Game Mechanics Warrior Tree Ideas

A few days ago, I stumbled across a tool (https://punscake.github.io/wynnability/) created by @punscake on discord which allows people to write up ability descriptions and change the ability tree layout, and I felt like having some fun with it. As a result, I ended up with a modified Warrior ability tree with a bunch of changes, particularly to Paladin, and I felt like sharing.

Before anything, I feel I should clarify the following:
1. I know that anything on here would require a lot of dev time, a very precious resource.
2. I don't expect any of this to end up in-game.
3. I don't truly have an idea how balanced any of this would be, as I can't test any of it.
I am simply sharing this because I think some of it sounds rather fun and it might inspire something that does get made.


So, with that out of the way, I can begin covering the changes I made

Spoiler: New Abilities

New Abilities:

• Surging Corruption
• Flicker of Sanity
• Striking Moment
• Shining Hope

Spoiler: Layout Changes

Layout Changes:

• Swapped Ragnarokkr and Comet's positions
• Removed Armour Breaker
• Moved Massive Bash to Armour Breaker's previous position and is a yellow node
  
• Surging Corruption is located at Massive Bash's previous location
• Cheaper War Scream (II), Better Enraged Blow, and Bloodlust have moved down 1 space
• Haemorrhage has moved one space to the right and one space down
  • Bloodlust may now technically be accessed from Brink of Madness, although it is not possible to have enough ability points for this to occur
• Flicker of Sanity is located down one space and right one space from Bloodlust, two spaces left from Haemorrhage's new location
• Discombobulate and Cyclone have moved 1 space down
• Thunderclap has moved one space right
• Cyclone no longer connects to Stronger Sacred Surge
  
• Mythril Skin is located at Rejuvenating Skin's previous location and is a purple node
  
• Increased Mythril Skin's Paladin archetype requirement (0 -> 5)
  
• Rejuvenating Skin is located one space to the right of Mythril Skin's previous location
• Removed Rejuvenating Skin’s Paladin archetype requirement (5 -> 0)
  
• Sparkling Hope is located one space to the left of Mythril Skin's previous location
• Increased Sparkling Hope's Paladin archetype requirement (0 -> 7)
  
• Mythril Skin now connects to Sparkling Hope and Rejuvenating Skin
• Sparkling Hope no longer connects to Cheaper Bash (II)
  
• Radiance has moved one space up and one space to the right and is a yellow node
  • Spirit of the Rabbit may now be accessed from Radiance
• Increased Radiance's Paladin archetype requirement ( 3 -> 4)
• Decreased Spirit of the Rabbit's Battle Monk archetype requirement (5 -> 4)
  
• Shield Strike has moved two spaces to the right and one space down
• Sparkling Hope and Shield Strike now connect to Radiance
• Striking Moment is an optional node connected to the right of Stronger Sacred Surge
• Decreased Thunderclap's Battle Monk archetype requirement (6 -> 5)
  
• Removed Martyr
• Second Chance is located at Martyr's previous position and is a purple node
• Increased Second Chance's Paladin archetype requirement (12 -> 14)
  
• Shining Hope is located at Second Chance's previous location

Spoiler: Balance Changes

Balance Changes:

• Increased Ragnarokkr’s strength buff (10 -> +25%)
• Removed Ragnarokkr’s mana cost increase to War Scream (+5 -> 0)
  
• Ragnarokkr's strength buff now only lasts 15 seconds
  
• Ragnarokkr now only grants its strength buff after losing 30% hp while corrupted
• Ragnarokkr no longer affects allies
• Increased Provoke's duration (8 -> 9s)
• Removed Ragnarokkr’s mana cost increase to War Scream (-5 -> 0)
  
• Decreased Collide’s damage (Neutral: 150 -> 75%, Fire: 50 -> 25%)
• Removed Collide's Area-of-Effect explosion
  
• Comet may now trigger Collide on enemies that have been hit by Flying Kick
• Reduced Axe Kick’s mana cost increase to Uppercut (15 -> +10)
• Sacred Surge has been completely rebalanced to include new options
  
• Increased Mythril Skin's resistance bonus (5 -> +10%)
• Sparkling Hope has been completely rebalanced, overhauling the ability
• Increased Radiance's ID boost (20 -> 25%)
  
