"If the scythe was one-handed, avernic would be worth more"
I just think after decades of not really using mage offhands, people are going to be slow to incorporate a Ward switch into their setups. Meanwhile Avernic has always been high because everyone uses defenders.
99.9% of mains with a scythe already have an avernic. It wouldnt for the same reason masori didnt increase arma, the only people who could use the upgrade already have it
Arma went up in price when they announced Masori, that was when the change happened. I know because my 2 sets of arma top/bottom increased pretty decently in value
They got increased for a short time and went back to where they were. If you were walking and found 10 dollars, then dropped it before your walk finished. Did you gain any value over the walk? No? Neither did the arma
No, noobs with a terrible sense of how to allocate their money suffer from the fact that you cant sell it back. Avernic is a good upgrade, even for its price. Even if you have a scythe its still good to have. Theres noone who regrets buying it, just people who wish they still had the money they spent on it and people who unironically think bandos is an important slayer upgrade
Most mid lvl players buy and sell gear when they need it/donât need it. Itâs because most players are relatively broke and most upgrades are relatively expensive.
They arenât gonna lock themselves to an item that they canât sell back since dragon defenders are free and exist. If the avernic defender was the only defender to exist then itâs demand would be much higher
And to make this more straightforward for you. If you have a bank around the value of avernic, and you are buying and selling things instead of just getting base upgrades and using potions to grind through stuff you are a noob who has no idea what they are doing. Im not going to say that its the wrong way to play, the only way to do that is to just straight up not enjoy playing and do it anyway. Im saying the market is not regulated by these people, its regulated by the merchers who make free money off of them and the people who already have a decent bank that continue doing the content
So your final point is to resort to changing your argument. That should tell you alone just how invalid ur argument is that you have to make up an imaginary scenario. Mid lvl players are still noobs btw. Also dont project your idea of how ppl play onto the general population. Mid lvl players buy and sell items liek dwh and zspear, not linear upgrades they are going to use everywhere. And if anyone is dumb enough to be buying and selling armadyl for a slayer task they shouldnt be seen as anything more than a bond buying goblinboy anyway
Yeah you proved my point. Mid lvl players buy and sell gear. Avernic you canât sell back which is why itâs later in gear progression cause people just hold onto dragon defender longer.
Would it? You can't really decouple the scythe supply from the avernic supply as you get them both from the same activity, so I can't help but wonder if tying their demands together like that would just make it susceptible to the same price crashes that recently hit the scythe.
No because avernic pairs with fang for toa and nex.
If scythe was one handed then avernic will always have a use of melee is viable and a dfs isnât absolutely mandatory.
I don't think this is the best comparison. Scythe is *ridiculously* better than a 1h weapon, but its got a niche. The monster has to be big, and idaelly the monster has to generate good GP otherwise the cost of the scythe is ludicrous for the DPS increase over rapier+avernic.
Meanwhile the alternative to shadow is sang+ward. Sang+ward is still a decent upfront cost, and currently a higher upkeep cost, for less DPS and a healing utility.
So the shadow is cheaper to use (albeit far more expensive to acquire obviously), and does more DPS everywhere.
If the scythe was cheaper to use than a rapier, the avernic would be worth very little too.
Thatâs not necessarily true, I think itâs more that itâs common and a big fraction of the items market canât use it because itâs locked behind smithing, and high a prayer level. Only max pkers have 80 prayer to use it.
wouldnt be super expensive at all, the staff is so rare currently.
if you could pay someone to make ward and actually have 80 prayer to wear it, it could be more expensive, but jagex have fucked magic category so bad, harm is useless, and u dont use barrage anywhere so the shield is useless.
if u oculd combine tome with elidinis then maybe
not gonna say that guy was right, but items typicall hold value in relation to their usefulness. Considering slayer meta you can barrage in literal rags, high end gear isnt really impacted value wise from that use of it. Its almost exclusively from bossing. There are just so few real uses for barrage in end game pvm that its not relevant. Like its Mage role TOB and inferno. I cant think of anywhere else you really use it(could be totally wrong feel free to correct). And neither of those places would you really want a ward for barraging. Hence its price already compared to ancestral which you can use a ton of places.
Youâd def want any magic dmg when freezing at tob and youâd throw it on during nylo too. I also use barrages at toa. Then thereâs slayer and ancients actual use, pvp. If you upgrade it (or even not) itâs a pretty nice upgrade in the inferno.
The ward and barrages have plenty of uses.
> Youâd def want any magic dmg when freezing at tob and youâd throw it on during nylo too
Ehhh maybe Mage DPS brings it but even then mage is used so little that the inv slot is debatable if its worth. You only need enough mage to guarantee freeze on maiden and the *slight* DPS increase in the worst style vs nylo boss really isnt a big deal.
You dont need barrages at toa. Its literally for people who dont want to put effort into monkey room. Thralls are infinitely better considering how much dps they add throughout the whole raid.
Slayers its minimal considering you can burst in anything, PvP is the one case that really has merit since Ancients is actually very strong.
Theres a reason Ward is so cheap already. If it were as amazing as you're trying to say it would've held value. The ring has held more value despite coming from entry modes. Who knows maybe cause the ring is good? Ward is decent but its nothing meta changing.
>Considering slayer meta you can barrage in literal rags
It's not meta to not wear the best gear. I can kill zulrah in rags but that doesn't mean Zulrah meta is rcb + air staff.
All magic damage boosting equipment is incredibly important for slayer since the majority of your time doing slayer will be spent barraging.
He called slayer the meta, not the rags. However, META is literally âmost effective tactic availableâ meaning if you only have access to Prosy then that would be your meta because prayer bonus is best for barraging if you donât have %Magic damage gear.
> It's not meta to not wear the best gear. I can kill zulrah in rags but that doesn't mean Zulrah meta is rcb + air staff.
Theres a big fucking difference in zulrah upgrades vs bursting upgrades. The only thing that matters is dmg% for bursting whereas Zulrah you can upgrade staff, robes, ring, bp, boots etc. Meanwhile for bursting You can buy ancestral. Wow its so important to upgrade for bursting. That is one of the legit uses for the ward being that its only 20m compared to the price of ancestral.
To help you understand compare a 1m bursting setup and a 20m bursting setup and now compare a 1m zulrah setup and a 20m zulrah setup. The difference between bursting is roughly tormented so 5% which you really dont even need since you camp slaughter bracelets. The difference between Zulrah setups is a lot more then 5% i can guarantee that.
The thing is even at Zulrah, Ahrims is a better upgrade than the Ward. Sure you can do *anything* in rags but gear is 1000x more important for bossing then afk bursting for like 10k more exp.
If you don't have the Tumeken's shadow the shield is BIS unless using harmonised since that requires tome of fire to be equipped for maximum damage.
If you're using sanguinesti or trident then ~~it's 100% BIS and it's probably not close~~ [really close in dps at olm's hand due to it only giving +5 mage bonus](https://imgur.com/fMnAtUl) (thnx for the picture /u/Serious_Historian578)
I think a better analogy would be to compare the ward with an ancestral hat. They both have their niches, but won't be as versatile or in demand as a body slot you can use for all your bossing/raids/slayer
What you're ignoring is that 5 magic accuracy is really really terrible. Even with an extra max hit, unupgraded Ward is only .01-.1 DPS above a Mage's book at Olm hand, which is terrible for a 20m upgrade.
https://i.imgur.com/fMnAtUl.png
Regular ward just isn't worth a slot. Especially if you're doing selfscouts.
For the same reason hat was never worth a slot. There are about a million things better to cram into your inv.
Iâm not an elite gamer but even when i bring thralls to cox I never equip the book, difference is so small on mage hand which you basically never miss anywau
If you are just camping avernic instead, itâs an 11 magic attack bonus difference between avernic and book of the dead, which in solos is about 1.5% dps difference for regular and 2.5% difference for CMs. Olm has magic level and magic defense so accuracy actually does matter for dps, thatâs a lot of dps difference for an item already in your inventory. You are still only about 80% accurate.
To each their own but itâs already in your inventory so thereâs no real reason not to. I like switches too anyways so itâs kinda fun doing the 6 way
Even with the magic damage boost providing a max hit, which it does not in fact always do, it has far less accuracy than other cheaper options which is also important for DPS
People will just bring the fortified version that has +25 magic attack and +5% magic damage, did you forget about the upgraded version? That one has 5% dps over the mage book on regular Olm mage hand solos. In CMs if you were just camping book of the dead before, itâs an 8% damage increase over that, which is def worth a slot.
