Cursed Obsidian Amor Balance/Buff, New tzhaar equipment changes

[Parasalin 4]

This post is a more detailed suggestion along the lines of 420's suggestion, which we had discussed earlier. With the recent increase in repair prices for untradeables, Cursed Obsidian does not feel worth the (non-refundable) 40b+ per piece investment. Here are some armor bonuses comparisons (numbers only) to other armors commonly found in pvp (actual suggestion at bottom): 

 

In the case of Bandos, which is around 70m per piece vs 250m per piece repair for the cursed plate and legs, you'll get a pretty similar kdr pking in similar setups. Bandos also has less negative ranged bonus. By just repair costs alone, Bandos would be a clear winner for use in these armor slots.

Even with Statius armor plate and legs (nobody cares for the helm), though losing the chest and legs would be 300m more than cursed obsidian repairs, the strength bonus is the same and the defensive bonuses are far superior, which also makes it better based solely on losing vs repair cost merit. 

In this comparison, a full obby set repair is 600m and this typical vesta/serp helm setup is about 2.5-3b. The defense bonuses of the vesta setup are much greater than the cursed obsidian, as well as there being a +2 strength bonus and a stronger offensive bonus. The only thing cursed obsidian has better is prayer bonus, which is mostly relevant in pve scenarios whereas we're comparing pvp armors. Comparing the two setups, I would say that the extra cost for vesta is worth a massive defense improvement as well as a slightly higher ko potential. Again, this is before considering the initial purchase cost, where the full cursed setup is enough money for upwards of 60 vesta/serp helm setups. Also venom vs non venom. 

 

 The last comparison I'll make for armors is Primal/serp helm vs the full obsidian. This is 600m repair cost vs an almost 9b set. Obsidian wins slightly with offensive and crush defense bonuses (and prayer if you value that). However, the slash and stab defensive bonuses are over 2x that of cursed obby, and the ranged is over 200 more. Also +2 strength advantage. I would not be confident in saying that this setup is better based on repair costs vs how much you'll die, but with the much higher cost of obtaining cursed obsidian, this setup is clearly a ton better than the cursed. Venom vs non venom as well. 

The only thing that Cursed Obsidian can do better than these setups is smiting people, which is only if you have one of them holy pets and normal prayers along with a barrelchest war axe/malevolent war axe. Unless you can afford hundreds of billions, if not trillions, on making a good smite setup, cursed obsidian really isn't all that great. Especially since malevolent war axes are so expensive and hard to come by, most people can only use the barrelchest war axe, which is incredibly lackluster as a spec weap. Realistically, the smite factor isn't all that big of a deal, and an actual smiting setup isn't even worth pursuing. Even if you factor in the smite effect to my comparisons, Cursed armor isn't all that great.

Tzhaar Ket Om (or) and Berserker Necklace (or):

I think these weapons are really cool additions to the game. From what I know about them, since I'm still too poor to afford both), it seems like a really good KO weap. The problem is that they're both tradeable. This means that they cannot brought together in the wildy if your'e going to skull, especially considering the terrible stats of the cursed obby armor, because you'll be risking either one of these which is an aggressive amount of money.

 

How this armor and weapons can be made as moist as they deserve to be:

1. Increase the offensive stats of the pieces, at +5 for stab and slash, and +20 crush for the set. 

2. Increase defensive bonuses to somewhere between Vesta and Statius, but having a it strong vs crush yet weak vs slash is kind of a cool niche to keep.

3. A 15% bonus to accuracy and strength of obsidian weapons, as the normal one would have 10% I'd assume, and show that on the tooltip

4. Give the Obby Maul (or) and Bneck (or) a small smite bonus (like 15-20%), and show that on tooltip.

5. Make the Berserker Necklace (or) autokeep and untradeable, possibly having an ornamental kit to use with it, and a 100m repair cost when broken.

6. Maybe give some other obsidian weapons their own ornamental version, and special attacks for them and the obby maul (theres tons of cool possibilities).

