Is Wendy a strong character?

[Dingle]

1 minute ago, Sapientis said:

Are we talking about the same Lardee guy with Wendy on his profile pic?

Oh, I was talking about Mr Giggio. He was posting his own fight with FW as Wendy. Lardee has a different video.

[Mr Giggio]

Lardee has playthroughts in youtube doing all bosses with her. Its super good to learn how to do it. Quakeszzzz also huge Wendy player. 

7 minutes ago, Sapientis said:

The thing is if Abigail dies in this fight, it's over. Compare that to Wanda, Wolf, Wortox, who can run circles around AFW and a small misstep is just a mild inconvinience that costs them 5 seconds at most.

She can do that, but she can also fail miserably while trying. I know, I know - skill issue.

I try to say she would be more accessible and forgiving if keeping Abigail alive wasn't that hard, or if losing her by accident wasn't as impactful.

The thing is, you compare Wortox with Wendy in FW when Wortox has a better match up, but forgot Wortox vs Beequeen is painfull and Wendy has a easier time.  Its a convenient argument when some bosses are harder or easier depending on who you r playing as. And she has a easy match up against almost all bosses. I would say the hardest one FOR ME being Clops/Bearger/Twins when the two first ones have low health so short struggle and Twins you can dodge with Vigor Mortis or Sisturn during the day to have her back for the next night.

[Sapientis]

6 minutes ago, Mr Giggio said:

Its super good to learn how to do it.

It seems I want her to get a little easier so I don't have to go out of my comfort zone

I hate rollbacking and starting over is even worse, so most of the times I have to prepare to lose Abigail and do the fight by my miserable 0.75 damage modified little self.

[arubaro]

6 hours ago, Sapientis said:

I compare Willow to Wendy to show Wendy's flaws, I don't say Willow doesn't have any.

I know it's cheap and easy but if you fail to heal her on time, or she get's outdamaged while being healed you lose her for good 2 days. There's no such problem with Bernie, other than leaving him behind, but that's up to the player.

I compare Bernie and Abi's usefulness while fighting shadows because they are a part of the game (also ruins). Yes, Abigail is more useful than Bernie in most fights, IF SHE IS ALIVE. Which sometimes becomes a big problem. And Willow without Bernie is much stronger than Wendy without Abi.

The sanity difference is not something that impactful on Bernie's usefulness. You're at full sanity only if you actively work towards it, via sanity foods or clothing pieces, so most of the time Bernie should be able to get activated, as Willow should hover around 30-60 sanity. Also many bosses have insanity aura and you usually carry a Dark Sword in midgame, so that really doesn't matter that much.
You also seem to value staying at high sanity, which isn't the most optimal, as Nightmare Fuel is needed to craft Thulecite Equipment, Night Armor and Dark Swords, refueling Mag and Bone Armor - basically all best items in the midgame.

Taunt or not they seem on the same level of taking aggro off their summoners.

140% damage is a number I'd like to see some math behind. Wiki says Abi's vex debuff causes 10% more damage received and Wendy attacks deal additional 40% damage, but due to her 0.75 damage modifier she's at 1.155 Wilson damage (0.75*1.1*1.4=1.155). Even adding 15-40 Abi damage idk if it leaves us at 140%.

And because Beefalo with Wendy on top counts as Wendy she gets 1.54 Beefalo damage (1*1.1*1.4=1.54). Adding 15-40 Abi damage we get some ridiculous numbers, but all of it is IF we manage to keep Abigail alive, and there are many scenarios in which it's hard, either due to Beefalo only having 1000 health points and no armor, so you cannot tank everything, or your enemy has a knockup attack, or the boss just targets Abi taking her down with 4 attacks (as well as many bosses having AoE attacks).
And if you would like to keep Abigail alive during fight that's at least 2 item slots: Abigail's Flower and Spectral Cure-Alls, compared to a single item slot taken by a Sewing Kit or an additiona Bernie (because active Bernie doesn't take up the item slot).

So um... "You are ignoring many things to make Wendy look way stronger than she is."