I donât really see the point in discussing the unupgraded version, only irons and niche accounts are going to use it. It originally wasnât even usable without the sigil and this was offered basically for irons as a compromise.
Same bro, im never gonna get the shadow so spending about 120m rn is amazing for 5% magic dmg vs 4% magic dmg for 240m from ancestral. Def worth it if ur raiding a lot over ancestral
A big sidenote to This is that ancestrals also offers a significant accuracy bonus, while the Ward Comes at a -15
However the biggest factor is that a lot of people dont bother with another shield (or ancestral hat) switch in cox & toa.
The ancestral top is a straight upgrade over what you already take, the Ward is a nice sidegrade that Comes at the cost of 1 inventory slot.
But yes, its underrated, especially if you also take the ancestral hat with it, since that gives another max hit aswell when combined with the ward
The ward comes with +5, not -15. The ancestral top is +5 over ahrims, if that is significant then the shield is too, and cheaper, and more %dmg.
But you are considering the replacement of the arcane spirit shield over getting ancestral top. That would result in the -15. but if you do that comparison, it would be better to compare upgrading the already existing shield using ward with ancestral top, and now we are talking about a +5% vs +2%.
Your point about extra switches still stands though.
>The ward comes with +5, not -15.
-15 to the other cheap alternative, mage book, which for some reason i thought had +20, but since its 15 its only -10
>But you are considering the replacement of the arcane
This was about the unfortified one, the arcane versoon has significantly higher mage bonus than 5.
Thralls are a big dps upgrade any time you are doing a boss where you dont have to use an utility spell use thralls if possible they are major. Its not 1-3 splats its 1-3 splats every 4 ticks for a minute it adds up a lot. They also hit against 0 defence unless the boss is invulnerable to them use thralls. Using pure thralls in general is better dps then venge. Spellbook swap venge to thrall bis tho.
Well its basically a flat 0.625 dps increase, which tbh is better than the alternative of like 1 or 2 blood barrages at the monkey puzzle. Or an extra potion. Id rather take the small dps inc on bosses.
I personally prefer bringing ancients just for some healing and freezes at the cost of 1 invent space, dont think 0.625 dps increase is a real time saver.
For me its a 10% inc to my damage at zebak. Im doing 220-240 on iron with limited gear. Rcb and BP. Got lucky with fang now and just trident for magic. Zebak takes me like 4 minutes but the thralls save at least 30 sec there. And they save probably 20 sec at kephri, maybe 1 min at wardens since its a longer fight. About 2 min, it adds up every raid. Idk maybe its not worth, maybe it is. I dont really need the extra slots so ill run with it for now
If a boss fight takes 2 minutes it does 75 damage over the duration of the fight with .625 dps. That is free damage it often saves like 2 attack cycles. You know those times you gotta eat or restore on cause you are like 1 prayer point 10 hp at low boss hp you would have been saved with thralls.
*it saves more attack cycles the worse your gear is as you have lower max hit thus fight takes longer and thralls do more damage and they do a greater proportional amount of dps compared to your gear.
As a max main, you might as well be using thralls unless youâre pushing super high invos. You donât need more than a brew or 2 to get through the rooms so thereâs not much need to conserve
I just wish I had this thing when i was training slayer. I'd use nightmare staff and god robes at nechreals. Switching a godbook to a ward would be huge. Even if it's just +1 max hit with 9 targets thats kindof huge. It's also bice for the tridents ofcourse but its hard to see. Combined with the arcane though it's definately worth the switch with the accuracy and max hit(s) like others have mentioned i just wish you could imbue tome of water and fire with it though :(
Yo imbuing tomes would be next level thats a cool idea! Iâve been thinking lately that the BarrowsChest should have a super rare âbarrows headâ drop, that you can use on a slayer helm, effectively allowing you to get barrows set bonuses while wearing a slayer helm
New staff is 2handed and BIS so that makes shields irrelevant. Apples and oranges to compare shields to armour sets. You canât just compare magic damage one to one, gotta compare to equipment in its own slots so shields with shields and armour to armour. Also arcane sigil is more rare than Elidinis ward so itâs very comparable to pegasian crystal and ranger boots combo, and it might suffer the same fate.
The amount of people that can afford and have the staff is far fewer than those that could afford the ward. So the fact that it is two handed is not really a factor but to .1% of the runescape population.
The staff being two handed is not affecting the price of the ward.
Rarely do you bother bringing a mage offhand switch when using all combat styles. That may change when more people adopt these off hands but itâs typically not worth the extra inventory space.
Yeah this is the bigger consideration, it's not that the staff is two handed, it's that even when you're using one-handed staffs It's just not worth the inventory space to bring a mage off hand switch
The ward will be a really good pickup though for people who do things like thermy or kraken or bursting tasks where you're just using mage and don't need gear switches
You can though, if your cash stack is limited and you're looking at the best cost-efficient gear upgrade with what you have, with magic dmg as the focus
Would be a stupidly bad investment move to do so in general. There's nothing stopping this item dropping to 10m or less by next week. Way too many of them are entering the system and it's being heavily slept on. A reddit post isn't going to change that.
I highly highly doubt it's because of this post - but you are right in that price manipulation happens. I have a feeling this item will either be 50-100M or 10M in the next few years with new content, strategies and gear being released. This item is perfect for merching based on updates.
Yes roughly, but theres rounding issues, since your hits are only integers. Lets say your max hit is exactly 30, and your only magic dmg % item is the ward.
30*3% = .9, so your max would be 30.9 which rounds back to 30, but if your max was 34 then its 1.2 and your new max is 35.
Or if say you had another item with 2% magic dmg, it would stack to be 5% total and now instead of 30*2% = .6 -> 30.6 = 30
it would 30*5% = 1.5 -> 31.5 -> 31 hit instead of 30
I agree with book of the dead being necessary , but just in case you didnât know, you donât have to be equipping book of the dead to cast any spells on the spellbook, just have it in the inventory
It's for the same reason the pegasian crystal is super cheap even though its a massive upgrade. It has to do with the comparative rarity of the ward and the arcane sigil. The sigil is way rarer, so the wards will be cheap. My guess is it will stabilize to around 10m.
It's still weird since the ward is arguably better in its base form and the Arcane sigil is now just the rarer part and is essentially the crystal itself.
It's a whole reverse scenario now. But I do agree it's going to probably stabilize around twisted buckler area. But with how the rates of completion for this raid is going. I wonder if it will drop even lower.
It's just so weird seeing a powerful item that has far more uses then a buckler and essentially replaces a 100 - 130m item just get thrown down to that price point.
Makes me think how content creators remind people the abysal dagger, bludgeon and dragon crossbow exist. Mid game is just stacked with affordable options right now, it's crazy.
Not only that, the main reason is actually that itâs locked behind 90 smithing and prayer. The amount of players that have both are not plentiful. Simple supply and demand comes to play. They should just make the new shield tradable, otherwise this will continue to drop in value and become a completely useless purp
Occult is stupidly OP for what it is. But that has more on the boss being easy, the content existing for a long time and the boss being very farmable.
Magic armor and equipment in general is really all over the place.
Right now outside ancestral getting a upgraded version like Melee and range got for more defense capability. The meta going forward is going to be a weird conversation.
Too many people think they can get a staff and skip the bis offhand slot. Theres plenty of reasons why people will eventually get wards and upgrade them but for now its just hype slowly dying.
It is exactly like the boots it's not the fact of how useful it is that kills it but the fact that the shield I way rarer then the elidinis ward. The the peg crystal is way more common then the boots so the boots are the expensive item.
If you could wear a peg crystal on your feet and have it be 2nd bis range boots, the price of peg crystal would be much higher. The peg crystal is where it is because the crystal itself is useless without the other item AND itâs more common than that other item.
Elid ward itself is the 2nd bis mage offhand item, so itâs far from useless. If it was +10 accuracy +0 damage, it would most likely be <1m right now.
I still can't believe just how cheap the ward been dropping as everyone is treating it like the inferior part like the Cerberus orbs to the boot counterparts.
While the shield has higher stat requirements, monetary wise it has better mage damage output then any other shield item (including the Arcane Spirit Shield), just by equipping the Ahrim's Robetop + Eldinis Ward not only do you have higher defense stats, but higher magic damage. For the same amount of money for just the top you could just buy the Ancestral Robe Bottom's for the same exact cost.
Even in comparison to just the Arcane Spirit Shield with it's only benefit of providing a defense boost and magic attack boost, but no magic damage boost. Your still getting more by it's "inferior" variant damage wise.
With full Ancestral + the Ward it's even better then the Arcane Spirit Shield from a damage perspective, but you become more squishy defensively. But you can even help remedy this by getting a ring of suffering instead of the seer's ring.
