Willow Rebalance Suggestion By A Willow Main

[Masked_Misery]

As a Willow main I can concur that her current benefits are really lukewarm and not very interesting, and her Rebalance benefits are kind of exactly the same?

Looking at Willow's Rebalance it seems like the developers kind of forgot what the point of Willow is, which is fire. The idea of having an army of Bernies fighting enemies is cool, but also ridiculous and not consistent with Willow's character; which is fire. All the fire benefits they want to give her are really forgettable so im'ma just put my idea for a rebalance here since it's what I was hoping they'd do. The main idea here is fire.

 

Benefits :

Willow no longer takes damage from fire, and heals slightly when she is on fire.

Enemies that die to fires caused by Willow drop their normal items instead of ashes.

Willow gains sanity from starting a fire, standing near fire, and the insanity aura of enemies doesn't effect Willow if they are currently on fire.

Fire heats Willow up faster if she is cold, and she takes less damage from overheating.

Willow doesn't lose sanity when using the Fire Staff.

 

Downsides :

Putting a fire out reduces Willow's sanity, Willow gradually loses sanity while it is raining or snowing.

Willow freezes easier, takes double damage from freezing and loses sanity while freezing.

Willow loses one sanity each time she eats something that hasn't been exposed to fire, as in cooked.

Willow has a Fire meter which passively decreases, and is increased each time she starts a fire. The size of the object burned determines how much starting the fire replenishes the meter, and standing near fires slightly increases it. Willow gradually begins freezing, and losing sanity, if the meter gets too low; and this freezing comes on faster the lower the meter gets from that point.

 

There's probably more that could be added to this but that's about all I got. Basically the idea is that Willow likes fire and doesn't like the cold. Her main benefit is that she can weaponize fire in a way other characters can't, and she has various modifiers which make her gain a lot of sanity and lose a lot of sanity. Because she's obsessed with fire, she has a fire meter which makes her have to keep making fires to stop from going into her form of withdrawal.

Fire.

[Stonetribe]

I like the idea of her losing sanity whenever she eats food that hasn't been exposed to fire, I don't think anyone's suggested that yet. One sanity seems extremely negligible though, maybe it could be 5 instead? Also do you think that this would this apply to certain crock pot dishes like ice cream and the melonsicle as well?

[FreyaMaluk]

I strongly disagree making Willow a fire protector all of the sudden..

she enjoys seeing things burn,... sorry but it makes no sense

if you want to use fire... then be aware you can loose loot..

4 hours ago, Masked_Misery said:

heals slightly when she is on fire.

i think this is OP... then healing is completely out of the gate and useless... I don't think so.. sorry

4 hours ago, Masked_Misery said:

Fire heats Willow up faster if she is cold, and she takes less damage from overheating

I don't agree with her getting warm faster... Being cold is gonna be her stronger downside.. with this you are pretty much making it obsolete

4 hours ago, Masked_Misery said:

she takes less damage from overheating.

this was already included in the last changes from upcoming update.. don't understand why suggesting this twice

Quote

• Willow takes less damage from overheating.

 

 

4 hours ago, Masked_Misery said:

Willow doesn't lose sanity when using the Fire Staff.

this is a non issue-- she looses only 1 sanity per use

Quote

The Fire Staff can set targets on fire from up to 8 units away, setting them aflame and making them take Fire damage, at the cost of 1 per use

 

 

4 hours ago, Masked_Misery said:

Downsides :

Putting a fire out reduces Willow's sanity, Willow gradually loses sanity while it is raining or snowing.

extra reduction while raining or snowing is a  good idea in my opinion

4 hours ago, Masked_Misery said:

Willow freezes easier, takes double damage from freezing and loses sanity while freezing.

again... another thing you are asking that this update is gonna have already.. at this point I don't see if you really read the Willow's rebalance post

Quote

• Willow takes more damage and loses sanity from freezing.

 

4 hours ago, Masked_Misery said:

Willow loses one sanity each time she eats something that hasn't been exposed to fire, as in cooked.

I agree with this idea  this is probably the idea I like the most from you post

4 hours ago, Masked_Misery said:

Willow has a Fire meter which passively decreases, and is increased each time she starts a fire. The size of the object burned determines how much starting the fire replenishes the meter, and standing near fires slightly increases it. Willow gradually begins freezing, and losing sanity, if the meter gets too low; and this freezing comes on faster the lower the meter gets from that point.

