Some final thoughts on Willow's skill tree

[Tortoise Guy]

   Seeing how the beta is finally coming to a close next week, I thought I'd give some feedback for the final changes I'd like to see in regards to Willow's skill tree. Obviously, there probably won't be time to implement most of these before the update's release, but I do hope that, after their well deserved break on the holidays, the devs will revisit Willow's perks to make some adjustments.

 Affinity fire raiser abilities
 It's been pretty obvious that the recent changes to Willow's fire raiser affinities have been quite divisive. Well, maybe divisive isn't the right word, since I've only really seen negative reactions to the change, which is to be expected. The cooldowns are incredibly long for the amount of damage that the skills do, especially considering the fact that they cost embers as well. Lunar fire really isn't as OP as it's made out to be, in fact I would say it's quite balanced, as not only does it slow your movement speed, leaving you vulnerable to attacks, but it also has quite the modest dps unless you're fighting huge hordes of enemies (which really isn't that common of an occurrence), so I'd suggest either reducing the cooldown on this ability to about 4 seconds, or removing it entirely. Shadow fire on the other hand has become a joke after the implementation of the cooldown, it does about 400-500 single target damage upon casting, which sounds like a lot, but burns (heh) trough embers like crazy if you try to use it consistently, the cooldown simply isn't needed. 
   I have a couple of suggestions on how to improve this, but they relate moreso to the ember system in general, so I'll talk about those shortly. Basically, just reduce or remove the cooldowns, they are the antithesis of fun, at least when it comes to Willow's abilities.

  Embers
  Many people have suggested to replace the previously mentioned cooldown with a limit on the total embers Willow can hold at a time (usually 40, although I've seen variations).  However, while that would probably work well, I would like to suggest another solution, one that would make you think more thoroughly about when to gather embers and when to use them.
  What if, when above 40 embers, Willow would begin to rapidly overheat, but also allow her to obtain bonus embers by dealing damage to burning bosses. That way, you could choose to spend less time collecting embers before a fight, being able to obtain them mid-fight at the cost of taking constant overheating damage.
   Speaking of collecting embers, it feels quite clunky right now. Having to take out your lighter, start absorbing fires, then walk over to each individual ember is tedious. I think Willow should be able to pick embers up without necessarily absorbing them with the lighter, but having embers float towards her if she does activate it.
   Oh and also, the current ember sprite is a placeholder, right? Because it really doesn't make me think of a fire when I see it, so I hope that gets changed.

Bernie
   Bernie's skills mostly feel a little underwhelming. The regeneration skill doesn't work too often and when it does it's disappointing, the speed boost is barely even noticeable, since Bernie follows Willow at a pretty quick pace already, and burning Bernie is fun, but it costs 8 points, which is absurdly overpriced.
   Maybe just reduce the skill points invested in Bernie required to unlock BB, and rework the other skills a little. Bearly sane and tough stuffing are cool tough! (Hot headed also exists, but I don't think I fully understand how it works, so I don't really feel qualified to speak about it. Does it just allow Bernie to taunt shadow and lunar alligned bosses?)


  Lighter icons
I'll keep this one short, the lighter icons aren't that great, the colors don't really suit dst, the contrast between the backgrounds and the actual icons is too low to be able to distinguish them at a glance and, like the embers, it feels like placeholder art. I'll just link @-Variant's thread on this topic, I really don't see any need to repeat what's in there.

But yeah, that's pretty much all I have left to add about Willow's skill tree and this update as a whole! I'm excited to see how this all turns out in the end, since this skill tree has been the one I've been anticipating the most!
Wigfrid's skill tree is cool too in my opinion, but other people who actually play that character (unlike me) have talked about it extensively already, so I won't get into it.
Have a great day y'all!

Edit:
Also one thing I forgot to mention is that the mobs that you can set on fire are really inconsistent, so I think it would be cool if Willow's fire raiser affinities would allow her to set mobs of the opposing allegiance on fire (A lot of bosses cannot be set on fire, which really limits Willow's potential in a lot of cases, so allowing her to, for example: be able to set the Nightmare Werepig on fire if she has the lunar fire raiser skill would be a neat way to circumvent that, or maybe just attaching it to her fire fighter perk).

[Yuuko]

55 minutes ago, Tortoise Guy said:

Bernie
   Bernie's skills mostly feel a little underwhelming. The regeneration skill doesn't work too often and when it does it's disappointing, the speed boost is barely even noticeable, since Bernie follows Willow at a pretty quick pace already, and burning Bernie is fun, but it costs 8 points, which is absurdly overpriced.
   Maybe just reduce the skill points invested in Bernie required to unlock BB, and rework the other skills a little. Bearly sane and tough stuffing are cool tough! (Hot headed also exists, but I don't think I fully understand how it works, so I don't really feel qual

It does what it says - If there is a lunar or shadow aligned monster nearby Bernie will taunt and attack that monster.

Its kinda bad for 2 reasons.

1) If you're combating a mob Bernie will fight them anyway.  Nothing stops him from fighting these mobs, so a skill to enable that is not helpful.

2) Glommer is lunar aligned and Shadow Chester is shadow aligned.  Bernie will taunt and box these on sight.

[Soul7k]

6 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

If you're combating a mob Bernie will fight them anyway.  Nothing stops him from fighting these mobs, so a skill to enable that is not helpful.

this. it basically does nothing

[Sikers]

1 hour ago, Tortoise Guy said:

  What if, when above 40 embers, Willow would begin to rapidly overheat, but also allow her to obtain bonus embers by dealing damage to burning bosses. That way, you could choose to spend less time collecting embers before a fight, being able to obtain them mid-fight at the cost of taking constant overheating damage.

I love this idea

Also it could bevery well combaind with this: 

Imagine if overflowing of embers would cause Self immolation 

I think it would create very risky and interesting plastyle