Willow needs an ember limit - not cool downs

[Yuuko]

The beta dropped, and the meme was pretty obvious - give Willow hundreds of embers and lolflamethrower.gif

I think this *did* expose a design flaw for Willow's skill tree.  Letting her use the spells as a primary attack is a bit too much.  Not just mechanically, but thematically.  Characters need to be built with restrictions to feel like we're still playing the same game.  We can't just look at times where balance over stepped its bounds and ask for everything to be turned up to 11...  but the restrictions have to fit the theme of the character.

To combat the memes Klei put in an extremely long cooldown on her spells.  This definitely fights the memes.  No point in having 400 embers if you literally just can't use them...  but its probably the worst way to fix this.  Having 10 stacks is worthless if it takes 30 minutes to burn through 1 BUT it also makes playing her feel extremely gated.  When you need a lunar flame thrower for what you're doing, and you can't cast it b/c of cooldowns it just feels bad.

Willow isn't about being reserved, she is about letting the world burn!  Its thematic to allow her to be more aggressive, chaotic, and destructive rather than holder her back with a CD.  Its better to give her finite resources and let her burn out if she consumes too much.

 

Giving her a 1 stack limit with zero cd allows her to be Willow better.

If she wants to go around torching the place, spamming spells she can - but with a very real limit.  Once she's out, she's out.

But its not thematic:  imo its the only thematic option.  Willow wouldn't hold back out of caution.  She'd burn her resources out.  This is best represented by capping her resources so she can burn bright, but hit empty.

But she'll carry stacks of bugs: Getting embers from stacks of bugs is a chore.  Unlike Wortox who can right click a stack of bees or butterflies and murder them for an instant re-fill, Willow has to light them up.  Even using combustion to kill them takes a while to get the embers from them.  This is not a quick refill.

But the spells are too much damage: No.  They aren't actually that much damage.  They have some great advantages like range and aoe, but they are not great as a raw damage source.  There is no doubt these spells are good, but using them too much or at the wrong time can naturally bring out the downside of being out of embers.

But skilless spam: I think giving the player control over their resources management allows for more skill expression than gating the spell behind a cd.  People who are unskilled are going to run out of embers and either need to finish the fight on their own, or fail the fight.  There is a time to use these spells, but it shouldn't be "every moment I possibly can."

 

Other things might need to change with this, but its better to change these then to leave her on cd with gated casting.

Remove all hit stun from her spells.  Burning / panic already gives her a cc, especially since mobs won't spread her flames.  Having a mob get stun locked in lunar flame isn't necessary.  Like Wanda's whip, Willow's flame opens the gates to some exploitive play with hit-stun.  Hit stun doesn't need to be eliminated from the game, but exploitive things like range advantage into hit stun are problematic, not just for Willow's spells but for any ranged advantage.  Previously a lot of ranged options just weren't viable, but that is obviously changing and hit-stun should be dealt with on that level.  Certainly we can remove hit stun from ranged attacks.  Without hit stun this becomes a very risky move as she is likely to tank some hits if she just spams it.  Willow will need to think about when to use it, rather than counting cd's.

Change which mobs give embers.  Maybe embers shouldn't be available from spiders and bees, or anything <150 health.  They already dropped it from birds and butterflies for this reason.  How easy it is to farm embers from spiders and bees is definitely contributing to the memes.  I don't think there is a problem with curbing her ability to farm.  She can kill tall birds, warrior spiders, pig men, and other larger stuff to get her embers up, and a lot of those give multiple embers already.  I'm not sure where the lines should be drawn - however having a cap of 40 kinda takes the edge off.  Since she can't just murder a stack of butterflies to refuel idk how much of an issue this should be.

Reduce cost - eh...  I'm iffy on this but if someone thinks "but I can only cast 8 times" is restrictive then maybe we can drop the cost to 4 embers letting them cast 10 times...  I'm a bit indifferent on this though.  In my play on the beta I have never felt the need to have more than a stack of embers for general play.  I feel I'm able to cast my spells, and have to spend some time getting re-fueled with a balance that I think fits well.  However there is room to balance around power with 1 stack by adjusting cost.  Much easier then trying to balance around 400 ember Willow.

