Is Wendy a strong character?

[Sapientis]

Please answer the poll before reading this. You can leave a comment about your point of view later.

 

I saw this post in the beta branch and need a reality check for myself or the devs...

On 11/21/2024 at 11:32 PM, Jason said:

There is room for some of these skills to improve with feedback for sure. They are probably tuned a little low. The reason for that is Wendy is quite strong already. Winona for example got a lot of crazy stuff cause she wasn't a strong character to begin with. That should be kept in mind for all skill trees really. 

 

I always considered Wendy a character for the everyday fun and easy playstyle, but significantly harder to deal with most bosses, because of how Abigail AI, low health points and vulnerability towards AoE damage works, but maybe I'm just delusional?

Like... I don't know... I question myself strongly here, but Winona was considered weak?
Boring - Yes.
Swap character - Yes, because catapults are strong.
Uninspired engineer with not much gameplay mechanics other than her crafts - I mean... Harsh, but also kind of... Yes.
But weak?

She had nothing going on for her basic survival but her catapults had all the power, which made her strong. Her skilltree made her absurdly powerful, taking nothing from the sheer power of catapults arenas she could already set up.

With Wendy, again: maybe I'm just missing something, I consider her really good for basic gameplay, but when the bosses come to the table, there are only several that Abigail can be helpful against. There are some that Abigail makes much easier: DFLY, Bee Queen, Crab King, Antlion, Spider Queen, Varg, Lord of the Fruit Flies. But with the rest you either require some crazy 5head tactic, that can still fail with poor execution (Eye and Twins of Terror, Toadstool, AFW), or just dozens upon dozens of Spectral Cure-Alls (because all other Elixirs just don't matter against 3-6 hits for 100-200 damage) which still don't do their job that well. Even a medium Treequard can kill Abigail with Spectral Cure-All and Wendy trying to tank it.
The time to acquire those healing Elixirs can be just saved by killing the boss yourself and don't risk Abigail dying, which may just lower your sanity and bring more Shadow Creatures. Also Abigail dying makes her useless for basic survival for the next day or two.

Are there poeple qenuinely considering Wendy stronger than Wilson when it comes to fighting Celestial Champion? Sure Abi dying only lowers Wendy's sanity, but trying to actively use Abigail in this fight just won't be a a net gain. She'll die easily even during 1st phase and then she'll just die each time she's summoned (yes, even with a Sisturn active, this thing does basically nothing to the boss fight).

So if all of this is just some madman gibberish to you, you know what to do... 

[Tranoze]

I'll admit my guilt. I play Wendy because she is cute and relaxing.

But she is only strong in few area - farming silk from spider, killing monkey and defend hound.
The rest? She is as weak as wes.

[Cuernito.]

1 hour ago, Sapientis said:

She had nothing going on for her basic survival but her catapults had all the power, which made her strong. Her skilltree made her absurdly powerful, taking nothing from the sheer power of catapults arenas she could already set up.

Just a little correction from a winona main since she was just wilson 2.0, she actually got nerfed twice by klei but because she got a huge buff in other areas people barely notice them. The first one was when klei changed the extra crafting speed to cost hunger points, and in the second nerf she got her normal catapults without any skill being worst than before, now the catapults have to be turned on manually one by one and now they have a minimun range of attack which means that catapults can not attack enemies if they are too close to them(this was not the case before the update or at least wasn't very noticeable). But i understand the point, she was a strong character after the first rework.

[Arcwell]

For a while I mained Wendy simply because I couldn't be bothered to learn how to kill Bee Queen as Wilson. 

By old standards (pre skill trees) she is quite strong, although if I'm comparing main branch Wendy to main branch characters right now, I'd rate her above average.

