[Analysis] Winona was nerfed overall: I truly feel like she needs these buffs to her rework.

[Duplosion]

I was looking forward to Winona being potentially a nice character, as before she was quite lackluster. Unfortunately from the get go, it was clear she still has glaring faults that sink her to a lower tier:

The hunger loss per craft is too crippling at 5 per craft. With the amount of crafting you do in the early game for every little thing, new tools, light sources, refining materials to go into larger crafts, you lose more hunger than a Wolfgang by comparison. If this were 2.5 hunger lost per craft, It would still be a decent penalty, but as it stands Winona's the biggest food vacuum right now. With the her slower crafting kicking in at 50 hunger, it only takes 18 crafts to drain 100 hunger. Paired with the standard hunger loss over time, it really is a little bit of an issue. There's also the possibility of increasing her hunger gauge from 150-200 as an alternative, but with that you run the risk of her having higher hunger overall when not crafting anything in the mid to late game. It's better to nerf the hunger loss per craft in my opinion.

Her Generator not being able to be turned off, this is something many find to be a large issue as well. It will drain within a day quite easily when hooked up to a meager 2 catapults while not really being used. I've seen that there is slight worry that it would be "too good" if you were able to turn it on/off or have an Emergency Mode, but I must disagree, for reasons I'll cover below with the Catapult itself. On top of that, it costs Nitre or Gems, making it quite difficult to refuel in the early game (Nitre isn't as plentiful as Rocks [materials] are, it could possibly use a buff to 3 Nitre dropped from each normal rock mining point, since Winona will be using so much of it now).  There is also the option of making a Charcoal powered generator. Above all though, an off switch would likely be the best option.

Edit: There's been pretty concrete proof that the catapults are pretty good vs Bosses, so if they were more accurate, that may make them pretty OP. The only buff they might actually need is not to attack allied fences/walls. The Catapult itself is sadly also lackluster, mostly due to its lack of accuracy. I know that it's meant to be a "power in numbers" type of unit, but the tracking on it isn't stellar for faster targets. It will airball on hounds / spiders that are chasing a player quite often, and might even be the primary target for the mob if there are no fences around it (Frog Rain possibly will be the largest destruction of Catapults). Rocks go into a fair amount of things early game for everyone on the server, so at 15 rocks per unit for something that isn't terribly accurate, I can't really justify making any over Tooth Traps- especially with how much fuel it drains. The damage it does is the same as a Battle Spear, which is honest damage that I'm fine with, but it's still pretty inaccurate- since it doesn't end up getting a lot of direct hits, it might need a Splash Radius buff.

There is a lot of promise in Winona now, but in worrying about her becoming Overpowered, she's sadly still Underpowered. Clearly we don't want massive buffs that will break the game, but just a couple nudges here and there that will make her more balanced overall while still having her downsides.  

Cheers for reading, as well as making such a fun game and keeping it updated, Klei. I hope that my input helps to make Winona a more well rounded character!

[Ginosaji]

i was aware of the hunger loss due to crafting issue even when they announced her last week. i thought to myself that they should make speed crafting an toggleable option just how it's the players choice as wolfgang to go mightly or stay in normal form. yes sure you can stay hungry as winona but then you'll be stuck with a crafting animation that is twice as long as normal, which isn't appealing to me either because when i have terror beaks on me and need a new weapon or it's about to become night time and i just noticed i'm missing a light source i might get hit if anything chases me.

the structures don't seem properly thought through either. if the catapult is spear damage (33) then 2 of those are the equivalent of a houndius shootius. something that used to require you to kill the deerclops and the ancient guardian in the ruins now can be made just by mining your way through the mosaic biome or a petrified forest. similarly the spotlight replaces the toadstool loot which imo was always useless anyway since it's more efficient to just use a lantern or a miners hat and pick some light bulbs whenever you're in need of refueling.

[Viktor234]

28 minutes ago, Ginosaji said:

if the catapult is spear damage (33) then 2 of those are the equivalent of a houndius shootius.

As much as I understand the catapult deals 40 damage, it took me 25 Rocks to kill a Beefalo.

[Ginosaji]

so 2 of them even top a houndius? because it feels like the catapults fire faster too.

[Casm]

Sorry but I just have to disagree with the OP. The hunger issue is IMO a non-issue. Early game if you're concerned about hunger, you simply build while hungry. Yes, it'll take a bit longer but once you're established, hunger no longer really matters at which point, you get to take advantage of fast building. Besides, this is her one drawback, so I personally find that to be acceptable.

