Variety In Attacks

Currently, Wynncraft's many, many playstyles, regardless of their intended purposes, come down to this exact combat order:
1) Attack/Cast Spells
2) Heal if Needed
3) Repeat

I understand that it sounds incredibly insensitive, but please hear me out.

Wynncraft's major complexity lies within the vast amount of builds which allow you to play the game in different ways. Now, that's not bad on it's own...But you're always using the same 5 attacks by late-game (4 if you're Mage). There really isn't much of a way to customize your main attack, besides making it faster/slower and statistical changes (in/decreases) to it.

The main issue, in my eyes, is that it just doesn't have enough fundamental variety. In other words, you're always stuck casting the same four Spells, and repeating the same old Attack. Between the entire cast of Classes...there's only 5 attacks, and 20 Spells. None of them are bad, obviously, but, dear lord, do they all get old fast.

From my point of view, I think that Wynncraft is ultimately a game which tries to make you ask: "How do I kill this thing...?" whereas most other RPGs would make you think: "I KNOW I can kill this thing...Now, how do I want to kill it...?"

I think that having a variety of attacks is incredibly important, especially when it comes to replayability. Wynncraft has all the builds in the world, but the complexity of those builds - the complexity of the entire game, really - isn't on a fundamental level. Those builds will never change what you attack your adversaries with. (And changing the cost of Spells to make some of them more or less usable isn't really a change!)

While I understand that there's a beauty to simplicity, I believe that Wynncraft has no such simplicity, and that if it really does, it's too much at a fundamental level.

There are two ways (which come to my mind) to make a game's combat interesting, if you're kinda limited on resources:
1) Give your players a variety of enemies to face off against
2) Give your players a large arsenal to blow up the same couple enemies with (gives

While I stand by '#2,' I think that what Wynncraft's going for is the first example. I can very much understand why they would rather have enemy complexity, and I can also understand that the limitations of plugins (and Minecraft in general) can only take our cast of hateable enemies so far, as of now.

I certainly think that even just making some projectiles here and there act different would be nice. For instance, certain Reliks could have homing bolts, certain Warriors' Spears will make them 'charge forward' a bit whenever they attack; just a bit of tweaking to the little things.
Stuff like this:
- Some Spears could have more range than others - maybe some 2-3 blocks more - while dealing less damage
- Some Daggers could only hit a single enemy at a time, but deal more damage
- Some Wands could fire continuous lasers, rather than individual beams. (These could also change the Mage's Attack to Right Click so that this is easier to 'sustain')
- MAKE SPELLS HAVE DRAWBACKS (IE: You gain Slowness when using Vanish (not on the jump, of course), or become unable to attack for a single second after casting Bomb Arrow - just make some Spells more realistically slow, to make them feel more powerful and risky)

 

"powerful" by nerfing them with no compensation

 

Well, the thing is...Buffing them as compensation would be Nether to balance. Nerfing Spells without compensation would never actually happen, I'm just a bit cautious about suggesting specific buffs for Spells...

A large part of what makes dramatic, powerful attacks in video games so dramatic and powerful is the general buildup to the attack. If there's a delay between when you hit the trigger on a rocket launcher and that rocket blowing things up, then it feels a lot more powerful.

Bomb (it's officially not called Bomb Arrow, for some reason) flies at the click of a mouse. Yes, it's technically three clicks, but it doesn't have any feeling of power - it's kind of an afterthought because the moment you input it, the explosive arrow nukes the thing in front of you.

 

I'm not good with statistical stuff so I really can't comment in good conscience, but I just wanted to point out that Vanish drains your mana sooo idk if that's the one to focus on since mana drain is a pretty big drawback.

Again, I'm prob just being dumb and no offense meant ofc :)

 

I just gave Vanish as an example, because it totally makes sense to be invisible and undetectable while you're running at Mach 3 and leaping from building to building. It would make sense to at least have Slowness for the first two Tiers of Vanish, which don't have said Speed.

