Aran is the best designed class in maplestory, and here is why.

Arans are poorly designed because combo finishers aren't worthwhile to be used at all. Their main defining feature and it shouldn't be used. At least Demon Slayer rewards you for spending your resource instead of punishing you. If Combo were a spendable resource like Fury instead of complete depletion whenever any of it were used, then I would agree that they are the best designed class, but I feel Mercedes is the better design and more classes should aim to imitate that; a wide range of multi-utility skills for varying situations instead of literally one thing to spam, e.g. Raging Blow for Heroes now.

The inherent problem with Demon Slayer, and in conjunction Mercedes, is their shield can have weapon potential. If Arans had a similar item, and Demon Slayers didn't have such a spammable FSAoE, Arans would be superior in every regard except being able to hit more than 10 monsters, which is rare to begin with, and mobility. And in the case of >10 monsters, Arans at least have Tempest while most characters can only hit 6 max.

Mikhail is just a piece of recycled trash.

I do not feel that because combo consuming abilities are useless now makes Aran a poorly designed class overall. I agree, the combo consumers have very little place in an Aran's actual arsenal anymore, outside of Drain and Combo Tempest when you have combo recharge available.

It wasn't always like that, however. When arans were first released, as Stereo pointed out, combo consuming abilities were used alot because they did non-distributed damage, unlike the swing abilities.

I don't like how mercedes was made though. She is literally nothing but re-hashed things from old classes. The dual-blade esque rush mobbing ablities, the aran toss up, and on top of that she has a bunch of free stats via Skills thrown at her, and passive haste. The only other class I dislike more is Demon Slayer, and thats because it steals literally everything from everyone, on top of having all the mobility in the game.

However Iam glad we all agree mikhail is garbage lol