Some ideas for balancing Willow

[SleazyMcCheesy]

As the beta currently stands, Willow is completely unbalanced because she can use nearly every other character's unique abilities. Maxwell can panic enemies in an area with the shadow trap? Willow can panic enemies for longer with firefighting and spontaneous combustion. Maxwell and Wormwood can disable enemies in an area using shadow prison and moonshroom mastery respectively? Willow can do the same with (again) spontaneous combustion and firefighting. Wigfrid does 25% increased damage? Burning frenzy lets Willow do the same + most enemies won't fight back due to being on fire, giving comparable damage to Wolfgang due to potential 300 fire damage per one hit from the lighter. Wendy has a built-in bodyguard who can augment your damage if you keep it alive? Willow has a better guard who increases damage in the same way AND can tank for you. Walter can attack enemies at long range? Willow can do the same with her shadow tentacles with higher speed and DPS with less upkeep. I could go on, but you get the jist.

Idea for balancing the lighter: spell cooldowns.

Each ember spell would have a different cooldown length. Here are my ideas:

• The standard fire burst would have a short cooldown, 3 or 4 seconds or so.
• Spontaneous combustion would have a base cooldown of 15 seconds if Willow lights nothing on fire with +1.5 seconds added for each enemy burned. Say Willow lights Bee Queen and 8 grumblebees on fire, that's 27.5 seconds of cooldown before Willow can use the spell again. Bear in mind enemies will burn for around 20 seconds with the burn duration skill, so effectively Willow would need to wait 7.5 seconds before casting the spell again against bee queen. This system makes sense because spontaneous combustion is more effective against groups compared to the small AoE of the standard fire burst.
• Burning frenzy would have a cooldown of 30 seconds starting from when the end of its duration. This would serve to preserve the value of Wigfrid's 1.25x damage, since Willow needs to wait a while before casting the spell again in a boss fight. The spell would still be just as useful against normal enemies alone and in groups since they are likely to die before the spell expires.
• Fireball would have 1 second of cooldown, but have its cost increased to 5 embers. Fireball is not an offensive spell so cooldown is not relevant. Increased ember cost would make a star caller a better rival to the currently cheap fireball.
• Shadow tentacles would have a cooldown of 7.5 seconds. 7.5 second cooldown would keep the spell as a powerful offensive tool without making it the OP spammable move it is now.
• Lunar fire would have a cooldown of 12 seconds starting from the end of the casting time. Same reasoning as shadow tentacles. Increased cooldown because shadow tentacles are not likely to deal their full 500 potential damage, whereas lunar fire is more likely to deal its full damage with Bernie keeping the enemy/enemies still.

As for Bernie, the lighter skills and Bernie skills should be more mutually exclusive. The lighter branch represents a more active playstyle while the Bernie branch represents a more passive playstyle. Perhaps affinity skills for Bernie and the burning Bernie skill could require having no more than X points specced into lighter skills or even ember skills. An example would be Burning Bernie requiring 6 Bernie points and no more than 3 ember skills, or 6 Bernie points and no more than 6 lighter skills instead of just needing 8 Bernie points. The new system would make the player choose between safer fights relying on Bernie or higher-risk higher-reward fights with ember spells.

 

Of course, all of these are just ideas and nothing is definitive. Sorry for the long read. Leave any ideas and criticisms in the comments and especially let a Klei dev know what you think.

[Swiyss]

I completely agree with the lunar and shadow spells having a cd, but the other ones having a cd would just be weird in a way. I think there are better ways to implement them, like making so burning frenzy deals a good amount of damage bonus only if shadow or lunar spells are used, and a bit less with regular fire. As for combustion, we need a 70% chance of spawning embers from monsters affected with combustion recently.

That would probably make the character feel a bit more in tune with reality.

As for the fireball costing 5 embers I completely agree, ruins rush with her feels like cheating, she has too many GREAT perks all at once. I think some should be buff, others nerfed, and others changed, so it doesn't feel like a modded character that gets everything for free.

It's a skill tree overall, not a character rework....

