I don't understand the complaints about Walter

[aidankocherhans]

It seems most people are in agreement that Walter is a bad/terrible character, but I've been playing him and I don't see it? He has a lot of really strong perks, and while he does have a notable downside it's not really a deal breaker.

I've heard a lot of bad things about the slingshot, but it just seems balanced to me? The range is really powerful, so it has a long startup and lower DPS to compensate. Combining it with woby's speed makes combat much easier, and DPS with cursed rounds is good enough for the safety it provides.

His sanity is the one major weakness he has, but it's only a weakness during combat, and only some of the time. Outside of combat it's a very nice qol feature that you don't need to worry about it. During combat, as long as you're avoiding a lot of damage you don't need to worry about sanity at all, and if you do go insane you only need to heal and raise it about the threshold to be good until you get hit again. Walter is one of the best characters at fighting shadows, so being insane really isn't that bad most of the time.

Woby is a fantastic perk, but I think he's also underrated in combat. He's really fast, even fast enough to outrun the attack of the tier 3 rook. He's less of a hassle than an ornery beefalo, and if you wear a marble suit you don't need to worry about getting bucked off if you don't take multiple heavy hits too quickly.

Maybe he's underpowered in comparison to some of the increasingly overtuned characters with negligible downsides, but I think he's still a viable and well balanced character.

[Gashzer]

Yeah i main Walter. 

For some mad reasons alot of other Walter mains on the forums actually tame a beefalo as him. The one character with his own beefalo and they still tame another one. Insanity. Complete disrespect to the strength of big woby being a cheap, early game, no massive amounts of feeding required, pocket beefalo.

Walter is really good at fighting sanity draining bosses or CC. Slingshot absolutely dumps on phase 3 CC that i feel sad for CC.

And he's even better for experienced kiters because Walter's downside is completely eliminated by player skill unlike most other characters.

Extra inventory that travels between shards unlike maxwell hat or chester, is crazy op. Indirectly boosts all body slot items because you dont need a backpack anymore or you can double down on inventory with piggyback because big woby negates the 10% speed penalty.

And because everyone hates Walter and wrongly think hes bad, klei are going to make his skilltree OP. Cant wait, ty Walter haters!

[Dwight34]

Walter's sanity will go down extremely quickly in any combat where you get hurt, and while that shouldn't happen much in regular survival, when you fight bosses it will definitely happen. Walter has easy sanity management in regular survival with the tent, campfire, and tree bonus, but all of those are utterly useless in bossfights. This means Walter has to bring much more sanity foods to almost all bosses than all other characters.

What does Walter get in return? The slingshot. Very low dps, have to stop to fire, very little variety in ammo and overall not good at anything else than killing rabbits and birds, and aggroing some mobs.

Walter's perks don't mesh together to form a strong or even decent characters for boss fights, they only make regular survival a bit easier (and only if you are not a noob, otherwise you will get hit and lose all your sanity constantly), and his advantages can be acquired and much more easily by playing Wurt. Wurt with a fish in her inventory will already never go insane, and she doesn't have that losing health = losing 2x sanity megadownside. And she can later steamroll bosses and ignore winter and summer with her fishes.

Woby will throw you off at the slightest damage, and while you can tame a beefalo, you could do the same as Wendy or Maxwell for vastly superior result. The only advantage Walter has with a beefalo is kiting and spamming the slingshot, but that will be incredibly long and tedious.

And the final nail in the coffin, he has low stats and can't recover sanity from most clothing. Walter simply has no justification to be picked, he requires you to be good to not enter a sanity-death-spiral, but if you're good enough to avoid that, then you're good enough to not need his regular survival perks. He desperately needs a skill tree.

[Echsrick]

wear his hat and sanity drain is actualy less, so get body armor instead of your football helmets for once

[Gashzer]

1 hour ago, Dwight34 said:

Walter's sanity will go down extremely quickly in any combat where you get hurt, and while that shouldn't happen much in regular survival, when you fight bosses it will definitely happen. Walter has easy sanity management in regular survival with the tent, campfire, and tree bonus, but all of those are utterly useless in bossfights. This means Walter has to bring much more sanity foods to almost all bosses than all other characters.

What does Walter get in return? The slingshot. Very low dps, have to stop to fire, very little variety in ammo and overall not good at anything else than killing rabbits and birds, and aggroing some mobs.

Walter's perks don't mesh together to form a strong or even decent characters for boss fights, they only make regular survival a bit easier (and only if you are not a noob, otherwise you will get hit and lose all your sanity constantly), and his advantages can be acquired and much more easily by playing Wurt. Wurt with a fish in her inventory will already never go insane, and she doesn't have that losing health = losing 2x sanity megadownside. And she can later steamroll bosses and ignore winter and summer with her fishes.

