feedback Willow, a personal retrospective and thoughts on her skill tree

[-Variant]

This post is most certainly going to be a bit everywhere. I know it's very out-of-character of me, but I've been waiting for this day for years now. I usually try to keep a sorta professional flare and I promise I'll try to keep that up today. I'll start with my quick little tragic backstory and then go into the meat of how I feel about the beta.

Side note. Man were people really excited to see me post about this, aha. Over 800+ plus missed messages in a single day! My legacy must really be known.

I'll spoiler the backstory portion and personal view portions to try to keep this easily readable.

Spoiler

I've mained Willow since early DS, and say what you will, I still enjoy her there. Most certainly not the best, but she's fun to me.

She got the short end of the stick when being ported to DST, I'm very glad the low sanity burning thing was gone for the sake of multiplayer but things like losing out on fire immunity was really bad.
You get the story, let me fast forward to her rework. I... feel it was dire. There was a vocal outcry that needed to happen to give her, her OWN immunity back during it. That didn't boost my confidence at all.

I say this jokingly a lot but I still feel it was a Bernie rework. She had her fire based kit put to the side in exchange for a major rework of Bernie, the bear.

That entire rework felt off, it was one of the earliest ones and all the ones after it seemed to just get better and better. I've been clawing at Willow in an attempt to get her a minor update like Wurt and Wortox received to bring her up a notch but that never happened.

Fast forward to yesterday... Yesterday was a bit of a bad day for work related reasons, I ended up missing the beta drop, too.
I feel like the sour day yesterday might've influenced me tonally, but I confess, I feel really off about the direction they went with Willow in this skill tree.

I had set myself up with two specific wishes, those being that Bernie wouldn't get the spotlight again, and that they'd shy away from making her an overly typical Mage type character.

Spoiler

Yes, I get it, it was unrealistic to hope they'd avoid relying on the mage trope but still. It's a personal gripe but it's there. You may disagree with my view entirely!

I've always loved Willow as a character because of how vague she sort of was. I like that her immunity was never actually expanded on and/or explained. To me she was just a woman who happened to be immune to fire, ahah. I liked that, it was funny.
I feel like, as funny as it currently is, going to actual magic casting takes a bit of that charm away.

I understand you need to use magic to make any of these make and remote sense but I feel like she can get away with it not making sense. She can manipulate fires just because she's the woman who happens to be immune to fire! 
It's... more of a title, gripe, really. I didn't want her becoming "Willow, the Witch/Mage."
I think all the promotional imagery of her dressing as a Witch is really funny when you consider that she isn't actually one. She just likes to joke about it. 

Okay, personal rant over.

Going over the actual skill tree itself now, I have some concerns.
Foremost, I think Bernie takes the cake once again. I actually don't think I have anything to say about his skills, yet, though! I think they did a wonderful job with him. Even if its not something I expected, I think it came out wonderful. Props, I mean it!

Now, for my concerns... the lighter branch.
I've been feeling like the team isn't confident when it comes to sticking it out with fire based abilities. I feel like some of the changes in this tree kind of reflect that, as well. 
I'll make a post about these skills and go more in depth in them after this, but to quickly go over them...

Controlled burning.
Loot smoldering. PERFECT, I've been begging for this for years!
100% igniting rate for torches/Lighter? Unexpected, very delightful though.

Fires not spreading... Both actively harmful, and a bit redundant. 
Fire spreading is such an important part of fires in of themselves, removing this is both harmful to a lot of gameplay tricks and is counteracted by another skill Willow receives. 
I, and a lot of other Willow main peers look forward to spreading fires for uses such as mob entrapment and charcoal gaining.
Losing out on the spreading fire makes me not want to pick this skill, and since its at the start of the branch, I forfeit the ENTIRE branch due to this.
As noted earlier, the need for spreading fires to be removed is counteracted by the Hungry Lighter perk. This gives her the most control over fires and how they spread she's ever had! 

My suggestion for Controlled Burning? 
Leave it mostly as is, and either remove the lack of fire spreading, OR give her the ability to stomp out/extinguish fires even if they're not smoldering.
Additionally, maybe just keep the lack of spread to MOBs on fire. Manually set fires should spread, but panicking mobs might benefit from it not spreading from them.

Burn Duration.
This one is weird. I personally hoped for the opposite, actually.

