I do not understand the Arc-Drive concept after playing for a while.

[yuu]

Excuse my English, it is far from the best but I will try to get my point across.

I have been playing this game for about a week or two weeks now (on the community edition), and I am someone who comes from games such as DBFZ, Soku, and other anime fighting games, if that helps.

What is the primary use of Arc-Drives and Another Arc-Drives?
They seem like a waste of meter, or most of them do.

I originally thought they were this game's version of "super attacks" from other games, where you can dump your meter after a combo to do more damage. However, not only are some Arc Drives really hard to combo into, they seem to scale much worse than just doing a basic combo.

For context I tried a few arc drives right after a 2C, and they did less than half their damage to the point where just doing a combo is far more beneficial.

I then soon realized that some of them had other uses, such as forcing the enemy to block longer, but I get the feeling a lot of these are meant to be high-damaging super moves. So why do they scale so terribly, in the cases where you can actually combo into them?

Are they meant to be a reversal? None of them seem to be frame 1 based on the mizuumi wiki. I know some are unblockable, but they are far too slow to be a threat.
It seems like the only use for them is to hit them raw, but I am unsure what the intended situation is for that scenario, since they have a very predictible super flash.

I understand Last Arcs as a punish mechanic, because you need to get an ex-shield for them to work, but what about the normal Arc-Drives?

All help is appreciated.

[torrenz]

AD/AAD are nothing special for most characters so you could say theyre a trap for new players because they're so flashy and expensive

Originally posted by author:

]I then soon realized that some of them had other uses, such as forcing the enemy to block longer, but I get the feeling a lot of these are meant to be high-damaging super moves.

most aren't
there are some characters with practical combos for damage like roa but AD/AAD are most often used for their utility like reversals, fullscreen punishes, pressure reset or command grab/unblockable setups

not useless but not something you'll see in every match, ultimately its case by case for each character whether they have useful applications or not since AD/AAD directly compete with ex moves, initiative heat and spark in terms of meter

your english is good, if you had a particular character in mind you could ask on discord too https://discordapp.com/invite/33cskPv

[yuu]

Originally posted by torrenz:

AD/AAD are nothing special for most characters so you could say theyre a trap for new players because they're so flashy and expensive

Originally posted by author:

]I then soon realized that some of them had other uses, such as forcing the enemy to block longer, but I get the feeling a lot of these are meant to be high-damaging super moves.

most aren't
there are some characters with practical combos for damage like roa but AD/AAD are most often used for their utility like reversals, fullscreen punishes, pressure reset or command grab/unblockable setups

not useless but not something you'll see in every match, ultimately its case by case for each character whether they have useful applications or not since AD/AAD directly compete with ex moves, initiative heat and spark in terms of meter

your english is good, if you had a particular character in mind you could ask on discord too https://discordapp.com/invite/33cskPv

I suspected this, thank you for your response.