Bernie is in a particularly odd spot

[-Variant]

As you may know, I'm rooting for some changes in her fire based skills, but after trying out Bernie, I've also got some concerns surrounding him. 
Shout outs to a lot of my friends giving their input on this one!

Currently Bernie's a bit riddled with bugs, I'm hoping once those are fixed he'll be a bit smoother in gameplay. But I did want to talk about some of his skills.

Patch Up.
The game literally doesn't tell you this only works during Combat at all. 
I was REALLY hoping this'd just be always active when walking around, I'm really disappointed its locked behind combat. And I've been told its like, 1 HP per second. Very, very slow.

Bearly Sane.
Something I've wanted since the first rework! However... Bernie always attacking shadows despite Willow not being sane feels very redundant. 
I got the skills hoping to be able to use him outside of shadow combat, but it seems the constant spawning of Shadows despite not being insane around him is going to make that difficult.

It's also super frustrating, you either let him take damage or you try to help him, which will boost your sanity causing him to deactivate.
I'm personally hoping the Shadows can be changed to not draw his aggro unless Willow is insane.

Burning Bernie.
This is one my friends talked about. I don't know enough to say much, but it seems like taking this skill takes a point you could spend on a lighter affinity skill, but it doesn't feel worth the exchange in gameplay.

Additionally, Bernie's affinity skills don't count as 'bernie skills' required to even unlock this perk!

And for my final note, Bernie's aggro seems really weird lately.
I hear from everyone telling me that Hot Headed makes him target aligned things, like Glommer, but he just outright doesn't for me.
On top of that, I can't get him to attack things I hurt. Sometimes using a Fire Staff works, but otherwise he just stands there unless something hits him.

[Mysterious box]

8 minutes ago, -Variant said:

Patch Up.
The game literally doesn't tell you this only works during Combat at all. 
I was REALLY hoping this'd just be always active when walking around, I'm really disappointed its locked behind combat. And I've been told its like, 1 HP per second. Very, very slow.

This is bugged it broke during the last update it did work outside of combat but only when he was big beforehand.

 

9 minutes ago, -Variant said:

Bearly Sane.
Something I've wanted since the first rework! However... Bernie always attacking shadows despite Willow not being sane feels very redundant. 
I got the skills hoping to be able to use him outside of shadow combat, but it seems the constant spawning of Shadows despite not being insane around him is going to make that difficult.

It's also super frustrating, you either let him take damage or you try to help him, which will boost your sanity causing him to deactivate.
I'm personally hoping the Shadows can be changed to not draw his aggro unless Willow is insane.

This is why I didn't like patch up I used patch up before it broke and even with the healing due to the shadows Willow spawned alone from being at 60 sanity Bernie was always suffering a huge net negative to the point that it felt like the skill did nothing.

12 minutes ago, -Variant said:

Burning Bernie.
This is one my friends talked about. I don't know enough to say much, but it seems like taking this skill takes a point you could spend on a lighter affinity skill, but it doesn't feel worth the exchange in gameplay.

Additionally, Bernie's affinity skills don't count as 'bernie skills' required to even unlock this perk!

The skill is alright but I don't see anyone ever using it due to how insane it is that it forces you to spend 9 skill points to unlock personally I think it should just be locked behind a 4 or 6 lock

[-Variant]

2 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

This is bugged it broke during the last update it did work outside of combat but only when he was big beforehand.

Alright, I wasn't certain. I had asked like 4 people to confirm and no one would. My friend tried helping me check the code and they said it was intentional it was only during Combat now. I dunno the truth anymore!!

[Mysterious box]

10 minutes ago, -Variant said:

My friend tried helping me check the code and they said it was intentional it was only during Combat now. I dunno the truth anymore!!

Yikes if they actually changed it in the code then they really should rethink that I can't believe they'd make such a bad skill even worse like that...

[WONTow]

55 minutes ago, -Variant said:

Bearly Sane.
Something I've wanted since the first rework! However... Bernie always attacking shadows despite Willow not being sane feels very redundant. 
I got the skills hoping to be able to use him outside of shadow combat, but it seems the constant spawning of Shadows despite not being insane around him is going to make that difficult.

It's also super frustrating, you either let him take damage or you try to help him, which will boost your sanity causing him to deactivate.
I'm personally hoping the Shadows can be changed to not draw his aggro unless Willow is insane.

THIS!! This is super annoying! I want to have him out for emotional support but he keeps aggroing these annoying pests that are supposed to be neutral!

Like what's even the point at that point.

[HeatAndRun]

Bernie should not attack the neutral nightmares when Willow's sanity is 15%~50% with Bearly Sane II.

[Jakepeng99]

6 hours ago, -Variant said:

On top of that, I can't get him to attack things I hurt. Sometimes using a Fire Staff works, but otherwise he just stands there unless something hits him.

Bernie normally only attacks things that are aggressive to Willow. 

[Mysterious box]

10 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Bernie normally only attacks things that are aggressive to Willow. 

