Team Spirit I ("Escape" option) could allow Abigail to kite with the player's guidance

[Ason180]

Hello everyone!

The title of this topic basically says what I've been thinking after playing around with the Wendy skill tree for a little while (as a Wendy main since the rework came out a few years ago). I can't help but feel that the "Team Spirit I" skill (ie. The "Escape" option for Abigail) isn't quite at its full potential yet, and I believe that it should receive some minor changes. With a few tweaks, I feel that it could be much more interesting from a gameplay perspective, as it could allow for Wendy players to have just enough control over Abigail to allow her to kite. I do not believe that any of my proposed changes would break the balance of the game, create problems in-universe, or go against Klei's intentions with this ability. I will justify why I believe these things later on, but for now, I will explain the limitations that I have found when attempting to kite with the current implementation, and what changes could be made to it to make Abigail kiting viable.

1. The Animation: Currently, the animation that plays when telling Abigail to "escape" makes kiting feel generally clunky and unfun for both Abigail and Wendy, along with massively cutting into your damage. 

Proposed Idea: Make the "escape" ability an instant activation when used.

• Justification for proposed idea: Making the ability an instant activation would allow it to be used for kiting, and it wouldn't have a significant impact when using the ability to get Abigail out of general trouble. This is because Abigail is not able attack while the ability is active, so using the ability would effectively be no different from simply unsummoning Abigail when she’s in trouble, which is something we’ve been able to do for years now.

2. No Way To Prematurely End The Ability: Currently, the “escape” ability lasts for ~5-6 seconds, with no way to end it prematurely. This massively cuts into your damage, as this is time that Abigail cannot attack, as well as time that Abigail’s vex is not active. It's also just annoying when the ability ends right when a boss does its attack, since it feels like unfair damage on Abigail.

Proposed Idea: Make it so that the “escape” ability will end immediately if Wendy deals damage to a target. 

• Justification for proposed idea: This proposal would fix the stated issues, and I do not believe it would interfere with Klei’s intent for this ability as Abigail would still be invincible for the same amount of time if Wendy does not attack anything. 

3. The Cooldown: Currently, there is a cooldown for the “escape” ability that prevents it from being spammed. This prevents it from always being ready when it is needed during combat, forcing Abigail to tank a few hits.

Proposed Idea: Remove the cooldown from the “escape” ability. 

• Justification for proposed idea: This proposal would fix the stated issue, and I believe that it would also make the "escape" ability better at its intended use. This is because unsummoning Abigail effectively does the same thing as the “escape” ability with regards to getting Abigail out of trouble. Because unsummoning already doesn’t have a cooldown, it makes sense for the "escape" option to not have a cooldown either. 

For why I believe the skill needs to be changed, I could very well be missing something, but in its current state, I haven't found a great use for the "Escape" option beyond getting Abigail out of trouble. While this is useful, I have yet to find a situation where simply unsummoning Abigail does not achieve the same outcomes. With both options, what follows is that Wendy plays a short animation of about equal length, Abigail becomes invincible but is unable to attack in return, enemies lose interest, and Abigail returns to Wendy's position. In other words, both actions are functionally identical to my knowledge, which makes the "Escape" option (and thus the entire skill) feel rather redundant. This is why I believe some minor tweaks should be made to it to give it more of a purpose.

As for why I believe this skill should allow Abigail to kite with the player's guidance, I believe this would make Wendy’s gameplay much more interesting. This is because it would allow for Abigail to be used during boss fights, while still requiring player skill for this to be viable. The changes I am proposing would also not interfere with what I believe was Klei’s intent with this ability, that being the ability to get Abigail out of trouble when her HP is low; these changes would merely add an additional use for this ability for more skilled players.

Anyways, these are the ideas I had for the “escape” ability, and why I think these changes would improve Wendy’s gameplay. Let me know what you all think!  Also Klei, if you happen to be reading this and like these ideas, please feel free to just take them. I don’t even care about credit, I’d love to see this in the game.