As for the generators, I don't have a problem with nitre early game. You're gonna find a lot of it mining rocks, especially if you're going out of your way to mine for catapults. Also, from what I can tell, the basic generator looks to me to be a very temporary stopgap until you build your GEMerators anyway, at which point power shouldn't be an issue. 3 gems = 6 days for a single machine. Since you can stack generators for them to last longer, after your first year, you should be able to keep enough generators going to power your defenses for months at a time with relative ease.

As for the accuracy, I again don't think that's a major issue since the boulders are aoe. Several catapults protected by walls should be a respectable alternative to base defenses. I can easily see me surrounding a few catapults/gemerators with walls and hound tooth traps for an effective 'safe area'.

On top of all this, she still has her innate abilities of making tape and ignoring the first hit from Charlie. This is just in no way a nerf to her character.

[Pop Guy]

Five points hunger for construction makes its mass production of objects completely useless. Keeping it to little hunger is still inconvenient, because many foods give more than 50 points hunger, and it is still boring to constantly give small morsels to a character. In addition, when hungry, it is the slowest double in building, a dangerous thing if you are in combat or urgently need some clothing. But even under normal conditions, building the double more slowly is just frustrating. It is not a difficulty that stimulates, bores and just.

Finally I find it stupid that the generators can not be turned off. In the game you can even turn off the torches, because I can not have full control of the machines I build? This is the same problem as Abigail that you can not tell whether to attack, follow or stay still. Fortunately, there are the modders. 

I still appreciated that now Winona has its own "personality" and is no longer just a "Wilson 2.0"

Long life to Klei :'D

[MondayNight]

My only issue with current Winona pro-cons-and-whatnot is the lack of a power-off option with her generators. Food is abundant in default settings even in pubs and a catapult as concept isn't accurate at all for moving targets irl, yet is more than adequate in game right now for its intended purpose. If I were to nitpick on her con, I would make first crafting action take only 2 or 2.5 hunger-points, and if you continue crafting en-mass (<3/5s intervals) the 5 points system would kick-in. Nitre is underused so regular Winona's generators seem ok to run on it (as others have pointed, it's a temporal solution towards G.E.M.erators), and gems from ruins, caves, and surface long-term wise do accumulate mid-to-end game with not many uses either, thus again a good source of fuel for second type of generator. All-in-all I for one am pretty content with current Winona re-balance plus her video introduction finally giving a backstory and reason to be emotionally-invested in said character with a nice motivation and lore.

[Viktor234]

A normal character looses 75 Hunger every day, a full day in-game lasts for 8 real-time minutes by default. That does mean that a normal character looses 1 Hunger every 8*60 / 75 = 6.4 seconds or 0,15625 Hunger per second. A Wolfgang with a full belly has 100% increased hunger drain and he looses 1 Hunger every 3.2 seconds or 0,3125 Hunger per Second.

Winona uses 5 Hunger per craft and takes only half as long (0.5s) to craft items. 5 Hunger per half a second, that's 1 Hunger every 0.1 seconds, together with her natural hunger drain, she'll loose 10,15625 Hunger per second or 1 Hunger every 0,0985 seconds if crafting non-stop, that's a 6400% increased hunger drain.

Since Winona's hunger can drain up to 32.5 times faster than Wolfgang's max hunger drain, does that mean that Winona is now Wolfgang 2.0 or 32.5?

[Duplosion]

I meant Battle Spear damage, lol. I'm too used to playing as Wigfrid. I've since updated it.

[Sweaper]

4 hours ago, Casm said:

 I can easily see me surrounding a few catapults/gemerators with walls and hound tooth traps for an effective 'safe area'.

Catapults destroy walls.

[ShadowDuelist]

It takes patience to learn how to properly use the catapults and generators as they stand, just as it did to learn how to use the tentacles without getting killed by them in dont stsrve. Let me explain why:

The catapult seems now to be a mid-late game structure which is great and something the game was needing. It is meant to be exploited only with gemerators, and the nitre generators are more of an early game, or emergency aid thing. I guess we could get used to only power the gemerators with just enough gems for the time we want to use them, and leave a chest with spare gems next to them for emergency activation. Gems do stockpile if you raid dfly and clear and reset the ruins often. They may even assist you to kill dfly a lot faster, so mid to lategame fueling them will be easy.

