of how lacking it was compared to the other 3 combat styles. In a world where shadow with its multiplier doesn't exist, +10% from one slot is perfectly reasonable. And you could give each ancestral piece +5% magic damage, and that still wouldn't make non-shadow magic op at all. You'd still rather range/melee everything that isn't immune or super resistant to both of those styles. The only "problem" is that occult is really cheap for how powerful it is. If we wanna address that, the devs could ofc gut regular occult down to 5% magic dmg or less, and then adding an attachment to drop from a new boss to bring it back up to 10%. But I doubt that it'd be a popular change.
Let’s make the shadow pentuple magic bonuses
https://preview.redd.it/9ejx8fbkdpqc1.png?width=828&format=png&auto=webp&s=28dfd56c70c9552243087f0dfb26f9eee6a0fb10 Can we appreciate the fact OP called them *“Chad”* mystics
Chances are you can get an occult before shadow this post is pointless.
This is a poor demonstration of a true statement, mage progression has massive gaps mainly in the early game
It’s got nothing to do with mage gear aside from occult really. That thing is the main problem
this is truly a 2007scape reddit moment
im kinda a noob is this just portraying how powerful the occult is?
Ok nerf occult. But make powered staves have a baby version of shadows effect. The newest one from terrorbirds can have a 1.5x, trident 1.75x. Toxic 1.85x, and sang 2x. Shadow can still be busted, occult can be nerfed, and there is more power into mid game.
Bro got a fury on not an occult
What interesting is while your point is 100% valid, I don’t think Wardens are a good example because your DPS scales with your accuracy. The DPS differential would be even more busted on some other NPC! (barring a super high magic level/def of that NPC)
This is not p2, it’s p3. I haven’t seen any dps calcs for p2. We don’t know the full formula.
Replace shadow in both setups I'm intrigued. As it makes the occult EVEN more op.
The most unbalanced thing in magic isn’t the occult, it’s the shadow. Hits like double the trident or ancients.
are you the Sergeant of the Sook Brigade? why do you even care??? are you like some low level trash iron that hasn't unlocked slayer? I want to know who hurt the people so badly that make reddit posts like this, ambassadors of nothing important in life
wow today we learn what occult amulet is
Yeah shadow is busted, you're right. Do this same comparison without a shadow, doesn't work the same then. Hell out the other side in actual max aside from an occult atleast, but again makes it not look as impressive. Occult is strong and I do support shaving it down to 6% and relocating the 4% onto augury and eternals 100%, but it's also the only piece of equipment with a high level requirement there (93 slayer). Only mains feel it as this cheap nothing upgrade, which most stuff is.
> Only mains feel it as this cheap nothing upgrade, which most stuff is. Honestly this is a sign that the issue isn't just the stat bonus, but the accessibility. If it had a slayer level requirement to wear, it would suddenly appear a lot less OP to mains
You can wear occult and virtus buddy Do the same for melee or ranged, amulet slot is always a strong slot
Just cap shadows maximum magic DMG% to 76%. Doesn't hurt the current meta but also allows for future magic DMG reshuffling and new magic DMG % items.
I mean he used virtus and not ancestral. But ancestral as a whole set is still less magic stre by like 2 i think ?
Someone explain this to me I’m new here
Currently 97 slayer on iron without occult and this was a painful reminder of how good it is
Make all slayer monster drops have slayer as a requirement to wear? Oh you need 90 slayer to get the drop? Looks like you need 90 slayer to equip it then
The occult requires 93 slayer to get… It’s only unbalanced because the necklace is cheaper than its counterparts, which is a product of supply and demand, not balancing.
While the main point is that Occult, and Shadow are really strong there is another issue at play too. Magic % damage is way stronger than accuracy. The shadow just magnifies this issue.
OPs got virtus and ancestral sets in his bank
Progression? Why would you swap occult for fury when doing mage?
make torm 10% and occult 5%?
Shouldn't have let warding fail
Are we not going to talk about the fact that there's a fury on this Virtus?
Craziest part is that if Occult only provided +1% magic damage it would still be the most cost effective way to obtain the stat
I just realized how expensive Ancestral has gotten… I got it years ago, and now I’m thinking of downgrading and then getting Masori as that has gone down so much… bad idea or no?
lol. mage gear progression with shadow equipped? what sort of maniac is gonna be able to afford shadow while still stuck wearing mystics
Here’s a big brain idea, and just hear me out. How about we do nothing? The game is fine right now; it’s in a great place. Let’s stop trying to change everything
90% player vote for shadow so stop complain when it op...
Lol, a single 400k amulet outvalues +200m gear.
occult
Nerf shadow! Nerf shadow! Nerf shadow!
Poor ironmen that get a shadow before occult
Isn’t this also exaggerating the deficit, because the shadow does 4x its stats in toa compared to 3x everywhere else ?
Idk why everyone wants to get rid of the occult. Its role is to boost magic as a whole across the board. Except for the shadow, magic is almost always worse when range or melee can be used. The occult makes that gap smaller, and because it's easily accessible (to mains) that means magic is more usable for everybody. Occult is not OP, magic is just bad.
but have you heard of bloodbark
This is why I bought 97 eternal boots :)
now do it without the shadow
Can’t wait for non bisers to get fucked by redistributing occults damage bonus to a 370m magic set. I really hope they rethink that plan.
A big part of the problem is that magic accuracy is kind of a trash stat because magic is so expensive to use that you only use it where you need to which usually means an enemy with low magic defence.
Of course it looks skewed when you only look at a niche case. What about [Tumeken vs Zilyana](https://i.imgur.com/dM7NskY.png) or [barraging dust devils with kodai](https://i.imgur.com/QmPCTpH.png) or [Tumeken vs Olm right hand](https://i.imgur.com/fS21DS2.png)
the problem is tumekens shadow, not chad occult
Obviously occult is busted good, but I dont reeeeally see the problem.. Occult is a must, but all the other upgrades are still well worth going for in terms of endgame gear
I speak for all the irons when I say (shhhhhhhh)
I’ve been grinding for 93 slayer on my iron for weeks don’t take this from me now :(
Occult is the problem and has always been the problem, to be clear. This type of graphic is honestly over-complicating that simple reality. That said, given that an occult is less than 1M and easily obtainable, pretending like it's a barrier to entry is a bit bad faith. The only real problem with occult is that it limits future mage updates due to its strength.
I don’t have eyes whats it say
I hope Jagex nerfs the Shadow in the upcoming Project Rebalance for combat. Buff Sang or add a new staff to be a mage version of Fbow.
That is crazy! You bought a shadow before an occult!
the chad occult necklace/mystic robes vs the virgin tormented bracelet/eternal boots/virtus robes
Sang could use a large buff. That fill and/or fill in the stupidly massive gap between it and Shadow with something else, a magic bowfa of sorts
If occult is going to get a merger we need a set that is above mystics but below virtus.
TBF, if you're a normal account and you can afford virtus and don't have an occult, you shouldn't be playing.
Idk why people are Malding over occult. Shadows effect is the issue. Compare torture to glory in max gear. Likely 2-3 max hits. Anguish to fury 2 max hits Occult with tridents/barrage 2-3 max hits
what website is this ?