Phantom Dust Quick Mode Retrospective

What''s written here is a bit of a look into some of what went on when creating the Quick Mode Arsenals for the rerelease of Phantom Dust.  This is not a perfect record of it, and I don't have everything that went on during it, but I thought this would at least interest people.  You'll also get to see some commentary on things that surprised me with it.  Sorry this is rambly and not the most organized.

I am not showing things with the developers' or other player's  commentary out of respect for their privacy.  

The players I do show, I do not think would be offended by what gets shown.(and deserve thanks for the ideas, encouragement, and help they provided)  What's shown is no great secret but something more of interest to players and what went into the updated arsenals creation.  

During testing with beta of the rerelease, we were doing our testing with the original Quick Mode arsenals.  Let's just say those arsenals didn't always make for the most thrilling of play.  One arsenal contained 4 rain moves in it for example.(Good luck with Panorama)  While I was gratefiul to get to test,  I half jokingly made a post in the testing group asking if they were going to update the Quick Mode arsenals, just hoping we might have more fun arsenals to test with if I could convince the developers..  

This ask had some support, and the developers asked us what we think they should be instead.  This eventually lead to the updating of Quick Arsenals, of which I had a significant hand in the creation of.  A fan boy's dream to have happen.  Honestly, I sometimes criticized myself for spending time writing what was originally a 90+ page guide on Phantom Dust, which I wondered if anyone even read much of anyway at times.  However, if I didn't write it, I get the feeling I probably wouldn't have been able to end up getting the Quick Arsenals updated in the re-release.  It would make putting things together more easy and give me the confidence (or arrogance?) to try to organize updated arsenals.  So you never know sometimes.  

Anyway, while I unwittingly pitched updating the arsenals some interesting discussions came up about what they should be designed around.  One interesting idea people had was make the arsenals in a way so that potentially "overused skills", like say Fortress of Iron was argued, not be used or be heavily deemphasized.  In a sense, I think the thought behind that was, with the absence of certain skills, other skills might have their time to shine.  While interesting, it's also a highly divisive idea.  Skills are popular at least in part because people actually like using them.  My memories would say the suggestion did not get much further than that conceptually in the discussions.

It did spark an idea in me though.  What if we designed these Quick arsenals with the intention that they have tag team synergy?  To the point that, maybe these decks aren't too good on their own, but if you and a teammate ended up with certain arsenals, you could pull off some wild combos, somehow...  It's an interesting idea in theory, which you might even be able to make work with enough design and testing time.  What ultimately bothered me with the idea, is that Phantom Dust Quick Mode, is not just designed for Tag Team, even if it's generally the die hard fans choice of play.  Did we want players playing One on One or Battle Royale getting stuck with ineffective arsenals because they lack a tag teammate?  No.  

These eventually dropped ideas did influence some of the Quick arsenals created.  Along with players commenting that they didn't like it in Quick Mode when they got an arsenal they didn't feel like using.  It influenced me to include Thieving Imps, Learnings, and Relearns in arsenals.  The idea was if you didn't like the arsenals you got, here's your chance to get an opponent's arsenal skill or emphasize a skill with Relearn.  It could also feed into the idea of potentially having a way to create new combos between the decks used, for more match variety.  This was especially the case with trying to include Thieving Imps and Learnings.  Skills I would say that weren't competitively popular, at least when the arsenals were designed.  Relearns were used as a way "customizing" the deck you received by essentially doubling up on a skill you wanted to empahsize more.  

If you're curious about what exactly was in the original quick sets, you can get the list here:   PD's Original Quick Arsenals

Starting to undertake the idea more, I worked on trying to justify arguements  for the removal of certain skills:  Initial Removal Arguments

Part of a more focused discussion included these exchanges:  Focused With Bregan123 and Nathan 0

I do feel like Bregan's staples suggestions helped ground me in the creation of the arsenals.  There were additional discussions I had with him in dms, but I don't have those, unfortunately.  I can only remember otherwise that he may have suggested a Faith Nature deck be one of the arsenals included.  

With Some time passing I started to justify the removal or eliminating of further skills:  Skill Removal Justifications

Another thing I found in my notes were a list of every skill feature I could think of that I'd like new players to see or for players to potentially be able to do when they play Quick Mode: Skill Type List.

I think I may have met all those goals somewhere.  