Woby will throw you off at the slightest damage, and while you can tame a beefalo, you could do the same as Wendy or Maxwell for vastly superior result. The only advantage Walter has with a beefalo is kiting and spamming the slingshot, but that will be incredibly long and tedious.

And the final nail in the coffin, he has low stats and can't recover sanity from most clothing. Walter simply has no justification to be picked, he requires you to be good to not enter a sanity-death-spiral, but if you're good enough to avoid that, then you're good enough to not need his regular survival perks. He desperately needs a skill tree.

Sounds like a skill issue 

Ah yes, wobys extra inventory doesn't mesh with the fact he benefits more from using body slot armours therefore you can ditch backpack for body armours and pinecone hat to make his downside extremely manageable.

His camper tent that heals both health and sanity doesn't mesh with his downside of losing both health and sanity during combat.

The slingshot which makes hunting koalafants for meat at day 1 super easy and convenient doesn't mesh with the fact jerky is really good boss healing food for both health/sanity which yeno is especially useful for Walter.

Big wobys speed doesnt mesh with the slingshot to make kiting with it super easy.

Since you don't need a backpack with Walter this doesn't mesh with the fact big woby can pick up marble pieces/altar from day 1, greatly speeding up overall game progress beyond what other characters can do.

Ah silly Walter and his "random" perks that just don't mesh... Why klei did you design such a flawed character that requires you to change your playstyle for once? 

Yeno changing playstyle should be the whole reason you play different characters. Walter rewards you for ditching your backpack for body slot items with all the benefits they bring while still having a decent overall inventory size.

[aidankocherhans]

1 hour ago, Gashzer said:

For some mad reasons alot of other Walter mains on the forums actually tame a beefalo as him. The one character with his own beefalo and they still tame another one. Insanity. Complete disrespect to the strength of big woby being a cheap, early game, no massive amounts of feeding required, pocket beefalo.

I get the logic behind taming a beefalo, it lets you ignore your sanity downside, but I really just don't want to go through all that trouble when I already have a faster mount that works just fine and comes for free

[Gashzer]

20 minutes ago, aidankocherhans said:

I get the logic behind taming a beefalo, it lets you ignore your sanity downside, but I really just don't want to go through all that trouble when I already have a faster mount that works just fine and comes for free

But by taming a beefalo you ignore Walter's upside. It's similar to taming an ornery beefalo as Wolfgang, means you can ignore Wolfgangs mighty meter if you want to and still be good to fight, but what's the point playing either of them anymore? Just play a different character.

Woby/big woby is and should always be the main reason u play Walter as she is the most powerful perk he has. His slingshot is a side perk that you can use effectively only in certain combat situations like cheesing phase 2 klaus or destroying phase 3 CC or aggroing nightmare werepig from a safe distance. But Walter doesn't need the slingshot to be his primary source of damage. If you just wear his pinecone hat with body armour, he can melee fight bosses perfectly fine.

 

[aidankocherhans]

1 hour ago, Dwight34 said:

What does Walter get in return? The slingshot. Very low dps, have to stop to fire, very little variety in ammo and overall not good at anything else than killing rabbits and birds, and aggroing some mobs.

I think "very low" is a bit of an exaggeration, cursed rounds do respectable damage with the high tentacle spawn rate, it's not the fastest but it requires much less precise dodging so the fights won't be harder because they take a bit longer. It's not the best weapon in all situations, but it is solid and works great against many enemies (clockwork rooks and Knights are helpless against it for example)

[Dwight34]

38 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Sounds like a skill issue 

Ah yes, wobys extra inventory doesn't mesh with the fact he benefits more from using body slot armours therefore you can ditch backpack for body armours and pinecone hat to make his downside extremely manageable.

His camper tent that heals both health and sanity doesn't mesh with his downside of losing both health and sanity during combat.

The slingshot which makes hunting koalafants for meat at day 1 super easy and convenient doesn't mesh with the fact jerky is really good boss healing food for both health/sanity which yeno is especially useful for Walter.

Big wobys speed doesnt mesh with the slingshot to make kiting with it super easy.

Since you don't need a backpack with Walter this doesn't mesh with the fact big woby can pick up marble pieces/altar from day 1, greatly speeding up overall game progress beyond what other characters can do.

Ah silly Walter and his "random" perks that just don't mesh... Why klei did you design such a flawed character that requires you to change your playstyle for once? 

Yeno changing playstyle should be the whole reason you play different characters. Walter rewards you for ditching your backpack for body slot items with all the benefits they bring while still having a decent overall inventory size.