Shorter burn times is nice for charcoal gaining, but that's it! The other uses for fire such as light and warmth are taken away, ESPECIALLY during Winter, where you'd want it the most!
Having played with it a bit in Winter, I feel it just turns me off of wanting to start fires for warmth/light.
I like the longer burn times for mob damage, it's nice.

My suggestions for Burn Duration is to just make burning objects last longer. It provides more warmth, light, AND gives you more time to put out important burning structures.

Firefighter.
This one is fine! Simple, but nice.

Ember Tender.
No gripes with this skill, but I feel it's odd that its in its own slot but needs others selected to function. 
Please correct me if I'm wrong on this. I just feel like the suction range for Embers need to be increased.

Spontaneous Combustion.
Really funny. I don't have enough opinions on it yet so say too much, but it's fun!

Fireball.
Feels like it's intended to be a cheaper Dwarf Star. It's alright, the light is neat.
Mmmaayyybbbbbeeeee introduce a way to make it portable? I'd love to carry a fire wisp with me.

Burning Frenzy.
This one I feel needs the most work.

It sticks out a bit compared to the other fire perks.
I find the needing to switch from casting to weapons to be cumbersome to use, it's also a VERY specific skill that needs set up. Very gimmick-y.
The time limit for it is another odd factor.

Personally, I'd want to see this one exchanged for another fire based perk.
I've got two very loosely thought out ones in mind.
Burning Woman, and Elated Ecstasy. 

Burning Woman/Self immolation.*
Basically, Willow's own version of the Burning Bernie skill.

Ignite yourself and become a walking woman of pyre.
I feel a skill like this would be very useful, as it provides the benefits of Burning Frenzy since you'd be doing damage to mobs whilst being on fire, and also does a whole lot more.
Becoming a walking source of warmth and light has its benefits for team play, alongside yourself, of course.
It could cost a hefty amount of Embers and be for a limited time to balance it out.

Some neat gimmicks could be cooking foods you walk over. Or even letting players use you as a campfire for cooking. Clearing Miasma would be niche, but nice as well. More flavor, really.

Elated Ecstasy.*
My less thought out of the two suggestions, but I like the idea of it.

Gain heightened damage and MINOR health regen whilst burning.
This plays into the gameplay loop of always wanting to set fire to things and also, again, provides the bonus of Burning Frenzy whilst also adding more to the perk itself.
This would encourage you to plunge yourself into fires during combat, and would also help boost your fights with burning mobs, as standing close enough to mobs on fire also procs fire damage against yourself, thus triggering the perk.

I imagine this would play better without a cost, but a high cost would also work for balances sake.

Final thoughts and TLDR:
Whilst I am really bummed out about some aspects, I think over all they did a really fine job with her skill tree. Some perks need cleaning up and I'm sad Bernie got a huge focus but I think the fact that they did so well with his makes it up to me almost entirely.

I think it's about time she got her spotlight and I think they did a great job bringing her up to par. I almost feel like she's deserving of such a strong boost in her gameplay with how she's been falling behind for years now.
I'll make specific posts about her skills in a bit after this.

[goblinball]

17 minutes ago, -Variant said:

Burning Woman/Self immolation.*
Basically, Willow's own version of the Burning Bernie skill.

Ignite yourself and become a walking woman of pyre.
I feel a skill like this would be very useful, as it provides the benefits of Burning Frenzy since you'd be doing damage to mobs whilst being on fire, and also does a whole lot more.
Becoming a walking source of warmth and light has its benefits for team play, alongside yourself, of course.
It could cost a hefty amount of Embers and be for a limited time to balance it out.

Yes!!!! This would be so much fun!! I don’t play Willow at all but honestly being able to just explode and set yourself on fire and run around sounds so much fun and is perfectly fitting for willow

i also agree that Willow just being a pyromaniac is more interesting than her being a fire mage, but I think the skill tree is still fun so I won’t complain much

[Yuuko]

I don't really like breaking up posts, but I think in this case its the best way to respond:

46 minutes ago, -Variant said:

I feel really off about the direction they went with Willow in this skill tree.

