Wigfrid is an Example of a "good" skill tree

[Jakepeng99]

It is fun to play and expands well on her abilities. It is not perfect (will discuss) but it is probably the best designed skill tree. I will discuss  some base kit thinga too. I feel like she is the best skill tree, Wormwood is really close up, but i have reasons.

 

Good Things:

▪Cool, useful Weapons.

▪Skill tree selection is not one sided. You don't just pick the same thing every, single time due to some options being clearly better than others. Almost all skills are well balanced.

▪Great synergy. (Combining both a lunar and shadow Wigfrid together is neat)

 

 

Honerable Mention:

▪Beefalo tree. It offers a unique bard playstyle when combined with other skills which is very fun from experience. However this tree still has fundamental problems, and i understand the reasons against this synergy being artificial, unlike with Wendy for example.

-Beefalo needs more combat advantages (not saying they should only be stat ones). The beefalo skill tree is heavily in favour for rider, which is odd since ornery still remains obselete for her.

-Saddle is weak. The "tank" saddle niche should not be Wigfrid exclusive either. Instead it could offer unique abilities to the beefalo like life steal.

-Potentially make Wigfrid songs work better with Beefalo. 

 

Problems:

▪Alignments. Wigfrid, the posterchild combat character, has pretty boring combat affinities. They should do something unique rather than a small dose of stat buffs. It is odd wormwood has significantly more interesting combat affinities the her. It does have that cool ying yang synergy though.

▪Song box: Should be base kit. It is obselete as a skill since you have one Wigfrid learn it (or use celestial portal), and then craft boxes for everyone else to use. It creates a very odd dynamic.

▪Battle Stingers (except the revive one): They are very underpowered and niche. They have minor uses, but can be improved. 

▪Commanders helm planar defence skill: It is obselete. Use a brightshade helm for much better results. It could be buffed to make the commander helm much more viable in riffs, or be replaced with something else.

 

 

 

[lenship2]

1 minute ago, Jakepeng99 said:

It is obselete. Use a brightshade helm for much better results.

tbf it has knockback protection and the health steal

[Szczuku]

->Skilltree in dst

->Good

Pick one

[Jakepeng99]

2 minutes ago, lenship2 said:

tbf it has knockback protection and the health steal

Yeah but there is a skill that just adds 5 planar defence to it.

[Evelo]

I think her skillset is less bad compared to Willow but still not good. All these unique crafts... why make them skill locked? Just implement it all baseline as a sort of "Re-refresh".
Then again I am very anti skillsets entirely. Why have them at all?! Just make it all baseline if you really need to have character updates.

[DinsdaleP]

Hard disagree on that, honestly it feels like the devs still have no idea what to do with Wigfrid ever since her inception. Her refresh was the worst out of all of them and while the skill tree had a few good ideas, it hasn't solved the problems with that, unlike in case of Woodie.

She's a fighter, why not make her a utility fighter? I would have hoped that the skill tree will give her the choice for songs to have completely different and more interesting effects (see Wigfrid: Re-refresh!), but instead it's just fillers and... an actually solid weapon that is locked between the most mind-numbingly boring part of the game. Why.

 

2 hours ago, Szczuku said:

->Skilltree in dst

->Good

Pick one

Willow, Woodie.

[arubaro]

4 hours ago, Szczuku said:

->Skilltree in dst

->Good

Pick one

I wasnt fan of the idea but other rejecting something new what is the bad thing about having personalization for characters in a gamer where you can find 4 willows in the same server?

 

[SapoLover]

I like Wigfrid's because it builds on the combat character to have more combat advantages. I dislike Willow's because they made the character who had minor survival perks related to fire to make yet another combat focused character that burns everything with her mind and throws blasts from her bare hands.

[WenericMember]

I can't help but feel incredibly conflicted about wigfrid's skill tree.

Individually, practically all of the skills are good, but together, it feels so much less than the sum of its parts.
I think my main issue is just how heavily inflated the requirements for any of the interesting skills are.

Elding Spear? Locked behind 2 negligible Inspiration skills + High material cost.

Commander Helm? Locked behind 2 negligible durability skills + High material cost.