• Radiance now triggers from War Scream instead of Bash
• Decreased Shield Strike's damage (Neutral: 70 -> 60%, Thunder: 30 -> 20%)
• Reworked Stronger Sacred Surge to accommodate Sacred Surge's changes
• Implemented Martyr's effects into Second Chance
• Decreased Second Chance's health restore (30% -> 20%)
• Increased Second Chance's invincibility duration (3 -> 4s)

Now on to the lengthy part: talking about each ability I changed and why

Spoiler: Fallen Changes

Ragnarokkr



During 2.0, Fallen gained a rather infamous reputation among talented players for being considered the best archetype in the game at team buffing (in regards to things these players cared about (damage)).
The idea here was to remove Ragnarokkr from being a team buff (Sacred Surge now contains that) and instead make it a selfish damage buff.
This is essentially replacing Armour Breaker as well, as I don't believe Fallen having an ability which makes an enemy weaker to their whole team is necessarily healthy.

Ragnarokkr and Comet have swapped places as Ragnarokkr only works with Fallen now

Massive Bash



Massive Bash has been moved here because it's not a wildly used ability and Armour Breaker's spot has been opened up. Figured it would be fine to let Fallen players skip it.

Surging Corruption



This was not an ability included in my initial ideas, but I thought of what to put in place of Massive Bash's old spot that would feel useful and this is what I came up with.
While playing Fallen, I've noticed an annoying phenomenon where entering Corrupted at anything other than full health feels terribly wrong because you remain missing that health for essentially no benefit. This can alleviate that by making the amount of potential Corrupted lost minimal.
As a bonus, it also pairs well with Exhilarate to allow you to recover extra health out of combat by repeatedly entering and exiting Corrupted

Flicker of Sanity



Now this is a fun one.
Brink of Madness has long been an ability of particular interest to me, as I think the idea of it rewarding you for playing so dangerously low with a strong safety net is really neat, but because when it does save you, you often need to leave corrupted immediately, it doesn't feel cool to take advantage of.
The idea here was that you sacrifice some of the offensive potential of Enraged Blow in order to consistently benefit from Brink of Madness. The bonus from Brink of Madness is made slightly weaker here to rein in the power of the combo a little.

I would like to note that with the adjustments to Enraged Blow this makes, you do not have the new maximum bonus while at 75% corrupted. This is intentional, as I wanted it to feel less than perfect when you're using it.
Also, if I had the power to program this, healing bursts would not be able to get you above 25% hp, despite technically working with the current wording.

I'm aware that the current Fallen design philosophy is that players are supposed to be entering and exiting Corrupted multiple times over a fight, but there will always be players who don't do that very often which this would benefit, and it may also allow a bit more control over when Bloodlust is triggered, making it more engaging to interact with.

As for the name of the ability, it's meant to reference a tiny part of the player realizing what is happening and the rage they've let take control, and fighting against its influence to avoid disaster. I'm quite fond of it.

Spoiler: Battle Monk Changes

Collide



Collide has always been in a bit of a weird spot due to its unreliability to hit enemies often.
Yes, Comet is a Fallen ability, not a Battle Monk one, but especially with the Comet-Ragnarokkr location swap, it is located very close by, and since Comet essentially slams enemies into the ground, I figured it makes a decent amount of sense to let it trigger Collide as well if the enemy has recently been hit by Flying Kick.
This would make one of Battle Monk's least useful abilities useful as well as help encourage a combo of spells, as this requires using both Charge and Uppercut to trigger.

To account for this buff to a rather strong archetype, I halved the damage and removed the aoe explosion effect that currently exists on Collide.

Spirit of the Rabbit



This small change was meant to make it easier for Paladin to access Axe Kick and meet Thunderclap's Battle Monk archetype point requirement. It also makes it easier for Fallen to access Thunderclap, but I don't yet feel this is a large issue

Axe Kick
(Technically not a Battle Monk ability, but I'm putting it here)



In my opinion, Axe Kick is rarely worth taking, as the strain on mana costs is too great to be worth it most of the time, so I lowered the cost to make it slightly more enticing.

Thunderclap



I chose to lower the Battle Monk archetype point requirement by 1 because it only affects Paladin, which currently has a very hard time getting the 6 points required without great sacrifice. This, combined with access to Spirit of the Rabbit, lowers the ability points you might spend on getting it by 3.