Funny thing is, even once you Vanish in thin air, some enemies can still attack you with ranged attacks. I would know from experience! ;)
COUGH Miniature Snow Storm COUGH

 

well I mean it does sound very overpowered in theory, but vanish lasts for about five seconds, drains mana pretty quickly, and stops like the second you left click.

Again I could totally be wrong, I am not an Assassin main, this is just my experience as a level 65 assassin so I haven’t gotten all the upgrades yet :)

 

Adding on to this most popular rpg games have basic attacks that combo into each other.
For example maybe making mage normal attacks turn into a 5 hit combo where each hit does a specific amount % of damage and the last hit does the most damage. This also allows for a lot of different mechanics to be added to combat. Maybe shifting while attacking would turn the attack into a wider sweep or other stuff. This is really short and is what I could come up with in like 5 seconds.

 

the drawback of spells is that they cost mana. the issue with wynn balancing has been pretty evident for a while and for assassin specifically its issue is that it was never properly balanced ever since its release as a VIP class.

Also I don't get your first point.
You said the first step is to attack, the second to heal if needed, and then repeat.
I'm not sure if you're playing wynncraft or hypixel skyblock but most endgame bosses can't be beaten without a little bit of experience or game knowledge. ( wretches in the eye as an example )

Also most RPGs that are open world are usually turn-based which is just, even more linear than the sequence you posted. One game I can think of off the top of my head is Breath of the Wild since its open world and not turn-based. In most games like that, you have multiple ways to kill enemies, however, players most often utilize the most optimal way to kill it.

That's my main point with this entire post.
You completely ignore that different playstyles, some being less optimal than others, exist and instead condense the entire wynn experience to a basic spell or heavy melee experience. Wynn has replayability for the very reason that it has diverse builds. Diversity in builds forces different playstyles which in turn provides a different experience to the player.

I know people that have replayed the entire game by just switching to something like solely archer melee and have been entertained the entire way through.

I'm also not sure why you bring up two different issues, which just makes your argument more confusing.
Bringing up assassin's poor balancing while also talking about a lack of flavor about wynn combat doesn't make sense to me and seems unnecessary.

 

chrysitis

also, on to the actual topic of the thread.

builds literally change entire playstyle.

archer heavy melee is VASTLY different from archer tierstack/cancelstack which is VASTLY different from nighthawk spell which is FAIRLY different from normal spell, as your cycles and movement patterns and positioning changes based on what you are playing. (note that there are obviously other playstyles in archer, i just listed 4 to get the point across)

and that's only archer.

for classes with even more viable playstyles, such as shaman, you have:

tierstack (which can be further characterized by the player-- they can choose to walk up for more damage or stay back for less damage but more safety)
heavy melee isn't generally used on shaman, but i have tried it and it doesn't suck, and it definitely has an interesting fight sequence of walking up to attack and then strafing back
poison (you can either mix this with cancelstack, see toxo, which has its own variance in playstyle, or go for a more laid back spleen splitter full poison stack, where you use a totem and uproot occasionally to reset duration, and you have to focus on your movements and positioning)
spellsteal (you want to walk up for max stealing chances, but you don't want to be there all the time for obvious reasons, and spellcasting)
spellspam (have to strafe around totem to avoid boss minions)
heavy hybrid (kind of like spellsteal, but obviously differences)
ambivalence spell (mmmmm wtf)
fast hybrid (you can write a novel on the nuances of fast hybrid gameplay so i'm just gonna cite @Yraw here)
trift totem spam (deleted in 1.20 but still a unique playstyle now)
spell-assisted melee (kind of like fast hybrid, but only using spells for their cc/buffs/utility instead of as a damage option)

then there are nuance builds that aren't really an entire type of build, like using arbalest uproot for your main damage, which obviously requires changing to your playstyle or some wtf cactus tank yol



overall, the incredible build diversity that you can successfully use impacts your playstyle enough that all the builds feel fresh. again, and i can't stress this enough, i would recommend learning more about the game, builds, and actual bosses (no "real" bosses before at-level bovine barn, and then the next one is at CoW imo) before you make suggestions like this. it makes you seem pretty uninformed.