 

There are certainly times when cd's are useful - but these are primarily on UN-costed abilities where the cd is the only gate.  Wig's spear dash does not cost her anything, hit or miss.  It also gives her repair % on the upgraded version.  Wanda'a backstep gives her some iframes and has no cost or refueling, same with her rez-watch.  For these things a cd makes sense b/c there is no other cost, the opportunity has to have some limit.  Willow's situation is different.  She is paying embers to cast, and getting embers takes effort.  She is already putting in the time to earn her tools.  If we set the CD so high that she can barely use embers anyway, why even have them?  If we literally MUST have cd's, take embers out of the equation all together.  Let her cast fireball once a day, let her cast alignment spells every 14/20 seconds, let her cast combustion every minute.  Make her CD's only, so it fits as a gate like other cd abilities - or take them off b/c she already has embers as a resource.  There is no reason to gate her both ways.

OR if you want to leave them on CD - significantly upgrade the skills to make them useful enough that even using them so rarely is impactful.  Lunar flame can deal freeze effect with the strength of an ice staff with each hit.  Shadow flame can deal 500 damage per bolt.  Make them big enough that waiting 20 seconds to cast is worth it.  You can even double their cost to 10 embers each b/c what does cost matter if the cd is so long you can re-farm the embers while you're waiting?

 

Also BIG BIG BIG need - if we absolutely MUST have a cd on this we NEED an indicator.  If we are trying to, ya know, actually use our character's perks...  it sure would be nice to know when they're available for use instead of getting a dumb quote while we're just trying to do the thing we picked this character to do.

 

PS - Bernie tree needs to be better.  Right now the only real choice in Willow's tree is if you sacrifice some skills for alignment Bernie or just dump it all into lighter.  The Bernie skills are so low impact if you aren't taking alignment Bernie you might as well buy all lighter skills and leave the 4 remaining points floating.  I gave a suggestion for this tree before, and I still stand by it.  Without any decisions to make in picking skills - with Bernie tree being so obviously worthless - of course we're going to see meme flamethrower videos its the only thing Willow is getting.

I know Klei is probably wanting to get this patch out, but this is a really bad state for Willow to be in.  Not just in cd's for her spells that already cost her a lot and have niche use, but also for Bernie tree being half bake, inconsistent interactions with what is "Willow's flame" etc.  I was saying this before that I hoped Willow would NOT be getting her skill tree early b/c she's going to get such rough treatment smh...

[grm9]

you spend more time on getting enough stuff to kill a boss using shadow fire spam and killing that boss than you do on getting enough stuff to kill a boss without spells and killing that boss so imo it's fine, otherwise nerf gunpowder                           

[Reecitz]

24 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

The beta dropped, and the meme was pretty obvious - give Willow hundreds of embers and lolflamethrower.gif

I think this *did* expose a design flaw for Willow's skill tree.  Letting her use the spells as a primary attack is a bit too much.  Not just mechanically, but thematically.  Characters need to be built with restrictions to feel like we're still playing the same game.  We can't just look at times where balance over stepped its bounds and ask for everything to be turned up to 11...  but the restrictions have to fit the theme of the character.

To combat the memes Klei put in an extremely long cooldown on her spells.  This definitely fights the memes.  No point in having 400 embers if you literally just can't use them...  but its probably the worst way to fix this.  Having 10 stacks is worthless if it takes 30 minutes to burn through 1 BUT it also makes playing her feel extremely gated.  When you need a lunar flame thrower for what you're doing, and you can't cast it b/c of cooldowns it just feels bad.

Willow isn't about being reserved, she is about letting the world burn!  Its thematic to allow her to be more aggressive, chaotic, and destructive rather than holder her back with a CD.  Its better to give her finite resources and let her burn out if she consumes too much.

 

Giving her a 1 stack limit with zero cd allows her to be Willow better.

If she wants to go around torching the place, spamming spells she can - but with a very real limit.  Once she's out, she's out.

But its not thematic:  imo its the only thematic option.  Willow wouldn't hold back out of caution.  She'd burn her resources out.  This is best represented by capping her resources so she can burn bright, but hit empty.

