Regarding Wendy and overall skill tree considerations

[oog]

I made an account here just to make this post and get feedback from other players, since it's been eating me up for a while as I look at the skill tree discussions on the forums.

As I've sunk more and more hours (~300 total at this point, so hopefully I have a decent basis for my claims here) into both DS and DST, I've found myself gravitating mostly toward Wendy since I enjoy her playstyle of cooperatively dealing damage with Abigail along with the additional prep work that she has available to her in the form of her elixirs (similarly why a close second favorite is Warly because of all the combat and non-combat buffs he can give out via foods and spices).

Wendy is not a particularly difficult character, obviously, because she has Abigail to soak a huge amount of damage for her as well as dish out an impressive amount of AoE damage that lets her deal with massive hordes of enemies that other survivors basically could not handle in any capacity. I've heard the argument a few times because of this that she's the 'easy mode' character, which I think is completely warranted- she has a super powerful solution to almost every early-game threat like hounds, and even some mid-game threats like Antlion completely on her own.

Some things are more difficult for Abigail to overcome, like the seasonal bosses capable of dealing a lot of AoE damage (Deerclops / Bearger) or targeting her directly if Wendy is trying to kite (Moose/Goose as well as cave worms to a lesser extent). Originally, I figured (and hoped) that the prospective future skill tree for Wendy would help her shore up those irritating weaknesses, similarly to the Weremoose Mastery line for Woodie providing him with the ability to cancel his charge early as well as a nice regeneration passive to help him out with the fact that he can't heal via food while transformed. Those, as far as I could tell, helped manage real annoyances with the form and made it a lot more viable overall. Another thought came to mind, though- how would any meaningful skills for Wendy be implemented without trivializing the same bosses that I put effort in to preparing for and killing? Giving her some form of armor or mitigation versus enemies who deal more to mobs would be nice, sure, but how would that be done without making every winter an episode of Wendy and Abigail face-tanking Deerclops and shredding through its HP without a second thought? Maybe a second elixir slot? Further increased passive health regeneration?

I really enjoy Wendy's design and I enjoy the considerations I need to make when preparing to fight enemies who present a real challenge, since the rest of the time you're able to throw swathes of lesser mobs into the 'Nightshade Nostrum meat grinder of doom(TM)' and collect the drops after she's done. Do I think Wendy is an easier character than the rest of the survivors? Yeah. I don't think that means she needs to be painfully easy, though, and I definitely don't want that! I enjoy the core gameplay and challenges of DS / DST a ton but I also enjoy experimenting with the cool playstyles that each character provides. Maybe this is all just an elaborate coping mechanism to defend my enjoying and maining of a character who's inherently easier than others at a solid portion of the game, but my hope is that any future updates regarding skill trees in general don't make the game too easy. I'm excited for whatever the developers have in store, but I also don't want Wendy to be buffed to make things even easier.

tl;dr: I think skill trees should serve to accentuate unique character strengths or make character downsides feel a bit less painful, but they shouldn't add / change so much that they start to remove the weaknesses the characters had altogether.

I wanted to hear the opinions of people who have a lot more time and experience than me regarding Wendy along with prospective directions that the bonuses in skill trees should take.

[zhangsheng]

I hope Wendy can have a haunting function, which is more in line with the setting of the undead spell. In addition, Mourning Glory can be mass-produced, otherwise no matter how much medicine is added, the experience cannot be better.

[oog]

30 minutes ago, zhangsheng said:

I hope Wendy can have a haunting function, which is more in line with the setting of the undead spell. In addition, Mourning Glory can be mass-produced, otherwise no matter how much medicine is added, the experience cannot be better.

I don't really mind helping Pipspooks, they give 7 or 8 per session and it can be pretty easy provided you're riding a beefalo or have enough movement speed. If they were craftable I probably wouldn't do it just because I'd rather walk around for a bit than spend resources instead. There also might be some strategies involving heavy usage of the more powerful elixirs that I'm not thinking of, though, so it could be good if there are people who use that many Mourning Glories.

[shaurun]

36 minutes ago, zhangsheng said:

I hope Wendy can have a haunting function, which is more in line with the setting of the undead spell. In addition, Mourning Glory can be mass-produced, otherwise no matter how much medicine is added, the experience cannot be better.

Something like posessing a skeleton to become a skeleton-companion?

[landromat]

41 minutes ago, oog said:

give 7 or 8 per session

that's like, one potion

[oog]

3 minutes ago, landromat said:

that's like, one potion

The high tier ones are 3 and the low tier ones are only 1, it's not too costly unless you're really going crazy with swapping. I can see an issue arising if you need a ton of cure-alls for something like BQ since Abigail soaks up the grumble bees' aggro and might need more than one.