 

Heres my 2 cents with playing thru 4 times with 4 different classes. I agree that currently Spells are somewhat bland. If you play the game w/o knowing abt builds and how they work it can be quite "stale" to use spells. This idea has been said before and i will say it again. Make Spells Switchable. I made a whole post abt if 1 new switchable spell was added for each class. Granted those spells were designed as spells for boss fights more than common fights (that was my intention btw since wynn is like 45% boss fights). So yes I do think some new spells would be awesome, preferably heavy hitting spells that cost alot of mana or have some draw backs. HOWEVER
I do see how a build can change the way you play the game. For instance one of my classes is a tier stacking assassin, my mage is a tank spell steal(NOTHING BEST WAND) my archer is an M1 Grand with nighthawk and my shaman is a jumpy mana regen boi. Each class is vastly different from the last and has different skill needed for it. But i do believe that spells could use a good rework/update. As Wynn has been using the same spells for 6-7 years now

 

Wynncraft's spells are not supposed to be very complex, salted said it himself that he would like attacks to be quick, easy, and very spammable. For the most part it is pretty good, and provide an excellent base to build off of.

One of your points you make a lot is that the combat isn’t complex enough, and I do agree the combat is simple, but what I disagree on is how it’s framed as a bad thing. There are tons of games with really simple combat mechanics but still have top tier gameplay. Terraria is one example, the combat is just pressing left click and clicking in enemies while dodging some attacks. Terraria’s builds are simpler than anything in Wynn, but one of Terraria’s strongpoint is the boss designs. The mobs aren’t very unique (There’s like a worm, slow moving heavy hitting mob, flying enemies, slimes, and enemies with projectiles), but that is made up for in Terraria’s boss designs. And in my opinion that’s what makes the game fun, trying to gather up all that gear so you can absolute dominate the bosses to get even more rewards.

Another great example is Hades, the combat is also pretty simple, but where Hades shines is the flow and vast customizability of your abilities. One point I’ll give to you is that the spells don’t give much room to customize, I’ll expand on that later. In Hades you can get powers and upgrades that can vastly change your playstyle, similar to how there are many different playstyles in Wynn. Where I feel Hades really excels though is the flow of combat. Hades can be quite combo heavy, and usually you start to cycle two abilities over and over, but what’s strange is that the combat doesn’t get boring. This is because the combat has a good feel to it, it’s rapid, varied, and incredibly hard to master sometimes. Wynn may not have the same spell customizability as Hades, but it sure has a incredibly diverse playstyle selection, and the combat in Wynn is also fairly combo heavy as well, spells are quick to cast and chain together.

Another point I would like to make is that you say that most RPG’s let you experiment in how you kill your foe, though that is true, you can also argue it’s very similar to choosing a different playstyle, something Wynn is great at doing. But you say that Wynn is mostly just attack, heal, repeat. But what doesn’t follow that general rule though? A ton of games hailed for their combat still follow the same formula, in souls games it’s attack, dodge, repeat. In Cuphead it’s attack, parry, repeat. In Terraria it’s attack, dodge, repeat. All of these games boiled down are basically the same thing, because it’s what the meta is. Of course you don’t need to do that exact thing, try just playing a different playstyle, because the great thing is, you don’t need to use the ‘best’, hell most players don’t even use optimal builds.