But she'll carry stacks of bugs: Getting embers from stacks of bugs is a chore.  Unlike Wortox who can right click a stack of bees or butterflies and murder them for an instant re-fill, Willow has to light them up.  Even using combustion to kill them takes a while to get the embers from them.  This is not a quick refill.

But the spells are too much damage: No.  They aren't actually that much damage.  They have some great advantages like range and aoe, but they are not great as a raw damage source.  There is no doubt these spells are good, but using them too much or at the wrong time can naturally bring out the downside of being out of embers.

But skilless spam: I think giving the player control over their resources management allows for more skill expression than gating the spell behind a cd.  People who are unskilled are going to run out of embers and either need to finish the fight on their own, or fail the fight.  There is a time to use these spells, but it shouldn't be "every moment I possibly can."

 

Other things might need to change with this, but its better to change these then to leave her on cd with gated casting.

Remove all hit stun from her spells.  Burning / panic already gives her a cc, especially since mobs won't spread her flames.  Having a mob get stun locked in lunar flame isn't necessary.  Like Wanda's whip, Willow's flame opens the gates to some exploitive play with hit-stun.  Hit stun doesn't need to be eliminated from the game, but exploitive things like range advantage into hit stun are problematic, not just for Willow's spells but for any ranged advantage.  Previously a lot of ranged options just weren't viable, but that is obviously changing and hit-stun should be dealt with on that level.  Certainly we can remove hit stun from ranged attacks.  Without hit stun this becomes a very risky move as she is likely to tank some hits if she just spams it.  Willow will need to think about when to use it, rather than counting cd's.

Change which mobs give embers.  Maybe embers shouldn't be available from spiders and bees, or anything <150 health.  They already dropped it from birds and butterflies for this reason.  How easy it is to farm embers from spiders and bees is definitely contributing to the memes.  I don't think there is a problem with curbing her ability to farm.  She can kill tall birds, warrior spiders, pig men, and other larger stuff to get her embers up, and a lot of those give multiple embers already.  I'm not sure where the lines should be drawn - however having a cap of 40 kinda takes the edge off.  Since she can't just murder a stack of butterflies to refuel idk how much of an issue this should be.

Reduce cost - eh...  I'm iffy on this but if someone thinks "but I can only cast 8 times" is restrictive then maybe we can drop the cost to 4 embers letting them cast 10 times...  I'm a bit indifferent on this though.  In my play on the beta I have never felt the need to have more than a stack of embers for general play.  I feel I'm able to cast my spells, and have to spend some time getting re-fueled with a balance that I think fits well.  However there is room to balance around power with 1 stack by adjusting cost.  Much easier then trying to balance around 400 ember Willow.

 

There are certainly times when cd's are useful - but these are primarily on UN-costed abilities where the cd is the only gate.  Wig's spear dash does not cost her anything, hit or miss.  It also gives her repair % on the upgraded version.  Wanda'a backstep gives her some iframes and has no cost or refueling, same with her rez-watch.  For these things a cd makes sense b/c there is no other cost, the opportunity has to have some limit.  Willow's situation is different.  She is paying embers to cast, and getting embers takes effort.  She is already putting in the time to earn her tools.  If we set the CD so high that she can barely use embers anyway, why even have them?  If we literally MUST have cd's, take embers out of the equation all together.  Let her cast fireball once a day, let her cast alignment spells every 14/20 seconds, let her cast combustion every minute.  Make her CD's only, so it fits as a gate like other cd abilities - or take them off b/c she already has embers as a resource.  There is no reason to gate her both ways.

OR if you want to leave them on CD - significantly upgrade the skills to make them useful enough that even using them so rarely is impactful.  Lunar flame can deal freeze effect with the strength of an ice staff with each hit.  Shadow flame can deal 500 damage per bolt.  Make them big enough that waiting 20 seconds to cast is worth it.  You can even double their cost to 10 embers each b/c what does cost matter if the cd is so long you can re-farm the embers while you're waiting?

