Another delve bet - perilous moons gear

I also want to be clear that this play isn't isn't about hunting the highest dps gear. Obviously there's higher dps shit than moons. This investment play is about two sources of demand: #1 a specific and important niche (ie venator bow at whisperer.) or #2 an accessible and impactful weapon (bludgeon at araxxor.) It's also reasonable that these sets will have a place at Delve, given it's a part of the Varlamore ecosystem.

Let's explore that further.

Specificity:
I feel very confident that Delve will have a unique mechanic similar to the Venator bow at whisperer or Heavy Ballista on the mirrorback araxyte. My best evidence for this is the Diabolical Aegis, a demonbane weapon that jagex proposed specifically as a drop that would be useful at the boss. There are a number of ways the Aegis could've provided a specific and important unique effect.

• Spec: Aegis had a spec that applied burn damage to the initial target and any target within 1 tile.
• Hitsplats: Aegis would've had two hitsplats.
• Passive: Aegis would reset it's attack delay if used to finish off any demonic enemy.

This tells me there's a few paths for specific niches. First, the passive is similar to ratbane weaponry at Scurrius, the dual-hitsplats are similar to many Varlamore bosses, and finally, they spec involves both burn and an AOE burn.

The moons gear have very similar niche effects to the Aegis.

For example, the Eclipse's set effect that applies burn. I think burn will be a useful mechanic. It doesn't have an AOE burn... but nothing in the game does. Going off the Aegis' spec spreading burn, I could see a situation where there's multiple smaller creatures that are best killed by burn. This would be a great place to use atlatl with eclipse armor.

It's important to note that the Aegis wasn't approved. This part is 110% pure speculating, but I could imagine that that after Aegis failed polls, Jagex changed the mechanics of the boss so that if the boss has the burn effect - it will spread burn to npc's within one tile. This would make burning claws, atlatl and scorching bow super useful here. burning claws and scorching bow both require a spec to apply burn, but atlatl applies burn if you're using it with the eclipse set.

Eclipse is also the best source of burn damage in the game. Wearing the set gives a passive 20% chance to inflict 10 burn damage AND it can stack up to 5 times. Meanwhile Scorching Bow requires a spec to apply burn + only applies 5 total burn damage. Burning Claws are inconsistent AND roll slash instead of crush which is what the Aegis was designed for. There's also a spec with the eclipse set that will clear the burn stacks and convert them into varying levels of immediate damage. This has pretty insane potential imo especially if Jagex were to introduce a burn "weakness" similar to a negative flat armor or elemental weakness. It wouldn't surprise me, but as far as I know there's no evidence to suggest something like this.

Moving on, the Dual Mac's are also very similar to the aegis - both are crush weapons with multiple hitsplats and a spec that allows for a reduced attack delay.

There's also the Blue Moon set, which has a set effect that allows for an instant attack after landing a bind spell. This is particularly useful when auto-casting with mark of darkness, which doubles the likelihood of grasp spells landing AND is meta for magic against demons (like in the Yama fight.) The Blue Moon Spear spec is also interesting as it removes binding effects on a target, and converts that removed bind into increases in accuracy and damage for every tick of bind removed. There's a lot of synergy in this set, and it doesn't really have a great use case right now. Perhaps this boss is the perfect opportunity to introduce that use case?

Accessible and impactful:

So I think it's clear there's some potential for a specific and niche mechanic that makes use of the otherwise underutilized set effects of Moons gear. But I also want to point out there general usefulness as well.

Jagex has alluded to the fact that this won't be a boss with gear switches, which is reserved for raids... but that doesn't mean multiple combat styles are out of the question. I think you just wouldn't be doing switches. For example, floors 1-2 could be melee focused, while floor 3 is ranged. Then 4-5 are melee again, and 6 is best done with magic. Just as an idea. You wouldn't have to do switches, but you would want multiple combat styles. This makes sense with how synapses are designed imo. I think high end players will be bringing 2-3 synapse weapons with a hybrid armor/jewelry setup the new treads, barrows gloves, lightbearer and two sets of armor.

Moons fit into this design perfectly as an mid level option. Both eclipse and blue sets are interesting because they are range/mage armors with melee strength. The Atlatl scales of melee strength, and the Blue Moon Spear has 71 melee strength itself.

Finally, it's affordable. While 2 synapses alone will cost 100m or more, not to mention how much more bis gear would cost. On the other hand, the eclipse and blue moon sets combined are currently only 11.2m. That's far more accessible, even if these costs doubled to 25m

I think there's a lot of untapped potential for these sets, and if you look at the trade volume, it's very low. Some items are at monthly lows, or historical averages, so I don't think there's a lot of risk. The reward if these have a good role at Delve could be pretty good though. There will be a LOT of people hunting this boss, as it drops the next Bowfa.. but it also has untradeable rewards that will bring in people.

TLDR: Moons gear to the moon.