OSRS Leagues 5 - Guide on area picking - Theorycrafting deep dive (READ DESCRIPTION)

[@Velikan314]

Alright so the flood gates are opening - in the OSRS discord there are now mentions of Vardorvis being in Varlamore instead of Kourend. I'm afraid a lot of information is going to trickle in completely debunking the information in this video but that's part of the fun! :')

[@TheDonrodryx]

And Desert is not needed for the DT2 bosses (except for Levi)

[@YogyBear]

Woo, more Leagues content! Great video! Lots of good example builds and tips to help people in general decide what they might want to go for. I think you discussed some of the pitfalls of certain region combos and basing your plans around getting a mega rare very well. Also I agree on bolt meta being 100% wack; hope it gets changed, to be honest. It was kind of ridiculous getting basically your top-tier DPS within an hour of the League starting, but that's just my opinion. Btw, thanks for linking people to the infographic I made! Hopefully it helps people visualize what the various regions have on offer.

[@Velikan314]

Oh holy shit, feels like meeting a celebrity :D

[@jawstrock2215]

problem with magic builds: it assume you WILL get Tumekun.. and that's far from a done deal :/

[@Velikan314]

Tumeken definitely isn't guaranteed but outside of surge builds and swamp trident I don't think there are any viable magic weapons. I covered those in the videos so that's why tumeken gets so much attention for magic users. Echo weapons may change this.

[@iseeyounoobs]

Less than 5% of players that picked desert did 50 TOA runs. Raids, while awesome, are a HUGE wall for most players to overcome. Even in leagues, the struggle is real.

[@Velikan314]

Yeah. Specifically ToA I remember sucking because I was doing 600 invos (? I think) and then getting white lights on a 60% purple chance was horrible lmao. Couldn't butterfly Akkha (no powered staff) and I think I was red-xing Ba-ba so I lost a ton of dps there. Time consuming and unrewarding.

[@TearThatRedFlagDown]

@@Velikan314 Hopefully echo weapons (and tbh hopefully also other gear slots) can fix some of that problem.

[@TacetTheTerror]

Current plan with available info right now is Varlamore, Morytania, and Tirannwn as melee build. Tried leagues for the 1st time for leagues 4 and burnt out after being one of the first few 100 to dragon rank, so plan is to just rush dragon rank again and stop. Plan is based heavily on Fire Sale and Trickster still existing this league almost entirely ignoring combat min/maxing as I found it made a rather small impact last league due to insane dps and slightly more insane dps being a very negligible difference. Varlamore: 1-2 Tick Dual Maracas, lots of free clue step teles, stonemason, nearly every shop type with some unique things like a uncut ruby, construction/hunter/rc/crafting buff Morytania: Halberd which fixes Jad challenges for melee, slayer mask, full inq bis for most things if 5 ticks are 3 ticks this time instead of 2 ticks, dharock bombing, rc/thieving/slayer buff Tiranwn: Multi skilling afk, rejuvenation pool in PoH (they fixed house load times since last leagues), 'uncontested' 2 tick teaks, smithing/crafting/thieving/wc/nearly all skilling fix Only big down side with this route is fishing and fletching. Fishing I forget if those regions have a 2 tick fishing spot setup otherwise would likely just afk them, and fletching just have to get the supplies to 0 time them in Moons, Sepulchre, and similar things.

[@Velikan314]

Thanks for sharing. Kinda liking that route although I'd probably avoid Mory myself, kinda afraid of ToB haha. Considering you mentioned 2-tick fishing I think you are a bit more serious than I am. I would just afk fly-fish and for fletching perhaps get some bowstrings through temple trekking but not sure how viable that is. Of course you do not have production prodigy so 0-time methods would be better. As for Tirannwn, and I'm sure you know this already, Zulrah isn't melee-able at all. You are setting yourself up to do 300 KC with a BOFA instead. Honestly that's not too bad but I'm mentioning it in case you/others don't know.