Wendy is really strong in the right scenario and if things go well (probably stronger than Willow to be honest), but she also becomes really weak (like 0.75 Wilson or 0.65 Willow, because she can still use spells and Burning Frenzy) in the fight not suited for her best setup and/or if she fails to keep Abigail alive. And keeping Abigail alive is pretty hard.
This gets some change for the better due to increased health from Blessed Sisturn III, but without Planar Entity Protection Abigail gets beaten just as easily, she can take 2-3 attacks more and it gives more room for error, but still Abigail is either "great" or "useless", there's no base value like Bernie has, no matter how low that is in some fights. Bernie is "fine, nothing spectacular" in most fights.

And all I try to get across is to give Abi some minor base value and cut some from her power at the best scenario. Understand that it would make Wendy better overall.

So, bring Wendy with Beefalo back to intended 1.1 + Abi, and give more room for error to keeping Abi alive. (automatic unsummon at low health, filled Sisturn preventing Abi death and lowering her level instead, or just give Abi some protection, so she doesn't receive 150-200 damage from single attacks).

A small downside that only shows up in some fights and if you make mistakes. More than fair considering all she gets for free or how other characters with less power needs to deal with a downside daily

[Y0sH]

19 hours ago, TabbyTheNeko said:

100% people are overvaluing the strength of horde clearing. 

When wendy has to take on any post rift content, she struggles hard.
People will say "well that's her downside for being good against hordes" completely missing the fact that rift content is an entire section of the game. same with bosses. a whole chunk of the game wendy just simply sucks at, where the only character worse then her is wes. 

I'm gunna use Wendy player's favorite scapegoat when justifying unnecessary buffs, Wanda. Know who else struggles with post rift enemies? Wanda. Has considerably less defense than most characters when taking planar damage and struggles hard with planar enemies literally able to 1-2 shot her even with a whole set of planar armor. If Rasp or Great death worm eat you, you might as well put the controller/mouse down because you're dead guaranteed, or literally 2 hits from a Gestalt.

If I was to make a post about "Wanda The Super, Mega, Ultra OP Character" actually having downsides I'd be crucified on the forums. Yet, it seems that if you point out the massive strengths and advantages Wendy has you'll be overly scrutinized in the same way. 

Wendy is about 50% of the playerbase with the other half being the rest of the characters combined. She obviously has a lot of advantages but because she struggles with an optional portion of the game doesn't mean she should be buffed to "This one character excels at all" status.

[TabbyTheNeko]

5 hours ago, Y0sH said:

I'm gunna use Wendy player's favorite scapegoat when justifying unnecessary buffs, Wanda. Know who else struggles with post rift enemies? Wanda. Has considerably less defense than most characters when taking planar damage and struggles hard with planar enemies literally able to 1-2 shot her even with a whole set of planar armor. If Rasp or Great death worm eat you, you might as well put the controller/mouse down because you're dead guaranteed, or literally 2 hits from a Gestalt.

If I was to make a post about "Wanda The Super, Mega, Ultra OP Character" actually having downsides I'd be crucified on the forums. Yet, it seems that if you point out the massive strengths and advantages Wendy has you'll be overly scrutinized in the same way. 

Wendy is about 50% of the playerbase with the other half being the rest of the characters combined. She obviously has a lot of advantages but because she struggles with an optional portion of the game doesn't mean she should be buffed to "This one character excels at all" status.

I main both Wendy and Wanda and let me tell you, Wanda still excels in rift content. you just have to sacrifice a bit of damage for durability. and even if you don't, wanda still has her instant cross shard group teleportation, invincibility frames via backstep, infinite health regen (her healing doesn't have durability, every other character besides wortox requires spending some resource to get it, once wanda has 4+ ageless watches it doesn't matter how much damage she takes, as long as it doesn't kill her in 1 hit she can just regen it instantly for free), and infinite revives.

wanda also has the option to simply go to her young form, and even without any of her watches (besides her ageless watches) she can essentially just become wilson. 
Wendy does not have this option, making her weaker. If you strip wendy of abigail, you get the second worst character in the game.

you would get crucified because you would be wrong.

no one here wants her to be "this one character excels at all" status. we just want her to be viable post rift in the same way that everyone but wes is, and for her perks to actually add something to her character that's not "renewable source of evil flowers." that's not gonna make her any better at resource gathering like maxwell, or exploration like woodie.