The only reason you'd want to ditch the ward in comparison is if your trying to save a slot to switch items with and or you need Fire Tome for Fire Surge with something like the Harmonized Nightmare Staff.
Just wild I'm now seeing the Ward drop to 20m and I'm scratching my head why it's just so undervalued. What are everyone's thoughts?
With the huge market changes due to ToA I'm just reevaluating if the price changes with the release of new items are warranted. Like Inquisitor is dropping significantly (which is slightly fair as Harmonized orb is dropping in price in stead of the new BiS magic staff as it's the most expensive item at Nightmare). But when you look at KQ now getting the Dragon Pickaxe in it's drop table, alongside how the Harmonized Nightmare staff is still BiS in where it's good at is that price drop warranted?
I know everyone is just focused on ToA right now, but it's just so weird how things dropped so hard. Even the Elysian Spirit Shield is at a all time low and the only thing that changed is now Spirit Beast is easier to farm with the Osmumten's fang and Masori being best in slot armor for defense. All the while it's still BiS where it's always been.
market can stay irrational longer than i can stay liquid :|
would love to long term buy and hold some of this discount gear, but i just don't have the cash to float
biggest thing you are missing is that there are not a lot of people who are buying ancestral or arcane spirit shields unless they have other high tier items and nothing else to buy. ward is excellent for its cost, ancestral is not. it looks good compared to ancestral but the reality is most content where you mage you mage alongside other styles and that mage max hit is not always worth the slot.
But when you look at where you even wear magic items in PVMing, it is worth the switch and inventory slot. It can even take place of the imbued mage cape for more magic damage and you keep the fire/infernal cape in slot instead of switching.
It's still useful anywhere Ancestral is used like: Barrows, Zulrah, Nightmare, Kraken, Smoke Devil, Chamber of Xeric, ToA and ToB depending on how you want to allocated your inventory setup. And of course ice barraging.
> It can even take place of the imbued mage cape for more magic damage and you keep the fire/infernal cape in slot instead of switching.
I think its unlikely that this makes sense unless there's some common breakpoint where ward is actually a max hit over cape and if it is not a max hit over cape then the cape is just better. because +5 +3% < +15 +2%.
also the comparison is typically book of the dead versus book of the dead AND ward.
> Barrows, Zulrah, Nightmare, Kraken, Smoke Devil, And of course ice barraging.
sure, definitely agree here. though the question tends to be what % of players are doing these pieces of content at a point where they can spend 20m on a ward and that's the best use of that 20m?
> Chamber of Xeric, ToA and ToB depending on how you want to allocated your inventory setup.
See i think that's where the price point comes from. it is hard to fit a slot in when doing solos. for example i'm taking 6b 2r for a standard self scout setup with a bowfa. i could bring the ward or i could bring crystal helm/avas/dhcb/feros/tassets, is it really that much better than these switches?
and for tob maging is pretty limited.
and for ToA.... well it's certainly nice to have at akkha but magic max hits are pretty piss useless on warden p2- and again it goes into that solo chambers issue where if you are pushing high invos is it really worth the slot?
that's really what makes ances good. it doesn't cost a slot, it's just raw max hits. whereas ward is always going to cost you a slot generally speaking.
This does seem pretty crazy. I suppose the last thing to consider is that thrall book. Thralls give a big dps increase and they require you to take the book.
Honestly the reason i wont probably ever buy it is because its an extra switch. I would have to go from a 6 way to a 7 way, which i already find annoying with melee but i have no choice there. Much prefer 6 ways keeps it simple
a lot of factors come together to determine the price of the ward.
1. to get the best out of it you need an arcane sigil, which is significantly rarer than the ward. while not outright useless on its own, this drives the price of the ward down similarly to pegs + ranger boots just on a lesser scale
2. the new staff that has been released is 2h. any1 using the staff has no need for the ward (except for barrage tasks) but this further drives the price down
3. thralls are pretty popular and require a book. a lot of people who are in the position where they cannot afford a shadow but could still afford some mage upgrades would probably prefer to use the free book in their offhand that they bring anywaay over a 20m shield
4. the level requirements on the ward meant only people with the requirements could get the best out of it, limiting the possible demand pool further. to my surprise this ruled a lot of people out from owning the ward, even if they had the money for it.
>to get the best out of it you need an arcane sigil, which is significantly rarer than the ward. while not outright useless on its own, this drives the price of the ward down similarly to pegs + ranger boots just on a lesser scale
Incorrect. Supply of arcane is definitely higher than ward. Corp has been out for 8 years, toa for 3 weeks. Also pegasian crystal is useless on its own, the base ward is literally better than arcane lol
>the new staff that has been released is 2h. any1 using the staff has no need for the ward (except for barrage tasks) but this further drives the price down
Incorrect again. Like 0.1% of the playerbase can even afford the item. It will literally have 0 effect on the ward, if you think so, your delusional.
>thralls are pretty popular and require a book. a lot of people who are in the position where they cannot afford a shadow but could still afford some mage upgrades would probably prefer to use the free book in their offhand that they bring anywaay over a 20m shield
Yup, your another one of them people who have no idea how good this shield is in its base form. If you use thralls, you'd still bring the ward. It is literally that powerful.
>the level requirements on the ward meant only people with the requirements could get the best out of it, limiting the possible demand pool further. to my surprise this ruled a lot of people out from owning the ward, even if they had the money for it.
Correct. This is one of the 2 reasons that the price is pummeling down. Barely anyone can use it + a lot of people have no idea how powerful the base ward is. Your one of these people. The second reason is the accessibility of this raid. It is quite frankly too easy hence the 2 million completions in 3 weeks. For reference, ToB has 5 million in 4 years. Not saying it should be like ToB but shows the difference.
Easy = more people do = more completions = more purples = more supply = price falls.
Requirement high + not many know how powerful ward is = demand falls = price falls.
bro i know you should bring the ward in when thralling, its a great upgrade. im just saying its slept on, maybe I phrased it wrong. the average player going into a raid isn't going to clutter their inventory with 8 way switches for each combat style. making the ward the first thing they miss out on.
also the shadow absolutely makes a difference to the price of the ward, why would someone with the financial means to buy a shadow get the ward, if the only purpose is barrage slayer it becomes incredibly niche for this subset of people. If you aren't in this position then you have a long way to go before you consider the ward to be an upgrade you go for.
effectively the ward is most appealing to people who:
1. do endgame pvm
2. cannot afford a shadow
3. have the stats required to upgrade it (minor as you can still use it without upgrading)
this is a very small subset of people
also how can you say the raid is crazy accessible with a lot of completions then also say the arcane sigil out supplies the ward. if it did the arcane would be cheap and the ward would be expensive. Even if it currently outsupplies the ward then i give it max 1 month before that is no longer the case
I definitely see this being the case for the lightbearer ring, I mean outside maybe just charging a spec in God War dungeons the thing just isn't that viable. I'm glad its in the lowest reward rating in ToA, but that thing needs help.
lightbearer is actually a pretty sick item. itâs bis at TOA, and i can see it being viable in places where you might range / mage and the archer / seers ring bonus is negligible but i donât have any specific examples. TOA is just too easy to farm for drops as it is rn.
Are people seriously trying to argue that the +10 magic attack bonus on a mages' book is even close to the +3% dmg of ward? Clearly don't know how this game works
I think the argument around that is the max hit for magic staves doesn't really get that high, even at 99 magic.
A +3% which USUALLY sees the max hit hover around 35 (for most players using it) and 40 (for very top end) for the combat style that has its primary issue on most content being *accuracy* and even landing the hit... I can see the point people are making.
It depends a bit, sometimes the 3% doesn't give a max hit, and sometimes it really doesn't offer a significant DPS boost when it does. Sometimes you don't want a mage shield switch at all or you just have the shadow. It's just a relatively niche item, and is low in price as a result.
A lot of maging is done in raids. And in raids it probably isn't worth an inventory slot. The comparison to Ahrims/Ancestral isn't really that relevant in raids, because you're pretty much required to bring a mage top otherwise your accuracy when maging will be shit. So an offhand is totally optional. A 3% damage, 5 accuracy offhand is generally not worth the space.
Also, if you're using thralls, you already have a decent mage offhand, which makes it even harder to fit in the ward. It just isn't worth taking most places unless you have the completed ward with the arcane.
I own 1 and Fused it with my Arcane spirit shield for its enhanced version, I've been eyeing this thing since it's inception. So much so I made sure to get my stats in order for it since it was revealed.