Battle Shield? locked behind 4 negligible durability skills + 2 additional skills.

Bragi's Blessing? locked behind a material you can't obtain until spring.

Battle Call Canistor?  locked behind a having 6 different battle calls

Beefalo-Inspiration synergy? locked behind 2 negligible beefalo skills and the extensive process of taming a beefalo.

Compared to every other skill tree in the game in the game, it's just not immediately engaging, and as such doesn't feel like the insight grind is worth it.

Woody & Willow's skill trees have a bunch of cool abilities within 2 or 3 insight, interesting skills well paced out. They've become some of my favorite characters due to them, and even when I'm not making a lot of progress in game, gathering insight encourages me to keep playing.

"I can't decide what to spend insight on!" compared to "I can't decide what to spend insight on..."

The worst part is the alignment perks. Wigfrid could work as a long term character, who gets a series of lategame, high investment perks, if the alignment perk wasn't the most uninspired and under-powered skill in her tree. Even Wolfgang, with a similarly uninspired alignment, at least contributes to his comically high damage output that makes it an acceptable set of skills.

It's a shame too, as Wigfrid was already my preferred combat character, but my time with her just demotivated me due to how long it took to access any of her perks.

[Jakepeng99]

33 minutes ago, WenericMember said:

Elding Spear? Locked behind 2 negligible Inspiration skills + High material cost.

? The inspiration works on elding spear too. It is far from negligible.

 

35 minutes ago, WenericMember said:

Commander Helm? Locked behind 2 negligible durability skills + High material

The durability skills are really good and even work on the commanders helm.

 

[WenericMember]

53 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

? The inspiration works on elding spear too. It is far from negligible.

 

The durability skills are really good and even work on the commanders helm.

 

Negligible probably isn't the right term... more Bland? Unnoticeable?

They're stat skills, and IMO the only good stat skills are the ones that break thresholds, bet example is probably Bearly Sane, which allows Willow to break the threshold of the insanity requirment. The durability buff especially so, it just means you spend a few less resources on an additional helmets, which just isn't interesting. Likewise, this inspiration boost doesn't enable it to be used outside of bosses.

Suggesting alternatives, I think it would be more interesting if the perks were more so like...

"Greatly reduces inspiration loss out of combat while battle spear is held" It's still just a stat buff, but allows her to chain inspiration between smaller combats, for things like ruins, swamps, archives, etc. 

 

 

[goatt]

12 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Combining both a lunar and shadow Wigfrid together is neat

What does that mean?

[Jakepeng99]

1 hour ago, goatt said:

What does that mean?

The two songs.

1 hour ago, WenericMember said:

Negligible probably isn't the right term... more Bland? Unnoticeable?

That is fair. Though honestly they are more interesting and impactful than most other stat ones.

[WenericMember]

31 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

That is fair. Though honestly they are more interesting and impactful than most other stat ones.

Yeah... It's not that I have an issue with those skills in of itself, it's just much of Wigfrid's skill tree is locked behind it. I have a similar gripe with Burning Burnie, but at least that isn't the centrepiece of Willow's skill tree.

[mykenception]

5 hours ago, WenericMember said:

Battle Shield? locked behind 4 negligible durability skills + 2 additional skills.

I don't remember needing to invest on the both the spear and the helm for the shield

you can just pick one branch to get to it

[Jakepeng99]

1 hour ago, mykenception said:

I don't remember needing to invest on the both the spear and the helm for the shield

you can just pick one branch to get to it

This is true.

[WenericMember]

9 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

This is true.

 

10 hours ago, mykenception said:

I don't remember needing to invest on the both the spear and the helm for the shield

you can just pick one branch to get to it

I stand corrected, my mistake. I could've sworn you needed both That does actually help a lot.

[Echsrick]

wigfrid? eh...was thinkin woodie more on the better skill tree ones

[Jakepeng99]

12 hours ago, Echsrick said:

wigfrid? eh...was thinkin woodie more on the better skill tree ones

He would be, but his curse skills are pretty severly flawed. The werebeaver and goose skills mostly suck. The werebeaver mastery is somehow still worse than using pigmen as Woodie when you are giving up the weremoose mastery for it.