12 hours ago, arubaro said:

A small downside that only shows up in some fights and if you make mistakes. More than fair considering all she gets for free or how other characters with less power needs to deal with a downside daily

if your idea of a small downside is that wendy goes down to wes tier then you're helpless. wendy's daily downside is that everything involving combat requires 33% more resources on account of her killing things slower without abigail. you need 33% more armor, 33% more healing, 33% more weapons. if you're doing a fight that needs something like an ice staff or weather pane, you need 33% more of those.

when you're in post rift content, where abigail dies almost instantly, those costs still apply, 33% more repair kits for you brightshade armor or your wagstaff armor or your void armor, which is all on top of another 33% more repair kits for whatever planar weapon you're using.

[PunkShark]

1 minute ago, TabbyTheNeko said:

that's not gonna make her any better at resource gathering like maxwell, or exploration like woodie.

Then you're looking at Wendy in the wrong way. Because unlike Wendy, Woodie and Maxwell were always about these things they were good at. Woodie excells at combat, exploration and gathering because that's what his role is even before the skill tree, because his role is a lot more versatile of being a jack of all trades. Maxwell has always been a gathering character. To look at Wendy in this light is not right, because like everyone in the roster, she excells at something the others don't. Just like Wolfgang being about raw power, Webber being about spiders, Wigfrid being about accessories & group buffs, Wendy is about AOE crowd control at her core. And she does it well. The skill tree's not about changing their core features but expanding their already given ones. You shouldn't expect a character to be entirely different with a skill tree at their core, but addons to an existing theme and role they play in. Turning Wendy into a gatherer or an explorer is not who Wendy is and never has been, while previous examples always have been.

[arubaro]

1 hour ago, TabbyTheNeko said:

I main both Wendy and Wanda and let me tell you, Wanda still excels in rift content. you just have to sacrifice a bit of damage for durability. and even if you don't, wanda still has her instant cross shard group teleportation, invincibility frames via backstep, infinite health regen (her healing doesn't have durability, every other character besides wortox requires spending some resource to get it, once wanda has 4+ ageless watches it doesn't matter how much damage she takes, as long as it doesn't kill her in 1 hit she can just regen it instantly for free), and infinite revives.

wanda also has the option to simply go to her young form, and even without any of her watches (besides her ageless watches) she can essentially just become wilson. 
Wendy does not have this option, making her weaker. If you strip wendy of abigail, you get the second worst character in the game.

you would get crucified because you would be wrong.

no one here wants her to be "this one character excels at all" status. we just want her to be viable post rift in the same way that everyone but wes is, and for her perks to actually add something to her character that's not "renewable source of evil flowers." that's not gonna make her any better at resource gathering like maxwell, or exploration like woodie.

if your idea of a small downside is that wendy goes down to wes tier then you're helpless. wendy's daily downside is that everything involving combat requires 33% more resources on account of her killing things slower without abigail. you need 33% more armor, 33% more healing, 33% more weapons. if you're doing a fight that needs something like an ice staff or weather pane, you need 33% more of those.

when you're in post rift content, where abigail dies almost instantly, those costs still apply, 33% more repair kits for you brightshade armor or your wagstaff armor or your void armor, which is all on top of another 33% more repair kits for whatever planar weapon you're using.

1st of all, isnt 25% and second isnt daily because you losing abigail preskill tree is unlike. If anything, most non boss fights cost you 0% and most boss fights, if you are experienced as playing wendy, cost you ~-60%

Aaaand the funnier part about how ridiculous is Wendy's downside is that her -25% damage doesnt affect planar damage so no, you arent wasting much more repair kits for planar weapons even if you lose abigail

And the funnier thing about your comment is that you compared her to wanda which, sure is overpowered and her downside isnt that big of a deal but isway more difficult to play than wendy. Is hilarious how people always talk about iframes when is easier to simply kite

You should play as her before giving feedback or discussing 

[Grove]

1 hour ago, TabbyTheNeko said:

if your idea of a small downside is that wendy goes down to wes tier then you're helpless. wendy's daily downside is that everything involving combat requires 33% more resources on account of her killing things slower without abigail. you need 33% more armor, 33% more healing, 33% more weapons. if you're doing a fight that needs something like an ice staff or weather pane, you need 33% more of those.

when you're in post rift content, where abigail dies almost instantly, those costs still apply, 33% more repair kits for you brightshade armor or your wagstaff armor or your void armor, which is all on top of another 33% more repair kits for whatever planar weapon you're using.