In any scenario where Abby is alive, Wendy is comparable to Wigfrid because she gets a 1.155x  (or 1.54x with beefalo!!) damage modifier instead of 0.75x, plus extra damage from Abby, plus Abby usually tanks some damage for you. Abby's AoE and aggro trivializes several mobs and some bosses. Some examples are hounds, spiders, frogs, splumonkeys, bishops, tentacles, Antlion, and Bee Queen. She can also deal with Fuelweaver's woven shadows provided you keep her alive.

Of course there are scenarios where it's harder to use Abby, and in those cases she can struggle. Three examples that immediately come to mind are AG because Abby lags behind and can get hit by the charge, Klaus because she counts as an extra target for ice/fire rings, and CC phase 3 because the lasers obliterate her.

[Sacco]

3 hours ago, Sapientis said:

Please answer the poll before reading this. You can leave a comment about your point of view later.

 

I saw this post in the beta branch and need a reality check for myself or the devs...

 

I always considered Wendy a character for the everyday fun and easy playstyle, but significantly harder to deal with most bosses, because of how Abigail AI, low health points and vulnerability towards AoE damage works, but maybe I'm just delusional?

Like... I don't know... I question myself strongly here, but Winona was considered weak?
Boring - Yes.
Swap character - Yes, because catapults are strong.
Uninspired engineer with not much gameplay mechanics other than her crafts - I mean... Harsh, but also kind of... Yes.
But weak?

She had nothing going on for her basic survival but her catapults had all the power, which made her strong. Her skilltree made her absurdly powerful, taking nothing from the sheer power of catapults arenas she could already set up.

With Wendy, again: maybe I'm just missing something, I consider her really good for basic gameplay, but when the bosses come to the table, there are only several that Abigail can be helpful against. There are some that Abigail makes much easier: DFLY, Bee Queen, Crab King, Antlion, Spider Queen, Varg, Lord of the Fruit Flies. But with the rest you either require some crazy 5head tactic, that can still fail with poor execution (Eye and Twins of Terror, Toadstool, AFW), or just dozens upon dozens of Spectral Cure-Alls (because all other Elixirs just don't matter against 3-6 hits for 100-200 damage) which still don't do their job that well. Even a medium Treequard can kill Abigail with Spectral Cure-All and Wendy trying to tank it.
The time to acquire those healing Elixirs can be just saved by killing the boss yourself and don't risk Abigail dying, which may just lower your sanity and bring more Shadow Creatures. Also Abigail dying makes her useless for basic survival for the next day or two.

Are there poeple qenuinely considering Wendy stronger than Wilson when it comes to fighting Celestial Champion? Sure Abi dying only lowers Wendy's sanity, but trying to actively use Abigail in this fight just won't be a a net gain. She'll die easily even during 1st phase and then she'll just die each time she's summoned (yes, even with a Sisturn active, this thing does basically nothing to the boss fight).

So if all of this is just some madman gibberish to you, you know what to do... 

that's wendy's downside you know...

being weak against bosses

[Tranoze]

6 minutes ago, Sacco said:

being weak against bosses

That what this post is about, "is Wendy a strong character?" Because dev used "Wendy is already a strong character" as an excuse to make her skill tree weaker than normal, but in fact, with her weak point, she is above average in term of strength, but she is very popular character that lots of people play her.

[Sacco]

Just now, Tranoze said:

That what this post is about, "is Wendy a strong character?" Because dev used "Wendy is already a strong character" as an excuse to make her skill tree weaker than normal, but in fact, with her weak point, she is above average in term of strength, but she is very popular character that lots of people play her.

she is strong obviously, but as of now most characters are crazy OP, who can destroy a ton of bosses in almost no time.

I prefere these new skill trees because they didn't make these characters very OP, just better.

Her bigger downside is to not be that good against some bosses, SOME not all of them.

[modageddon]

She's very strong if you know how to get her to be strong like to the point of out damaging wolfgang if you don't she's better than average but nothing crazy

[Evelo]

1 hour ago, Tranoze said:

an excuse to make her skill tree weaker than normal,

Most of the current skill sets are overtuned. If a character needs a refresh then give them a refresh, not a skillset that acts as a refresh.