All of this is small advantages for early game exploration and regular survival, as I already said. But food is already plentiful, healing food not hard to get, and Wortox and Woodie as strong if not stronger at exploring. This has nothing to do with playstyles, Walter plays slower, for no reward. If you want casual surviving, Webber, Willow, Wurt are all much more efficient options. You get a free backpack, but you have to wear the pine hat to not lose too much sanity, so you have to wear body armors... so you're simply back at square one, where you'd just wear a helmet and a backpack.

There is no "skill issue" with Walter in the sense of high-risk high-reward, that's a stupid argument, he's high-risk low-reward, there is no reason to play him because none of his perks benefit an experienced player. You have to be experienced to play him well, but you have to be a noob to truly benefit from most of his advantages.

 

30 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

But Walter doesn't need the slingshot to be his primary source of damage.

That's literally his only alternative source of damage, if he's not using the slingshot, he's just a Wilson with strong sanity issues anytime he gets hit, which in many bosses will be unavoidable. Just because you CAN bring 40 cooked cacti instead of 15 doesn't make it more rewarding or fun, it's just more grinding.

34 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

But by taming a beefalo you ignore Walter's upside

If you fight anything on Woby, a single hit and you're bucked off and will take a second hit at least, and your sanity will be wrecked. Woby is not made for bossfights, beefalos are. And Woby needs 3 monster meat to transform and explore (only real upside of big woby), but you can do the same with Woodie and walk on water as a benefit.

28 minutes ago, aidankocherhans said:

I think "very low" is a bit of an exaggeration, cursed rounds do respectable damage with the high tentacle spawn rate, it's not the fastest but it requires much less precise dodging so the fights won't be harder because they take a bit longer. It's not the best weapon in all situations, but it is solid and works great against many enemies (clockwork rooks and Knights are helpless against it for example)

The DPS is very low, slingshots attack twice as slow as any melee weapon. Cursed rounds are not too bad, but you have to be at at an APS to craft them every time and they still cost a lot of nightmare fuel in the end, and are just not that efficient compared to melee weapons. And once you reach late game you get the gloomerang which is fantastic, and very late-game the howlitzer.

 

If you want a slower experience that rewards you for adapting to it, Wurt is the objective answer. Walter doesn't reward you for your efforts, and I like the guy, but he's a walking contradiction currently since he's designed for new players but in practice requires way too much skill for them. Walter is slower than other characters at a normal run, but he's not rewarded with a calmer or easier playstyle apart from small instances like easily farming gold and meat. His entire sanity upside is literally obtained by any character by just wearing the void robe.

[SilverSpoon]

58 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Sounds like a skill issue 

Here we go again...

[Dwight34]

7 minutes ago, SilverSpoon said:

Here we go again...

Sadly yeah. I'm hoping Walter gets his skill tree sooner than later, the little guy deserves it. He's more disliked than Wes because at least Wes was meant to be bad, Walter wasn't.

[aidankocherhans]

1 hour ago, Dwight34 said:

All of this is small advantages for early game exploration and regular survival, as I already said. But food is already plentiful, healing food not hard to get, and Wortox and Woodie as strong if not stronger at exploring. This has nothing to do with playstyles, Walter plays slower, for no reward

Walter is good at early exploration, but is slow? What do you mean by that? He actually seems like a pretty good ruins rusher to me.

 

1 hour ago, Dwight34 said:

If you fight anything on Woby, a single hit and you're bucked off and will take a second hit at least, and your sanity will be wrecked. Woby is not made for bossfights, beefalos are. And Woby needs 3 monster meat to transform and explore (only real upside of big woby), but you can do the same with Woodie and walk on water as a benefit.

If you wear marble armor you can take most hits without getting knocked off, and even if you do you'll probably have avoided a lot of hits earlier in the fight. Woodie can't interact with anything in goose form, it's not really the same thing.

 

1 hour ago, Dwight34 said:

there is no reason to play him because none of his perks benefit an experienced player.

An extra chester is useful to anyone no matter what, and not every character can move as fast as woby. If someone is good enough to not get hit they have no need for sanity management.

[Dwight34]

19 minutes ago, aidankocherhans said:

Walter is good at early exploration, but is slow? What do you mean by that? He actually seems like a pretty good ruins rusher to me.

I mean that while exploring the map is quick, the milestones of a playthrough like exploring the ruins or fighting bosses require much more preparation and carefulness, and even in regular survival Walter is incentivized to stay still (sleeping, sitting at a campfire to regain sanity...) which in turn make you less productive in a defined period of time thus winter creeps on you faster leading to a less productive autumn.

19 minutes ago, aidankocherhans said:

If you wear marble armor you can take most hits without getting knocked off, and even if you do you'll probably have avoided a lot of hits earlier in the fight. Woodie can't interact with anything in goose form, it's not really the same thing.

