Game Design Why Shadestepper is the worst-designed archetype

So recently I decided to pick up Assassin for a new playthrough and decided to go with Shadestepper; but as I was doing so, one thought went through my mind: "I'm sure Shadestepper isn't that bad and people are always just overplaying it, right?"
But hoo boy, was I wrong.
However, I don't just want to make another "buff Shadestepper" post because one, it's beating a dead horse; and two, the reality is that it isn't exactly "bad" in terms of power itself but rather in terms of the feeling of power; so no matter how many buffs it gets, Shadestepper will always be "bad" because it is a fundamentally poorly designed archetype and I'd like to go into why this is the case.

As I've implied, when I say Shadestepper is "bad", I'm talking about how horrible it is to play, not necessarily that its damage is bad or how "meta" it is. That being said, Shadestepper could have the objectively best damage in Wynncraft and it still wouldn't matter because it's badly designed and not fun to play, and that needs to be addressed.
But to find out why, let's go into the ability tree.

The Shadestepper Ability Tree:
To start off, we have the first abilities of Shadestepper. The ones that should set the precedent for the rest of the archetype to follow.




Simple enough, these three abilities naturally synergize with each other. I do think Backstab has the problem of being based around, well, Backstabbing the enemy which without Vanish or a teammate is essentially impossible, but I digress. This is a very strong start, and it sets the Shadestepper up as an archetype based around Backstab and especially Vanish, dealing devastating damage with a sneak attack on unsuspecting enemies.
This is a good concept with a single defining ide-



...I'm sorry, what? Smoke Bomb upgrades? Smoke Bomb, as in, the ranged spell that deals sustained damage? In the Archetype based around point-blank burst damage?
Now, while I will say that while these are somewhat strange to suddenly focus on, it isn't necessarily bad.
It does shift the focus from two spells into three, but it's actually handled very well so it's perfectly fine as long as they don't throw Spin Attack in ther-



The Problem:
The biggest problem with Shadestepper is that it simply isn't fun to play. It has a severe identity crisis and way too much buildup, but finally reaching that buildup is no more fun than any other subclass in the entire game, in fact there are many subclasses that just feel a thousand times better to play. I don't feel like I'm being properly rewarded for the sheer amount of work I have to put in just to maximize my stacks, I just feel like I've reached a work quota. When you max out your gimmick on a subclass, you should feel like a badass laying waste upon the battlefield; Sharpshooter raining down hundreds of homing arrows, Arcanist unleashing rapid-fire meteors, Summoner having a horde of goons beating the enemies to a pulp. That's what these stacking archetype gimmicks should be about. Both of Shadestepper's stacking gimmicks are literally just "do slightly more damage per stack when hitting your attacks" and that is breathtakingly boring and unfulfilling for the work you have to put in to get those stacks. I get that not every stacking archetype gimmick is a winner in this regard, but Shadestepper unequivocally has it the worst out of all of them because it literally has two stacking gimmicks and both are completely devoid of any feeling of power or spectacle.

More than that though, what is your damage focus supposed to be? I imagine Backstab, right? But then why does Fatal Spin exist? It creates a desire to just spam Spin Attack to get knives faster. There is absolutely no true focus here, not even on Vanish and Backstab. And you know, Backstab and Vanish are obviously a good focus, and even Smoke Bomb is pretty fine with how well it's handled here, but Spin Attack? That's just silly to have any sort of required nodes for, let alone for those nodes to be an important part of Shadestepper. And out of the last 3 entire pages of the Shadestepper tree, only two nodes are for Backstab; one is just "Cheaper Multihit" and the other the last major node of the entire tree. And even worse, only one single node is for Vanish (that being Death Magnet), which is completely optional and very niche.
All of this is to say that Shadestepper has unequivocally the biggest identity crisis of any archetype in Wynncraft.

Other class archetypes have nodes for spells they otherwise wouldn't use, it's true, but most of them are completely optional whereas here they're part of Shadestepper's important gimmicks which makes them feel entirely mandatory, like you're playing the class wrong if you're not using every single one of your spells and that's just simply ridiculous.
But worst of all is the fact that many things after the Vanish and Backstab nodes just simply doesn't synergize with the rest of Shadestepper's kit. Nightcloak Knives for example only consumes marks if you use Spin Attack while in Vanish, which has no synergy with Vanish whatsoever, and it means you have to sacrifice your Vanish's cooldown just to set up damage for later.

