Wigfrid Beefalo skill tree rebalance ideas

[RatherUncreativ]

Wigfrid struggles with using combat Beefalo for the same reason Wendy or Wes might want to use them: Character damage multipliers don't apply. An Ornery beefalo is 50 damage. A War Saddle is +16. A Dark Sword is like 80 damage, and a Battle Spear around 54. If you wanted to use her unique saddle, you're looking at around the same damage as what you can do Day 1 with a Battle Spear. Granted, that's with a 30% speed boost and 1400 effective Beefalo HP, but is that worth domesticating a Beefalo for so much time and making a unique saddle when a Marble Suit and a stack of helmets can already let you comfortably tank many things? You can do that without spending 4 Insight points.

The best workaround is to not use them for combat, and take advantage of Noble Mount III to get 50% inspiration on the way to a boss, and dismount for combat. Even then, the first two skills become useless eventually. A fully domesticated Beefalo doesn't need Noble Mount I, and a rider Beefalo rarely bucks you off, and doesn't want Noble Mount II. That means you spend three skill points for starting a fight with 50% inspiration. Not terrible, but what perks aren't you taking for it?

My idea is to buff the first two skills to lean more heavily into buffing domesticated Beefalo.

Noble Mount I could be: Beefalo are domesticated 15% faster. Domesticated Beefalo Excel at Combat. Stealing the wording from Wigfrid's perks, that would mean after you fully domesticate a Beefalo after like 10 days of training, they deal 25% more damage and take 25% less. It might be better to fine tune it, since that with the Battle Saddle would be like 1650 effective HP and 68 damage on an Ornery beefalo. I just like the novelty of "Excel at Combat" instead of "Deals 10% more damage and take 10% less damage," even if the latter is more balanced.

Noble Mount II could be: Beefalos will allow you to ride them for 30% longer. Domesticated Beefalo Tendencies are more effective. The wording could use work, but basically Rider beefalo would be some amount faster, and Ornery beefalo would be some amount more damaging (and for the sake of consistency, Pudgy beefalo some amount more sanity. Though, I doubt anyone would notice if it didn't.) That way, even if you only use Beefalo for transportation, you get some benefit from the buffs. Combined with the first buff, Ornery Beefalo probably would only get a couple extra points of damage. You don't want to give them like +10 damage, and make them deal like 60 + 16 * 1.25 and deal nearly 100 damage. Adding base damage and mult in the same update could become problematic. Granted, Wanda can pull out 142 damage Alarming Clocks, but that's riskier than sitting on over a thousand HP of Beefalo while healing and gaining sanity.

 

The exact numbers can be tweaked, or even given other effects like healing on attack like Wigfrid does, but basically I don't want to feel like I'm putting in so much legwork to deal less damage than using a stack of Dark Swords I could've crafted instead, and I don't want the first two Noble Mount perks to feel useless if I go for mobility Rider beefalo instead.