TL;DR: scythe isn’t the slash mega rare, it’s the wreck big monsters mega rare. Design should focus more on a passive that unlocks powerful damage scaling against a broad but not all encompassing set of monsters. The attack style and stat line is all secondary and a world where we get hung up on it and end up with a crush mega, a stab mega and a slash mega is boring Since Raids 4 was announced we’ve talked a lot about a crush mega rare. The more I think about it, the more I think focusing on the raw stat line of the weapon is reductive and the route to the most boring design archetype, a stat stick. We can dream bigger - mega rare items should shake up the game in a way other drops can’t. I’d hold the Scythe up as the gold standard we should aspire to for mega rare design. It’s raw stats aren’t that exciting, but under the right circumstances you get 1.75x scaling (dependant on rounding) to your max hit. There are two levers that we can pull to reign this power in when we want to: The major lever is monster size – if the monster is 2x2 then you’re only getting 1.5x scaling, 1x1 and you lose all scaling. The thing I especially love about this is that it’s obvious in game where your Scythe passive will work, you don’t need to check a stats table on the wiki. The minor lever is a monsters defensive stats, and ability of defence to be drained, given that each hit splat rolls its own accuracy roll (not opening the crush on scy can of worms for now) Rather than labelling Scythe the “slash mega rare” I think it’s better thought of as the “kill big monsters” mega rare. Tbow’s passive amplifies your ranged damage against wizards and is the “wreck things with high magic stats” mega rare - it can be balanced accordingly, even if all this is a bit more under the hood. The critical issue with Shadow (as Jagex said in their blog) is that it’s just flat out good everywhere magic is good and gets its mega rare scaling in all situations. Shadow balance is a whole other thread tbh. I’d hesitate to call Scythe and Tbow niche weapons because their niches are broad, but I believe the critical factor in a fun mega rare is very powerful stat/damage scaling on certain types of monsters. Can a future melee mega rare have a crush focused stat line? Absolutely, but I think that is secondary. We need to think what type of monster we want this thing to have crazy damage against, and ideally have this be both broad enough that it can have plenty of use, but also able to be designed around so it’s not always BIS. This is how we get a mega rare that really shakes up the game. These are some very rough ideas that I’ve thought of where you could apply situational insane damage scaling based on something more interesting that just attack style. Some of them are definitely bad ideas, I’m sure people who know more about game design than me could come up with much better ones. It’s really to illustrate that there are different directions we can think in. Melee: Do we want to lean in the opposite direction to Scythe and fuck up small monsters? What if each hit generated a stack on the monster, and when the n of stacks = n tiles on the outer edge of the monster (4 for 1x1, 8 for 2x2, 12 for 3x3 and so on) you get fuck loads of damage? There aren’t many small bosses right now, but that could change. Do we want to be really good against mobile monsters? What if moving a monster around in combat generated a powerful bleed? You could combine this with the above – 1x1 monsters have to be moved 1 tile, 2x2 2 tiles and so on Do you want it to be really good against static monsters? Do we want to lean into the combat triangle and be super strong against monsters that range? The less inspired route would be scaling vs the range stat similar to the tbow. Or, what if getting hit with a ranged attack procced a “revenge” attack where you got a free empowered hit? What if it’s insane against monsters with shield mechanics - this is probably too narrow in scope, but there are some limitted current examples in Kephri, Huey, Nightmare, and Verzik p1 Fang already explored excelling against high defence targets, but you dream up a different mechanic that dials the concept up to 11. You could explore a space where taking damage has a riposte mechanic allowing the weapon to excel in encounters with chip damage, or to reward a degree of risk. Maybe you “store” damage taken for a revenge blow. You’d have to consider how to not just reward bad gameplay though, maybe your riposte is more effective against small damage splats. Ranged: A ballista that can shoot a new set of gem-tipped Javelins with powerful effects that are useful in some circumstances – ideally these would probably be quite restricted rather than one for every gem like bolts have. Some very superficially thought out examples off the dome: A stacking burn-esque effect that builds up over longer fights, or pops after a certain number of hits? A prayer piercing effect that punishes monsters that use overheads (I’d imagine ranged prayer would still block your primary hit splat) More damage the further you are away from a monster? Maybe combine this with a binding Javelin? I’ve thought about this a lot less than the melee ones tbh submitted by /u/quenox
Originally posted by u/quenox on r/2007scape