Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-110.146.149.161-20150813074512/@comment-25555436-20150903030825

Devil, what I said with "they don't need Dust" is basically this:

You have 3 characters, one is a mage, one is a rogue, one is a warrior.

-The Warrior causes melee damage and focuses on receiving all the hits. He only needs to have good armor and maybe a shield to be effective, and a good weapon if they want to cause any damage.

-The Rogue causes melee damage in a more DPS perspective, depending more on speed to evade, and to cause quick attacks and counters that either hit many times or cause great damage to unsuspecting enemies. They just need to maintain a good speed, and have sharp enough weapons.

-The Mage causes magic damage, and depends entirely on it. Unlike a Warrior or Rogue the Mage can take hits, and deal more damage better than both. However, that is only as long as they have the MP. If they run out of MP, they end up with a very pityful damage output, making them useless offensively, and also very squishy, making them useless for anything defensive, both speed and defense related.

Ruby only needs speed and some space to slice things appart. She doesn't need Dust, only her scythe. Pyrrha has her Semblance and weapon, and doesn't need to use Dust in the slightest because she is so overall effective she doesn't need to use it. Sure, using the powers of the elements would make them more effective, but they don't need it to be effective.

Weiss, meanwhile, is almost useless without it. Her rapier can only go so far even if using her Glyphs, all the times she relied on it alone she got owned. However, when actually using Dust, with or without her Glyphs, she can actually take damage, and deal damage, in an effective way. She can be more effective than Ruby or Pyrrha, as long as she can keep using it. If she doesn't use it, she is not effective at all in neither offensive or defensive perspectives.

Of course, she can use her Glyphs to escape. Though she seems to be a bit dumb enough to not do it, instead prefering to rush head-on towards the enemy or just jump in the air, and not, say, move backwards to create distance and then blast them with Dust from afar where they can't punch her. Inexperience may have something to do with it.

To finalize, I never said she should learn the just-Aura method, nor does she truly need to learn it. A Hunter can train in, and use whatever they want. If she wants to stick to A+B that's her choice and with enough Aura training it would be just as effective, probably end up more effective, than the alternative in multiple areas, even if it still fails when comparing Aura cost at point-blank.

If she can snipe someone with A+B that could actually be useful. 1 disadvantage-by-comparison does not mean it's automatically worse overall, after all.