Why Adding More Spells To Every Class Wouldn't Work Well

I've seen a colossal uproar lately of people wanting Wynn to add extra spells for every class. Not just on the forums, but also on the subreddit, and for all I know there may even be people suggesting it on Discord! I'm getting tired of seeing it, because, as cool as it sounds, it wouldn't really work.

Here's why:

Each class is tailored to fit a certain role in the gameplay, each of its 4 spells serving a certain specific purpose.

From the classes I've played up until level 90:

Mage is the healing tank, who isn't expected to attack much, hence the weak meteor spell and the short-lived Ice Snake for a little crowd control. Heal is for, well, healing yourself and allies, while Teleport is just a movement spell with no real meaning behind it. This class has the bare minimum it needs to solo bosses, with the huge bonus of instant self-healing.

Shaman is the AoE glass cannon, who can spawn a damaging totem wherever they like (also being able to heal allies with it), send a wave of AoE damage through it with Aura as well as sort of disperse the mobs within it by doing so, and it has Uproot to move mobs, move the totem, and keep the totem alive. Its movement spell also depends on the totem.

Archer is a DPS glass cannon, who can do absolute massive amounts of damage with its incredibly powerful bows, its amazing Arrow Storm spell and its Bomb Arrow. Escape is designed to get the Archer out of a desperate situation, and Arrow Shield serves as a defense that lets out a rain of arrows when depleted.

For the remaining 2:

Assassin is a melee DPS glass cannon, able to vanish to escape near-death situations, use smoke bomb for some extra damage, and use multihit and spin attack for damage. It does less than the Archer, but it also takes less damage.

Warrior is a class I have never played seriously, but I know it's a DPS tank that is good at staying alive and doing lots of damage

As you can see, their spells are pretty useful for their situations (except i didn't show warrior's spells because i don't know them). I couldn't find a single spell that could be interchanged for anything else. I think it'd be cool if you could use the spell interchanging idea to make, say for example, Archer go from a heavy DPS glass cannon to a defense class, but I don't see a way to do that without it being weird.

Another thing I often see for these spell suggestions is some ideas for what the extra spells could be. They usually meet the class's specification. Here is an example of a mage spell for RLL

Magic blast
Send a laser from your wand to do tons of damage to any enemy touching it. It lasts 5 seconds

The problem with a spell like this is that it would hugely overshadow Meteor. ''tons of damage'' implies that it would do heavy damage, which not only defies Mage's specification, but damages the Meteor's popularity as a damaging spell.

Here's another example, this time for an Archer LLL spell:

Super arrow
Shoot 1 strong arrow that is 2* as strong as a regular arrow

The problem here is that the ''new spell'' would be massively overshadowed by Arrow Storm. Nobody would use it, and it would be seen as an overall useless inclusion.

Those ideas were hard to come up with, and they were intentionally bad, so can you imagine how difficult it would be for the Content Team to come up with more spells that are actually GOOD?

To end it off, here's a note to you people who suggest this. If you want more spells, slap on Pandemonium and call it a day.

 

Tbh I just don't want more spells out of the fact my brain can't process permutations of 4

 

What I think would be a bit better than new spells would be adding variations of spells based on the different elements. Say you reach a certain amount of skill points in one of the skills you could unlock versions of the spells you could choose to replace the normal version that would be slightly different for example, reaching like 110 dexterity as mage could unlock a thunder variation of meteor that could make more of the damage convert to thunder while changing up the particles a bit to look more like a thunder based attack and also changing how fast it casts, or even just making it a lightning bolt that still functions and performs similar to how meteor does could work.

 

I think adding an ultimate ability for each class could be cool. It could even be the theme of the next update too. Or something you have to unlock to help take down the Dern Beast.

 

Hmm then why would elements even exist

Even if new spells are added, as long as you don't completely break them, each class will still have their clear differences. All my reason is stupid elemental conversion, I want to play EWA assassin without losing like 20% damage :(

 

Assassin isn't really a glass cannon IMO Vanish allows him to stay alive and deal s hell of alot of damage.