[SleazyMcCheesy]

1 hour ago, Swiyss said:

I completely agree with the lunar and shadow spells having a cd, but the other ones having a cd would just be weird in a way. I think there are better ways to implement them, like making so burning frenzy deals a good amount of damage bonus only if shadow or lunar spells are used, and a bit less with regular fire. As for combustion, we need a 70% chance of spawning embers from monsters affected with combustion recently.

That would probably make the character feel a bit more in tune with reality.

As for the fireball costing 5 embers I completely agree, ruins rush with her feels like cheating, she has too many GREAT perks all at once. I think some should be buff, others nerfed, and others changed, so it doesn't feel like a modded character that gets everything for free.

It's a skill tree overall, not a character rework....

I watched a video of Ameslarii rush bee queen as Willow on day 3 that inspired me to make this post. In the speedrun, Willow is able to spam spontaneous combustion to panic the grumblebees over and over again, completely nullifying the threat. The spell completely outclasses other character methods of dealing with bee queen (bramblehusk, shadow prison, etc.) because Willow can gather embers super quickly and get more from the harmless grumblebees with minimal prep. I'm not saying the skills need to be nerfed solely because of the bee queen matchup, because Willow's spells outclass more characters than just the ones I mentioned in other ways.

"It's a skill tree overall, not a character rework..." I understand your point that you need to unlock the skills first before using them, but once you have the insight points, they're unlocked permanently. After Willow unlocks 15 insight points, she suddenly has the best ranged attacks, the best crowd control, an unlimited star caller, Wigfrid damage, and an incredibly beefy body guard right from the start of the game all at once. A lack of nerfs to Willow's skill tree could be disasterous for the game as it would completely invalidate half of the roster. Why play as Maxwell, Wendy, Wormwood, Wigfrid, Wolfgang, Webber, etc. when Willow can do what they do for basically no cost? Keep in mind the Instantly Insight (client) mod that immediately adds 15 insight points for every character as soon as you activate it.

It's important not to think of only that character when considering their skill tree. Willow isn't the only factor in this equation, every other character is too.

 Skip to 17:19 to see the fight. You'll instantly know exactly what I mean.

 

 

[Swiyss]

3 minutes ago, SleazyMcCheesy said:

I watched a video of Ameslarii rush bee queen as Willow on day 3 that inspired me to make this post. In the speedrun, Willow is able to spam spontaneous combustion to panic the grumblebees over and over again, completely nullifying the threat. The spell completely outclasses other character methods of dealing with bee queen (bramblehusk, shadow prison, etc.) because Willow can gather embers super quickly and get more from the harmless grumblebees with minimal prep. I'm not saying the skills need to be nerfed solely because of the bee queen matchup, because Willow's spells outclass more characters than just the ones I mentioned in other ways.

"It's a skill tree overall, not a character rework..." I understand your point that you need to unlock the skills first before using them, but once you have the insight points, they're unlocked permanently. After Willow unlocks 15 insight points, she suddenly has the best ranged attacks, the best crowd control, an unlimited star caller, Wigfrid damage, and an incredibly beefy body guard right from the start of the game all at once. A lack of nerfs to Willow's skill tree could be disasterous for the game as it would completely invalidate half of the roster. Why play as Maxwell, Wendy, Wormwood, Wigfrid, Wolfgang, Webber, etc. when Willow can do what they do for basically no cost? Keep in mind the Instantly Insight (client) mod that immediately adds 15 insight points for every character as soon as you activate it.

It's important not to think of only that character when considering their skill tree. Willow isn't the only factor in this equation, every other character is too.

 Skip to 17:19 to see the fight. You'll instantly know exactly what I mean.

 

 

Yeah I already watched this video. All I can say is, check my profile on a thread about how the new willow stuff is ruining the survival aspect of the game, everything I typed there at the end is essentially my idea of her skillset as a whole.

