I've been watching a lot of OSRS streams lately, and many of them use prayer flicking in order to pretty much fight everything. Prayer flicking allows them to not lose any prayer points or to lose them extremely slow, while not taking any damage since their prayer protects them. From what I understand, they are able to do this because of how the game uses a game tick. You turn the prayer on and off very fast in order to not lose any prayer points and absorb any damage.
In Runescape 3 (the modern version of the game), prayer points drain much faster, but you have more of them. However, you only lose prayer points every game tick, just like in OSRS. When I am fighting more difficult creatures, I still take hits from them that are above 50% their max hits (I use the deflective curses, which reduces damage of the curse type by 50%), meaning that I am not getting my prayer flicks correct.
At what time do I need to turn my prayer on and off by in order to reap its benefit while also not losing any prayer points (or as little as possible)? Is it the tick before the creature does damage to me or the same tick as the time the damage is dealt?
Best Answer
After experimenting for a while, I've observed the following:
For prayers that affect your target (like Soul Split), you want the prayer to be on for the same tick that you deal damage to your opponent. With certain abilities, you may need to delay turning on your prayer for a tick or two. One ability that you need to delay for is Asphyxiate - I believe it takes two game ticks before any damage is dealt with this ability (possibly only one tick). Failing to do this, will result in you turning your prayers on at the wrong time, negating them.
For prayers that absorb damage being taken, you want your prayers to be on the tick before the damage is dealt. I've noticed that turning the prayer on right as the damage is dealt to me seems to negate the prayer and allows full damage through (exactly what I want to avoid).
All of this comes down to keeping track of the game tick of 0.6 seconds each. If you are too fast or too slow with the prayer flicks, you will become off-tick and your prayers will be useless. You also need to be careful when using abilities so that you don't fall out of the tick cycle as well.