Spoiler: Paladin Changes

Provoke
(Technically not a Paladin ability, but I'm putting it here)



A common complaint about Provoke right now is the 2 seconds downtime that makes it difficult for a Paladin tank to keep control over the boss. I generally agree with this but can understand not wanting it to be bulletproof and letting everyone else get away with not paying any attention.
Because of that, I chose to increase the duration to 9 seconds so that the downtime is smaller but not nonexistent. Hopefully this would be low enough that tanks don't feel required to also use the Taunt major ID and spam War Scream.

I also removed the cost reduction because I didn't feel it made much sense.

Sacred Surge



Now this is a long one.
I mentioned earlier with Ragnarokkr that the old team buff from that had been moved to Sacred Surge: here it is. Sacred Surge can now give the team a damage buff for War Scream's duration by casting War Scream with enough Holy Power.
I also brought Armour Breaker over here because it was yet another team buff ability, this time from Bash.
Uppercut retains the old smite Sacred Surge currently has, as I feel it's fitting to leave on there for obvious reasons. I buffed the damage on it because it needs to feel worth using, which it currently isn't

Mythril Skin



A simple buff, because 5% resistance really isnt all that much for what is supposed to feel like a major ability.
I chose to place it above Rejuvenating Skin because the latter is a rather powerful ability that I felt should be a little harder to reach and because people might actually want to skip it because of what I did to Sparkling Hope and its new upgrade Shining Hope

Sparkling Hope



This is possibly my favorite ability of the ones I redesigned.
Sparkling Hope was, in my opinion, a really cool ability name which unfortunately sucked, so I wanted to make it a much more important one.

The idea here is as follows: if the tank is a reliable bastion of stability in the party, then they should seem like a beacon of hope despite the horrors you may be fighting. If the tank cannot remain stable, then it might cause a downward spiral of pain.
Because of that, it felt right to make an ability called Sparkling Hope reward you for succeeding at being that beacon. Drop below 85% health and you lose a healing buff that you and/or your allies may be depending on you to have (as well as the bonus dps which felt fitting to buff).

I made the self-healing much lower than what allies get because if you're playing paladin, you probably have a rather tanky build, so that 1% of your max health per second goes a lot further than the 4% to allies does.

The Area of Effect is 12 blocks to match War Scream's buff radius so allies aren't trying to keep track of a lot of different radii.

Radiance



Radiance, despite how good it sounds, doesn't tend to actually do all that much for allies, so I felt it deserved a small buff.
I also changed the activating spell to War Scream because Bash is still rather clunky at this point and it defines War Scream more as the team buff spell alongside Sacred Surge (also keep the 12 block AoE consistent).
The Paladin archetype requirement was raised to make it slightly harder to non-Paladin Warriors to access this slightly better Radiance.

Radiance was moved to be on the same vertical level as Spirit of the Rabbit to allow access to it as well as Axe Kick, as I didn't see a reason Paladin shouldn't be able to access them. It also just looks nicer in my opinion.

Shield Strike



Shield Strike is not a powerful ability by any means, but I wanted to rein it in a little because of the introduction of Striking Moment later on. Overall, it'll actually be better.
As a side note, it's on the side underneath Rejuvenating Skin because you also might not actually care to get it and it leaves Radiance open for other archetypes.

Stronger Sacred Surge



You might have noticed earlier that I didn't give the initial Sacred Surge ability that high of modifiers. This existing is why; I figured some of the power of it should be locked behind getting deeper into Paladin and the ability for that already existed.

This increases the Armour Breaker effect and War Scream damage bonus back to roughly where they were on 2.1 Fallen (both offset by 5%). It also increases the smite damage to 320%, hopefully making it another bit more enticing to use, and increases the base War Scream Resistance from 20% to 25% when casted using Sacred Surge.

Striking Moment



(This ability name is one I stole from a buff in Terraria that I find interesting which makes your next melee hit do 5x damage. Probably used in other games, but thats where I took it from)

I never quite feel happy with the damage bonus on this as I keep arguing with myself whether this is too powerful or too weak. Regardless, this is meant to give Paladins at least something to pack an offensive punch when they need it. It's a very good time to cast, say, an Axe Kick Uppercut with a smite stacked on. Just that alone is 810% spell multiplier, which sounds really powerful, but Mantle's cooldown is 20 seconds and neither smites nor Axe Kick tend to be very spammable so you aren't dealing that high of a multiplier consistently.

