Wanda Skilltree, issues and ideas

[MihmetCrido]

Wanda playstyle issues (with rift content)

Wanda is an increadibly unique character, trading the ability to easily influence her health through food for an aging system, that requires upkeep, but makes the ability to restore incidental damage easier than most other characters. She was a "glass cannon" that trades the safety for being closer to death, ie more damage when old. Most people circumvented this by using strong armor, like thulecite crown, dreadstone or nightmare armor.

As an exampel  
Thulecite helm + body 
100 damage (0 planar) with thulecite crown, 10 damage or 4 years
Void helm + body
75 damage + 30 planar, taking 15 damage or 6 years  + 10 pdamage or 4pyears, total 10 years

Given that the wanda was old you only have 14 years to play around with, this would mean that previously you could take one or two hits without being super worried about the next hit killing you, the new planar mobs and armor doesn't allow you the same leeway. One hit could easily bring you to a panic as any damage after that would kill you, some bosses also have combo attacks, like Crystal Deerclops where if you get hit by the freeze attack they will attack you a second time, this combo is garantees to kill you regardless of what armor you have on. (Ignoring bone armor as it works a bit differently). While this issues isn't Wanda specific, the issue is amplified a lot by her previous way of playing.

Armor

I do NOT hink that her skilltree should solve this, but instead introduce new armor (or adjust existing armor) that are stronger in terms of planar defense. I think a stronger armor in terms of defense is one way of helping to combat this issue, players who prefer a more defensive playstyle should have that option, keeping the existing void/brightshare gear as the more offensive options with their offensive bonuses tied to their respective sets. A quick idea is a planar armor that requires both shadow and lunar materials, gives a high planar defense, but takes a potion of the planar defense over X to it's durability, making the armor a very strong but fragile armor when facing high planar damage dealing entities.

Some issues I have with (mostly= Wanda as a character:

• Inventory slots are extremly limited, in order to utilize her skills you are pretty much forced to bring at the very least an ageless watch, and often more for any non-trivial combat and a backtreck watch. I would like to see this reworked, and have some ideas how this could be adressed in the skill tree.
• Assemble, disassemble and reassemble watches, this is a very cool skill but I feel that you can quickly amass enough time pieces to no longer care about this. Being able to craft the perfect watch for the situation by disaseembling an existing one is a cool skill for a player and I would like to see this incentivies more. 
• Teamplay, I think she is a strong solo character and while she has the ability to bring along friends through portals, I think her ability to make her presence felt as a unique character in the team could be expanded on 
• Backstory, I feel like her past points to having more than a baseline knowledge of the shadows existence, but her clocks seems to be harnessing it's power on a deeper than surface level, please expand this and wherever possible make it show either through flavour text in game or as skills. 
• Not eveything needs to be combat or power related in, ability to quickly travelse the land, stronger combat, easier time collecting resources etc. I think each character could have more unique items, interactions between themselves, other characters and the world.
• Time-related abilities, I think playing on the time concept is very fun, I want to see more of this, having DST apropriate skills that relate to time; past, present and future; Time and space; Accelerated Perception; Chronokinses (local time manipulation); Precognition; Loops and Paradoxes. While not everything above is easily implemented without being game breaking I think the flavour of these could easily be incorporated into her skill names. 

Wanda Skill Tree Node ideas and general abilities (could add some for character flavour 

Ageless Watch Tech

XOR branch (cant take both)

• Ageless Watch Cooldown
  • 2 Charges, each on a separate cooldown, but each cooldown is increased by a small amount. (could help solve the inventory issue, by allowing players to save up charges for when you need to quickly use multiple chargers in quick sucession without having to clutter the inventory, but at a cost. 
• Ageless Watch Cancels Damage
  • Cancels damage similarly to how taking damage cancels rewinding in progress.
  • Slows down time, making rewinding or fast-forwarding time happen slower,

Age Tech

• Shadow: Changes the interaction between age and shadow proficiency, keeping the 3 age thresholds the same.
  • Moves some of her perks earlier: Young: x1.25, Middle Age: x1.75
• Tinker: Able to infuse an item and craft a Wanda-specific item that, while it holds "charge"(some sort of durability), slows down Wanda’s natural aging while equipped.

Sanity and Insanity

• Planar Defense Gets passive planar defense at the cost of sanity.
  • Takes up to X planar damage to her sanity instead of age, making her more prone to going insane while fighting strong planar entities.
  • While old, the rate her sanity is drained from this ability is reduced.

Tinker’s Toolbelt

Able to craft a new storage that can only hold clockmaking tools, pieces, or clocks.

• Counts as watchmaker tools
• Inventory
  • slots for pieces
  • slots for clocks, perhaps can store max one of each clock?
  • Retained when dying
  • clock materials like gems, marble etc? (I can forsee this being an issue where players could use this as extra storage for "unintended" purposes like extra storage for gems, not sure how to adress it)

Clockwork Companion

Summons a small mechanical beetle that can assist. (If you have read Milleniums Rule, inspiration from Tyen's Beetle) 

• Can gather small nearby resources and bring them to the player if they have it in their inventory. (for ex, berries, grass, twigs, seeds, would only pickup (1) pieces and bring it to the player if they have it in their inventory already
• Stealth Mode
  • Invisible to enemies, allowing it to scout ahead and reveal parts of the map without attracting attention.
  • Highlights hidden items or threats in the environment. Think easier time finding chester eyebone, bottles and tentacles to avoid
• Analyzes enemy behaviors and warns the player of impending attacks or seasonal changes, helping them in advance (time sense).

Time Sense

could be either an innate talent to wanda or tied to the mechanic companion.

• Glimpse
  • Glimpse a few seconds into the future to anticipate enemy actions.
  • Gives a more detailed description of incoming bosses and seasonal waves.
  • Can predict where they are going to spawn before they do (e.g., sensing if a worm or boss worm is coming).

Temporal Awareness

• Detect distortions in time and space, revealing hidden enemies or objects.
• Similar to how Winona can find remnants of Wagstaff.

Backstory Integration

Clockmaker’s Legacy

• Introduce elements of Wanda’s backstory through her skills and abilities. For example, certain skills could be tied to her past experiences or mentors.
• Include lore items or quests that reveal more about her history and motivations, making her a more engaging and relatable character.

Time Traveler’s Tales

• Wanda could have more unique interactions with other characters based on her knowledge of different time periods.
• These interactions could provide additional context and depth to her character, as well as offer unique gameplay opportunities.

 

These are some of my initial ideas and would love to see others take apart them or use them as inspiration for their own ideas.

If you took the time to read this thanks for you time, sorry for it not being as coherent at parts as I would have liked, this is just a few ideas I had during a lul time at other obligations.

/M