7. *edit on 7/10* After using obby maul and bneck ornamentals together for a bit, the accuracy is underwhelming and could do with a substantial accuracy buff.

 

These suggestions would make this 150b+ (and almost 200b with weapons) set of gear actually worth getting. Is at a point where the cost effectiveness of losing so much money to an untradeable is little to none, and its niches are good but not really useable. I believe my suggestions are well balanced, and when considering untradeables one must consider how hard they are to actually get.

If the images are too big, I have no idea how to make them smaller...

Edited July 11, 2019 by Parasalin

[Kellatha 630]

Very nice putting in comparison screenshots of the different gears @Parasalin. However lot's of the changes you want are the reasons the community felt like it needed a nerf.

1. Cursed obby was auto keep which already results in mixed opinions from the community, with the majority leaning towards not wanting auto kept items. Any current and future auto keeps are heavily scrutinized as the community feels like auto keeps are overpowered compared to their own risks in the wilderness.

2. The smite bonus cursed obby provides is what attracted some people to the gear set but the recently added nerf to smiting has basically made this less of a feature and more of a novelty. With the way prayer works on SPK you needed maxed out smite bonuses and even then smiting wasn't something you could easily pull off. Prayer drain is a myth on SPK and drains like 5x slower than what it does on OSRS. You'd have to really be bad at pking and ignore your prayer to actually get smited and I imagine that's even harder to do with the smite capped at 35 per tick.

3. Everyone knew it was barely better than bandos and that wasn't ever an issue. Since it was autokept that's what made the community upset that people "couldn't kill someone with bandos gear that's 100m a set".

All of these leads to number four below:

4. The repair fee was also made more expensive and resulting in yet ANOTHER nerf for cursed obsidian. At this point it's really irrelevant to use cursed obsidian and using a bandos set that's like 100m is a much better alternative or even your completionist armor that's free and has no repair fee.(I should rather not say anything before the community gets upset about auto keeps with no repair fee).

The community is cracking down on all auto keeps and even though they're slightly better than unspawnable gear that's dirt cheap, it's still aggravating them for that little fact that it's auto kept.

From someone whose invested trillions into auto kept gear was mostly for luxury and bragging rights, cursed obsidian became irrelevant a long time ago. Very unfortunate I bought it at release where cursed relics were 150bish each, but at this point everything is getting nerfed so it's whatever.

[Jimm0 27]

I really like this suggestion. I personally haven't used my cursed obsidian in such a long time and have opted for using basically any other armour set (I nearly prefer torags to be honest).

It is now an expensive armour set to use, and any additional functionality, especially turning cursed obsidian into a one trick pony 'powerful in one element, but weak against slash' type of armour would make it fun for use with obsidian weapons.

I would also love to see a greater variety of pking combos being used in the wild so +1 to any obsidian weapons being made viable =]

[420sad 2]

Thanks for taking the time to elaborate on my suggestion and really flesh out a post! Having just come back recently I didn't know the set already went through several nerfs. I understand the communities dislike for un-tradables as it can be frustrating for a new player. But being one of those new players and finally saving up enough for your own to realize youre 85b investment is useless without another few 100b to spare for smite pets and items etc. is possibly even more frustrating! Perhaps if it does get a buff on death you drop the full repair cost when you die making it feel worth attacking someone in untradables without gutting them. I love all you suggestions though!

[Jimm0 27]

Nice to see both @420sad and @Parasalin contributing here and bouncing ideas off each other - really good to see a positive, non-flaming bit of the community. I hope that this gets implemented and you make more great suggestions in the future.

Thanks guys.

 

[Parasalin 4]

@Jimm0 we're a moist bunch over here  @Kellatha Yeah while some of the nerfs in the past could be justified, it's all come down a bit too heavy on cursed obby. It's easy to forget just how expensive untradeables actually are, and that the money spent on them is 100% final. 