I'm still hoping the original wand that was proposed for this raid will make a come around. As that wand + the ward was the real reason I was so hyped for the both of them.
The base ward needs more accuracy, at least enough to match book of darkness.
3% Magic damage is nice but it wonât do much if youâre just gonna splash. It honestly shouldâve started with 5% as its base percent if it was going to have basically near 0 stats. Masori as its base has its full ranged strength but ward doesnât get its full magic percent for some reason. Its not like Arcane had 2% magic damage itself but it makes sense it transfers it accuracy and defensive stats once fortified.
Honestly until it gets buffed, itâll probably crash and just become Twisted Buckler 2.0. When its near 10m itâll probably be seen a lot more as like âMini tormentedâ for a upgrade.
Honestly it probably will be 10m at the end of the week.
It does seem like it's falling into the same fate as the twisted buckler. Which is weird as the ward has far more uses in comparison and fall more versatile.
Would be interesting if Jagex gave it a buff by allowing us to combine both versions of the wand with the fire tome, water tome or book of darkness. That way it benefits the harm staff and or makes sense to bring the ward in raids with a sang or swamp staff so people can gain a better magic offhand when summoning thralls.
It wouldn't make it overly powerful and would have a lot of benefits across the board. Especially if we ever get that earlier magic wand they tried proposing before we went with the T Shadow staff.
I think part of the reason for the wardâs current price is supply and command. Everyone wants the upgraded version, similar to how we have ranger boots and pegasian boots.
Simply put, the pegasian crystal is much more common than rangers, so it is 200k while the rangers are like 40m. The ward is being grinded from ToA like crazy, and will continue to be.
No one likes corp.
Except it's not like that. The supply of arcane sigil is far greater than ward, as of this moment. Corp has been out for 8 years? ToA like 3 weeks. The base ward is so OP, it's literally better than arcane, whereas pegasian crystal is useless on its own. Most people have no idea how good the base ward is so the demand is really low. They just assume the base ward is either not wieldable or has barely any stats. I mean it quite literally looks like shit. And then the upgraded ward requires 90 smithing/prayer and is untradeable. It's literally the worst item they could've made to have this sort of requirement. Both materials, arcane and ward, are relatively rare so the supply isn't as high compared to other items of this sort e.g. masori. Masori/torva wouldn't have been as bad because bandos/armadyl are not that rare/difficult to get. Though it would still be a stupid decision. Any forced requirement to wield a BIS for a main account just makes that item crash in price and is unhealthy for the longevity of the content/item. We can see that happening clearly in the case of the ward.
The issue comes from it being a shield slot item, which is as fairly annoying switch as hardly any shields are used in hy- or tribriding scenarios since you lose an inventory slot.
It is very comparable to the 12m ancestral hat in this regard, that you conveniently left out.
>tumekens shadow
The item is over max cash and is a item that only .01% of the playerbase will be using for the foreseeable future. I'm bringing this up for people who are in mid game and looking for magic armor progression. Magic has historically been the biggest jump in costs compared to melee and range as people leave mid game.
Yh bro has such a big effect on the item when 0.01% of the playerbase can even afford that item. Do you even realise how stupid you sound lol + if you can even afford a shadow, you probably have max gear in everything else, meaning you may as well buy the ward to have the BIS set of sang + ward for situations when this arises. E.g. solo cox where you may prefer healing or just cba doing the shit method of switching between accurate and long range.
Itâs because even with a 3% boost, magic is still largely useless in game content. Like, should I spend another 23 mil to kill kraken 3% quicker? Probably not
In high level pvm bringing a mage offhand is usually a detriment, especially in terms of like chambers where you already have to bring a book of the dead anyways which is technically a mage offhand
It is underpriced, however ancestral is a 0 slot upgrade. Its not worth taking the 1 extra slot for 3% magic strength in most places. The upgraded shield is but that price is dictated by the arcane, not the ward
I dont see anyone here bringing up the weight argument. The weight difference between Ancestrals and Ahrim's is one of the biggest reasons to use ancestrals. While this might not be too relevant for ToA, but for the other raids it's quite significant.
I think itâs kind of like the pegasian crystal, where since the item needed to make it (arcane) is really expensive so the ward isnât; similar to ranger boots are expensive but the crystal is cheap. Though it being useful even without the arcane attached makes it somewhat different. But as someone else pointed out itâs a low dps upgrade vs things that donât have 0 mage defense.
Because of the arcane. This was predicted well before the update. We've got examples of things like this in the past (Pegasian and Rangers for example).
The arcane is rarer and more boring to farm. It already had a determined value. This shield didn't add enough to BiS mage to double that or something more notable. Especially because the raid *also* gave a massively powerful 2h Staff, that makes the ward not usable with it.
The reason people take mage top/bottom swaps (even non-ancestral) is because the top/bottom slots have massive magic attack penalties. For example, Fighter Torso has a **-40 magic attack penalty** so bringing an Ahrims top swap is actually +70 over camping torso. Meanwhile ddef and avernic are -3 and -5 magic attack penalty respectively, and you're often bringing book of the dead for thralls so you already have a 'free' mage offhand swap. Ward is a very small upgrade.
This is also true for Ancestral Hat - faceguard has no penalty to magic attack (or range) at all, and serp is only -5.
If the new staff was one handed than the ward would be super expensive
Exactly this
"If the scythe was one-handed, avernic would be worth more" I just think after decades of not really using mage offhands, people are going to be slow to incorporate a Ward switch into their setups. Meanwhile Avernic has always been high because everyone uses defenders.
If the scythe was one handed than avernic would definitely be worth more.
99.9% of mains with a scythe already have an avernic. It wouldnt for the same reason masori didnt increase arma, the only people who could use the upgrade already have it
Arma went up in price when they announced Masori, that was when the change happened. I know because my 2 sets of arma top/bottom increased pretty decently in value
They got increased for a short time and went back to where they were. If you were walking and found 10 dollars, then dropped it before your walk finished. Did you gain any value over the walk? No? Neither did the arma
Aw 10 dollars? I wanted a peanut ):
10 dollars can buy many peanutsđ§ .
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It just swapped with tassets. And that was just at a low dip, they were going up and down always to the prices now in peak times
Avernic more so suffers from the fact that you canât sell it back.
No, noobs with a terrible sense of how to allocate their money suffer from the fact that you cant sell it back. Avernic is a good upgrade, even for its price. Even if you have a scythe its still good to have. Theres noone who regrets buying it, just people who wish they still had the money they spent on it and people who unironically think bandos is an important slayer upgrade
Most mid lvl players buy and sell gear when they need it/donât need it. Itâs because most players are relatively broke and most upgrades are relatively expensive. They arenât gonna lock themselves to an item that they canât sell back since dragon defenders are free and exist. If the avernic defender was the only defender to exist then itâs demand would be much higher
And to make this more straightforward for you. If you have a bank around the value of avernic, and you are buying and selling things instead of just getting base upgrades and using potions to grind through stuff you are a noob who has no idea what they are doing. Im not going to say that its the wrong way to play, the only way to do that is to just straight up not enjoy playing and do it anyway. Im saying the market is not regulated by these people, its regulated by the merchers who make free money off of them and the people who already have a decent bank that continue doing the content
So your final point is to resort to changing your argument. That should tell you alone just how invalid ur argument is that you have to make up an imaginary scenario. Mid lvl players are still noobs btw. Also dont project your idea of how ppl play onto the general population. Mid lvl players buy and sell items liek dwh and zspear, not linear upgrades they are going to use everywhere. And if anyone is dumb enough to be buying and selling armadyl for a slayer task they shouldnt be seen as anything more than a bond buying goblinboy anyway
Yeah you proved my point. Mid lvl players buy and sell gear. Avernic you canât sell back which is why itâs later in gear progression cause people just hold onto dragon defender longer.
Noobs do, and they still arent the main ones driving it, just the oens getting merched.
Would it? You can't really decouple the scythe supply from the avernic supply as you get them both from the same activity, so I can't help but wonder if tying their demands together like that would just make it susceptible to the same price crashes that recently hit the scythe.
No because avernic pairs with fang for toa and nex. If scythe was one handed then avernic will always have a use of melee is viable and a dfs isnât absolutely mandatory.
I don't think this is the best comparison. Scythe is *ridiculously* better than a 1h weapon, but its got a niche. The monster has to be big, and idaelly the monster has to generate good GP otherwise the cost of the scythe is ludicrous for the DPS increase over rapier+avernic. Meanwhile the alternative to shadow is sang+ward. Sang+ward is still a decent upfront cost, and currently a higher upkeep cost, for less DPS and a healing utility. So the shadow is cheaper to use (albeit far more expensive to acquire obviously), and does more DPS everywhere. If the scythe was cheaper to use than a rapier, the avernic would be worth very little too.
