Don't buff bernie!

[Jakepeng99]

Imagine these two videos, but with Willow joining in the fight with her spells at a safe distance.

Don't buff bernie more since alot of people think he needs buffed.

 

 

It looks like bernie has planar defence just like brightshades which reduce damage taken by alot. He probably needs a nerf if anything.

[Sunshine.]

4 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Imagine these two videos, but with Willow joining in the fight with her spells at a safe distance.

Best Willow could do is combustion with how the skill tree is set up. Having the burning Bernie doesn't allow you to have the Luna fire or the shadow tendtrill spells since there isn't enough insight points to get them.

I'm not saying that you aren't right, seeing Bernie solo Deerclops is quite uncanny to me. But it'll not be such a spell fest as you think it will when they picked the burning Bernie skill - which does a lot of the damage in both videos too.

[Jakepeng99]

1 minute ago, Sunshine. said:

Best Willow could do is combustion with how the skill tree is set up. Having the burning Bernie doesn't allow you to have the Luna fire or the shadow tendtrill spells since there isn't enough insight points to get them.

I'm not saying that you aren't right, seeing Bernie solo Deerclops is quite uncanny to me. But it'll not be such a spell fest as you think it will when they picked the burning Bernie skill - which does a lot of the damage in both videos too.

The burning bernie skill seemed weak with minor contributions on deerclops. The spells definitely make up for it on both. Bernie would probably perform close to the same in these scenarios.

[arubaro]

why they added planar defense? makes no sense mechanically speaking. Is a huge buff cuz potatoe

[GenomeSquirrel]

Was it hard not to have Bernie kill the deer?

3 minutes ago, arubaro said:

why they added planar defense? makes no sense mechanically speaking. Is a huge buff cuz potatoe

like so new content wouldn't melt him

[Jakepeng99]

4 minutes ago, arubaro said:

why they added planar defense? makes no sense mechanically speaking. Is a huge buff cuz potatoe

They actually reduced bernies hp to 1000, but everyone begged klei to put it back to 2000. Everyone probably had no clue about the alignment planar defence.

1 minute ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

Was it hard not to have Bernie kill the deer?

like so new content wouldn't melt him

In the video, bernie focused on klaus almost all the time, except during the 2hd phase transition. Bernie normally attacks what is aggroed on Willow first.

[Mysterious box]

The problem is there's no incentives to use the Bernie tree because it's so restricted and bearly does anything to improve Bernie outside of bearly sane if nothing else hot headed needs changed and they need to lower the lock requirements a lot there's no world where burning Bernie is worth 9 points.

5 minutes ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

Was it hard not to have Bernie kill the deer?

like so new content wouldn't melt him

Problem here is they should have applied it where it only applies against faction enemies.

5 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

They actually reduced bernies hp to 1000, but everyone begged klei to put it back to 2000. Everyone probably had no clue about the alignment planar defence.

They said that was a accident

[Jakepeng99]

1 minute ago, Mysterious box said:

The problem is there's no incentives to use the Bernie tree because it's so restricted and bearly does anything to improve Bernie outside of bearly sane if nothing else hot headed needs changed and they need to lower the lock requirements a lot there's no world where burning Bernie is worth 9 points.

It is the alignment skill and the health skill doing the main work.

[Vahnheim]

[Mysterious box]

Just now, Jakepeng99 said:

It is the alignment skill and the health skill doing the main work.

I'm aware that doesn't change the problems I mentioned though

[flamboyant wolf]

6 minutes ago, arubaro said:

why they added planar defense? makes no sense mechanically speaking. Is a huge buff cuz potatoe

I think it's actually a pretty great use of planar mechanics. 

It makes it so Bernie can stand against the bigger foes better, while not making him completely invulnerable against regular enemies/shadows. 

Overall, I think Bernie is in a pretty good spot rn, though I don't really understand the point of "hot headed" skill. 

[Mysterious box]

There's too little customization with this and to fix your problem once again all we need to do is make his enhancements only apply to faction mobs

12 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

So I more or less like the Willow skill tree but there are a few gripes I have with it so I figured I'd bring those up here.

Bernie is the main one as most of his skills don't feel worthwhile and feel almost entirely there to hold back the better ones and chew through skill points.

Bearly Sane  Is a good one as raising the threshold for transformations is very helpful for keeping him around in fights so I have no complaints

Patch Up, Hot Head, and Accelerant mostly just feel like filler skills your forced to grab for the sake of his alignment and burning

Patch Up I feel like to make patch up more worthwhile Bernie should regen at all times including while he's not active but it could be halved when this is the case if people feel it's too much.

