Evolution of Combat only one week away!

After the long wait, Evolution of Combat is finally on a deadline, and there's only a week or so left before it comes out.  Have you tried the Beta?  I haven't spent a ton of time on it.  Like Jagex acknowledged, time to play is precious, and I want my time to count.  So ever since they announced EOC, I've been skilling whenever I had a few minutes to play.  Don't see the point in doing combat when it's all going to change soon.

That's good.  It's forced me to work on skills that otherwise would never get finished.  Getting very close to 99 Agility.  Talk about a boring skill to train!

Back to the subject though, Runescape's EOC is now less than a week away, and they're still doing 11th-hour changes.  I'm glad.  It's nice to see community feedback getting honest response.  It's also nice to see Runescape is committed to making it the best they possibly can.  Not convinced I'm going to love EOC, but willing to give it a try.

The combat triangle is important, but the extremism shown in Beta had me worried.  Nice to see they're relaxing that.  Didn't really fancy carrying around multiple sets of armor just to fight effectively.  According to Jagex, it was very restrictive for PvM, and now the hit chance has been improved for players in "either the same or negative side of the triangle"...

To me, this reads as letting 2 sides of the triangle be effective against the third, rather than just one.  Maybe it'll be on a weighted scale that requires the correct gear for best results... but there's more leeway than there had been.

I hadn't heard about potions and Herblore being underpowered, but apparently it was an issue.  Compared to the beta, Jagex said they've seriously ramped it up.    No details, so I have to assume they mean the effectiveness of the actual potions, not the skill/training.

Prayer is looking better.  Originally prayer was just plain ruined.  Jagex heard our complaints and said the final EOC will have prayer much more powerful than it's been in Beta.  I'm sure they won't fully return to the old style of Prayer, but at least it's been stepped up some.  Prayer took far to much money and effort to train- I'd hate to see it become useless.

All of that's been nice to hear about... but the big news has to be about Special Attacks.  Runescape no longer has special attacks for given weapons.  Instead it's all tied to Abilities.  That just stinks.  Personally, I worked for a long, long time to get the Enhanced Excalibur for it's extra healing.  I often use it in non-combat skilling where the occasional injury is sustained (or penguins, on the northern islands of Jatiszo and  Neitznot.)

Since Abilities are tied to combat, they're useless for on-the-run healing the way I currently use Excalibur.  Same goes for many other specials.  Fortunately, Jagex listened, and are trying out "passive effects" in the current Beta.  These passive effects will be similar to a weapon's existing special.

At the moment, this is just a trial, and limited to Godswords and Enchanted Excalibur.  From the sound, I expect Excalibur will still be tied strictly to combat for the healing, but hey, at least all that work spent getting it won't be wasted!

Yesterday, Runescape updated Dungeoneering.  Both in Solo and small team experience granted, and in how the item Binding works.  I haven't had time yet to try it out, but as soon as I can, I'll post my thoughts on it.