I disagree with this... the devs moved already from insanity and cold effects.. that was probably the most annoying and lame feature she had before.. I also disagree with a fire meter concept.. it sounds like an annoying feature instead of something really challenging... 

Quote

• Willow no longer gets cold from low sanity.

 

[OMERICA]

So basically make Willow fire farm machine lol. 

[Spep]

better then making her a teddy bear general

[MondayNight]

8 hours ago, Masked_Misery said:

Willow gains sanity from starting a fire, standing near fire, and the insanity aura of enemies doesn't effect Willow if they are currently on fire.

This alone would encourage all newbies/noobs to burn everything they encounter for sanity, same current line of thought with massively picking up flowers.

And that in turn will only skyrocket the amount of insta-kicks and insta-bans on players picking Willow.

[CaptainChaotica]

I'm a Willow semi-main myself, and the main problem with ANY version of her is:

She thinks fire is awesome.

But fire...SPREADS.

This is _lethal_ to teamwork in multiplayer, but can even mess up things for just yourself when playing the singleplayer version!  Like, I loved that one time in regular DS when I set a forest on fire and then GLEEFULLY RAN LAUGHING THROUGH THE FLAMES, BWAHAHA!--but the only reason I did that is because winter snuck up on me, I didn't have my cold-weather gear, and since I was in a thick forest, setting _one_ tree on fire inevitably meant setting them ALL on fire.  In other words, as gloriously Uber-Willow as that moment was...I DID still kinda worry about how many resources I was losing.

(Luckily it turned out that since the forest was HUGE, I only took out about a third of it.  I also made a point of replanting any pinecones that fell off the burned trees when I came through later.)

I too love the idea of an insane pyromaniac walking dramatically out of a wall of fire (as in, one of Klei's own most famous images of Willow), but...well, you can't have that without tons of destruction.  Also some resources don't respawn!  And in multiplayer you'll immediately become the most HATED player on the server.  We've had WAY too much "BAN THE WILLOW!" as it is.  Let's not...fan those particular flames again.  (rimshot!)  Heck, I've run into that myself.   It's also the exact same reason the Dragonfly was pinned down to one location instead of suddenly showing up over your shoulder as the summer boss--fire spreading ruins things for EVERYONE, not just one person, and this is a multiplayer game.

If anyone can come up with a proper-pyromaniac version of Willow that somehow DOESN'T have this problem, I'm all for it.  It might have to be a mod, but I'd still try it out.

...Notorious

[axxel]

The only things I'd hate they have burnt are reeds and catcoon stumps. A burnt forest is actually bearable in DST - for charcoal of course. And fire is actually hated because of wild fires in bases. Bases become an important part of many world and it's a shame that fires, earthquakes and griefers destroy them.

[minespatch]

6 hours ago, Shpee said:

better then making her a teddy bear general

Why not? I can see potential in a horde of Bernies.

In the forge, five Bernies helped defeat a Boarrior. It was awesome.

[maradyne]

8 hours ago, Shpee said:

better then making her a teddy bear general

have you seen my bear Tibbers

[X-lem]

I don't mind the abilities one way or another. They just don't make her a better team player. Enemies that drop items after they die of Willow's fire kinda is, but not really. Willow really needs fire abilities that she can use to help other players. The benefits you've listed really just make her easier to play and she's already a pretty easy character.

 

I would agree that her abilities should allow her to fight mobs with fire, but nothing you listed really accomplished that.

[4 Da LOLs]

Willows lighter should deal extra damage to flaming enemy's giving her a more accessible morning star

using the ignited mobs as light

also better than the morning star because it makes its own buffed damage

this also makes the lighter have its own useful power to make it more viable in combat scenarios

[EveryMansFool]

It's probably too late for anymore significant changes to Willow. They spent all their time on the Bernie buff that no one asked for. I say they just refresh Willow again after they're finished balancing everyone else, but this time actually do something that makes her a worthy character.

I'm genuinely tilted rn.

[FreyaMaluk]

10 minutes ago, EveryMansFool said:

It's probably too late for anymore significant changes to Willow. They spent all their time on the Bernie buff that no one asked for. I say they just refresh Willow again after they're finished balancing everyone else, but this time actually do something that makes her a worthy character.

I'm genuinely tilted rn.

They said they gave us SOME features... We need to wait for THE REST

[EveryMansFool]

Just now, FreyaMaluk said:

They said they gave us SOME features... We need to wait for THE REST

I don't trust them to have anything interesting. Surely they could predict this backlash? Maybe this is just an epic troll.