[@TacetTheTerror]

@@Velikan314 Yeah, chose a lot of regions based on things I wanted to do on the hardcore last time. Never done CG, ToB, or Nightmare on any account yet, so figured I try them during leagues this time so my maxed HCIM doesn't die to them. Solo ToB should be okay if they have a revive relic again, as otherwise have to redemption about 30 times and tick eat around 5 times. Mostly plan to do Zulrah only until Blowpipe for ToB and Gargoyle boss. Point route still not known, but doubt all Zulrah CAs/drops are needed for dragon rank. Skipped 3 bosses last league and points didn't seem to be too bad off since can just offset it with more clues or skilling.

[@Velikan314]

@@TacetTheTerror Yeah I 100% agree. You can skip a bunch of tasks and still end up well over 56k. Best of luck in Leagues 5 man!

[@alsoyes3287]

i really hope they change up the combat relics with some 'dual typings'. Being a god in 1 style and noodling in the other 2 gets old. 2x melee speed and +20% range accuracy and dmg 2x mage speed and 1 tick faster melee speed, 10% more accurate 2x range speed and spellcasting is 4t and 10% more dmg/acc stuff like that

[@gordonrussell8613]

water/earth are no longer weaker than fire

[@Velikan314]

You are absolutely right.

[@ItsMochaJoe]

Yup just about to say this. All elemental spells from the same tier hit the same. This was done during the magic rework I'm pretty sure.

[@Moonsbro]

ive done melee in both other trailblazers so i told myself that im not doing melee this year but then looking at mage and range they basically havent gotten any new items or content in the last year. its so hard not to pick melee since it has the most options and build types. last year i did kand desert fremmy. leaf bladed axe into fang into soul reaper axe. turns out the soul reaper axe is awful even when its 2tick. hope the echo weapons and combat mastery stuff pulls me away from melee cause right now the blood moon gear seems like it would pop off in leagues.

[@Velikan314]

Soulreaper sims decently high on calcs so I'm wondering why you are saying it's awful. Either way I agree with you, weapon progression for melee is just infinitely better. If you really want to mage/range you could throw yourself an oddball with a wildy pick (webweaver) or go surge build. It's not the best dps but it will suit you the entire league.

[@Chucky42069]

I am+1ing your comment. I did exactly like you, 2 leagues with melee as there were so much more progression. Right now I hope echo loot will shake up the mage-range meta, so I can use one of these styles

[@Duckywarrior]

Thanks for making these videos, I really enjoyed the ones you made for leagues 4, so glad to see you back for leagues 5. For somebody like me who mostly plays leagues and misses a lot of updates, its great to have some information summed up in front of me to get me going.

[@pm-5565]

Just a few addons: - For melee builds Morytania will also have the Noxious hally which has great str bonus and should be 3t speed plus it can venom at a 33% chance. Aranea boots are a half decent pair with +4 str. With Kandarin you also have access to the rancour ammy. - For rangers Asgarnia also gives the ability to make Pegasian boots. Personally even if echo ranged variant does outclass ZCB I can still see the ZCB being the ultimate spec weapon for rangers even if they remove the ridiculous spec spam build (still depending on relics/masteries either way) so ZCB + Lightbearer might still be a very strong combo. - For mage build which was my main's build last leagues do not tunnel vision the Tumeken's shadow, doing ToA (which still should be the easiest way to obtain it) with only barrage was pretty horrible, tho now the 1 tick delay from autocasting is gone so it's at least viable for even insanity Warden but your dps is gonna be laughable in some parts of the raids. Shadow without any or little magic dmg% would max hit in the 40s for me but still makes Leviathan very fast and easy for Virtus but imo prioritize some mid tier or easy to get magic dmg% gear first at least. - Barrage is ridiculously good for slayer allowing you to do triple max hit attacks with Berserker relic (if still a thing) making it so you can kill most monsters guaranteed by the time you're casting the 3rd barrage which in a lot of cases means no food or prayer required for slayer but you still have blood barrage for healing which was ridiculously good last time thanks to the max hit on monsters with full hp. If you don't care to pvm but still want to max or do slayer barrage is a great consideration but it's still really good for some pvm thanks to the very high freeze rate which can even freeze bosses like Verzik. I predict magic to be easily the style that's the most impacted by Echo bosses due to how spread magic dmg% is and how much it impacts the Shadow. Still that said I can vouch that with the kind of relics we had last time the Shadow with Virtus and Imbued heart only is already very good and this time Virtus has double the dmg% too, but Kandarin having Trident + Tormented + Occult makes it still a good pick for mager despite it being quite lackluster in terms of the content you get from it in both quality and quantity, depending on what you're looking for and how much you care about having BIS over having a good amount of content to do. But I cannot stress how much I agree with the advice at the end, I almost gave up on last leagues because I barraged almost everything since it took me almost 100 ToA to get Shadow and even tho I was able to solo 400s when my only friend that was still playing leagues and had Desert could play it was over 40 min raids and it was a very sweaty and easy enough to fail raids. Good progression is KEY do not think you can easily skip mid game and go straight to end because even though possible there's a pretty good chance you won't get there easily at all. - TL:DR being that you need to do your own theory crafting based on what you want out of the league and feel comfortable with, leagues is the ultimate "have fun" mode and that's what it is for. It's great to get advice and look at other people's homework for info but base your route around you, BIS in leagues is not the end all be all to have fun. But still very helpful to check upon vids like these or the Leagues discord feel free to ask any questions you may have in there in the appropriate channels, there's always people keen to help out.

