Volt Goat Jelly is unhealthy for combat.

[chirsg]

The boost jelly provides is significant. Off the top of my head, I've only got certain calculations that have struck me and are notable to my interests, but if I'm not mistaken, when spiced by chilli and used against a wet opponent, the damage output is around 6x with mighty Wolfgang.

This is one instance of the extreme to the maximum, but in my limited knowledge, on a dry opponent, your damage converts totally to electrical damage and works out to be 1.5x damage. On paper, it's pretty fair... But because we collectively have very calculating minds, we want the absolute most bang for our buck. We'll generally wait for everything to be wet to utilize it. 

Why the theory is put forward that it's unhealthy for combat is because of what is generally needed to utilize it. Let's face it, a majority of us play by ourselves and if we ever do play with others, we're not centring our lives around just being crock pot nannies.
I'll hazard a guess, and I don't think I'd be wrong in my assumption that a majority of the time, we'll switch to Warly in order to unlock "Unlimited power"

We've delegated a whole entire character's value to a single dessert item that roids up characters who are already strong and functionally make them miniature Wolfgangs, and making Wolfgang into a titan.
Let's get to why it's unhealthy. 

With Jelly, it's most biggest flaw is the allowance for too much hypothetical scenarios to float around that puts into question certain character's power which when taken out of the equation of Jelly itself, functions modestly in the day to day, and even in the extravagance of boss fighting.

Wolfgang in my opinion is an analogue for challenging this game when you're alone. He has all the tools available to him to make a game balanced around fighting bosses with oceans of health a lot more reasonable to undertake. 
Woodie before the nerf was definitely in the same boat. This game is unequivocally designed around team work, but in a way that good coordination is pretty damn broken, but that's a variable that isn't always consistent. 

I digress, having powerful characters isn't unhealthy. It actually enhances the enjoyability of a game played alone when the game was designed pretty much around having 6 wilsons running around scrambling to get gear to weather the winter.
Wolfgang and Woodie's moose just took onto their shoulders the burden of playing a game alone which was designed to be played with your friends. This is fine. This is like finding Love in a Hopeless Place - Rihanna. We accidentally had fun in a situation where the design philosophy was against this style of play.

And then we enter Warly. Oh Warly. None of the people on the forums are strangers to crock pots. I'm sure we love crockpots. Some of us get pretty meta with the 6 format setup and go nuts on it. What better character to cater to that passion we all have than Warly?

The master of the crock.
When you were partying, he was studying the crock,
when you were in the gym pursuing vanity, he was studying the crock,
so on, so forth.

Great character on paper. Very valuable... 
Problem with Warly is that all his value can be put into a heap of wax paper and stored away for years.
There is no reason to stay as him for an extended period of time. 

If you do a bulk laundry list of his jobs, you can store it all away and not even have to utter his name.
Here's the thing. When you take what Warly is best at, suddenly, as a result of Warly's poor design, reasonable characters get put under the microscope.

I remember seeing a snip out of context from a Rhymes With Play stream criticizing Wolfgang of all characters for having crazy numbers when he ate Jelly. I can't quote it, but the microscope was on our favorite labelled coward Tom Platz, Chris Bumstead, Errol Flynn looking strongman.

Not Warly... But Wolfgang. 

And it isn't even really Warly either that's entirely to blame. It's the blue stuff he manufactures that seems to cause all these problems. 
For the most part, it goes like this,

"Warly, you have 20 days to live. You need to provide for your family"

And the conclusion is for him to cook the blue stuff and finish it up with Chilli P. And after Warly is finished, he leaves a mountain of problems for the other survivors after he passes. 

Literally his life is "JesseB, we need to cook" and then causes problems in a meta sense. It affects the game outside of the game.

I can't help but think that this problem has made a victim of Woodie's max powered moose. 
How Woodie's moose functioned was to make the combat portions of the game manageable in a significantly unique way. 

Woodie didn't need to resort to using the run of the mill armor and run of the mill weapons. His playstyle stood on it's own merit and excelled compared to the generic, but cool darksword and football helm combo. Having a legitimate preference for your wereforms is unbelievably perfect when considering the character.

He's finally come to terms with his fate as a chimeric canadian mythical creature. All the while needing to eat like everyone else, bleeding like everyone else, fighting like everyone else, but just a little bit differently with different instances of foresight and different hazards unique to him and no one else.
He's SO weak after coming out of a werecreature task, all the while other characters mid combat or chore manage their stats at will. 

