[Poll/Discussion] Is Walter an effective ranged character?

[Harrowick]

Hey there! This is just a poll I thought I'd make after some extensive playthroughs as Walter on private servers and public servers alike. I'd like to know what everyone thinks of his slingshot's damage, versatility, and usefulness.

The reason I bring this up is I often see the argument that melee is almost always a better alternative for Walter, since he has no penalty or reason not to as long as you don't get hit. Please feel free to discuss and let me know what you think! 

 

[Szczuku]

I mean... how good any ranged weapon can be as sooner or later the enemy will be within malee range anyway.

Solo Walter's slingshot can be a tool to get enemies like Koalefant or Volt Goat to fight you at best. The pebble rounds can't even 1 hit birds.

[.]

I think he is a really interesting character but he should get few extra perks. Klei must do something about him because as I see, nobody want to play with him mostly
-Slingshot range should increase, this will fix speed problem automaticly because he will be able to hit more before enemy reach him.
-His hat should get buff in power and get nerf in recipe. (It should require more materials to make.)
-He should get a trace powers a little like Wheeler's navigator. He is a scout boy and as I know they get those knowledge by education of surviving.

He should have a map in starting (Which we know he already had one, so this will not be problem for storyline) and he should navigate items by putting item on this map. Maybe it should work for only foods, this could give him something like animal tracking/hunt mechanic when only he equip it. Like how wagstaff sees treasures and dangers when he wear his googles. By this way, he will be able to find beefalos, spiders, pigs, catcoons and other creatures that have special drops. Or defaulty, it could work like navigator and be able to find everything. But if this map would have a power to find everything, it should have durabilty too.

[BezKa]

Let me use hound teeth as ammo! They can do same damage as rock ones, just let me have some use for all the trash left laying around!

[mkemal23]

15 minutes ago, BezKa said:

Let me use hound teeth as ammo! They can do same damage as rock ones, just let me have some use for all the trash left laying around!

YES

[themightyone]

He is ok . Sanity is pretty brutal during big fights . Can't say I am a Walter fan really.

[HeatAndRun]

I always felt his firing speed is a bit slow. His ammos cost way more than melee-weapons and that's good since it's ranged weapon, but the dps is quite low, preventing using slingshot as a main dealing weapon due to its inefficiency.

But slow ammos and freeze ammos are really good for support raid battles and various situations, so I often use those utility ammos in combat.

[SinancoTheBest]

As a support, I love having him in my team. Fireside stories, consistent ranged damage against bosses, easy butterfly and bird killing en masse, portable tent, companion that grants inventory spaces and locomotion (especially helpful with lunar structures & stuff). Though I barely ever play as him so I don't know how he fares by himself. That sanity loss for damage received is a very harsh but effective downside, I see Walter players struggle with it all the time. Can never have enough Vegetable Stingers and Melonsicles.

[Spino43]

I will say he does, but mainly in early game. The gold ammo is enough to one shot rabbits/ birds which makes gathering food very easy. Poop ammo is pretty good at aiding you taking the Tallbird eggs without one eyed monstrosities following you half the map.

However, during mid and late game, where you can make blow darts/boomerangs/ ice staffs quite easily, his perk as a ranged character is not really effective compared to them.

[Ranma Saotome]

His slingshot's pretty strong, huh?

[ShadowDuelist]

I think the normal pellets are pretty well balanced with a decent progression. Its always a side weapon, your main damage should always be melee as with any other character.

Spoiler

Stone pellet is the most basic, easy to access, and provides little damage. Its good for aggroing enemies at a distance, killing butterflies or rabbits (if you stand between the rabbit and their hole), and befriending rock lobsters.

Gold pellet is the second tier, it has a decent damage, and its super easy to mass farm, so you can hunt birds, spiders, rabbits in one shot, mushgnomes, etc. easily with this one. It should be your main ammo during early game.

Marble pellet is your highest tier damage, deals a good damage and its not as hard to mass farm as everyone says. Once you set up a farm with at least 40 marble trees, you are mostly set to use your marble shots at will. 

Walter is mostly lacking on his special pellets, they are too expensive and ineffective for what they give, and they are usually not worth crafting.

My suggestion: 

Spoiler

- Make poop pellet effect last longer, and not wear off instantly if the enemy has herd mentality. It should be a crowd control item, but with its current state it works on very few situations.

