Game Design In my Opinion, Warrior and Assassin aren’t fun anymore.

I’ve come to a little realization after taking a break for a little while from Wynncraft.

After the 2.0 update, I stopped having fun with Warrior and Assassin

Every time I’d try to pick up and play either of the two classes, i’d get a build, fiddle with the Ability Tree, decided I didn’t like it, and repeated to find a playstyle I liked.

But I never would find a playstyle I’d like, because I wasn’t having fun with any of them. With the other classes, there’s at least 1 or 2 archetypes I have fun with.
I like Riftwalker because it’s mage before 2.0, and I was already accustomed to that playstyle.
I like Trapper and Boltslinger because it’s fun to just spam things from a range and just be really fast.
And I like Summoner because it also was most similar to a pre 2.0 playstyle (and I like my little guys)

There is a pattern here.
The archetypes I loved are the ones that are most similar to how they played BEFORE 2.0, and I think that’s why I stopped having fun with Warrior and Assassin.

After 2.0, Warrior lost 10% of its base damage reduction, which I think removed some of the appeal.
Warrior is supposed to be the tankiest class, and while I can understand that it needed this change for balancing reasons, it makes Warrior now feel more like an Assassin alternative.
Warrior also doesn’t ever feel quite complete with just 1 Archetype. It feels like you HAVE to hybridize it with others because otherwise, it just feels incomplete.

If you take only Fallen, then you either have to take Battle Monk skills for mobility or Paladin for Tankiness to compensate for its playstyle of loosing health, with Battle Monk, you have to take Paladin or Fallen for defense or damage, etc.
Each of the Warrior archetypes only is good at one thing respectively, they’re one trick ponies.

Along with this, it never feels like i’m playing them correctly. With Fallen, I always feel like I should be more tanky than I am, and so I end up going in for damage and retreating, which feels more like Assassin. With Battle Monk, I just feel like i’m casting spells that have no weight or power behind them, and with Paladin, I’m not dealing enough damage, and the Tankiness doesn’t even compensate for that.

With Assassin, I feel sort of the opposite.
It feels like the archetypes weren’t made with the others in mind, and thus, many of the abilities don’t synergize, or even can be used with each other in many cases.

This is most noticeable with Shadestepper and Acrobat. The two are complete opposites, and finding a way to combine them just results in Acrobat, but with Marked.

None of the Archetypes are particularly tanky, and even with Trickster, you are loosing damage by tanking hits.

Shadestepper honestly feels like a step down from pre 2.0 Assassin. People do not spam “Buff Shadestepper” in comment sections because it’s bad (well, they do, and it is, but it’s for another reason on top of that). They do it because it isn’t the same as pre 2.0 Assassin, so it looses its appeal.

Trickster and Acrobat feel like completely different classes, and I don’t like that.
I think Acrobat having the ability to fly is nice, but I feel like it was made with only that thing in mind: “MAKE ASSASSIN FLY”
It feels like I’m not even fighting when I play Acrobat. It feels more like a spam RLR-Hop-RRR simulator, while weaving spells in-between when I feel like it.

All this to say one thing:
I stopped having fun with Warrior and Assassin because they lost their original appeal and playstyles.

If there’s something I could say about either of them that I like, “the new Shadestepper/Trickster Bamboozle playstyle is cool”, is about everything I could say.

I also don’t want to discredit the work that was put into these two classes. I fully understand that Wynncraft is a hard game to make, and I want to say that the developers did a great job with these two classes, and everything else in the game for that matter.

I’m just someone who doesn’t agree with how the two were handled in the 2.0 update and beyond.

Warrior doesn’t feel particularly feel tanky or strong anymore, and Assassin doesn’t feel fast, cunning, and sneaky anymore, at least that’s what I think.

And if the two don’t have the aspects of what I liked about them before, then what am I supposed to like about them?