Or aggressive to other players around Willow while he's big if I'm not misremembering a good middle ground would be if the shadows aren't hostile to anyone he won't attack them.

[haroNIK]

2 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

Или агрессивен по отношению к другим игрокам вокруг Уиллоу, пока он большой, если я не ошибаюсь, хорошей золотой серединой было бы, если тени не враждебны ни к кому, и он не будет нападать на них.

it would be cool if he only hit those who are hostile to Willow, in any case, even if you are with friends, you can start hitting the nightmare that attacks your friend and Bernie will help with aggro

[Yuuko]

I made my own post about what I think the Bernie tree needs - and it covers the points you're bringing up here.

1) Patch up is bad as a concept.  Regen is not a good stat at its core.  If regen is too high then Bernie never dies, if its too low then it might as well just be more health.  I think we need an active way to heal Bernie during combat rather than a passive stat.

2) I don't think we can stop Bernie from fighting shadows because he needs to provoke shadows on other players.  Its a bad side effect that he fights the neutral shadows that follow you...  idk if I want this changed - rather I think we should get a skill perk that lets us pick up Bernie even if our sanity is low.  When we don't want him to fight we can just pick him up.

3) Burning Bernie is the only active skill Bernie actually has, and it does a good job for what its worth - but it does require the full commitment to Bernie side of the tree.  In order to take this you cannot get the alignment fire spell, and need to make other concessions on the lighter tree.  I think this is intentional, and good b/c Burning Bernie is strong - but still not enough to be your sole investment.  His tree needs other interesting things to make it feel better going this deep.

4) Unmentioned - but Hot Head is just a troll skill.  Bernie already aggros anything aggressive to Willow so there is no benefit there - yet Glommer is lunar aligned and Shadow Chester is shadow aligned.  If you take this skill all it really does is make Bernie grief your team :\ 

 

In general the biggest mistake of the Bernie tree is that it is ALL passive skills that have very little play impact and zero meaningful choices.  It needs to be revamped into something more active which is what I go into in my thread.  I'll give a brief overview of what I think should be done here:

- Get rid of regen.  Its a bad stat and will never work.  Instead I suggest adding a 3rd skill after health 1 and health 2 that lets us do something to heal Bernie in combat.  Its not hard to make multiple Bernies and sewing kits are fun / powerful but I think a lot of players would like to be able to play around just 1 beloved stuffed defender, healing him without putting him away.  I think a spell costing ember to heal a bit while he's out would work.  I have seen other suggestions too - imo its pretty clear we should have a way to actively heal Bernie without putting him away for a sewing kit.

- Let us pick him up.  Sanity 1 and sanity 2 are nice, but I think a 3rd point that lets us pick Bernie up regardless of our sanity is needed.  Then his quirky behavior of provoking passive shadow mobs just means you pick him up and its okay.  This also helps with jumping through wormholes and other transport issues Bernie suffers from.

- Just generally too passive.  Burning Bernie is a high cost skill, we need something smaller but still active.  I think we can add after speed 1 and speed 2 a 3rd skill that gives Bernie the effect from our Burning Frenzy upping his combat damage, giving you a feeling of fighting with him.

- Hot Headed just does the wrong thing.  Hot headed should allow Bernie to grow against shadow monsters regardless of Willow's sanity.  This improves his abilities as a defender for other players as he'll get his full health and fight back.  Also this can combo with lunar / shadow alignment to let him grow big and fight the opposed faction letting him help in lunacy or against other situations like AFW where we need to control our sanity as part of the fight - rather than giving up Bernie entirely (a big investment if you spec this way) this enables Bernie to still help you.

I think Hot Headed can have a 6 point requirement, and Burning Bernie can be in a chain after it.  This means 8 points gets you 2 first tier trees, Hot Headed and Burning Bernie answering your last point - that its too expensive to get.

 

I think this brings more interesting decisions to the Bernie skill tree in general.  The situations I see with the tree are:

Full Lighter:  If a Willow player wants to spec everything into lighter they still have 4 points left over that they can only put in Bernie.  This tree would still give them a meaningful choice like to pick up bernie, or get more damage from him.  Even a few points can mean something here, and give different players a different experience to try out.

Balanced: If you aim for both affinity perks then you need to spend 6 on Bernie and 7 on lighter tree.  With 6 on Bernie you can pick 2 perks and the alignment, giving you something for the split besides boring passive stats.  Which 2 perks do you want?  Still a choice even though you're on the balanced path.

Heavy Bernie:  You can skill up 2 of the first tree perks, hot headed, burning bernie, and the affinity perk now with 6 points left over for Lighter.  Its not enough for the affinity spell BUT you still get some spells and have a strong and helpful bernie to play around.  BB is a great spell for farming mobs similar to Abi - spiders, bees, monkeys, etc, but with Bernie's tankiness and a new skill letting him benefit from Burning Frenzy he can help during boss fights with a bit more dps on top.

Full Bernie:  If you want all the bernie perks you can actually invest 12 skills into Bernie and feel like you're getting something from each point, ending with a strong and useful Bernie, with still 3 points leftover for fire skills.