But then, the moment you spice up old beta moose with Jelly, he is suddenly the problem. One video of weremoose doing an impression of Minecraft Steve punching walking trees while he's roided up on the blue stuff and boom. It's not the supplier that should be scrutinized, it's the filthy user.

This says more to me about the climate of DST combat right now than the characters themselves. 

I think that good design philosophy should account to make arbitrary actions obsolete in a creative way.
Woodie's one armed janky attack cancel, as I like to call it, the stanky arm, was made obsolete with his 136 damage slam, and even that could be cancelled to adjust for skill and reward for actions per second inputted.

As it stands, doing the stanky arm is a lot more optimal than putting all your eggs in the weremoose mastery basket. I could see elitism rise from this.

And all because he hits a little too hard from basically an electrical stimulant. 

 

Of course, this had to end with a rant about Woodie, but the purpose is highlighting the problem which is volt goat jelly and the effects it has on innocent bystanders.

It's not Woodie's old damage figures before the hotfix that was ever the problem. His DPS threshold is excessively modest on anything not named treeguard. Please consider this. 

I had so much fun before the nerf and I would see chaud froid burn 1000 times over than see Woodie get hit by injustice once.
The good deserve to live to be free to frolic in the ruins punching robots in peace.

[Evelo]

Sounds to me like limited access to the Celestial Portal would fix this. If you play MP, go ahead you have a neat combo. Play solo? Well now you got a broken set up. Or, "You can't use another characters tools while that character isnt present" thing. Either or.

[chirsg]

4 minutes ago, Evelo said:

Sounds to me like limited access to the Celestial Portal would fix this. If you play MP, go ahead you have a neat combo. Play solo? Well now you got a broken set up. Or, "You can't use another characters tools while that character isnt present" thing. Either or.

The thing is with other characters is there are active incentives to stay as them and their effect isn't as cut and dry as chaud. You're still playing the game. Active multiplayer synergies are really fun and bring forward a brand of enjoyment. 

Warly: here's your lunch, sweetie. 

The problem really is perception and sheer hypothesis. When I get chaud froid, I really have to think about when I use it and if it's worth it to use. 
Do I really want to switch to warly again just to make fights that tiny bit more... quicker?

He's a boring character. The amount people use jelly corresponds to how much a player is willing to be bored. I don't think people use chaud as much as the media would imply that they do.

"ZOMGZZZ Chaud froid sooooo OP, I'm going to 1 shot everythingzzz xd"

All the while, to attain this, you literally have to coop up in the corner clicking your screen in a monotonous way.
For the most part, the juice isn't worth the squeeze, and balancing characters around allowing for a boring sequence to make them literally broken isn't the way to go.

It kills the game. Volt goat jelly kills the game.

[Random Guy000]

Look, i dont know where you're getting your insides from, but literally nobody besides you even mentioned that this might be the reasoning behind Woodie's nerf

They probably did it with the same thoughts as the guy with Chuck Norris pfp had in mind: The moose is super cheap, so this much value doesn't really make sense for him, especially considering how much it overshadows all of the other were-form masteries

I still don't love the nerf and stay by the words of people who say that animation cancelling will just be better if the nerf is to be, but your point just doesn't stand, because it isn't supported by literally anything

[chirsg]

my point stands. idc. 

[Mysterious box]

17 minutes ago, Random Guy000 said:

The moose is super cheap, so this much value doesn't really make sense for him, especially considering how much it overshadows all of the other were-form masteries

 Weapons and armor also super cheap Wandas alarming clock is also super cheap to maintain  This is a mostly mediocre fighting state  that's apparent saving grace is it's cheap in a game where resources are abundant and this is after spending 4 skill points on it.

 I don't agree jelly needs a nerf though

[Ardyn]

If you don't see that there is an Anti-Warly conspiracy, You haven't been paying attention.

[Pedro cc]

It's a hard job to kidnap this many families and force people to use the celestial portal.

[abrocator]

Warly is a chef character that people (according to the forums) play in order to get a challenge from crockpot dishes.

That’s like Wigfrid having 66% base damage and -25% innate armor.

Day 1 his only purpose for us wimps who play the game normally (no Wes-style characters) was as a Portal Character.

[Dr. Safety]

He's the ultimate support character. Sucks that all of his upsides can stick around after switching off of him, but nerfing his upsides ain't the way chief

[chirsg]

49 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

 I don't agree jelly needs a nerf though

Jelly cannot be nerfed. Nerfing jelly would be like squeezing toothpaste back into the tube. It's not going to end well.

