Woodies affinities should offer interactions with the new gear.

[Malfario]

Of the 4 characters with skilltrees 3 of them offer new interactions with the brightshade gear, wilson and wolfgang being just raw numbers, which isnt bad, and wormwood offering new mechanics associated with these new gear.

I would like to say before going forward that it makes sense for woodie to not have direct buffs or interactions with the new gear as he does something more interesting which is an earlier acces to the benefits of these items. The beaver been able to efficently mine riftstals and the dreadstone pillar/outcrop, and the moose combo skipping plannar dmg.

Woodie can relay on his curses to fight and engage with the new content, which is something that i found extremly clever as it continues his theme of having inmediate acces to perks that other characters will need more time to obtain as well as keeping him as the jack of all trades updated for the harder content.

Wodie can perfectly use the beaver to gather resources from the lunar rifts and his moose form is more than decent and worth using against the inkblights. My problem is that his curses are not universally usefull, as for the brightshades they are a threat that pop up at any moment at any place, and wasting so many idols for a fight that takes a relativly small amount of time doesnt seem worth using, so he ends up using the new items which dont really felt as good using as other characters.

Of course the brightshades are only one encounter that woodie isnt so good against and this might not be as much of concern, but we know that post rift content will have new challenges and mobs that we will have to fight very often and if they are design in the same manner as the brightshades i can see woodie having to relay a lot on the new gear rather than his curses.

My sugestion is for woodie to have something similar to wilson, small buffs that make the gear feel unique using as him.

For example serving the shadow queen could make it so woodies attack animation with shadow weapons get severly speeded up, and same with lunar weapons if he chooses to aling with the criptic fonder. This will be in line with his harvesting quicker ability and lucy faster choping animation.

[Picklesaurus]

I wish weremoose's dps was similar throughthout the game, it falls from 148 dps to normal enemies/104 if you dont hit the combo - to 128 dps to planar enemies/64 dps if you dont hit the combo. It makes me anxious that , after we get rumored upgrades to the brightshade sword and shadow reaper planar damage for every character, we go back to a situation pre skill tree where it is better to simply use woodie human form 90% of the time for the new planar fights - including boss fights - not only because he is more flexible and easier to use than moose, but also because human form would have higher dps. It would be nice if his moose form had +10 planar damage on the normal attacks before the combo so it would bring his dps back to 140 to planar enemies.

[jimagine]

Woodie's forms do not benefit at all from the new equipment which is a big issue...is strong early on but late game with the new gear you are still generally better off staying in human form.

[Masked Koopa]

I do think this is a valid concern. Woodie was one of the earlier reworks and suffered from the later reworks being more powerful, i'd rather not get a repeat of that where the moose and/pr woodie stops scaling with the new content.