'Daily downside' is just sad. Abi doesn't even die in the majority of fights. She's only unusable in a few boss fights, even then you can kill them before they kill her if you have the right setup.

Wendy can easily farm pigmen and werepigs with just a shield potion on Abi at night. Same for beefalo. So hambats are plentiful. As well as football helmets.

There's also spiders for monstermeat and thus eggs, which can used for pierogis

Pretty much no fight uses the ice staves. And Wendy is good at farming hounds, so blue gems really aren't a problem. And the other component of the ice staff is a spear. Only advanced fights use weatherpains, and if you're doing them then just learn how to use Abigail instead.

Repair kits are cheap, and easily farmable. Especially the lunar ones. And the whole planar damage thing already helps Wendy overcome her weakness.

Abigail can also survive pretty much all post-rift fights. Just crystal deerclops and arnored bearger kill her quickly, and deerclops&bearger were already fights she couldn't survive without you killing them before they kill her. Even then, I might be wrong about crystal deerclops.

She even reveals rictus/ newest ink blight easily, and last time I fought him, he focused on her, allowing you to kill him easily.

[TabbyTheNeko]

3 hours ago, arubaro said:

1st of all, isnt 25% and second isnt daily because you losing abigail preskill tree is unlike. If anything, most non boss fights cost you 0% and most boss fights, if you are experienced as playing wendy, cost you ~-60%

Aaaand the funnier part about how ridiculous is Wendy's downside is that her -25% damage doesnt affect planar damage so no, you arent wasting much more repair kits for planar weapons even if you lose abigail

And the funnier thing about your comment is that you compared her to wanda which, sure is overpowered and her downside isnt that big of a deal but isway more difficult to play than wendy. Is hilarious how people always talk about iframes when is easier to simply kite

You should play as her before giving feedback or discussing 

1st of all, -25% is her damage modifier, bringing her to 75% total damage. 1 divided by 0.75 is 1.333.... thus the 33% higher cost. If she did 50% less damage, she wouldn't use 50% more stuff, she'd use 100% more stuff. that's how this works

2nd, the planar weapons do more than planar damage, they do a split of both planar and normal damage. so while i was wrong it isn't 33% more repair kits, you're definitely going to be using them more.

3rd. While it may be simpler to kite, kiting loses you damage, the iframes allow more damage.

4th i have played both of these characters extensively. I have 900 hours of playing them on steam alone, which doesn't take into account the extra 300 or so i played wendy on xbox.

 

5 hours ago, PunkShark said:

Then you're looking at Wendy in the wrong way. Because unlike Wendy, Woodie and Maxwell were always about these things they were good at. Woodie excells at combat, exploration and gathering because that's what his role is even before the skill tree, because his role is a lot more versatile of being a jack of all trades. Maxwell has always been a gathering character. To look at Wendy in this light is not right, because like everyone in the roster, she excells at something the others don't. Just like Wolfgang being about raw power, Webber being about spiders, Wigfrid being about accessories & group buffs, Wendy is about AOE crowd control at her core. And she does it well. The skill tree's not about changing their core features but expanding their already given ones. You shouldn't expect a character to be entirely different with a skill tree at their core, but addons to an existing theme and role they play in. Turning Wendy into a gatherer or an explorer is not who Wendy is and never has been, while previous examples always have been.

 

4 hours ago, Fitzee said:

Unfortunately, some people simply don't care who Wendy is.