The goose has 2 skills that effectively do nothing (waterproofness and dodging). The weregoose mastery is not worth the investment.

[Swiyss]

6 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

He would be, but his curse skills are pretty severly flawed. The werebeaver and goose skills mostly suck. The werebeaver mastery is somehow still worse than using pigmen as Woodie when you are giving up the weremoose mastery for it.

The goose has 2 skills that effectively do nothing (waterproofness and dodging). The weregoose mastery is not worth the investment.

I think it does the job. If I killed all bosses already and want to keep farming marbles, trees etc. without bearger the skill is super useful. The goose is great for early game, and the moose is great for killing bosses.

They don't need to be better than amassing 100 pigs or merms or even maxwell or bearger. The skills just have to be situationally great, and they are. 

I'm not sure you played woodie that much. Saying that it mostly suck with the reasons you gave me felt like an understatement. Maybe it is not perfect, or "not that great" sure you can say that.

For me something that really "sucks" is locking cool skills behind some characters. I have to constantly use the portal because of this.

Still is not that big of a deal honestly.

[Jakepeng99]

Just now, Swiyss said:

The goose is great for early game,

The goose is great for all stages, though only the 1st skill really.

1 minute ago, Swiyss said:

without bearger the skill is super useful

The werebeaver I skill is enough normally. The times i would think about going for the mastery, i would probably play Maxwell or Wurt instead.

 

3 minutes ago, Swiyss said:

They don't need to be better than amassing 100 pigs or merms or even maxwell or bearger.

5 merms/pigs are already faster. The thing is, Woodie's beaver mastery needs to be better than all these options. It is a large investment and the other stuff woodie has to offer is not normally enough to compensate. The skill should truly put the "Wood" in Woodie.

4 minutes ago, Swiyss said:

I'm not sure you played woodie that much. Saying that it mostly suck with the reasons you gave me felt like an understatement. Maybe it is not perfect, or "not that great" sure you can say that.

He is one of my mains. The main reason i play them is for the weremoose mastery, the goose, and the infinite fast axe (i never actually use the werebeaver for wood chopping since i just quickly trim trees when they are ready, or when exploring to get all i need. I only use beaver for marble, mining and sometimes stonefruit). 

9 minutes ago, Swiyss said:

For me something that really "sucks" is locking cool skills behind some characters. I have to constantly use the portal because of this.

I kinda agree. I wish skilltrees were more fitted to benifit a specific playstyle of that character. Woodie's would be like this with improvments to the non-weremoose curse skills. Wigfrid's is kind of like that with the beefalo tree, Wormwood's is almost like that with farming and mage druid abilities, though the farming side needs a little more. 

[DinsdaleP]

1 hour ago, Jakepeng99 said:

waterproofness and dodging

Waterproofness is actually something I found really useful, though somewhat niche. During spring, you can't really log out or go to the caves if you want lureplants, as they spawn every ~5 days of playtime - armed with this information, I tend to switch to Woodie and go for a bit of ocean exploration, finding moon quay, doing a quick raid for banana bushes and dock materials during the long nights, finishing as many pearl tasks as I can, raiding whatever I haven't yet gotten from lunar, yadda yadda yadda. Without that skill, it would be at best constant thermal stone usage, at worst, occasionally freezing to death.

[Sapientis]

Wigfrid's skillset shows why skillsets are problematic...

We have her new late game spear, which is basically a walking cane, which can be repaired infinitely with a dash that can pass land gaps and also allows to dodge attacks, which also deals electric and planar damage.

We have her new shield that outclasses 20k hp boss drop Shield of Terror (having both more protection and durability) allows for 100% damage reduction with no durability cost for 3 Wool and 4 Gold (1k hp Beefalo sold to Pig King!).

Rider part makes no sense for Wigfrid herself (gameplay wise) and is yet another good craft gatekeeped behind a certain character (and 3 other useless skills). There is no real reason for Wigfrid to tame a beefalo when she is leagues better fighting on her own, having passive damage and protection, as well as cheap Helm and Spear and passive health gain while fighting.
The Beefalo part is so random, the only reasonable link is "she's roleplaying a Valkyrie", but Valkyries rode freaking horses from Asgard, not some fat, furry cows.