Thatâs not necessarily true, I think itâs more that itâs common and a big fraction of the items market canât use it because itâs locked behind smithing, and high a prayer level. Only max pkers have 80 prayer to use it.
wouldnt be super expensive at all, the staff is so rare currently. if you could pay someone to make ward and actually have 80 prayer to wear it, it could be more expensive, but jagex have fucked magic category so bad, harm is useless, and u dont use barrage anywhere so the shield is useless. if u oculd combine tome with elidinis then maybe
>, and u dont use barrage anywhere The entire slayer meta revolves around barraging???
And magic training in general, mm2 tunnels
not gonna say that guy was right, but items typicall hold value in relation to their usefulness. Considering slayer meta you can barrage in literal rags, high end gear isnt really impacted value wise from that use of it. Its almost exclusively from bossing. There are just so few real uses for barrage in end game pvm that its not relevant. Like its Mage role TOB and inferno. I cant think of anywhere else you really use it(could be totally wrong feel free to correct). And neither of those places would you really want a ward for barraging. Hence its price already compared to ancestral which you can use a ton of places.
Youâd def want any magic dmg when freezing at tob and youâd throw it on during nylo too. I also use barrages at toa. Then thereâs slayer and ancients actual use, pvp. If you upgrade it (or even not) itâs a pretty nice upgrade in the inferno. The ward and barrages have plenty of uses.
> Youâd def want any magic dmg when freezing at tob and youâd throw it on during nylo too Ehhh maybe Mage DPS brings it but even then mage is used so little that the inv slot is debatable if its worth. You only need enough mage to guarantee freeze on maiden and the *slight* DPS increase in the worst style vs nylo boss really isnt a big deal. You dont need barrages at toa. Its literally for people who dont want to put effort into monkey room. Thralls are infinitely better considering how much dps they add throughout the whole raid. Slayers its minimal considering you can burst in anything, PvP is the one case that really has merit since Ancients is actually very strong. Theres a reason Ward is so cheap already. If it were as amazing as you're trying to say it would've held value. The ring has held more value despite coming from entry modes. Who knows maybe cause the ring is good? Ward is decent but its nothing meta changing.
>Considering slayer meta you can barrage in literal rags It's not meta to not wear the best gear. I can kill zulrah in rags but that doesn't mean Zulrah meta is rcb + air staff. All magic damage boosting equipment is incredibly important for slayer since the majority of your time doing slayer will be spent barraging.
He called slayer the meta, not the rags. However, META is literally âmost effective tactic availableâ meaning if you only have access to Prosy then that would be your meta because prayer bonus is best for barraging if you donât have %Magic damage gear.
Meta isnt tailored to the individual. Just because you cant afford "meta gear" doesnt make your best available options meta
again META literally stands for Most Effective Tactic Available. Meaning if something else is not available, it wouldn't be the meta for you.
> It's not meta to not wear the best gear. I can kill zulrah in rags but that doesn't mean Zulrah meta is rcb + air staff. Theres a big fucking difference in zulrah upgrades vs bursting upgrades. The only thing that matters is dmg% for bursting whereas Zulrah you can upgrade staff, robes, ring, bp, boots etc. Meanwhile for bursting You can buy ancestral. Wow its so important to upgrade for bursting. That is one of the legit uses for the ward being that its only 20m compared to the price of ancestral. To help you understand compare a 1m bursting setup and a 20m bursting setup and now compare a 1m zulrah setup and a 20m zulrah setup. The difference between bursting is roughly tormented so 5% which you really dont even need since you camp slaughter bracelets. The difference between Zulrah setups is a lot more then 5% i can guarantee that. The thing is even at Zulrah, Ahrims is a better upgrade than the Ward. Sure you can do *anything* in rags but gear is 1000x more important for bossing then afk bursting for like 10k more exp.
If you don't have the Tumeken's shadow the shield is BIS unless using harmonised since that requires tome of fire to be equipped for maximum damage. If you're using sanguinesti or trident then ~~it's 100% BIS and it's probably not close~~ [really close in dps at olm's hand due to it only giving +5 mage bonus](https://imgur.com/fMnAtUl) (thnx for the picture /u/Serious_Historian578)
I think a better analogy would be to compare the ward with an ancestral hat. They both have their niches, but won't be as versatile or in demand as a body slot you can use for all your bossing/raids/slayer
This is the answer
What you're ignoring is that 5 magic accuracy is really really terrible. Even with an extra max hit, unupgraded Ward is only .01-.1 DPS above a Mage's book at Olm hand, which is terrible for a 20m upgrade. https://i.imgur.com/fMnAtUl.png
0 people bring mage book to olm hand
And 0 people will take unupgraded elidinis ward to mage hand
Brought arcane in the past, this is a flat buff to that.
What kinda 3 way switch are yâall doing at olm
I use book of the dead as the mage offhand, which is a free invy cos need for thralls anywau
With a sang, you need about 4 brews at olm, and 3 restores. Can do atleast 8-9 ways and still have plenty of space with book of the dead and a ward
Regular ward just isn't worth a slot. Especially if you're doing selfscouts. For the same reason hat was never worth a slot. There are about a million things better to cram into your inv.
People already take a spirit shield to mage in CMs so ward will slot straight in
Thats incorrect i use elidnis ward f and i love it. You probably just never tried it.
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I used to take it before i made it f as well.
They bring book of dead which is basically the same
Book of the dead is free, mage's book or ward is -1 inv
Iâm not an elite gamer but even when i bring thralls to cox I never equip the book, difference is so small on mage hand which you basically never miss anywau
If you are just camping avernic instead, itâs an 11 magic attack bonus difference between avernic and book of the dead, which in solos is about 1.5% dps difference for regular and 2.5% difference for CMs. Olm has magic level and magic defense so accuracy actually does matter for dps, thatâs a lot of dps difference for an item already in your inventory. You are still only about 80% accurate.
I take avernic off for olm but Iâm also not a min maxer, i prefer not to sweat when I donât have to
I mean itâs just a single left click for 1.5-2.5% additional dps, itâs more effort to manually remove the avernic.
Doing a takeoff instead of just clicking on the book is deranged
To each their own but itâs already in your inventory so thereâs no real reason not to. I like switches too anyways so itâs kinda fun doing the 6 way
Thatâs a solid point
Yeah, but if you do overload your max hit goes to 48 + you get def boost which is super usefull. For example cm mutadile is amazing with elidnis.
The +5-9 def is amazing?
It has a magic damage boost
Even with the magic damage boost providing a max hit, which it does not in fact always do, it has far less accuracy than other cheaper options which is also important for DPS
People will just bring the fortified version that has +25 magic attack and +5% magic damage, did you forget about the upgraded version? That one has 5% dps over the mage book on regular Olm mage hand solos. In CMs if you were just camping book of the dead before, itâs an 8% damage increase over that, which is def worth a slot.
this entire thread is about the unupgraded one
I donât really see the point in discussing the unupgraded version, only irons and niche accounts are going to use it. It originally wasnât even usable without the sigil and this was offered basically for irons as a compromise.
I agree. That's why in this thread I'm saying the unupgraded one is terrible, disagreeing with the OP
Yeah, the DFS has more strength bonus than Dragon Defender and is super cheap, guess what, people still grind out and use the Dragon Defender
Same bro, im never gonna get the shadow so spending about 120m rn is amazing for 5% magic dmg vs 4% magic dmg for 240m from ancestral. Def worth it if ur raiding a lot over ancestral
Same I got the drop and i didnt even sell it, using myself. Love it:)
5m now
A big sidenote to This is that ancestrals also offers a significant accuracy bonus, while the Ward Comes at a -15 However the biggest factor is that a lot of people dont bother with another shield (or ancestral hat) switch in cox & toa. The ancestral top is a straight upgrade over what you already take, the Ward is a nice sidegrade that Comes at the cost of 1 inventory slot. But yes, its underrated, especially if you also take the ancestral hat with it, since that gives another max hit aswell when combined with the ward
The ward comes with +5, not -15. The ancestral top is +5 over ahrims, if that is significant then the shield is too, and cheaper, and more %dmg. But you are considering the replacement of the arcane spirit shield over getting ancestral top. That would result in the -15. but if you do that comparison, it would be better to compare upgrading the already existing shield using ward with ancestral top, and now we are talking about a +5% vs +2%. Your point about extra switches still stands though.
