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There is nothing inherently difficult about playing Arisha at all.
In fact, because she has so many tools at her disposal she has the ability to output consistent and top tier damage at any point of the battle. She can close and dump damage onto a boss almost non-stop.
She has really good defensive tools as well.
Outside of deflection she has one of the most responsive and available blocks in the game. Because of the speed of her attacks as well I will say she has the best block. It comes out of almost all of her attacks really quickly and so you can play almost in a reactionary way with it. Meaning that you can attack almost all you want and the wait time before you can safely attack and have to block or dodge is minimal compared to almost all of the other characters. Try doing your smash attacks non-stop as Vella and then go cross stance out of it in reaction to a boss's attack. You will get hit. You need to pump your attack speed way up to minimize these situations with the other characters. It's much less so with Arisha because of how fast her attacks are executed and how easily she can go out of them into her block or dodge.
Her dodge has a medium distance to it and it has great invincibility frames.
In terms of block and dodge only Delia has it better than Arisha does.
And almost nothing outstrips her in total amount of time spent invincible. With her block, dodge, and warp she can bypass almost all boss attacks that anyone else would find threatening.
Arisha is the best designed character. And in the female lineup, only Scythe Evie is easier to play.
Her warp, her mana flurry, ruin blade, counter drain, and now her ability to change sp to mp as well? Coupled with her defensive mechanics, this gives her great damage potential and I find you really need a top tier scythe Evie to outdamage a well played Arisha.
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Now to play them well? All are pretty hard. Chainblade Vella is the easiest one to play. Then Scythe Evie.
But if you intend to play at the endgame level where you solo raids with no pots and no trans for your scrubby pub party then all of them are difficult.
And in terms of your criteria of "ease of use, damage potential, reliable skills, stylish looking character and moves."
For reference, you can check these out in an almost apples to apples comparison.
Delia:
Arisha:
Fiona, hammer + large shield:
Fiona, sword + small shield:
Lynn-
Evie, scythe:
Evie, staff:
Vella, chainblades:
Vella, twinswords:
If it's not already apparent from the videos, Arisha has the most enjoyable and varied endgame playstyle, again, simply because she has options on what to do at any point, block, dodge, attack, counter drain, ruin blade, mana flurry, save mp now or use it now, generate mp from sp, warp, restore stamina, etc. All of these combined together makes for a very efficient and fun to play character. At no point in her gameplay will you have to sit there and go "dang... I didn't have enough time to do what I wanted to do to maximize my dps."
Vindictus is horribly optimized (not optimized at all). lol
I recently upgraded from an i5 2500k @ 4.5ghz to an i7 4770k @ 4.7ghz. Literally no change at all to my ability to host raids.
If I have 1-4 people I'm generally okay with rarely any dips below 40fps when I host no matter the raid. If I have 5-8 people and I'm in Pantheum or Juggernaut or one of the other harsher raids, I'm lucky if I get anything more than a slideshow at 10-25 fps. And in raids that don't crush fps like Havan or Iset I'm lucky if I maintain 40fps. Usually struggling around 30 or 35fps in those.
Also, go to Twilight Desert and host a raid. Go into the dungeons, rotate the camera around. Vindictus renders the dungeon room and the rest of the map. Kill off the enemies, then keep the fps display on and rotate the screen around. As you get back to viewing the rest of the map and not just the dungeon room the fps drops significantly. When you're no longer facing the rest of the map the fps increases again.
For this reason, I think the fps drops in Vindictus are all because the game renders things that are off-screen and it renders a hell of a lot of them without consideration as to whether or not those objects are in view. My friends and I have a theory about Juggernaut that the fps drops are because the game is rendering all those useless gears turning in the background behind the walls of the cavern you fight in. And for Pantheum it's his cloak effects and all the lava that's probably behind the walls and under the floor.
I remember a while ago that a GM came out and said that so long as you don't virtual box and you have one computer per account logged in you can have multiple characters logged in.
For this reason, it may be beneficial if you are playing with friends and you all agree with it, that you have a separate "host" computer set up. This host computer logs into a dummy account and hosts the raid so it has to bear the burden of all those stupid and pointless renders. You face him away from the action so it doesn't have to render any of that and then you guys can all fight with normal 60fps.
AND if what I remember about the GM saying about multiple computers for different characters logged in holds true. You wouldn't be playing it, it just logs in, hosts the raid, you join, and then it turns away from the action and sits there. The rules I recall were that everyone in the raid must be made aware of this and must agree to it. So generally, it's best if you just do it amongst your friends in private raids only. Pubbies that see the host afking despite what you may try and explain will be get annoyed unless the raid ends really quickly each time. ANd hey, you double your drop rate. *shrugs*