But the true reason this is the most irritatingly designed archetype in the game, let's go over how you would have to play this against a boss:
You use smoke bomb on the boss to bring it to max marks, then you use Vanish and Spin Attack on the boss to get 3 Knives, then you use another Smoke Bomb to bring the boss to max marks again, and after waiting for Vanish to come off cooldown you use it again, use Spin Attack again to get max knives, and then you use Smoke Bomb yet again to bring the boss to max marks while you have max knifes. All of this just to set up your damage. After waiting for Vanish's cooldown again, you use it and after all that rage-inducing buildup, THEN you use Backstab. But of course you can't only use Backstab with Vanish from then on, no sir. Cause you still have to refresh the knives' duration with Vanish + Spin Attack or else they'll completely reset and you'll have to do that setup all over again.

I shouldn't have to say this, but this is absolutely insane. This is bordering on FFXIV Red Mage levels of setup, except that setup is not only more consistent, has synergy with itself, and doesn't just reset after the fight is over, but it also makes sense to the game it's a part of. Shadestepper should not be this convoluted just to set up and maintain your damage rotation for a single fight, especially considering how hard it forces you to build into intelligence and/or mana regen. But that leaves one single question:

How do we fix this?
The hard way is to rework Nightcloak Knives and/or Mark to make them actually feel powerful to max out. This is what I want because even if the buildup were removed entirely, Shadestepper still wouldn't feel fun because it has no oomph whatsoever.
The easy way however is just to simply remove or severely reduce the buildup. There are a great many solutions to this problem, and here are some of mine. Just about any single combination of these could make Shadestepper actually feel fun to play instead of feeling like you have a quota to fill.

1. Make Nightcloak Knives not require you to be in Vanish to consume marks. This is the simplest possible solution to the sheer aggravation of having to wait multiple times for your Vanish to come off cooldown just so you can stack your knives against a boss.
   Alternatively, instead just lower the cooldown of Vanish when you use Spin Attack during it to consume marks.
2. Make Nightcloak Knives lose only a single stack when the timer runs out instead of entirely resetting. This makes them active for more than one single fight and removes a ton of the buildup from each subsequent fight, not to mention just making it feel better in general during actual fights.
3. Make Nightcloak Knives and Fatal Spin based around Backstab instead of Spin Attack. This would actually give the ability synergy with several other nodes such as Shadow Siphon and Violent Vortex. Obviously Fatal Spin would need a new name too.
4. Replace Death Magnet or at least give it more functionality, as it feels redundant given that its function already exists on Black Hole, which doesn't have a cooldown unlike Vanish, and there's not a reason to spend multiple ability points on pull effects when they fall off in raids.
5. Spin Attack having nodes is fine, but they need to be optional, just like Paladin's Radiance, Sharpshooter's Fire Creep, or Light Bender's Freezing Sigil. These are all nice things to have the option to upgrade, but they're great because they're optional and not a main part of the archetype's design (regardless of elitists tell you).

Conclusion:
Shadestepper is bad, it's true, but not actually in terms of actual power, but rather in terms of feeling and oomph, and that's because of its lack of synergy, lack of scale, and lack of focus which really makes it no fun. In its current state, Shadestepper is a waste of an archetype that needs to be addressed.

 

yes but it's not as bad if you hmelee

 

Perhaps but you shouldn't be shoehorned into one specific build for your archetype to be fun.

 

i agree, i'm just saying that mana isn't much of an issue for non-spell shade

 

Okay, you made a good analysis.
However, I think you are making two arguments in your post:
1 Shadestepper is not fun
because
1 Shadestepper's design is non-synergistic.

Lets start with the first point. How much fun a playstyle is, is entirely based on personal preference. I personally like the more carefull and position based gameplay of shade, compared to the spellvomit that is arcanist. I'm sad to hear that you didn't enjoy this playstyle.

Onto the second point:
While I agree that spellshade can feel a bit bad in some cases, like the one you just described, I disagree with the idea that it has little synergy between it's abilities.The synergy is not between the spells themselves, but between the effects.