Your counterpoint to this is that those are only statistical changes, and it still confines you to 4 spells, but it just doesn’t. I’ll use fast hybrid as an example. Fast hybrid is a pretty unpopular playstyle because it’s well, not very good in combat, but the reason I use it on my Shaman and love it is because it can expand how you think of mobs ten fold. Instead of that base chain of attack, heal repeat, fast hybrid throws a wrench into this because of a statistical change. You see, one of the most important mechanics in Wynn is mana steal and life steal proc chance, in a nutshell, superslow is the optimal attack speed to proc ls and ms, because it has around a 50% chance, so you can just do one hit and get good enough mana. On the other side, there’s superfast attack speeds, which has a 5%ish chance (these numbers are rounded) to proc ms and ls. Even though they both average out to one proc every 4 seconds (which is why it’s /4s), superfast is un optimal because there’s a lower chance to proc mana on hit, whereas in super slow there’s a 50/50. In combat you can’t stay in the same place for four seconds just to get some mana, that’s a surefire way to get killed. Now, shaman’s melee attack is three beams which split your procs by 3, so you’re now looking at a incredibly low chance of getting mana on hit, ontop of fast hybrid. This means to get good mana you need to take a risk of going close to enemies to just get mana, this flips the general strategy of getting back when you run out of mana and be more defensive to get CLOSER when you run out of mana. This encourages more aggressive play, and now you need to make a choice when you see an enemy, do you kill it with your melee to get mana? Or do you use aura to deal with it easily. This choice becomes even more important when you get a swarm of mobs, normally people would say to aura large groups, shaman is a cc class afterall, but then you leave a lot of mana on the table that could of been used.

Even when you do have mana, you still need to make the choice of what you wish to do with that mana. On my build specifically, you have a high uproot cost. Uproot is an extremely useful spell for shaman because it resets your totem timer. On my fast hybrid build it costs 6 mana. You say that increasing spellcosts doesn’t really change much, but that atatement comes off as pretty uninformed. Because of the 6 mana cost, you have another choice to make, when your totem runs out of time you can either uproot or just get another totem up. At first glance you would choose to just get a totem up, but there’s a delay of around a second between when you cast, and when you can aura trap mobs again, so even though it is a lower cost, it takes longer to take effect, and that’s time where you can easily be hit. Uproot on the other hand is 3x the cost, but it has instant effects, and can knock enemies towards you. This may seem counterproductive on paper, shaman is a glassy class, why would you want enemies to come towards you? But because of the way fast hybrid encourages you to get closer to enemies it becomes an actual choice to make.

All of that comes together greatly in bosses, like the eye. In the first phase, there’s not much to really get mana on, this leaves you very vulnerable because you can’t haul as much as you would like to. This puts you in a more aggressive playstyle because you want mana, most people using it stay close to the eye, only going back when it casts spells or there’s minions spawning, in which case you charge up your special (Usually chain lighting because it can proc steals) with melee. Because mana is so important, you need to conserve it, this means instead of spamming aura you wait for aura to rebound before casting again, in the meantime you get melees in for extra damage. At the end of phase one, there are arteries you need to kill because they fire projectiles which can damage you easily, but one problem. Shaman’s aura cannot reach those projectiles. The strat I use to take care of them is quite risky, you have to get under the arteries and use your melee attack and use chain to hopefully kill both arteries and move on to phase two at the same time. Phase two is the same as phase one in terms of strat, just now there’s a lazer the eye shoots sometimes, this is where totem positioning comes into play. Because uproot is 6 cost, you can’t really reposition totem after it is placed, so you need to get it right the first time. It needs to be in a place t hit the eye but still be in a good place to haul to to avoid attacks. Phase 3 starts and now there’s a wretch you need to kill in 10 seconds or you lose 90% of your hp. Another choice can be made here, you can avoid the wretch and let it hit you so you can just spend more time hitting the eye. Or you can focus on killing it first for some nice mana steal. I usually kill the wretch, and one strat that works well is to time when a wretch comes using totem timer, because wretches come every 20 or so seconds. There are other ways to tell, some use the magma lasers, some even use the boss music to tell, and others just use instinct. 4th phase starts and it’s a simple mob to kill, in fast hybrid you would usually aura, haul, and try meleeing while in the air because 4th phase is pain. Then the eye is killed and the boss is done. Fast hybrid shaman’s main changes are very statistical, make your attack faster and now you have melee damage and uproot costs more, But the issue is you’re looking at it on paper. Those ‘small’ changes have vast effects on gameplay, and change how you deal with normal foes, the only difference is that there’s no new fancy animation or cool name to call it.

