Arknights Modules and Amiya Guard
Modules... leave something to be desired. Hardly a unique opinion, basically an ice-cold one, I believe. That being said, while I understand that game design and thus module design is hard, I've found it repeatedly more frustrating to be let down by a basic stat increase than to not get one at all. The thing that sparks this post is looking at Guard Amiya's new module. Longer post ahead.
I really like Amiya. I find her a compelling character, and a compelling design. I like watching how she proceeds through the story, and I like using her in story relevant locations. I'm used to both her uses and limitations, and she's the only above-module-level unit in my roster.
So I can say with security that Guard Amiya is unfortunately, tragically, the most underwhelming of her forms, with some of the weirder limitations and design restrictions. It's even stranger to consider when you look at all of the influences she has access to and doesn't take advantage of:
Arts Fighter Guards - Arts fragility, RES ignore, or RES shred (true damage could count if it was more reliable) - Block/Target increase - Burn/Elemental damage - Dueling dangerous opponents - Increased ASPD - Increased durability
Blademaster Guards - Activated powerstrikes (doesn't mesh with her talent) - Offensive recovery only - SP regain
Her Caster form - Auto-activated skills - Offensive recovery trait - Self retreat on s3 - Three skills - Unfocused yet high DPS - A lot of these make sense to not be used as they're reflective of her younger, inexperienced form! It makes sense that she would have auto-activation, unfocused, and self retreat or self debuffs on her skills.
The limitations of her design come primarily that as a raw damage unit, she doesn't do overwhelming amounts of damage, have any way to consistently bypass RES, and that her second skill as her only source of true damage and RES bypass is extremely gimmicky and limited.
It only being usable once is extremely harsh, requiring killing fodder enemies requires an in-depth stage knowledge and planning to take advantage of, and doesn't have enough of an attack increase even satisfying these conditions to make it worth the effort. Nevermind the limited 30 seconds, as well as no durability increases that can guarantee that she even gets to deliver out her entire skill.
This skill has a few places that I feel as though it could go, and different directions that it could benefit from. The most obvious step, is that since it doesn't follow Chimera's design and retreat her (instead becoming unusable) that she keeps the buffs she gains during the skill. Unfortunately, this is such an easy mistake to make that the third bullet point has to explicitly disagree with that specifically.
Not only would it give her an interesting indefinite duration skill that could justify the timing, of having +120% ATK with true damage, a functional invulnerability to Arts with RES at 81, it would also give a thorough synergy with her talent, making it indefinitely active. Imagine how good that would be for Talulah's fireballs.
It would even have cohesion with her character by this point; though she can still spike her power and go all out, represented by the initial slashes, she has a much better mastery and usage of her powers, allowing her to pace herself and actually last through a fight! That's awesome!
It would make so much sense, it would all work together, and yet. The insane drawbacks that come with this skill, the limited use and necessary fodder, will typically allow her skill 1 to outperform it in raw damage. Taking s2 over s1 is a massive risk for only a potential benefit. While I do really like this skill, and think that it's very cool and a good reflection of Ch'en's third skill, it can best be described as just unwieldy.
Ultimately I would prefer that a redesign take place to take better influence from other sources. She's a solid unit, but has a lot of different ways that she could be really interesting and engaging in alternative ways, or have different abilities that could all work nicely. I think I may even post some concepts later. Regardless, that all being said, I understand that Arknights doesn't do rebalances or redesigns, so my interest piqued with her module.
At maximum level, with maximum trust and maximum potentials, this is the difference that the module would make. Modules as a whole are a very interesting way to retroactively balance the game (given their inability, or aversion, to doing so manually) that to be done well require that they engage with each individual character's mechanics. Four and Five stars rarely get modules that will "fix" or address fundamental flaws within their kits (and I would be impressed if they did something like that for Guard Amiya), but I had an expectation that the protagonist of the game, the literal face of it, would get more than just trivial stat increases.
That isn't to say that stat increases aren't effective. I consider both Indigo and Ludonata's modules to be very nice, and the relative simplicity in their modules could be argued to reflect their 4* nature. Surtr getting 6 additional RES ignore is boring, but helpful at least. So surely, Amiya, could get something more exotic than a stat increase. Or at the very least, if it has to be a stat increase, more than 2%.