 

[Kellatha 630]

2 hours ago, Parasalin said:

@Jimm0 we're a moist bunch over here  @Kellatha Yeah while some of the nerfs in the past could be justified, it's all come down a bit too heavy on cursed obby. It's easy to forget just how expensive untradeables actually are, and that the money spent on them is 100% final. 

 

Alot of the community feedback is heavy bias coming from people who dont actually own these items. While i'm not dismissing the fact that some autokeeps are OP, not all of them are but the community doesn't seem to understand that. The select few who are rich enough to have full autokeep in every slot and top tier epic pets with those sets is what's ruining the gameplay for the entire community. What's OP in some peoples hands is not OP in every single person who owns that particular item/weapon in the community.

A fine example of that is the controversial malevolent weapons that are smite factories which resulted in a server wide smite nerf/adjustment which coincidentally cursed obsidian was also affected by the server wide nerf.

People seem to forgot that 'Goho' achieved a 700+ KS at edge with just 1-2 autokepts which was just enchanted boots/gloves. While redskulled and in vesta/torva which was entirely killable. With t10 upgrades every 5 kills, around 120 BM every kill, and easily farmed gold artifacts. But hey lets nerf the noobs using cursed obsidian that happens to be 95% of their bank 😴

[Super Unicum 16]

@Kellathaas always absolutely correct!

[IGN 39]

2 hours ago, Kellatha said:

But hey lets nerf the noobs using cursed obsidian that happens to be 95% of their bank 

It seems to happen a lot, favor the rich take from the poor.... Donald Trump tactics. 

[Kellatha 630]

12 hours ago, Anthem said:

It seems to happen a lot, favor the rich take from the poor.... Donald Trump tactics. 

Since i've been gone(march and forward) a lot of the updates are absolutely destroying the "middle class" players and while not exactly hurting the newer players it's making them hard to progress. Newer players should also tread carefully because investments could be nerfed at any time, so what may be good at one point of purchasing a few weeks later down the road it'll get nerfed and your investment was rendered useless. While that is a aspect of RPG games, that nerfs can happen at any time, going on about them and especially in consecutive updates will always yearn for negative community feedback.

At this point it's just cherry picking from the suggestion list and heavy input(bias) from staff. I'm sure you can guess who i'm referring too, and at this point it's just a situation where you just have to roll with the changes because community feedback towards changes(nerfs in this case) doesn't matter.

I find it extremely coincidental that lot's of changes are being made to autokepts hand in hand with combat changes which are spear headed by one person in particular, backed by more staff members that are involved in the PvP aspect of the game. At the end of the day these changes are made by Ryan, but i'm sure he's heavily influenced for these changes.

It all went downhill when yoshi was starting to get tampered with.

Edited July 11, 2019 by Kellatha

[Jimm0 27]

1 hour ago, Kellatha said:

Since i've been gone(march and forward) a lot of the updates are absolutely destroying the "middle class" players and while not exactly hurting the newer players it's making them hard to progress. Newer players should also tread carefully because investments could be nerfed at any time, so what may be good at one point of purchasing a few weeks later down the road it'll get nerfed and your investment was rendered useless. While that is a aspect of RPG games, that nerfs can happen at any time, going on about them and especially in consecutive updates will always yearn for negative community feedback.

At this point it's just cherry picking from the suggestion list and heavy input(bias) from staff. I'm sure you can guess who i'm referring too, and at this point it's just a situation where you just have to roll with the changes because community feedback towards changes(nerfs in this case) doesn't matter.

I find it extremely coincidental that lot's of changes are being made to autokepts hand in hand with combat changes which are spear headed by one person in particular, backed by more staff members that are involved in the PvP aspect of the game. At the end of the day these changes are made by Ryan, but i'm sure he's heavily influenced for these changes.

It all went downhill when yoshi was starting to get tampered with.

It was curious how all the autokept items were given repair fees but ethereal items were not, eh?!

