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My first impressions...
- My stamina issue is god awful now. Insane reaper + stamina potion used to sustain 50 speed acceptably; I am constantly short on stamina post patch.
- SP -> mana skill has a 25s cooldown, far too long to burn up your excess SP. Cat statue remains useless in raids after the first 15 seconds of a fight.
- Damage output increased significantly, but still ain't remotely close to catching a skillfully played scythe or kai if you don't spam mercpot+ for stam refills.
- Season 3 farm map grind speed improved a fair bit. Can now afford to burn mana on a lot of trash and still have mana to work with on bosses.
Comments
Stamina is having a little bit trouble but still manageable
New sp skill is godly
Damage output exceed scythe but behind prepatch kai almost top tier dps now
Overall I really don't like the mana change. I feel perfect mana drain does not grant additional mana now. And I don't like the fact all sp skill grants mana. Arisha nowadays has way more mana to spend and can remain in mana mode for 90% of the battle. Comparing to pre patch, the fun fact of game and skill level have dropped significantly. It no longer requires you to time attack, no longer require you to switch between modes frequently and very little time you need to spend building up the mana(which is quite fun for me)
The mana blade mode is almost like spin lann in old days when you just need to hold left and watch a few CDs, if you like seeing your name in the end you should be happy. But I can hardly find a reason why would I like the change at all.
But yes, they did go overboard with the mana since I barely go out off blade mode now. I totally get the part about not caring about whiffing drains in favor of faster swaps. I do sorta miss blade switching too, to some extent.
> Extended block period for stalling out multi-hit attacks
> Mana-inducing, allowing extended periods of Mana Blade performance
> A reasonably fast CD that puts otherwise unused SP to use - at a nearly self-sustaining cost
My solo run times have been cut down by about a quarter of the original times with this, and coming from someone who plays exclusively from a gamepad, looking at this as a viable alternative to using Ruin Blade to burn all that excess SP (and, by so setting aside the pad to do the command) makes it an absolutely phenominal tool.
Cons? Yeah, my stamina management did take a bit of a hit, but from a lower-speed (43) more defensive player, I'm perfectly fine trading a few seconds per raid to stall for stamina for something this powerful.
I don't have a lot of experiance with this character but always taught that if you can figure a way to input a maximum of damage while maintaining your stamina comfortably,than you should be very hard to beat,especially with the gear system change that gave her access to much higher levels of defense/crit res.
I just did a *sloppy run* to test the stamina depletion.I know that most people complaining about it have much higher attack speed than i do and it's an additional factor for sure.Althoe,im not invested into Arisha and never play her so 33 att speed is what i could display.I also didn't get the chance to test things out in competitive raiding so the formula im proposing is not set in stone at all,but perhaps could maybe help out some who really can't control their stamina level.
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Basically on any character,i would simply take some time to walk or us normal hits while the stamina bar replenishes.However Arisha seems to be able to stay in Mana Edge mode even at very low amount of stam(Even thoe i don't that have much speed,i still have only 125 max stam).This is also nice because you can still do decent damage with the 4th-5th smashes and the crystal burst,mana crystal 5 stage retreival and you don't have to stay out of mana Edge mode for that long.
Also for the ones who have a very considerable amount of speed and cannot handle it,wouldn't it be better to wear Braha Helm/Pants with Memorable/Armadillio?And Strong as accessory prefix instead of Significant.Each Strong gives +2 stam and each Armadillon +5.If your not too concerned with level 90s armor ability you could even use:
http://vindictus.gamepedia.com/Skeleton_Witch_Set
It gives 30+stamina and that is without the actual enchants.I'm not sure she would actully need it,but i'm just putting the idea here for those who really can't deal with the stamina.
*Sloppy test run*:
With that being said i still think that Sword Lann is the only class that would need a little retouch in term of Stamina consumption.His gameplay is very fun and powerful,but he is the only one who still has old school mechanisms and he cannot afford to miss out on stamina.