At this point I was starting to just make the arsenals and pitched 8 of them as a group.  Designwise, there were 2 main threads.  Getting greater variety of effective skills vs flat out potentially more effective arsenals with duplicates.  I went with a variety approach, with at least some skills from more staple arsenals followed on.  I think it would be a lot harder to start filling up arsenals with duplicates that meet a few staples with less skill variety.  Depending on player taste, the mode could be less appealing if players are stuck with arsenals that had fewer liked moves, but was a better focused.  I was also concerned the quick arsenal update idea could get shot down because of testing players disliking a more limited scope of skills.  On top of that I thought it would be better for newer players to see more possibilities than just an arsenal using 3-4 attack types.  If something annoys them, they also won't see it as prevalent when playing multiple matches.  I kept the shields down to 3-4 to help to discourage overly defensive play.  Each of these arsenals needed to have ways around defenses.  Every deck with Faith did have Reincarnation for example.  So yes, I didn't always follow variety, but balance wise, it helps those arsenals overcome defensive issues.  

Talking about limitations and variety also brings up another interesting influence in the design.  With 8 arsenals, in the original Quickmode, each school was featured in 3 decks each.  

Wanting to be fair with school variety, I also followed this consideration initially with this pitch.  I think at this point of the thread discussion, someone needed to pitch a tangible set to really get the idea moving further past talk:  Pitched Arsenals.  

You might notice something in that list.  Arsenal Number 7, Weird Miner Shatter is different than the one playable in game now.  It has Ki school instead of Nature in the current game.  I wanted to get Ki in there, because all the other schools had 3 arsenals they were in.  It also gave me a chance to give Learning to another deck so players could play off each other.  As I did more testing with it, and maybe even a little playing it felt like it came up short with what I hoped for.  The deck was meant to be a bit more in your face.  Looking back maybe it wasn't as bad as I thought, but at the time I felt like I really let people down with that one.  Since a second update, was being put out right away, I was able to ask to update it to what's there now, which was really cool of them to do.  I think I made the right call even though it meant Ki was only in 2 of the 8 quick arsenals.  I wanted to give players that feeling of being able to pursue opponents with that single Speed Up, but I also didn't want it to get abusive to the point that all these decks now need to have fixers to deal with a pesky +4 speed player.(Thieving Imp Relearn opportunity )  

I didn't really get the chance to play these decks with other people to try to test.  Mostly it came down to me starting them up in split screen mode and seeing if I liked the way the skills theoretically came out.  I also did some play against the AI for whatever that's worth.  Other than that, after Xbox Live went down for Phantom Dust, I maybe either played 6 or 7 times on Xlink Kai with PD vets.  I didn't really have a whole lot of recent experience to design off of.  On the most basic level, more play and testing would have lead to a better balance, no matter what guided the arsenal creations  in the first place.  Whether you went for more variety or more focus styled arsenals.  I did the best I reasonably could in trying to get it changed into something better with the time I had.    

Some Reflections on the actual Builds.  

Part of the design towards variety had ups and downs to it.  More variety meant being able to get more cool combos possibilites for players.  Though with more arsenal building experience now, I realize having less duplicates means lower chances of getting combos to actually come out for you in play.  Even if you put 3 of a skill in a deck, you're going to have games where you can expect to never get those moves before the match ends.  Now if you have 4 of a skill in an arsenal , you can reliably expect getting at least one of them in a match.  So yeah, more variety means more types of combos potentially possible, but less chance of any specific combos occurring in a match.  Something I did not really think about in the design of the Quick Decks. Special Thanks to Bregan, Maalik, Nathan 0, Phreaker, and Developers for support and help editing / coming up with arsenal direction.  

I did a little write up on the decks when PD rereleased here at this PhantomDusted.com archive :  https://web.archive.org/web/20180329090938/http://phantomdusted.com/quick-battle-arsenals/

From here I'm just going to talk about the arsenals and other things I didn't expect, or combos I had hoped for players to pull off.  They'll kind of go in and out on subjects here, but hopefully it's interesting to read.  