[Q42]

4 hours ago, SleazyMcCheesy said:

Maxwell can panic enemies in an area with the shadow trap? Willow can panic enemies for longer with firefighting and spontaneous combustion. Maxwell and Wormwood can disable enemies in an area using shadow prison and moonshroom mastery respectively? Willow can do the same with (again) spontaneous combustion and firefighting. Wigfrid does 25% increased damage? Burning frenzy lets Willow do the same + most enemies won't fight back due to being on fire, giving comparable damage to Wolfgang due to potential 300 fire damage per one hit from the lighter. Wendy has a built-in bodyguard who can augment your damage if you keep it alive? Willow has a better guard who increases damage in the same way AND can tank for you. Walter can attack enemies at long range? Willow can do the same with her shadow tentacles with higher speed and DPS with less upkeep.

 

This all applies to Maxwell as well. He can make enemies panic, stun them, deal increased damage with duelists, have bodyguards, and attack enemies from a range.

4 hours ago, SleazyMcCheesy said:

The standard fire burst would have a short cooldown, 3 or 4 seconds or so.

I can't see myself using the fire burst more than every few seconds anyway, I'd rather use combustion if I needed to light a lot of enemies on fire.

4 hours ago, SleazyMcCheesy said:

Spontaneous combustion would have a base cooldown of 15 seconds if Willow lights nothing on fire with +1.5 seconds added for each enemy burned.

 There's several characters who can decimate Bee Queen already (maxwell, wendy, wicker), and I feel like this suggestion was made with specifically Bee Queen in mind. It's fun to have tools to deal with this minion spammy boss. Either way, cooldowns in general make for sluggish wait-y gameplay in my opinion.

4 hours ago, SleazyMcCheesy said:

Burning frenzy would have a cooldown of 30 seconds starting from when the end of its duration. 

1.25x is already a low damage increase, nerfing it further to an effective 1.125 would be a bit too harsh.

4 hours ago, SleazyMcCheesy said:

Fireball would have 1 second of cooldown, but have its cost increased to 5 embers.

I already don't use fireball because a star caller is better anyway. Lasts longer and doesn't cost embers.

4 hours ago, SleazyMcCheesy said:

Shadow tentacles would have a cooldown of 7.5 seconds.

Shadow tentacles main advantage over the lunar flames is the ability to quickly deal lots of damage. Taking this away from it would make it lose it's biggest strength.

4 hours ago, SleazyMcCheesy said:

Lunar fire would have a cooldown of 12 seconds starting from the end of the casting time.

Lunar fire doesn't need a cooldown, nobody is spamming 5 stacks of embers of embers to kill a boss. (650/5=130 per ember, 27500/130 = ~5 stacks of embers to kill Dragonfly). In my opinion Embers should be capped to 80 so we have something to balance around instead of unfun waiting mechanics.

All in all after doing a full year as willow killing most bosses I believe she needs a buff. I'm making a more in-depth post on this in the near future, but in summary she has little-to-no utility and no reason to actively want to always have embers, and her shadow alignment needs a slight damage buff and accuracy increase to compete with lunar alignment.

Thanks for taking the time to write this out, I do agree with your last section about skill assignments.

[WONTow]

"DST is starting to become a MOBA, so let's give every ability a cooldown to make it less like a MOBA"

[SleazyMcCheesy]

"The standard fire burst would have a short cooldown, 3 or 4 seconds or so."

Enemies bunched together by Bernie are susceptible to this move. One well placed burst can light 3-4 enemies on fire for one ember, so a group of 6-8 enemies can be lit for half the cost of one combustion. The timing doesn't specifically need to be that much time, whatever would be most balanced.

 

"Why are you trying to specifically nerf combustion against Bee Queen? There's several characters who can decimate her already (maxwell, wendy, wicker). Let Willow have this."

I'm not specifically trying to nerf Willow against Bee Queen, just using her as an example. Combustion is extremely broken against groups especially compared to Maxwell's prisons. Prisons require precise timing from duelists breaking them at different times, requiring careful attention and quick thinking if you fail to recontain the enemies. Willow can deal with the same enemies cheaper and more easily than Maxwell can.

 

I already don't use fireball because a star caller is just better. Lasts longer and doesn't cost ember.

The fireball is objectively better than the star caller. The dwarf star doesn't need to last 24 minutes, it just needs to provide light and heat for the night. The 2 ember cost is absurdly cheap compared to the ordeal you need to go through to get a star caller, and it's always available.

