mechanics¶
Target Cycling¶
Targeting settings can be found under the Combat Tab in the Settings Interface and includes the situationally useful Cycle Target keybinds. This function allows you to select a target procedurally based on whether you set the targeting mode to Radial or Conal. It is very useful for improving consistency and speed of certain instances in boss encounters, including, but not limited to, tagging on dropdowns at Vorago, the Sinister Fragments during The Ambassador, and the amalgamations during Nex: AoD. A notable advantage of cycle target is that Detonate will not be cancelled upon use.
Radial Targeting cycles from the nearest to the farthest target from the player when pressed. In the case of multiple equidistant targets, it will cycle clockwise starting from the north. This is useful for simply snapping to the closest target available (any single target situation, Ambassador fragments, Solak Core, Vorago, etc.)
Conal Targeting cycles from the closest to the farthest target in the direction the camera is facing. The angle for an NPC to be considered eligible for selection is around 75-90°. This is most useful for more precise targeting in scenarios with multiple NPCs around (AoD amalgamations if detonating P2).
Usage Specifics
The Shadow Reef
Tagging Sinister Fragments at the Ambassador, saves 3-4 ticks. Can be radial or conal targeting but the former is less effort
Vorago
Gaining aggro on p2 dropdown. This can solve the 1 hp p1 issue where p2 starts off with random aggro
Tagging Teamsplit on drop to Reprisal the first Teamsplit
The timing for p5 Teamsplit is 17 ticks from when you can crack heal
Nex: AoD
Radial targeting to tag p2 amalgamations when detonating. This allows to tag on spawn without risking cancelling detonate accidentally.
Tagging pillars on p4, prevents possible misclicks with the camera snapping over after using Surge + Bladed Dive
Solak
Tagging the Blight Afflicted Core on spawn, potentially saves a tick which helps a bit for one-cycling.
Tagging Arms and Legs faster.
GWD2
The bosses with long spawn animations can be tagged immediately, which helps particularly on Helwyr.
Note: When attempting to cycle to a target on spawn, spam clicking the keybind will not work so you just have to know the exact tick it becomes targetable. Alternatively if you’re constantly moving you can spam it once per tick.
“Grimshaw” Switching¶
Due to the fact that damage critical hits are calculated as an ability is fired, but modifiers like scrimshaw are calculated when an ability hits, it is possible to obtain the boosts of Erethdor’s Grimoire at the same time as a Scrimshaw. This can result in roughly a 6% increase in damage across the course of an entire rotation, but will significantly increase the amount of inputs.
Inputs for grimshaw with 4taa, in order (bracket groups indicate inputs in a single tick):
[Have Active Grimoire + Staff Equipped ] > [Auto > Ability > Equip Scrimshaw > Activate Pocket Slot] > [Equip Grimoire] > [Activate Grimoire]
[Have Active Grimoire +DW Equipped ] > [Ability > Equip Scrimshaw > Activate Pocket Slot] > [Equip Grimoire] > [Activate Grimoire + Equip Staff]
Demonstration
Walking bosses in RS (courtesy of <@236955913859104778>)¶
In RS, bosses only walk east, west, or south (never north). The direction they walk is random at first, but they will always walk in that direction afterwards.
Hitting a wall changes walking behavior in the following ways: an east-walking boss will turn west, a west-walking boss will turn south, and a south-walking boss will turn either east or west.
While walking isn’t as insanely overpowered as it once was, it still has a variety of applications. The simplest of these include walking a bleed such as combust, frag, or slaughter. A more advanced version of this is using a bleed, and then immediately using surge to go under the boss and bladed dive to get back all within a GCD. This allows you to double bleed damage against bosses when you aren’t MD. Couchy demonstrates it in this clip:
https://clips.twitch.tv/CorrectConcernedGrouseNerfRedBlaster
Keep in mind that most bosses move at 2 squares per tick (same speed as you), so for bosses that you don’t want to walk (such as AoD), you should move 2 squares (or more generally just an even number) to prevent unwanted movement.
Walking can also be used to reposition a boss, such as fixing base spot on P2 Vorago, moving Vorago out of green bomb mists, and moving Telos out of beams.
Manual Spell Casting (courtesy of <@133391081109716992> and <@150675804596994048>)¶
Currently, magic auto attacks deal damage based on the spell your weapon is set to. The Surge, Blitz, and Barrage spells deal damage scaling up to T92 while other spells are capped at a lower tier. Particularly, the Aurora spells are capped at T90 damage and below, making them undesirable to use despite their secondary effects.