It's also worth noting that for those who don't care to gain the offensive punch, this is intentionally an optional node to allow you to skip it.

Of course, if this were implemented right now, there'd be an issue where it wont take effect due to the War Scream damage bonus you'd probably have active, but if that were to be somehow changed, this could be fun.

Shining Hope



Now you aren't just sparkling, you're shining.

Paladin is a team support archetype (and tbh I might have made it too good at that, especially with this), so it feels fitting to give it its own one of the exclusive overhealth abilities in the game to allow you to protect your team from even more damage. Enemies will also do a little less damage, allowing that overhealth to go a bit further.

Just don't mess up now, that would be really bad, wouldn't it?

As a side note, this is why I feel Rejuvenating Skin stops being so useful for Paladin with my ideas; you can only lose 5% of your actual health before things get a bit rough, and that doesn't leave a lot of room for Rejuvenating Skin to do much, but it's still a very powerful ability so I felt it deserved to stay.
It could still be used to charge Sacred Surge rapidly, which is why I'm not changing it to a purple node; it still has a potent use.

Second Chance



Now I know this not being a red node sounds ridiculous. Surviving when you should have been dead, and it isn't considered that major? Well, it really doesn't do all that much for a proper tanking playstyle, so outside of some niche scenarios (mostly including weird war tech afaik), it doesn't tend to ever trigger. In some cases, it might as well be a glorified 30% hp increase.
That being said, I don't believe it deserves to be removed, so I'm leaving it here, in Martyr's old spot so that Paladins don't have to take it.

I increased the duration to 4 seconds because I felt 3 seconds was slightly too low, but decreased the hp restore to 20% partially to rein that in and partially because it felt weird having it bring you to a hp level outside Brink of Madness' range when it's literally 3 ability points away.

I don't use the forums very much, so I can only hope that the images of the abilities show up properly and that the text file to paste into the area next to the load button on https://punscake.github.io/wynnability/ is accessible so that you can see the full tree yourself.

 

this are pretty cool , honestly !
bmonk is the least changed , but that's not bad , sometimes the simple options are better . I like how collide is changed , making it more spell-combo oriented , but some of the changes are so small , sometimes i looked at the ability , and i wasn't sure what changed until i read the thing under it lol.
fallen is also good , flicker of sanity and the ragnarokkr changes are my fav , cuz' A: they both make the archetype more engaing , and B: they are VERY thematic !
but the best of the three archetype changes is for sure paladin . paladin was mostly a passive archetype , like if you wanted to play pre 2.0 warrior , but the changes completely change that ! sacred surge is cooler , paladin has more buffs and has actually healing for teammates and damage ? like actually decent damage that doesn't feel broken ?! YES!!! not to mention it's burst damage , my ideal "type" of paladin damage .

All in all it's very pog ,but shining hope (maybe sparkling hope too) deserve a bit of a nerf , not to the threshold but the regen . also , as cool as retroactively "nerfing" abilites is , i honestly think the wynn team wouldn't do that as it sounds counter-intuitive at first glance , those minor flaws aside I think it's very solid !

 

YOOOOOOO WHAT

 

my thoughts too (doesn't appear to have wynnpack for ability descs.)

 

Flicker of Sanity is very cool thematically!

________________________________

What the hell is wynnpack?

 

the wynncraft resource pack
you know
it makes spears look like spears and not iron shovels
it also changes the font of minecraft to be fancier and thicker
and it makes certain symbols become other symbols (like the circle turns into an hour glass)

 

I would love to use that but have no idea how to (completely legally) extract that as a usable font

 

yeah i mean fair

 

i love the concept of sacred surge as well as paladin in general and i really hope the content team sees this and adds this in some form in a later update, even if nothing else changes.

 

I ADORE those Paladin abilities. I just hope the content team see this and have the same feeling, because those abilities would probably make Paladin viable.

I really like your buffs to Sacred Surge, and the replacement of Second Chance w/ Shining Hope. The Sparkling Hope and Shield Strike buffs are also really cool.
Striking Moment feels sort of like a sidegrade/alternative of the Ragnarrokr we have now, and Mythril Skin giving more damage resistance is also cool.

If they replaced Brink of Madness w/ Second Chance, and added Shining Hope in its place, I don't think anyone would argue about that.

 

This wynncraft ability tree maker is huge.

The new abilities are huge too

This is huge.


(huge)