Fair Balance Arsenal (Nature Faith) - I think the launch off point was Bregan suggesting a Faith Nature arsenal should be included in the group.  Naturally I said let's get a Thieving Imp in this arsenal for that cross combo potential.  That element of giving someone's deck a move they didn't expect to be working with.  Plus a limited capsule pop is fun. I did not want to have a whole lot of level erase in these arsenals, but Vicious can be a significantly fun one to mess around with but not be overly aggravating for new players like say Vicious Balance decks designed to zero opponent's level.

Something I didn't really anticipate was the chances that multiple players would end up getting the same particular decks between each other in matches.  .  Maybe it's me, but it's felt like the RNG Gods seemed to give multiple players the same arsenals in matches more than I thought would happen.  I guess it's not that ridiculous between 4 people, that 2 of them could get the same arsenal when they only have 8 to choose from.  I definitely didn't anticipate it, but in Vicious Balance's case I don't think that ever turned out that bad, but we'll get to duplicate decks more later.  

Back to this Faith Nature deck, I'm not sure where all the credit comes from.  I happen to like Faith Nature a lot but Bregan also feels he had additional  influence with it beyond suggesting it.  Faith at that point was probably my Favorite school.  Some reflections with it was to put Healing Water in because I wanted new players to know healing moves existed in the game.  To see there is more to the game than attacks.  I know having the "Trinity" of Nature Swords is fairly popular - Flame Sword, Ice Sword, Lightning Sword.  I didn't include Lightning Sword though because I kind of felt 3 of them was a little against variety of the arsenal.  I also wondered if maybe it was too powerful for a game type with limited shields.  Flame Sword and Lightning Sword seem to have nearly the same accuracy too.  At least Ice Sword is one of the tougher melee attacks to dodge in situations.  I thought the Ice Effect would be more interesting to feature with it too.  With maybe one or two hits being less consequential than 2 lightning sword hits.  A streak of frozenness can be nasty though.   I put Trance and Heat in because I wanted players to realize they can combo buffs together.  For a very long time I thought it wasn't possible because you can't combo Tiger's Strength, and Trance.  I hope people didn't get killed too much from Trancing and Gehenna'ing.  It's hard to make use of Faith without a little sacrifice.  It really ups the shield busting potential of the arsenal.  Return to Nature was thrown in as a counter to Amaros going real bad, or stop opponent stats going too wild.  It also counters the Speed Up player arsenal.  Sure Armaros could have been used, but even the game's AI is stupid enough to use the move against itself ;)  I wanted a chance for stats to be countered but not to have it all over the place either.  Also potential to stop Optimization, although I  think there are a good number of skills here to exploit Opti like Ice Sword.

The Eraser Arsenal (Arsenal 5) - Listed a bit later in the pitch link, I remember the development of this arsenal more concretely.  This one has Bregan's influence heavily.  I honestly would not have  felt that comfortable suggesting this myself.  It was very Erase skill heavy, and I would have felt uncertain of whether having Diabolical Trick and all the Lacks, and Dragon Slayers were a good approach.  I was less experienced with it, and thought people might feel I was putting my thumb down on erase too heavily for an arsenal.  Heat from the Void was a natural fit for things.  I might have suggested the Exhaust since we're already erasing stuff and wanted to give a slightly different taste of erase.  Technically with Heat from the Void it's incentive to make players eat up Aura Particles they might otherwise hold.  That's was the theory at least.  One Exhaust hit is not the end of the world, but  a second one can hit you fairly hard.  I guess you could pull that off with a Thieving Imp Relearn.  I dropped the Thieving Imp idea though with this one because I thought it might feel less interesting in a deck with Diabolical Trick already in it that was already a packed arsenal.  We've got the Learning here though for more cross arsenal potential.  And this one's got an Armaros to give someone a shot at sticking it to one of their perma-stat buffing opponents.  No buffs in this deck will get screwed by Armaros'ing yourself either for very long.  This deck is a little aura heavy in need in retrospect.  Shields and defenses are pretty cheap at least. It's kind of a shame that most skill Erase moves you have to shoot with, pale in comparison to Lack.  (enough to justify a 2nd Lack in there)  Either Bregan suggested or approved the rest of the attacks in the arsenal.  I'm glad fans of the erase side would at least see an arsenal with some emphasis in the Quick arsenals.  One other little trick I wanted to encourage in the design was having Crawlers and Diabolical Trick so players could walk on a capsule and use the skills similar animation to fake out someone into getting hit by a Crawlers.   