[@Velikan314]

Thanks for sharing. I 100% agree with you (except hally is 5t so it would be 2t in leagues). Truth be told I'm struggling a little bit between being completely exhaustive (and exhausting) and keeping my content short. Last year I felt like my 25 minute videos got more views than my 90 minute one. I originally compiled a longer video and omitted some information before I considered it youtube-ready, and in hindsight I should not have omitted the halberd. That said I feel the people in the comments are leaving very valuable information so I don't feel the need to cover everything.

[@pm-5565]

@@Velikan314 Yeah sorry I rounded up instead of down. I get that though I personally enjoy in depth full analysis videos regardless of length but majority do prefer shorter formats as they're more digestible in one go. Personally I think you could easily turn this into a mini series and have a playlist with info, so you could do per style and per area. There's a lot of nuance that goes into the choices you can make and how it can impact your playthrough, even when it comes down to the order of areas you pick. It's ultimately up to you if you want to cover some things to it's full extent or not but not everyone reads comments either. Idk still good job I appreciate your work

[@dm9910]

Pegs are ass. Completely irrelevant when it comes to region picks. Make a pair if you happen to be in Asgarnia and get the ranger boots but don't go out of your way. ToA without trident isn't great but it's not *that* bad either now that they've removed the autocast delay, the infinite sustain is nothing to sniff at. The really slow parts are Akkha and Wardens when you have to use other combat styles, this is best mitigated by raiding with a group especially since they've said they're removing the cap on unique chance so group raids should be competitive with solos again. Barrage is really good for slayer but leagues is so fast I wouldn't pick my regions around it. Chins exist, TDs are a non-barrageable task that will give tons of exp and is accessible to everyone, there will almost certainly be a slayer relic, and just generally high dps with 16x exp rates means you really aren't going to have a problem slaying with any region choices. I don't think Jagex are going to be implementing echo gear that buffs Shadow. Shadow was already the best weapon last league other than arguably ZCB. I think they're going to use echo loot to add viable magic weapons to regions not named Kandarin and Desert so that you have more choices.

[@Drollls]

Would love to see more theorycrafting with a focus on points/tasks. Especially once all the relics are revealed. Leagues 4 I theorycrafted with min/maxing dps in mind and I feel like it took too long to progress and I got bored after getting to tier 8.

[@Velikan314]

@@Drollls I was considering this but it would feel like a dragoncup guide by a guy who failed to get dragon cups. I'll think about if I can do something like this and how I need to shape a video like that.

[@christopherp6727]

I'm planning to rush the Noxious Halberd on a melee build, i think it'll hold me over till scythe

[@Velikan314]

@@christopherp6727 it sims pretty high and I'm liking it too. It's an excellent weapon even if you never get the scythe

[@shroomjak200]

I really like how you can get any of the big 3 weapons from any raid you want

[@ChiaroscuroxX]

