A 4th Archetype for Assassin!

Before anything else, a few notes relating to this thread:

- I know more archetypes for already-existing classes is a bad idea, I just made these for fun and testing making Wynncraft abilities (hence why this is posted here and not in suggestions).

- I absolutely suck at balancing, so don't expect some perfect balance here, I'm better at making the ideas themselves (you can still comment on the balancing but yeah).

- I don't have the Wynn texture pack (I couldn't get it), I don't have a proper skill tree for this archetype (you'll have to imagine it based on the images' order), some things were forgotten, some typos here and there, but again, it's all just made for fun so whatever for now (again, you can still give criticism anyway).


Anyway, all of this out of the way, I present to y'all: The Showmaker!

"Showmakers love attention, they become more powerful the more enemies are around them. (Set Up, CC)"

The idea behind this archetype is basically the polar opposite of Shadestepper: an archetype that excels at crowd control but kinda sucks against single enemies.

Like I said above, I don't have a proper skill tree set, so you'll just have to imagine how these abilities could be placed within one (and secondary abilities like the better spells one aren't showcased here either).

Spoiler: Here are the abilities!

I hope y'all enjoy this fun little ideas, thanks for reading!

Edit 1: Made some changes to some abilities!
- Added missing elemental damage indications
- Changed Dazzling Beam's status effect to slowness instead of blindness
- Reworded Leftover Blades' description
- Reworked Attention Craver's second effect
- Reworked Crowd-Pleaser's speed boost effect
- Added a way to cancel Frontflip
- Reworded Leftover Blade's description
- Reworked Lonely Valse's effects

 

This is pretty cool, at least from me who knows nothing about assasin or balancing! Why did you choose aspect for the name?

 

Thanks! I chose Aspect because I needed a noun similar enough to View or something, and Aspect was the closest thing I found (and it sounds pretty cool so that's nice too).

 

Pretty cool post, seems like a lot of effort was put into it. One thing I do have to say is that the archetype kinda feels like a conglomeration of acrobat and trickster, which happen to be adjacent to each other, and some abilities kinda feel like rip offs of preexisting ones. Some of the abilities are quite interesting though, such as Frontflip and Lonely Valse. I feel like some of these abilities would synergise very well on the ability tree between trickster and acrobat. I have a question though: What happens with Aspect when there is one boss in the arena, because that seems pretty underwhelming. Overall, cool post with good ideas behind it.

 

Thanks for the feedback, I can only agree that some abilities may be ripped from these two since I haven't properly played these yet to be fair.

For the one-boss only, you'd indeed only get 1 Aspect from it, which I agree is fairly underwhelming. This is why I added a few abilities like Lonely Valse and Leftover Blades to help with single-target DPS, maybe I should have added more or made these better idk.

 

I haven't read the rest yet but just looking at this one sentence

Isn't certain archetypes' reliance on having multiple enemies in the fight hint hint Fallen hint hint Shadestepper one of like the most hated things in the community? Since it kinda like, screws the player over in singular boss battles

I'll withhold judgement though Imma keep reading though brb

 

Ok hi back I'm going to comment on each ability now and give my own feedback. Most of these I don't have enough info to make a judgement though so expect a couple of questions

Blade Juggler: Do the knives auto-lock on the enemies? Is this an aimbot or can the knives actually miss their target? Do all the knives throw out instantly?
Crowd-Pleaser: Please define "Refreshes". If it resets back to 0 every second, then wow the player's stats are going to fluctuate so much
Frontflip: Does this actually look like a frontflip or is it just a leap
Spotlighted: Pretty fine, no further comment on the mechanic itself. Could make the ability slightly more interesting though.
Dazzling Beam: Oh hey I remember making a bow called Necrolumina which changes arrow storm to exactly this. Nice. Anyways isn't this like a permanent stunlock for enemies without any Blindness Immunity
Crowd Surfing: I really like the uniqueness of this ability, but the angle of the bounce better not be too high upwards otherwise it'll be less of surfing and more of a slight annoyance
Firework Show: Are the projectiles literal or do enemies just take damage in the listed radius
Lonely Valse: Oh a pity system. I gotta be honest I'm not sure about a forced side-effect to an otherwise forced situation where there are not a numerous amount of enemies present
Newfound Glory: Oh it's actually resetting to 0 every second I see now. Doesn't this kinda make Showmaker somewhat unusable until you get this massive DPS option? That, or Showmaker is usable but this DPS option becomes too op after.
Crazed Knives: Again, do the knifes auto-lock? Because if so wow this thing is op as hell. Btw if it's bouncing why does it end up behind? Also, why specifically behind?
Spin Kick: This brings up an interesting question: What happens to enemies who cast movement spells in the middle of being carried, and enemies who have Knockback Resistance or CCI? Are they just... immune? Also, are you able to cancel out of your current frontflip if you notice an enemy that you are bringing along is about to cast a damaging spell onto you?
Attention Craver: No comment on the first part. As for the second, is it even physically capable to reach 30 Aspect? There are 20 game ticks in a single second, and I highly doubt you can reach 20 at any reasonable consistency anyway.
Cinematographic Motion: Seems like a huge nerf. It essentially forces a sudden break in the flow of battle by removing the main thing that makes Showmaker's stats be buffed to the number it is.
Leftover Blades: ...huh?
Grand Finale: If Aspect gets reset to quickly isn't the effectiveness of this infrequent attack depending on said Aspect's count kinda heavily timing luck-dependent?
All Eyes On Me: Not really any comments.