 

Also BIG BIG BIG need - if we absolutely MUST have a cd on this we NEED an indicator.  If we are trying to, ya know, actually use our character's perks...  it sure would be nice to know when they're available for use instead of getting a dumb quote while we're just trying to do the thing we picked this character to do.

 

PS - Bernie tree needs to be better.  Right now the only real choice in Willow's tree is if you sacrifice some skills for alignment Bernie or just dump it all into lighter.  The Bernie skills are so low impact if you aren't taking alignment Bernie you might as well buy all lighter skills and leave the 4 remaining points floating.  I gave a suggestion for this tree before, and I still stand by it.  Without any decisions to make in picking skills - with Bernie tree being so obviously worthless - of course we're going to see meme flamethrower videos its the only thing Willow is getting.

I know Klei is probably wanting to get this patch out, but this is a really bad state for Willow to be in.  Not just in cd's for her spells that already cost her a lot and have niche use, but also for Bernie tree being half bake, inconsistent interactions with what is "Willow's flame" etc.  I was saying this before that I hoped Willow would NOT be getting her skill tree early b/c she's going to get such rough treatment smh...

Personally, I disagree with further reducing what can drop embers, especially if you want an ember cap to be implemented. Also, you mentioned before at one point that the basic lighter spells' cost could be reduced to 1 (or if neccessary, 2 in regards to the spells besides Flame Cast); do you still think this?

[Yuuko]

10 minutes ago, Reecitz said:

Personally, I disagree with further reducing what can drop embers, especially if you want an ember cap to be implemented. Also, you mentioned before at one point that the basic lighter spells' cost could be reduced to 1 (or if neccessary, 2 in regards to the spells besides Flame Cast); do you still think this?

At this point I think the most important thing is to remove CD's because they are very unlike Willow, and contrast to gating with resource cost.

There is room to balance more in a case where Willow gets a 40 ember cap like adjusting costs but I do not think it is high priority.  Same with changing what drops embers - I don't think taking it off of butterflies and birds was very good whether you want Willow to be stronger or weaker b/c while butterflies are easy to kill with a lighter they also aren't easy to exploit with combustion.

If we can take Willow to 1 stack cap and no cd and play with it we can determine if she casts spells too little or too much for a stack, or gets embers too easy or not.  Its hard to say right now with both resource cost AND extremely high cd though b/c even having 1 stack of embers feels like too much when you can barely cast at all.

[Malfario]

40 embers is to little, thats only 10 combustions, and 8 affinity spells(if i remeber correctly they cost 5), you will run out of embers before finishing most boss fights or you will result to not use the affinities most scenarios because been able to perform it 8 times before needing to farm more embers its equally as bad as having to wait 20 seconds between casts.

i would like to give an stimate number of how much embers willow needs to carry to perform a boss fight with flexability and use of different abilities, but due to the crashes i am still not able to perfom any tests.

Tldr: If we only take into account the regular spells 40 embers is enough in most situations, but you will result in not ussing the affinities because you will only been able to use it 8 times before needing to farm 40 bees/spiders. Regardless of any change made, please increase the stack size

[Reecitz]

Yeah, like up to 100 maximum, in my opinion. 

[Malfario]

45 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

Change which mobs give embers.  Maybe embers shouldn't be available from spiders and bees, or anything <150 health.  They already dropped it from birds and butterflies for this reason.  How easy it is to farm embers from spiders and bees is definitely contributing to the memes.  I don't think there is a problem with curbing her ability to farm.  She can kill tall birds, warrior spiders, pig men, and other larger stuff to get her embers up, and a lot of those give multiple embers already.  I'm not sure where the lines should be drawn - however having a cap of 40 kinda takes the edge off.  Since she can't just murder a stack of butterflies to refuel idk how much of an issue this should be.

this just makes her grindier for the sake of make her grindier, every other character who needs this sort of items can get it easily why is it different for willo when she is still not even that powerfull, her spells dont work for a good bunch of bosses, has no perks aside from fighting except fire ball.

Let her have a fun gameplay its not a crime

[haroNIK]

14 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

На данный момент я думаю, что самое важное — удалить компакт-диски, потому что они очень похожи на Willow и контрастируют с ограничением стоимости ресурсов.