Aside from fire magic and bernie magic, what would Willow's perks be?  imo her identity has always been "the girl Wilson," but that has long faded out as both Winona was added as "new girl Wilson" AND skill trees even made Wilson not Wilson...  They had to do something, what else could it have been?  I only really see these two directions and think generally they did an alright job of taking the most requested things and making them happen.  If there is anything I'm disappointed with its exactly that - this is mostly just whatever the community requested.  Nothing about the skill trees surprised me.  imo that's okay, and really my only critical point about this skill tree on a whole.

 

46 minutes ago, -Variant said:

Controlled burning.
Fires not spreading... Both actively harmful, and a bit redundant. 

maybe just keep the lack of spread to MOBs on fire. Manually set fires should spread, but panicking mobs might benefit from it not spreading from them.

 

Burn Duration.
This one is weird. I personally hoped for the opposite, actually.

A+ on both of these comments.  Making mobs not spread fire, but leaving all other sources to spread is imo the right change.  Same with having objects burn longer instead of shorter.

46 minutes ago, -Variant said:

Ember Tender.
No gripes with this skill, but I feel it's odd that its in its own slot but needs others selected to function. 
Please correct me if I'm wrong on this. I just feel like the suction range for Embers need to be increased.
 

It comes with the 1 ember burn spell so its not totally wasted, but yeah I think they wanted the point sink count to go up for balance reasons.  They need to make you choose between best fire magic or best bernie, so the extra skill acts like a tax on preventing you from maxing both sides.

46 minutes ago, -Variant said:

Burning Frenzy.
I find the needing to switch from casting to weapons to be cumbersome to use, it's also a VERY specific skill that needs set up. Very gimmick-y.
The time limit for it is another odd factor.

You can pretty easily switch to your lighter for 1 swing to set them ablaze and swap back to your weapon.  I tend to prefer this then to cast combustion or any other way to light my target mob on fire.  Combustion is alright-ish for farming ember on bees and spiders, but its not the best way to light a combat target like a boss on fire.

46 minutes ago, -Variant said:

Final thoughts and TLDR:
Whilst I am really bummed out about some aspects, I think over all they did a really fine job with her skill tree. Some perks need cleaning up and I'm sad Bernie got a huge focus but I think the fact that they did so well with his makes it up to me almost entirely.

I think it's about time she got her spotlight and I think they did a great job bringing her up to par. I almost feel like she's deserving of such a strong boost in her gameplay with how she's been falling behind for years now.
I'll make specific posts about her skills in a bit after this.

Bernie got a huge focus, and if you take the Burning Bernie skill he is probably better than Abigail for crowds atm BUT that taxes you out of the fire path.  You have to make decisions.  You can decide to leave Bernie aside taking every lighter perk and have a pretty good kit so I feel she got good options for both people who want Bernie and people who don't.

All in all - as I said before nothing is really surprising with this skill tree, which is okay b/c its what many have been asking for - and it is fun to play.  There is still room for tweaking and adjusting, so I'm glad Klei released the beta a bit early to get more feedback time.

[GenomeSquirrel]

I'll admit I'm not a fan of the nonspreading fires and shorter burn time, and would have preferred kerosene douse/spread and ignite type animations over Xmen movie poses

but Willow looks (i won't be able test until a few days) unique now, I'm a lot more content than when we weren't even going to get fire immunity back in initial rework.

 

[-Variant]

9 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

I don't really like breaking up posts, but I think in this case its the best way to respond:

12 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

Aside from fire magic and bernie magic, what would Willow's perks be?

I appreciate the break down. It's easier to respond to things this way.
I want to clarify this since I know it's going to be my most confusing take ever.

I love the exploration of fire magic, it's what I wanted, I just have a personal bias against the mage trope. It's visual flare, really. (And on the Bernie note, I expected a tree dedicated to fire. I think the use of Bernie for it was unexpected, but I feel it's welcomed with how well they did it.)
Things like Willow waving her hands and shooting out rows of fire from her palm feel out of character to me! It's not something she's ever done before. It's just the visual execution, I think the skills could all stay with it using a bit of a more sensical approach. I think approach the nonsensical with sensical is fitting, and funny. That's all, really. Nothing against what we actually got in the end.

15 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

It comes with the 1 ember burn spell so its not totally wasted, but yeah I think they wanted the point sink count to go up for balance reasons.  They need to make you choose between best fire magic or best bernie, so the extra skill acts like a tax on preventing you from maxing both sides.