I will also address your statement that though there is beauty in simplicity, Wynn doesn’t have that. I agree, Wynn’s doesn’t have beautifully simplistic combat, it has basic combat that can have a high skill ceiling. Wynn’s combat is heavily inspired by Super Smash Bros, this is a game where the attacks are very basic, but the reason it shines is because of it being so technical. There’s hitboxes, timing of combos, when to dash away, when to retreat vs attack, and so many factors that can be considered for advanced players, this makes it so it can be very casual and advanced at the same time depending on player. You give two ways to add complexity to games, but in reality there are many, many ways to. You can add new mechanics to change how player approach new challenges, you can add more reaction based mechanics, you can introduce some rng to make it more interesting. You only provided two, and it makes it seem like you can only take one or the other. This is just false, and you make it seem like Wynn is gravitating towards more enemies. A good game has a good mix, you can have all the tools in the world to put a nail in a piece of wood, but at the end of the day it’s still a nail, and you’re always going to be using a hammer. Likewise adding too many enemy variations makes a game feel bloated, and you need to have a lot of moves to memorize. Wynn deals with this un a few ways, first by having the player choose between multiple playstyles. Second by having good designs (recently) for bosses. And if that’s not enough, they are literally already doing what you want in the form of major IDs, which can alter how a spell works like in Hades. Things like Nighthawk and Rythm of the Seasons are great examples, they change how the spell works and how it’s used. Before making a thread about how spells aren’t varied at least look at some items in the game, hell there’s an item at level 40 which has a spell altering major ID. This isn’t ment to be a personal attack, but a ton of the claims you’re making are sketchy at best, and the solutions you want are already in the game, and is planning on being expanded on.

Another thing I’ll add on is your solutions. One of the things you said is for spells to have drawbacks. This does make spells more complex, but when you think about it and how it’ll be used in gameplay, it’s very hit or miss. I’ll use your vanish giving slowness as an example. Though yes it does make sense for you to go slow to be stealthy, having slowness in a game with fast paced combat like Wynn is terrible for having good flow. Wynn is a movement heavy game, and restricting movement in ANY game is one of the most annoying mechanics to have in a game. That’s why so few games put slower movement in abilities players use often unless it’s used as a balancing tool. You also seem to consider vanish as a defensive spell for stealth. While this was true in pre 1.19, now vanish is used for mobility and it’s damage boost. There’s no real point into hardcoding drawbacks into spells or classes, Wynn actually tried this with Warrior, it’s a class that doesn’t have any really good spells, because warrior wasn’t supposed to be spellheavy. Infact, warrior’s spells has a lot of the mechanics you’re for. Warrior’s spell is slow with a small chargeup, it has some drawbacks to spells (All of the spells are spacers so you can’t really get steals off), and warrior has quite complex spells. The result is... a class that is considered the worst in Wynn, with the meta being to use a glitch to skip the animations with are supposed to be buildup. Also abusing a mythic with a major ID that makes warrior deal more damage and be more tanky.

These solutions would fit better in more turn based games, or games with slower combat, where fancy animations are enjoyable and it’s not too focused on timing and more on strategy. But in a game with combat as quick as Wynn, there’s no space for that. Your solutions too of changing some attacks are by definition statistical changes (Really? A few blocks of extra range on warrior melee isn’t very game changing)

To conclude, you make it seem like simplistic combat is something bad and Wynn doesn’t do it well, even though there are multiple games that have simplistic combat like Wynn, and skill curves like Wynn. You also say that most builds give statistical upgrades or downgrades, even though anyone with an ounce of experience will tell you that those changes vastly differ a playstyle. You say the combat is repetitive, but your point is a boiled down example that can be used to describe 99% of games (not very accurately mind you). Your solutions are either already being built on, and were for around a year before, or are those statistical changes you seem to be against, or are ideas that just won’t work in Wynn and are proven not to work well in Wynn and not supported by the playerbase.

