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Bluu -> RE: Friday, March 6th Design Notes: Arena at the Edge of Time: The Test of the Cycle! (3/8/2026 6:39:51)
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While I agree with some of @GodJank's points, the way in which they are presented makes me want to disagree. Therefore, this post.
I might actually be alone on this lol, but I've always been a fan of this board. Test of Meanwhile is generally seen as a terrible fight, but even on release, I appreciated that it allowed and even encouraged the player to pull off creative strategies that were otherwise impossible. Test of Killing Time was a great fight - while on the easier side of fights, it was certainly a lot of fun to optimize and play around with. Test of the Cycle continues the creative streak and uses the fairly limited design space rather creatively to create a memorable battle, albeit still (imo) on the easier side.
I didn't think much of it when I first played and beat it, but I wanted to bring up how much I enjoy the dynamic boss rotations of Old Man of the Wastes from the previous release and ShadowWalker of Time from the current release. While quite frustrating to plan out on a spreadsheet, it does add some much-needed variance to a fight and require you to adapt during the fight even if you go into it with a solid plan. SWoT's Shadow Charges being based on damage dealt is a fun way to incorporate the mechanic into a battle rather than the class counterpart's mechanic of getting them with specific skills. I especially like that many of the Antumbral form skills are setup skills whereas the Umbral form skills either debuff you or deal the brunt of the damage, as it adds a layer of strategy on when to push him into Umbral form.
I like that he was designed with -300 Crit in mind, thereby allowing BPD spam as a more-than-viable means to avoid his attacks, and that his innate counter to this is his own Bonus buff, -MPM/BPD debuff, and his enrage upon the AoT's death. This allows him to have a variety of strong attacks or debuffs in quick succession without feeling too overpowering, which is nice imo. His Gear being an 8-turn -10 All is also great! Not super overpowering on its own, but adds a good amount of DPT to both the boss himself and his partner AoT. Any smart player should catch this and attempt to shield or purge the debuff.
I also love the implementation of Doomsday Clock. It's much better than the widely hated Claw/SetHP mechanic that has been used thus far and I am excited to see how this will be utilized in the future.
I also really like the long HoT he applies (Consuming Shadows) when he goes below 50% HP but only if he is in Antumbral form. This is a pretty interesting way of fattening up the boss because it isn't very oppressive:
- First off, if he goes below 50% HP while in Umbral form, you may still have a handful of turns to burst him down before he starts healing.
- Secondly, you can skip this mechanic entirely by bursting him from 7.5k HP and not having to worry about it - strategically playing around a scary mechanic by figuring out how to ignore it is actually still engaging with the mechanic, because it dictates how you approach the fight. I actually planned to kill him first because I thought Enraged Doomsday Clock would be super oppressive, but I decided to kill the AoT instead since I only had one use of Inner Darkness, which required me to then contend with Enraged Doomsday Clock. I thought that was pretty cool :)
- Third, in not being a one-time large heal, it does not disproportionately harm classes that cannot inflict large amounts of +Health onto their targets and allows them to instead use smaller but long-lasting forms of +Health like Hacked Magi Drone and Amalgam Blaster to deter it.
- Lastly, it makes the fight feel more fluid and responsive as compared to a hard damage gate into a forced 40% heal.
This might be a lot for a simple one-off mechanic, but I wanted to stress how much I appreciate that recent bosses are moving away from damage gates after the dumpster fire of Your Dragon! Acatriel's implementation of his second life, Kinnar's use of Mana Barrier, and now Consuming Shadows are all much better ways of fluffing up the boss than what the damage gates intended to do.
As for the AoT, I really like the implementation of its Doomed Timeline skill as a form of enrage after the defeat of the SWoT. It's a very creative use of design space and serves the additional function of effectively doubling his Boost/Bonus scaling feature. Meanwhile is a great effect and I'm very glad that this skill was used in such a creative way, for Dr. When's own fight also introduced unique mechanics but was a bit of a lackluster execution thereof, so I consider this to be his vindication. Drained Durability is a fantastic way of baiting the player to use a shield early and then opening them up to the trio of nukes. I wish I could say more about the reset mechanic, but I don't actually have much to say on that front haha
Overall, I really liked this fight even though I thought it to be on the easier side. Inn challenges have been quite mechanically interesting lately and it's increasingly clear that the developer has been attempting to apply all the feedback that the players had provided during the YD fiasco. Looking forward to next month. Apologies for the long post - thread started out a bit negative so I wanted to counterbalance that.
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