Spellshade functions on three main principles: vanish, marked and backstab. These do synergise together, even if the spells themselves don't.
Vanish helps the player reposition for a backstab as well as increasing backstabs damage.
Marked also increases backstabs damage, as well as refunding mana, compensating for vanish blocking of manaregen.
Backstab is the main damage tool of shade. It requires carefull positioning, but when succesfull it deals large amounts of damage, decreases the vanish cooldown and refunds the mana through triggering harvester.
This allows the player to theoretically do a spell cycle of smokebomb (to stack marked), vanish (dmg buff and reposition), backstab and then repeat. As might be noticed, this cycle flows quit nicely.

With this in mind the smokebomb upgrades start making more sense. All of them make it easier and cheaper to apply max marks to an enemy.

What about nightcloak knife and fatal spin, you might ask? These do not fit within the proposed cycle.
That is true, however, they function as a way to make fighting higher hp enemies like bosses more dynamic. You don't set up knifes on enemies that can't survive one backstabcycle. With this in mind, fatal spin allows you to reapply the marks while waiting for vanish to get back up, as well making the consumption of marks less punishing.

Thus against bosses, the setup starts with smokebomb, into a vanished spin attack to setup the knife. Then you spin attacks two to three times, to get the marks back up to max while dealing damage. When vanish is back up, you do the normal vanish backstab cycle. It is important to note that you don't try to max out your max knifes in single target directly. This is because the damage you gain by getting the additional knifes does not weigh against the damage you lose in the short term. I the long term it does, however, you need to refresh your knifes once every 40s anyway, which allows you get max knifes then.

However, you ended with the statement that the setup is way to convoluted. Again, this is personal taste, but the setup doesn't feel complicated to me at all. Yes, it's more complex than other classes, but that is just variety that is healthy for the game. Some people like more complicated and skill expressive combo's.

However, you do make a good point about the mana hungry nature of spellshade against bosses. This sadly is a consequence of shade's all-or-nothing playstyle regarding mana. Either you have enough damage to one-cycle the enemy, meaning you need no or very little excess mana regen or cost reduction, or you do not one cycle, at wich point vanish makes it so that you need excessive amounts of mana regen/steal and spell cost reduction.

Regarding your proposed fixes: 1 and 2 are nice buffs, while not fundamentally changing anything. 3 and 5 I disagree with, because they remove the dynamism that nightcloak knifes brings. 4 I have no oppinion on, I think it's fine, I never use Death Magnet.

 

this is totally subjective, you're stating it like an objective fact. i love shade, i can simply chill in vanish for most of a fight and simply exit to pump in mega backstab damage. though im not totally disagreeing with some of your points, god i hate having to expend vanish cd on building knives, sometimes i just skip it entirely. but i also think you entirely missed the mark on the design lacking synergy? i mean i feel that the progression for the tree is totally natural, starting with backstab and vanish, the playstyle for the whole tree is outlined by those two abilities, hit-and-run. with just the augment abilities to those two abilities (surprise strike and silent killer specifically) it would be incredibly boring, and would probably fall off against other classes/archetypes. augmenting smoke bombs with the ability to stack marks and nightcloak knives, the player is given ways to build even stronger hits (than just with vanish and backstab), which rewards even more "methodical" play.

reiterating bc im feeling like spitting my own gripes with shade, im not in total disagreement. shade, spin attack? useless. only for claiming nightcloak. co-op synergy? god in an ideal world, huh? but overall i think its one of the better archetypes, providing a better alternative to "hur dur spam infinite spell for infinite damage naurrrr" (LOOKING AT YOU ARCANIST, NO BRAIN ASS GAMEPLAY). ++ i think the playstyle comes to mind when one thinks "assassin", where instead of acrobatics or clones, its a silent moment before a deadly strike (POETRY)

 

Shade is lowkey fun early game but super niche endgame and can’t survive in lootruns or raids

 

Nightcloak knife should at least reset Vanish cooldown imo, that transition is too rough

 

As a Shadestepper main, must say I do agree about how Knives are super annoying. I would rather get them while doing backstab. Also having to be in vanish for it sucks.


Also its annoying to have everything (knives, smoke bomb, etc.) reset when you swap to pots to heal