However, this issue is resolved with manual spell casting found in the combat settings. This toggle makes it so that the autocast spell that the player’s weapon is set to does not change even if they attack with a different spell. Without this toggle, if the player’s spell is set to Blood Barrage and they use Ruby Aurora, for example, their autocast spell will be set to the latter, capping all damage they deal from T92 down to T90. With manual spell casting toggled, the autocast spell stays locked on Blood Barrage, keeping ability damage set to T92 regardless of what spell the player manually inputs. This is due to magic ability damage being based on the current autocast spell, not the spell the player last attacked with.
Applications
On the normal spellbook, this allows the player to attack with Air Strike instead of Air Surge (although the autocast spell must still be set to Surge), reducing rune costs from 5 Air Runes per attack down to 1. For those who are worried about rune costs while 4 tick auto attacking, this relieves much of the problem.
On the ancients spellbook, the Aurora spells can be used while maintaining T92 damage, so long as the player’s autocast spell is set to a Blitz or Barrage spell. Ruby Aurora is the most useful of the set as it increases the damage of nearby teammates by up to 3%. This effect has existed for a long time but it was used at a DPS loss to the caster. Emerald Aurora provides damage reduction up to 5% on a personal basis, potentially allowing some use in a solo pvm situation. The other two Auroras boost prism effectiveness and likely won’t see use until prisms themselves become meta.
Blood Burst, the lower tier of Blood Barrage, can also be used to save on rune costs and have the same damage and effects of Barrage under manual spell casting.
At Telos, manual spell casting may be used to prevent the player from accidentally auto attacking with an Ice spell when it may be undesirable to do so. For example, binding Telos in the black beam or breaking his Freedom at a poor time can be the result of using Ice Blitz/Barrage earlier and having it set to the autocast spell with manual spell casting toggled off. With the toggle on, however, the player has increased control over when to bind Telos and potential ping spikes won’t have as much of an unintended consequence.
Autocast Spell Selection (courtesy of <@244845124712923137>)¶
When selecting an autocast spell, be sure to manually select it with dual-wield (main-hand + off-hand). Selecting your autocast with a two-handed weapon will only apply it to the main-hand, thus setting no off-hand spell, causing you to do 2/3 damage when doing dual-wield abilities in this manner.
Here is a comparison. First example is selecting your autocast with two-handed weapon first (main-hand autocast). Second example is selecting your autocast with dual-wield weapon first (main-hand + off-hand autocast).
How Adren Gaining Without a Target Works, Courtesy of <@236955913859104778>:¶
Have you ever entered Telos, used devo, and lost 15% adren because you forgot to lose target? Well fret not, because in this short guide I will explain how adren gaining with an out-of-range (or dead) target works.
Essentially, after doing your last damaging ability on an NPC, you can use any abilities to gain adren for then next 10 seconds. After that, defensive basics will no longer give adren. However, there is an important caveat: you will only be unable to gain adren for 10 seconds. After that, you can use ONE defensive basic that will give you adren, after which you will be unable to gain adren again for 10s. Think of this as a cooldown - 10s after the last damaging ability on a boss, you will only be able to build once every 10s. The following abilities do not affect or reset this “cooldown”:
Non-defensive abilities that do not require a target (surge, escape, and bd)
Defensive thresholds (these will always take 15 adren unless you lose target, and their use does not affect the CD)
Ultimates that do not require a target
An example showcasing the latter (ultimates not affecting this cooldown) would be not losing target after an AoD kill, then starting off the next kill with sunshine + a defensive basic that was used NO EARLIER than 10s after the previous defensive basic you used to stall adren. For example, you would be able to use anticipate to stall, sunshine when your anticipate timer is at 2s, then use another defensive basic like freedom after anticipate has run out.
Note that all this does not apply on targets that automatically force you to lose target after death (e.g. Araxxi, Telos, etc.)
Some useful areas of application: AoD, Vorago phase transitions, COMBAT DUMMIES, and various other bosses where you can still gain adren after killing them (may potentially work on an exhaustive list)
Tl;dr: if you ever accidentally use a defensive thresh without losing target or can no longer build with defensive basics, simply wait 10s (stalling with surge/escape/bd) and use another defensive. From this point, you will only be able to use 1 defensive basic to build every 10s… making it necessary to use surge/escape/bd in between all this time.
The True Centre of a Boss is Always South-West, Courtesy of <@175995416955977728>:¶
This affects abilities like corruption blast/shot and detonate. In the picture with the combat dummy, the true centre is in the centre because the size of the dummy is 1 square, but any monster 2 by 2 or larger has a south-west centre.