You can, but then you are spamming the slingshot which is twice as slow as a spear, and you still need to dodge most damage. Woodie can't interact but he doesn't need to that much, as the main purpose of his exploration is that unlike Walter he can cross gaps and water and find the most precious biome possible in an early playthrough, the lunar island.

19 minutes ago, aidankocherhans said:

An extra chester is useful to anyone no matter what, and not every character can move as fast as woby. If someone is good enough to not get hit they have no need for sanity management.

Useful yes, but definitely not game-changing. Not every character can move as fast as woby, but they can be much more productive/quick at combat or resource-gathering which doesn't just even the playing field, but easily makes them faster. If someone is good enough to not get hit, they are good enough to not profit much from Walter's upsides.

[arubaro]

The downside is one of the best and a lot of his perks are fun, the problem is how bland is the slingshot...you just press F to deal low safe dps or waste expensive rounds for an effect you get for cheaper items like ice staff... would be more interesting if it was more powerful but needed to aim like the special atack from darts in the forge

[DegenerateFurry]

3 hours ago, Gashzer said:

Yeah i main Walter. 

For some mad reasons alot of other Walter mains on the forums actually tame a beefalo as him. The one character with his own beefalo and they still tame another one. Insanity. Complete disrespect to the strength of big woby being a cheap, early game, no massive amounts of feeding required, pocket beefalo.

Walter is really good at fighting sanity draining bosses or CC. Slingshot absolutely dumps on phase 3 CC that i feel sad for CC.

And he's even better for experienced kiters because Walter's downside is completely eliminated by player skill unlike most other characters.

Extra inventory that travels between shards unlike maxwell hat or chester, is crazy op. Indirectly boosts all body slot items because you dont need a backpack anymore or you can double down on inventory with piggyback because big woby negates the 10% speed penalty.

And because everyone hates Walter and wrongly think hes bad, klei are going to make his skilltree OP. Cant wait, ty Walter haters!

People tame a beefalo as Walter because, unlike Woby, it'll take hits for you. It won't just buck you off and leave you to die while your sanity drains like a burst dam. Instead, riding a beefalo (particularly an ornery one) actually negates his main downside since his big sanity drain from being hurt doesn't happen if he's not being hurt - unless it's a ranged enemy like a clockwork bishop, the beefalo's taking the damage instead of you.

It's one of the reasons people say Walter feels like a disjointed bag of random perks. Woby's a riding mount only, which is great to have in the very early game, sure, but when you look at how it's on a character who can't take hits and has a slow-firing ranged weapon that requires him to stand still (so you'd want to ride Woby while using the slingshot so you can reposition faster), you kinda realize that it gets outclassed by beefalo later (as early as your first winter if you're rushing a tamed beefalo), which sucks, because then one of your character's central perks becomes irrelevant. 

Compare this mobility-related perk to another: Woodie's goose form. It never loses relevance or gets outclassed because it means he doesn't need a boat to go back and forth between the mainland and any of the islands or to cross gaps on the mainland, and it's also a quick and easy way to explore the caves due to wereform night vision. It's also just straight-up faster than using a boat, at least with a normal boat set-up. A beefalo's more versatile since it doesn't lock you out of fighting, sure, but providing night vision and crossing the ocean with no boat are things beefalo simply can't do, so the goose will save you a bunch of time and keep your options open.
Woodie also has other options that discourage him from using a beefalo in combat (his weremoose form), so him having a different way to get around quickly is some pretty great perk synergy; every part of him sort of discourages using a beefalo for anything other than moving big objects. 

The only thing Woby can do that a beefalo can't is have some extra inventory slots, and you don't have to sacrifice those to use a beefalo as your mount instead, so there's literally no reason not to use a beefalo instead as Walter outside of the first 15 days or so when the ride time's not quite enough for boss fights.

[Gashzer]

27 minutes ago, DegenerateFurry said:

People tame a beefalo as Walter because, unlike Woby, it'll take hits for you. It won't just buck you off and leave you to die while your sanity drains like a burst dam. Instead, riding a beefalo (particularly an ornery one) actually negates his main downside since his big sanity drain from being hurt doesn't happen if he's not being hurt - unless it's a ranged enemy like a clockwork bishop, the beefalo's taking the damage instead of you.

It's one of the reasons people say Walter feels like a disjointed bag of random perks. Woby's a riding mount only, which is great to have in the very early game, sure, but when you look at how it's on a character who can't take hits and has a slow-firing ranged weapon that requires him to stand still (so you'd want to ride Woby while using the slingshot so you can reposition faster), you kinda realize that it gets outclassed by beefalo later (as early as your first winter if you're rushing a tamed beefalo), which sucks, because then one of your character's central perks becomes irrelevant. 

