Better and tougher downside for Wanda?

[HowlVoid]

Lets leave Wanda alone please.

She's amazing but she isn't overpowered.

[Misa22]

3 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

see now.. that’s overpowered. 
Wendy doesn’t just Respawn with a new Abigails flower, Woodie doesn’t just Respawn with a new Ax, They actually have to travel BACK to their death locations and pick that stuff back up.

I imagine it was just an Over-Sight on Klei’s part with Wanda on her release.

Life giving amulet. 

Wanda doesn't do anything new in terms of resurrection imo. 

[Hornete]

1 minute ago, Mike23Ua said:

see now.. that’s overpowered. 
Wendy doesn’t just Respawn with a new Abigails flower, Woodie doesn’t just Respawn with a new Ax, They actually have to travel BACK to their death locations and pick that stuff back up.

I imagine it was just an Over-Sight on Klei’s part with Wanda on her release.

Wendy and Woodie can get their abilities back relatively easily.

Wanda's literal only way to heal is with her ageless watch, if she loses it, and she does not have the resources to craft another one(which are relatively expensive, mind you), there will be practically nothing you can do. Some player on a server picks up the watches you dropped upon death and they leave with them? What are you going to do, go down to the ruins/archives in less than a day and hope you don't get hit several times while you get the necessary materials?

[Mike23Ua]

4 minutes ago, Misa22 said:

Life giving amulet. 

This is a Late game tool* that most newer players won’t have- and if your referring to Wanda’s special Reviving watch: It breaks after she uses it.

However respawning at the portal WITH your watches still in your inventory shouldn’t be happening… no other character gets that treatment- Why should Wanda?

[QuartzBeam]

5 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Woodie doesn’t just Respawn with a new Ax, They actually have to travel BACK to their death locations and pick that stuff back up.

No, he doesn't. He can materialize Lucy out of a cheap flint axe.

[Mike23Ua]

1 minute ago, Hornete said:

Wendy and Woodie can get their abilities back relatively easily.

Wanda's literal only way to heal is with her ageless watch, if she loses it, and she does not have the resources to craft another one(which are relatively expensive, mind you), there will be practically nothing you can do. Some player on a server picks up the watches you dropped upon death and they leave with them? What are you going to do, go down to the ruins/archives in less than a day and hope you don't get hit several times while you get the necessary materials?

The Age-less watch should be the ONLY one she spawns with then.. not any of the others.

[Frashaw27]

3 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

see now.. that’s overpowered. 
Wendy doesn’t just Respawn with a new Abigails flower, Woodie doesn’t just Respawn with a new Ax, They actually have to travel BACK to their death locations and pick that stuff back up.

I imagine it was just an Over-Sight on Klei’s part with Wanda on her release.

I mean, considering that she would literally die over and over again without the ageless watch it makes sense. Woodie doesn't have to use Lucy to survive, Wendy doesn't have to use the Flower to survive, Maxwell doesn't have to use the Codex Umbra to survive, Wanda NEEDS the watch to survive any decent amount of time. She also just can't make new ones on the fly since she needs to go all the way to the ruins just to get the stuff to make a new one. It is unreasonable to make it so that the player would have to do something so intensive to just survive past the revivification is just horse apples. 

Also, they had to literally make a entire new system to keep the watches bound to her on death, so there is no way it could be an oversight.

[Monkey Cups]

Wanda is no more "OP" than mighty Wolfgang, and unlike Wolfgang she has actual downsides, requires a ton of maintenance and is very fragile. It is very easy to actually die as Wanda. She's balanced.

[SomebodyRandom]

9 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

However respawning at the portal WITH your watches still in your inventory shouldn’t be happening… no other character gets that treatment- Why should Wanda?

