Why are Wynn players so defensive when asked this?

“What’s the best class?”
Why do players usually not give the following answer?
For the most conventional pick, pick mage or warrior. Mage is the most versatile, thus the best. (Pick Mage) Shaman is for aoe damage and support. Assassin is a stupid gimmick that’s fun but not too effective. Archer has great dps if you throw away all self preservation.

 

Because there is no best class. All classes are viable, and what makes something "the best" in any field is almost entirely an opinion. It's better to let new players pick what they think is the coolest and what they will thus likely have the most fun with instead of make them play something they aren't interested with the notion it's somehow "the best" -- something factually untrue.

 

Because the "best" is a matter of opinion, and the strongest and even the average experience of each class changes constantly, both due to updates and to new metas, as well as how the player decides to play it. Lightbender might be the strongest archetype in the game right now, but two updates ago it was kinda meh, and trickobat was OP (actually it might be more than two updates, I've not played much lately). I'm pretty sure trapper is the strongest archer archetype right now, but if you'd used it or boltslinger a year or so ago people would've told you to switch to sharpshooter because it was massively stronger. I know cuz they did to me. Paladin was trash up until the latest update. Is it still? I dunno. Maybe it's really strong right now. Any recommendation based on strength is only true for a short while. Pre-Gavel, mage was considered the worst class by a hilarious degree. Assassin was brokenly overpowered. Then Gavel hit and assassin was practically useless and mage was debatably the strongest class. Ancient history, but it was probably the last time any of this was even close to objective. It certainly isn't now. And more importantly, of all of the current strongest builds, are any of those the most fun to play?

Also, you listed a ton of characteristics of the classes from how you've experienced them, but those are all completely untrue for many builds. Fallen rage warrior isn't exactly the most conventional build; deliberately building to be at low health with no way to regain any health during the majority of combat is about as far from a conventional build as you can get imo. Mage might be the most versatile...in terms of the different archetypes, but not the abilities of the each individual archetype. Arcanist is about the biggest one-trick pony in the game. Shaman is for AoE damage and support...unless you play summoner, which can actually do insane single-target damage, but really falls off when there's even two enemies and tends to have minimal support features. Assassin has 3 different gimmicks just in terms of archetypes, at least one of which can be extremely effective in the current patch, and both of the other two have spent a significant amount of time being some of the strongest in the game (trickobat was probably the strongest in the game a patch or two ago, acrobat was always really strong even if the dps was trash, even pure trickster has had its moments, and shadestepper is apparently pretty strong right now.). Archer has insane dps if you sacrifice survivability... but so does every other class. Fallen can often outdamage even a fairly glass-cannon archer, and tanky archer is still 100% viable and a thing. And pretty much all of my specific examples are also not true of all builds.

 

You just answered your own question. "What is the best class" is vague with no correct answer and even if divided up into the sections that you yourself listed, it's still completely subjective. Mage is the most versatile by your standards, but maybe not by others'. There's a good argument for Warrior as the most versatile given that two of its archetypes are complete polar opposites and the other has good range, mobility, and damage.
Shaman may be the go-to aoe damage/support for you but for others it might be mage or even warrior (with an extremely funky fallen/paladin build or something lol idk)

 

(yes but falladin has terrible aoe)

 

on top of what everyone else has said, classes are not permanently in one state. while assassin may seem like a "stupid gimmick" that isn't "too effective" now, it could later become very strong while the previous "better" options have become bad. we're tweaking the balance of classes all the time and the "best" and "worst" is constantly changing. generally, people prefer not to tell people what they think the current best class is because it's ultimately meaningless and better to just choose whichever sounds the most fun or interesting, because the core concept of the class is what will ultimately always remain

 

sure i agree, telling new players what to play is bad cuz they should just explore the game
but in terms of endgame, to deny that certain classes are stronger than others would be ridiculous
mage/archer and fallen is clearly stronger than shaman/assassin in the terms of the "meta" (big number=better) sure, i get that that is not how the game is balanced around the "meta" dps class, but there are factually better classes for playing the game (id also argue that shaman/assassin being weaker in the meta isnt fun because it feels kinda pointless to play/spend le on them when there is better options)

 

The other bit is that you cant just rank them on damage when talking about which is best since your build is a HUGE factor, any class can do the most damage if you sacrifice all your defense in the same vein any class can be unkillable with enough defensive stats.

Saying something like "assassin does the highest damage" might be true if you minmax, but in practice a build like that'll die if something looks at it wrong.

Also we say this because we want people to play the game how they want, not what is "strongest"; given the opportunity gamers will optimize the fun out of the game and all that.