Compare this mobility-related perk to another: Woodie's goose form. It never loses relevance or gets outclassed because it means he doesn't need a boat to go back and forth between the mainland and any of the islands or to cross gaps on the mainland, and it's also a quick and easy way to explore the caves due to wereform night vision. It's also just straight-up faster than using a boat, at least with a normal boat set-up. A beefalo's more versatile since it doesn't lock you out of fighting, sure, but providing night vision and crossing the ocean with no boat are things beefalo simply can't do, so the goose will save you a bunch of time and keep your options open.
Woodie also has other options that discourage him from using a beefalo in combat (his weremoose form), so him having a different way to get around quickly is some pretty great perk synergy; every part of him sort of discourages using a beefalo for anything other than moving big objects. 

The only thing Woby can do that a beefalo can't is have some extra inventory slots, and you don't have to sacrifice those to use a beefalo as your mount instead, so there's literally no reason not to use a beefalo instead as Walter outside of the first 15 days or so when the ride time's not quite enough for boss fights.

Walter can take hits. This is the biggest misconception about him. As long as you have full sanity and wear the pinecone hat going into fights he's fine, camper tent makes this possible anywhere.

Slowdown rounds lets you reposition without needing any speed boosts at all. And you are acting like you have to fight things with the slingshot, you 100% do not need the slingshot. You can drop it day 1 and Walter is still a very powerful character, taming a beefalo is a big task, is tedious and the beefalo can die to stupid stuff like rooks/tentacles. A early game beefalo is mega good and is the best time to have this speed. Early game perks are way more valuable than late game perks, bone armour/bone helm completely negate walters downside in the late game allowing you to tank if you wish.

And Walter ironically is one of the best characters for moving with a mag/cane because he doesnt sacrifice inventory to do so. Making him one of the best characters to be late game if you want a nice compromise of speed/inventory and you don't like handling a beefalo or big woby even.

Also snurtle armour is very rapidly farmed these days with a watering can so with wobys extra inventory space and a piggyback you can carry absolutely loads of them to tank bosses with.  

Again, people are trying to play Walter like every other character which is the problem. Oh no I can't use football helmets with a backpack efficiently anymore... better tame a beefalo instead of using pinecone hat + body armours an being completely fine.

[SilverSpoon]

2 hours ago, Dwight34 said:

Sadly yeah. I'm hoping Walter gets his skill tree sooner than later, the little guy deserves it. He's more disliked than Wes because at least Wes was meant to be bad, Walter wasn't.

Problem #1: Slingshot still doesn't support flat damage.

He is well-balanced. As with any character, Beefalo covers almost all of the risk of being hit. Also, his slingshot is particularly synergy with the Beefalo riding style, and if you kite shooting, Walter have the potential to solo quite some bosses. You can use Woby as a one-shot Beefalo even in the early game.
Tent Roll is very useful for managing his health and sanity. Tent Roll is a shelter that can be placed and dismantled 10 times when you have low sanity or low health. No matter how low your health or sanity is, you can recover 2 health/sec, 1 sanity/sec, per -0.5 hunger/sec, so you have even plenty of room to eat Cooked Monster Meat. Even if that's not the case, he has a lot of sanity recovery methods, so actual sanity management is easier than other characters.
He has his own Chester, so he can carry rounds, tent rolls, and emergency health and sanity recovery items.

So what's his problem? to take the time to slowly craft 10 rounds at a time, shooting slowly them to get DPS as only spear level, literally keeping to press F in party play , going to the depths of the ruins just to craft rounds, waiting patiently to recover your health and sanity, everything about playing Walter is (personally) boring.
And there are almost no roles that only he can do, on the level of Wes. Slow-Down Rounds? It's almost a margin of error, and you can contribute much more by fight with a combat character.

My suggestions are there
- Make it so you actually have to "aim" with the slingshot, either by cursor move like in Yoshi's Island, or by pulling the sling with the mouse or joystick like in Ape Escape.
- In addition accordingly increase the DPS, and increase the number of rounds types to give player more options, like sleep rounds, panic rounds, status debuff rounds, stun round(Continuously generates very weak area damage), wet round, player heal round, and any something. 
- Increase the number of rounds stacks and the amount can make at once
- Simply increase the time efficiency of tent recovery or make it so that sanity recovery accelerates the longer you sleep or telling stories, so you don't have to wait longer than necessary to recover sanity

[Dwight34]

3 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Walter can take hits. This is the biggest misconception about him. As long as you have full sanity and wear the pinecone hat going into fights he's fine, camper tent makes this possible anywhere.

Slowdown rounds lets you reposition without needing any speed boosts at all. And you are acting like you have to fight things with the slingshot, you 100% do not need the slingshot. You can drop it day 1 and Walter is still a very powerful character, taming a beefalo is a big task, is tedious and the beefalo can die to stupid stuff like rooks/tentacles. A early game beefalo is mega good and is the best time to have this speed. Early game perks are way more valuable than late game perks, bone armour/bone helm completely negate walters downside in the late game allowing you to tank if you wish.