- Make the ice pellet and the slow pellet have AOE radius on hit. The ice pellet could have a small radius, and the slow pellet, given its even more expensive and overall less useful, could have a larger radius than the ice one.

So even if they are expensive, a good placed shot could turn the fight entirely.

 

[Mike23Ua]

I think he is alright, one thing I really hate that I can’t do as him is craft slingshots for non Walter players and load them with Ammo.

I think it would help tremendously when it comes to Team Work, and it’s not even THAT broken because a Walter player still has to be there to load/unload rounds that only he can craft into the slingshot..

But Give me the option to give players a slingshot with 40 pre-loaded rounds and I can place those into chests at the florid for random strangers to use for their survival needs.

THAT is what disappoints me most about Walter, It shouldn’t require forgotten Knowledges to have to learn how to use a Slingshot.

I think Klei opted not to let other non Walters use it in fear he would become a pick and swap character, but either way- it took me about a week of crafting storage chests and giving random strangers slingshots until I sadly realized they couldn’t even use em.

Once you have Gold rounds just go around one shot killing birds, then take those Morsels to pig king for more gold for more rounds, an infinite free ammo supply cycle.

And if you have Marble rounds, which Marble is also pretty easy to get and Mass produce they’re even better.

You should only be using stone rounds to kill things like Butterflies or to get ONE target in a mob of targets to Aggro onto you (while using poop pellets to de-Aggro away the rest of that mob) so you can single out and Melee kill that solo target.

Darts may be a better weapon, but I’ve personally never bothered crafting them AT ALL EVER so I wouldn’t know... and I’m willing to bet you thousands of Newbie players wouldn’t know either.

So for what it’s worth, Walter is a relatively easy character to pick up and play (yes even solo) and his Sanity downsides have so many incredibly gimmicky ways of negating (such as standing in a forest of trees, telling stories at campfires, using his mobile tent, wearing his special hat, + other more traditional cooked food ways) that it really isn’t THAT much of a problem.

The only thing I wish they would adjust it to let Walter craft and pre-load slingshots for non Walters to use.  

Other then that I feel slingshot ammo, reload speed, damage etc is pretty good.

[Harrowick]

Thank you all for your responses, suggestions, and thoughts! They are all a good read and neat ideas! 

[Maybe a dog]

Walter is my favourite character of all. That said, I wouldnt mind some minor adjustments.

Ammo

• His general-use ammo (rock, gold and marble) is perfect. It is kind of annoying to collect marble from marble shrubs (takes ages to mine through them), but that is more of a problem with that plant than Walter specifically.
• Poop ammo works, but only if its a single enemy. Using it against, for example, spiders... eh. Herd mentality, as others have said already. Another possibility would be to change the effect, making it, instead of dropping aggro, forcing the hit target to run away in confusion (and the effect wearing off after some seconds). Retains usefulness and makes it more effective against crowds.
• Ice, Slowdown and Cursed ammo are just not good. I would prefer if the adjusted the materials or maybe upped their efficacy. Cursed ammo in particular. Instead of Cursed ammo being a copy of Thulecite Club, maybe they could make it so its instead a mini-shadow creature that follows the target and disappears after dealing a few hits. Now that justifies the price for them.
• Another alternative is to scrap the Ice, Slowdown and Cursed rounds completely and just make them act like Warly's seasonings. You craft Ice/Slowdown/Cursed powder and can apply them to regular ammo (like arrow coatings).

Slingshot

• I would love if they increased fire rate. Range and damage are fine. If they increased fire rate, this might even make special ammo more reliable and useful in the process.
• Im not sure if its actually intended or it was just lag, but sometimes Walter will stop firing after a while of holding the attack button and get stuck in the "loading slinger" animation. If that is actually intended, then I guess its supposed to be some sort of cd after acertain amount of shots. Wouldnt mind seeing that gone, if its an actual feature.

Wooby

I wuv my Wooberz. Small QoL change though, much like Wendy being able to see Abigail's health, I would like to be able to see Big Wooby's hunger meter. A much more user-friendly method than just comparing speeds.

And kinda wish that Wooby's AI wouldnt choose to make her move away from you while you are carrying Suspicious Marble and trying to mount her...