I need help with my Willow skill tree

[Memetan]

I've playing Willow with the new skill tree, and I don't know what to think about some of the skills, are they good? are they situational? I need some explanations or people that can tell me their experiences with them. To make it easy, I'll make 4 categories depending on my opinion right now.  Sorry for the dark picture.

• Must: Controlling the fire, adding more duration to the fire, combustion for embers and CC, hp regeneration for Bernie, making Bernie big without needing to be insane, and make Bernie better with an affinity (I don't mind which one).
• Don't: Making Bernie move faster is not for me, I don't even notice the difference, and if I don't spend points in speed means no Burning Bernie even If I like it, also I saw a lot of people using the fireball, but I don't want to spend points in a cheap star caller.
• Points to spare: Making Bernie have more Hp to tank more, and having the same light radius with the lighter than the lantern is great for me, one item less to take care of.
• I need info about these: Is Firefighter necessary or good? I mean, I usually put on fire enemies and start attacking them, so they normally die before the fire ends except for bosses, but IDK if then the fire will make enough damage. Burning Frenzy looks good, but I saw almost no one using it, and having to use it on bosses maybe give you more damage, but does fighting a burning boss hurts players near it? BTW if Deerclops die on fire, that means no lunar Deerclops? I really need information about burning bosses. Lunar fire the OP skill that all people love, but for me is really weird to aim, walk or try to avoid damage wile using it, I really need advice about when or how to use it. Shadow fire I don't need to aim it, gives light and looks cool, but I heard that it deals so low damage that it isn't worth it, is it true? or there is a specific way to use it?

That's my opinion and questions about Willow skill tree, feel free to give your opinion or experience about them, it will help me a lot.

[Yuuko]

Bernie Regen skills are pretty bad, and you're right that speed is also bad.  So I'd do 1-2-3 on the sanity tree, 1 on regen, and then 1-2 on extra health.  The extra health you get will mean more than your regen ever will.  Coincidentally 3 sanity, 1 regen, 2 health = 6 points so you can get your alignment bernie.

imo alignment bernie is really only as good as you value the skin lol.  Aside from looking cool its not particularly useful.  Being an alignment entity is only good for high damage values and bosses tend to want to attack you even if Bernie is there...  but it looks awesome with either element and ngl I use it a lot just for that.

Burning Frenzy is iffy b/c 1) some bosses cannot be lit on fire, 2) it takes time to light them on fire (at least 1 swing), and 3) it takes time to cast and re-cast frenzie.  2 and 3 both take a bit out of any extra damage you might deal, and 25% isn't that much to begin with...  But I do use it for the bosses I can.  Lighting up Ancient Guardian or Twin Terrors helps generate light as well so there is that lol.  Of course like other damage mods it doesn't work with planar so at that point it is practically worthless.

Firefighter is a skill that mostly makes farming embers easier.  Spiders and bees drop like butterflies with this upgrade.  If I want to farm up 5 stacks of embers to take out bee queen or something imo this skill is a must.  BUT you gotta have the right setup to farm the embers too...  Combustion costs 4 embers already so you want to have a lot of targets per cast to really make it pay.  If you aren't going to reroll for angry bee biome or build a good ember farming area - or you are going to mostly play with 1 ember stack anyway - then this skill is an easy pass.  The damage is pretty negligible for bosses and other mobs.

I do like Fireball - but mostly because I don't like lanterns.  One of the best points in Willow's rework imo is refueling her lighter with embers, which are generally easy to get as you play.  Any time I would drop a lantern to provide light while doing something else I cast fireball.  I get why people might pass it up, but to me it completes the lantern replacement so I always have that inventory space back - and never need to go to the caves for lightbulbs again.  Along with that you can take 1 or 2 points in radius upgrade.  2 points is basically a fully fueled lantern while 1 point is <80% lantern.  I think 1 point is a good enough upgrade over basic lighter without costing too much, but its up to you which you prefer.

My trees I've used are either balanced getting alignment bernie, or lighter focused - either with lighter radius for comfort or with those points in bernie health

Spoiler

balanced - for when I want alignment bernie skin

sacrificing alignment bernie for more lighter skills - I'm comfortable with a low light radius and can drop a fireball any time I need more so this is my most common build.

going all in on lighter - kinda a meme, but the bright radius from the lighter is comfy.

I think Willow's tree the lighter skills are obviously the better ones, but there is room for customization.  If you don't like Burning Frenzy or Fireball you can flex those points to other spots.

[Mike23Ua]

I’m finding burning frenzy to be particularly useless.. like I legit hate this skill lol… maybe I don’t know how to effectively use it, but I dislike the casting animation time it takes to buff yourself up, and the fact you need to reliably target an enemy mob with her spell attacks (or hit them with a lighter up close…) to make any use of it.

Sure it’s a decent enough perk to have WHEN Enemies are on fire, and the perks to make mobs stay on fire longer do significantly help.. 

I wish I could respec and remove burning frenzy lol.. I’d find more use in fully upgrading lighter brightness probably. But then again.. fireball makes that skill pretty worthless too.

Unfortunately you can’t have Bernie’s cool burning effect without investing 8 points into him

[GenomeSquirrel]

I can confirm that you can die from a burning deerclops, I died last night from one as Wormwood, although most of damage was from clops and sloppy, casual play.

 

As far as skills go, frenzy is annoying to use well, it's one of the things that speed runners can make good use of, but it's menu heavy with a low duration and somewhat low list of enemies you'd want to activate it on, if you're not highly skilled, it's a waste.

[prettynuggets]

2 hours ago, Memetan said:

BTW if Deerclops die on fire, that means no lunar Deerclops?

yes it will burn the corpse to crisp so no mutated boss.
i think that happen to me once before not on deerclops but with varg.

btw this my current build 
personally combustion isnt make collecting embers any easier. i prefer let bernie tank and i just smack things with lighter lol. and for bq i prefer the usual way i played (since i accidently killed grumble bees more with it than i should) + burning frenzy give more damage so its good trade.

[Dr.Webber]

I think the fire starter skills would be better if they  mirrored  one another preferably going with both have tendrils but the other is fine too

[Ohan]

There r posts about willow builds on page 7 of the official skill tree update release thread. I wrote a long post there with the build i like! 

Ill just repeat here that i think lunar fire is very overrated and shadow fire is way more fun to use and incorporate into kiting patterns vs bosses! 

And i find burning frenzy very fun to use becauses it changes fights/gives u more stuff to manage so it makes the simple combat more interesting, same goes for shadow fire. And while a handful of bosses might be fire immune, the majority of bosses and mobs are flammable. 

Other than that, just try different builds out to see what u like most.

Overwhelming majority of Willow’s skills are very good. Only the bernie speed skills are kind of superfluous currently.