 

"Shadow tentacles main advantage over the lunar flames is the ability to quickly deal lots of damage. Taking this away from it would make it lose it's biggest strength."

"Lunar fire doesn't need a cooldown, nobody is spamming 5 stacks of embers of embers to kill a boss. (650/5=130 per ember, 27500/130 = ~5 stacks of embers to kill Dragonfly). In my opinion Embers should be capped to 80 so we have something to balance around instead of unfun waiting mechanics"

I don't think you're meant to rely solely on tentacles for damage in a fight, but the cooldown mechanic doesn't absolutely HAVE to be the balancing mechanic, especially for spells like the shadow tentacles and lunar fire meant for burst damage. Perhaps diminishing returns from casting in quick succession? I'm open to suggestions. I'm aware some of these cooldown times need adjusting.

10 minutes ago, WONTow said:

"DST is starting to become a MOBA, so let's give every ability a cooldown to make it less like a MOBA"

The cooldown doesn't absolutely need to be the limiting factor. Klei is a company with actual game developers and could probably come up with a solution better than mine. The main point I'm trying to make is that there has to be a limiting factor as to not invalidate half the game's roster. I think limiting the number of embers Willow can carry to 40 would be a perfectly fine solution.

[Yuuko]

Gah no.  Not even close.  This is as bad as ppl who dump in Wendy like she is skilless.  Killing spiders by the thousands does nothing against afw, cc, or other more serious threats.

22 hours ago, SleazyMcCheesy said:

As the beta currently stands, Willow is completely unbalanced because she can use nearly every other character's unique abilities. Maxwell can panic enemies in an area with the shadow trap? Willow can panic enemies for longer with firefighting and spontaneous combustion. Maxwell and Wormwood can disable enemies in an area using shadow prison and moonshroom mastery respectively? Willow can do the same with (again) spontaneous combustion and firefighting. Wigfrid does 25% increased damage? Burning frenzy lets Willow do the same + most enemies won't fight back due to being on fire, giving comparable damage to Wolfgang due to potential 300 fire damage per one hit from the lighter. Wendy has a built-in bodyguard who can augment your damage if you keep it alive? Willow has a better guard who increases damage in the same way AND can tank for you. Walter can attack enemies at long range? Willow can do the same with her shadow tentacles with higher speed and DPS with less upkeep. I could go on, but you get the jist.

Willow's disable is not nearly on par with Maxwell's.  When you light enemies on fire they go into a panic mode.  Sometimes the panic mode is negligible and it works as a cc like Bishops but most of the time panic means they are running around - and guess what, when they're running around you're not able to actually attack the much.  Some weaker enemies like spiders and bees suffer from hit stun, but after the Wanda release many don't and without stun-lock or a stationary panic mode like Bishops that fire is only keeping them you from attacking them as much as them from attacking you.  Most bosses don't do any reaction to fire so its not a cc at all.

Maxwell's cc is a bonified root.  It traps enemies and they can't move.  Combined with his shadow duelists and Maxwell can 100% hands off many fights in the game.  Pretending Willow's fire is anywhere near this is a joke.

Wigfrid does +25% damage all the time and has access to higher damage weapons and armor to facilitate her combat in addition to her songs and life steal passive.  She has a whole kit, you can't reduce her to a 25% damage bonus and pretend Willow is stepping on her toes.  Wendy and Wolf both have good damage boosts and Woodie's moose is no slouch now.  +25% damage when the enemy is on fire (combined with the smaller list of mobs you can actually fight while they're burning - like fr go light bearger on fire and tell me how much dps you dealt while he was in panic lol) is nothing like Wig's total +25% at all times with all weapons (pre-planar of course.)

Fire damage is highly random.  Sometimes a spider or bee (100 health) will live through it.  Against anything with decent health like literally any boss in the game this damage will be pretty insignificant over the course of your fight.  The fire is more about its non-damage benefits like farming embers, burning frenzy, and panic mode.  Pretty much the only time the damage is significant is against spiders and bees lol.