I would cut you some more slack, but you made multiple threads like this, every time you come off as horribly misinformed, and it seems like you aren’t taking the smallest bit of research into actual gameplay mechanics before making a point that holds no water in practice and only work in theory. It seems like you’re just reading about different playstyles or just looking at the builds without thinking about what they actually work in gameplay. It especially doesn’t help that your suggestions, whilst being detailed, lack the technical knowledge of Wynn to know how to implement, or know the effects they would have on gameplay. Things like not differentiating between additive or multiplicative damage %s, showing how exactly your suggestions will effect formulas like the spell formula, or just not really have an in depth knowledge of building or gameplay mechanics in general. Information like this isn’t hard to find either, there are threads made by amazing people saying exactly how those mechanics work. I highly suggest taking at least a few minutes to at least skim through the information below before making threads that are horribly misinformed.

Good threads to read for information on how the game works:
Spell damage and melee damage formula (outdated but the formula still is correct)
https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/how-damage-is-calculated.176082/

Raw spell damage vs spell % damage (outdated graph, but again, formula is still correct)
https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/raw-spell-conversion-ratios.253700/

Effective HP and how defense can effect it
https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/defense-and-how-it-affects-your-effective-hp.263585/

How elemental defense really works
https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/how-elemental-defenses-work.276187/

How base defense of classes work
https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/effective-class-base-defenses.278549/

How spellcosts work
https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/spell-cost-guide-reference-chart.268079/page-2

Classbuilding 101 (Some things might be outdated, but as of now the general idea is mostly the same)
https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/class-building-101.266243/

Hybrid efficiency vs cps
https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/spell-steal-efficiency-analysis.267241/

Baselines
https://forums.wynncraft.com/thread...base-health-and-ingredient-durability.272232/

These guides are made by people who are reputable, and they also made some other guides as well, and of course there’s more on forums that I probably forgot. You can also just ask on forums for some guides too.

 

what the fuck yraw

 

should probably remove the page-2 part

also wtf yraw

________________________________

time to copypaste the rant you clearly didn't read from your previous thread:
(seriously, read this @AcadeeAlkana)

Play. The. Game.
You can get to combat lv40 in a single sitting. Get to endgame and learn the bare minimum about items before trying to mess with them.
And even once you make it to endgame, you'll still know nothing. 99.9% of players don't know anything about items. Wynn as a game misleads new players and doesn't tell them about the vast majority of very basic game mechanics. You need to seek out knowledge, it won't come to you.

If you're going to make big suggestions, at least know what you're talking about first so your entire thread doesn't get invalidated. I want to have good discussion about interesting concepts, not something that falls apart when someone who knows the bare minimum about the game stands within a mile of it.

 

holy shit he actually wrote a novel on the nuances of fast hybrid

 

Mixed in with hades appreciation, actual god

 

barts chart is too useful

 

:doom:

 

I agree that there should be more spells (but dont listen to me, I only leveled a mage to 37 and reach the desert.)

As I only played Mage, his spells are:
- Heal
- Teleport
- Meteor
- Ice Snake

Ways to improve
- Maybe you can change the optical of spells, like: BlueIceSnake, IceSnake, PackedIce
- Add Runes to change the Element of spells, like: IceSnake, FireSnake, LavaSnake
- Unlock more Spells the further you come in story. Get maybe uo to 8 Spells
- Swap in Midfight to another class
- Borrow an Spell from another class
- Add Channeling to improve your current spells
- Add more particles the higher the spells are (maybe this is enough, but not for me )

 

Class reskins

Lore disagrees

Not enough clicks

And mess up the code even more

1.13 feature for 1.12 server (heavily simplified)

 

nice post yraw