Affinity skills crafts are also useless pre-rifts sadly...

Idk why Mystic Resilience isn't an Affinity skill. What is Planar Defense for before Rifts? Besides this skill is just so uninspired...

 

Fighting Words and Encore are ok, one can take them if they think they're useful, plus the task oriented unlocking is the true way Insight should be gained in the first place.
The only really good part of Wig's skillset is the Battle Call Canister to hold all those pieces of paper, but it only cleans up the mess from her previous refresh, which was its own thing.

 

The problem I see with skillsets, as well as refreshes in general, is the fact that those are only really necessary for weaker characters, to bring them on the same level of viablity (not even power, mind that). What we get instead is the power creep of the whole cast, which pushes the best even further from the worst (Wilson's "refresh" skillset was a joke compared to Wigfrid refresh and skillset).

I wouldn't mind skillsets if Klei wasn't afraid to pack some of character's perks and drawbacks into skills. You could have a starting character plainer than now, but skillsets could allow you to choose some goods and bads yourself. Current skillsets add goods exclusively and the only choice is between "somewhat good", "good" and "META".

 

Picture this: big Bernie could be a part of Bernie part in Willow's skillset, some new books, Bookcase and book repairing could be a part of Wickerbottom's skillset, Gym crafting could be a part of Wolfgang skillset, new goose and moose Wereforms could be a part of Woodie's skillset, crafting Sisturn could be a part of Wendy's skillset, some circuits could be a part of WX-78 skillset and so on... But Klei doesn't use skillsets as training wheels for new players, to introduce them to the complexity of a character but to give the character more and more power, power that they don't really need anyway.

Characters like Wormwood and Wigfrid, or even Woodie, who were already well rounded and complex got a bunch of new crafts and a whole new level of complexity thrown into their skillsets just for the sake of making a skillset for everyone.

[Jakepeng99]

19 minutes ago, DinsdaleP said:

Waterproofness is actually something I found really useful, though somewhat niche. During spring, you can't really log out or go to the caves if you want lureplants, as they spawn every ~5 days of playtime - armed with this information, I tend to switch to Woodie and go for a bit of ocean exploration, finding moon quay, doing a quick raid for banana bushes and dock materials during the long nights, finishing as many pearl tasks as I can, raiding whatever I haven't yet gotten from lunar, yadda yadda yadda. Without that skill, it would be at best constant thermal stone usage, at worst, occasionally freezing to death.

If you have an umbrella you could just get rid of the wetness after transforming back with a fire. A cool way to improve it would be making Weregoose faster in water and during rain.

[DinsdaleP]

On 2/3/2024 at 12:18 AM, DinsdaleP said:

Hard disagree on that, honestly it feels like the devs still have no idea what to do with Wigfrid ever since her inception. Her refresh was the worst out of all of them and while the skill tree had a few good ideas, it hasn't solved the problems with that, unlike in case of Woodie.

She's a fighter, why not make her a utility fighter? I would have hoped that the skill tree will give her the choice for songs to have completely different and more interesting effects (see Wigfrid: Re-refresh!), but instead it's just fillers and... an actually solid weapon that is locked between the most mind-numbingly boring part of the game. Why.

Having played her for longer, I must admit that I was wrong in my initial assessment, she did indeed became just the type of utility fighter I wanted her to be. The spear is ******* amazing, both for AoE and single target combat and her new talents really make her a master of surviving anything the game throws at her, including planar damage.

It's however still somewhat problematic that her signature weapon is locked behind moonstorms, and some additional ways of getting it would be amazing - say, the Twins of Terror dropping in an item similar to a Spark Ark, that can be hammered for other characters for their original drops, but Wigfrid can charge it in the archives then charge her spear? It would let the players leave Pearl for late game and you'd fight a battle she has no reason to fight otherwise, yet still locking the item behind the moonstone event.

Or just make the initial spear be able to recharge, it's basically only a Hambat until you get to spring, wouldn't be that much of a leap.