Accelerant This one could probably stay the same but I don't really see it being worth investing into

Hot Headed Should be completely erased as a skill as there's no good reason for it instead I'd recommend replacing it with a new skill that lets you shrink Bernie back to his small size temporarily and it could even have a additional effect to scare shadow creatures away for a few seconds when it's used as a small reference to the short

Tough Stuffing Is more or less fine

Burning Bernie Has two main issues first he requires far too many skill points for what the skill does it requires a full 9 insight to use and that's plain overkill and worse yet it kills build variety in the skill tree if your planning to use it since it makes the tree all or nothing. The second big issue with it is that the duration on the ability is far too short so when your fighting you constantly have to keep lighting him on fire. Raising the duration to 1-2 minutes per burn would do wonders for making the use of it far less annoying.

 

What I feel should change to open up more variety in Bernie's tree is instead of the locks tie some more of his skills together into mini branches for example:

• bearly sane 1 and 2 would stay together but my suggested hot head replacement would become the third option in the bearly sane tree
• for tough stuffing, patch up would be the 3rd option
• for accelerant, burning Bernie would be the 3rd option

This would potentially lead to some unwanted skills but it would allow more freedom in mixing and matching the Lighter and Bernie skills in builds

 

As for the lighter skills overall I feel like there's not too many issues but I do want to touch on a few things with them too.

Hungry Lighter This skill's absorption range is far too small and takes far too long to refuel the lighter if your not using cheese methods

Flame Cast and Combustion I feel has too little range so I feel they should be increased a bit

Burning Frenzy Suffers from the same issue as burning Bernie as you'll find yourself recasting far too often

Personally I still feel this is more or less the route they should go about handling this but with a mechanic to make it so Bernie's planar alignment doesn't apply when not fighting faction enemies as outright nerfing him will just make him unusable late game.

To be clear, my main issue with this skill true is that if the goal was to encourage customization Willow's fails because Bernie's tree doesn't offer you choices

[Captain_Rage]

What happened to good game design?

[arubaro]

5 minutes ago, skile said:

I think it's actually a pretty great use of planar mechanics. 

It makes it so Bernie can stand against the bigger foes better, while not making him completely invulnerable against regular enemies/shadows. 

Overall, I think Bernie is in a pretty good spot rn, though I don't really understand the point of "hot headed" skill. 

old bernie already needed 20 hits from a 100 damage boss to be defeated. Now he got extra health, regeneration and planar defense at day 1. Nobody asked ever for a buff for him because you were able to revive him with sewing kit or crafting more bernies

also bernie isnt the only perk willow has, unlike wendy getting only abigail, so she got spell plus a bernie on steroids

[Mysterious box]

5 minutes ago, arubaro said:

also bernie isnt the only perk willow has, unlike wendy getting only abigail, so she got spell plus a bernie on steroids

But Bernie was the only perk she had. And we both know that wendy isn't staying the same either.

 

6 minutes ago, arubaro said:

old bernie already needed 20 hits from a 100 damage boss to be defeated. Now he got extra health, regeneration and planar defense at day 1. Nobody asked ever for a buff for him because you were able to revive him with sewing kit or crafting more bernies

Honestly, this is kind of the issue of the skill trees that anyone who opposed them got crap for because they're designed with instant gratification in mind which is what everything has been leaning towards we're getting power we shouldn't have out of spawn but that we need in the end game however if these powers were locked behind the end game forever most players would be very upset as many would never see them. And we're going to see more of this when it comes to Webber, Wendy, Wurt, and God help us Maxwell. 

[Sunshine.]

9 minutes ago, arubaro said:

old bernie already needed 20 hits from a 100 damage boss to be defeated. Now he got extra health, regeneration and planar defense at day 1. Nobody asked ever for a buff for him because you were able to revive him with sewing kit or crafting more bernies

That is assuming that not a single Shadow will spawn during your insanity, which does sometimes happen but is rather unrealistic. In a multiplayer setting, it would also be more than your own Shadows that he will be fighting. With crawling horrors already spawning at 82.5% of someone's max sanity, which then aggro on Bernie as well, it was rather comical as to how bad he was at his job. I had countless times where big Bernie was more of a hassle to control & have shadows aggro on him to prevent others from having to deal with insanity than him actually helping. And him dying within a minute of that was just an insult to injury.

His activation mechanics were quite annoying as well, forcing Willow to be on her insanity threshold but then staying up till she reached above 50% - IF Bernie is occupied with fighting something. This could backfire in both ways - him staying up to little since she reached over her insanity but currently no shadows have been spawning or him refusing to turn small since Willow is far below her 50% sanity limit at times where you gotta be going - thus leaving him behind. Bearly sane helps a lot here, allowing to stay near the 50% limit to use him and not having to dip into actual insanity.