You can still use the tech early game with the nitre generator but in a more limited way which balances out: lets say build 2 catapults, one generator, and kill or farm stuff such as mactusks or spiders. If you manage to make at least 5 powered by 2 nitre generators, the solo fight against deerclops becomes a lot faster, even if your kiting isnt perfect or miss a lot of hits.

Regarding the slow attacks: its compensated by the splash damage, if you move within a circle they will always aim around that area, with practice you can learn to time them so the splash always hit them. I did a few tests and although I didnt do it perfectly, I managed to do it consistently, so with practice you should be able to. We will soon have pro players uploading videos of this im sure.

The only thing i find no use for yet are the spotlights: the radious is too small, they are always powered on and they consume a relatively expensive fuel for just light. You can get more light with less expensive fuel and less babysitting just building fire pits or endothermal pits around the base. I strongly believe the spotlights should turn off when nobody is within range so they can stay in standby for much longer, otherwise they are quite bad compared to cheaper generic options IMHO

[pedregales]

For the hunger thing I believe Winona can do with a hungrier belly (something like 20-25% faster hunger rate) instead of fast crafting costing hunger, as it will serve a similar purpose while not being nearly as obnoxious. True, hunger is not a problem specially mid to late game, but it sure is annoying having to eat because you had to craft a couple things.

For the generators... I can kinda see how they will become "hyper-efficient", but sadly as it currently stands, the catapult and the spotlight are more of a cool gimmick than a viable option. Sure, they are cool and do their work pretty well, sadly they are a chore to maintain and use when you actually need them: "ok, let me socket this gems/nitres that I carry in my inventory at all times just in case I need to turn on my generator; instead of, you know, just flipping a switch, because that sure is inconvenient". Now, it being able to turn on/off is not really going to make the catapult or the spotlight better than they are (which by themselves have a lot of issues despite their usefulness), it will just make having to attend them less annoying.

• The catapult is amazing against few enemies that you can keep in place through aggro (mostly bosses, specially antlion), against many and they start to fail (and is not like having many active will actually fix this). It does roughly the same damage as Wigfrid's spear (not bad), and has an attack speed similar to shootius, although not nearly the same accuracy (moving targets can avoid damage). The AoE as far as I could tell was pretty small, so you might as well consider it non-existent.
• The spotlight has a lot of issues as useful as I find it. 2 spotlights will light up the same player if it is the closest player, despite being able to light up another player (say spotlight1 and spotlight2 both light up player1 who is the closest to both spotlights, but spotlight1 can light up player2 who is within range, but further away than player1). They light up and follow ghost characters for some reason. For solo play is pretty useful (although very niche), and for team play is very wonky.

So yes, I agree that the generators should be able to turn on/off.

[RancorSnp]

Honestly, I am fairly let down by the Winona rework.  I got very hyped for it after I saw Wormwood, and while her rework clearly had the same design principles she did not turn out as good.  In case of Wormwood we can see he was meant to be unique in his play style and his crafting tab felt like an integral part of the character, helping players to get used to his quirks and play style. 

But Winona does not give off the same feeling. As I see it, her crafting tab is treated as her source of power, and all of her abilities focus on nerfing the character to balance out the new crafts. I'd say her unique buildings are of questionable quality and do not warrant the nerfs, but I will leave this for more experienced players to discuss. 

What I can say for sure though is that her getting one free hit from the darkness is pretty useless. It does not matter if you are an experienced player or have just started out, as soon as you realize the darkness hurts you, you do not get hit by Charlie, and when you do definite most of the cases tanking one more hit won't help. But I am sure that 1 time you actually survive thanks to this might feel pretty good. 

The faster crafting is honestly barely noticeable, which is especially weird since the slower crafting feels like it takes ages to complete. I am still not used to it and constantly interrupt my actions by trying to move when my brain tells me I should have already been done. And the hunger penalty is really big. Want to make a log suit? 15 hunger. Alchemy engine? 45 hunger.  While I am sure more experienced player won't have any issues, I really struggle to make up for the crafting.  Having set up my camp in the middle of frog ponds, with over 20 berry bushes, a couple pig houses fighting the frogs, Turkeys being slaughtered by the frogs, 2 bee boxes and me slaughtering all the butterflies over the first 19 days of the server my ice box only stores enough food for 1 - 2 days of winter at best.

