I have this exact same problem. For a long while, my watch alarms worked fine on silent, just using the haptic taps to wake me up. But then one day in the last few weeks or so (perhaps around the release of watchOS 2.1, though I cant be sure), the taps stopped working, or rather, the alarm would tap me once on the wrist and that was it. It would not continue tapping like it used to until I snoozed or dismissed it. I have tried recurring, non-recurring, with snooze on/off, set manually, set via Siri I cant get them to behave like they used to.



Not sure if it helps to know that someone else out there is having the same problem or not. I have no idea how to resolve it.