All of this is also contrasted to other characters, such as Wendy being able to summon / desummon with just an animation, whenever she feels like it. Bernie even had a cooldown on his transformation so if he went small, he cannot transform back for some secounds, which got me and others killed by splumonkeys & spiders before as well. Furthermore, characters such as Wolfgang and old Wanda can deal with insanity a lot easier than Willow ever could while benefiting from fuel even more than Willow (Wolfgangs double damage on dark swords, Wanda just being Wanda)

Not to mention the farming of fuel using Bernie - I sometimes had situations where a single full Bernie was not enough to get me enough fuel for a Shadow Manipulator, depending on Shadow RNG. Bernie was cool but playing other characters just made him feel so bad in comparison. New Bernie has a lot more staying power and can do his job of surviving Shadows a lot better - even if making him take aggro of all the shadows in a team would still be a hustle at times. At least he won't die for a while now, so that's good.

 

TL;DR: From experience, Bernie was a lot weaker than most people perceived him as once you got to using him a lot. In comparison to what else you could pick for insanity related characters, Willow was the worst of them all even though she had Bernie. New Bernie manages to close the gap and is great for that.

[Jakepeng99]

I tried berrnie with Willow spells vs bee queen. I keep dying.

[Soul7k]

I get not wanting to have Bernie be super strong, but I gotta say even if the regen was working right at 1 hp per second 1800 hp over half an hour isn't a great ratio. Takes the poor guy almost a whole minute to recover from getting slapped one time by a single nightmare beak. Also I wish the lock for burning burnie wasnt so high. I am not crazy about a lot of his skills. 600 hp is fine, but the guy can already keep up with you holding a cane and he already fights just about all hostiles or peaceful shadow monster as is so i ignore those 3. Which leaves me with only the sanity thing which I am still quite not happy with since it raises her sanity threshold to 59 for him to come out and that still isn't high enough to pull off with a single shroom which will take you down to 20 when you gotta pop 2.

TLDR  hp good. sanity ok. everything else meh. lemmi get him on fire sooner

[Mysterious box]

Just now, Soul7k said:

I get not wanting to have Bernie be super strong, but I gotta say even if the regen was working right at 1 hp per second 1800 hp over half an hour isn't a great ratio. Takes the poor guy almost a whole minute to recover from getting slapped one time by a single nightmare beak. Also I wish the lock for burning burnie wasnt so high. I am not crazy about a lot of his skills. 600 hp is fine, but the guy can already keep up with you holding a cane and he already fights just about all hostiles or peaceful shadow monster as is so i ignore those 3. Which leaves me with only the sanity thing which I am still quite not happy with since it raises her sanity threshold to 59 for him to come out and that still isn't high enough to pull off with a single shroom which will take you down to 20 when you gotta pop 2.

TLDR  hp good. sanity ok. everything else meh. lemmi get him on fire sooner

Yea most of his tree feels like forced filler.

[Trips]

Deerclops isn't really a great example to demonstrate how powerful something is, to be honest. The threat of fighting him more comes from the inevitable shadow creatures that come to disrupt your kiting pattern. Besides that, he's a simple boss to fight and I haven't had any issues against him for a long time. 

Klaus on another hand is a better example, but not as indicative as you may think.

 

31 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

I tried berrnie with Willow spells vs bee queen. I keep dying.

It really could just be matchup dependent, like how Loyal Merms trivialize fights like Bee Queen but get stomped by any boss with a lot of AoEs

[Jakepeng99]

11 minutes ago, Trips said:

Klaus on another hand is a better example, but not as indicative as you may thin

Klaus is the boss where minions often automatically lose.

[Trips]

35 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Klaus is the boss where minions often automatically lose.

BERNIE is pretty different from most other minions. Pigs/bunnies/merms are groups of individually pretty weak mobs and thus get owned by AoE, but BERNIE is basically a miniboss and only gets hit once while a group of minions might take upwards of 1000 damage spread across all of them at once

[MondayNight]

If KLei is watching (and probably are, because Beta), after OP's video am sure BERNIE! will receive some nerfing to not have Willow just passively sit there, scratching butt while minion does all the work. Still, as opposed to Abi vs bosses for bulk player-base, Bernie should be a lot better to not overlap and offer different gameplay. But no idle player/minion does it all against mini-/bosses.

[Mysterious box]

9 minutes ago, MostMerryTomcat said:

Bernie should be a lot better to not overlap and offer different gameplay. But no idle player/minion does it all against mini-/bosses.

Agree but it'd definitely be a hard balance to strike.

[MondayNight]

3 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

Agree but it'd definitely be a hard balance to strike.

Depends when they plan to release this update to live-servers aka how much time they got to develop it. Would involve quite a fair amount of testing I suppose. They could even after release, as they did so in past. Important thing: the willingness to be there for a balance towards player fun engagement as opposed to the minimal effort/passiveness of current iteration.