Results tl;dr : rondache reduces max hit before the attack is reduced by prayer. This limits usefulness but for some bosses it still makes a slight difference. it’s also probably the better way to do it in terms of game health. killing faster is still the best way to take less damage. Summary: the Rondache is usable, even if not optimal. Same strength bonus as an avernic and minimally more defence bonuses, at the cost of all of the accuracy. I can’t really see anyone actually buying one to use specifically for these two bosses nor a few others I tested, and I definitely can’t see any irons grinding TFA for a rondache just to go back to the Forgotten Four. My tests went as follows: I sat there letting the enemy attack me with auto retaliate off while wearing minimal gear, very high prayer gear with as little defence as possible. Ancient vestment robes, devout boots, confliction gauntlets, void knight mace, ring of the gods, and ofc the rondache. I did not drain my defence to 1, but if anyone wants to repeat the experiment they could consider doing so. Everything seemed to hit me just fine without. Swing for a zero at the start of the fight, pray accordingly, and observe damage taken. I did not test any strength lowering special attacks. IMPORTANT TO NOTE: the rondache does not activate its passive effect until you attack something after equipping it. You can observe this because it won’t charge up its special attack, it charges up if and only if it reduces damage. Duke Sucellus : Duke’s chip damage maxes an 11, reduced to 5 with protect from melee. I took several hits off prayer / no shield to confirm he does hit 11s. The math should work out that a reduced max hit to 9 should mean he can only hit 4 through prayer with the shield. I tanked chip damage while dodging gas flares, and in a whole inventory of food I never saw him hit a 5 a single time. I repeated this two more times and never observed a single 5. He did hit a lot of 0s, despite my lack of defence, meaning it was probably reducing raw damage rolls of 1 and 2 down to 0, and potentially even 3s (reducing to 1 and then halving, rounding down to 0)? The downside: I tried a duke trip with the rondache instead of an avernic defender (emberlight as weapon), and it didn’t feel better. Taking less damage is great, but I lost so much accuracy that I felt like I needed to bank for a BGS to reduce his defence each kill (normally I just use a voidwaker to finish him during enrage). I ended up using the same amount of food per kill as a normal trip with an avernic. The shield bash never hit him due to his high crush defence. Duke conclusion : don’t rondache Duke unless you somehow don’t have an avernic (or any better two handed options) Vardorvis : Vard is the current leg of my SRA grind, so he was my first target for testing the rondache. His max hit increases as his health decreases, and protect from melee reduces it by “roughly” 75% (rounding down assumed as that’s what happens everywhere else in the game). At first I just stood there and let him hit me, funnily enough you don’t get any flying axes nor ranged attacks from the head until you damage him. In three full inventories of food he never hit me for an 8 like he normally can, instead he maxed a 7, plenty of them too. Then I did some math. The following raw max hits are courtesy of the wiki’s DPS calculator. The “roughly reduced by 75%” according to the wiki means that the following numbers may be slightly off. In theory he should never be able to hit an 11 through prayer, but in my 1300 ish kc he absolutely does hit 11s during the enrage phase. Decimals included despite the fact that OSRS supposedly always rounds down (see Mad Angel section below), just in case the 75% prayer reduction or rounding assumption aren’t fully accurate. So as you can see, there are certain thresholds where his max hit is reduced by 1 post prayer reduction. On average, you take 0.5 less damage per hit, which will add up with how much he hits you. This also reduces the amount that he heals from damaging you substantially, leading to you having to deal less damage overall to kill him. That combined with the shield bash mean kills are pretty much the same speed as using an avernic defender (his crush defence isn’t that much higher than his slash defence). The marginal slash defence increase did very little to reduce incoming damage to me. My test setup used a salsa blade, rondache, full oathplate, rancour, bellator ring, ferocious gloves, echo boots (active), fire cape because I’m bad at the game, rada’s blessing 4, with support from death charge and mage thralls. Burning claws as my spec weapon. In this setup, my average time to perfect kill is about 80 seconds, which is more or less identical to using a defender. This means he hits me about 25 times per kill, accounting for the delay from the head ranging you and the captcha attack (which the shield also works against btw). The 12 or so HP saved per kill adds up to me getting an extra kill or two every trip (usually 2), assuming one supply drop per trip and all perfect kills. His other attacks (flying axes impact damage, bleed damage, spike dash spikes) are not reduced by the shield and do not contribute to its charges. Vardorvis conclusion : rondache Vard if you want longer trips without losing dps over avernic, just beware that you now have two spec bars to keep track of. Also it’s still going to be worse than using an SRA on him. Mad Angel : I also went to try it at the Mad Angel for some reason, but it doesn’t help at all vs her. Her damage is reduced to 1/6 via protect from melee (max hit 31 to 5), but she still hits 5s with the shield equipped. Theoretically 29/6 = 4.833 so I thought it might round down, but it appears to not be the case with her. That may also be true of Vardorvis, so again take the above math with a grain of salt. You may see some reduction of damage from her magic attack if you miss the prayer flick on it, but I didn’t test that. submitted by /u/DarkTemplar_of_Chaos
Originally posted by u/DarkTemplar_of_Chaos on r/2007scape