You two entirely missed who i was responding to. I was responding to someone who claimed that people want wendy to be the "this one character excels at all," and I countered by pointing out that she in fact does not excel at all, even if she's given buffs to do more damage. You both entirely missed the point. Stop arguing in bad faith.

 

3 hours ago, Debruh said:

'Daily downside' is just sad. Abi doesn't even die in the majority of fights. She's only unusable in a few boss fights, even then you can kill them before they kill her if you have the right setup.

Wendy can easily farm pigmen and werepigs with just a shield potion on Abi at night. Same for beefalo. So hambats are plentiful. As well as football helmets.

There's also spiders for monstermeat and thus eggs, which can used for pierogis

Pretty much no fight uses the ice staves. And Wendy is good at farming hounds, so blue gems really aren't a problem. And the other component of the ice staff is a spear. Only advanced fights use weatherpains, and if you're doing them then just learn how to use Abigail instead.

Repair kits are cheap, and easily farmable. Especially the lunar ones. And the whole planar damage thing already helps Wendy overcome her weakness.

Abigail can also survive pretty much all post-rift fights. Just crystal deerclops and arnored bearger kill her quickly, and deerclops&bearger were already fights she couldn't survive without you killing them before they kill her. Even then, I might be wrong about crystal deerclops.

She even reveals rictus/ newest ink blight easily, and last time I fought him, he focused on her, allowing you to kill him easily.

"She's Only unusable in a few boss fights" you mean everything except bee queen, crab king, dfly, and fuel weaver? Ancient guardian? dead. Shadow pieces? dead. Toadstool normal and misery? dead. both normal and crystal bearger? dead. Crystal clops? dead. Lunar varg? dead.

I wont argue with you on the werepig farm other than that the benefit abigail provides against them is rather minimal, and can sometimes be a downside due to abigail sometimes accidentally hiting more than one werepig, leading to one werepig that she targets dying, and then the others end up eating the loot. If you set your pig farm up so that the werepigs are all walking into a wall trying to get a bait, you only have to deal with one at a time anyway, and any character can kill them easily in that setup. I will say, hambats kinda fall off once enemies start getting planar defense, and same with football helmets when planar damage comes in. Both still really useful items, but neither of them address the issue that wendy falls off a bit post rift. 

I've always used ice staffs for crab king, and sometimes with the amount of gear you need to bring on crab king fights, especially if you're doing them solo, you can't hold it all in your inventory, which is made worse by wendy needing to carry more of them.

Fair point on the lunar repair kits. I don't know how you would "farm" for them considering they use brightshade husks and there's not an easy way to farm those, but fair enough. maybe some deconstruction staff and construction amulet nonsense helps with the.

Already addressed your point about abigail surviving bosses. Maybe she can in a multiplayer scenario where other players sometimes draw aggro off abigail, but in single player my experience is different from yours.

haven't fought those two newest guys yet so i can't comment.

[Grove]

1 hour ago, TabbyTheNeko said:

"She's Only unusable in a few boss fights" you mean everything except bee queen, crab king, dfly, and fuel weaver? Ancient guardian? dead. Shadow pieces? dead. Toadstool normal and misery? dead. both normal and crystal bearger? dead. Crystal clops? dead. Lunar varg? dead.

I have done all of those (not just me, other much more skilled players too) with the exception of misery toadstool (has also been done just not by me), and

1) She survives easily vs Ancient guardian with just a speed elixir (called vigor mortis)

2) She can survive part/phase 1 of the shadow pieces with a revenant restorative (the weaker and longer health elixir, have to specify names for the health ones). I personally unsummon her during phase two, you can probably keep her alive but I would just go with unsummoning her for safety. And during phase 3 vs the lvl 3 shadow rook, you can summon her again. Set her to aggressive and attack the shadow rook with her. She keeps her distance when aggressive, so when the rook tried to teleport onto you, she'll be out of its range  (Knight>Bishop>Rook) as usual

Definitely the hardest fight for her to survive. But if you have enough speed boost(s), you don't need much healing and armor after phase 1. And none after phase 2.

There's also an alternative strategy (Knight>Rook>Bishop>). Where you make Abi attack thr bishop last, set her to aggressive so she keeps her distance, and insta unsummon her with a staff or any ranged attack. Then summon her again.