Couple things, first if you havent played since tb1, 5 tick magic is same speed as powered staves (4 tick) He doesn't touch on it but Bloodbark (Mori. Addy defensive stats +3 dmg) is quite good if you stack it with whatever survivability relic they have this year. If youre a 3rd monitor office gamer. Theoretically you can be even better if you took F & V to get sceptre and its blood gem to allow overheals but thats uhh a choice. He also doesnt touch on it (as of 40 min in) but master wand (D) can get to +15% with a drop from CoX (Z) its super rare but i mean the whole mage route is predicated on you getting a mega rare in endgame so youll be in raids anyway. Lastly you miss a CRUCIAL area where Shadow is left in the DUST by wrath rune spells... zarosian spiritual warriors randomly take 200% bonus damage from fire spells so you can comfortably hit 90 on this very commonly fought and important enemy while shadow gamers are stuck only hitting 60s

[@Velikan314]

@@ChiaroscuroxX in my calcs I can only get surge spells close to a tumeken if the enemies have 100% vulnerability which not too many enemies have. Surging is decent enough to mention in a video but Zarosian mobs specifically weren't worth mentioning.

[@Slabfish]

If you didn't know, Tonalztics are essentially a ranged bgs for its current role in the game except its worse than a bgs in majority of scenarios. Heres my reading on it: 1. Drains a flat amount instead of percentage, making it able to zero defence bosses like BGS (hence its role) 2. Drain amount determined by mage level and not defence level 3. Drains on a successful hit, not a random number between 1 to max hit, making it WAY more consistent than BGS assuming the boss doesn't have high range defence 4. Its a ranged weapon In order from top to bottom this makes it excellent at literally just Maiden and nothing else (both normal tob and HMT) 1. Flat drain means hammers goes first then tonsils, flat drain important in tob as zero defence means scythe is the highest dps weapon in the game 2. Maiden has high mage level, just makes tonsils good 3. Always drains the same amount on maiden, meaning if a certain amount of hammers hit, and both accuracy rolls pass on tonsils, she will always be zero defence, in 4s and 5 mans this means a BGS'er doesnt need to fill a spec in, frees up a dragon claw spec allowing for people to skip and stack crabs more consistently (checked with tob nerd its 1 hammer, 2 tonsils passing all 4 accuracy checks for 0 defence which frees up a lot of spec energy for the team) 4. As its a ranged weapon, its carried by a mager. In max efficiency teams they are always tbowing, just makes it easier to spec without losing ticks to gear swaps It just happens to be dogshit everywhere else in game. In leagues its a defence draining or general spec option for rangers who arent going for ZCB, which is cool I guess. Its terrible on zuk in main game but probably better than most options in leagues

[@tchNL]

Great expansive guide, thanks 👍

[@GijZagevent]

I dont really play anymore other than leagues, which allows me to experience the new content, so picking Varlamore is a nobrainer for me, thinking Morytania cuz Araxxor is new and the hally will probably be a good scyth replacement since i probably wont be doing too much of that, and probably the wildy as my third pick since i never really did anything there.

[@FindStoicism]

cool info, thanks for putting this together

[@jaydonloar6293]

I believe only elite void gives the magic damage bonus, which requires Asgarnia, Kandarin and Tiranwyn. I can't really imagine any magers taking that route, so void is probably not worth it for mage.

[@CasualPvmer]

Zombie axe might fix melee progression making fang less interesting if it is obtained through just starting areas

[@averagegatsby29]

Went melee last leagues and had a good time with 2t fang + blood fury in TOB. Rushed t8 and burned out before I got my scythe, but had a good time overall. I like the idea of switching to a ranged build this leagues, but the bolt proc meta is pretty unappealing to me as it trivializes almost all ranged weapons after you get an RCB including the tbow. Based on what Jagex does about bolt procs and echo weapons, I may revisit this, but you brought up another great point that non-melee builds are going to have a more tedious time at Moons, and I'd like to pick Varlamore to go for the Sol pet. I think one of the most unappealing things you can do in leagues is to grind content in a way that's basically unchanged from the main game (e.g. sloughing your way through Moons for full Eclipse when your best weapon is a dragon long).

[@Velikan314]

The problem with the rcb is you get your best weapon so early on, you deprive yourself of any meaningful upgrades. Also, because there are no upgrades available to you (outside of a ZCB, which is only a 10% upgrade iirc), you often think to yourself why you are grinding certain bosses as it's only for points. You do like 300kc and receive 200 points, move on to the next. I feel the prospect of let's say, a soulreaper axe, would be much more exciting. Then again you may go dry and burn out. :')

[@ramonruijgt4532]

Leagues 4 was my first leugue i joined. Think this time try eclipse set from moons of peril. Have not tryed the set in main game.