Есть возможность сбалансировать больше в случае, когда Уиллоу получит ограничение в 40 угольков, например корректировку затрат, но я не думаю, что это является высоким приоритетом. То же самое с изменением того, из чего выпадают угли — я не думаю, что снимать его с бабочек и птиц было очень хорошо, хотите ли вы, чтобы Уиллоу была сильнее или слабее, потому что бабочек легко убить зажигалкой, их также нелегко эксплуатировать с горением.

Если мы сможем довести Уиллоу до 1 стека и поиграть с ним, мы сможем определить, использует ли она заклинаний слишком мало или слишком много для стека, или слишком легко получает угли или нет. Трудно сказать сейчас, учитывая как стоимость ресурсов, так и чрезвычайно высокий кд, хотя даже наличие 1 стека углей кажется слишком большим, когда вы вообще едва можете кастовать.

The reload time is really very long, especially if Willow suddenly decides to retreat, then the icy fire will go past the enemies, going back, and this not only leads to the loss of Coals but also the recharging of the ability, of course they decided to do Glue very stupidly, they may not even read what we write .. I even doubt that they will change as they are offered and it is logical that what the players are offering is adequate, unlike what Willow is now, Bernie is a really weak branch, especially since he beats neutral shadows with Willow’s sanity of 60.. very stupid

[arubaro]

39 minutes ago, grm9 said:

you spend more time on getting enough stuff to kill a boss using shadow fire spam and killing that boss combined than you do on getting enough stuff to kill a boss without spells and killing that boss so imo it's fine, otherwise nerf gunpowder 

this

i dont see why there should be a limit or cold downs, less when there are less restrictive/unfun ways of nerfing stuff if even needed

[Mysterious box]

Honestly placing these limits on a character whose abilities can't even effect a fair bit of enemies just feels silly to me even more so since I guess lunar fire raiser is actually going to be useless against lunar enemies if it's working as intended.

[Reecitz]

I do hope things turn out well for the affinity spells before release, without resorting to harsh drawbacks like caps or cooldowns. 

But me personally at this moment, I'd simply be content if:

1) I can even make use of the fun parts of Willow's skill tree.

2) They further embrace Willow using fire as a serious offensive tool by improving her basic skills. I could make a thread detailing what I mean, or explain it here, but I don't know how I'd word the title. 

[Kubicska]

Let this man cook

Except for this (yes I know that it’s just an idea plz don’t end me)

3 hours ago, Shosuko said:

Maybe embers shouldn't be available from spiders and bees, or anything <150 health. 

This would just be tragic because me personally I don’t want to find myself toasting Bunnymen all the time as if they were in a literal OVEN when I need embers…

Making spiders not drop embers would even look ridiculous because spiders are like the size of a character’s head (ahem Webber) but I would honestly be (mostly) fine with them removing bees from the ember dropping list if they REALLY had to

Also I too also think that they should limit her to one stack of embers but increase the stack size to like 60 or 80 at max (I would probably never need more than 60) and just remove the cooldown altogether, we should be able to spend our embers however we want or really reduce it to like four seconds on the lunar fire IF they MUST keep the cooldown 

[Reecitz]

20 minutes ago, Kubicska said:

Let this man cook

Except for this (yes I know that it’s just an idea plz don’t end me)

This would just be tragic because me personally I don’t want to find myself toasting Bunnymen all the time as if they were in a literal OVEN when I need embers…

Making spiders not drop embers would even look ridiculous because spiders are like the size of a character’s head (ahem Webber) but I would honestly be (mostly) fine with them removing bees from the ember dropping list if they REALLY had to

Also I too also think that they should limit her to one stack of embers but increase the stack size to like 60 or 80 at max (I would probably never need more than 60) and just remove the cooldown altogether, we should be able to spend our embers however we want or really reduce it to like four seconds on the lunar fire IF they MUST keep the cooldown 

Here's what I find interesting: there might have been a possibility that introducing cooldowns would have been better received if it started out much shorter, like 2-4 seconds after casting, then we'd be more willing to give it a chance and see how we felt about it. But no, they hit us with that amount right out the gate, making me believe for a fact that they actually thought Lunar Flames was such a game-changing, tide-turning, boss-annihilating spell, and shadow fire was caught in the crossfire. 