I knew I was forgetting something. Thank you for clarifying that for me!

28 minutes ago, goblinball said:

Yes!!!! This would be so much fun!!

It's something I did in my own personal take on her rework. It really is a lot of fun, I'd love to see it in the vanilla game!

[glitterfr33ze]

53 minutes ago, -Variant said:

My suggestion for Controlled Burning? 
Leave it mostly as is, and either remove the lack of fire spreading, OR give her the ability to stomp out/extinguish fires even if they're not smoldering.

YESSS KLEI DO THIS. It'd work wonders against griefers. You could become a Willow player that knows how to protect her group from bad actors, like a good luck charm. 

Edit: as for the fire magic, I think it's cute. It can be regarded as her controlling the fires she'd light around herself on low sanity in vanilla. But personally, I'd like the visuals to look a bit less mmorpg Power Blast inspired

[ButterStuffed]

53 minutes ago, -Variant said:

Yes, I get it, it was unrealistic to hope they'd avoid relying on the mage trope but still. It's a personal gripe but it's there. You may disagree with my view entirely!

For literally 10 years Willow's fire related abilities were never once considered magical. No character quotes hint towards magic, all of her abilities were logically sound within the game world, (besides Bernie I suppose) her cinematic even went as far as to make it plausible for Willow to have caused an explosion through non-magical means. The sudden shift towards explaining her abilities as literally magic is such a huge left turn that I was not at all expecting. I think it was absolutely reasonable to hope or even assume that they wouldn't go with the fire witch trope.

Personally I wish her skill tree wasn't as heavily combat oriented as it is. Don't get me wrong I have no problem with combat based abilities, but I can't say I expected Willow being the type of character to have almost her entire skill tree dedicated to improving her combat ability in one way or another. But I digress, that is just my thoughts after having read yours. I do not dislike Willow's skill tree, but I definitely didn't expect it either.

[Theukon-dos]

fun fact: The range on fire absorbtion is so low that it sometimes doesn't even work. If a structure has too large a hit box, such as pig houses. It's entirely impossible to extinguish.

[Yuuko]

5 minutes ago, ButterStuffed said:

Personally I wish her skill tree wasn't as heavily combat oriented as it is. Don't get me wrong I have no problem with combat based abilities, but I can't say I expected Willow being the type of character to have almost her entire skill tree dedicated to improving her combat ability in one way or another. But I digress, that is just my thoughts after having read yours. I do not dislike Willow's skill tree, but I definitely didn't expect it either.

Sadly that will be a recurring theme.  Every character is going to become a combat character.  That is kinda the planar and skill tree thesis - knock out all traditional powers, and rebuild everyone into a combat character.  We're pretty clearly in the DSTRPG realm now.

2 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

fun fact: The range on fire absorbtion is so low that it sometimes doesn't even work. If a structure has too large a hit box, such as pig houses. It's entirely impossible to extinguish.

Is this because of range?  Or because certain structures are exempt from extinguishing?  I noticed I cannot do bunny hutches, pig houses, or slurtle mounds but I can do other structures with the same collision...  Someone mentioned that "organic structures" as they call them cannot be extinguished with her lighter.  Its kinda an unspoken thing though ?

[ButterStuffed]

Just now, Shosuko said:

Sadly that will be a recurring theme.  Every character is going to become a combat character.  That is kinda the planar and skill tree thesis - knock out all traditional powers, and rebuild everyone into a combat character.  We're pretty clearly in the DSTRPG realm now.

I would hope not.

Woodie's tree didn't have that problem, Wilson didn't have that problem, Wormwood didn't have that problem, ironically even Wolfgang has more non-combat related skills than Willow. There are options to specialize in something other than duking it out with the wilderness for everybody else besides Wigfrid, but that is to be expected. For Willow the options for a full build are restricted to either having Bernie be good at fighting or being a fire flinging witch.

[Scrimbles]

 

29 minutes ago, ButterStuffed said:

For literally 10 years Willow's fire related abilities were never once considered magical. No character quotes hint towards magic, all of her abilities were logically sound within the game world, (besides Bernie I suppose) her cinematic even went as far as to make it plausible for Willow to have caused an explosion through non-magical means. The sudden shift towards explaining her abilities as literally magic is such a huge left turn that I was not at all expecting. I think it was absolutely reasonable to hope or even assume that they wouldn't go with the fire witch trope.