I believe much like Wormwood, instead of trying to make unique crafts and traits balance each other, they should work together to create an unique play style.  And yes I do realize this may make reworked characters overpowered compared to the old cast, but it does not have to. And even if it does, does it really matter? After all it is only a matter of time until other characters will also get their reworked traits and crafting tabs. 

[CarlZalph]

6 hours ago, Ginosaji said:

so 2 of them even top a houndius? because it feels like the catapults fire faster too.

From tuning.lua:

Spoiler

EYETURRET_DAMAGE = 65,
EYETURRET_HEALTH = 1000,
EYETURRET_REGEN = 12,
EYETURRET_RANGE = 15,
EYETURRET_ATTACK_PERIOD = 3
inst.components.health:StartRegen(TUNING.EYETURRET_REGEN, 1) -- eyeturret.lua


WINONA_CATAPULT_HEALTH = 400,
WINONA_CATAPULT_HEALTH_REGEN_PERIOD = 10,
WINONA_CATAPULT_HEALTH_REGEN = 400 * 10 / total_day_time,
WINONA_CATAPULT_DAMAGE = wilson_attack * 1.25,
WINONA_CATAPULT_MIN_RANGE = 6,
WINONA_CATAPULT_MAX_RANGE = 15,
WINONA_CATAPULT_ATTACK_PERIOD = 2.5,
WINONA_CATAPULT_AOE_RADIUS = 1.25,

 

Here's a chart comparing the two for ease of reading:

           | eyeturret | catapult
-----------+-----------+---------
hp         | 1000      | 400
regen      | 12        | 8.33_
delay      | 1         | 10
regenps    | 12        | 0.833_
-----------+-----------+---------
damage     | 65        | 42.5
delay      | 3         | 2.5
dps        | 21.66_    | 17
-----------+-----------+---------
projectile | fast      | slow
AoE        | no        | yes
battery    | none      | needed
craft cost | heavy     | low

If one had unlimited resources, then the eyeturret outperforms the catapults easily.

However this is not the case, and as such the catapult is a very good alternative.  Cheap, similar damage throughput, and can be massed to a spot for either protecting or farming with minimal resources and upkeep.

[Mack Swell]

Hunger is not an issue, especially early game, if you explore the map for food and wait to base until winter. The Catapults are cheap Houndius Turrets, which can not only generate some decent home defense but also is a great tool for pig and bunny farming. Spotlights are great for cave bases and can be set around anywhere, so if you have the nitre to power it, you have basically an eternal light source. All in all, Winona is on the same tier as Wickerbottom and WX due to having abilities that nobody else has with high potential.

[camelot]

Did anyone actual try the catapult fighting in game? I just saw 2 videos about killing bee queen and Misery toadstool using this device and I must say that I'm impressed

Hunger is quite trivia after you got bunnymen farm. And after a while Klei might give you ability to turn off Spotlight too. Just give them more time to polish things, first version could not (and should not) be perfect and consider all use cases thoroughly

[0rutyna0]

So ... The miracle that everyone was waiting for did not happen. To make a character interesting / balanced it is not enough to give him a unique recipe from some crazy mod for a Team Fortress engineer.

[Majestix]

I really like what they did with Winona there. She was supposed to be a beginner friendly character, and they have kept everything that made her beginner friendly; but they have also given her skills that will be useful for the rest of the team.

I disagree with the criticism of her new items. For example it seems like people are comparing the spotlight with the fire pit and concluding that the power cost is not justified, or complaining that the catapult is not great against spiders and frogs. None of these items were meant to be the ultimate solutions for all your life's problems.

The spotlight will be a great addition to larger bases, for example sitting atop a large chest area. It is not a place where many players are spending the night, but if you do need to go there, you pop a nitre into the generator on the way, and you freely move about, sorting through the chests, while the light follows you around. It can actually be convenient, and in any case, it looks super cool.

The catapults are not supposed to replace all fights for you. A mate and I did some extensive testing last night, and the catapult is a very good solution for some specific tasks in the game. Of course it will not brew your coffee. So what? I will let the Winonas out there figure out what the good uses of the catapult are (and try to come up with more myself), but I will just say it again: the game wants you to be creative, to find the best, most efficient solution for the job at hand, and there is no reason at all why that most efficient solution should always be the same, why it should not depend on the situation.

[RancorSnp]

18 minutes ago, Majestix said:

I really like what they did with Winona there. She was supposed to be a beginner friendly character, and they have kept everything that made her beginner friendly; but they have also given her skills that will be useful for the rest of the team.