And Walter ironically is one of the best characters for moving with a mag/cane because he doesnt sacrifice inventory to do so. Making him one of the best characters to be late game if you want a nice compromise of speed/inventory and you don't like handling a beefalo.

Also snurtle armour is very rapidly farmed these days with a watering can so with wobys extra space and a piggyback you can carry absolutely loads of them to tank bosses with.  

Again, people are trying to play Walter like every other character which is the problem. Oh no I can't use football helmets with a backpack efficiently anymore... better tame a beefalo instead of using pinecone hat + body armours an being completely fine.

Are you being obtuse on purpose? Needing to wear the pinecone hat IS a major downside, no other character in the game has to wear that one specific helmet to not lose a billion sanity, and Walter without his slingshot is by definition a much worse Wilson when it comes to any bossfight. The tent is useless during fights, only useful after or before them.

Other characters don't need the bone armor/helm in the first place in any similar way because they don't have his downside. And if you want to move fast late-game, you've got Woodie, Wortox, Wanda, WX-78, Winona and Wormwood. That's a lot of characters who have that same advantage, and they don't need a magi to get it.

Drop the "git gud" act immediately, Walter isn't played because he isn't rewarding, that's all. People walk in their home on 2 legs instead of hopping on 1 not because they can't but because it's completely useless to do so. Walter fails at providing a safe experience for noobs, and he fails at shining in any way in the normal milestones like rushing the ruins or fighting any boss. Hell, Jakey hasn't even bothered to do a boss rush on him with how much of a worse Wilson he is in that regard.
Walter isn't for noobs, and since you focus the discussion on "muh skill adapt", he isn't good in all of the metrics players use to compare characters. His exploration is above average, his combat is way below average in most instances that matter, and his resource gathering is completely average.

5 minutes ago, SilverSpoon said:

Problem #1: Slingshot still doesn't support flat damage.

He is well-balanced. As with any character, Beefalo covers almost all of the risk of being hit. Also, his slingshot is particularly synergy with the Beefalo riding style, and if you kite shooting, Walter have the potential to solo quite some bosses. You can use Woby as a one-shot Beefalo even in the early game.
Tent Roll is very useful for managing his health and sanity. Tent Roll is a shelter that can be placed and dismantled 10 times when you have low sanity or low health. No matter how low your health or sanity is, you can recover 2 health/sec, 1 sanity/sec, per -0.5 hunger/sec, so you have plenty of room to eat Cooked Monster Meat. Even if that's not the case, he has a lot of sanity recovery methods, so actual sanity management is easier than other characters.
He has his own Chester, so he can carry rounds, tent rolls, and emergency health and sanity recovery items.

So what's his problem? to take the time to slowly craft 10 rounds at a time, shooting slowly them to get DPS as only spear level, literally keeping to press F in party play , going to the depths of the ruins just to craft rounds, waiting patiently to recover your health and sanity, everything about playing Walter is (personally) boring.
And there are almost no roles that only he can do, on the level of Wes. Slow-Down Rounds? It's almost a margin of error, and you can contribute much more by fight with a combat character.

My suggestions are there
- Make it so you actually have to "aim" with the slingshot, either by cursor move like in Yoshi's Island, or by pulling the sling with the mouse or joystick like in Ape Escape.
- In addition accordingly increase the DPS, and increase the number of rounds types to give player more options.
- Increase the number of rounds stacks and the amount can make at once
- Simply increase the time efficiency of tent recovery or make it so that sanity recovery accelerates the longer you sleep or telling stories, so you don't have to wait longer than necessary to recover sanity

Another thing I forgot to mention, the slingshot has 0 way of interacting with planar entities yet. Every single ammo deals purely physical damage for now, something I'm sure the skill tree will fix. And it's not that Walter is boring, it's that Walter has you constantly walking on eggshells. Anyone looking for casual survival can relax and pick:
- Webber to sleep in nests and eat monster meat all day and use spider resources to cover all needs
- Wurt to have infinite sanity regen, ignore rain and later use fish to cancel winter and summer
- Willow to never worry about sanity or light
- Wendy for infinite light (Abi's ghost, especially if you /dance) and easy defense from common mobs
- Wilson to ignore winter almost entirely with his beard, and make infinite meat effigies safely

Etc. And all of them can do a decent job of attaining normal milestones. Walter is the exception, high-risk, low-reward.

[Well-met]

two reasons

walter's slingshot mechanic is built around your target being busy with another player. Most people play this game solo.

walter's sanity mechanic is built around never getting hit. Most people refuse to learn kiting or can't and they will rely on tanking and holding f.