Opti - I think the initial basis was Bregan talking about Ki and Optic, Tiger's Strength.  Relearn's here for that option of getting a player a second skill in their arsenal.  I guess the most annoying thing you can do with it is Relearn a Ricochet Laser.  We've got Learning in there for the additional cross arsenal combo potential.  If you really want lean into that, I thought it would be cool to Relearn a Learning.  I definitely wanted a deck with an Optimization it can put out.  Optimization can be stupid fun, so I wanted players to get a taste of that.  A lot of moves were meant to take advantage of it.  Also, let's encourage people to be annoying with Ricochet Laser by putting them in a deck.   Or Photon Burst like a fool a bunch of times.  I also wanted Pin Down specifically to annoy with.  I thought Pin Down with Opti had an infinite stun at the time, so I wanted to teach that too.  I think you can eventually break out of it with a jump or shield mashed long enough without +2 Aura Regen in a 2 school case.  (maybe even a cartwheel trick...)  After release of the game I remember a player upset about there being an Optimization in one of these arsenals.  There's only one in this deck.  One opponent arsenal's got a Return to Nature, and you're going to find moves in those other arsenals that can take advantage of Optimization as well.  It's a fun state condition for people to play in.  Sorry, not sorry.  Entangle in one of the others arsenals has a true unbreakable stun with Optimization out for the trolls out there.  I just don't feel the appearance rate of one Optimization led to a negative result in play overall.  You can thank player Kamizar for the Recollection ending up in this arsenal for posting about this trick back in original Phantom Dust days.  Maybe a few times.  Good job!  Recollection was meant to combo with Photon Burst, especially without Optimization down.  Fail to hit with Photon Burst, and then when your opponent thinks you don't have enough aura to Photon Burst again, use Recollection to shock them.  

Accuracy - Bregan suggested an Acquisition style deck.  The thing I've liked best with Acquisition is how a lot of Fall skills are undodgeable by jumpers with just +2 accuracy.  And you've got to cartwheel them if you want to dodge otherwise.  I would have switched out Demon's Fire with Wil'O'the Wisp, but we could not use skills 301-374 when suggesting new arsenals.  As we would later find out, they would be the DLC skills you would have to pay some money to unlock.  The pricing is pretty reasonable too.(the game had to try to make money somehow)  Demon's Fire is supposed to be a trickier skill to cartwheel, and could be especially tricky with Acquisition buff.  I was a little worried about Armaros with this arsenal so an Angel's Tear was put in.  Ideally you only use one of those +2 Acquisitions, unless your confident enough to avoid Armaros.  +4 is nice with Big Bomb too though.  Lunar Force is this deck's way of trying to counter an Optimization from being played.  Lunar doesn't really interfere tremendously with other arsenals.  I kind of wish I kept Sign of Saints in, instead of arguing for Demon's Venom in it's place.  Demon's Venom is easier to understand how to use though and poison can be fun to use on Opponent's.    I also thought the locked skill button thing could get confusing to new players, who might just overwrite a bunch of skills and be stuck with Sign of Saints.   Still, Saints in the right hand is so much better.  We've even got a Lunar Force available to make sure Sign of Saints can at least can do 1 damage.  Tough call.  There are less projectile erasing shields overall in Quick Arsenals to make Demon's Venom a litte more durable.  Theiving Imp to possibly experiment with other moves while having high homing.  I think there are some that could benefit from high homing.  Some better wear down attacks, and some moves becoming impossible to jump against jumpers.   If you get Armaros'd maybe you can steal a skill from someone with a skill not affected by Homing stats as much.  Psycho Knife and Reincarnation still have some bail out potential on that front too.  

