Beta almost up, Willow still needs help

[Yuuko]

Beta is almost up, and as I feared it looks like Willow is going to get the shaft.  We haven't seen the patch for this week yet, but last patch did not leave me hopeful.  The change was a simple, crude, and oppressive CD slapped onto her spells and... that's it...

Willow needs more.

When the refreshes started Willow got hers early and suffered ever since as her extremely minor perks became utterly unremarkable as the rest of the cast accelerated into new awesome interactions.  This seems to be happening again as she gets the utter strike down with 20 seconds cd between casting her signature spell.  And more importantly - has the most basic, unimaginative, forgettable, and worthless Bernie tree possible.

I think it is vital that the Bernie tree be revamped.  It is all boring passives.  There is no fun in buying into this tree unless you buy enough to get Burning Bernie - which while useful, is so expensive you basically cut yourself off from any significant fire magic.  The Bernie tree needs to have something actually worth using in it - more then that though, Bernie has already been suffering in the recent arcs with Lunacy and the way fights force players to manipulate sanity.  If Bernie is supposed to be a key component of her kit, enough that she would invest in its tree - it NEEDS to be useful more broadly.

The CD's are such a kill joy, and anti-thematic to Willow and the entire ember = mana mechanic.  Willow is not a reserved person.  She wants the world to burn, and it would only be fitting to allow her to spam away if she wants.  Her penalties should be that she can burn out, not that she has to slow burn.  Mechanically its bad too - things in the game gated by cd's have no other cost.  You can res as much as you want, heal as much as you want, etc because you have to invest in the resources.  Things with cd's like Wig's spear dash and cost-less songs skill, Wanda's back step, res and teleport watches, etc all make sense with cd b/c they have no other cost.  Giving the Lunar and Shadow spells a cd, especially such a painfully long cd make the ember cost superfluous.  If the problem is that Willow can get embers too easily, and carry too many, then HIT THAT.  Don't give her spells a cd.  A simple limit of 1 stack of embers would suffice, but we could also adjust ember drop rate to not be 100% making embers a bit more scarce.  Basically set limits to Willow's total power, but let her burn through that total power in a few moments if that is what she wants.

OR - ya know - take away the embers all together and just set her up with only cd's.  It would be the absolute most UN-Willow way to build her, but ya know w/e just stacking these two gates is excessive.

A common critique of Willow is the strength of her spells - and whether we have an ember cost or cd I feel this is a valid thing to hit.  It might be wise to cut the total damage from the 2 affinity spells in half, and set them to pure raw.  Then let her "refuel" her lighter with pure horror or pure brilliance to tack on +100% affinity damage so she scales properly with planar.  (this refueling is a 1 time interaction designed to tie her into  unlocking planar the same way every other player would.)  And fr don't make enemies of that alignment immune to her spell.  Planar is weird enough with its overly complex formula and awkward presence in the game, giving enemies immunity to WILLOW's spells but not other planar sources is dumb.

I'm going to link the two threads I made about these topics already here - mostly b/c I feel the Bernie tree is a pretty well though out thread with good suggestions for how to improve the Bernie tree as an actual valid choice for Willow instead of an afterthought.

 

[JustAFlower]

They can still update and fix it later, there's not that much shame or problem with that. These developers deserve a well deserved vacation. Willow can get her fixes later, just like Wormwood and his lunar moonshrooms. There's no timer of death.

[Mike23Ua]

16 minutes ago, JustAFlower said:

They can still update and fix it later, there's not that much shame or problem with that. These developers deserve a well deserved vacation. Willow can get her fixes later, just like Wormwood and his lunar moonshrooms. There's no timer of death.

Klei’s vacation won’t be very long though, cause there’s still one more thing left on the 2023 Roadmap- the annual Year of the ??? Event.

So I predict that by the end of January or early February we will get YoT + whatever feedback tweak changes Willow & Wigfrid might get.

[GenomeSquirrel]

Bernie has the skills I’d expect from a tank, I’d love if he could be a light source or inflict burn status, but what we have is reliable, outside of killing glimmer.

 

For Willow I worry that her ember abilities are too crashy to assess them, and that an ember cap would cause scarcity and reduce experimentation

[Anthony_L3hr]

Here's to one last good hotfix for the Beta!

[Yuuko]

3 minutes ago, Anthony_L3hr said:

Here's to one last good hotfix for the Beta!

Yeah, here's hoping

[Soul7k]

tbh i am just really hoping they added controller support for spells

[Reecitz]

25 minutes ago, Soul7k said:

tbh i am just really hoping they added controller support for spells

According to the bug tracker, my post regarding controller support had its status changed to "fix" days ago. I do agree however, I'll believe it when I see it.

[Mysterious box]

3 hours ago, JustAFlower said:

They can still update and fix it later, there's not that much shame or problem with that. These developers deserve a well deserved vacation. Willow can get her fixes later, just like Wormwood and his lunar moonshrooms. There's no timer of death.

While I don't want to overwork them they very rarely pick things back up once they put them down there's no doubt Wormwood's skill tree wouldn't be what it is now if there wasn't a big community outcry for example.

Personally at the very least I hope they do something about Bernie as his tree just feels bad compared to any other combination of skills you can go for.