Why is the Aran class so unpopular?

Ill just shoot my two cents in here. Aran was my first main, longest played character, first funded character and lvl 200 character. I'm very passionate about aran, I've written alot about him both here on southperry and on other places.

These are, factually, the problems aran has with bossing.

 Spoiler

1. Fighting bosses that require alot of on-demand movement and short bursts of damage is literally a circle of hell reserved for the worst sinners of history.
Aran does not do fast movement, Derp-Step is the crappiest excuse for a movement ability ever. As far as short bursts of damage goes, we all know how that goes. The same old song and dance of 4 second long attack rotations to get off your full damage. However, having a combo chain of skills is not inherently bad, as a matter of fact it is what made aran cool. But, in the case of fighting bosses such as magnus and vellum, it is garbage. In this department, aran needs a way to frontload damage in a small amount of time for the previously mentioned bosses. Derp-Step also desperately needs a buff, I would even take Slipstream at this point. You can't even avoid vellum's one-shot ability with this....



2. 0% free abnormal status resist.
Aran and Archers should start a club, because this genuinely is no fun. You can say this is a quality of life thing or just my opinion, but it is not. Objectively, bossing is much harder for classes with very little or no abnormal status resist. In addition, Aran is a melee character, why does he have no abnormal status resist? Melee characters are up in the junk fighting, a simply seduce into body shot can spell death for aran who has low health.



3. Aran has too-few attack lines and hits cap way too easy.
Like I said, Aran was my first funded character. However, once I reached about 150% main stat and 250 atk PA, there was literally no point in gearing further. Literally none. I already hit cap on bosses, and just having rage at HoH meant I hit cap there too. JoeTang has done the math here, 6.58 hits per second and 5496% per second. Aran needs more lines to allow for further growth in gear, because currently he is the easiest class to cap with and offers no incentive for long-term funding. The cap can be addressed in unlimited, but overall %/sec is still abysmally low.



simply put, the above must be addressed if aran has any hope of performing even half as well as his neo-warrior brethren (Mihile/DS/Kaiser). Period.

Now the facts are out of the way, the things below are my opinions on what other problems with aran are.

 Spoiler

1. Bring damaging combo-finishers back to rotation in both training at at bosses.
When aran came out, the finishers were wonderful because they did not do distributed damage, unlike the Swing abilities. You had a legit reason to use them, and actually did. This was also before Combo Recharge mind you, which should incentivize using finishers. But it baffles me because now you just use recharge for pre-fight buffing so you start with full crit. The finishers should hit really, really hard (im talking mini-Ancestral Prominence here) because they eat your buffing resource. At the moment, they don't and they're just a damage loss. Finishers can be cool, buff them and get them back into use.



2. Give arans more health, and a tiny bit of reduced damage received.
On release, it was easily justifiable to give aran a small health pool. He healed to full literally with each attack because of Drain, so his tiny health pool would spike back up if he got hit. Since then, bosses got harder, more unforgiving and more complex. Even with the 20% health tacked onto High Defense aran's current health pool does not cut it. Aran is the squishiest warrior, even behind Hayato with his 80% avoid. However, the reason I put this in opinions is because it is still very possible to play him, this is just a quality of life thing.



3. Unlimited Combo does not work fully. You have to have a combo count while it is active to use combo consuming abilities.
This truly is just my whiny opinion, but I find this to be non-sense. Why doesnt my character just cast Combo Tempest while this buff is active if I press the correct commands? I imagine they require the combo count so the game can differentiate a Judgment command from a Tempest command, but why not just cast the highest damage dealing ability? Its dumb, fix it.

I got my whiny opinions out of the way, one more thing.

This last part is kind of an address to the aran users. I see alot of complaints concerning, what I feel, are gameplay features core to aran. When I see these complaints, it makes me feel that the person doesnt want to play aran, but wants something that plays like aran but with baby's first resource management. So im going to say some things that might anger some people.

1. The combo count system (generating it, decay timer, consumption) is completely fine. It does not need to be easier, players need to stop being lazy. For god's sake its already been dumbed down enough.
If you do not like that combo-consuming abilities eat the entire bar, >DEAL WITH IT<. This is core to aran gameplay, it is how it functions.

If you want a bar you can fill and consume on your own time, go play a Demon Slayer. What you want is demon fury in this case, not aran combo.

Now, if you are still with me, I'll tell you the real problems with the combo system.

Justifying spending your much-needed combo is hard because the damage dealing ones are not worth it. They do not deal sufficient damage to warrant throwing away combo you have to recharge. Nexon needs to make the finishers hit like NOS'd mack trucks with boulders in the back and players will feel much better about spending it. If these changes did happen and you still cry about spending it, tough. You have combo recharge and its hyper skills, deal with it.



2. 4-second long combo rotations are not inherently bad. As a matter of fact, they can be cool and are actually one of the things aran does exceptionally well.
I know, I know, the casual aran players are mad at me now. That is ok. The fact of the matter is, the showy and long damage rotation is something core to aran. You get a show of neat animations, cool moves, and a big Polar Bear/Tiger/Bird/Polearm at the end. You also get big numbers, everyone loves big numbers.

Now, like I said before, but I will reiterate again: These rotations are not the problem. The problem is when fighting bosses like Magnus or Vellum, where damage in short-bursts and quick movement is required, aran is at a huge disadvantage.

So what aran needs is an ability that frontloads alot of damage in a short period of time, and a buff to Derp-Step. My proposed change is to let Beyonder Blade be cast freely, but deal more damage if it is linked to Final Blow. Easy, simple, effective.

there, just kind of a condensed list of things

edit: just to quickly clarify, im not particularly assaulting anyone here for their opinions. the third part was mainly written as a response to general feedback i've seen through various forums concerning aran. if you are not peeved by the issues I mentioned, please do not feel offended