RSorder OSRS: The Dominance of Slash Weapons

Stellaol

Combat styles in Old School RuneScape are built around three main melee attack types: slash, stab, and crush. Ideally, each style would have meaningful situations where it shines. In reality, however, crush attacks are currently the least useful of OSRS gold the three in most PvM scenarios. While they do have a few niche uses, the overall meta strongly favors slash or stab weapons.

Recent discussions around upcoming rewards and weapon designs have brought this issue back into the spotlight. Many players have debated whether new crush-focused weapons could fix the imbalance. However, the truth is that the weakness of crush attacks isn't really about the weapons themselves-it's about how the current combat meta, boss design, and gear bonuses interact. Having many cheap OSRS gold can also be very helpful.

The Dominance of Slash Weapons

The biggest reason crush weapons struggle to compete is the overwhelming strength of slash-based gear. Some of the most powerful melee weapons in the game rely on slash attacks, including the iconic Scythe of Vitur. This weapon offers extremely high damage potential and strong bonuses that allow it to outperform many alternatives-even against enemies that technically have lower crush defense.

Mid-tier slash weapons are also very effective. Items like the Abyssal Tentacle provide reliable damage output in a wide range of encounters. Because slash weapons scale so well with high-end armor and gear bonuses, they often remain the best choice even when enemies have moderate resistance to slash damage.

As a result, players rarely switch to crush weapons unless a boss has a very extreme weakness to crush attacks.

Armor Bonuses Shift the Meta

Another major factor contributing to crush's decline is the power of certain armor sets. For example, the Torva Armour provides massive melee bonuses that heavily favor slash attacks.

When combined with top-tier weapons, these bonuses increase both accuracy and maximum damage. This can allow players to simply power through enemy defenses rather than switching to a theoretically better attack style. In many cases, the raw strength of slash gear outweighs any advantage crush weapons might have.

This leads to a situation where players stick with the same high-damage slash setup for most encounters instead of changing weapons based on enemy weaknesses.

Boss Defense Often Doesn't Favor Crush

You might expect crush weapons to excel against bosses with low crush defense. While that's sometimes true, the difference in defense values often isn't large enough to outweigh the power of slash gear.

Take bosses like Cerberus or Sarachnis. Both have lower crush defense than slash defense, yet many players still prefer slash weapons. The damage bonuses from high-end gear often make slash attacks more effective overall, despite the enemy's theoretical weakness.

Only in extreme cases-where a boss has dramatically higher slash defense compared to crush-does the crush style become the optimal choice.

The Scythe's Crush Option Isn't the Problem

Some players have suggested that the crush attack option on the Scythe of Vitur is partly responsible for the crush's lack of relevance. The argument is that the scythe is so powerful that it overshadows dedicated crush weapons.

However, this claim doesn't hold up very well in practice. The scythe's crush bonus is relatively low compared to its slash bonus. In fact, its crush stats are closer to those of mid-tier maces rather than high-end crush weapons.

Because of this, players almost never use the scythe's crush attack style. The weapon is overwhelmingly used in cheap RS gold slash mode because that's where its strength lies. Removing the crush option entirely would likely change very little about the game's current combat meta.