It should be happening though, just because the character has a special treatment doesn't mean that character shoudn't get it, in fact other characters should get it too. Like let Woodie keep Lucy, Wigfrid keep her songs, Willow keep her lighter and Bernie. No reason not to allow them to keep their stuff (other than some stuff like Bramble Husk or Tapes that aren't exactly that important to the character or can be used by more than just that character and could still just drop fine.)

[Duck986]

me reading this topic:

Spoiler

 

but tbh, everything was already said before me by @Toros - all she needs rn is stunlock bugfix for alarming clock, if this bug is still present.

[LinknAllie]

Uh oh.  The "word" OP has been mentioned.  Time for the post to be locked.

[Mike23Ua]

19 minutes ago, SomebodyRandom said:

It should be happening though, just because the character has a special treatment doesn't mean that character shoudn't get it, in fact other characters should get it too. Like let Woodie keep Lucy, Wigfrid keep her songs, Willow keep her lighter and Bernie. No reason not to allow them to keep their stuff (other than some stuff like Bramble Husk or Tapes that aren't exactly that important to the character or can be used by more than just that character and could still just drop fine.)

Are you wanting to trivialize any and all aspects of a SURVIVAL Wilderness game? I literally see Wanda Dying and needing to go recover her watches from her death location as NO DIFFERENT from dying in Winter dropping your Thermal Stone at your Death Location and having to Respawn at the florid portal and then literally rush to get back to your death location to recover the supplies you need just to stay alive with..

You Dont Respawn from the portal with resources in your inventory to safely build the campfires back to your dead carcass.. no- you instead either have to rush to your stuff OR pray you can gather other types of resources to recover long enough to go get your stuff.

Other players STEALING your stuff is a problem with the PLAYERS not the games design.

The ONLY Clock Wanda should always Respawn with in her inventory is the Age-less one, the others… are just additional luxury for her character And the one that literally revives people at the location they died in is too over-powered for her to Always just Respawn with always in her inventory, I swear it’s like Klei is Casualizing the hell out of certain parts of this game… but I won’t start complaining until we start respawning with Thermal stones still in our inventory or a device that lets us teleport Dead players back to the location they previously died in.. oh- Oh yeah wait..

[Juny Pear]

49 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

There is one thing that I DO find overpowered about Wanda though- and maybe this is probably a Bug.. I highly doubt it’s intended gameplay. 
 

When Wanda Dies in Endless Mode she Respawns from the portal with her watch as if entering the world for the first time.. Making it easy to stockpile watches by just intentionally dying.

False information. Wanda just doesn't drop her watches on death.

You can easily test this by dropping her watches, intentionally dying and then respawning.

[luvu2bits]

24 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

However respawning at the portal WITH your watches still in your inventory shouldn’t be happening… no other character gets that treatment- Why should Wanda?

Wanda is nothing without her watches, and those watches happen to be really really really expensive. Characters like Woodie, Wendy, etc. are all perfectly playable without their items, albeit gimped in power. Their items are also extremely cheap, it shouldn't be too hard to replace them almost immediately if lost. Wanda can't even live without her Ageless Watch, and all of her watches are rather expensive (especially considering most of them don't really benefit anyone but herself)
I for one would be pretty pissed if I died as Wanda far away from base and couldn't live, teleport, or do anything because my watches are all too far away and I die of old age.

[ZombieDupe]

57 minutes ago, Friendly Grass said:

Oh my gosh like literally every single character?

The main downside is that she ages over time and has to restore her time health with watches, correct? So doesn't that mean part of her upside of watches basically counter her downside directly?

In contrast WX takes water damage as the main downside (even if it's miniscule, that's not the point), having nothing in special abilities to counter that. Same applies to Wickerbottom's inability to sleep or Wortox's loss of sanity, making maintaining sanity harder and nothing in their special abilities to combat that directly. You have to use the same stuff and methods as everyone else or less so to manage the downside, which is not the case for Wanda. Her abilities are part of the counter.

@Mike23Ua you can destroy catcoon dens permanently or wall them off. They are only located in a single type of biome anyway, so it sounds like a very niche scenario.

