Maka isn't top of her class though, like that's an explicitly stated thing. The top three of her class are Kid, BlackStar, and Kilik. And the 99 souls measurement isn't as impressive when you factor in that the beings she killed to get them were by and large fodder. It's a major plot point that Maka is a largely unskilled and mostly untrained fighter, that for the majority of the story she relied heavily on Soul to perform maneuvers in combat due to his ability to control himself in scythe form while she didn't know how to properly wield a weapon herself. It took up until after the Giriko fight for her to actually start training to wield a weapon.
You realize that top of her class is more than just combat ability, right? I'm talking a student that is in a school devoted to a world where fighting things with your soul is the main form of combat. My point is that Maka is not an idiot and would easily realize that Ruby's powers derive from her soul and can work around that. Neither combatant here is going to be doing some stuff that the other hasn't at least some sort of type of before. Her Soul Perception means that it's not like Ruby is going to sneak up on her or do any tricky stuff she won't see coming. (Not that I imagine Maka and Soul will be doing anything of the like either. My arguments for speed are not leaning on the speedblitzing of either combatant.)
Also the "by and large fodder" could be exactly said for Ruby's early training as well. We all know well and good Qrow did not have her fighting up against probably anything bigger than an Ursa during her training. Hell from the first episode we can already see the being Maka and Soul fight are more than just mindless animals unlike the kind of Grimm Ruby would have trained against. The main cast didn't even encounter anything scary to fight since volume 3, which by that point in all of their lives they hadn't faced anything like that before.
You keep hammering home the point that Maka is basically a novice combatant even in the late stages of the series, but this 'unskilled' combatant was fighting against the endgame boss, trading blows, blocking and taking hits from something that scales higher than anything Ruby can do. Maka says she's 'not as accomplished' as a fighter because she's up against Death the Kid (of god of the world) and BlackStar, the guy who is the better version of Naruto's 'You can be anything you want if you try hard enough".
Hell you even mentioned Killik, who was the first person in the series to wield four weapons at once, which I don't even think ever happened again. Everyone in Soul Eater has their own strengths. Whatever Maka might light in fighting
technique she makes up for in analyzing her opponents. And even then Soul is right there to back her up.
That's is not how it works no. Dust has inherrent elemental properties, Aura has nothing to do with the element.
For the World of Remnant episode of the same name, see Dust (WoR episode). Dust is a source of energy in Remnant. The physical properties of Dust make it incredibly useful for a variety of purposes, particularly in the weapons of many characters in the series. It is known to make a distinctive...
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I mean, paralyzing Maka with electricity or encasing her in ice would hinder her a lot.
That much is fair, but again the entire point is that she will have to actually hit Maka for it to matter. They'd be easy enough to avoid with her reactions, not to mention Maka and Soul have AoE of their own that can clear areas as well. Soul can even do it by his own if they ever get separated.
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