[SilverSpoon]

23 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

As long as you have full sanity and wear the pinecone hat going into fights he's fine

25 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

bone armour/bone helm completely negate walters downside in the late game allowing you to tank if you wish.

25 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Also snurtle armour is very rapidly farmed these days with a watering can so with wobys extra inventory space and a piggyback you can carry absolutely loads of them to tank bosses with.  

The fact that you have to go that far compared to other characters is a big problem.

27 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

And Walter ironically is one of the best characters for moving with a mag/cane because he doesnt sacrifice inventory to do so. Making him one of the best characters to be late game if you want a nice compromise of speed/inventory and you don't like handling a beefalo or big woby even.

And if that's the reward, he's the perfect inferior version of Maxwell.

[Mysterious box]

5 hours ago, Dwight34 said:

Walter's sanity will go down extremely quickly in any combat where you get hurt, and while that shouldn't happen much in regular survival, when you fight bosses it will definitely happen. Walter has easy sanity management in regular survival with the tent, campfire, and tree bonus, but all of those are utterly useless in bossfights. This means Walter has to bring much more sanity foods to almost all bosses than all other characters.

What does Walter get in return? The slingshot. Very low dps, have to stop to fire, very little variety in ammo and overall not good at anything else than killing rabbits and birds, and aggroing some mobs.

Walter's perks don't mesh together to form a strong or even decent characters for boss fights, they only make regular survival a bit easier (and only if you are not a noob, otherwise you will get hit and lose all your sanity constantly), and his advantages can be acquired and much more easily by playing Wurt. Wurt with a fish in her inventory will already never go insane, and she doesn't have that losing health = losing 2x sanity megadownside. And she can later steamroll bosses and ignore winter and summer with her fishes.

Woby will throw you off at the slightest damage, and while you can tame a beefalo, you could do the same as Wendy or Maxwell for vastly superior result. The only advantage Walter has with a beefalo is kiting and spamming the slingshot, but that will be incredibly long and tedious.

And the final nail in the coffin, he has low stats and can't recover sanity from most clothing. Walter simply has no justification to be picked, he requires you to be good to not enter a sanity-death-spiral, but if you're good enough to avoid that, then you're good enough to not need his regular survival perks. He desperately needs a skill tree.

I have a lot of complaints with Walter but some of this isn't true Walter's sanity doesn't go down extremely quickly in combat unless your tanking or not wearing armor. The reason people tend to hate Walter in this area tends to be that he punishes you harder for being sloppy with your kiting something you can get away with while playing Wes but not Wanda or Walter. Keep in mind that in order to go insane with Walter you have to take a lot of damage through armor and intentionally not heal. Even during a boss fight unless your actively getting wrecked this isn't a issue and if you aren't very good and combat carrying sanity food completely solves the problem.

I do agree that his perks aren't very good in combat but they do have their niches for example the slingshot is one of the safest ways to kill brightshades and deal with some other post rift content, his portable temt makes him one of the best ruins clearers and if you like to do ocean content with friends his campfire stories shine for longterm boat play.

 

As for Woby I agree she's outclassed by the beefalo but she doesn't instantly buck you unless your not wearing armor.

As for beefalo gameplay the biggest advantage Walter has over Wendy or Maxwell is his slowdow rounds which allows you to use the beefalo in more boss fights than normal.

5 hours ago, Dwight34 said:

And the final nail in the coffin, he has low stats and can't recover sanity from most clothing. Walter simply has no justification to be picked, he requires you to be good to not enter a sanity-death-spiral, but if you're good enough to avoid that, then you're good enough to not need his regular survival perks. He desperately needs a skill tree.

This is rather pointless as he isn't passively losing sanity like other characters but he can infact wear thulectie armor if you want passive sanity regen.

I do agree he needs a skill tree but because his slingshot is too weak and he doesn't offer enough combat wise not because he's a overall flawed character or something.

20 minutes ago, SilverSpoon said:

The fact that you have to go that far compared to other characters is a big problem.

And if that's the reward, he's the perfect inferior version of Maxwell.

The thing is you don't you just have to not tank or practice kiting.

33 minutes ago, Well-met said:

walter's sanity mechanic is built around never getting hit. Most people refuse to learn kiting or can't and they will rely on tanking and holding f.

It's not even never getting hit it allows you to eat a lot of hits just not a huge amount.

1 hour ago, DegenerateFurry said:

Compare this mobility-related perk to another: Woodie's goose form. It never loses relevance or gets outclassed because it means he doesn't need a boat to go back and forth between the mainland and any of the islands or to cross gaps on the mainland, and it's also a quick and easy way to explore the caves due to wereform night vision. It's also just straight-up faster than using a boat, at least with a normal boat set-up.

