By GrumbleBelly

First, some background to this:  I finished the Lost City quest which allows you to buy Dragon Swords, and when you get to 60 attack, wield them.  So rather than choosing Aggressive Mode (Strength +3) as I have for the last 20 combat levels, I started playing with Controlled (+1 to all three)  and Accurate (Attack +3).

  I thought it was just my imagination, but I seemed to be doing not as well with the Accurate fighting.  Then I noticed some other things as well that I wasn't too sure of, so I decided to do some statistical analysis.

First I played around with using potions versus beer, and noticed that the round off is better when your stats are below normal (such as when drunk) and the exp is going to them.  It's close enough, and I only had a six pack to experiment with, so I will chalk this up to rounding issues, rather than boldly state:  fight drunk to get more exp.

Then I decided to really make it a chore, and get numbers.  Combat level 62, no potions, no prayer, rune 2 hander, no amulet, attack rating 50.  I was fighting Level 37 Giants (mostly because I wanted to get Limpwurt roots for the Temple of Ikov quest).  I tracked 50 combats in Accurate mode, and 50 combats in Aggressive mode.

Some notes:

I believe my max hit is 18 with a dragonstone amulet, 19 when using prayer.  This was without amulet, so max should be 16.

The last hit never shows what the damage actually is, instead the target vanishes and is replaced with loot.  Because of this, the statistics can only show what the minimum would have to be, in other words, if the Giant has 11 hits left and he dies with the next shot, then my attack did 11 or more (11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, etc).  Since I have no way of knowing exactly what damage I actually did, I just designated death of the Giant with a "D", and the last column notes how many hit points he had at death.

In 50 accurate combats, I had 2 fights last 9 rounds,  while in 50 aggressive combats, only 1 fight lasted 9 rounds.  Further, only three times did I manage to "three shot" a giant (death with in first three rounds) in accurate mode, but had six combats of only 3 rounds in aggressive mode.

Finally I find it interesting that the average opening attack in accurate was 6.08, while the closing shot was 7.42, which is a pretty big difference when compared to the average aggressive opener of 6.26 with final blows tallying 6.82.

In all, it seems to show that fighting in agressive mode gives you a faster more consistent fight (5.14 rounds versus 5.4). 

I didn't count up the number of zeros, that exercise I leave for the reader (hey we all have to have some fun now and then right?)

 OK here's the numbers.  Remember kiddies, math is fun.  Now keep telling yourselves that through statistical analysis classes, and you will be fine.