[Mike23Ua]

In my opinion Wendy excels best at what she was designed to excel at the best (using Abby’s AoE to quickly deal with large swarms of mobs) However Abigail was intentionally designed to NOT be a good Boss Fighter, and as a Result, if your not extra careful with managing and applying potions to her she just gets in the way.

Something else that should be mentioned is that Wilson doesn’t have an Abigail or any sort of damage boosting Abigail like mob entity, yet he has the single weakest and most disappointing skill tree of any character to ever exist in the history of skill trees across every game ever created.

(Im intentionally over exaggerating here but you get the point…)

If players are relying on Abigail to attempt to fight bosses, they in all brutal honesty… need to start playing as Wilson so they can learn to fight bosses Without her.

however, outside of combat Wendys short comings start to become glaring, such as taking longer than other characters to perform tasks like chopping trees.

I don’t know what changes the skill tree made to her (Xbox player, can’t play betas) But I do know that pre-skill tree Abigail won’t fight or interact with any shadow related mob, so and with each new shadow mob (like shadow rift rictus snakes) Wendy’s downside of hitting weaker than average (without Abigail’s Attacking petals buff) is very much intact.

After several other skill trees (Willow, Wigfrid, Wurt, Winona, Wormwood) 

Wendys OP levels have significantly Declined.

Wigfrid can freely freaking revive her Beefalo and team mates for an “encore” performance, Has a Weapon that when used as a Dash NEVER loses any Durability, Self repairing Helmets and Armors.

I mean Klei needs to give this “Wendy Op” Meta way of thinking a rest….

Theyve made even freaking Wormwood (originally designed as harder to play glass canon type of character) easier to heal and have cool ability utility.

Wendy DOES have the light radius of Abigail’s ghostly glow, but now Wormwood has free lightbug follower summons and WX78 & Winona can laugh away the thought of night altogether.

[Mysterious box]

1 hour ago, Tranoze said:

That what this post is about, "is Wendy a strong character?" Because dev used "Wendy is already a strong character" as an excuse to make her skill tree weaker than normal, but in fact, with her weak point, she is above average in term of strength, but she is very popular character that lots of people play her.

This seems strange to me is the idea that because she's a popular character she should become very strong even in areas that she doesn't excel at despite her being very powerful in areas she does?

[Evelo]

13 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Theyve made even freaking Wormwood (originally designed as harder to play glass canon type of character) easier to heal and have cool ability utility.

Yeah... I'm not happy about that.

[Tranoze]

7 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

This seems strange to me is the idea that because she's a popular character she should become very strong even in areas that she doesn't excel at despite her being very powerful in areas she does?

Im not saying she should be strong. Im saying her skill tre shouldn't be weaker than normal because dev think she is strong. Her whole mourning glory skill is just for her to farm more potions. Her potions skill is jusy for potions to active longer. Basically in combat power abigail remain the same as pre skill tree, with only 2 new potions which are alligement potions that you can only pick one.

[Cheggf]

Most bosses do not have AoE damage and she completely trivializes some of the most difficult fights in the game. She is ridiculously good at dealing AoE damage to things like spiders, bees, hounds, etc, and has some of the best single target damage in the game. She's also probably the easiest character in the game, which is why she's so popular. 

[Sapientis]

4 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

This seems strange to me is the idea that because she's a popular character she should become very strong even in areas that she doesn't excel at despite her being very powerful in areas she does?

My point is, Wendy is mostly a fighting oriented character with main perk being Abigail that excels at killing weak mobs, but starts crying  and dies when the big mob comes at her. Are we considering that a strong character? Bullying the weak and running from the strong?

Wigfrid is fighting oriented as well and she's good against everything, rightfully considered strong, plus she's great support for multiplayer. Look at her skilltree, damn, look just at her new spear, that is infinite, allows to cross land gaps, is electrical and planar, allows to get inside ruins outposts, does 100+ AoE damage, etc.