Vibration Power - Bregan influenced the direction of getting Vibration moves in along with a Slide Laser.  "Laser staple" arsenal.  Between wanting variety, I didn't go above that.  I didn't want new players saddled with a bunch of long rangers.  Not that it wasn't done in the past, but I feel like manual aim is something in the rerelease that players have done a lot more across the board.  I think it helps make the arsenal even stronger.  With even more lasers though, you could end up being too sub optimal on a stage like Panorama.  Though manual aimers have grown to get more juice out of these moves even there.  As first timers, though its not intuitive to manual aim "long range" moves. Having Stimulate and Heat in there for the mixed buff emphasis again.  Personally I would say at the time I wasn't the most enthusiastic on Vibration Blaster.  Maybe due to a sometimes more heavy level erase community?(I appreciate it much more now though)  I think the emphasis on variety between arsenals led to not really getting a proper melee move in this.  I did like the idea of Photon Wave as serving that purpose to a certain degree.  No shields in any of the Quick arsenals can erase it either.  This fact was also a driver to include Twister in.  Nature's Reincarnation, though nowhere near as good.  But also a definite crowd pleaser.  The Relearn potential's also pretty high here.  (Stimulates, extra Vibe move)  Potential for a +5 damage Gungnir here.  Just make sure no one's using "The Eraser" asrenal with Armaros in it!  Otherwise you'll pay for the greed.  Photon Wave was also used as one of the "shields" in the arsenal.(following the "4 shields rule")  I guess the one consolation of an Armaros'd stimulate aura regen buff, here is that Twister will feel more like a 3 cost move than a 4 cost one.  

Battle Memory - Bregan basically saying "Make a Memory of Battle arsenal, including Psycho Spears" drove this one's build.  I've been told I committed the cardinal sin of only putting one Memory of Battle in the arsenal.  I would agree with that in a lot of "Memory of Battle " arsenals.  I was concerned about balance or over emphasizing it in Quick, but I could see how it makes sense and might have been a good idea.  I am kicking myself for not including Gravity Press because I missed out on the chance to give players a "miracle" combo:  Lightning Bolt a shield holding opponent, then Psycho Spear into Gravity Press to do 20 damage.(did I not know it back then?)  Maybe I thought Gravity Press' 4 cost was harder to use up.  I did not feel like I had the most confidence in making a "proper" Memory of Battle arsenal.  Variety led the way, with also wanting to create some cheap cost stun combos off Piece of Thunder and Lightning Bolt.  Flame Sword for the one infinite use melee option.  And Fire Storm's uneraseable option here.  A move that has seen greater use now than in the past I'd say trendwise.  I wanted to get Dazzle in the mix with one of these arsenals.  Fun effect to do against others and a great stun against cartwheelers which you can solo set up.  In tag you might see Decoy more, but I preferred Dazzle for the solo set up possibilities.   Turbulence was definitely put in to have something potentially counter a Dash user or other annoying moves, like Dazzle or Pin Down.  But Dazzle's in this deck!  Yeah double edged sword, but maybe your opponent will also get this deck ;)    I wanted players to at least have some chance to counter other moves, even if they didn't always come from every deck.  Whether that idea is spread too thin, is something to think about.  I got past the "4 shield rule" here.  Arguably because there are a lot of one use moves to get you to cycle through your arsenal quicker to shields.  

Miner Shatter - I'll talk about the initial version and the updated version here.  I wanted an arsenal with some more up close emphasis.  This one ended up with the most close range moves and with 2 mine moves on top of it.  With the remaining unused skills, I was led towards this arsenal.  A big influence would be from seeing Nathan 0 and The Wolf 0 playing tag team matches where they planted land mines around players spawns while they would take advantage of capsule popping.  Maybe something like watching an old grainy Nathan match like this inspired this up close mine emphasis:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZzPgVloGEY     Shatter was put in to give that capsule pop potential.  Also a speed up for outmaneuvering while popping.  Aboslutely only had one Speed Up put because I was concerned about +4 Speed players being aggravating  to play against with the other arsenals.  The Odd One arsenal could override this by Thieving Imping a Speed Up and then Relearning it though!  Because of worries of getting Armarosed into -2 speed I threw Purify in here, it also gives a chance of countering other stat buff oriented decks.  For the intents of an up close arsenal I think the Nature and Psycho version does a much better job than the Psycho Ki version made.  More varied melee options.  I leaned into Fang of Tree and Entangle, as "trick" moves you could alternate with Shatter too.  Any luck there?  I thought the Entangle also granted another skill seen as "anti cartwheeler", to some degree at least.  A funny thing with this deck, I very much thought of Psycho Burst being  an anti Fortress of Iron move for the arsenal.  I ended up surprised once playing someone who seemed at least for a while to not go past 7 level, countering that Psycho Burst tactic.  Bomb's not the most inspiring move but it's still kind of neat.  Was kind of hoping knock down potential could aid one of your Shatter attempts.  Twister again as "Nature's Reincarnation" again.  Also another follow up Shatter option.  If someone puts Optimization out, it might be possible to Entangle someone and Shatter a capsule and then Re-Entangle without the opponent breaking out of stun over and over!  With the right spacing at least.  Needs testing.  

