Instability

The fractured Staff of Armadyl's special attack, Instability

Instability is the special attack of the fractured Staff of Armadyl. It costs 50% adrenaline, strikes the opponent for 120-140% ability damage, and has a 60 second cooldown between uses.

Additionally, activating the special attack grants the Instability buff for 30 seconds. While this buff is active, landing a Magic critical strike on the primary target will also fire a time strike, dealing 90%-110% ability damage and landing 1 game tick after the source hit. If the time strike lands as a critical strike, it will not generate further hits as to prevent a recursive effect. Because this is dealt as ability damage, it will not consume runes (apart from the random activation of Ancient Magicks spells). Time strikes are treated similar to a magic basic ability which allows the effect of Blood Tithe from the Exsanguinate combat spell to increase their damage; but they do not increase the stacks of Blood Tithe from Exsanguinate nor Glacial Embrace from Incite Fear.

The effect only works when using magic weapons (unequipping the staff does not remove the self-buff); while switching to non-magic weapons does not remove the buff timer, the special attack will not create additional attacks from non-magic critical strikes.

To maximise the usage of the special attack, players should use abilities that hit multiple times, such as Concentrated Blast or its greater variant. A Channeller's ring, Reaver's ring, Erethdor's grimoire, and the Biting perk will give a fairly high chance of critical strikes. Smoke Tendrils provides guaranteed critical strikes while other useful abilities include Tsunami and Omnipower with the Igneous Kal-Mej.

The special attack does not grant its critical strike effect in PvP scenarios but does not go on cooldown either.

Calculations

The expected damage for any single source hit while under the effect of Instability can be found by calculating

$E=(1-p)\cdot S_{\text{non-crit}}+p\cdot (S_{\text{crit}}+T)$

where

• $E$ is the expected damage from the combined damage of the source hit and time strike hit
• $p$ is the probability of the source hit landing as a critical strike
• $S_{\text{non-crit}}$ is the damage from the source hit if it does not land as a critical strike
• $S_{\text{crit}}$ is the damage from the source hit if it does land as a critical strike
• $T$ is the damage from the time strike hit

A calculator for finding the probability of an ability or an auto-attack to land a critical strike can be found here: Calculator:Combat/Critical strike.

Special attack info

Instability
Adrenaline	50%
Damage range	120-140%
Average total damage	130%
Cooldown	60 seconds
Description	Launch an unstable blast at your target. 120-140% Magic damage. On critical strike: Launch a Time Strike at your target dealing 90-100% Magic damage. 30s duration.
Style	Magic

Weapons using this special attack

• Augmented fractured Staff of Armadyl
• Augmented fractured Staff of Armadyl (Aurora)
• Augmented fractured Staff of Armadyl (Barrows)
• Augmented fractured Staff of Armadyl (Soul)
• Augmented fractured Staff of Armadyl (Third Age)
• Augmented fractured Staff of Armadyl (blood)
• Augmented fractured Staff of Armadyl (ice)
• Augmented fractured Staff of Armadyl (shadow)
• Fractured Staff of Armadyl
• Fractured Staff of Armadyl (Aurora)
• Fractured Staff of Armadyl (Barrows)
• Fractured Staff of Armadyl (Soul)
• Fractured Staff of Armadyl (Third Age)
• Fractured Staff of Armadyl (blood)
• Fractured Staff of Armadyl (ice)
• Fractured Staff of Armadyl (shadow)

Update history

This information has been compiled as part of the update history project. Some updates may not be included – see here for how to help out!

• update 4 March 2024 (Update):
  • Damage range (initial hit): 49.6-200% → 120-140%.
  • Time strikes: 60-120% → 90-110%.

• patch 5 June 2023 (Update):
  • The Fractured Staff of Armadyl's special attack has been modified:
    • The buff on the player no longer fires an additional autoattack after landing a critical hit, instead triggering a time strike which deals 60-120% ability damage.
    • Critical hits caused by time strikes do not trigger further time strikes.

• patch 31 August 2021 (Update):
  • The Staff of Armadyl's special attack's initial hit will now deal 50-200% ability damage as stated in the tooltip.

• update 16 August 2021 (Update):
  • Restored the ability for auto attacks critical hits to fire off extra spell casts.
  • Fixed an issue where the extra spell cast from the staff was doing offhand damage if you were using dual-wielded weapons.
  • Extra spell casts can now only fire off if the critical hit is on the player's main target.

• patch 9 August 2021 (Update):
  • The Staff of Armadyl’s special attack is now affected by the Altar of War’s cooldown reset.

• hotfix 28 July 2021:
  • Changed the Staff of Armadyl's special attack to stop extra spellcasts firing off from non-ability based critical hits whilst we investigate and monitor the power level of the special attack.

• update 26 July 2021 (Update):
  • Added to the game.