Btw unrelated but you should specify what neutral/elemental damage each damaging attack does in the description.

Also I'm kinda interested on the general gameplay loop that you have in mind for this archetype, or at least the standard/ ideal gameplay loop for this archetype. I don't have enough brain power at the moment to combine all these abilities and figure it out.



Overall the whole single enemy issue still persists, and I really like the strong themeing a lot and I love the creativeness of a lot of. Have you been playing a certain new update on a funny cookie game over the past week, by any chance?

Spoiler: "The world's finest playwright, poet, director, actor, clown... Everyone's most beloved trickster!"

 

oh my god this is incredible

I love how you name abilities!

 

Yup I expected some people to not fully get what I said since it was my first time doing Wynncraft abilities so I'll answer all of your questions:

Blade Juggler: They would been thrown at high velocity and autolocked but not instantly hit: enemies charging out of the way could possibly dodge them.

Crowd-Pleaser: By refreshes, I mean it rechecks how many enemies are around. For exemple, if there are 5 enemies around you and 2 new ones arrive, the refreshes just goes from 5 Aspect to 7, without passing by 0.

Frontflip: It would look like a high jump leap for the user since spinning around their camera probably isn't really a good idea xd. Circling particles could be implemented to make it look like more of a frontflip.

Dazzling Beam: Probably too OP yeah, noted.

Crowd Surfing: Noted too.

Firework Show: They are literal projectiles yeah.

Lonely Valse: Like I said in an earlier answer, this ability is to try making single-target DPS not pitiful. Maybe you said that because of the misunderstanding on the Aspect system, so idk.

Crazed Knives: These ones don't autolock, that's why they bounce behind the targets, so the user have a proper sense of where the knives will bounce toward.

Spinkick: Ig they would be immune yeah. The cancelling idea is a good idea, maybe casting that spell while in the middle of one could cancel it? I'd have to think about it.

Attention Craver: This question is probably due to the misconception too. If it's not, my answer is idk lol, might rework it if needed.

Cinematographic Motion: Understandable, I could think of another way to nerf it in this case, like a temporary maximum Aspect reduction instead of removing all of it, something like that.

Leftover Blade: Sorry for the bad wording, basically Blade Juggler normally throw one knife per enemy, the remaining knives remain unused. This ability makes these unused knives thrown back to the same targets at the cost of less total damage. Basically something to help with single DPS too.

Grand Finale: The cleared misconception on the Aspect system should answer that yeah.


Damage types: Yeah that's something I forgot on some of the abilities, sorry about that. I honestly felt too lazy to redo these so that's on me.


Gameplay loop: One of my main idea is for this archetype to weaken all enemies at once instead of killing them one by one, so that it keeps the high Aspect boosts.


Thanks for the compliment on the theming, the cookie run thing is actually a total coincidence because I don't know anything about this game at all lol.


Thanks for the questions and critiques, I hope this can help clear some confusion.

________________________________

Thanks too, gotta say your tutorial greatly helped me, especially with the used symbols list!

 

Overall, I think the concept is cool, but I think the biggest issues are that:

• The constant aspect fluctuations and the resulting walk speed changes are going to make movement absolutely hellish, especially since it only checks in an 8 block radius which isn’t that big. It’s like frenzy except you’d have zero control over when you’d speed up or slow down; it’d be entirely up to the mobs around you.
• The 1% health regen per Aspect is practically useless; maybe make it heal .5% of your max hp per aspect per second instead or something
• There are few situations in the game where you will be up against 20 mobs at once, fewer where you will be up against 30, and even fewer where all 30 of those will be in an 8 block radius of you. Like, for an 8x8 area almost every other block would need to have a mob to reach that 30 aspect cap. That’s a lot of mobs
• In addition, because of the fact that some abilities scale the AoEs of your spells, it’s entirely possible for you to make your AoEs so large that they kill enemies before they can reach your eight block radius to count for your aspect. It’d basically be like a black hole forming an accretion disk by consuming stars too quickly, preventing more matter from entering the event horizon

I think the simplest solution would be to make Aspect a tagging system where you gain an aspect whenever you tag a new mob, and start losing aspect if you don’t tag a mob for long enough. That way, you can at least somewhat control when you gain your speed boosts by choosing when to cast spells, and you wouldn’t be as limited by the eight block radius. Also, maybe halve the max aspect amounts and adjust the numbers accordingly

 

I definitely agree with most of your points (idk about the health regen thing), I actually had the idea later to make Attention Craver increase Crowd-Pleaser's range instead, that would also fix the problems of the bigger AoEs.

