Prayer

Prayer is a non-members combat skill. Prayer is trained by burying bones, using them on an altar in a player-owned house, by praying at the Ectofuntus with bonemeal and buckets of slime or killing reanimated monsters summoned via the Arceuus spellbook. Different bones give different amounts of experience.

Prayers are unlocked as the level in the skill goes up, which are used to aid the player in combat. The prayers can help with Attack, Defence, Strength, Ranged, Magic, and Hitpoints; among other uses. When prayers are activated, they drain the player's Prayer points until the prayer is turned off or all Prayer points are used.

Most prayers can be activated immediately before the attack hits and promptly deactivated in order to gain buffs and/or protection with minimal to no expenditure of prayer points. This is called Prayer flicking.

Recharging Points
The player can recharge all of their Prayer points to full by praying at an Altar, which are most often found in churches.

Certain altars will recharge the player's Prayer points above the maximum. Those altars are as follows.
 * The Altar of Nature in the Nature Grotto
 * The Edgeville Monastery (Requires Level 31 Prayer)

Prayer potions, super restores and Sanfew serums will also recharge Prayer points proportional to the player's prayer level.

Quick prayers
On 6 February 2014, data orbs were added and has given the Prayer icon the ability to select your quick prayers. It can be left-clicked to activate, or deactivate, a group of Prayers preselected by the player simultaneously. You can select which prayers are activated by right-clicking the button and choosing the "Setup quick-prayers" option. Before the addition of this function, players had to, sometimes frantically, locate the Prayer icon and activate them one by one. This function allows players to place many of the most useful prayers on immediate standby. It is very useful for prayer flicking. Quick Prayers can also be used as an easy way to turn off all prayers by double left-clicking it (to turn quick prayers on, then off).

Prayers
The Prayer tab contains all of the available prayers. To activate a prayer, simply click it. This will show a whitish circle around each active prayer, and will start to drain Prayer points.

Prayer bonus
Prayer bonus can be viewed in the Equipment Stats window. Here, players can see all of their bonuses, including Prayer. A higher Prayer bonus will cause Prayer points to drain at a slower speed.

Each point of Prayer bonus slows the drain rate by 3.33% of the regular drain rate of the Prayer(s). A general formula for the time (interval) between dropping Prayer points with a given Prayer bonus is:

$$interval_{modified} = interval_{original} \times (1+\frac{bonus}{30})$$

Where the drain interval is the number of seconds per point (i.e. 1 point per x seconds).

For example, if a player uses the "Protect from Melee" Prayer with a Prayer bonus of 0, their Prayer points would drain at a rate of 1 point every 3 seconds. If that player then equips armour giving a Prayer bonus of +15, the drain rate of this Prayer is slowed by 15 / 30 = 0.5, so the drain interval becomes 3 × (1 + 0.5) = 4.5, or 1 point per 4.5 seconds instead of 1 point every 3 seconds.

To generate a Prayer bonus, players must equip certain types of armour, clothing, weapons, and jewellery. See Prayer items for more information.

Prayer bonuses, however, do not help to stave off the side-effects of locations and monsters which drain Prayer.

The maximum Prayer bonus is 61 wearing the following gear: Using the "Protect from Melee" prayer with this gear would result in 1 point drained per 9.1 seconds.
 * God mitre (+5)
 * Ardougne cloak 4 (+6)
 * God Stole (+10)
 * God Crozier or Void knight mace (+6)
 * God book, Broodoo shield, or Falador shield 4 (+5)
 * Proselyte hauberk (+8)
 * Proselyte cuisse/Proselyte tasset (+6)
 * Holy wraps (+3)
 * Holy sandals (+3)
 * Ring of the gods (i) (+8)
 * God blessings (+1)

Prayer flicking
A skilled player may "prayer flick" by turning prayers on right before their effects are required, and turning them off immediately after. This will stop the prayer from continuing to drain Prayer points in between attacks.

For prayer flicking involving Protection prayers, for example, the player will activate the prayer just before they are about to be hit, and turn it off immediately after the hit lands. This uses very few Prayer points, and you can even avoid using Prayer points at all if done quickly enough. Although it requires timing and skill (the game allows for some leeway on the timing), doing it successfully can save Prayer points and allow a player to continue fighting monsters for much longer, or increase damage rates with offensive prayers. If done perfectly, no Prayer should be consumed regardless of how long you do the trick. However, most players will not have absolutely perfect timing. Wearing gear with a high prayer bonus will help you prayer flick much longer. Flicking is considerably easier when fighting a monster that matches your weapon's speed, and/or when playing with sounds on. Many of monsters attack at the standard attack speed, which is the same as that of many popular weapons such as the abyssal whip.

The only disadvantage to prayer flicking is the high click intensity associated with constantly turning prayers on and off.

