today I am going to be talking about the Staking Odds in Old School Runescape, and in terms of the Attack Styles that you can use while you Stake.
To be honest, there are some very interesting results in this article – some things that a lot of people would not expect at all, and definitely a lot of people don’t use this. So, basically, what I have done in this article is I have calculated the accuracy of each Attack Style on specific other Attack Styles – so whatever your opponent is using. I have collected all of the data, and I have worked out which Attack Style actually gives you the best odds when you are Staking in Old School Runescape.
Assumptions
Now, before I get into this article, there are quite a few assumptions I need to make. The first one is that I am going to assume that everybody here has Max Stats, so 99 Attack, 99 Strength, 99 Defence and 99 Hitpoints. Most Stakers have maxed out stats and that is where the fairest staking actually happens. So, I am not going to do any more than that. I am also going to assume that both users are using a Tentacle Whip, not a regular Whip – a Tentacle Whip. But, yeah, moving right along…
Different Attack Styles
So, when you are staking, there are 3 Attack Styles you can use – Flick, Lash and Deflect. Flick gives +3 to your effective Attack level, Lash gives +1 to Attack, Strength and Defence, and then Deflect gives you +3 to your effective Defence level.
Strength Bonus
Now, one very important thing here is that higher Strength levels do not actually give you a higher chance of hitting higher. It does let you hit higher, but there is not a better chance of hitting higher. Mod Ash actually made a Tweet explaining this, and he says that the damage distribution is uniform from 0 – your Max Hit. So, there is an equal chance of hitting a 0 – Max Hit even if you rolled an accurate hit. So, when you work out your Attack accuracy and let’s say you rolled a hit, but then you still have a chance of hitting a 0 either way. But, you also have equal chance of hitting your max Hit and all the numbers in between. Another way to think about it – you have the same chance of hitting a 5 as you have a chance of hitting a 20.
Max Hits (Flick vs Lash)
So, the next thing I did was work out the Max Hits from using each of the Attack Styles with a regular Tentacle Whip, and no other bonuses. The Max Hits do round down – that is important to keep in mind. So, 1 or 2 Strength bonuses is not always going to increase your Max Hit. So, you can see on the screen below, I did some hand written calculations, and I did not show the way I worked out the effective level. But, it is not just your visible level and the stance bonus. You also have to add 8 to the effective level to get the final effective level. I am not going to go into detail about that. But at the end of the article I have linked where I got all the information on the formulas.
Once I did all of the working out, I found that the Max Hits for Flick and Lash are exactly the same. Which means that the Lash Strength bonus is absolutely useless. They both have a Max Hit of 25. So, that means that with the same Max Hits, it all comes down to accuracy. The accuracy of your Attacks simply determines your odds of winning.
Scenario 1
Now, in Staking, there are 2 different scenarios. There is the first one, which is when you are attacking at different times, which means that you are allowed to flick to Deflectwhile they attack you, and that gives you a +3 to your effective Defence level. Then, you can go back to Flick or Lash, and then that gives you an Attack bonus.
Scenario 2
The other scenario is when you are both attacking at the same time, and that does not happen as often. But, it still happens.
Defensive Flicking
So, I am going to start off by working out the odds when both players are defensive Flicking, meaning they are going into defensive, and then going back to Flick or Lash. So, I did a lot of calculations and I incorporated the fact that the opponent has a +3 to their effective defence level at the time of your attack. I also properly worked out the effective levels, I triple checked all of my calculations, and I also worked it out from the formulas from a Mod, so I definitely did everything correctly. Now, at the end of the calculations, it comes out that using Flick while they are on Deflectgives you an accuracy of 49.55%. So, that is your chance of hitting something. But then with Lash, your effective Attack level is lower. So, that means that your accuracy comes out to be 48.65%, which all in all, means that Flick gives you better odds of winning than Lash does. Now, obviously Staking also does come down to PID. I have not really explained what PID is yet. But, that is not exactly decided by the player, so you cannot really help your odds in terms of that. So, all in all, if you are both changing Attack Styles, one is Defensive and then flipping to Attack and so one, Flick actually gives you the better odds.
Not Defensive Flicking
Now, for the scenario where both players are attacking at the same time – this means that both players cannot use Defensive Flicking, therefore they are either stuck on Flick or stuck on Lash, or they might be stuck on Deflect, depending on what they want to do. I am going to calculate for all of these, and every single situation. So, in a situation where you are using Flick, and your opponent is using Deflect or where you are using Lash and they are using Lash as well. Now, in this scenario, you cannot tell what your opponent is doing. You cannot tell if they are on Flick or Lash or Defence. You cannot tell at all. But, as I said, I worked out each scenario, and it will give you an idea of which one works out best. So, on the screen below, there is a table with the odds for each type of Attack of your opponent and yourself. The percentages there are the chances of that person hitting on the other person.
Now, what you can gather from this, is that Flick always has better odds than the opponent – no matter what style that your opponent is using – except when you are both using Flick, obviously. But, with the other scenarios, you will always have a better chance of hitting, even very slightly I the opponent is on Deflect. Now, if you are using Lash, you actually have worse odds. You don’t have better odds in any scenario, unless you both have the same in which you both have the same odds. I see so many people using Lash, especially on streams and in videos. Lash is not better. Lash is the worst style you can be using while you are staking. Now, if you are on Deflect, you actually have fairly decent odds, except for when your opponent is using Flick, and you are on Deflect. But, in the other scenarios where they are using Lash or you are on Deflect and they are on Deflect, the odds are pretty much in your favour unless it is the same obviously. But, the margin between the odds is not very significant, and the best one here has to be Flick. It still comes down to Flick even if you are attacking at the same time.
So, yeah guys… That honestly really surprised me when I worked this out. A lot of people are using Lash these days and Flick is actually better. So, please, if you are Staking, use Flick. But anyways guys that is all I wanted to talk about in terms of the Staking Odds.