Same for the speed bonus, there's definitely other ways to implement it, via a manual activation or something, but tbh I don't really wanna make Aspect a tag stat. But yeah, thanks for the feedbacks too.

________________________________

I'll definitely need to make an updated version of this archetype lol.

 

Really cool and unique ideas, I love the names!

 

I do feel that this is the problem of shaman, which isn't ideal against single targets, but 3 times worse. Nonetheless, good idea

 

If they would add this i would 100% play this archetype

 

Oh well in that case that misconception about Aspect clearing up sure changed everything
Okay let's go through this once more

Blade Juggler: Oh I see ok
Crowd-Pleaser: See above
Frontflip: Oh swirly particles makes sense. Just make sure it doesn't obstruct the player's camera if they're in first person, I suppose.
Dazzling Beam: Mhm yeah, although if you remove the Blindness capability it'll just become some standard AOE attack. Maybe slowness could be a good substitute?
Firework Show: Individual projectiles might be an issue when it comes to AOE though, because this technically isn't AOE. Do the projectiles pierce?
Lonely Valse: Nah it's less of the misconception of Aspect and more of the concept of the ability itself, Since the existence of Lonely Valse tells the player that the game is aware of Showmaker's inherent weakness and rather than accounting for Wynncraft's wide, general variations of fights it instead patches said natural weakness up with almost like a bandaid compromise of some sort. Regardless, even with the bonus pity system it's still leaves Showmakers at a very high disadvantage to fights. Doesn't help that having more DPS in boss fights actually punishes the player because their archetype would kill off minions faster while leaving the boss as it is. The concept of Aspect overall is flawed for an environment like Wynncraft but I still see potential in this archetype.
Crazed Knives: By behind an enemy does the knife change direction to be opposite of the enemy's facing direction or does it just keep traveling the direction it does? Either way, it's still kinda a really hard bonus to find useful since the knife most likely won't hit anything behind the mob, I'm not really sure what bounce really means here. You might want to elaborate on the actual trajectory of the knife.
Spinkick: Does this completely replace normal dash or is there a way to cast the regular dash for like, horizontal movement? You could use regular dash as a cancel. Also yeah you really need a way to cancel it. If Frontflip can't be cancelled then mobs shouldn't be able to attack the player while they're both in the air. If mobs can't attack, then the player shouldn't be able to spam Frontflip to keep the mob locked in a state of being frozen. If the player can't spam Frontflip, then players would have less opportunities to perform a full Frontflip without cancelling it.
Attention Craver: Yeah sorry that was misconception. Still, I find it hard for the player in any situation to reach anywhere near 20 enemies near them at the same time.
Leftover Blade: Like, on the next multihit cast? Or like, some enemies will get double or triple the knives if there are less enemies?

Also I meant gameplay loop as in the standard chain of actions that the average player would be expected to be doing in battle.

 

Dazzling Beam: Slowness or Burn was my other ideas, so that's cool.

Firework Show: They don't piece, they explode, which is what the AoE stat represents.

Lonely Valse: Y'know what, that's an extremely good point, I was gonna rework some of its effect but I think a soft rework is more viable at this point lol.

Crazed Knife: Sorry for the bad wording again, I meant behind from the user's perspective, basically the knife going in a straight line based on its initial direction. I'm planning on updating its description for that to be more understandable.

Attention Craver: You're right about the max aspect being too niche, I said in an earlier post that I'd change that to a higher detecting zone for Crowd-Pleaser.

Leftover Blades: The Latter. It'll get an updated description too.


Gameplay Loop: Oh, I'm sorry but I don't think I'll be able to answer this question really, I just though of how the archetype would be played, not how the player would play it.

________________________________

Here's my to-do list for the changes:
-Add elemental damage indications
-Fix typos
-Change Dazzling Beam's status effect
-Reword Leftover Blades
-Rework Attention Craver
-Rework Crowd-Pleaser's speed boost
-Add a cancel to Frontflip
-Reword and buff Leftover Blade
-Soft rework Lonely Valse