[Brutal 40]

On 7/9/2019 at 11:13 PM, Parasalin said:

In the case of Bandos, which is around 70m per piece vs 250m per piece repair for the cursed plate and legs, you'll get a pretty similar kdr pking in similar setups. Bandos also has less negative ranged bonus. By just repair costs alone, Bandos would be a clear winner for use in these armor slots.

If I remember correctly we made armor give more negative range bonus, due to the OP range to melee on here is insanely quick and hard to eat out of. Just to decrease the accuracy of the range a bit so that people got stacked 100's less in 1 tick, without even trying (this is still possible with the right rng obviously). Also I don't think you NEED the (OP) gear to be able to compete with pkers out here, a lot of trash veng pkers pk at edge with op gear and tend to be free loot tbh. You could easily have a 2-5kdr pking with Spawnables and a 1-5b spec wep, but that's just my opinion and experience from fighting at edge.

 

On 7/9/2019 at 11:13 PM, Parasalin said:

How this armor and weapons can be made as moist as they deserve to be:

1. Increase the offensive stats of the pieces, at +5 for stab and slash, and +20 crush for the set. 

2. Increase defensive bonuses to somewhere between Vesta and Statius, but having a it strong vs crush yet weak vs slash is kind of a cool niche to keep.

3. A 15% bonus to accuracy and strength of obsidian weapons, as the normal one would have 10% I'd assume, and show that on the tooltip

4. Give the Obby Maul (or) and Bneck (or) a small smite bonus (like 15-20%), and show that on tooltip.

5. Make the Berserker Necklace (or) autokeep and untradeable, possibly having an ornamental kit to use with it, and a 100m repair cost when broken.

6. Maybe give some other obsidian weapons their own ornamental version, and special attacks for them and the obby maul (theres tons of cool possibilities).

7. *edit on 7/10* After using obby maul and bneck ornamentals together for a bit, the accuracy is underwhelming and could do with a substantial accuracy buff.

1. Sounds good, but instead of +20, I'd rather have it be +10.

2. Nah it has good defense already, no need to buff it.

3. Highly agree, possibly even 20%.

4. Highly agree

6. Spec's for obby weapons nah, I don't like that idea.

7. Yeah it's pretty lackluster. Hence why i'd like the Accuracy bonus to be added.

 

Overall I think Cursed obby is really good, just needs minor tweaking to the game itself, such as: make prayer drain more or increase smite capacity as Kellatha said.

[Parasalin 4]

@Brutal while I feel that having it be incredibly strong within the obby weapons niche (reflecting the moist amount of cash needed for an entire set), I also feel that the pieces should be worth using on their own due to how high a cost it is to complete a set. Keeping the defensive bonus as is would mean that the offensive bonuses should be even higher than vesta, which could also work as we need another solidly offensive armor set amidst all the tanky options. 

[Brutal 40]

@Parasalin While I feel like it does need a buff, I don't want it to really have better stats than vesta in terms of offense. If we can change the smite power and effectiveness then there won't be that much need for a buff in stats. On the other hand I don't mind buffing the offense stats to be equal or greater than vesta, but then I'd like to remove the smiting buff then. I don't want cursed obby to be TOO good, I understand it's 40-50b a piece, but it's autokept and already pretty good gear. 

 

5 minutes ago, Parasalin said:

Keeping the defensive bonus as is would mean that the offensive bonuses should be even higher than vesta, which could also work as we need another solidly offensive armor set amidst all the tanky options. 

All the armor are "offensive", as the saying goes the "best offense is defense". Which is highly true, if u look at the offensive stats that the "defensive" gear give, while having really good offense stats. 

[Hooke V2 51]

I think the lack of smiting goes hand in hand with the eating mechanism and the slow drain of prayer overall. I think Doggy maybe a gyazo once of osrs prayer drain vs spk prayer drain and spk drained 3-4x slower. If that and the eating mechanics would be tackled the lowered and nerfed smiting in general should (probably) not be necessary.