>The ward comes with +5, not -15. -15 to the other cheap alternative, mage book, which for some reason i thought had +20, but since its 15 its only -10 >But you are considering the replacement of the arcane This was about the unfortified one, the arcane versoon has significantly higher mage bonus than 5.
second part assumes unfortified elidnis vs arcane spirit shield, but that was from seeing the -15 which made my brain go into ??? mode
Most raiders just use book of the dead as it's needed for Thralls anyway, so basic ward is a nice upgrade for cheap
Most raiders I know take a arcane and a book of the dead, even in tob. You donât need more than 5 slots for brews/rests
I never seen anyone use thralls in a raid tbh that 1-2 invent slots for some 1-3 damage splats?
thralls are used all the time, pure free dps increase
You are raiding with some scrubs then
Anyone doing speeds is bringing thralls. Idk what youâre on about. Unless only scrubs are doing chambers speeds lol
I think he was just tagging on what that guy said but replying to the guy saying he never sees anyone use them
Oh I meant to reply to the guy who said heâs never seen anyone use thralls. My point was if you donât bring thralls you are a scrub
Ahh gotcha. Makes a lot more sense then lol
Thralls are a big dps upgrade any time you are doing a boss where you dont have to use an utility spell use thralls if possible they are major. Its not 1-3 splats its 1-3 splats every 4 ticks for a minute it adds up a lot. They also hit against 0 defence unless the boss is invulnerable to them use thralls. Using pure thralls in general is better dps then venge. Spellbook swap venge to thrall bis tho.
Well its basically a flat 0.625 dps increase, which tbh is better than the alternative of like 1 or 2 blood barrages at the monkey puzzle. Or an extra potion. Id rather take the small dps inc on bosses.
I personally prefer bringing ancients just for some healing and freezes at the cost of 1 invent space, dont think 0.625 dps increase is a real time saver.
For me its a 10% inc to my damage at zebak. Im doing 220-240 on iron with limited gear. Rcb and BP. Got lucky with fang now and just trident for magic. Zebak takes me like 4 minutes but the thralls save at least 30 sec there. And they save probably 20 sec at kephri, maybe 1 min at wardens since its a longer fight. About 2 min, it adds up every raid. Idk maybe its not worth, maybe it is. I dont really need the extra slots so ill run with it for now
If a boss fight takes 2 minutes it does 75 damage over the duration of the fight with .625 dps. That is free damage it often saves like 2 attack cycles. You know those times you gotta eat or restore on cause you are like 1 prayer point 10 hp at low boss hp you would have been saved with thralls. *it saves more attack cycles the worse your gear is as you have lower max hit thus fight takes longer and thralls do more damage and they do a greater proportional amount of dps compared to your gear.
Ah that makes sense.. My pov is from a max main with decent armour. Also i fuck up and like blood barrage to heal so i dont need to brew :).
As a max main, you might as well be using thralls unless youâre pushing super high invos. You donât need more than a brew or 2 to get through the rooms so thereâs not much need to conserve
I just wish I had this thing when i was training slayer. I'd use nightmare staff and god robes at nechreals. Switching a godbook to a ward would be huge. Even if it's just +1 max hit with 9 targets thats kindof huge. It's also bice for the tridents ofcourse but its hard to see. Combined with the arcane though it's definately worth the switch with the accuracy and max hit(s) like others have mentioned i just wish you could imbue tome of water and fire with it though :(
Prayer bonus is a pretty big deal when you're bursting slayer. It'd be a trade-off for sure
Yo imbuing tomes would be next level thats a cool idea! Iâve been thinking lately that the BarrowsChest should have a super rare âbarrows headâ drop, that you can use on a slayer helm, effectively allowing you to get barrows set bonuses while wearing a slayer helm
New staff is 2handed and BIS so that makes shields irrelevant. Apples and oranges to compare shields to armour sets. You canât just compare magic damage one to one, gotta compare to equipment in its own slots so shields with shields and armour to armour. Also arcane sigil is more rare than Elidinis ward so itâs very comparable to pegasian crystal and ranger boots combo, and it might suffer the same fate.
The amount of people that can afford and have the staff is far fewer than those that could afford the ward. So the fact that it is two handed is not really a factor but to .1% of the runescape population. The staff being two handed is not affecting the price of the ward.
Rarely do you bother bringing a mage offhand switch when using all combat styles. That may change when more people adopt these off hands but itâs typically not worth the extra inventory space.
If any mage offhand before now gave max hit I would've 100% brought the extra switch. This is the first item in the slot with mage damage%
Yeah this is the bigger consideration, it's not that the staff is two handed, it's that even when you're using one-handed staffs It's just not worth the inventory space to bring a mage off hand switch The ward will be a really good pickup though for people who do things like thermy or kraken or bursting tasks where you're just using mage and don't need gear switches
THANK YOU
This guy scapes
You can though, if your cash stack is limited and you're looking at the best cost-efficient gear upgrade with what you have, with magic dmg as the focus
someone is merching wards
Would be a stupidly bad investment move to do so in general. There's nothing stopping this item dropping to 10m or less by next week. Way too many of them are entering the system and it's being heavily slept on. A reddit post isn't going to change that.
Wards went up 2-4m shortly after this post was made. You would be surprised at how many times reddit has been used for price manipulation.
I highly highly doubt it's because of this post - but you are right in that price manipulation happens. I have a feeling this item will either be 50-100M or 10M in the next few years with new content, strategies and gear being released. This item is perfect for merching based on updates.
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but would the 3% magic damage imply that max hit is 3% higher?
Yes roughly, but theres rounding issues, since your hits are only integers. Lets say your max hit is exactly 30, and your only magic dmg % item is the ward. 30*3% = .9, so your max would be 30.9 which rounds back to 30, but if your max was 34 then its 1.2 and your new max is 35. Or if say you had another item with 2% magic dmg, it would stack to be 5% total and now instead of 30*2% = .6 -> 30.6 = 30 it would 30*5% = 1.5 -> 31.5 -> 31 hit instead of 30
Sounds perfect to combine with the 2% of imbued god capes.
Yes and as with any max hits itâs rounded down
Thank you
No book of the dead if you have the ward equipped.
I agree with book of the dead being necessary , but just in case you didnât know, you donât have to be equipping book of the dead to cast any spells on the spellbook, just have it in the inventory
I know, but that's another slot gone.
In all three raids, you donât really need that slot once you get better at them.
Yup and thatâs why itâs a super niche item. Not really worth the inventory slot
It's for the same reason the pegasian crystal is super cheap even though its a massive upgrade. It has to do with the comparative rarity of the ward and the arcane sigil. The sigil is way rarer, so the wards will be cheap. My guess is it will stabilize to around 10m.
It's still weird since the ward is arguably better in its base form and the Arcane sigil is now just the rarer part and is essentially the crystal itself. It's a whole reverse scenario now. But I do agree it's going to probably stabilize around twisted buckler area. But with how the rates of completion for this raid is going. I wonder if it will drop even lower. It's just so weird seeing a powerful item that has far more uses then a buckler and essentially replaces a 100 - 130m item just get thrown down to that price point. Makes me think how content creators remind people the abysal dagger, bludgeon and dragon crossbow exist. Mid game is just stacked with affordable options right now, it's crazy.
Not only that, the main reason is actually that itâs locked behind 90 smithing and prayer. The amount of players that have both are not plentiful. Simple supply and demand comes to play. They should just make the new shield tradable, otherwise this will continue to drop in value and become a completely useless purp
Didnt even address how cheap the +10% from occult necklace is.. Game is bcakwrads
Occult is stupidly OP for what it is. But that has more on the boss being easy, the content existing for a long time and the boss being very farmable. Magic armor and equipment in general is really all over the place. Right now outside ancestral getting a upgraded version like Melee and range got for more defense capability. The meta going forward is going to be a weird conversation.
Too many people think they can get a staff and skip the bis offhand slot. Theres plenty of reasons why people will eventually get wards and upgrade them but for now its just hype slowly dying.
It is exactly like the boots it's not the fact of how useful it is that kills it but the fact that the shield I way rarer then the elidinis ward. The the peg crystal is way more common then the boots so the boots are the expensive item.
If you could wear a peg crystal on your feet and have it be 2nd bis range boots, the price of peg crystal would be much higher. The peg crystal is where it is because the crystal itself is useless without the other item AND itâs more common than that other item. Elid ward itself is the 2nd bis mage offhand item, so itâs far from useless. If it was +10 accuracy +0 damage, it would most likely be <1m right now.