[Mike23Ua]

8 minutes ago, ZombieDupe said:

The main downside is that she ages over time and has to restore her time health with watches, correct? So doesn't that mean part of her upside of watches basically counter her downside directly?

In contrast WX takes water damage as the main downside (even if it's miniscule, that's not the point), having nothing in special abilities to counter that. Same applies to Wickerbottom's inability to sleep or Wortox's loss of sanity, making maintaining sanity harder and nothing in their special abilities to combat that directly. You have to use the same stuff and methods as everyone else or less so to manage the downside, which is not the case for Wanda. Her abilities are part of the counter.

@Mike23Ua you can destroy catcoon dens permanently or wall them off. They are only located in a single type of biome anyway, so it sounds like a very niche scenario.

You just compared Wanda to characters who haven’t been reworked yet, that’s a bad move on your part- Instead you need to compare her to Wendy, Willow, Woodie characters who have downsides but they are completely avoidable with their new rework powers.

Wanda has a watch that literally revives other players at the exact location they died in, Thats ridiculously helpful in things like: Wanda just passively standing on the side lines repeatedly reviving dead players who die to Deerclops until they kill it.

This Watch along with the teleportation ones are additional LUXERY for her character, they have to be EARNED before she can use them, the ONLY watch Wanda should always respawn with is the Ageless one- The others are too powerful to just let her always keep in her inventory even persisting through her own death.

[Juny Pear]

Just now, ZombieDupe said:

The main downside is that she ages over time and has to restore her time health with watches, correct? So doesn't that mean part of her upside of watches basically counter her downside directly?

In contrast WX takes water damage as the main downside (even if it's miniscule, that's not the point), having nothing in special abilities to counter that. Same applies to Wickerbottom's inability to sleep or Wortox's loss of sanity, making maintaining sanity harder and nothing in their special abilities to combat that directly. You have to use the same stuff and methods as everyone else or less so to manage the downside, which is not the case for Wanda. Her abilities are part of the counter.

@Mike23Ua you can destroy catcoon dens permanently or wall them off. They are only located in a single type of biome anyway, so it sounds like a very niche scenario.

It's not JUST her passive aging, it's also the fact that you don't have immediate healing available after healing once.

The cooldown on the watch can be pretty annoying for fights since you can't just slam 100s of hp worth of healing within 2 seconds, you're basically restricted to 20 every 2 minutes unless you have several ageless watches, which all take up their own inventory slot and still have the cooldown.

Not to mention that part of her downside is also her combat damage scaling depending on age and weapon type, which basically means in practice that if you are ever caught in a situation at low hp and don't yet have a shadow weapon you're essentially a sitting duck, or if you're using her perk for your benefit through the shadow damage, that you are always very close to death. Being able to heal somewhat makes that downside a little bit less severe, but that won't help you if your healing is on cooldown and you take lethal damage.

There are a lot of nuances here that I feel you're neglecting.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

49 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

This is a Late game tool* that most newer players won’t have- and if your referring to Wanda’s special Reviving watch: It breaks after she uses it.

i didnt know that 1st autumn is late game

[ZombieDupe]

Just now, Mike23Ua said:

You just compared Wanda to characters who haven’t been reworked yet, that’s a bad move on your part- Instead you need to compare her to Wendy, Willow, Woodie characters who have downsides but the here completely avoidable with their new powers.

I think that's a bad decision on Klei's part as far as downsides go. Also Wortox is a fresh new character who was introduced as the reworks were going, so that's a bit of a conundrum. In terms of reworked characters, Webber's follower downside isn't countered by anything special he can do that none else can in my experience. The downside can be avoided almost entirely, and that's something that would require changes in other mechanics or features to fix, but it doesn't follow the line of... whatever point you're trying to argue for.