In picture a, the detonate green arrows are on the centre of the dragon, meaning the dragon to the north will not be hit by the detonate
In picture b, the arrows are perfectly aligned and will allow detonate to hit both dragons. This means you should always try to detonate a monster that is north east of another monster to maximize the amount of targets hit.
Note that this works with other forms of AoE as well, such as mechanized chinchompas.
Camera Shaking Toggle (by <@216433706343202816>)¶
If you suffer from motion sickness, you may toggle this off in the settings menu. This is particularly useful for Rise of the Six tunnels, or usage of Quake. However be aware that camera shake often helps indicate a mechanic is about to happen, for example at Solak or Black Stone Dragon.
Boss Sizes for SGB (Courtesy of <@127417821817864192>)¶
List does not include 1x1 bosses
The Ambassador (ED3) - 3x3
Araxxor/Araxxi - 5x5 (Araxxi is blocked)
Astellarn (ED2) - 5x5 (blocked)
Beastmaster Durzag - 4x4
Black Stone Dragon (ED2) - 5x5
Chaos Elemental - 3x3
Commander Zilyana - 2x2
Corporeal Beast - 5x5
Crassian Leviathan (ED3) - 2x2
Dagannoth Kings - 3x3
General Graardor - 3x3
Giant mole - 3x3
Har-Aken - 5x5
Helwyr - 5x5
Kalphite King - 5x5
Kalphite Queen - 5x5
King Black Dragon - 5x5
Kree’arra - 3x3
K’ril Tsutsaroth - 5x5
Nex AoD - 3x3
Queen Black Dragon - 5x5 (blocked)
Sanctum Guardian (ED1) - 9x9
Seiryu (ED1) - 4x4
Solak - 3x3
Telos - 5x5 (10x10 p5)
Twin Furies - 3x3
Tztok-Jad - 5x5
Verak Lith (ED2) - 5x5
Vindicta - 3x3 (5x5 with Gorvek)
Vorago - 5x5 (blocked on p5/10/11 and during “The End” spin)
Yakamaru - 5x5 (blocked)
Ability Stalling (Courtesy of <@236955913859104778>)¶
Ability stalling is a very useful skill to know and it has many uses in PvM situations. Simply put, it is the act of activating an ability outside your weapon’s cast distance, “holding” the ability, and finally releasing it.
Short video guide on this topic: https://youtu.be/fInvWvnSI18
Video transcript: https://pastebin.com/4jtB3RYh
Saving Aftershock while using specs (Courtesy of <@358148685718093827>)¶
When using a special attack such as 
aftershock stacks are lost due to switching to an unperked weapon, this is avoided by swapping to and from your spec weapon within the same tick.
Due to the inability to input the same weapon bind twice in one tick you must swap from 2h to dual or dual to 2h. (All inputs must be done in the correct order AND within the same game tick to be successful)
Starting with 2h: [optional 4t auto] > > 
> 
> 
Starting with Dual: [optional 4t debuff] > > > 
Weapon Poison Guide (Courtesy to <@108682527304060928>)¶
Weapon Poison provides a buff to the player for an amount of time dependent on the grade of poison being used. While this is active, players have a 1/6 chance of poisoning a target so long as they are not poison-immune. After being poisoned, the target will take damage every 16 game ticks, or 9.6 seconds, and will continue to take damage for 3 minutes. This 3 minute duration also has a chance to be refreshed at a 1/6 rate. Poison damage will hit 2 ticks after the damage that applied it.
Generally the only poison one would want to use is Weapon Poison+++ , which lasts for 12 minutes and deals an average of 27.9% ability damage for each hit. Vulnerability affects this damage, but prayers and damage boosting ultimates do not.
Additionally, Cinderbane Gloves heavily boost the amount of damage that can be dealt by poison. While worn, the gloves effectively ignore the 16 tick cooldown on poison damage, allowing for a 1/6 chance of reapplication and refreshing the poison timer on the target. This reapplication will incur an extra poison hit, and the 16 tick damage timer is also reset. This effect also allows for poison to reapply itself, so each poison hitsplat also has a 1/6 chance of dealing an extra poison hit and refreshing the timer.
Without using weapon poison, the damage supplied by Cinderbane Gloves’ own poison will be closer to that of Weapon Poison+. However, they increase the damage that applied weapon poison deals; The +++ variant is increased to an average 36.5% ability damage from 27.9%. Coupled with Kwuarm incense sticks, this value raises further to 46.5%.
Poison can be applied/refreshed by any player-sourced damage . This includes:
Auto attacks (including vulnerability)
Abilities (including bleeds)
God books
Reflect damage
Blood necklaces
Cannon damage
Puncture bleeds
Poison damage
Wyvern Crossbow passive
Eldritch Crossbow special
Dominion mines