Arena - More Weird Builds?

[Ya_Mama--]

So for bow we got a build that relies on Peak Performance. In other words, don’t get hit. There are zero levels of Constitution or Stamina Surge, which forces you to dodge (almost) every attack if you don’t want to run out of stamina. There are also no Evade Window levels, so you can’t miss a single frame for all those dodges. Correction: it does have 1 level of EW, my bad.

The build does get Divine Blessing and Protective Veil, which are both defensive in nature and useless since you lose Peak Performance when either of those comes into play.

Then there is Foray, which is only useful for the first poison proc, after that the Power Coatings deal more damage compared to reapplying the poison.

There are also some affinity skills for that single time that one of your arrows crits.

It seems a tad unbalanced that you have to dodge every attack possible and hit its weak spot consistently without any useful skills if you want to beat the 5min mark. Perfect play for the top 10k sure, but this feels like trying to beat a speedrunners record instead of a challenge quest.

I wonder what challenge they had in mind exactly. Did they make bad builds on purpose to add to the challenge, or was this just a drunk dev who asked chatGPT for a bow build and then forgot half of it when he coded it into the game?

I’m not really familiar with the other weapons. How are the builds for them? Do they make more sense or did that same dev make all the arena builds?

[Shield]

Looks like you already understand the challenge, since you've laid it out.

You don't want to get hit so you can retain your peak damage, you want to dodge everything but you lack notable stamina recovery, and you obviously want to spin both those plates while wrestling with the monster.
Then you consider coatings and it gets even more complicated when going for a high score.

That's generally what arena challenges are about; if these builds were good, it wouldn't be as challenging.

They're meant to be hard-to-use builds with hard-to-use conditions while fighting a boss by yourself. Hate to say it, but the entire experience is the challenge; you just have to embrace it.


And yeah, I did the Doshaguma Lance challenge and it was also some half-broken, sh!tty build.

[OnePunchGay]

pretty sure it had ew1 which is good enough over 0ew

[lailaamell]

Originally posted by Ya_Mama--:

So for bow we got a build that relies on Peak Performance. In other words, don’t get hit. There are zero levels of Constitution or Stamina Surge, which forces you to dodge (almost) every attack if you don’t want to run out of stamina. There are also no Evade Window levels, so you can’t miss a single frame for all those dodges.

The build does get Divine Blessing and Protective Veil, which are both defensive in nature and useless since you lose Peak Performance when either of those comes into play.

Then there is Foray, which is only useful for the first poison proc, after that the Power Coatings deal more damage compared to reapplying the poison.

There are also some affinity skills for that single time that one of your arrows crits.

It seems a tad unbalanced that you have to dodge every attack possible and hit its weak spot consistently without any useful skills if you want to beat the 5min mark. Perfect play for the top 10k sure, but this feels like trying to beat a speedrunners record instead of a challenge quest.

I wonder what challenge they had in mind exactly. Did they make bad builds on purpose to add to the challenge, or was this just a drunk dev who asked chatGPT for a bow build and then forgot half of it when he coded it into the game?

I’m not really familiar with the other weapons. How are the builds for them? Do they make more sense or did that same dev make all the arena builds?

its a challenge not give you easy way to beat it and just dont get hit and dont miss

[Ya_Mama--]

Originally posted by OnePunchGay:

pretty sure it had ew1 which is good enough over 0ew

True, I added a correction.

Originally posted by Shield:

[...]That's generally what arena challenges are about; if these builds were good, it wouldn't be as challenging.

They're meant to be hard-to-use builds with hard-to-use conditions while fighting a boss by yourself. Hate to say it, but the entire experience is the challenge; you just have to embrace it.[...]

I get that it's supposed to be a challenge, but this build seems counter intuitive. Foray indicates that you should make use of poison. But if you do that, it's impossible to beat the 5 minute mark because you lack the damage from Power Coatings. The problem is not that the build is hard to use, the problem is that half the build is not meant to be used.

From what I can see other builds seem to have a lot more synergy. Heroics & Resentment synergizes, Flayer & WEx synergizes. And both get extra damage from Agitator or Offensive Guard. Compared to just Peak Performance. But I don't play the other weapons, hence why I made this post. Was this playtested in order to ensure that every build stands on roughly equal footing for getting competitive times? Or do the other builds have an easier go at comparatively?