How to prayer flick
To prayer flick, one must activate and deactivate a prayer so it is active on the needed game tick. If flicking a combat prayer, this is the tick you attack; if flicking a protection prayer, this is the tick your enemy attacks (which is not necessarily the tick in which you appear to take damage). TzTok-Jad is an exception, as his attacks are instead calculated soon after the start of the attacking animation, in order to give the player a chance to pray accordingly.

If flicking against monsters, the player will have to study their attack speed first, and then flick as you would auto-attacks.

Some tips for timing:
 * If trying to learn prayer flicking for the first time, it is easier to learn against an npc that uses melee, instead of magic or ranged. Activate the protect from melee prayer just before the hit splat appears on your character, and turn it off as soon as you see the 0 hit splat.


 * If using a standard speed weapon (4 ticks, most commonly abyssal whip/scimitars) and praying offensive prayers, turn your prayer(s) on just as your hitsplat disappears and turn it off as soon as you see the prayer(s) light up. Alternatively if you are fighting a monster with an attack speed of 6 (4 ticks) with a normal retaliation time (2 ticks, therefore does not include any range/mage monster, killerwatts etc.), turn your prayer(s) on just as their attack animation starts and turn it off when you see their hitsplat land on you.
 * If using a slow speed weapon (5 ticks - e.g. All magic spells) and praying offensive prayers, turn your prayer(s) on after your hitsplat disappears and turn it off as soon as you see it light up.
 * If using a very slow weapon (6 ticks - e.g. Godswords) timing becomes a little difficult for offensive prayers. Your prayer(s) must be on 2 ticks (1.2s) after your hitsplat disappears. An alternative visual cue is useful if fighting speed 6 normal retaliation monsters - after your initial attack, turn on your prayer(s) as soon as the monster's hitsplat on you disappears, then again as soon as the monster's third attack hitsplat lands on you.
 * Praying defensively against standard speed normal retaliation monsters, turn your prayer(s) on just as their hitsplat on you disappears. Alternatively, if you are using a standard speed weapon, turn your prayer(s) on after you see your hitsplat on the monster appear. This is most likely the most useful visual cue as it works for ranging/maging monsters too, such as aberrant spectres; however it requires that your attacks be synced correctly.
 * If you have your settings configured so that experience drops show up on your screen, the time to activate stat boosting prayers is just before the experience for the hit shows. If using OS Buddy, your experience drop will be blue instead of white, if a prayer was active when your damage was calculated.  If it's white, then you most likely turned on your prayer too late.

Specific combat style flashing

 * Melee flicking: Right before the hitsplat is supposed to show up, you should turn on your prayer, and then turn it off again. The hit will always be a 0 if done correctly, but not charge any Prayer points due to it being on for just half a second. You will know that you executed it correctly if the blue hitsplat and your overhead prayer symbol appear at the exact same time.
 * Ranged/Magic flicking: Right when the monster/player begins the attack animation (Ranged: Pulling up the bow, Magic: Putting hands together for the bolt to form) you should turn on your prayer, and then turn it off again. The hit will always be a 0 if done correctly, but not charge any Prayer points due to it being on for just half a second.
 * Note: there is a slight delay between when you click the prayer and when it appears/takes effect. The prayer must be active at the beginning of the animation, meaning depending on your ping you may need to click even slightly before the animation begins.
 * Damage flicking: This can also be done with any other prayer, so you could do it with prayers such as Ultimate Strength for example, to get the extra 15% bonus whilst not draining Prayer points.

The aforementioned exceptions to the rule of initial-tick-counts is TzTok-Jad. He has distinctive attack animations which telegraph the nature of the next attack, but are not part of the attack itself.

For players who have never prayer-flicked before, the killerwatt plane is an excellent training ground. Killerwatts exist only in a single-combat zone (usually absent of other players) and are not aggressive until you attack them first, giving you ample time to prepare; their melee attacks are also fast enough that you don't need to worry about awkward timing. In addition to these advantages, killerwatt melee attacks are dangerous and accurate if your protection prayer doesn't negate the damage, so it will be quite easy to tell whether you have mastered the skill or not. Killerwatts are very easy to flick effectively against with Protect from Melee, and once mastered, you will be able to apply flicking more easily to enemies with slower attack speeds (which, as mentioned above, are more difficult to flick accurately against). Note that killerwatts can attack with either melee or ranged attacks at will, but there is a way to prevent this: see the killerwatt wiki page for details.

Equipment that affects Prayer
Some equipment can bypass or disable overhead protection prayers, as well as drain Prayer.

Monsters that use Prayer
Several monsters are able to make use of protection prayers.

Trivia

 * A Prayer bonus of +30 is required to halve the drain rate of Prayers.
 * In RuneScape 2, the Prayer icon colour was originally yellow, but Jagex changed the colour on 21 November 2006 when Hunter was released.