I don't know if we can call her beginner friendly when it is impossible to survive winter with her for anyone who does not play the game well enough to be able to provide up to 300 food a day ^^'

[pedregales]

1 hour ago, camelot said:

Did anyone actual try the catapult fighting in game? I just saw 2 videos about killing bee queen and Misery toadstool using this device and I must say that I'm impressed

Hunger is quite trivia after you got bunnymen farm. And after a while Klei might give you ability to turn off Spotlight too. Just give them more time to polish things, first version could not (and should not) be perfect and consider all use cases thoroughly

I did try it. As I said, pretty useful against few enemies (specially if they are packed and slow, like grumple bees, toadstool, and bosses), not very useful with anything else; is a nice niche nonetheless. Although I would have to add that those are 40 catapults for bee queen, and 23 for misery toadstool, plus at least 8 gems each (so quite a lot of resources)*. I did say that many would not correct the "being overwhelmed issue" (and I stand corrected), but I also didn't expect to be able to place 8-9 around a single generator (the most I could was 6, so maybe you have to place the catapults first and then the generator? Or likely I need to enroll in one of Winona's building classes). Nonetheless, it would be a nice extra not having to carry those gems if I can.

Yeah, hunger is trivial late-game. But to be honest, what is the point of building faster if you can only do it when above certain hunger, while at the same time a single item can cost you up to 15 or even 25 hunger. Say you craft 3 log armors (which are pretty common to craft), that is 45 hunger down unless you are below 50 (I think). This could have been done better. Everything else is almost fantastic, but this alone defeats the purpose of this perk (is like Warly's bigger stomach, with faster hunger rate; giving him effectively, the same amount of time before starving, as any other character).

From what I have read, Klei didn't intend for the spotlight or the generator to be off-turnable, it was not on the plans at all because they considered it balanced as-is (until people brought it up and now they are considering it). To be precise, from the looks of this release, it seems it isn't (or wasn't) intended to be changed much, maybe changing numbers like catapults attack speed/damage; or a very much needed QoL change like spotlight illuminating the players that actually need light (instead of all spotlights illuminating the same player as if they are Shakira in concert!).

EDIT:

*The advantage that I forgot to mention here though is that this is a one-time cost (given they are not destroyed), it still is a lot of resources, since 1 catapult alone costs 15 rocks, so that is a total of 345 rocks for the m-toadstool (the cheapest one). I am sure you can do with half (so around 20) against bee queen though.

[Maxposting]

just craft when hungry.

it's not so damn hard.

[lakhnish]

2 hours ago, CarlZalph said:

However this is not the case, and as such the catapult is a very good alternative.  Cheap, similar damage throughput, and can be massed to a spot for either protecting or farming with minimal resources and upkeep.

Not only that, it doesn't suffer from the drawbacks of the turret where once you place it, you're stuck with where you placed it.

[pedregales]

6 minutes ago, __IvoCZE__ said:

just craft when hungry.

it's not so damn hard.

Oh, sure, is not hard at all. Just absurd, very very absurd.

[Majestix]

59 minutes ago, RancorSnp said:

I don't know if we can call her beginner friendly when it is impossible to survive winter with her for anyone who does not play the game well enough to be able to provide up to 300 food a day ^^'

Where does that number come from? Is someone "who does not play the game well enough" going to start mass crafting tons of stuff every day in the first winter? What did I just read?! "Impossible to survive with anyone..." who cannot provide 300 food a day?! Give me a break. You people are just inventing problems where there are none.

Winona is still a forgiving beginner character, but also a legitimately useful late game character: want to expand your tooth trap field, or your chest area? Give Winona three meaty stews and some stacks of wood/grass/teeth/what have you, and save a considerable amount of time and tedium. And the new additions just make her much more interesting than a mass crafter, so that some good players will now actually want to play her. This is important, since there are characters in DST that can be useful to the team, but are so lacklustre that no good player actually wants to play them.

[Viktor234]

1 hour ago, pedregales said:

but I also didn't expect to be able to place 8-9 around a single generator (the most I could was 6, so maybe you have to place the catapults first and then the generator?

Catapults placed behind the first catapult won't reach the generator.

Place first the generator and then the catapults as far away as possible from the generator, that will extended the scope and on a bigger scope you'll become able to place more than only 6 catapults (The most I managed place was 8 (Update: Managed to place 9 Catapults)).