3) Toadstool (I completely forgot about this fight in my last post, very sorry.) A speed elixir allows Abi to be fast enough to dodge boomshrooms as well as the stomp/hop attack.

As for other resources, with the right setup, and in my experience, like two weatherpains are enough. Maybe three to be on the safe side. You don't even  need them btw. I have also done it by burning up most spore caps and chopping one, like 3 fire staves at most (I brought 4 with me to the fight didn't use them all). You can just use a torch if not using a beefalo.

Ice staves, I also brought 4 with me and I don't remember how much I used. But 4 ice staves are just 4 blue gems. And only one panflute id enough for this fight. Though, personally I get two.

As for misery, doable, but would obviously require more resources.

5) The beargers. Yea, I already addressed them.

6) Crystal deerclops was also addressed. Though, while I haven't tested yet, if she targets you over Abi, then you could theoretically bait out her ranged attacks, and use the gloomerang, while Abi attacks her. 

7) Possessed Varg is also doable. A spectral cure-all during the fight is enough for Abi to survive. Just position yourself so that the hounds get hit by Abi, then change positions so that Abi is on the one side while you're on the other, so the lunar flame attack doesn't hit her. Wendy's actually prettu good at this fight, since she doesn't even need to build a pen and move the varg away from its hounds. She and Abi just square up with it. Tbf, while I have done it, I haven't seen anyone else do it, but I also haven't searched for them so there probably is.

Check out Lardee137 for most of these strats. And Jakeyosaurus for the alternative shadow pieces strat

2 hours ago, TabbyTheNeko said:

I've always used ice staffs for crab king, and sometimes with the amount of gear you need to bring on crab king fights, especially if you're doing them solo, you can't hold it all in your inventory, which is made worse by wendy needing to carry more of them.

New crabking doesn't really need ice staves. But the inventory thing does apply to toadstool so I'll address it.

Wendy is very good at beequeen, so getting the bundling wrap blueprint shouldn't be a problem. You can easily destroy hives with Abi, and Abi protects you from suprise tentacles during the swamp. So, the materials for it are also easy to get.

Additionally, toadstool is a pretty isolated boss, so while I can understand not wanting to go through beequeen for crabking, who is need for cc and the rifts and such, toadstool has nothing to do with either shadow or lunar shenanigans and is already know as a huge resource sink.

2 hours ago, TabbyTheNeko said:

I wont argue with you on the werepig farm other than that the benefit abigail provides against them is rather minimal, and can sometimes be a downside due to abigail sometimes accidentally hiting more than one werepig, leading to one werepig that she targets dying, and then the others end up eating the loot. If you set your pig farm up so that the werepigs are all walking into a wall trying to get a bait, you only have to deal with one at a time anyway, and any character can kill them easily in that setup. I will say, hambats kinda fall off once enemies start getting planar defense, and same with football helmets when planar damage comes in. Both still really useful items, but neither of them address the issue that wendy falls off a bit post rift. 

Fair point on the lunar repair kits. I don't know how you would "farm" for them considering they use brightshade husks and there's not an easy way to farm those, but fair enough. maybe some deconstruction staff and construction amulet nonsense

Personally, I just walk into a pig village during the fullmoon and kill. Which, is obviously much easier as Wendy with Abi, than having to cage as Maxwell.

Hambat and football helmet were brought up as solutions to the armor and weapon problem you mentioned.

I structured the lunar thing poorly, but I meant that you can easily get repair kits. Brightshades are easy to kill, literally come to you, and the other material is just mined.

You can kinda farm them, at dragonfly lava pools with dragonfruit plants though.

[Grove]

13 hours ago, Debruh said:

6) Crystal deerclops was also addressed. Though, while I haven't tested yet, if she targets you over Abi, then you could theoretically bait out her ranged attacks, and use the gloomerang, while Abi attacks her.

So, I tested it. And cystal deerclops is indeed possible with Abi. Or at least, the majority of the fight is possible.

Both pre-beta. And on the beta, where the escape command makes easier.