Walter has a sling shot - and guess what, blow darts are a thing.  So is the howlitzer, and the bright shade staff.  Do you think all of these things need to be deleted too?  b/c adding Willow after we have all of those - not a big deal.  She needs to farm embers to fuel her spells - and as others have mentioned there is probably room to balance in how many embers she can carry and whether she can stack damage buffs on her spells - but taking those out her damage on her spells is fine.  The lunar flame is aoe, but aside from that its dps for single target is not actually that great.

 

18 hours ago, SleazyMcCheesy said:

I watched a video of Ameslarii rush bee queen as Willow on day 3 that inspired me to make this post. In the speedrun, Willow is able to spam spontaneous combustion to panic the grumblebees over and over again, completely nullifying the threat. The spell completely outclasses other character methods of dealing with bee queen (bramblehusk, shadow prison, etc.) because Willow can gather embers super quickly and get more from the harmless grumblebees with minimal prep. I'm not saying the skills need to be nerfed solely because of the bee queen matchup, because Willow's spells outclass more characters than just the ones I mentioned in other ways.

"It's a skill tree overall, not a character rework..." I understand your point that you need to unlock the skills first before using them, but once you have the insight points, they're unlocked permanently. After Willow unlocks 15 insight points, she suddenly has the best ranged attacks, the best crowd control, an unlimited star caller, Wigfrid damage, and an incredibly beefy body guard right from the start of the game all at once. A lack of nerfs to Willow's skill tree could be disasterous for the game as it would completely invalidate half of the roster. Why play as Maxwell, Wendy, Wormwood, Wigfrid, Wolfgang, Webber, etc. when Willow can do what they do for basically no cost? Keep in mind the Instantly Insight (client) mod that immediately adds 15 insight points for every character as soon as you activate it.

It's important not to think of only that character when considering their skill tree. Willow isn't the only factor in this equation, every other character is too.

 Skip to 17:19 to see the fight. You'll instantly know exactly what I mean.

 

 

Ah yes.... THIS video.... Have you seen Wendy do Bee Queen in the last idk 3 years?  Or maxwell?  tbh this is nothing special.  Oh and really, check out maxwell doing the bqueen fight and come ask for nerfs for him and we'll talk lol

Cooldowns are not needed.  What she needs is probably a limit of 40 embers (1 stack) similar to Wortox, and to not have damage mods effect her spells (except maybe her own burning frenzy.)

And omg wow... this whole thing about Bernie and Lighter skills needing to be separate - you know they are right?  You get 15 points across both trees.  In order to get both the Bernie and Lighter alignment perks you must sacrifice some fire spells.  In order to get Burning Bernie (the spell that lets Bernie work similar to Abi) you must make some pretty big sacrifices on your lighter tree.  Also the Bernie tree is pretty pathetic at this point.  imo that needs some serious work to have any reason to buy it at all.  Right now you spec probably into speed and sanity, and ignore the rest - buying up all the lighter perks b/c all Bernie perks do is.... well they do nothing really lol

Yeah I'm coming off kinda harsh here but fr this sounds like you haven't played Willow at all, but saw some nonsense videos like Beard's about stacking damage mods and now you're trying to throw every nerf you can think of at her without understanding any of her kit or even the current power balance of the game...

[WONTow]

5 minutes ago, SleazyMcCheesy said:

The cooldown doesn't absolutely need to be the limiting factor. Klei is a company with actual game developers and could probably come up with a solution better than mine. The main point I'm trying to make is that there has to be a limiting factor as to not invalidate half the game's roster. I think limiting the number of embers Willow can carry to 40 would be a perfectly fine solution.

Everyone are getting skilltrees eventually, no one's being left behind. Willow only look strong because she's the only one who can do what she does atm. Give it time and she'll once again be a worthless pile of nothing. Happened every time she's gotten buffed.

[Reecitz]

I was warned about the type of takes people would have here; a bit of a shame that I see them, but this is the only place where I can be aware of any updates 

[Q42]

I see your perspective better now on the combustion's ease of use compared to Maxwell, and it's easier to use than Abigail as well.
About the staff, I should have worded they better. Sometimes I like the fireball but I don't generally pick it because I usually have several star callers by the first autumn. I'm sure I would use it if that wasn't my playstyle, but not for 5 embers. I'm still not sure if it's worth nerfing.