Just now, Nettalie said:

Not to mention that part of her downside is also her combat damage scaling depending on age and weapon type, which basically means in practice that if you are ever caught in a situation at low hp and don't yet have a shadow weapon you're essentially a sitting duck, or if you're using her perk for your benefit through the shadow damage, that you are always very close to death. Being able to heal somewhat makes that downside a little bit less severe, but that won't help you if your healing is on cooldown and you take lethal damage.

So her downside is made almost irrelevant by her additional watches some time later on in the game. If so, I don't think I'm neglecting anything here. But I don't agree that this is a great way to balance a character. Her perks at no point should nullify her downsides. Staying old is also a choice when playing as her, so it's more of a situational risk vs reward scenario than a continuously prevalent downside at a later stage.

 

[Juny Pear]

51 minutes ago, ZombieDupe said:

So her downside is made almost irrelevant by her additional watches some time later on in the game. If so, I don't think I'm neglecting anything here. But I don't agree that this is a great way to balance a character. Her perks at no point should nullify her downsides. Staying old is also a choice when playing as her, so it's more of a situational risk vs reward scenario than a continuously prevalent downside at a later stage.

 

That does not really make sense with what I said though? How does her weapon damage changing in age get nullified entirely by her watches later on? Using her alarming clock outside of bigger boss fights can not only be extremely costly longterm, but in order to squeeze the full potential out of it you'd have to stay old, which in itself has the drawback of you being closer to death (That's how risk vs. reward works, you have a risk, here in the form of said drawback, for a reward, here in the form of bonus damage output). Not to mention that since her health is effectively tied to her age that staying old is heavily at the mercy of your environment.
This may not be an issue in something such as a day 5 grassy biome, but put Wanda in the ruins, which she is heavily incentivised to go to for her watches, and suddenly you could be in huge trouble during nightmare phase when you're at the cusp of death and can't heal in peace with your health ticking down steadily. If your armor then breaks and you don't happen to have another piece on you, you'll find yourself scrambling to craft some but effectively hindered by her slower craft speed at old age.

Plus this is basically assuming that ""early to mid game"" does not exist or is not there for long enough to matter, when in reality that is usually the part of the game people will be playing the most, unless we're talking purely about the most core part of the community who already know how to entirely deal with any and all downsides of each character.

And lastly it is also very important to keep in mind how expensive her tools really are. Her Backtrek watches require walrus tusks and 2 time pieces, her alarming clock requires 3 time pieces, 4 marble and 8 nightmare fuel, her ageless watch 2 marble and a red gem.
Those materials are really costly to get, especially the time pieces, and while in a solo environment this would not be too big of a deal, with multiple people, multiple wandas especially, this means everybody is competing for resources that are either incredibly annoying to farm or require a larger set up to obtain reliably.
Even just making additional ageless watches means you are using up a red gem which somebody else probably would have liked to use for a life giving amulet on top of taking up that extra inventory slot i mentioned earlier.
 

[Mike23Ua]

Since you missed my point entirely and since some of this could be seen as spoilers to people who have yet to figure them out for themselves I will go through each reworked/Newer DLC Character and how their Downsides are completely avoidable once you know how to counter them.

Spoiler

Willow- Downsides becoming cold faster & going Insane quicker when cold.

Negated By- Holding small Bernie for Warmth or placing Bernie on the ground while insane to become Large Bernie a shadow destroying savior.

Wendy- Downsides are: Hits Weaker than Average.

Negated by- Abigails petal Bestowment buff that lets Wendy do additional damage to mobs provided Abigail is available.

Woodie- Downsides are: Suffers a randomly choosen curse every full moon (or 11th game day) 

Negated by: Creating the specific totem and turning into the mob you want to be right before the full moon OR by going to caves to avoid the moon light altogether.

Wormwood- Downsides are can’t be heal from eating foods. Loses sanity when trees are chopped are flowers are plucked near him

Negated by: using healing tab, sleeping, using his green thumb tabs or simply smearing a variety of easily available resources on your face (he even heals from Rot and that’s Everywhere!) and planting new trees or flowers.