The Psycho Ki version of this arsenal lacked the more cohesive in your face options I was looking to go for which Nature provided.  It was a bit more varied in projectiles, and had less melee moves.  It just felt like the moves didn't compliment each other as well.  I really did want to try to make it happen just to get another Learning to follow that chance of arsenals playing off other people's moves.  It lacked a counter to Armaros, with only a Neutralization.( I know, Refresh was possbile)  Nature's Purify taking it's place though was protective against Armaros and gave you an undodgeable stat counter option.  Hyper Ki Bullet and Psycho Sniper did provide some clunkier high cost knock down potential in the Ki version.  I guess I could have brought Hyper Kick in as an option and Psycho Blade.  But vs Flame Sword, it's harder to cause knockdowns for follow up shatters.   They just didn't mesh as well I thought vs adding Flame Sword into the mix.  Flame Sword gets a quick cheap knockdown for a follow up shatter.  Dragon Slayer and Lack made things a little more interesting for the Shatter portion.  I just really didn't feel like things meshed well overall working around Ki instead of Nature.  I was happy to get the chance to update it to the Nature Psycho version.  Even if it was at the expense of losing a "Learning Arsenal" and only having Ki in 2 of 8 arsenals. All the other schools were in 3 different arsenals, and Nature had 4 now.  

I think it was the right call even if the Psycho Ki theme could have been built a little better right out the door.  I do find myself a little biased against Ki vs the other 4 schools.  Or maybe I don't give it credit where it's due when it's part of an arsenal.  It's got some cool environmental concepts I really like, but no way are they getting in Quick mode consideration.  If we had a dude complaining about Optimization existing in an arsenal, just imagine how happy people would be with a Memory Lapse, Chaos, Irregular Rhythm, Fatigue or Soul Cage  ;)   I also like Dance of Death a lot but that's not everyone's cup of tea and generally a large part of your arsenal has to revolve around it.  Or quite a few samey Melee moves that aren't great or are tricky to use need to get included.  ("Why doesn't Swift Blow do anything?  I've got way more than 2 Level?")  "Dance of Death only does 2 damage,  I might as well just use Hyperkick and get rid of Dance."  And while there will be people who think Ki Palm's Kamehamaha animation is iconic, it's not beginner friendly.  It would also need an arsenal with a greater stat buff emphasis.  Ki Cannon's cool too but has basically the same issue.  I think given the limitations it was worth having Nature take Ki's place to compliment Miner Shatter's intended style more.  I think a lot of the remaining good Ki moves did get featured in the other 2 arsenals as well.  

The "Odd One" - This arsenal I questioned quite a bit, but somehow ended up satisfying for me at time.  I think it made space for some interesting one off Faith moves not featured elsewhere yet.  Having both Relearn and Thieving Imp, it has the best deck theft potential.(Quick, steal less odd skills)  But you know, the downside to Thieving Imp is that the skills sitting at your opponent's spawn may not be the best ones.  After all they left them there for other moves instead.  Thieving Imp's not meta, but when you're forced to use a deck with it,  it can be a fun effect and has interesting potential Quick variety.  The Relearn is also pretty nifty for going double Muramasa Blade or double Agonies of Death.  Fusion ended up in this arsenal because a previously created Quick deck used the 2 Dhampir Faith melee attacks that steal life.  Unfortunately, those skills' accuracy is very bad and easy to punish with shield erase.  At the same time I was concerned that excluding both of them would cause complaints, so I argued for Fusion to take the place of both of them.  Fusion's a little more accurate, it seemed.  Still, Fusion leaves a lot to be desired.  If you land one you can do a significant amount of damage and gain life.  So if you do land it, its a more dramatic affect.  It's also uneraseable by shields.  I kind of hoped it might provide an unerasesable melee stun potential like Dazzle or Decoy.  It's lower accuracy doesn't really lend much to that unfortunately.  It does also have "Miracle Combo" potential.  If you've got 1 life and hit someone with 20 life with Fusion, you'll drop the opponent to 10 stunning them, perfect for a Muramasa Blade follow up to send them from 20 life to 0 life.  I thought Demon's Wing's Invisibility was another cool thing to feature to players and being the last deck created possible for it to be in, Also perfect for Muramasa Blade.  Though I think now I probably should have dropped it for Optical Camo.  Most players aren't going to know that if they hit the same button that activated Demon's Wing it will allow you  to drop to the ground.  Demon's Wing probably could have aided some of the projectiles in situations at least.  The jumping invisibility of Demon's Wing can be harder for eyes to see too.  Killer Satellite is another pretty cool move that didn't make it into another arsenal yet.  It probably should have swapped places with another arsenal given the odd assortment of skills in this deck.  Swapped for something a little more consistent and versatile?  I was hoping Paralyze Barrier would also show players the Paralyze effect and it can create difficult situations against some of the power moves in here.  But man is it level heavy to pull off.  