Ironically a major complaint about the goose is that it does get outclassed fairly quickly into winter and very much so late game.

[Dwight34]

17 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

I have a lot of complaints with Walter but some of this isn't true Walter's sanity doesn't go down extremely quickly in combat unless your tanking or not wearing armor. The reason people tend to hate Walter in this area tends to be that he punishes you harder for being sloppy with your kiting something you can get away with while playing Wes but not Wanda or Walter. Keep in mind that in order to go insane with Walter you have to take a lot of damage through armor and intentionally not heal. Even during a boss fight unless your actively getting wrecked this isn't a issue and if you aren't very good and combat carrying sanity food completely solves the problem.

That's correct but it ignores a very important point: all other characters (except Wes) who can't mindlessly tank have strong tools to help them with this disadvantage. Wanda has much higher damage and i-frames as well as range, Maxwell has high damage and shadow prison, Wormwood has salamanders and root armor AoE attacks... Walter either plays like a worse Wilson, or he stays away holding F with a slingshot that attacks twice as slowly as any melee weapon and has a peak damage of 51 per shot (excluding tentacles with a compliant target). Why would you choose to get punished for "sloppy play" for no advantage? My last world was on Maxwell, and I definitely had to be very prudent and always carry revival means around, but he had strong advantages to justify it. Walter doesn't.

17 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

I do agree that his perks aren't very good in combat but they do have their niches for example the slingshot is one of the safest ways to kill brightshades and deal with some other post rift content

Safe sure, but irrelevant. Kill brightshades once and you've got the staff to easily kill them. Get the gloomerang and they become an absolute joke, you can literally hold F with your eyes closed from outside of their range and you'll kill 3 of them without emptying even a single gloomerang's durability.

17 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

This is rather pointless as he isn't passively losing sanity like other characters but he can infact wear thulectie armor if you want passive sanity regen.

He is if you're less than 90% health, which you will be in bossfights. Sanity is not an issue outside of boss fights for any slightly experienced player, but in boss fights it quickly becomes an issue with Walter with very few hits, and if some chaos starts to erupt, you will constantly be losing sanity if you get hit in situations where you couldn't dodge or if you're running away and don't have time to stop and heal. His sanity is only an upside in casual survival, but that's only truly good for noobs, who cannot play him successfully. It always comes back to this issue, either Walter needs to become much more friendly to noobs, or he needs a lot of mid and late-game perks to make him relevant for experienced players.

All of his upsides can be made to sound good and all, but in actual play, Walter just doesn't work as efficiently as any other character. You're better off picking Wilson in basically all instances.

[Gashzer]

27 minutes ago, SilverSpoon said:

The fact that you have to go that far compared to other characters is a big problem.

And if that's the reward, he's the perfect inferior version of Maxwell.

This is if you are bad at kiting. Thulecite crown + mag and the 4-5 times I get hit during a boss fight if I'm kiting poorly isn't enough to go insane as Walter. I'm saying if you are terrible at kiting and can't git gud. Snurtle armour is easier to use as Walter because of all his inventory space you can stockpile it easier and move between slurtle mounds faster on woby which solves u needing to get sanity or health healing for most bosses. Or pinecone hat and thulecite suit is pretty awesome too.

Maxwells magician hat is more clunky to use (can't craft directly from it) and doesn't carry over shards which is a bigger deal than you think. Don't get me wrong Maxwell has a higher skill ceiling with his prison spell and duelist but Walter is a very old character in terms of updates while maxwell is more recent.

Walters skilltree will hopefully be beyond willow/woodie levels of buffness while Maxwell probably get more flavour and less op skills in his.

[SilverSpoon]

19 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

The thing is you don't you just have to not tank or practice kiting.

Totally agree, but that cockie guy continues to say "his own beefalo and they still tame another one. Insanity", "he can melee fight bosses perfectly fine", "you to tank if you wish", "skill issue ".
So what's the point of playing Walter?

[Gashzer]

6 minutes ago, SilverSpoon said:

Totally agree, but that cockie guy continues to say "his own beefalo and they still tame another one. Insanity", "he can melee fight bosses perfectly fine", "you to tank if you wish", "skill issue ".
So what's the point of playing Walter?

Yeah its massively unnecessary to tame a beefalo when playing Walter. You don't need to waste time getting a saddle, collecting beefalo food to keep beefalo obedience up or worry about a rogue rook or tentacle ending it all.

Game knowledge or a willingness to use wobys extra space as ur backpack opens up alot of indirect advantages that Walter provides.

 "cockie guy" now now SilverSpoon, don't make this personal. My insults are to the masses not to individual people, and even that skill issue joke highlights that walters downside is eliminated 100% by being good at DST.