[Kubicska]

7 minutes ago, Reecitz said:

Here's what I find interesting: there might have been a possibility that introducing cooldowns would have been better received if it started out much shorter, like 2-4 seconds after casting, then we'd be more willing to give it a chance and see how we felt about it. But no, they hit us with that amount right out the gate, making me believe for a fact that they actually thought Lunar Flames was such a game-changing, tide-turning, boss-annihilating spell, and shadow fire was caught in the crossfire. 

EXACTLY

I couldn’t have said it any better than you did.

Good job you get a Gold Star!  (or a lemon) 

[Soul7k]

grm9 put it perfectly,

but if I HAVE to have a downside I would rather it only be a stack of 40. 8 casts of lunar flame or shadow is enough to obliterate everything around you in a pinch while giving me a loop of having to get embers back. If you are going to have cooldowns leave it to characters who have an infinite source for their abilities like Wanda or Wig who can re-use their items over and over. Another user posted similar dps breakdowns and you can do the same damage faster fighting alongside Abigail which is also aoe damage (tho mixed with single)
 

 

[D_Good_Fellow]

Hear me out...

What if instead of imposing a hard limit on the number she can carry, a penalty was added for continuing to carry too much?

I know Wortox loses some sanity and drops souls when he hits the limit, but what if it were a softer, riskier line to cross? What if beyond a certain threshold, there was a chance the embers would set fires on their own? Maybe there'd be no limit on how many embers Willow could hold, but past a certain amount the risk of random fires would get higher and higher. Basically this is a return to her fire-lighting weakness of DS solo, but instead of it being a brutal punishment for poor sanity management it's a risk associated with stockpiling embers for high level spells.

Now I'm not very knowledgeable in game design or balancing mechanics so this might be a terrible idea in practice, but in my head it leads to a lot of fun gameplay balance decisions. Players can choose how risky they want to get with ember hoarding and account for it with stuff like ice fling-o-matics. The obvious issue would be how this works with cooperative play: I've heard that Willow's low-sanity fire lighting was removed from DST because it caused Willow to become a liability to other players' bases. I feel like this would be less of an issue if it were only caused by hoarding embers, since it can be planned around a lot easier. 

In any case I definitely agree that cds feel very un-Willow (the idea of Willow having to plan her fights around cooling down just feels wrong). Spellcasting obviously needs to be balanced somehow, but I'm certain there are more creative ways to handle it. 

[Reecitz]

5 minutes ago, D_Good_Fellow said:

Hear me out...

What if instead of imposing a hard limit on the number she can carry, a penalty was added for continuing to carry too much?

I know Wortox loses some sanity and drops souls when he hits the limit, but what if it were a softer, riskier line to cross? What if beyond a certain threshold, there was a chance the embers would set fires on their own? Maybe there'd be no limit on how many embers Willow could hold, but past a certain amount the risk of random fires would get higher and higher. Basically this is a return to her fire-lighting weakness of DS solo, but instead of it being a brutal punishment for poor sanity management it's a risk associated with stockpiling embers for high level spells.

Now I'm not very knowledgeable in game design or balancing mechanics so this might be a terrible idea in practice, but in my head it leads to a lot of fun gameplay balance decisions. Players can choose how risky they want to get with ember hoarding and account for it with stuff like ice fling-o-matics. The obvious issue would be how this works with cooperative play: I've heard that Willow's low-sanity fire lighting was removed from DST because it caused Willow to become a liability to other players' bases. I feel like this would be less of an issue if it were only caused by hoarding embers, since it can be planned around a lot easier. 

In any case I definitely agree that cds feel very un-Willow (the idea of Willow having to plan her fights around cooling down just feels wrong). Spellcasting obviously needs to be balanced somehow, but I'm certain there are more creative ways to handle it. 

One of the more actually creative solutions I've seen, bravo.

Maybe you could make a thread about this? The chances of them seeing this at the moment might be pretty low.