Abigail is just good at farming weak mob drops and dealing with hound waves. She bullies 3 raid bosses and dies to most other. Wendy provides basically no support to multiplayer other than that. Sisturn sanity station? Pfff...

And Wendy's skilltree power budget gets the comment: They are probably tuned a little low. The reason for that is Wendy is quite strong already.

Where was that when Wigfrid's skilltree came out?

[Tranoze]

6 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Most bosses

Only 4 boss i allow abi to join fight is bee queen, crab king, antlion and dfly(often because we often kill dfly with group of 3-4 and abi being fine with being hit 1-2 times) if you consider fruit fly lord a boss then count that too. The rest? I have to unsummon abi.

[Mysterious box]

2 minutes ago, Sapientis said:

My point is, Wendy is mostly a fighting oriented character with main perk being Abigail that excels at killing weak mobs, but starts crying  and dies when the big mob comes at her. Are we considering that a strong character? Bullying the weak and running from the strong?

Wigfrid is fighting oriented as well and she's good against everything, rightfully considered strong, plus she's great support for multiplayer. Look at her skilltree, damn, look just at her new spear, that is infinite, allows to cross land gaps, is electrical and planar, allows to get inside ruins outposts, does 100+ AoE damage, etc.

Abigail is just good at farming weak mob drops and dealing with hound waves. She bullies 3 raid bosses and dies to most other. Wendy provides basically no support to multiplayer other than that. Sisturn sanity station? Pfff...

And Wendy's skilltree power budget gets the comment: They are probably tuned a little low. The reason for that is Wendy is quite strong already.

Where was that when Wigfrid's skilltree came out?

It's debatable it feels like people are under valuing how powerful horde clearing is I could see her getting more support abilities but should she continue to trivialize what she already excels at while becoming very powerful at her only weak point as well? Why even have the damage downside for her at that point? Buffing Abigail's survivability is fine but she should have to work harder to keep her alive in exchange for what she already excels at rather than just turning Abigail into a tank no?

[Mike23Ua]

42 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

It's debatable it feels like people are under valuing how powerful horde clearing is I could see her getting more support abilities but should she continue to trivialize what she already excels at while becoming very powerful at her only weak point as well? Why even have the damage downside for her at that point? Buffing Abigail's survivability is fine but she should have to work harder to keep her alive in exchange for what she already excels at rather than just turning Abigail into a tank no?

You can’t blame Wendy as being OP when Klei insists on adding a bunch of smaller minions to every single boss fight they add into the game..

Without hordes of minions to actually trigger Abigail’s shield proc, then Abby is going to be weak to boss fights.. Klei can even make it so bosses they don’t want Abigail to be able to fight will instantly target and destroy her or whatever..

if Klei was to give me full control over designing a Wendy rework/skill tree I’d make some pretty huge (& questionable) changes to her.

Starting with actually giving her some team-based perks that benefit other players outside of “attack What Abigail is Attacking for a damage buff..”

Something weird like, Wendy can become “Tuned” and linked to another survivor when that player would had taken damage that would’ve killed them so they die, the linked Wendy player Dies in their place instead… But, a dead player linked Wendy will drop Abigail’s flower at her death location and the player who she’s linked with can revive her from beyond the grave by interacting with the flower (like turning on or off terrarium when dropped on the ground) 

A Dead Wendy can use a ghost Teleportation Network to revive at any of her nearby placed Sisturns (with an obvious cooldown to prevent spam)

In general, the TL:DR is that after so many amazing character updates with skill trees,  Wendy’s feels very very basic and doesn’t offer up a whole lot of fun new stuff to do beyond what she already did.

I’m excited to see what tweaks they’ll make before the live version of the final update (looking forward to haunt commands)

but for right now Even Wolfgang’s Skill tree felt more thought out by giving him new downsides and new counters to those downsides by needing to be near or recruit followers to negate his faster sanity drain.