The "diminishing returns" do sound interesting, although I would rather just have a cap to the max amount of embers.

Thanks for replying so affably, I realized too late that my tone wasn't too friendly in my original post and edited it while you were typing. 

[Reecitz]

In any case, there is one suggestion that I saw and hope it is genuinely considered: a different ability that could replace Burning Frenzy that not only fits better thematically, but also doesn't step on the shoes of anyone else. 

[arubaro]

if someone spams means that they have invest time farming the embers to spam... adding cost and CD is horrible

change numbers instead...

[prettynuggets]

that video looks legit to me tho. she doesnt spam spell. doesnt rely on spell damage to kill mobs. still need to hit and kite (also animation canceling??) and using panflute ? its pretty neat.

i wonder people that telling it too OP ever see wendy killing bq just with abigail and F pressing ?
combustion make grumble bee scatter? ever see maxwell shadow sneak? feared for solid 12 second?

saying one thing outclassed the other thing just based on video is just sad. just because one come up with one strategy and look easy on video doesnt mean u can do the same right away. 

[Mr Giggio]

16 hours ago, SleazyMcCheesy said:

Spontaneous combustion would have a base cooldown of 15 seconds if Willow lights nothing on fire with +1.5 seconds added for each enemy burned. Say Willow lights Bee Queen and 8 grumblebees on fire, that's 27.5 seconds of cooldown before Willow can use the spell again. Bear in mind enemies will burn for around 20 seconds with the burn duration skill, so effectively Willow would need to wait 7.5 seconds before casting the spell again against bee queen.

Bring a flute swap burn> sleep > burn and u have exactly the same fight with same situation, not a solution at all

And then u realize that u guys just don't like fun.  Just want to make everything more complicated  instead of rewarding gameplay

Or you think that fight is that easy that u can put this same fight with no effort? Cuz u pasting a Larii's video buddy some folks could never, this guys knows some tricks and u Betta respect that

And ye I could keep going but u just convenient argumenting since the beginning with the "stealing other shines". she will never be Maxwell and having an option to do the same chores in different ways is actually healthy but y'all not ready for this convo, so

11 hours ago, Q42 said:

There's several characters who can decimate Bee Queen already

7 Characters already in my playlist, pretty sure can add willow now and didn't had s chance to work on Wilson gunpowder strat but I'm quite sure this can be extended to at least 10 characters

Which is more than half

1 hour ago, prettynuggets said:

i wonder people that telling it too OP ever see wendy killing bq just with abigail and F pressing ?

Dude they don't even try to replicate the fight. Just watch the video assume is as easy as it looks and goes like"NeRF tHisS"

I would pay real money to see those type of forumites trying the fight and regretting these posts cuz they ain't aware of the amount of effort and play skill that requires to put together

And then proceed to treat you like you don't know what they are talking about, like  you  can't see the point when in reality I'm just over that point cuz this wouldn't be a conversation if they were trying to do the fight in the first place

I can do beequeen solo has like more than an year and spended three whole days (almost 18 hours) to learn as Willow the timings and patterns to read posts like this kinda makes me annoyed not gonna lie x__x

[Mr Giggio]

11 hours ago, Shosuko said:

And omg wow... this whole thing about Bernie and Lighter skills needing to be separate - you know they are right?  You get 15 points across both trees.  In order to get both the Bernie and Lighter alignment perks you must sacrifice some fire spells.  In order to get Burning Bernie (the spell that lets Bernie work similar to Abi) you must make some pretty big sacrifices on your lighter tree. 

That exemplifies what I'm talking about. Thank u for having the patience to explain all that. 

[arubaro]

1 hour ago, Mr Giggio said:

Dude they don't even try to replicate the fight. Just watch the video assume is as easy as it looks and goes like"NeRF tHisS"

i bet most of them never even defeated her

[Jakepeng99]

18 hours ago, Swiyss said:

It's a skill tree overall, not a character rework....

It is as big as a character rework. Before she was just bernie and a lighter which was a mini but durable torch.