Personally I wish her skill tree wasn't as heavily combat oriented as it is. Don't get me wrong I have no problem with combat based abilities, but I can't say I expected Willow being the type of character to have almost her entire skill tree dedicated to improving her combat ability in one way or another. But I digress, that is just my thoughts after having read yours. I do not dislike Willow's skill tree, but I definitely didn't expect it either.

Creating interesting and rewarding utility in a character is way harder than making combat skills that do a lot of damage, and going the generic "fire witch" approach is much easier than "fire obsessed weirdo".

 

 

 

So, obviously, klei chose the combat oriented generic fire witch approach.

[Toroic]

+1 to the "don't prevent fire spread with a skill" suggestion. 

Fires spreading is a part of normal character toolkits (such as controlled burns for charcoal) and if you increase the radius for the lighter extinguish willow already has all the tools she needs to create and remove fire.

Controlled Burning, which is essential to any fire-based combat because burning the loot is unacceptable, is anti-synergistic with Hungry Lighter.  Removing the "prevent fire spread" and increasing the radius for Hunger Lighter I believe would be an improvement.

I do get where people are coming from, pyromaniac is very different fundamentally from fire witch, but Willow has a long history of supernatural powers related to fire.  Her earliest version (pre strange new powers) was immune to fire and would spontaneously create fire when engulfed in darkness.

I'd probably have preferred some sort of sanity based pyrokinesis flavor that felt more psychic and not magical based, but that's a thematic criticism and not a mechanical one.

Willow has a lot of fun, cool abilities and it's nice to see after so many years of being mechanically pretty sparse.

[Yuuko]

23 minutes ago, ButterStuffed said:

I would hope not.

Woodie's tree didn't have that problem, Wilson didn't have that problem, Wormwood didn't have that problem, ironically even Wolfgang has more non-combat related skills than Willow. There are options to specialize in something other than duking it out with the wilderness for everybody else besides Wigfrid, but that is to be expected. For Willow the options for a full build are restricted to either having Bernie be good at fighting or being a fire flinging witch.

Woodie got big buffs to his moose form, including regen, a higher dps combo, and planar damage added.  Wolfgang was already as much damage as needed so he actually just got planar nerf / restore in his skill tree.  I suspect other competent combat characters (Maxwell, Wanda, Wendy, etc) will get a similar treatment where some of their power is backed off to be in the tree while other non-combat characters (Wicker, Wortox, etc) are going to get shifted into combat the same way Willow did.

imo @Scrimbles put it quite succinctly. 

23 minutes ago, Scrimbles said:

 

Creating interesting and rewarding utility in a character is way harder than making combat skills that do a lot of damage, and going the generic "fire witch" approach is much easier than "fire obsessed weirdo".

 

 

 

So, obviously, klei chose the combat oriented generic fire witch approach.

 

[arubaro]

46 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

Sadly that will be a recurring theme.  Every character is going to become a combat character.  That is kinda the planar and skill tree thesis - knock out all traditional powers, and rebuild everyone into a combat character.  We're pretty clearly in the DSTRPG realm now.

Is this because of range?  Or because certain structures are exempt from extinguishing?  I noticed I cannot do bunny hutches, pig houses, or slurtle mounds but I can do other structures with the same collision...  Someone mentioned that "organic structures" as they call them cannot be extinguished with her lighter.  Its kinda an unspoken thing though ?

fires ln moon trees cant be extinguish neither

[Mr Giggio]

1 hour ago, -Variant said:

I just feel like the suction range for Embers need to be increased.

A hundred percent. For me it would be just like wortox range they insta go to u as soon u have lighter on.

 

1 hour ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

I'll admit I'm not a fan of the nonspreading fires and shorter burn time

u can also count on me with that. Seems like going to the opposite intention that is making Willow proeficient with fire mechanics around her. Just make she able to extinguish actually fire like the OP said.

 

[Trips]

38 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

Woodie got big buffs to his moose form, including regen, a higher dps combo, and planar damage added.  Wolfgang was already as much damage as needed so he actually just got planar nerf / restore in his skill tree.  I suspect other competent combat characters (Maxwell, Wanda, Wendy, etc) will get a similar treatment where some of their power is backed off to be in the tree while other non-combat characters (Wicker, Wortox, etc) are going to get shifted into combat the same way Willow did.

imo @Scrimbles put it quite succinctly. 