And now nearing our end here, let's talk about the "monster" I put in this arsenal known as Disintegrate.  I regret putting this skill into Quick mode the most.  It can be a really nasty move.  I kind of felt though more experienced players do a fairly good job dodging it.  And I did want to get something else in just to show other players the level erase potential that's in this game.  If people get hit with one, they have a reasonable chance of recovering.  Well, turns out beginners don't think to jump this move.  Beginner cartwheelers do not know the moving pattern to dodge it, and lazy cartwheelers can get caught in it.  As I mentioned before, when I made these arsenals, I didn't think there would be many games where multiple players would get the same arsenal.  So not only is this move very punishing and not easily handled by beginners, this could happen more than once potentially creating stale mate situations...  Experiencing or watching that Disintegrates land multiple times in matches did make me feel bad.  "I've created a monster" I thought at one point.(Relearn that Disntegrate to stick it to me twice)  I honestly really wanted to use Quatnum Decay in an arsenal instead that also had Aura Cannon in it.  A Relearned Quantum Decay can also do a pretty nasty hit on people's Level.  But since online skills weren't on the table, I thought let's go with that big ole Disintegrate.  "It's just one skill, that will feel significant if it hits.  It ain't going to hit that much."  Regret.  On the plus side, in a set of games played by a Kotaku journalist, doing a streaming session, she used Disintegrate and it helped her win one of her matches ending the session on a happy note:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPXaSQFIyZ4   Some good press at least :)  I also caught a video of a player laughing at an opponent because they somehow took a melee swing at someone doing Disintegrate.  The attacker somehow dodged the disintegrate under them hurting his opponent with the melee move, while watching the Disintegrate caster manage to hit themselves with their own Disintegrate.  So it wasn't all bad, but I severely underestimated it.  

I've actually realized a pretty nasty cross tag combo with it in Quick mode too now.  If your teammate is at 2 life have them cast Vicious Balance while you cast Disintegrate and let Disintegrate hit yourself.  Your teammate dies doing Vicious Balance and you send your opponents and yourself to 0 Level.  Now resurrect your teammate who's still got all their level and let them go nuts.  Want another one I didn't think of at the time?  If you Thieving Imp an Armaros and your opponent cartwheels, they better pray they don't have a stat and do have a hole blocking shield.  You can solo Armaros stun someone into Disintegrate if they can't jump and don't have shields that block holes.  And what do you know?  These arsenals only have 3 or 4 shields and even less that can block holes.(They can still wheel but it won't take them far enough if your timing of doing Armaros > Disintegrate is done immediately.  At least I've found this when testing offline.  Did not plan that.  Still I'm not 100% sure might be able to do a quick turn into a cartwheel to avoid that hit all stun trap now that I'm thinking about it.  Doing hitall traps with your teammate is better anyway but that requires a bit of practice timing:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9k09COjNeA

A funny situation could happen if your Opponent's put out an Optimization and you have Entangle and your teammate is using the Erase arsenal.  You can stun a player infinitely with Entangle after knocking out the other opponent.  While they're stunned infinitely, the Eraser arsenal can dig for Diabolical Trick to pop out your other opponent agonizingly.  With practiced timing I'm pretty sure you could do an Entangle loop with your teammate shooting 3-4 damage projectiles at the opponent too.(But that's tricky and requires waiting for the knock down effect to reset)  

I hope you had fun playing with these as I did watching people and playing them.