Combat

Combat occurs whenever a player fights a monster or another player, or when a monster attacks a player. The combat skills are Attack, Strength, Defence, Hitpoints, Prayer, Magic, and Ranged.

The Combat Triangle
The term combat triangle is the name given to the three styles of combat in ProjectRS06, and explains which style of combat is best for each situation.

Melee is best for attacking ranged.

Ranged is best for attacking magic.

Magic is best for attacking melee.

This is mainly because the armours and weapons that each style wears have bonuses. Melee for example has high melee and ranged bonuses and weak magic bonuses which make it weak against magic attacks. Ranged has high ranged and magic bonuses... and so on.

If you are going to go into combat, it is start to first note what would be the best attack to use based on what you are going up against, as this will give you an advantage in battle.

Melee


See the full article of melee combat: Melee.

Melee is the combination of the three skills attack, strength and defence, which work together in melee combat. Attack boots your chances of hitting more, strength increases the chance of hitting higher and defence makes you less likely to recieve damage.

They also work so you can wield stronger weapons and wear more powerful armours.

To see what armours you can wear at different levels, go here, and if you want to see the weapons, go here.

Melee combat is the most powerful against rangers who are close to the attacker. This is because the armours they wear have higher ranged defence bonuses. For example if we look at the Rune Platebody, it is shown to have a plus 80 range-defence bonus, which means a ranger is unlikely to hit as high on a meleer who wears this armour.

Melee combat however is weak when it comes to magic, as can be seen in the Rune Platebody comparison. It has a minus 6 magic defence bonus and a minus 30 magic attack, meaning that magic can easily inflict damage on the player wearing the platebody. Mages therefore have a higher tendency to pick on meleers over other combat styles in the wilderness, as they know that they have an advantage in the combat triangle.

However, it should be noted that magic-based players lose their advantage over melee players if they do not keep their distance, as magic armour is usually the weakest (in physical defence [Range/Melee] of all forms of armour). If a mage neglects to freeze, snare, or trap a melee player, the melee character will normally hit the mage as if they are not wearing any armour at all.

Ranged
Click here for the full article on Ranged.

Ranged allows the player to hit another character or npc from a distance or from behind an obstacle.

Ranged is perfect for fighting mages, as the armour they wear gives the ranger great magic-defence bonuses. So if a mage engages in combat with a ranged player, it will result in a large number of "splash" magic attacks (complete misses).

Ranged is generally weak against melee because while a mage has the ability to freeze or hold a melee character out of attack range, a ranged character's only option is to trap a melee behind an object. The Magic-Attack bonuses on Dragonhide and other range armours is far too low to make any form of magical "hold" spells realistic.

This usually results in face-to-face battles with melee characters, most of whom will have far superior net-defence values.

Magic
Click here for the full article on Magic.

Magic is probably the most interesting combat style. The magic skill allows players a wide variety of attacks, as well as various "skill" based spells (such as High Alchemy or Superheat Item). Not only do mages get many spells to choose from, some of these spells also carry the ability to freeze, hold, or reduce the stats of enemies. Contrary to ranged characters, mages have the ability to hold back melee players and use their magic spells to inflict serious damage (as almost all melee-based armour has a negative magic defence value).

The ability for a mage to freeze a melee player for up to 30 seconds and proceed to attack them from a distance often causes meleers to run at the sight of any mage and seek easier battles.

A popular term used by meleers who do not agree with the tactic of keeping them held at a distance is "Far Caster" (or FC). It is generally used when a melee player is fed up of not being able to hit and implies that the mage is "cheating" the fight by preventing any damage from the melee player. However, the argument can obviously be made that this was the design of the Magic skill to begin with, and without keeping melee players a fair distance away, a mage's armour would be sliced through in seconds by a Rune Scimitar.

In minigames that require you to kill many players, such as Castle wars, Magic is very useful.