Is javassist required since 5.3 CR2?

Theoretically, both Javassist and ByteBuddy are needed to compile the hibernate-core since both of them are supported.

Now, a user can switch from one provider to the other using just the hibernate.bytecode.provider configuration property.

It’s better if you open a Jira issue so that we can discuss it and fix it if turns out that we don’t need to provide both jars by default.