[@iseeyounoobs]

Last league I did Melee with Kandarin, Wilderness, and Asgarnia. I did barely manage to get dragon cup during the last week. All in all I concluded I am not going Kandarin again because I will not spend 20 hours doing monkey laps and I did not enjoy 500 demonic gorilla kills. I also was not able to finish both ballistas with 500 kc. Wilderness is S tier pick in my book. The tasks (outside of Corp, just don't bother) are really easy.

[@Velikan314]

@@iseeyounoobs hard agree

[@DCherewegoo]

During raids, is everyone able to get a purple now?

[@Velikan314]

Yes I think they changed it in a way where you can get multiple purples if you are with multiple people.

[@dm9910]

Enjoyed your analysis but I think they're going to something completely different with combat relics this time around. Given that they're moving combat stuff to a separate skilltree, I'm guessing we're going to see a much more granular approach with many smaller relics rather than picking a single defining relic that buffs a single style crazy hard. Personally I'm not a fan of the attack speed increasing system of previous leagues, both due to how it throws off weapon balance (5t > 2t/4t > 3t) and also due to how spammy it feels. If they don't do away with the turbo attack speed entirely, I hope they at least offer viable alternative builds. My bold prediction is that we're going to see relics themed around archetypes like tank (damage reduction, slow attacks), assassin (crits, specs, first/last hits), berserker (fast attacks, take damage to deal more damage) etc rather than around specific combat styles. But that's also what I hope so I'm pretty biased.

[@Velikan314]

Your comment prompted me to check the discord. Mod Arcane confirmed today that there'll be one tier of relics related to combat and most of the combat related stuff has been moved to masteries. I think we are getting to pick 1 style again through the relics, and do all the other stuff (like berserker) through masteries. But that hasn't been confirmed.

[@dm9910]

@@Velikan314 ah, wishful thinking from me i guess

[@IndySavvy]

Nice vid!

[@ReDempTedSpider]

How important is piety compared to armor in terms of melee dps?

[@Velikan314]

This is a really good question. I am not a dps calcing expert but I gave it a twirl: The first thing to know is that you are able to get some +str gear from a fire cape, fury, combat bracelet etc. with most of your strength bonus coming from your weapon. Gear like bandos only has a +6str bonus and the difference I'm getting in most of my calcs is like 3% dps between having Bandos or no Bandos, 4% for blood moon gear. But Torva makes around a 8% difference. The difference between 15% prayers and Piety becomes bigger on high defense targets. Meaning that on for example bloodvelds, the difference between Piety and +15% prayers is around 6%. On higher defense targets (say Bandos) the difference is around 10% dps. This means piety is a much better dps increase than say Bandos armor. I'd say it's on par with Torva. If Ruinous powers isn't a thing (which would be better than Piety), then Torva + Piety is likely to be a top dps contender. You can find a dps calc that was used for Leagues 4 here, you'd have to make a copy to your own personal gdrive (tick relics on the top right). docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wBXIlvAmqoQpu5u9XBfD4B0PW7D8owyO_CnRDiTHBKQ/edit?gid=158500257#gid=158500257

[@ReDempTedSpider]

@@Velikan314 Thank you for the very concise response! As of right now without knowing too much about relics like Ruinous powers or echo bosses and combat masteries I’m thinking Kandarin might be a must pick for piety. But as we get closer to the start of leagues it could turn out those three things combined can make up for not picking up piety and opening up another region to pick.

[@Velikan314]

@@ReDempTedSpider I would say Kandarin is the single worst area in leagues because of the tasks, I personally avoid it like the plague. Think of it like this, the difference between 24 and 26.4 dps isn't gonna make or break your leagues.

[@ReDempTedSpider]

@@Velikan314 you got me there! I picked Kandarin last time going mage and hated the tasks there

[@Velikan314]

@@ReDempTedSpider For mages the difference is amplified by Tumeken. If it wasn't I would not even consider going there. That's also why I am hoping Jagex is gonna kill that meta with echo items.