 

in Klei's defense, they do have a lot of character skill trees to plan out. they probably have to dilute their creative resources across the various skill trees, how they'd interact with each other while also planning out future content like bosses and maybe even areas, etc. etc...

whether or not skill trees for the entire roster of DST is a bit too ambitious of an undertaking in of itself is another thing. 

a modder could probably create a higher quality Willow skill tree since it would be a much more focused effort on propping up one character instead of eighteen, and probably wouldn't be as worried about planning about future skill trees or caring as much how it'd interact with other current versions of characters

[glitterfr33ze]

 

55 minutes ago, Trips said:

a modder could probably create a higher quality Willow skill tree since it would be a much more focused effort on propping up one character instead of eighteen, and probably wouldn't be as worried about planning about future skill trees or caring as much how it'd interact with other current versions of characters

That's true. But Klei is a company, and a company that pays their employees. Modders are doing it for free. As much as I sympathise with the workload, their work doesn't have to be subpar just because they...have more work. And it's not like other characters have a fire themed skill tree to take away from Willow's! She might be a flat character for some if you're not into what she represents, but imho I feel there's a lot of potential for interesting mechanics, whether they're inspired by her past or her present

[SpuddyBuddy]

Maybe we wouldn't need so many combat abilities if Klei didn't insist on adding progression through combat in a game that has notoriously bad combat.

Sorry but that's literally my biggest gripe with the direction DST's been going for a while now; combat isn't fun or engaging, but they keep adding combat instead of survival challenges.

My own gripes aside, I quite concur. I also never really saw Willow's abilities as being inherently magical in nature. If you asked me, I'd probably either say she's like that because she's like that, or something along the line of what Toros said about it being something psychic in nature(even Bernie could be explained away with this; she believed he could get up and protect her, so he does). I haven't gotten to play for myself because I've been sick, but does she really just cast fire from her hands? That really seems like a disservice to her character if that's true.

Also being able to self-immolate sounds fun lol

[-Variant]

6 minutes ago, TrashLord said:

I'd probably either say she's like that because she's like that

This has always how I've viewed her. She's just like that!

6 minutes ago, TrashLord said:

does she really just cast fire from her hands? That really seems like a disservice to her character if that's true.

In most of her abilities she raises her hands and a fire pops into existence where you put your mouse.
In her alignment skills, she does hand-blast things.

[Dextops]

2 minutes ago, -Variant said:

This has always how I've viewed her. She's just like that!

In most of her abilities she raises her hands and a fire pops into existence where you put your mouse.
In her alignment skills, she does hand-blast things.

I’m sorry but everytime I see the lunar fire cast all I can think of is Biden blast.

[Yuuko]

37 minutes ago, 9screamingkittens said:

 

That's true. But Klei is a company, and a company that pays their employees. Modders are doing it for free. As much as I sympathise with the workload, their work doesn't have to be subpar just because they...have more work. And it's not like other characters have a fire themed skill tree to take away from Willow's! She might be a flat character for some if you're not into what she represents, but imho I feel there's a lot of potential for interesting mechanics, whether they're inspired by her past or her present

I think what Klei did was basically gather up all of the community suggestions and task themselves with working out how to mostly get it all in the game.  I don't feel anything from Willow's skill set was actually from Klei's imagination.  As such I don't fault Klei with the results here.  They are fine enough, and plenty of players (me included) will love them even if some had their own interpretations of Willow's powers previously.

And that is definitely one of the big changes DST is going through - previously characters and lore were both very light.  Willow was essentially a vanilla character with a high durability low potency free torch and a bear that might taunt and tank for you, and might get lost and forgotten somewhere.  The lore of her powers was whatever players thought explained it best to them - and for those of us with the original Willow in mind a more psychic focused "happening" like being nervous and creating a fire, or feeling scared and animating a bear to protect her, all fit in as a troubled girl without her being a fire mage.

But now we're on a bender of hard coded lore with Charlie and Wagstaff directly represented in game with dialogue and everything for the first time solidifying exactly what is going on in what was previously a very nebulous narrative.  We have combat escalation that both requires combat and rewards you with combat, turning DST into a much more combat focused game.  We're just 1 final boss away from the game being "beaten."

