2.0 Asuka Rework

[TarkusLee]

So, they reworked Asuka (along side HC), and I'm wondering... why?

 

I don't know enough about the game to really unferstand why they would reork Asuka and if the changes they made acheive their goal.

[Kjam]

So to start, they messed up really badly in one respect (lol)

I can only hope this is a bug, but one of the big changes is that Asuka can now "burn himself out", or deplete his remaining mana to cast a spell he can't afford. While this seems relatively benign... Recover Mana (Continuous) exists. When Asuka gains the continuous Mana recovery effect, spending the last bit of his Mana to cast a spell he can't afford will not burn him out and instead will always leave him with a pixel. In other words, he gains infinite ammo for five seconds (long enough to drain ~a quarter of the opponent's health bar with chip damage on block due to RISC affecting chip now).

The real reason for the rework came down to agency. When Asuka accessed a Test Case before, he had a 2/30 chance of a spell being a staff (basically augments his casted spells rather than being a spell on its own), a 2/30 chance of the spell being a Mana recovery/cost reduction option (varied with Test Case), and another 2/30 chance of the spell being a Bookmark spell (somehow aiding with slotting spells into empty slots or shuffling his hand). This rework reduces those 6/30 non-attack spells down to 3/30 by moving Staves to their own input and removing one Mana recovery/cost card out of each Test Case, effectively giving him access to real projectiles more often. On top of that, casting a slot that has no spell now does a new free spell that is weak, but can function as a cancel on unsafe moves.

I think the intent was to make him interact with the opponent more and dip into different Test Cases to access a guaranteed staff of his choosing, but since Mana costs went up on most spells and the economy spells were halved in number, he just feels anemic when he doesn't have the continuous Mana recovery buff or cost reduction buff. I'd say the rework achieved the goal of increasing Asuka's interactiveness most of the time and giving him more agency, but I'd argue he's more or less in the same position where he really just wants to put you in an excessively long blockstring by whatever means he can achieve through RNG since his normals are the same...

[Kjam]

8 minutes ago, Kjam said:

So to start, they messed up really badly in one respect (lol)...

You tell me if it's a problem, this is a 10% Mana start 

(partially just curious what video attachments look like in the forum lol)

[TarkusLee]

1 minute ago, Kjam said:

You tell me if it's a problem, this is a 10% Mana start 

(partially just curious what video attachments look like in the forum lol)

Lmfao, every Asuka clip makes him out to be a Cube Dispenser. 

 

I liked his concept a lot, but I'm afraid of him going too much into one direction instead of mixing a variety of spells.