In this image, each fighter is attacking the one weaker than it and being attacked with its own weakness
The Combat triangle is a chart of the strengths and weaknesses of each combat class against the other classes. In general, when players are combatting opponents with skills close to their own skills:
- Warriors are very strong against rangers. Their armours deflect the projectiles used by rangers. Their weapons penetrate the weak leather armours worn by rangers.
- Rangers are strong against mages. Their leather and dragonhide armours absorb the magic spells used by mages. Their projectiles easily pierce through the mages robes.
- Mages are strong against warriors. Their magic is amplified by the metal armours usually worn by warriors. They can freeze/bind the warrior, making it harder for them to reach the mage.
However, this does not guarantee that each class will always beat their weaker class. For example, a meleer can still defeat a lower levelled or worse-equipped mage.
Bending the triangle
The Dwarves' "blueprint" of the Combat Triangle.
The triangle tends to focus mostly on the effectiveness of armour.
- The warrior's armour is most effective against ranged projectiles, though the ranger has an advantage as long as they can remain out of direct contact. The warrior's armour is innefficient against magic, but using no armour or ranged armour and closing in on the mage, the tables are turned, though the mage can counter with binds or freezing.
- The ranger's armour is most effective against magic, while holding tactics cannot prevent the ranger from hitting the mage, making this a side of the triangle that is almost impossible to collapse. The ranger can counter the warrior by evasion, or increase defence by switching to a chainbody.
- The mage's armour tends to offer little protection over ranged and warrior attacks. While the mage's attack hits easily through metal, it's advised to stay as far away as possible from warriors, as their weapons can easily pierce their robes. The mage can do little to change their position in the triangle, though members do have some more defensive armour options, such as splitbark. Also, members have access to the Ancient Magicks spellbook.
- The prayer robes offers no protection or attacking bonuses although maces or staves if you are using Magic or Melee to help you in Prayer to help you inflict damage on your enemy. Explorer's ring also does this.
Hybrids are capable of standing at more than one point on the triangle, though at some cost and compromise to their equipment and inventory load.
Criticism
The combat triangle is highly criticised for being unbalanced, especially toward the power of Magic. This is often the subject of debate on the forums, as the maximum hit of a mage is only 400 (with miasmic barrage, 370 with ice barrage), as of 12 February 2010 players may be able to hit well over 1000 with extremes, staff of light, hexcrest, and having ice Strykewyrms as a Slayer task (level 93 Slayer required). While rangers can possibly hit up to 1040 (520-520) if they utilise the Dark bow's special attack with Dragon arrows and high-grade ranger armour such as Void Knight equipment. Also, many melee weapons such as the Dragon dagger and Godswords can hit well over 700 with a high Strength level, and its maximum possible hit is currently shown to be 1,350 against kalphites using a Keris and the best strength equipment, the Piety prayer, a black mask or a slayer helmet, and drinking an extreme strength potion. Another problem reported by players is a warrior's ability to wear Dragonhide armour without a reduction of melee stats, therefore allowing them to overpower mages, who are normally supposed to have an advantage, however, a mage can partially counter this by equipping a slashing weapon to take advantage of dragon hide armour's vulnerability to slash attacks. The recent addition of the Staff of light means that mages now have a reasonably good slashing weapon which doubles up as a powerful staff. Its special attack also means that all non-magic damage done by meleers attacking the mage is halved, drastically reducing their maximum hit.
Trivia
- In the top right corner, among the Dwarven script, are three equations that are used in game to calculate a player's combat level based on whichever combination of statistics results in the highest combat level.
- The combat triangle is currently being rebalanced, due to complaints that mages are underpowered and rangers can easily kill all other classes on the combat triangle.
- In the background of the Dwarf "blueprint", a hexagram can be seen.
- It has been confirmed that when the combat triangle is rebalanced the dragon crossbow will be soon released but this could unbalance the combat triangle.
- Dragonfire is another form of attack, and is not part of the combat triangle. It defies the combat triangle and cannot be blocked with any protection prayer. Using Protect from Magic will only partially help the user.
- Damage inflicted by poison or a dwarven multicannon should also be considered another form of attack as Poison cannot be blocked by a protection prayer and a darven multicannon has its own symbol next to the damage inflicted by it showing that it does not inflict ranged damage but its own unique kind of attack instead. It is unknown if protect from range will defend a player from a cannon as it is impossible to expose a player to multicannonfire. However a monster with high range defence will be more difficult to hit with a multicannon and your range attack bonus does impact the multicannon's accuracy suggesting that multicannon damage and range damage are linked.
- Although summoning familiars usually attack from a corner of the combat triangle the prayer protect from summoning will render you completely immune to their attacks even if multiple familiars are attacking you from multiple sides of the combat triangle.
- Despite a similar design, name, and provenance the hand-cannon inflicts range damage not multicannon damage.
- The hexagon in the background of the dwarven diagram may allude to the six attack types; melee, range, magic, dragonfire, poison, and multicannon.