I have seen a lot of threads complaining about things in the aspect arena, this is op, that is broken. Whatever. But none really go into why it’s unbalanced, just that it is. So I thought i’d make a thread laying that out there for anet to take and make the game better, if it’s going to be a permanent addition.
So let me say first, I have gotten every achievement for the minigame and have been the top player in kills with each aspect multiple times. My favorite aspect to use is the lightning aspect.
So first up is the aspects:
The Air Aspect
I assume air is meant to slow and stop the enemies movement from the skills, as opposed to getting kills.
- The auto is fine as it is.
- The second skill is good though it should pull the enemy towards you instead of push them away from you. It can be used for stopping enemies as it is but if it’s done wrong it ends up helping the target.
- The third skills cooldown is a little on the short side, even without the bug of dodge rolling out of it to reduce the cooldown. It doesn’t seem to encourage being tactical in the game. It also takes you back up to full speed while using it if you’re carrying the crystal, I assume this is also a bug.
- The forth skill is fantastic and encorages paying attention to what your skills do and your surroundings as opposed to just spamming your skills.
- The fith skill seems a bit underwelming as a movement skill since sun and lightning can be used to move faster with the orb (Get to that in their section) while assisted leap can’t help movement at all. Though it can be used as a fast way to get up from knockdown; i’m assuming that wasn’t intended but if it’s kept it would give in an edge and a use in combat like the other aspects have in their movement skills.
The Sun Aspect
What I assume the sun aspect to be for is utility and support, again based on its skills.
- The auto skill is ok damage wise but I feel the range is a little too long to me. I think the range should be reduced to 900 from 1200.
- The second skill is a little lacking. The AOE blind is a neat idea and makes sense for sun, but in practice it doesnt work with the people spamming skills. I suggest the blind be replaced with weakness or confusion 3-4 seconds in duration.
- The third skill is a good idea but should remove the slow caused by the air auto in addition to what it already does.
- The forth skill is good as it is, though the tooltip needs to state you can collapse it early by pressing the button again.
- The light dash is terrible for the game. It’s good in theory but you can easily traverse the small arena with it. If you have the crystal you will still go normal light dash speed and you can easily get away from any pursuers. It works like a dodge roll in that you’re immune to everything and can move through lightning barriers. This skill should not make you immune to the lightning barriers, nor immune to sun’s blackholes or air’s tornado if you are still in the path of the skill. In addition, none of the movement skills should be able to be used while you hold the crystal, I didn’t mention it with air because it really doesn’t help for movement of the crystal but it’s not the end of the world if air suffers a little because of this.
The Lightning Aspect
The lighting aspect, to me, is the one meant for combat, the front line fighter that is meant to kill players.
- The auto is fine as it is.
- The second skill is fine as well
- The third skill is fine as well, although it seems when players are using the sun auto against it, they dont trigger the stun but also don’t cancel out the shield.
- The forth skill is also very good for what the lightning aspect is meant to do, just the sun being able to move through is bad. You can also dodge roll out of it with the right timing. I haven’t mastered the timing but I have done it to know that it’s possible.
- The movement skill, lightning pull, is much better than the rest of the aspects, like it was in the zephyr sanctum and in sanctum sprint. Due to it both being a higher jump and a long movement skill. For all the movement skills i’m not really complaining how they work, just how they work with the game. Though the game does make areas where you cant use lighting for something air or sun could do, unlike in the zephyr sanctum or sanctum sprint where lightning could do the same thing as both air and sun. Again this movement skill makes you move at the increased speed without the crystal, with the crystal. And again this movement skill shouldn’t be able to be used with the crystal in hand.
In addition, I think it would be nice if when the crystal is picked up, it becomes a specific crystal attuned to the aspect of the person that picked it up. Encouraging people to play all the aspects with the current way of having to turn in all three crystals before being able to start over on crystals being turned in.