09 February 2015 - Ninja Update – Responsive Combat

Earth · **Posted:** February 9th, 2015, 8:10 am

runescape.com wrote:

Today's update brings a change that'll make RuneScape combat faster, more frantic and more fluid: improved combat responsiveness from the deadly and talented Ninja Team. Get into game, gear up and seek out an enemy - you'll notice the difference right away.

As determined in a Player Power poll last year, we've also made a whole load of Gielinor's deadliest beasts aggressive, as they once were.

Read on for further details!

Combat Responsiveness

First, we removed the short delays between cooldowns ending and abilities triggering, and between clicking an ability and that ability activating. This means combat now feels more immediate and dynamic – your actions translating crisply to those of your character in-game.

Note that we've increased cooldown times slightly to compensate for the quicker combat, so combat balance is unaffected.

As well as that, we've also improved target switching, so you can charge into battle with lethal efficiency.

Finally, if you're a Revolution fan, you'll find that your favourite combat mode kicks in and deactivates in a much smoother fashion.

There's no substitute for trying today's improvements first-hand. Log in and give it a go!

The RuneScape Ninja Team

Monster Aggression

Following last year's Player Power poll to bring back aggressive monsters, these beasts will now come straight at you when you enter their lairs:

Lesser demons
Greater demons
Black demons
Banshees
Mighty banshees
Aberrant spectres
Lizards
Desert lizards
Small lizards
Kurasks
Harpie bug swarms
Skeletal wyverns
Brine rats
Mutated bloodvelds
Dark beasts
Hill giants
Fire giants
Moss giants

You'll be able to initiate combat with as many monsters as you can handle, but only one enemy will attack you at a time if you make no aggressive move of your own.

Monsters will remain aggressive unless:

Your combat level is more than double theirs.
You've stayed in the area for longer than five minutes.

Stay alert on your travels - and make good use of those new, sharper combat skills!

The RuneScape Team

In Other News

Come and try out the new, more-responsive combat with Mod Kalaya and Mod Matthe in Castle Wars: today at 16:00 UTC, World 24.
GameBlast15 is coming 20th February, along with the next Double XP Weekend! Prepare now for maximum gains all-round on this weekend of charity fun.
The first RuneLabs poll is live! Head into game now and vote on your choice of player-proposed updates.
Want to know more about RuneScape lore? Head to the Lore Discussion forum on Thursday 12th February, 18:00 UTC, and join Mods Osborne, Raven, Srowley, Stu and Chaose for a Lore Q&A.
Try our fun Valentine's quiz and find out which Gielinorian's the sugar on your summer pie.
Read the patch notes for other updates released today.

Adbot · **Posted:** February 9th, 2015, 8:10 am

Arceus · **Posted:** February 9th, 2015, 7:10 pm

I know a few people who weren't too pleased with "more responsive" combat. What do you guys think?

Shane · **Posted:** February 9th, 2015, 8:21 pm

Why aren't they pleased? Personally I think it's very nice.

Magicking610 · **Posted:** February 9th, 2015, 8:40 pm

I think it was a bad decision to remove it, and an even worse decision to denote the return of it *for SOME monsters* as the main update for a week.

As I said, bad idea to remove it, so I'm glad it's (partially) back.

Mr Bistro · **Posted:** February 18th, 2015, 5:18 pm

I agree, I feel that the aggressive monsters should have remained aggressive. It would have been so fun to be in multi-combat with aggressive monsters at the beginning of the combat release. Now it just feels like they are starting to give it back when it should just be put back altogether.

Lord Rickles · **Posted:** February 18th, 2015, 7:54 pm

Five minute cool down is just silly. That's literally not long enough. What's the point of aggression if they forget about you in just a few kills? It should have been 20 minutes, if not 30 minutes.

Adbot · **Posted:** February 18th, 2015, 7:54 pm

Pyrnassius · **Posted:** February 21st, 2015, 3:30 am

Aggression time should be longer, but they also need to look at the mechanics of it. I don't understand why a monster on the other side of a room attacks you instead of the closest one. This is very frustrating on my Ironman account when killing fire giants on slayer tasks. I am not impressed by the update, but maybe that's because I am not used to it yet. I had gotten used to the delay and had compensated for it when fighting. Now I always seem to miss the timing when launching threshold abilities. We shall see how it goes.