Wormwood skill tree changes are neat but misses the main problem.

[Jakepeng99]

Good:

The lunar skills on the right buff the bramle husk. Fixes the design of the skill being useless pre-riff. Great change, only concern is the husk becoming op since it is already great but we still have to test.

They fixed the blooming branch, this is great. My personal suggestion to complete this branch by making the first 2 blooming branch skills reduce his hunger drain in this form.

The lightbug skill is fixed. Before you would only make 2 since making any more had almost 0 difference.

 

Inbetween:

Saladmanders gain a health buff when you have two out. It doesnt make much sense, the benifit to having 2 saladmanders instead of 1 is that you have an extra minion. Saladmanders are already really great (super underrated) so this change feels unessisary and weird.

However, maybe it would be interesting if the health buff was replaced with another buff. 

 

Main Problem:

His plant crafts need something extra attached. The current skills can be used to success, but they have missed potential to be more interesting. As a fast example as a proof of concept to show what i mean, unlocking the sapling crafting could allow wormwood to have the ability to boost the growth of nearby saplings for a few harvests. Something like this would create a new type of farming playstyle that wormwood players can enjoy. Currently, they don't add much as they make him a niche crafting station. 

[IAmAFurrz]

the crafts branch is so weird even to this day... like why would they actively design a character skill branch to be purely for swapping to? its really bad cuz its not a gonna increase his likelihood of survival either, its mostly encouraging turtling more than anything...

[grm9]

5 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Saladmanders are already really great (super underrated) so this change feels unessisary and weird

their dps is tiny and they die very quickly and you can't even stun dfly using them, bramble husk and dark sword iirc

[Jakepeng99]

3 hours ago, grm9 said:

their dps is tiny and they die very quickly and you can't even stun dfly using them, bramble husk and dark sword iirc

Their dps is good. They are great at tanking. They can tank mobs like the lunar varg. Most people never bother using them.

[grm9]

Just now, Jakepeng99 said:

They can tank mobs like the lunar varg

why would you use them for that? they can't tank FW or CC for long at all

1 minute ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Their dps is good

not really?

[Jakepeng99]

Just now, grm9 said:

why would you use them for that? they can't tank FW or CC for long at all

Because i tested it and it was very effective. You just sit back and support them.

[grm9]

Just now, Jakepeng99 said:

Because i tested it and it was very effective

lunar varg isn't normally an issue though, they're bad if they're only good against it 

[Evelo]

Wormwood main here. Hello!
So. I was worried when I heard they were tweaking Wormwood. Then I heard the changes. I am unsatisfied. Buffing Photosynthesis is unnessecary. Then again I think the traits are iffy in general since I don't like Skillsets.

I do like the change for the Brightshade Armor bonuses working with the Bramble Husk. Still think the Bramble Husk trait is too strong but a lot of people like it, so whatever.

I really wanted something to change the crafting traits for both Wormwood and Wilson. I've been desiring a transition from the skillset traits to a full crafting station.

Over all I think Wormwood did not need a buff. (On top of the already large buff that he got with the Skillset).

[Jakepeng99]

4 hours ago, Evelo said:

Buffing Photosynthesis is unnessecary. Then again I think the traits are iffy in general since I don't like Skillsets.

Yeah i am somewhat the same. Only reason photosynthesis sucked was because every other skill in the blooming section is arguably useless (they fixed 1 skill)

[TTraw]

Another wormwood main here!

I think those changes are fine-ish for most part.

Moon shroom changes are welcome even if not needed, fertilizer boost is great, and Photosynthesis wont be beyond useless anymore even though we all know we could've just brought back nerfed petal production

The only questionable thing that I noticed in the dev stream is that Flower Power description suggests that it no longer increases Maximum Bloom. If that's the case, I must say I feel slightly annoyed. It was a nice QoL buff that let you use growth formula less often if you had bulk of them available. I feel like it could stay along with fertilizer boost or be simply put into his base kit instead of being removed completely.

Saladmander changes are, imo, kind of a miss. The health of them is not a problem, although I welcome extra tankiness. The biggest problem of Saladmanders is how slow they are. They are just always offscreen because wormwood is such a fast moving character, and waiting for them to catch up before starting a fight is tedious and annoying. I think they need a movement speed boost when they are out of combat or at least when they are simply too far away from you.

But honestly, I think the things that weren't untouched are bigger problem than the things that actually were touched up:

• Berry bush crafting is a thing that infuriates me the most about Wormwood skill tree. If your world gen decided that you receive regular berry bush world and not juicy berry bush world (which is btw the world that most players default to via settings because Juicy Berries are annoying) then this skill literally cannot be used at all. In that scenario, in order to use this skill you also need to unlock Juicy Berry Bush first. It is completely nonsensical that prerequisite perk is placed AFTER and not BEFORE a skill perk that needs it to be even used at all.
  • Suggestion: Either change the crafting recipes, or, much more interesting idea, is to merge Juicy Berry Bush and Berry Bush craftings into one skill perk, both are berry bushes after all. It would free a slot for another perk idea, like another plant crafting or maybe a perk that reduces health cost of your craftings by ~5. But anything could be given here.
• Bee kind just doesn't do anything. Pacifying bees and butterflies isn't useful unless you are a new player (who doesn't even have access to wormwood anyway), and ability to pick up honey without aggrevating bees can be substituted by simply placing bee boxes 2 tiles away from each other. It needs something extra imo.
  • Suggestion: It could give bee damage resistance to help against Bee Queen, or maybe let it allow Wormwood to pick up bees and butterflies without a net to conveniently speed up early game.
• Crafting lunar sapling isn't worth much. Saplings are easily accessible with a shovel so instead of 5 sticks and 5 health for 1 plant you can use 2 sticks 1 flint for 10 plants.... 
  • Suggestion: Maybe if it allowed us to craft all kinds of sapling it would be better, so we could convert normal saplings into the limited spiky bushes which would synergize with Wormwood's husk and provide sticks during winter. It is the first upgrade Wormwood gets so I don't expect it to be godlike useful, but it still shouldn't be useless filler perk.
• Shade Plant isn't worth much because it only helps during Summer and most people use thermal stone or stay in caves during summer.
  • Suggestion: Maybe if it also helped in other seasons it would be more viable, it could provide a little extra rain resistance or insulation.

That said, I am still really happy to see Wormwoods perks getting rebalanced. Knowing that characters that already received skills aren't destined to be forgotten by devs is such a nice change of pace after playing so many other video games.

Wormwood is so close to having very balanced and fun skill tree, and I feel that with a little more attention he could be so much more versatile and fun to play.

[Valase]

10 hours ago, Evelo said:

I do like the change for the Brightshade Armor bonuses working with the Bramble Husk. Still think the Bramble Husk trait is too strong but a lot of people like it, so whatever.

...

Over all I think Wormwood did not need a buff. (On top of the already large buff that he got with the Skillset).

Truth to be told, I'd never consider not using the bramble armor after the rifts, it's damage is too low to planar defense to matter and usually by the time that I have the rifts, I have enough healing and know how to handle three brightshades. I would love a buff to use the brightshade armor (they could revert this change and instead make this armor fire it's effect every three attacks).