Arena Masters

[itastelikelove]

I just finished killing my old self in the Arena, and...I was kind of disappointed. It might be that I was playing a Yeek Summoner that was almost 10 levels higher than my old Berzerker, but he just didn't seem to have the same punch that he had when I was playing him. Despite having double the health and (i think) better quality infusions. Maybe a Summoner master will be sufficiently horrible.

The other disappointment was that he wasn't EXACTLY the same. I kinda wanted to fight myself exactly the way I was! Is there a reason that can't be done? Are the changes supposed to make them better all around, or just to somehow compensate differences in how the game handles PCs vs NPCs? It's tactics were a bit different, too. Some were just the AI being dumb (who uses Unstoppable to start a fight? really!), and some were probably just the AI being less smart than me: it probably should have made more of an effort to bypass or break through the summons and reach me, shouldn't have run away from the ranged summons, should have used Shattering Impact even if i didn't have it on when i won the game, and should have made much better use of Death Dance. Maybe the game could track your talent use, and weight the new Arena Master's talents to help mimic your play style?

Other than just fighting a more accurate-feeling Arena Master, the other thing I'd love to see would be a way to fight other people's Arena Masters. It would be great if the game could check the online vaults for character with the Arena Master achievement, and let you fight with them, to see how your character holds up against what other people have done. Then we could have an online scoreboard to keep track of the most deadly Arena Masters, for anyone who wants a serious challenge. It could start with a list of the top ten or twenty scoring Arena Masters (actually that alone would be a fun thing to have. although it would probably just end up full of Berzerkers. maybe there should be a separate scoreboard for each class), and then anytime you beat one of them, your character takes their place on the list.