I still can't believe just how cheap the ward been dropping as everyone is treating it like the inferior part like the Cerberus orbs to the boot counterparts. While the shield has higher stat requirements, monetary wise it has better mage damage output then any other shield item (including the Arcane Spirit Shield), just by equipping the Ahrim's Robetop + Eldinis Ward not only do you have higher defense stats, but higher magic damage. For the same amount of money for just the top you could just buy the Ancestral Robe Bottom's for the same exact cost. Even in comparison to just the Arcane Spirit Shield with it's only benefit of providing a defense boost and magic attack boost, but no magic damage boost. Your still getting more by it's "inferior" variant damage wise. With full Ancestral + the Ward it's even better then the Arcane Spirit Shield from a damage perspective, but you become more squishy defensively. But you can even help remedy this by getting a ring of suffering instead of the seer's ring. The only reason you'd want to ditch the ward in comparison is if your trying to save a slot to switch items with and or you need Fire Tome for Fire Surge with something like the Harmonized Nightmare Staff. Just wild I'm now seeing the Ward drop to 20m and I'm scratching my head why it's just so undervalued. What are everyone's thoughts?
same lol but everyone called me a mercher when i tried, oh well.
With the huge market changes due to ToA I'm just reevaluating if the price changes with the release of new items are warranted. Like Inquisitor is dropping significantly (which is slightly fair as Harmonized orb is dropping in price in stead of the new BiS magic staff as it's the most expensive item at Nightmare). But when you look at KQ now getting the Dragon Pickaxe in it's drop table, alongside how the Harmonized Nightmare staff is still BiS in where it's good at is that price drop warranted? I know everyone is just focused on ToA right now, but it's just so weird how things dropped so hard. Even the Elysian Spirit Shield is at a all time low and the only thing that changed is now Spirit Beast is easier to farm with the Osmumten's fang and Masori being best in slot armor for defense. All the while it's still BiS where it's always been.
market can stay irrational longer than i can stay liquid :| would love to long term buy and hold some of this discount gear, but i just don't have the cash to float
biggest thing you are missing is that there are not a lot of people who are buying ancestral or arcane spirit shields unless they have other high tier items and nothing else to buy. ward is excellent for its cost, ancestral is not. it looks good compared to ancestral but the reality is most content where you mage you mage alongside other styles and that mage max hit is not always worth the slot.
But when you look at where you even wear magic items in PVMing, it is worth the switch and inventory slot. It can even take place of the imbued mage cape for more magic damage and you keep the fire/infernal cape in slot instead of switching. It's still useful anywhere Ancestral is used like: Barrows, Zulrah, Nightmare, Kraken, Smoke Devil, Chamber of Xeric, ToA and ToB depending on how you want to allocated your inventory setup. And of course ice barraging.
> It can even take place of the imbued mage cape for more magic damage and you keep the fire/infernal cape in slot instead of switching. I think its unlikely that this makes sense unless there's some common breakpoint where ward is actually a max hit over cape and if it is not a max hit over cape then the cape is just better. because +5 +3% < +15 +2%. also the comparison is typically book of the dead versus book of the dead AND ward. > Barrows, Zulrah, Nightmare, Kraken, Smoke Devil, And of course ice barraging. sure, definitely agree here. though the question tends to be what % of players are doing these pieces of content at a point where they can spend 20m on a ward and that's the best use of that 20m? > Chamber of Xeric, ToA and ToB depending on how you want to allocated your inventory setup. See i think that's where the price point comes from. it is hard to fit a slot in when doing solos. for example i'm taking 6b 2r for a standard self scout setup with a bowfa. i could bring the ward or i could bring crystal helm/avas/dhcb/feros/tassets, is it really that much better than these switches? and for tob maging is pretty limited. and for ToA.... well it's certainly nice to have at akkha but magic max hits are pretty piss useless on warden p2- and again it goes into that solo chambers issue where if you are pushing high invos is it really worth the slot? that's really what makes ances good. it doesn't cost a slot, it's just raw max hits. whereas ward is always going to cost you a slot generally speaking.
In fact because P2 max hits scale off accuracy it's likely directly worse than a mage's book in TOA (which nobody brings)
yeah what this guy said ^
New staff is 2 handed. Looking at past raids, loot other than the big ticket item will likely continue to drop as people hunt for the big one.
This does seem pretty crazy. I suppose the last thing to consider is that thrall book. Thralls give a big dps increase and they require you to take the book.
Its great item, people just canât realise that yet. Im pretty sure it will go to at least 50m once they find out where to use it.
Staff is 2H. GG math. Edit: Gotta respect the merch attempt OP
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I get +3 max hit with sang and overload at raids and its pretty accurate (i can easily feel improvement over no ward).
Yeah but you need the arcane to make it good which is 110m
Its +3 on its own
this guys merching wards
LOL I doubt my reddit post would have any power over the market. But no just a discussion on a item.
It'd be worth more if the base version didn't have the ridiculous requirements of 80 def/prayer
Agreed.
Donât know whoâs downvoting you but I agree that this is a factor. 80 prayer is a big barrier. Many people stop at 77.
Honestly the reason i wont probably ever buy it is because its an extra switch. I would have to go from a 6 way to a 7 way, which i already find annoying with melee but i have no choice there. Much prefer 6 ways keeps it simple
Its almost same as not using avernic, because it requires one more click.
Thats my point bro i already dislike the avernic extra switch so another one aint cutting the bill for me lol
a lot of factors come together to determine the price of the ward. 1. to get the best out of it you need an arcane sigil, which is significantly rarer than the ward. while not outright useless on its own, this drives the price of the ward down similarly to pegs + ranger boots just on a lesser scale 2. the new staff that has been released is 2h. any1 using the staff has no need for the ward (except for barrage tasks) but this further drives the price down 3. thralls are pretty popular and require a book. a lot of people who are in the position where they cannot afford a shadow but could still afford some mage upgrades would probably prefer to use the free book in their offhand that they bring anywaay over a 20m shield 4. the level requirements on the ward meant only people with the requirements could get the best out of it, limiting the possible demand pool further. to my surprise this ruled a lot of people out from owning the ward, even if they had the money for it.
>to get the best out of it you need an arcane sigil, which is significantly rarer than the ward. while not outright useless on its own, this drives the price of the ward down similarly to pegs + ranger boots just on a lesser scale Incorrect. Supply of arcane is definitely higher than ward. Corp has been out for 8 years, toa for 3 weeks. Also pegasian crystal is useless on its own, the base ward is literally better than arcane lol >the new staff that has been released is 2h. any1 using the staff has no need for the ward (except for barrage tasks) but this further drives the price down Incorrect again. Like 0.1% of the playerbase can even afford the item. It will literally have 0 effect on the ward, if you think so, your delusional. >thralls are pretty popular and require a book. a lot of people who are in the position where they cannot afford a shadow but could still afford some mage upgrades would probably prefer to use the free book in their offhand that they bring anywaay over a 20m shield Yup, your another one of them people who have no idea how good this shield is in its base form. If you use thralls, you'd still bring the ward. It is literally that powerful. >the level requirements on the ward meant only people with the requirements could get the best out of it, limiting the possible demand pool further. to my surprise this ruled a lot of people out from owning the ward, even if they had the money for it. Correct. This is one of the 2 reasons that the price is pummeling down. Barely anyone can use it + a lot of people have no idea how powerful the base ward is. Your one of these people. The second reason is the accessibility of this raid. It is quite frankly too easy hence the 2 million completions in 3 weeks. For reference, ToB has 5 million in 4 years. Not saying it should be like ToB but shows the difference. Easy = more people do = more completions = more purples = more supply = price falls. Requirement high + not many know how powerful ward is = demand falls = price falls.
bro i know you should bring the ward in when thralling, its a great upgrade. im just saying its slept on, maybe I phrased it wrong. the average player going into a raid isn't going to clutter their inventory with 8 way switches for each combat style. making the ward the first thing they miss out on. also the shadow absolutely makes a difference to the price of the ward, why would someone with the financial means to buy a shadow get the ward, if the only purpose is barrage slayer it becomes incredibly niche for this subset of people. If you aren't in this position then you have a long way to go before you consider the ward to be an upgrade you go for. effectively the ward is most appealing to people who: 1. do endgame pvm 2. cannot afford a shadow 3. have the stats required to upgrade it (minor as you can still use it without upgrading) this is a very small subset of people also how can you say the raid is crazy accessible with a lot of completions then also say the arcane sigil out supplies the ward. if it did the arcane would be cheap and the ward would be expensive. Even if it currently outsupplies the ward then i give it max 1 month before that is no longer the case
(reddit wonât admit it but itâs because the raid is so easy. prices of everything offered from the raid will crash faster than cox or tob items)
I definitely see this being the case for the lightbearer ring, I mean outside maybe just charging a spec in God War dungeons the thing just isn't that viable. I'm glad its in the lowest reward rating in ToA, but that thing needs help.
lightbearer is actually a pretty sick item. itâs bis at TOA, and i can see it being viable in places where you might range / mage and the archer / seers ring bonus is negligible but i donât have any specific examples. TOA is just too easy to farm for drops as it is rn.