 

that's what warrior is supposed to be

assassin has high defence

 

I think what spells need is more functions or variations
Shift key is used in some spells such as uppercut to send yourself upwards along with the enemy
I think adding more variations to the existing spells through methods like that would be ideal, it doesn't break the classic 3 clicks combo system and still adds more depth to the spells

Useful ones would be better than uppercut's upwards launch tho

 

We just ignoring the fact you would have to add another spell input

 

the ideas presented here were meant to like
replace current spells in currrent inputs

 

Counterpoint:

It seems like your main gripe with this is that spells either wouldn't fit a class' identity or that they would be too OP/UP. If those requirements are met however, extra spells could be fun and could freshen up the gameplay experience. Sure, it would take a long time to balance and honestly might need months of beta testing, but if done right, I think this could be a great feature.

 

What I'm mostly trying to say is that each class was designed with its spells in mind, and that having interchangeable spells could be a bad idea

Imagine you're doing a raid and you have an archer, and you want them to have the good spells. Instead, they have the bad ones. Having more spells would not only be weird, but it would make people's movesets unpredictable.

 

Maybe right clicking a person could show you what spells they're using, so it's easier to find the best person to use for your raid party.

 

Yes, I agree with you, 4 spells is enough.

They can, however, implement a system (apart from items) that alters skills in a meaningful way by adding runes to a slot or something (bit like Diablo/PoE, implemented in a system like Tomes, per skill). This could, for example, alter the mage's Heal spell to a Pulse spell that deals damage or something. This would open up purely offensive mages.

 

It's not really supposed to be DPS, more crowd control tank, but yeah...

 

I’ll be honest..


I’m an advocate for more spells, because even if it might get unbalanced.. it’s still something fresh, new, and fun for EVERYONE to play around with. It also could add lot of customization to classes to make everyone with their own “spell build” feel unique in this fairytale world in their own way.

Wynn’s spell system kinda gets cookie-cutter after a while, so I think it would be great to expand the players magical capabilities ^.^


sometimes good things can come out of turning things on it’s head!

 

This whole argument is borne on the assumption that spells are a static fact in the game. This is not true. As much as people might say the classes only really have 4 spells, we have major IDs which can greatly change the use and effectiveness of these spells anyway. Consider that cherry bombs, hawkeye, entropy, flash freeze, the effigy IDs and rally which all provide new "spells" without rejecting the current system

 

Major ids are perfect for the extra spell thing, they are flexible and easy to balance, and doesn’t make the system too complicated. If people really want a change, I think melee should get upgrades throughout level progression like spells do. Maybe at level 100 an LLL spell is “unlocked” basically making a small special effect happen every three melee hits. Also, the shift toggle for spells is cool, but I feel like half the time it doesn’t work or its just completely useless. Spells like uproot and vanish would be pretty well suited for shift toggle effects imo.

 

Adding additional spells to classes is very conditional. It's possible for sure, but not without changes that would make them both not obsolete or powerful than the other.

If a player were to say to add swappable spells to classes that you can interchange and match without any changes to the current system and handling of spells, then yes I'd typically say it's a bad idea, unless said spell fits very well. As stated in this post, most of the class's core areas and skills are covered. Each class has pretty much everything they need, and any other spell added would have to tailored very specifically to a different playstyle. I personally can't think of many spell ideas that would be viable to overwrite the current ones. Every class pretty much has most of everything covered.
There's also the fact of the style of the "no-cooldown" system Wynncraft has, as Wynncraft is a "hack-n-slash" RPG of sorts, and less about strategic decisions and spell builds. It makes it more difficult to create spells that would be balanced at a spell-spammable level. You usually cannot make a spell that deals a ton of damage or provide major benefits without some sort of major drawback or "charge-up" to it.
For example, Meteor is the highest damaging ability in the game right now percentage wise at 500% damage in a single hit. However, the ability in itself has a drawback of having a fall timer, so it's not an instantaneous blast of damage. Not only that, most Wands in the game don't deal as heavy damage as weapons like Cataclysm. They have a different weapon damage baseline than the other weapons, most likely lower.

However, like I said it's very much so possible to add new spells. It's not out of reach for the developers and designers of Wynncraft. In order to do so, some aspects of the current spell system would need to be changed, such as adding cooldowns, different mana costs, reducing the overall capabilities of each spell to a more specific niche (Ex. Making Spin Attack not a circle of instant damage + Stun + Effect Cleanse), maybe more spell slots to cast with(?), etc. Doing this will open the door to adding more spells alongside the current ones, as those spells would fit different niches and have more specific uses.

 

How is it possible to add more spell slot? Those are basically the maximum combination for the class.