If Wendy needs to be Nerfed to get some fun new stuff beyond AoE proc, then do it.. nerf her.. but actually give her some cool new stuff that makes playing as her a unique gameplay experience too.

I sucked at boss fights regardless of which character I played as anyway, but don’t make non-boss gameplay boring AF just because some players can shred bosses with Abby (when Abby wasn’t even intended to be better at bosses than Bernie)

Im a Wendy Main and I hereby demand if they feel she’s OP as she is that they nerf the OP parts and replace it with fun new creative stuff.
okay so maybe not “demand” but, it would be nice to be able to do other things too..

Walter can have Woby go fetch stuff now, or dig up random loots…

Why can’t Wendy convenience ghostly mob followers to posses axes and self automate tree chopping chores for her?

You can argue it steps on Maxwells shadow workers but.. the dude legit can do everything he already did PLUS use Wickerbottoms entire book collection AND he still doesn’t have his own skill tree yet..

This is just a few suggestions for a more than “basic mob blender” Wendy update.

[Mysterious box]

5 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

You can’t blame Wendy as being OP when Klei insists on adding a bunch of smaller minions to every single boss fight they add into the game..

Without hordes of minions to actually trigger Abigail’s shield proc, then Abby is going to be weak to boss fights.. Klei can even make it so bosses they don’t want Abigail to be able to fight will instantly target and destroy her or whatever..

I'm not blaming Wendy but I still don't think she should be overwhelmingly powerful at what she excels and then become very strong at dealing at what she doesn't on top of that some kind of balance should be struck.

6 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

but for right now Even Wolfgang’s Skill tree felt more thought out by giving him new downsides and new counters to those downsides by needing to be near or recruit followers to negate his faster sanity drain.

Wolfgang's tree was definitely not well thought out it's up there with Wilson's as one of the worst he got number buffs and that's about it.

8 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

If Wendy needs to be Nerfed to get some fun new stuff beyond AoE proc, then do it.. nerf her.. but actually give her some cool new stuff that makes playing as her a unique gameplay experience too.

I do agree a rebalancing of the dynamic between Wendy and Abigail would be for the best and open up more interesting ideas for the duo but I doubt it'd go over well at this point. 

9 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Walter can have Woby go fetch stuff now, or dig up random loots…

These are really bad like really really bad.

[Sapientis]

34 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

It's debatable it feels like people are under valuing how powerful horde clearing is I could see her getting more support abilities but should she continue to trivialize what she already excels at while becoming very powerful at her only weak point as well? Why even have the damage downside for her at that point? Buffing Abigail's survivability is fine but she should have to work harder to keep her alive in exchange for what she already excels at rather than just turning Abigail into a tank no?

It's debatable it feels like people are over valuing how powerful horde clearing is 

Besides, I don't think Abigail should be able to assist in every boss fight, but she should be able to take at least a couple of hits, so you can make the fight just this little bit less tedious or manage to unsummon her before she dies. Is the 200% damage from bosses needed with all bosses having so much health points? Not even mentioning Planar bosses...

I personally don't even like the new Flower Shroud fix in recent patch. Abigail shouldn't be a tank like Bernie is, she should just get a little more durable to provide more room for errors, and maybe provide some minor help in areas she's useless now.

So it's not making her very powerful at her only weak point, just making her less miserable at her weak point.

Also her damage downside is pretty problematic against Shadow Creatures.

[Edible Coal]

2 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

 

Wolfgang's tree was definitely not well thought out it's up there with Wilson's as one of the worst he got number buffs and that's about it.