I'm just highlighting the absurdity of volt goat jelly in general and how it shouldn't really be a factor when considering the power of certain characters.

38 minutes ago, Ardyn said:

If you don't see that there is an Anti-Warly conspiracy, You haven't been paying attention.

Anti Warly conspiracy is a pro combat one. There should really be more to him than just being a crockpot mum. I'm just saying I'd rather lose chaud than lose fun in other characters.

But once more, chaud is the status quo. Can't squeeze toothpaste back in a tube like that.

and as if he's not going to get a groovy skill tree enhancement. 

[Masked Koopa]

My take has been for a while that the way electric damage works should be changed entirely. Make it so instead of boosting damage, hitting an enemy with an electric weapon makes electric arcs travel from the target to other nearby enemies, with some numerical limit like at most 2-4 targets or so, so it isn't just AOE. Make it a form of crowd control, essentially. Hell, you could make it so stacking voltgoat chaud froid with the morning star would double the number of electric arcs you get.

I think this would solve the following problems:

1: The lack of any crowd control options outside of bramble husk and abigail. Now the morning star is a reliably available but time-limited crowd killer available to all characters.

2: Goat jelly isn't just "Pepper flakes but better", while still serving a clear and very useful function

3: The overall damage level an individual character can attain is cut down dramatically, without it screwing over Warly, instead making him arguably more diverse in the options he provides.

[Mysterious box]

6 minutes ago, Masked Koopa said:

My take has been for a while that the way electric damage works should be changed entirely. Make it so instead of boosting damage, hitting an enemy with an electric weapon makes electric arcs travel from the target to other nearby enemies, with some numerical limit like at most 2-4 targets or so, so it isn't just AOE. Make it a form of crowd control, essentially. Hell, you could make it so stacking voltgoat chaud froid with the morning star would double the number of electric arcs you get.

I think this would solve the following problems:

1: The lack of any crowd control options outside of bramble husk and abigail. Now the morning star is a reliably available but time-limited crowd killer available to all characters.

2: Goat jelly isn't just "Pepper flakes but better", while still serving a clear and very useful function

3: The overall damage level an individual character can attain is cut down dramatically, without it screwing over Warly, instead making him arguably more diverse in the options he provides.

So I was about to come at this like but that's a nerf and Warly doesn't need any nerfs then I thought about it and this is far more interesting...

[chirsg]

Despite the outcome for moose being favorable in the end, I still think this is a bit of a problem. 

If other characters come out of the woodwork with fun mechanics, if it makes it so voltgoat jelly brings combat mechanics under the microscope, then it's an issue. 

Not only for the character itself, but for Warly. He should be more than the designated switch character. 

19 minutes ago, Masked Koopa said:

My take has been for a while that the way electric damage works should be changed entirely. Make it so instead of boosting damage, hitting an enemy with an electric weapon makes electric arcs travel from the target to other nearby enemies, with some numerical limit like at most 2-4 targets or so, so it isn't just AOE. Make it a form of crowd control, essentially. Hell, you could make it so stacking voltgoat chaud froid with the morning star would double the number of electric arcs you get.

This is genius and more fun than what we have now.

[NNOUS]

25 minutes ago, Masked Koopa said:

My take has been for a while that the way electric damage works should be changed entirely. Make it so instead of boosting damage, hitting an enemy with an electric weapon makes electric arcs travel from the target to other nearby enemies, with some numerical limit like at most 2-4 targets or so, so it isn't just AOE. Make it a form of crowd control, essentially. Hell, you could make it so stacking voltgoat chaud froid with the morning star would double the number of electric arcs you get.

Statikk shiv in DST I presume 

[Theukon-dos]

At this point, I'm pretty sure nerfing Volt Goat Chaud Froid is the only reason for Planar Damage to exist. Becuase it's definitely not nerfing Wolfgang on his lonesome anymore. And we all know that Wigfrid and Wanda are going to be getting perks that let them get extra Planar Damage.

[chirsg]

12 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

Wigfrid

I kind of hope you're right about added planar... But now that I think about it a little bit more... I hope wigfrid doesn't get an innate planar boost.

I hope Wigfrid gets a perk that allows her to throw spears and battle spears, but to give her something, I hope she gets an exclusive brightshade/void craft. Probably spears so she can throw those too.

