Wes's skill tree suggestions and thoughts

[Catuna_]

During Klei's rhymes with play stream, they've said that they'd love feedback and ideas on the forums for Wes' skill tree, about when players like to play him and why. I thought I'd make a post to share my thoughts on what I'd love to see, and what I wouldn't like to see in his skill tree for when it comes out.

Wes is a character of very negligible upsides and horrible downsides, being able to control his sanity and help others regain it via an AoE aswell as being an aggression magnet for hounds has its uses, but it's always outweighed by his low stats and especially low damage.
Personally the reason I play Wes is that always been charmed by Wes' design pretty early into me getting into DST, something about his expressiveness and complete silence has always been very charming to me. Other people may like trying to work around his downsides, whether it'd be getting into beefalo taming or compensating for his low damage by using a Thulecite club's shadow tentacle perk.

With that out of the way, let's talk about his potential skill tree. An idea I've seen discussed is that his skill tree would contain nothing but purely negative perks that hinder him more: I really dislike this idea, I think that it defeats the idea of skill trees in general and the idea of Wes being designed as a challenge character.

What I actually hope for his skill tree is perks that provide an okay amount of utility at heavy caveats and drawbacks. A perfect example of this would be to expand on his balloonomancy tab, as I think it could use a fair bit of new content. Wes's speedy balloon and party balloons are genuinely decent, the former allows him to have one of the best options for early game speed while the latter lets him regain sanity that scales extremely well with the amount of players present for free. But all of his crafts come with drawbacks, such as popping when taking damage in the case of the hat, vest and speedy balloon and the party balloon requiring people to huddle close for the sanity gain. I'd love to see this be expanded on, like a big balloon that Wes can hit that causes panic from mobs hit from several balloons popping inside of them, but resulting in him getting hit most/all of the time when he triggers it via melee, or one-time use balloon mines that deal an okay amount of damage but would quickly rack up sanity loss for Wes and are a one-time use that can deal damage to him.Another option for his skill tree is to also provide straight minor buffs, like a perk that makes his balloons take two hits to pop, or increasing their durability which would be extremely useful for the speedy balloon. It's also possible to add more team-centered perks: like the increased hound aggression towards Wes, it would be inconvenient for the Wes but helpful for his allies, which fits with his character spreading fortune via his terrible luck... I don't have any ideas for examples on this one.

Perks like these would allow Wes to gain more options in what he can do but still abides by caveats and his low stats, I would hope for his skill tree to focus on providing a better early-mid game experience for him, as I believe that the new planar damage mechanic, enlightened crown and the new armor more than make up for most of his big downsides offering him the brightshade staff and the planar weapons which offers a sustainable method of breaking the 50 damage breaking point, while still being inline with the other survivors compared to the difference between Wes's hambat and dark sword and Wilson's for example. The void robe prevents negative sanity auras, a repairable way of letting Wes essentially ignore his low sanity downside. So the reward payoff for the new content feels more and more satisfying.

[Waitdire]

Few people mention this, but Wes has an unobvious plus, it breaks weapons 34% slower, of course, this is offset by its 0.75% damage, but it also works with fire/ice/bright staffs, and also gives more space to get bonuses from some weapons (shadow tentacles from Thulecite Club with 268 uses, healing from a batbat, Tail o' Three Cats, glass cutter, all fighting staffs, all planar weapons).

[Dr.Webber]

Speaking of skill trees 

 

 

[Funny Wonker]

I don't really know if Wes should have a skill tree or not. But it's good to make him a challenge so, I'd say no.

[Catuna_]

On 8/20/2023 at 1:29 AM, Funny Wonker said:

I don't really know if Wes should have a skill tree or not. But it's good to make him a challenge so, I'd say no.

There's no reason to lock any character out of a skill tree... It'd look unnatural and jarring for this particular character to not have a skill tree like everyone does, and it'd be a huge middle finger towards the player base of that character no matter how minimal. You can give a skill tree without making him good. As I say in the original post, it'd be cool if he had more minor upsides to work with.

[Fieldstorm]

I would honestly love to get the balloonmech from his original trailer as a part of a maybe final-skill for him.