New skill is great for Arisha. Now i dont have to spend half the fight in boss raids building mana.
Stamina isn't an issue. Crystal burst is good enough to keep stamina in check so long as you're not continuously buring mana away like you're Lann. If done right you should be able to maintain mana mode for the whole duration of the raid. I need more testing to be sure but so far in my experience I haven't ran out of mana for more than 10 - 15 seconds. But then again i have 84 speed...
It seems as though mana stored but have not yet been drained to usable mana only gets the Perfect drain bonus if it was not stored from certain SP skills. Ruin Blade and Resonance doesn't seem to work with Perfect drain. Better to just drain right away unless you already have a lot of mana drained. Everything else from normal attacks, crystal burst, ether zone and Counter drain still work with Perfect drain.
Either way I'm happy with the changes. Now to figure how to do more deeps than I already do. O_o
u can't even deeps m8 >:(
Arisha really needs a new SP skill that isn't ~50% rubbish. At the end of party raids, I always see under 'SP Used' a Kai with like 5000+ spent SP, and then me underneath that with ~1000 or less. I look at my 4 activated SP skills and 1 is RNG, the other is a 8 second cast time, the next has a long cd and does slightly more damage than a normal smash crit, and the last is the time stop hold ulti you can use 1 time per raid unless everyone is really really bad.
Overall, it has been an improvement. Tradespot's stamina stacking idea looks like something I just might try out to. Stamina management got worse, but I don't notice it when I trans (DK). Could be fun being the Arisha in lv 80 armor when the lv 95 cap update hits.
If you still have SP difficulties (and/or plenty of stamina to spare at times), it means you are getting hit too much, or missing out on too many dps windows due to being overly cautious. At perfect gameplay, you should have stamina shortage even at 40 speed.
I have no difficulties whatsoever with the new arisha buff, I'm always in mana blade (other than the initial 15 seconds of a raid), have no stamina problems and also no SP problems due to cat statue as well.
"Infinite mana" pretty much sums up the arisha buff for me
In s3 raids, I have infinite sp without using cat statue, and a constant stamina shortage. I'm in mana mode only about 75% times.
Top DPS in most pub raids is trivial; but I don't even come close to catching a stacked scythe who actually knows what he is doing ^^
Regarding MeApple's comment about the change, the excess mana solves alot of frustrating scenarios she had previously. It used to be difficult to time perfect drain with the enemy's attack when they were constantly flinching from other pple or taking aggro away from you. Furthermore, you are still rewarded for perfecting the timing of drains and counter drains, it is just simply less punishing.
Stamina was always an issue and did get worse. I personally am all for this buff. The idea of managing mana and switching mana blade mode was interesting and engaging but the aspect of spamming left click to build mana became repetitive and boring becuz it was slow and weak. At least with constant mana u can flurry and diff warp more which is fun becuz of the animation, the feel and power behind those moves. Landing a resonance is more rewarding and be able to hve greater flexibility to use ruin blade right off cd is a nice bonus. Altho its more challenging and fun to try to time ur ruin blade with an enemy's attack, its only truly fun in solo. In parties its annoying waiting to use and holdin off on it becuz the enemy aggro is not focused on you and you are just waiting for it. Same with perfect drain; in the past u wud have decide whether to wait to perfect drain to get more mana or cut ur loss and just mana drain and start dpsing with less mana. It gets frustrating when the boss keeps moving and isnt focused on you.
That's funny because im always actively close to bosses and topping dps. I mean sure, there's always room for improvement but i always find my self at the top and im not even attack capped for S3 either.
But i do agree that stamina now is a bit harder to manage but it is still manageable and thats fine for me. Just means the skill cap is increased for arisha players
Anyway, after the new patch resonance is actually more useful and could and probably does more damage+give mana than being able to attack the boss normally (NON mana blade mode).
Having such a long windup is better because the skill has a semi-long cooldown and most of the time you won't be using it twice in one raid.