I'm not much of a betting man, but if I were and needed the thrill, I would bet wigfrid would instead get a skill tree that dedicates more to natural planar defence so can basically get eaten by chungus inblight and whipped by brightshades until they both give up.

[Copyafriend]

I'm gonna be real, I feel like this post is about beard making the showcase about the moose with jelly, and is kinda aimed at preventing a similar situation in the future.

I'm like. 99% sure, klei does not care what beard posts on his channel, and they are big boys and girls who know that "ideal scenarios" are not what is typical.

They didn't nerf wolfgang, and he did the same exact video for him.

I just think they were like "it seems a bit overtuned" and lowered it a bit. and then changed their mind later for one reason or another. it had nothing to do with volt goat jelly, and I think assuming it did is putting too much blame on a rather silly content creator.

5 hours ago, chirsg said:

With Jelly, it's most biggest flaw is the allowance for too much hypothetical scenarios to float around that puts into question certain character's power which when taken out of the equation of Jelly itself, functions modestly in the day to day, and even in the extravagance of boss fighting.

And this is why i believe what I said above.

Klei is fully aware of volt goat jelly and its interactions, and they probably keep it in mind when designing new characters.

But honestly, I don't cook volt goat jelly, and no one I have ever spoke to that has beat the game cooked it for anything other than toadstool, it's just not really worth the effort 99% of the time. If I wanted an easy dps increase, i'd just switch to wolfgang for the fight and switch back when it was over.

[Arcwell]

1 minute ago, Copyafriend said:

I just think they were like "it seems a bit overtuned" and lowered it a bit. and then changed their mind later for one reason or another. it had nothing to do with volt goat jelly, and I think assuming it did is putting too much blame on a rather silly content creator.

I'm 90% sure it was just to make the number neater. 119 damage is the exact same as 2 Weremoose punches, which makes sense when you think about the slam being with 2 fists. The fact that they reversed it so quickly leads me to believe it was never intended to punish Weremoose enjoyers.

[Copyafriend]

1 minute ago, Arcwell said:

I'm 90% sure it was just to make the number neater. 119 damage is the exact same as 2 Weremoose punches, which makes sense when you think about the slam being with 2 fists. The fact that they reversed it so quickly leads me to believe it was never intended to punish Weremoose enjoyers.

thats a good point, I never thought of it that way.

[Cassielu]

Warly really needs its damage to make up for its disadvantage in combat. 

Although those combat character have taken the spotlight away from him.

[ALCRD]

Voat Golt jelly is a game balance nightmare.

Please remove it from the game :>

[chirsg]

1 hour ago, ALCRD said:

Voat Golt jelly is a game balance nightmare.

Please remove it from the game :>

I know you're being facetious, but I can't help but think we may actually be happier for it. 

It's a minefield though. I acknowledge it can't really be removed like that.

[Dr. Safety]

This is an issue with the portal, not with Warly. Warly is very powerful but also a challenging character with a kit that will reward your entire team if you do it well. His job is to make great characters greater. He's incredibly selfless in that regard, as most of his buffs are just better on other characters. It's why I like him as a character. He's arguable the best if not the ONLY purely support character.

Those videos you see of Wolfgang or Weremoose doing huge damage never actually have a Warly. They are always staged to see the potential damage and think it should be balanced around that. Veiwers don't realize that the cost of that damage modifier is that someone in the server has to deal with Warly's massive downsides. The fun from playing Warly is seeing how much your team can dominate the constant if you kept them all well buffed and yourself alive. With the portal, his big buffs come at just the cost of the ingredients instead of the cost of his big downsides. The damage seems practically free at that point, which is where the problem lies.

For years I argued for at least a 20 day cooldown on the portal per player, so that if you wanted the stupid damage he provides for characters who already do stupid damage, you'd have to actually somewhat commit to the support character for a bit first. Every time I suggested a nerf to the portal, most people just used the classic "if you don't like it, don't use it" line, and then that was the end of the discussion. The issue wasn't that the portal fundamentally invalidates playing some characters, the issue was me for not pretending like there was no problem.

I don't want to talk about how balanced chaud froid is when players don't actually have to deal with the means of getting the item. If you don't like chaud froid, don't use it

[cybers2001]

You're saying it's not a Wolfgang problem, it's a Warly problem. @Evelosays (surprise surprise) it's not a Warly problem, it's a CP problem.

I, however, say it's not a CP problem. It's a bundling wrap problem.