[landromat]

55 minutes ago, oog said:

The high tier ones are 3 and the low tier ones are only 1, it's not too costly unless you're really going crazy with swapping. I can see an issue arising if you need a ton of cure-alls for something like BQ since Abigail soaks up the grumble bees' aggro and might need more than one.

yes, that's exactly the issue

[Dr.Webber]

 

I think for affinities you should be able to use pure horror/brilliance  as a telltale heart and turn Abby into a black  silhouette of her human self with red details  or  blue silhouette with white details a larger sanity gain for Wendy and the ability to help with more the just fighting and her flower determines the shape of the silhouette with maybe different details  Also I think the knife she has in that  one image will be be use to sacrifice stuff to give Abigail  higher stats , or even new abilities

[Yuuko]

4 hours ago, oog said:

tl;dr: I think skill trees should serve to accentuate unique character strengths or make character downsides feel a bit less painful, but they shouldn't add / change so much that they start to remove the weaknesses the characters had altogether.

Different characters need different things from the skill trees.  Willow and Wormwood basically had no kit, so their skill tree needed to be everything the refresh cycle didn't give them.  Woodie and Wig had a kit, but it was clunky and needed some tidying up.  Their skill trees needed to serve as a smoothing over tool.  Maxwell is pretty blatantly OP, his skill tree could be 15 points of "your shadow deals +2 planar damage" and he'd still top the charts.

I think Wendy has some great tools for handling the weaker stuff, but as you say she struggles when it comes to Abi being forced to take damage.  Without Abi she is at a damage disadvantage.  I think she should get an update similar to Wig.  She needs a few new potion options, and maybe a second potion slot so Abi can have 2 potions active at once (I always hated having to cancel her extra shield to give her a healing.)  Outside of her potions / abi tree I think she could get a nice sanity tree that lets her gain or lose more sanity from certain actions.

A really cool perk would be for her to be able to either command Abi to haunt something, or a potion she can use on something to haunt it, to get the same effect of a player ghost haunting a thing.

[oog]

11 minutes ago, Yuuko said:

Different characters need different things from the skill trees.  Willow and Wormwood basically had no kit, so their skill tree needed to be everything the refresh cycle didn't give them.  Woodie and Wig had a kit, but it was clunky and needed some tidying up.  Their skill trees needed to serve as a smoothing over tool. 

This is a good way of looking at it. I'm partly hoping that future skill trees are looked at in a vacuum in the sense that the characters in question get more stuff that really fits them and the fantasy of their playstyle rather than just direct changes to compete with other characters- I don't want my faves to be involved in a powercreep battle against the rest of the cast because I'd like the game to remain difficult in some aspect regardless of who you play. There's another part that also hopes that the designers of the skill tree take into account the fun-factor of one survivor's over another when doing the skill tree changes, since I can imagine there's a fine line between making a character really lean into their kit's value and making them so good at what they do that they start to step on other characters' toes. I wouldn't want Wendy to be like Wolfgang in the sense that she can just unload damage onto enemies in single target like he can.

[Alexx7]

i just hope her skill tree gives her some perks that aren't just damage

you only like spend 40% of the time you spend on the game fighting so giving her perks revolving around survival and resource collection/management eould be nice

[WenericMember]

I think balancing Abigail's hex should be the crux of her skill tree. iiirc, Abigail inflicts a hex on anything she's targetting, giving a 1.1x damage boost to anyone attacking the same target, with a much bigger buff on Wendy (i think resulting in 1.2x regular damage all up or so).

Conceptually, it solves Wendy's damage issues, while encouraging working in Tandem with Abigail and is probably one of the best bits of kit design in the game. But obviously it doesn't work against giants, as Abigail dies to quickly to maintain the boost.

As such, there's really two potential paths for Wendy's skill tree in regards to solving this issue.

One, Abigail becomes tanky enough to tank bosses properly. While it would be fine against bosses, it would also have a side consequence of allowing Abbi to crush hordes even worse than she already does.

The other, which I what I hope for, it to give Wendy an alternate source of inflicting hex, that can be applicable when encountering giants. There's a bunch of cool options that it could take the form of - armour, a weapon, a potion, a new property of the sisturn, skys the limit.

In terms of non damage perks I really want to see

• Repairable Touchstones
• Enhanced Telltale Hearts
• Ability to inflict Haunt Effects
• Alignment perks based on Sisturn filled (Evil Petals/Lunar Blossoms)
  • Lunar could Increase Abigail's light range & or inflict chill
  • Shadow could increase Abigail's attack range & or increase single target damage

[comonavi]

With the right potions and strategy (and especially with a Beefalo) she can already take down giants faster than most characters. And even if that weren't the case, it's a reasonable tradeoff for the ability to massacre hordes of mobs with little effort.

[oog]

5 minutes ago, Comonavi said:

With the right potions and strategy (and especially with a Beefalo) she can already take down giants faster than most characters. And even if that weren't the case, it's a reasonable tradeoff for the ability to massacre hordes of mobs with little effort.

I agree, which is why I'm concerned that she might end up getting even more power budget toward targets that would normally pose a threat via her skill tree. It would sap a lot of the fun out if you didn't need to strategize or prepare at all and just let your insight points carry you through fights that you'd normally struggle with.