Again I don't fault Klei, in a way its the natural progression of a game like DST that wants to continue adding content, building up, etc - eventually it has to lead somewhere right?

[EthanTheMime]

4 hours ago, -Variant said:

and that they'd shy away from making her an overly typical Mage type character.

i've always liked your take on willow not being a pyromancer type character--i think it's just a thought that's very indicative of someone being a real fan of her. i've also always appreciated the vague nature of her story, and i would definitely say that you liking the abilities but not their presentation is very valid. i don't really have much else to say here, i just think it's cool to see someone vocally appreciate don't starve and like a character in the way that you do (and clearly im not the only one if so many others were anticipating your thoughts on the beta) 

[Golden Daemon]

8 hours ago, -Variant said:

Controlled burning.
Loot smoldering. PERFECT, I've been begging for this for years!
100% igniting rate for torches/Lighter? Unexpected, very delightful though.

Fires not spreading... Both actively harmful, and a bit redundant. 
Fire spreading is such an important part of fires in of themselves, removing this is both harmful to a lot of gameplay tricks and is counteracted by another skill Willow receives. 
I, and a lot of other Willow main peers look forward to spreading fires for uses such as mob entrapment and charcoal gaining.
Losing out on the spreading fire makes me not want to pick this skill, and since its at the start of the branch, I forfeit the ENTIRE branch due to this.
As noted earlier, the need for spreading fires to be removed is counteracted by the Hungry Lighter perk. This gives her the most control over fires and how they spread she's ever had! 

My suggestion for Controlled Burning? 
Leave it mostly as is, and either remove the lack of fire spreading, OR give her the ability to stomp out/extinguish fires even if they're not smoldering.
Additionally, maybe just keep the lack of spread to MOBs on fire. Manually set fires should spread, but panicking mobs might benefit from it not spreading from them.

Burn Duration.
This one is weird. I personally hoped for the opposite, actually.

Shorter burn times is nice for charcoal gaining, but that's it! The other uses for fire such as light and warmth are taken away, ESPECIALLY during Winter, where you'd want it the most!
Having played with it a bit in Winter, I feel it just turns me off of wanting to start fires for warmth/light.
I like the longer burn times for mob damage, it's nice.

My suggestions for Burn Duration is to just make burning objects last longer. It provides more warmth, light, AND gives you more time to put out important burning structures.

I personally think they should give willow two stages of burning items/structures/trees, the first time she uses her lighter to burn something it causes a controlled burning , causing the item to burn for a longer duration than normal without spreading to other places.
Then she could use her lighter on an already (controllably) burning item to turn the controlled burning into a wildfire, allowing it to spread to and ignite other nearby items much faster than normal rate.

This fixes the two problems simultaneously while keeping the best of both worlds.

[Szczuku]

I wish skill trees and new updates in general were less combat-oriented...

I wish Klei didn't feel the need to introduce new enemies in updates that aren't supposed to be about combat and new enemies. I wish that Wilson's 'rework' hadn't been overshadowed by Daywalker, the main menu animation didn't scream "Wilson rework", it screamed "New Boss! Here's Wilson, as he's the poster child of dst"

I wish Willow's tree didn't make her a pyromancer. 

I wish it gave her more generic, everyday-use perks; something like "Extra Adorable Lavae will regain hunger when close to Willow", "Willow can stare into the campfire to restore sanity quickly"

I wish the game wasn't going the way it is.

[Captain_Rage]

7 hours ago, EthanTheMime said:

i've always liked your take on willow not being a pyromancer type character--i think it's just a thought that's very indicative of someone being a real fan of her. i've also always appreciated the vague nature of her story, and i would definitely say that you liking the abilities but not their presentation is very valid. i don't really have much else to say here, i just think it's cool to see someone vocally appreciate don't starve and like a character in the way that you do (and clearly im not the only one if so many others were anticipating your thoughts on the beta) 

If you have played Griftlands (another game by Klei) there is a character called Rook who works as an undercover agent, also with a very shrouded past. Through his whole campaign nothing ever says that he is psychic, not lorewise either, but here and there (for example in certain themes of his artwork) suddenly heavy suggestions show up that he is. It feels a bit like some of the cosmetic skins in DST which also come with certain implications for the survivors.