[cropo]

16 hours ago, SleazyMcCheesy said:

 

 

 

Shame that this will likely be nerfed. That -actually- looked fun.

[GenomeSquirrel]

57 minutes ago, cropo said:

Shame that this will likely be nerfed. That -actually- looked fun.

Speed runs don’t show the times were everything goes horribly wrong, it may have been the best of 100 attempts of a highly skilled player, just because it looks easy doesn’t mean that it is

[xhyom]

6 hours ago, prettynuggets said:

that video looks legit to me tho. she doesnt spam spell. doesnt rely on spell damage to kill mobs. still need to hit and kite (also animation canceling??) and using panflute ? its pretty neat.

i wonder people that telling it too OP ever see wendy killing bq just with abigail and F pressing ?
combustion make grumble bee scatter? ever see maxwell shadow sneak? feared for solid 12 second?

saying one thing outclassed the other thing just based on video is just sad. just because one come up with one strategy and look easy on video doesnt mean u can do the same right away. 

That's really true, this guy is incredibly skilled, visibly very good, he used a ton of tools at the same time while managing sanity, canceling animations and attacking. I highly doubt that many players will be able to mimetize this even with a **** ton of preparation later on their servers, this looks viable, but not even close to easy.

[Ameslarii]

20 hours ago, SleazyMcCheesy said:

I watched a video of Ameslarii rush bee queen as Willow on day 3 that inspired me to make this post. In the speedrun, Willow is able to spam spontaneous combustion to panic the grumblebees over and over again, completely nullifying the threat. The spell completely outclasses other character methods of dealing with bee queen (bramblehusk, shadow prison, etc.) because Willow can gather embers super quickly and get more from the harmless grumblebees with minimal prep. I'm not saying the skills need to be nerfed solely because of the bee queen matchup, because Willow's spells outclass more characters than just the ones I mentioned in other ways.

"It's a skill tree overall, not a character rework..." I understand your point that you need to unlock the skills first before using them, but once you have the insight points, they're unlocked permanently. After Willow unlocks 15 insight points, she suddenly has the best ranged attacks, the best crowd control, an unlimited star caller, Wigfrid damage, and an incredibly beefy body guard right from the start of the game all at once. A lack of nerfs to Willow's skill tree could be disasterous for the game as it would completely invalidate half of the roster. Why play as Maxwell, Wendy, Wormwood, Wigfrid, Wolfgang, Webber, etc. when Willow can do what they do for basically no cost? Keep in mind the Instantly Insight (client) mod that immediately adds 15 insight points for every character as soon as you activate it.

It's important not to think of only that character when considering their skill tree. Willow isn't the only factor in this equation, every other character is too.

 Skip to 17:19 to see the fight. You'll instantly know exactly what I mean.

 

 

Im not used to frequent the forums that often but a lot of people are into posts and discussions which my videos are being used to make a point so I came to comment.

 

Firstly, you cannot use my videos as parameters. Specially rushes. Basing your opinion that it is easy just because you watched her when she was successful is dismissive.

I've been fighting Beequeen for a long time, I created strategies to kill her easily with the old Willow being able to do this same rush on the day 4 or 5 and if you watched it you would say that Willow can work if played well. However she clearly needs a buff, and now that she got it you guys can watch a video of mine and say that needs a nerf, but why? She's not broken, she hasn't become the best character in the game, her strategies for beating bosses ain't easy, I bet that 95% of players can't reproduce my fight in Fw with her. I use few resources in the video, but it was because I trained for this, and have you ever stopped to think if this would be possible without canceling animation? Or did you stop to see other players fighting with the bee queen and not being able to leave Bernie alive even in phase 2 of the bee queen? or that when using any of Willow's skills a simple bee can cancel your animation, making you miss the bee queen's scream team and you simply die? The position matters. The timing matters. The knowledge matters. I made the fight look easy, but it's far from being. Based on my videos to nerf characters is not the play yall, I currently have 25x world records [and 27 posted in my channel] so based on world records will you nerf wolfgang, woodie and others because you watched me do them "easily"? Are they going to nerf woodie and buff the new boss, because I just did it on day 1 and beat him just by tanking? Look at the context as a whole, don't base yourself on just one video in which everything worked out, I've played Willow since the beginning of the game, she was my first main and always will be, I have a huge experience playing Willow.

