There is a section of designer's notes in the rules in which he outright says he wants the game to be kind of nasty. That's probably why the obnoxious stuff like Assassin / Witch / Warlord is still there.
I normally swap out Assassin and Warlord at minimum since even the Witch is better than losing your turn entirely. The new rules includes several suggested character + card combinations depending on what sort of game style you want.
The new buildings are also intended to help the game flow faster.
See it's funny because I actually like Assassin and Thief since they target characters and not players. That is exciting and thematic and encourages guessing and second-guessing nastiness that defines the game. But just pew pew I'll pay all my gold to burn down your building and now we're both screwed; that's game design straight out of 1975.