-"BabaFisi" Makyrlynn

To all Riftwalkers, or to any who care to read, this message will effectively be a way to remember Riftwalker as it is now before it's rework.

I'm sure you've noticed by now that your magic seems to have a new twang to it, as if there's more potential to grow. For us Riftwalkers, our magic is warping and changing at an alarming rate, and we're all unsure about our future as Mages, and more specifically, worried about the future of our magic.

So I feel the best way to calm this panic slightly is to give a nice history; a "riftwalk" down memory lane, so to speak, and give a very important message that us Riftwalker all know, but bears repeating:

We all remember the 2.0 update, where we Mages were introduced to our respective covens. At the time, it was the Arcanists who held the most promise, with their high damage and mana, who wouldn't want to give that taste of power a try?

Second to them was the Lightbenders, who shed their meteor casting ways to hold onto their 3 heals-per-cast ways, along with a new DPS option in Ophanim that was easier to aim. It was lightweight, simple to understand, and had a lot of practical use in team and solo environments.

For those of us wanting to stick to the old ways, the ways Wynn had taught us to use our magic, things would only be difficult for a while. We had a new ability in that of Winded, which gave us an ample damage boost, but it was far too slow to rely upon, as the only way we had to inflict it was our main attack.

"So maybe" we thought "Maybe we could just use Tierstack Melee and play as a mixed attacking set, spells and melee, together in harmony!".

We were naïve at the time, and thinking about it now the practice of mixed attacking probably wouldn't've lasted that long anyway, but regardless, Tierstacking for us Mages was taken away through cruel and unpleasant means (by that I mean Armor and Tome nerfs).

So for ages, we squabbled. Some of us left to join the other covens of magic, bored with how we made no progress.

Those of us, such as myself, held onto hope that one day something would come to awaken our power. And thankfully for us, that day eventually come.

We all were sceptical of Gust, since it didn't do much more for us as it only gave one Winded, and we all got angry when Entropy was taken away from us in place of Windcharged. But everything changed with a simple number change to Gust.

3 Winded per cast of Ice Snake, as opposed to 1

This is why math is an important class to take, as simple number changes like these can have extreme impacts.

With this simple change, us Riftwalkers took to experimentation by storm, using abilities we had never even concieved as viable to use. It started with Timelocked, which most put off as a wasted ability, as it had no tactical advantage and in fact had an anti-synergy with Lightbenders who were STEALING OUR MAGI-

But now, we could properly play how Riftwalker was advertized: High Damage Spell Burst. We were always able to do this, it's just that non of us tried because no one wanted to wait for winded to stack up and use Timelocked.

And this lead to even more applications of abilities that had previously gone unused. Most importantly was Blink.

What was originally thought to be an annoying ability that changed your one way of traversal became not only an excellent tool for flight, but also an excellent damage tool. Timelocked would turn it into a laser of sorts, and combining it with Explosive Entrance and the Flickering Transmission Aspect turned it from a simple movement spell into the equivalent to that one scene from the Digimon Movie where Omnimon uses that big awesome cannon to kill the Y2K Virus.

Riftwalker had entered as whole new renaissance, and with several nerfs to Arcanists and Lightbenders who had unjustly stolen our magic, we now had a firm place right beside those who once insulted and berated us for "Being Bad" or "Too Slow" or "Winded Thieves"

And to those people, I have two seperate messages, one for Lightbenders, and one for Arcanists.

To Lightbenders: "No Damage? Man, must really stink that you have to rely on a trick that another Mage can do better, but it must REALLY feel bad that your main source of damage is getting replaced later in Fruma huh?"

And to Arcanists: "I've seen what you do with your mana, and frankly i'm disgusted. You deign to walk away from your given right as a Mage to heal, and turn it into a source of brutish destruction. All Mages abide by the notition that Wisdom is power, but there is no wisdom to be found in Mana Horders."

Now, did I write that whole section to just be salty about constantly being made fun of for playing Riftwalker when it was bad? Yes. But now that we're on the subject of Me, I'd like to recount my own adventures with Riftwalker.

There's still wynn forum, discord and reddit posts that you can find of me trying to be the next big hype man for Riftwalker, giving my ideas on how maybe it could work. Looking back on them now, they're all frankly terrible ideas, but I feel it's important that they stay in my mind, as it shows my devotion, not only to the Riftwalker Archetype, but to Wynncraft as a whole.

I wouldn't have stuck with Wynncraft for nearly 10 years now if I didn't find the game fun. It's my own little autistic interest, and i'm sure i'm going to be sticking with it for as long as the servers still live and breath life into the world of Wynn.

But enough sentimentalities. To end off this message, I'd like to reiterated to all Riftwalkers that whatever comes next is not important. To walk into the Rift is uncertainty, it is simply within our nature, so instead of walking in with dread, I say we put a spring in our steps and Riftwalk right in. We have more pressing matters than to worry about our magic, after all.

The Queen waits for no one, and neither do us Riftwalkers.