5. Our Range Strategy
Why is the ranger so undervalued? I've always found myself resenting people who range at wars, simply because I've seen ranged attacks as underpowered. Especially against rune armor.
Quite a few people here have gone to dagganoth kings with me. These people understand the difference between having a protection prayer on, or not. The moment you enter dagganoth kings, the hybrids come up against a dag prime and dag supreme, a mage and a ranger. We all protect from magic. The ranger hits hard. You can have your food drained in a matter of a couple minutes, simply because you have no prayer to shield yourself, and the ranger will hit consistently.
Everyone has the mentality that at wars, you either mage or melee, depending upon your individual character's strengths and weaknesses. Then binding is taken into account, and it really becomes a complex array of attack you set against your enemy.
Now, to take apart each of our current tactics as completely ineffective.
First, the example of when we brought lots of mages. They get koed easily, especially in any war with over 10 opponents - where they hardly have time to put on rune, and even after that, have already had much food drained. But in addition to that, what makes mages even less effective as a group, is that, say you have a team of mages all hitting a guy in rune. The guy puts on protect from magic. How many of the mages do you honestly think will want to pull their scims out and melee the guy? I wouldn't want to. If only a few people pull scims, then the damage received by the opponent is still minimal. If everyone pulls scims and attacks, he switches to protect from melee, after taking a brief bit of damage. Then what? Do we switch back to mage? It sure takes a long time to set spells again. Time we can't afford to waste. There's no way to get a ko with that kind of inefficiency.
Binding - how useful is it? When you're hugging, and you run around a rock, or a tree, you plan to stand in that spot for at least a couple seconds, while the enemy is stuck. If you were going to stand there for a bit anyways, how much harm does a 5 second bind do you? Not much. I admit that binders are slightly helpful for giving meleers a break, since they're always running around exhausting themselves, but really, fewer are necessary.
Now, clearly what we need is something fast. We need to hit through prayer, as a group, consistently. We need to NOT get koed. What is the most obvious, simplest solution? A different type of hybrid. A melee/ranger hybrid. Except not only have one person do this, but everyone. Fight as a group.
Think, about the gear - rune helm, green d hide, and maple short/rune scim (no time wasted to equip a shield unless being piled). This gear offers relatively decent protection against all forms of attack, including binds. Enough protection, at least, to give you time to equip rune and hug instead of being koed the moment you are piled.
Now, for the offensive benefits. First, it is very easy to switch between a bow and a scim. I wouldn't hesitate a second before switching and continuing my attack. Now, imagine 10 clan members all attacking an opponent with scims. He puts on protect from melee. We pull bows, and almost instantly resume our attack, with no pause in between. As soon as we saw the prayer change, we switched attack types. So, the enemy has a choice - either he has his prayer hit through CONSISTENLY, and is ultimately very likely koed. Or, he stays and focuses on the prayer screen, almost constantly switching prayers to adapt to our attack types, which can switch at a moment's notice. But then, he can't focus on hugging, or eating, and he is ultimately koed.
After I thought of this, I thought - wow, this is such an obvious tactic, why haven't we been using it? And don't say that not everyone has high ranged. High ranged is not necessary at all. I know for a fact that 60 ranged against a guy who IS NOT praying is far more effective than 90 attack against a guy who IS praying.
So, the official war strategy, which ed has now approved for me, is this :
2/3 of people to go as range/melee hybrids, as follows :
Equipped :
Green d hide body
Green d hide legs
Fighting boots
Power amulet
Green d hide vambraces
250 adamant arrows
Rune full helm
Maple shortbow
Inventory :
Strength potion (4)
Rune kiteshield
Rune platelegs
Rune platebody
Rune scimitar
23 swordfish(or pizzas)
1/3 of people go as mage/bind hybrids or melee/bind hybrids, as follows :
Equipped :
Robes
Staff or Scimitar
Power amulet
Rune full helm
Rune kiteshield
Fighting boots or leather boots
Gloves or green d hide vambraces
Inventory :
Rune platebody
Rune platelegs
Strength potion (4)
Binds
Swordfishes(or pizzas)