Wurt: Downsides are only eat Veggies, loses sanity when holding any type of dead fish.

Negated by: Butterflies, 1 Berry + 3 Ice RWYS garden, Dropping the dead fish into a storage chest or fridge or anywhere other than Wurts Inventory- she can also wear a top hat and carry a pet fish to negate sanity drain altogether. 

Wortox: Downsides are doesn’t get much hunger from eating human foods, loses Sanity when having to eat souls.

Negated by: Mixing a healthy stream of human foods with the occasional souls devouring, The sanity lost isn’t a problem either when “insert any sanity restoring method here..” exists for him.

Winona: Gets hungry from doing too much work crafting things.

Negated by: Her literal quick crafting skill that lets her craft multiple things quickly that surpasses the hunger penalty.

Walter: Downside can’t gain sanity from wearing clothing items, constantly loses sanity if he loses health.

Negated by: in addition to “insert any commonly known non-clothing sanity restoring method here, he also has his very own Gimmicky ways of restoring it: Such as Standing in a forest wearing his Pinetree pioneer hat, telling campfire stories by a campfire at night.

Wigfrid: Only eats meat.

Negated by: Wearing her special armors and face tanking anything and everything that drops meat, including some of the newer Update mobs such as Molebats.

I saved the best for last-

Wes: downsides, More likely to be struck by lightning, enemy mobs aggro onto him more often, not very strong, Gets too cold or too hot faster.

Negated by: His special Balloon hat or Eyebrella which prevents lightning strikes, Using there stubbornness to chase you to kite them into other mobs then sit idly by and watch. Literally just crafting a Beefalo Bell and then riding a Beefalo around- WES deals less damage.. the Beefalo he is mounted on doesn’t suffer this same penalty. The last one is simply a matter of reverse psychology … if he gets too cold or too hot faster then if he is too cold, standing near a warm source will also warm him faster and Vice versa.

My point? Every character has no downside once you find a good way to negate it.

Webber- ????? I don’t really know his downside except pigs hate him, no big deal.

Warly is the only one with harsh downside but even THAT is negated by just endlessly making the same food dish until he likes it again (Meatballs/Meaty Stew) not to mention the RWYS update made getting ingredients a laughably easy joke..

WX78, Wolfgang, Maxwell, Wilson, Wickerbottom are the 5 Not yet Reworked characters- so you absolutely can NOT compare them to Wanda but If the spoiler above is any indication to go by: Expect their downsides to become just as unnoticeable as the rest.

[goblinball]

55 minutes ago, ZombieDupe said:

So her downside is made almost irrelevant by her additional watches some time later on in the game.

The problem is that excluding Wanda’s ageless watches having infinite uses, they kinda suck as a healing item. They aren’t stackable, so if you want to have lots of healing, a decent chunk of your inventory will be filled with watches. Plus, they only heal you for 7-8 years. Compare this to something like dragonpies or jellybeans (both of which are stackable!), it’s ridiculous how little healing Wanda has. When I first started playing with her, it was a massive adjustment getting used to not being able to shove jellybeans or dragonpies in my face if there was any risk of dying. I had to change my playstyle and attempt to reduce damage as much as possible. I’d say Wanda’s downside is definitely a big one and is not negated by her watches.

[Spep]

Personally, the ageless watches are fine even after getting 5 or so, considering that you can already turn off your brain and get an infinite supply of potatoes/toma root/pierogi/souls/whatever for infinitely better healing.

wormwood mains are weeping though.

[lakhnish]

I tried rushing BQ. I got cocky and BQ cancelled my clock from healing me. I stared at the clock as it ticked upped to age 80 and I died.

I didn't even get to phase 2.

[Rafi.]

I think that most people don't realize that the main downside of Wanda implies the non existent use of instant healing and how big that is. Wanda is fine.