[Ardcrumb]

22 hours ago, grm9 said:

, otherwise nerf gunpowder                           

Don't you goddamm dare

[D_Good_Fellow]

On 12/11/2023 at 11:25 AM, Reecitz said:

One of the more actually creative solutions I've seen, bravo.

Maybe you could make a thread about this? The chances of them seeing this at the moment might be pretty low.

Thanks! Just did 

[DownloadADuck]

On 12/11/2023 at 9:21 AM, D_Good_Fellow said:

Hear me out...

What if instead of imposing a hard limit on the number she can carry, a penalty was added for continuing to carry too much?

I know Wortox loses some sanity and drops souls when he hits the limit, but what if it were a softer, riskier line to cross? What if beyond a certain threshold, there was a chance the embers would set fires on their own? Maybe there'd be no limit on how many embers Willow could hold, but past a certain amount the risk of random fires would get higher and higher. Basically this is a return to her fire-lighting weakness of DS solo, but instead of it being a brutal punishment for poor sanity management it's a risk associated with stockpiling embers for high level spells.

Now I'm not very knowledgeable in game design or balancing mechanics so this might be a terrible idea in practice, but in my head it leads to a lot of fun gameplay balance decisions. Players can choose how risky they want to get with ember hoarding and account for it with stuff like ice fling-o-matics. The obvious issue would be how this works with cooperative play: I've heard that Willow's low-sanity fire lighting was removed from DST because it caused Willow to become a liability to other players' bases. I feel like this would be less of an issue if it were only caused by hoarding embers, since it can be planned around a lot easier. 

In any case I definitely agree that cds feel very un-Willow (the idea of Willow having to plan her fights around cooling down just feels wrong). Spellcasting obviously needs to be balanced somehow, but I'm certain there are more creative ways to handle it. 

Couldn't she just... absorb the fire

[D_Good_Fellow]

19 hours ago, DownloadADuck said:

Couldn't she just... absorb the fire

...crap. Yeah, she could. Lol.

[Ilikili]

I haven't actually played Willow with the skill tree, so I don't really know what I'm talking about, or if these issues have already been fixed, so take what I have to say with a grain of salt. Anyway, here goes.

In my opinion, the embers are very similar to Wortox's souls. If Wortox could hold unlimited souls, it would be a problem, just like with Willow's lunar flame spam was. But because Wortox can only hold 20, he can't just hoard them. He switches back and forth from collected to using souls throughout gameplay. Why can't Willow have a similar limit to prevent the hoarding?

If I were in charge, I would change how Willow collects embers, (and remove any CD from using her fire spells). My idea is that she gets embers just by fighting mobs with fire in general, as opposed to killing mobs with fire. If a Willow player wants, they could light spiders, beefalo, pigs, and so on to get embers (like an arsonist), or in a boss fight, she would get embers throughout the fight by keeping the boss on fire. Wortox taking the souls of dead creatures around him makes sense thematically, and I would argue that Willow getting embers by keeping creatures lit makes more sense than killing things with fire. There is just so much preparation with fighting already (armor, healing, weapons), that I think getting rewarded with embers throughout a boss fight or lighter spree might be a nice change of pace. With the limit of 20 embers, you can't hoard, and with collecting embers by having mobs stay lit on fire and no spell cooldown, you can still use embers relatively frequently.

[zhangsheng]

It is completely possible to not use CDs or set quantity limits, as long as the flame is appropriately weakened.

For example, the Moon Fire can be changed to infinite output, consuming one ember per second. However, as the Moon Fire is released, Willow's body temperature drops sharply and ignores objects that increase temperature (such as clothing, warm stones, or dwarf star), which limits the Moon Fire.

Shadow Fire increases damage to 150 or more, with no CD limit. But adding a buffer value, during the buffer period, continuous use of Shadow Fire will deduct a large amount of sanity. If the sanity is zero, using it will generate an additional Shadow creature next to you, thus controlling Shadow Fire.

[WhackE]

On 12/10/2023 at 12:10 PM, Yuuko said:

Not just in cd's for her spells

Im not a fan of CD's in general, I understand some stuff might need them (Wanda specifically), but CD's do not belong in Don't starve. So I agree with your post