[EATZYOWAFFLEZ]

The worst thing Klei could do is remove Wendy's damage modifier. Imo, Wendy should be at a disadvantage in some combat scenarios, because she has such an advantage in the rest.

[WenericMember]

13 minutes ago, EATZYOWAFFLEZ said:

The worst thing Klei could do is remove Wendy's damage modifier. Imo, Wendy should be at a disadvantage in some combat scenarios, because she has such an advantage in the rest.

Wendy's in a weird spot bc her downside balances her, but it's not an enjoyable downside to engage with. There's no unique strategy other than keeping Abigail alive to inflict hex or riding beefalos so its just... bosses take 1.5x longer.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this lol

[Yuuko]

Probably something like Bernie, where Abigail can gain either alignment and become a planar entity.  Unlike Bernie this would do a LOT for Abi's survivability...  She could probably heal pot through most abuse with that tweak.

[somethin]

Personally I have never used more than 2 health potions for bee queen. If you set Abigail to normal mode she will only aggro on bee queen when you aggro it yourself, so bee queen won't focus on her and prioritize attacking Wendy instead. Grumble bees are also stun locked by her aoe anyway so in the end she doesn't really take that much damage.

[GimplyGoose]

On 2/8/2024 at 10:09 PM, zhangsheng said:

I hope Wendy can have a haunting function, which is more in line with the setting of the undead spell. In addition, Mourning Glory can be mass-produced, otherwise no matter how much medicine is added, the experience cannot be better.

What if the petals put into a sisturn turned into mourning glories instead of rot when they expire? I could see that being a skill as well. Maybe you would need two other sisturn skills to unlock it or something.

[EATZYOWAFFLEZ]

On 2/9/2024 at 3:42 PM, WenericMember said:

Wendy's in a weird spot bc her downside balances her, but it's not an enjoyable downside to engage with. There's no unique strategy other than keeping Abigail alive to inflict hex or riding beefalos so its just... bosses take 1.5x longer.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this lol

Ideally she would be given ways to use Abigail in more boss fights. But it would need to be something nuanced and not just "hurr durr Abigail go brrr". So idk how you would do that.

[WenericMember]

4 hours ago, EATZYOWAFFLEZ said:

Ideally she would be given ways to use Abigail in more boss fights. But it would need to be something nuanced and not just "hurr durr Abigail go brrr". So idk how you would do that.

Yeah terrified of the possibility that the solution is just "inflate Abbi HP/Regen" as it would work but would ruin any nuance to her character design.

I think a potential compromise would be a potion that increases her Attack range. Useful but not broken for Hordes, and potentially allows Abbi to Kite bosses.

Alternatively she probably needs a tweak to her AI against giants, maybe an ability to soul hop like wortox.

Other than that, an additional way to inflict hex, either by a potion, weapon/armour, and the like.

[somethin]

19 hours ago, EATZYOWAFFLEZ said:

Ideally she would be given ways to use Abigail in more boss fights. But it would need to be something nuanced and not just "hurr durr Abigail go brrr". So idk how you would do that.

Faster recall/summon animation would help a lot. There are times where recalling her is better than juggling her around even with the speed potion.

[Cheggf]

On 2/8/2024 at 10:19 PM, oog said:

~300 total at this point, so hopefully I have a decent basis for my claims here

How informed you are doesn't have much to do with playtime. Plenty of people have gone many hundreds if not thousands of hours not really learning much just kind of AFKing while they play. Also you can say things even without being informed, I promise not to make fun of you :steamhappy:

On 2/8/2024 at 10:19 PM, oog said:

Originally, I figured (and hoped) that the prospective future skill tree for Wendy would help her shore up those irritating weaknesses, similarly to the Weremoose Mastery line for Woodie providing him with the ability to cancel his charge early as well as a nice regeneration passive to help him out with the fact that he can't heal via food while transformed. Those, as far as I could tell, helped manage real annoyances with the form and made it a lot more viable overall. Another thought came to mind, though- how would any meaningful skills for Wendy be implemented without trivializing the same bosses that I put effort in to preparing for and killing?

Yes, that's right, you are right. Abigail should not get something to mitigate her weakness to AoE, that is literally Wendy's only weakness and it's completely possible for you to play around it the very few times it comes up (Not use Abigail in those situations, kill the AoE monsters so fast Abigail doesn't die, heal Abigail, etc). Klei is going to be wrong when they inevitably give her a skill along the lines of "If Abigail receives AoE damage, she becomes immune to AoE damage for 25 seconds".

[arubaro]

I think what wendy needs are little perks or branch that aren't combat focused. She is hard to update because is a simple combat character,  she only has abi as gameplay

I think something like the woodworking branch from woodie or the beefalo taming branch from wigfrid. Little perks to make her gameplay more rich rather than just buffing her like how bland is Wolfgang's branch

Sure, give abi few planar powers but dont do what was done with bernie. Focus on fun stuff so she isnt just a "obliterate ordes and good for bosses" character but something richer