An analysis to answer all questions over whether Wendy is strong or not

[Peasant]

I posted this to the general disscusion section some four hours ago, and received 0 reply so far. So I decided to post it again in here.

WARNING: Long article ahead, if you dont want to read, there is a TLDR at the bottom.

 

Recently I've seen dozens of post claiming Wendy is strong enough or complaining Wendy is not strong at all, so here I've decided to write this article to answer the questions over Wendy's strength and thus end the quarrel if possible.

As Karl Marx said, everything is dialectical, therefore we should use a dialectical method to analyze and discuss whether Wendy is strong or not. Personally I believe that this quarrel over the topic itself is probably the result of failing to adopt a dialectical perspective when analyzing and discussing.

Before we answer the question, we need to first analyze Wendy's advantages and disadvantages.

For the former, the main advantage Wendy has got is having her past sister Abigail beside her to provide protection, which deals aoe damage that count 15 during the day, 25 during the evening and 40 during the night. When dealing damage Abigail gives the enemies a debuff, making them receive 10% more damage, but if the damage source is Wendy, this would plus another 40%, which means Wendy eventually can deal 1.54 times as her original damage. Initially Abigail got a hp of 150, and she upgrades through time, when she reaches her max level she has 600 hp, which makes her can take more damage than two pigmen can, even more cause Abigail regains 1 hp each second and becomes invincible for 0.5 seconds when receiving damage. Beside this ,Wendy wont lose sanity from all kinds of ghosts, and loses 25% less sanity from evening and night, she can build the sisturn which can provide 25 per min sanity boost and increases the speed Abigaid upgrades. One last important thing is that she can craft various potions that boosts Abigail, varied from largely boosting her hp regain for a short time to allow she always deal 40 damage regardless of the time of the day.

The later on the other hand is quite simple: Wendy's damage rate is 0.75, making her dealing less damage than everyone except Wes and weak Wolfgang(well, no one would use weak Wolfgang in combat I guess?). This makes her actual damage rate after boosted by Abigail 1.155, which is a little lower than Wigfrid.

So now we've known the advantages and disadvantages, it is time to come to...the beefalos.

Wendy players had truely brought their subjective initiative into play. They had set their eyes on battle beefalos which deals 50 damage, and this is not affacted by the Character's damage rate, yet is considered dealt by the player who's riding it. You can get 16 more damage by using the war saddle. So the Wendys sat on the war saddle that is on the back of a battle beefalo and dealing 101.64 damage per hit. If you consider Abigail, whose attack rate is 1 sec, the you can roughly take that Wendys can deal 108 to 121 damage per hit. Really remarkable if you dont consider there's an old granny out there who got a watch that deals 142 damage per hit.

So now we've talked about the beefalos, can we go to an conclusion that Wendy is strong? Well...no.

One important thing is that as we can see from these analysis, Wendy's advantages lie solely on the field of fighting. In other aspects related rather little to battle such as map exploring, logistics, Wendy is of not much use, thus marking herself a fighting character. Then how does she perform as a fighter?

The theoretical figures may look awesome, the actual practice however may suggest otherwise. During above analyzing I think that by now you can see a hidden unstable factor, if not two, that because they act as the fundations of Wendy's strength, can also threaten Wendy's strength. The first one is —— Abigail.

Abigail, being no doubt the core of Wendy's strength, is rather vulnerable when faced with giants who deals double damage to non-player units. And when Abigail dies...dies again, Wendy immediately loses all her strength. However players cannot control Abigail directly, they can only control whether Abigail would rush to the front of the boss or would stay quietly by Wendy's side, thus making Wendy a skill requiring character if you want to let out all her potentials. But even so, there's another upcoming danger that I'll mention below.

Then another thing is the beefalo. Being the other pillar supporting Wendy's strength, beefalo is the key that allows Wendy to exceed before-skilltree-Wigfrid in terms of combat. The loyal cattles served their masters well until...the rifts update. 