Is it really that bad? i sorta view wolfgang as a simple man and him getting simple number buff sorta fit him as a person and i think the dev just sorta allow wolf gang to be the "stat character" 

[Mysterious box]

10 minutes ago, Sapientis said:

Besides, I don't think Abigail should be able to assist in every boss fight, but she should be able to take at least a couple of hits, so you can make the fight just this little bit less tedious or manage to unsummon her before she dies. Is the 200% damage from bosses needed with all bosses having so much health points? Not even mentioning Planar bosses...

I personally don't even like the new Flower Shroud fix in recent patch. Abigail shouldn't be a tank like Bernie is, she should just get a little more durable to provide more room for errors, and maybe provide some minor help in areas she's useless now.

Honestly we're on the same page here that's the balance I feel like she should have keeping Abigail alive during boss fights should require player effort but also not be near impossible.

9 minutes ago, Edible Coal said:

Is it really that bad? i sorta view wolfgang as a simple man and him getting simple number buff sorta fit him as a person and i think the dev just sorta allow wolf gang to be the "stat character" 

I disagree is that fun or interesting? It just seems lazy to me especially when you consider how much other characters have evolved over time imagine if Woodie was still just a Were beaver that chopped wood really well and his skill tree was entirely focused on just chopping wood faster would you call that a good skill tree?

10 minutes ago, Sapientis said:

Also her damage downside is pretty problematic against Shadow Creatures.

I feel like this is reasonable to stay as is however I see it like Willow's weakness to ice magic or Walter's Weakness to bees.

[Cheggf]

17 minutes ago, Edible Coal said:

Is it really that bad? i sorta view wolfgang as a simple man and him getting simple number buff sorta fit him as a person and i think the dev just sorta allow wolf gang to be the "stat character" 

And yet they replaced his fun & engaging numbers mechanic with the most boring shiitake mushrooms ever created.

[Cruvimaster]

Of course, Wendy is a very strong character and even the developers know and say so.

Wendy's focus is survival (not combat) and she is the best character for that (in my opinion).

Before the character rework process, Wigfrid was the main choice of players.

After Wendy's rework, she became the main choice of the community, especially for beginners (but not only for them).

Even powerful reworks, such as Maxwell's, were not able to change that.

Then the skill tree process began and Wendy remained at the top and will continue to be there even after the skill trees are over.

Most players focus on relaxed gameplay. They want to collect resources, build a base, etc. Combat is not a priority and many don't even like the combat part. And Wendy is perfect for that because of Abigail.

She is indeed powerful and there is no point in saying otherwise.



Since we don't have an official source on the use of characters released by Klei, I use the one below just for simple reference.

My main character was Wigfrid for many years. Then I switched to Wendy for a while and started laughing at how much easier it was to survive because of Abigail. And this was long before the game got any easier with the new weapons and armor in the game.

[ToXic Cur3]

9 hours ago, Sapientis said:

I always considered Wendy a character for the everyday fun and easy playstyle, but significantly harder to deal with most bosses, because of how Abigail AI, low health points and vulnerability towards AoE damage works, but maybe I'm just delusional?

It's not that your delusional everyone has there own opinions which is completely fine 

I like playing as wendy when I get the opportunity to because I like playing with different characters so I won't have to stick with one I dont Mind it but sometimes it does get a little repetitive also I like to approach what I normally do in a new way which I enjoy

I main wigfrid which she is stronger and comparing her to wendy isn't really fair since each character has a uniqueness, wendy to me is more balance and beginner friendly but also can be useful in some instances that you said but would be hard to pull off which is something not everyone can do 

9 hours ago, Sapientis said:

There are some that Abigail makes much easier: DFLY, Bee Queen, Crab King, Antlion, Spider Queen, Varg, Lord of the Fruit Flies. But with the rest you either require some crazy 5head tactic, that can still fail with poor execution (Eye and Twins of Terror, Toadstool, AFW), or just dozens upon dozens of Spectral Cure-Alls (

Overall wendy is balanced to me but also where the game is now with skilltrees wendy is weak, play as who you want if you enjoy playing them,many opinions on them are out there what matter is the player having fun in the end