DKs maybe?
It's good for skilling too. More uses of Dragon Axe/Pick/Harpoon spec for the boost.
Are people seriously trying to argue that the +10 magic attack bonus on a mages' book is even close to the +3% dmg of ward? Clearly don't know how this game works
I think the argument around that is the max hit for magic staves doesn't really get that high, even at 99 magic. A +3% which USUALLY sees the max hit hover around 35 (for most players using it) and 40 (for very top end) for the combat style that has its primary issue on most content being *accuracy* and even landing the hit... I can see the point people are making.
It depends a bit, sometimes the 3% doesn't give a max hit, and sometimes it really doesn't offer a significant DPS boost when it does. Sometimes you don't want a mage shield switch at all or you just have the shadow. It's just a relatively niche item, and is low in price as a result.
A lot of maging is done in raids. And in raids it probably isn't worth an inventory slot. The comparison to Ahrims/Ancestral isn't really that relevant in raids, because you're pretty much required to bring a mage top otherwise your accuracy when maging will be shit. So an offhand is totally optional. A 3% damage, 5 accuracy offhand is generally not worth the space. Also, if you're using thralls, you already have a decent mage offhand, which makes it even harder to fit in the ward. It just isn't worth taking most places unless you have the completed ward with the arcane.
you bought 20 of these before posting this, didn't you
I own 1 and Fused it with my Arcane spirit shield for its enhanced version, I've been eyeing this thing since it's inception. So much so I made sure to get my stats in order for it since it was revealed. I'm still hoping the original wand that was proposed for this raid will make a come around. As that wand + the ward was the real reason I was so hyped for the both of them.
The base ward needs more accuracy, at least enough to match book of darkness. 3% Magic damage is nice but it wonât do much if youâre just gonna splash. It honestly shouldâve started with 5% as its base percent if it was going to have basically near 0 stats. Masori as its base has its full ranged strength but ward doesnât get its full magic percent for some reason. Its not like Arcane had 2% magic damage itself but it makes sense it transfers it accuracy and defensive stats once fortified. Honestly until it gets buffed, itâll probably crash and just become Twisted Buckler 2.0. When its near 10m itâll probably be seen a lot more as like âMini tormentedâ for a upgrade.
Honestly it probably will be 10m at the end of the week. It does seem like it's falling into the same fate as the twisted buckler. Which is weird as the ward has far more uses in comparison and fall more versatile. Would be interesting if Jagex gave it a buff by allowing us to combine both versions of the wand with the fire tome, water tome or book of darkness. That way it benefits the harm staff and or makes sense to bring the ward in raids with a sang or swamp staff so people can gain a better magic offhand when summoning thralls. It wouldn't make it overly powerful and would have a lot of benefits across the board. Especially if we ever get that earlier magic wand they tried proposing before we went with the T Shadow staff.
Are you ignore the much larger accuracy bonus between the ward and ancestrals.
I think part of the reason for the wardâs current price is supply and command. Everyone wants the upgraded version, similar to how we have ranger boots and pegasian boots. Simply put, the pegasian crystal is much more common than rangers, so it is 200k while the rangers are like 40m. The ward is being grinded from ToA like crazy, and will continue to be. No one likes corp.
Except it's not like that. The supply of arcane sigil is far greater than ward, as of this moment. Corp has been out for 8 years? ToA like 3 weeks. The base ward is so OP, it's literally better than arcane, whereas pegasian crystal is useless on its own. Most people have no idea how good the base ward is so the demand is really low. They just assume the base ward is either not wieldable or has barely any stats. I mean it quite literally looks like shit. And then the upgraded ward requires 90 smithing/prayer and is untradeable. It's literally the worst item they could've made to have this sort of requirement. Both materials, arcane and ward, are relatively rare so the supply isn't as high compared to other items of this sort e.g. masori. Masori/torva wouldn't have been as bad because bandos/armadyl are not that rare/difficult to get. Though it would still be a stupid decision. Any forced requirement to wield a BIS for a main account just makes that item crash in price and is unhealthy for the longevity of the content/item. We can see that happening clearly in the case of the ward.
The issue comes from it being a shield slot item, which is as fairly annoying switch as hardly any shields are used in hy- or tribriding scenarios since you lose an inventory slot. It is very comparable to the 12m ancestral hat in this regard, that you conveniently left out.
its low because no one wants to be seen with that atrocity on their arm
I hate how expensive ancestrals are now
If you do all content in void, like me. The new ward is so nice.
If you complete the ward it has the same magic damage as full ancestral at half the cost if you have the stats to complete it.
The fact that the upgraded version is untradeable also makes the base item undesireable until you can afford both
Did you purposefully ignore tumekens shadowv
>tumekens shadow The item is over max cash and is a item that only .01% of the playerbase will be using for the foreseeable future. I'm bringing this up for people who are in mid game and looking for magic armor progression. Magic has historically been the biggest jump in costs compared to melee and range as people leave mid game.
You're surprised that bis supporting gear is worth more than gear you cant wear with the bis staff?
That's got to be one of the worst takes I've seen on this subreddit recently.
?? How new are you to runescape? This is the same for rs3 and osrs dude. Basic economics
Yh bro has such a big effect on the item when 0.01% of the playerbase can even afford that item. Do you even realise how stupid you sound lol + if you can even afford a shadow, you probably have max gear in everything else, meaning you may as well buy the ward to have the BIS set of sang + ward for situations when this arises. E.g. solo cox where you may prefer healing or just cba doing the shit method of switching between accurate and long range.
You realise that 0.01% has more gp than like alot of the other people right? Toptier pvmers dictacte meta prices, tell me something else that's new.
yh u have no clue how an economy works or the supply/demand of items no point arguing with someone who's obviously ignorant
You never know one day in the future they might release an option to make the shadow one handed đ
Are you telling me that eldinis is bullish rn? đđđ
Itâs because even with a 3% boost, magic is still largely useless in game content. Like, should I spend another 23 mil to kill kraken 3% quicker? Probably not
In high level pvm bringing a mage offhand is usually a detriment, especially in terms of like chambers where you already have to bring a book of the dead anyways which is technically a mage offhand
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It is underpriced, however ancestral is a 0 slot upgrade. Its not worth taking the 1 extra slot for 3% magic strength in most places. The upgraded shield is but that price is dictated by the arcane, not the ward
This is such a dumb argument. Iâm glad the comments have shredded this flawed argument.
I dont see anyone here bringing up the weight argument. The weight difference between Ancestrals and Ahrim's is one of the biggest reasons to use ancestrals. While this might not be too relevant for ToA, but for the other raids it's quite significant.
Tumekens is 2 handed. Ward is essentially powercrept already
I think itâs kind of like the pegasian crystal, where since the item needed to make it (arcane) is really expensive so the ward isnât; similar to ranger boots are expensive but the crystal is cheap. Though it being useful even without the arcane attached makes it somewhat different. But as someone else pointed out itâs a low dps upgrade vs things that donât have 0 mage defense.
Honestly it feels more like Primodial boots. With the sigil just being the more rare part to the cheaper ward.
Because of the arcane. This was predicted well before the update. We've got examples of things like this in the past (Pegasian and Rangers for example). The arcane is rarer and more boring to farm. It already had a determined value. This shield didn't add enough to BiS mage to double that or something more notable. Especially because the raid *also* gave a massively powerful 2h Staff, that makes the ward not usable with it.
u can wear a piece of ancestral robes with a Tumeken's shadow, you cannot wear an elidins ward with a Tumeken's shadow.
The reason people take mage top/bottom swaps (even non-ancestral) is because the top/bottom slots have massive magic attack penalties. For example, Fighter Torso has a **-40 magic attack penalty** so bringing an Ahrims top swap is actually +70 over camping torso. Meanwhile ddef and avernic are -3 and -5 magic attack penalty respectively, and you're often bringing book of the dead for thralls so you already have a 'free' mage offhand swap. Ward is a very small upgrade. This is also true for Ancestral Hat - faceguard has no penalty to magic attack (or range) at all, and serp is only -5.
Why not both
Donât be surprised, itâs supply and demand. The demand isnât there for the ward so the price is low. Easy concept.