So, continuing on this happy train, here are my thoughts on what we need to do next year in terms of art preparation.
I would disagree with moving forward with Spiritual and physical cultivation as rapidly as possible. While we should do it, I believe putting it on the back burner is probably better than moving full steam ahead on it. And there are a couple of reasons why.
- Base cultivation really drives itself with the use of drugs and the Dark Pool.
- We have a ramshackle build of things we stole, were gifted, randomly earned, or desperately bought.
First off, elemental alignment. We have some crazy elemental alignment going on here, that makes it exceedingly difficult to do any type of item scheme. We have all of the Imperial 8, most of the Traditional 5 (just missing metal TRF!), and then Darkness and music to go along with all of that. We are a kaleidoscope of colors to anyone who sees us and checks our elemental alignment.
I don't particularly like it, but it also means cutting arts that I like out of the picture. The easiest art to cut, in my opinion, is Argent Storm. After that, it gets a bit harder with AC. Then we get to the tricky ones like FSA and AE, and then the really devastating one in AM. We could go further and cut TRF and eliminate wood, or PLR and eliminate Moon, but I really don't want to do that.
What this means is that our elemental alignment will be more focused on Dark, Wind, Water, Wood, Moon (and music). I mean, now I have to go through my justification on cutting AE, FSA, and AM
AE first. As much as I love this art, it doesn't pull the weight that I want it to pull. I wished that the third technique was more focused on the minions rather than another AoE. An AoE that received immediate competition from FSS, and art that has a higher count of dice than AE. Ultimately, it serves a useful function for the tournament and may require multiple arts to fully replace (a perception art, qi draining art, spiritual defense art, armor degradation art, and summoning art) but with as much competition as it is receiving from FSS, it probably won't be pulling it's weight and should be cut after the tournament for a more dedicated summoning art, at the very least.
FSA next. I love FSA, I really do. We have had extremely fun times with it, and it has pulled a substantial amount of weight in critical fights. However, as our proficiency with music is growing, and our arsenal of music is increasing, the value of FSA and bows, in general, is decreasing. We have more tools to do what FSA did and find it hard to rationalize and find time in a fight to stop our powerful music to pick up a bow and shoot. Furthermore, we have reached the end of it, and it would require finding its successor to improve upon. That being said, we should look into an art that is a simple "nuke" art for the purposes of rapidly destroying terrain in front of us. It was incredibly useful in escaping Yan Renshu's lair the first time, and having that type of firepower to blast through something in dire need is something to be appreciated.
AM is last, but certainly not the least. AM is a fundamental art in our build and a cornerstone of our perception and spiritual defense. It has proven extremely valuable for its perception-based abilities as well as the ability to emotionally stabilize oneself and see what is really going on. That being said... we have reached the end of the road for AM. There is no further way to improve upon it other than going down the Argent Path. Which means... eventually, we will need to find another art that serves those functions. An Early Green art just can't compete when we are dealing with 4th or 5th level greens. I love AM, and it will be difficult to find replacement arts, and it probably is on the lowest rung of our replacement scheme simply because of how fundamental it currently is to our spiritual defense and perception.
So, what arts should we focus on next? Well, here is a list of what I would like to have.
- A Proper Summon Art (something dealing with treants would be cool)
- A dedicated Stealth Art (SCS is great, but let's really crank up that stealth shall we?)
- More diversified music arts (FVM and FSS strike an interesting chord in the listener, but perhaps expanding to more cheery toons will do Ling Qi good)
- Face changing art (our subterfuge skill needs improving, surely there is an art that can change a person's face or a target's perception of the face? With Cai's mission being of the ... delicate sort, being as unrecognizable as possible will have it's merits)
- More spiritual defense (~ Don't cry for me Argent Mirror! ~)
- More Perception ( ~ Don't cry for me Argent Mirror! ~)
And yes... the pun was intentional.