 

One thing I'm curious about is why you seem to only like archetypes that are "similar to the pre-2.0 classes". I mean, it's been two years since then, and moreover a lot of the pre-2.0 classes were relatively uninteresting in terms of gameplay. Assassin was incredibly dull due to the fact that you could be in Vanish indefinitely, so mobs would effectively never attack you; Mage pre-2.0 was completely lacking in damage, and was just less mechanically interesting than anything 2.0 has to offer; Shaman pre-2.0 was the same as Shaman is currently but again lacking in most things that makes Shaman interesting these days; et cetera. The classes all got mechanically much more interesting when 2.0 came out, and I'm confused as to why you keep comparing them to their pre-2.0 variants; again, it's been two years.

Warrior's reduction in base defense is made up for by the Paladin archetype, and it means that not all warriors have to be playing tanks.
I definitely understand what you're saying about hybridization; any tree that doesn't have Fallen can feel like it's lacking in damage, and any tree that doesn't have Battle Monk can feel like it's missing mobility. I also understand your concerns about assassin archetypes not being entirely compatible; honestly, that's fair. Lacerate blocking out Echo is a good example of this.
I feel like neither of these facts make Warrior or Assassin any less fun, though. With Warrior, you can choose to fully build into damage, or into tankiness or mobility, and the game supports that; but, if you want to do some combination of them, Warrior allows that as well. For Assassin, I agree that I'd like to see a little more synergy between archetypes, but each archetype on its own is still really interesting. Acrobat gameplay can feel repetitive at times with the RLR - Hop - RRR cycle, sure, but there are definitely still ways to make the archetype interesting, and the other archetypes don't much suffer from this repetitiveness.

Your main criticism of these classes does seem to be "they're not like what they used to be"; they're not, no, because they've been made better. Pre-2.0 Assassin was constantly abusing Vanish, and Pre-2.0 Warrior was basically locked into tanky playstyles. The classes have changed, yes, but they've changed for the better.

 

You also seem to be under the impression that more/new = better, which is not inherently true. In fact, it's not like every single individual archetype is even more mechanically interesting or dynamic than pre 2.0 iterations of the classes, especially with the level of unbalance in the ability tree and aspects. While Warrior archetypes have a variety of new mechanics, how much more unique are they from the pre 2.0 classes in terms of raw gameplay? Wynncraft at its core is a very mechanically simple game, being you try to dodge attacks and melee or spam spells to deal damage. You spam spells on Fallen to deal damage, spam spells on Battle Monk to deal damage.... and exist on Paladin. Pre 2.0 Warrior is the same, but at least you had the skill ceiling of uppercancelling to maximize DPS. Neither of these iterations of the class are amazingly complex, and in fact I like them being generally simple. So, are the 2.0 classes objectively better? Is it a better gameplay loop on Boltslinger to gain an obnoxious mechanic that pushes you back when using your primary close range damage spell? Is it a better gameplay loop on Shadestepper to primarily rely on a singular attack rather than Assassin's diverse combos pre 2.0? Is it a better gameplay loop on Lightbender to... left click? Some archetypes and classes for the most part have improved, like Shaman. But to dismiss criticisms because "it's been 2 years, let it go" and "more abilities = better" is incredibly childish and reflective of why we're at the state of balance we have been in for these past 3 years.

 

Honestly, you're completely right. I guess I was trying to say "I don't feel like these criticisms are substantial, because all you say are that they're different than they used to be", but there are definitely many very real criticisms to be had of the new classes. It's been long enough where I don't entirely remember how many of the classes played pre-2.0 (my bad memory compounding with the fact that I really was only there for the back end of 1.19 and all of 1.20), and just assume naturally "yeah the balancing was wacky and the abilities were more simple, ergo they've obviously improved since then". I'd argue that most of the archetypes are improvements over their pre-2.0 counterparts, but you're completely right in saying that "they're new and more complicated, so they're better" is just totally wrong.

(except for boltslinger. i love boltslinger. the recoil on arrow storm is actually brilliant and i will fight someone to the death on this.)