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Slaughter
Slaughter
Release date 20 November 2012 (Update)
Members No
Skill Attack
Level 1
Type Threshold
Adrenaline −15%
Equipment Any
Cooldown 30 seconds
Description
Cause your target to bleed for between 100-250% weapon damage over 6 seconds. If the target moves location, they suffer 3x damage.
Slaughter
Click animation for full size
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Slaughter is a threshold Attack ability. When activated, the target is bled five times for 100% to 250% weapon damage. If the target moves away from the square where they initially received Slaughter, they suffer triple damage; if they move back to their original tile, Slaughter deals normal damage again. It requires level 1 Attack to use and works with all melee weapons.

This ability can be one of the most damaging melee abilities if the target moves. To maximise Slaughter's damage, a player can click under their target as they activate Slaughter, forcing them to move from their square(s). Another way to make the target move is by using the Kick or Stomp abilities, moving it one square, although one hitsplat of Slaughter will not be tripled in damage, and targets larger than 1x1 cannot be kicked back.

Like most other damage-over-time abilities, the damage of this ability is not increased by:

  • damage-boosting prayers/curses,
  • additional damage applied by having boosted levels (i.e. from potions - note that this is a separate damage increase to the raw increase from having a higher level),
  • damage increasing abilities like Berserk
  • all variants of Void Knight equipment,
  • the black mask and all slayer helm variants.

Much like Dismember, Slaughter has an abnormally high chance to deal 100% ability damage, which makes its average ability damage 145%.

Advantages[]

  • Very high damage if target moves
  • Damage can stack with other abilities, as it deals damage over time, significantly increasing one's KO potential during this ability's duration. This makes Slaughter one of the best melee abilities to use in PvP.

Disadvantages[]

  • Damage can be cleared immediately by Freedom, and because this ability's cooldown is just as long as Freedom's, one can potentially always 'save' Freedom to counter Slaughter.
  • If the target fails to move, the ability will only deal moderate damage. For the same reason, bosses that are stationary, such as Araxxi, cannot be dealt triple damage
  • Berserk does not increase the damage of this ability.

Tactics[]

  • Walking on the square where your opponent is standing or using Kick or Stomp provided the target occupies a 1x1 area and there is room behind them will force them to move (unless they are stunned or bound), dealing triple damage.
  • In PvP situations, using powerful abilities such as Blood Tendrils, Destroy, Assault or Overpower (with the aid of Adrenaline potions) right after the target moves location can make your opponent receive large amount of damage in a short period of time.

Countertactics[]

  • Using Freedom clears the constant damaging effect.
  • As you see your opponent uses this ability, avoid getting lured (either by clicking your square or eating food).
  • If fast enough, you could stun your opponent using abilities such as backhand before they hit you, and they will end up losing adrenaline bar and wasting the cooldown.
  • Using Reflect and deliberately taking the effects of the triple damage to reflect half of it back can put your opponent in a very dangerous situation

Trivia[]

  • Slaughter is one of the first times an attack displays blood in the attack animation, along with Dismember and Deadshot.
  • Slaughter used to hit 4 times against monsters and 6 times against players. It has now been changed to hit 5 times in both PvM and PvP.
  • If the player using Slaughter is killed before the effect ends, the target stops receiving damage.
  • Until 8 August 2015, Slaughter shared its cooldown with Fragmentation Shot, even though patches to Fragmentation Shot caused it to do 2x and not 3x damage if the target moved from its spot.
  • Slaughter was called Haemorrhage in Jagex's test servers for the Evolution of Combat.
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