Since the Nightmare Werepig, klei has been keep giving new bosses the ability to knockback, which will drive Wendys out of their cozy little saddles placed on the back of their warm cattles. What's worse, powerful planar giants got themselve a Hugh number of damage and crazy superpowers like keeps slapping till nothing is alive within it's attack range or freezing you with each aoe blow, making the poor beast helplessly die in desprate, possibly alongside their masters. And the damage threatens not only the life of beefalos, but also Abigail. With only 600 hp Abigail will be killed with just three blows by lunar bearger, which would be easily achieved for lunar bearger can keeps slapping till Abigail rest in peace once again. Without the two things making Wendy a powerful character, Wendy is now merely another Wes but with 150 hp.It's clear that the rift update has brought Wendy into a dilemma.

Of course it's also brought many other characters into a dilemma too, but here comes the skill tree. What should a skilltree provide? Players dont expect the skilltree can make their favourite character into another Potato Man, nor that they wish it does. People expect skilltrees to solve this kind of dilemma that characters faces in the planar version, and then maybe add a few new things that makes the gameplay more convenient. or interesting. And that's the reason why people now are condemning Wendy's skilltree, for it nether solve any problem nor did it bring any more interesting/usful items.

So let's make a conclusion after all these analyzing. Is Wendy a strong character? She is a rather strong battle-centered character who requires skillful play, and no longer is once the rifts are opened.

TLDR:Wendy is a rather strong battle-centered character but requires skillful play, and is no longer strong once the rifts are opened, or after all her aids have been killed.

[Asmybelle]

I would add to your analysis that Wendy can be good in utility as well, as her aoe allows farming lots of mobs easier/more efficiently than classic characters (she can be overshadowed by some characters like webber for spiders but that doesn't change the fact she does it better than most).

Personally I think she's a strong character but it's not like that matters much, we're playing a co-op sandbox game and not a fighting game. I feel like we should only worry about a character's "balance" if the character really feels like a chore to survive with (wes excepted ofc).

[cyjs]

Wendy is no longer good, now everyone has AOE, the only reason to choose her is because she is cute

[arubaro]

3 minutes ago, Asmybelle said:

I would add to your analysis that Wendy can be good in utility as well, as her aoe allows farming lots of mobs easier/more efficiently than classic characters (she can be overshadowed by some characters like webber for spiders but that doesn't change the fact she does it better than most).

Personally I think she's a strong character but it's not like that matters much, we're playing a co-op sandbox game and not a fighting game. I feel like we should only worry about a character's "balance" if the character really feels like a chore to survive with (wes excepted ofc).

Well, it matters a lot since the game can be boring when your partner is using something that makes the run boring like how maxwell can root enemies making fights easy or how he can do all the work in no time

[Peasant]

6 hours ago, Asmybelle said:

she can be overshadowed by some characters like webber for spiders but that doesn't change the fact she does it better than most

She DID it better than most. As the skilltrees is being updated, klei has been more generous in aoe damage, both for monsters and for the players. Now there's a fire witch who can wipe out the whole of killer bee plain, a constructor who brings a set of catapults in her pocket, moose person can charge, our little wooden friend can make the queen bee and her minions sleep till they die.

Some may argue that all these above got a price while Wendy gets it for free, but that's just the point, they pay a price, and get a much stronger aoe ability, while Wendy though get her aoe for free, is some what limited comparing to those above.

Course I'm not saying that we should boost Wendy's aoe ability, it's just now that there's others who could do what she could, and better, when a basic base had been established, then there's very little room for her to show her value.

6 hours ago, Asmybelle said:

Personally I think she's a strong character but it's not like that matters much, we're playing a co-op sandbox game and not a fighting game.

Sadly I always play solo…

[cyjs]

They can't see it at all, haha, are we complaining or are they?他们根本不带看的，哈哈，到底是我们在抱怨还是他们啊