Combat Basics
Understanding the fundamentals of RuneScape combat abilities
Combat Abilities
RuneScape uses an ability system where you can cast abilities to damage monsters, move around faster, or defend from incoming attacks. It can feel daunting looking at your available abilities, but each one has a tooltip that tells you what it does and how it can be used. The tooltip can be viewed by hovering over the ability within the respective ability book.
Hint: If you are using the default interface mentioned earlier in the guide, many of your ability books will be found in the top left of your screen. They can be dragged onto your action bars from there.
Let's cover this in detail.
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| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Type | Displays the name and type of ability |
| Cooldown | Displays the ability's cooldown |
| Target | The type of targeting the ability uses |
| Description | Explanation of what the ability does |
| Requirements | Requirements to use the ability |
Ability Types
RuneScape has five types of abilities:
Basic Ability: Basic abilities generate adrenaline (base 8%) and will deal small to moderate damage. They can have unique effects, but are primarily used as a means of gaining adrenaline. They will be a large part of your rotation, so learning which basics are good to use in certain scenarios is very important.
Threshold Ability: Threshold abilities are your next step up. They will deal a moderate to large amount of damage. Every threshold ability costs 15% adrenaline to use, but can only be cast when you have over 50% adrenaline. For example, if you have 40% adrenaline, you cannot cast a threshold. If you have 60% adrenaline, you can, and your adrenaline will go down to 45% when cast.
Ultimate Ability: Ultimate abilities are the most powerful abilities and cost 100% adrenaline to use. There are different types of ultimates, but the two main types are damage boosting ultimates and damage dealing ultimates.
Special Ability: Finally, we have the special ability. This classification is only given to weapon special attacks so its effect will change based on your weapon. The special ability could be completely irrelevant, or it could be the backbone of your rotation. Special attacks only appear on mid to high tier weapons above level 60.
Ability: This classification is given to abilities that do not fall into one of the other 4 classes. Movement abilities and most Necromancy abilities fall into this class.
Cooldown
A cooldown is the period of time an ability is unusable after it has been used and it can massively vary in length.
Remember that RuneScape runs on a 0.6s tick system. This means that all cooldowns will be in increments of 0.6s, for example, 20.4s.
Target Types
Below the cooldown timer is another type of classification which tells you how the ability targets foes.
Self-target: Self-target abilities are cast on your player. These include movement abilities, damage boosting ultimates, and some defensive abilities. Self-target abilities don't require a target and only affect your character.
Single-target: Single-target abilities are, as the name implies, cast on a single target and only affect that target.
Area-target: Area-target abilities affect a certain area, generally around the player or on a specified location.
Multi-target: Multi-target abilities work a bit differently than area-target abilities. They are cast on a target and spread to other targets. They are not bound to an area in the same way area-target abilities are.
Description
The rest of the tooltip provides specific information about the ability. Every tooltip will have a short description, followed by the damage range of the ability, if applicable. This will consist of 2 sets of numbers: actual damage numbers, and % numbers. The actual damage numbers will only show when you have a weapon of that style equipped.
The actual damage numbers will update in real time, but do not include most buffs, while the % values will always remain the same. These can be used to compare abilities against each other to decide which abilities are a good source of damage.
Under the damage information, the tooltip will include all other relevant information such as extra effects, number of hits, and adrenaline cost.
Requirements
At the very bottom of the tooltip are any requirements to cast the ability. This is generally a level requirement and an adrenaline requirement, but can include items or effects.
