I am pretty new to this game, having only jumped in a couple of months ago with the pandemic, together with my brother and friends, so I'm aware that my opinions are still very much uninformed.
IDENTITY?
Personally, I feel the shadow warrior lacks a distinct theme or identity. It's classified as a ranged DPS class but (as several more experienced players already mentioned) it seems to be the most successful in its melee stance.
I understand that the very essence of the career is stance dancing, which is something many players (including myself) seem to resist. Personally, I like the concept and flavor of its flexible nature, but the way it currently translates into mechanics is not quite as appealing. Skills don't seem to interact with each other too much, giving me no incentive to jump into assault or pull back into scout stance.
Now, a career mechanic that is completely bound to the way a battle flows is really cool in and of itself. Destruction pushing in? The SW reaches for his sword in assault stance. The melee breaks up into a scattered mess? The SW flips to skirmish. The battlelines measure each other? The SW snaps to his scouting bow. But the class strikes me as not elusive or resilient enough for those switches.
SO, WHAT TO DO
Obviously the game doesn't need a class that can do everything well, which is why I can't even imagine how hard it is for the devs to balance it. That said, I would wager most SW players would much rather have a distinct identity or role for their class than an OP powerhouse that excels at any range.
I, like surely many others, rolled a SW because it allows me to play the archer archetype. Even so, a 10% range increase (or the BS bonus) hardly makes me better at my ranged dps role than other choices for my realm. Same goes more or less for the other stances. So, what to do?
My suggestion would be to push career identity and go all-in on the stance mechanic, by either:
- Boosting stance benefits
Adding stance drawbacks
And maybe consider implementing stance switching bonuses
Boosting stance benefits: The more simple number changes such as a 25% range increase for Scout stance, or boosting the speed of melee skills in Assault stance or whatever.
Stance drawbacks: To counterbalance the aforementioned changes, why not have assault stance increase cast time of bow skills by 30%, or the scout stance lower movement speed as well?
Stance switching bonuses: If the Shadow Warrior's identity is its flexible nature, then maybe it could be interesting to make stance switching a more skill-intensive mechanic. In line with the aforementioned drawbacks, increase cooldowns on switching and add a switch buff as the elf "adapts" a new combat style (switching into scout grants a brief boost to crit damage, switching into assault grants a brief boost to dodge, switching into skirmishing grants a brief boost movement speed).
I'm sure there's more interesting ideas to be implemented in these veins, but ubiquitous bonuses like movement speed could not only serve as a cool incentive for stance switching, but would also serve the fluff of the career as well.
All in all, as a fairly inexperienced player, I truly believe that betting on class identity would be the way to go. What's more is that these changes could be implemented in order of complexity; first trying out boosts to stance benefits and then (assuming this is even doable) move into stance switching mechanics.
As a final thought, thank you devs for your work. I've been having a blast with my brother and friends.
Cheers!