[Parasalin 4]

@Brutal the smite balancing is difficult because of holy pets, barrelchest war axe, and malevolent war axe. Pushing the armor in a smite direction vs a stat increase direction still has the problem of the armor useless as individual pieces. One possibility is that a smite bonus only occurs with an the obby maul+bneck or combo (and maybe any other obby weaps), which would still allow it to have a good stats buff to make it a good standalone armor choice, while also keeping a smiting niche, yet not making it's smiting op with war axe specs. Theres also the possibility that it's impossible to balance its smite effect with other items and possible changes to the game's prayer drain, in which case another new effect could be warranted. 

[Phenomenon 398]

Interesting points made by many parties on this thread, I'll be forwarding it to Ryan and Nate to see what we can cook up - I'm all for a balanced buff especially considering the new repair fee that has been implemented and since I don't really have any opinions on the matter, this thread is going to be a perfect resource to use when determining said buff.

 

Great stuff guys, stay tuned!

[Glorified 8]

Goho also ate like a bitch. After you scratched his justiciar for about 5hp, he would triple eat back to 115 and say "I am risking 120b, I can safe if I want". @Kellatha

[Big Pee pee 12]

Tevin wants nerf so we get nerf

suggestions forum is useless

[Kellatha 630]

5 hours ago, Glorified said:

Goho also ate like a bitch. After you scratched his justiciar for about 5hp, he would triple eat back to 115 and say "I am risking 120b, I can safe if I want". @Kellatha

He'd hardly eat, i'd check with ::checkinv because I thought i got him to 0 food but he said not even close and sure enough he hadn't ate much. Also for the most part he would use vesta because it wouldn't matter what gear people attacked him with he didn't need that extra 5% def bonus because he'd just leech it all away with leech and e gloves leech. You'd get one auto in and bam str is at 69/99

The only way i'd get him to 0 food was with unholy hawk and constantly hitting 60's on him through his mage gear while having tsotd spec up 24-7. 0% kill potential because mage was all i was using, but it worked wonders on his build.

Edited July 13, 2019 by Kellatha

[Parasalin 4]

15 hours ago, Phenomenon said:

Interesting points made by many parties on this thread, I'll be forwarding it to Ryan and Nate to see what we can cook up - I'm all for a balanced buff especially considering the new repair fee that has been implemented and since I don't really have any opinions on the matter, this thread is going to be a perfect resource to use when determining said buff.

 

Great stuff guys, stay tuned!

Thanks @Phenomenon, glad to see my suggestion can be useful. That's very moist of you to forward it

[Ryan 315]

Thank you for taking the time to put this suggestion together!

I do agree with some points made here (particularly the defense stat improvements), but we'd like to be a lot more cautious when re-balancing existing equipment as we move forward. We tend to have a "pendulum swing" pattern with re-balances, where we go back and forth on nerfs & buffs. We may nerf an item to satisfy a portion of the playerbase voicing their concerns, only to buff it again a few weeks later to satisfy a new portion who felt it was nerfed to hard (and are now voicing their concerns), and the cycle/pattern continues.

In order to prevent this from happening as much as it has, we are continuously improving our combat development tools so we can do more thorough tests for item balancing. We are also going to make an effort to better measure how much re-balances will affect the value/efficacy of other items in the game, or how it may affect the meta of our server at a broader scale.

Some things you might expect to see as improvements for this gear on the next update:

• We may increase the defensive bonuses for cursed obsidian armor to a fair degree
• We are more then likely going to be significantly raising the new "smite cap" (at single-zone combat in particular)
  • This is more of a general buff, but it will increase the viability of cursed obsidian armor without a doubt

Thanks,
Ryan

 

[Parasalin 4]

@Ryan Thanks for considering my suggestions, and I hope you do implement at least some of them the next round of updates. Lmk if you'd like any more ideas on this armor, or any other topic. 

Edited July 13, 2019 by Parasalin