 

So don't base yourself on me. Telling me that the new Willow is broken is far from lucid, burning Bernie is useless, most of Bernie's skills are, the only good thing about him is that he is tanking incredibly better than the old one, shadow flames are also terrible and easily ignored by the lunar flames, which have good damage, yes, but in a fight against a boss he will not be stunlocked and will continue attacking you, and using these parameters, attacking with a dark sword when tanking will simply give more damage and hits than the lunar flames in the time interval in which it works, test the skills on real parameters, on bosses that you kill, in boss rushes that you did and not just watching videos, especially because Willow's real problem has always been Bernie's terrible aggro. Bee queen day 3 with Willow? STOP this "nerf this" atitude immediately as if it weren't possible to do day 2 with wolfgang and day 3 with wendy just by holding F. If I had done my Willow run on day 3 they would currently use the same arguments, but I did it since the old Willow, If I use my new strategy that I posted on my channel I could do this on Day 2, but it would be cheese, so you probably wouldn't complain. Let's be considerate that most players can't kill the dragonfly using 1 Bernie, not even if they activated it only in the lavae phase, while in the old Willow I practically left it alive the entire fight, if Bernie gets in the way of the Dragonfly kite making you have to recalculating the number of hits before it hits you, most would simply be confused or don't have the ability to do that, but it's like a friend told me, for the dst community there is no ability, every strat on youtube is easily doable 100% of the time and thats false.

 

Well, that's my opinion, I'm sorry if I seem rude at times and if my text was difficult to understand at others, as I don't speak fluent English and language barrier can be a thing.

[prettynuggets]

lmao get slapped back from OC of the video.
we can differentiate between the opinion based on people that only watch vs the one that actually play. 

[Catuna_]

On 12/6/2023 at 2:41 AM, SleazyMcCheesy said:

I watched a video of Ameslarii rush bee queen as Willow on day 3 that inspired me to make this post. In the speedrun, Willow is able to spam spontaneous combustion to panic the grumblebees over and over again, completely nullifying the threat. The spell completely outclasses other character methods of dealing with bee queen (bramblehusk, shadow prison, etc.) because Willow can gather embers super quickly and get more from the harmless grumblebees with minimal prep. I'm not saying the skills need to be nerfed solely because of the bee queen matchup, because Willow's spells outclass more characters than just the ones I mentioned in other ways.

It does not outclass Shadow prison or the Bramble husk, they are all extremely cheap. They just co-exist as characters that are good against Bee Queen. Willow is still by far weaker than Maxwell considering his insane damage output anyway, and Wendy is notorious for how good she is against Pee Queen. For ****'s sake Maxwell separates grumble bees from Bee Queen once and he keeps them there for the entire fight for the cost of like FIVE NIGHTMARE FUEL.

The idea of putting cooldowns on all of her skills would feel so clunky, and would feel terrible to play. I'd rather a character be overpowered to hell than be awful to play. I hate the "NERF THIS! NERF THAT!" argument as soon as something is done quickly or seemingly easily, Wolfgang should just be deleted from the game at that point. Willow needs shifts to her power level of her skills rather than just nerfing what's currently good, Shadow tendrils are so incredibly useless compared to Lunar flames it's insane. Her lighter's light radius perks need to be condensed into one perk because who's investing two perks for a lantern downgrade?? Burning Bernie takes up too many perk slots etc. You have to consider how the character would feel to play first, balance around that second, otherwise you end up with a Walter-tier character.

[somethin]

1 hour ago, Catuna_ said:

who's investing two perks for a lantern downgrade??

I- I would...
I mean, it means I don't have to bring lighter AND lantern anywhere I go, so I save a slot that I can use for embers instead, which I can use to make mini star if I want to do something stationary.
Besides, from what I saw, the light radius doesn't even dim over time like lantern and the radius is almost the same. I will take it over some Bernie perks any day.