[Poll] On Walter, Wendy and Wortox's Current Skilltrees, Premortem

[GetNerfedOn]

As always, vote freely and discuss!

[for posterity's sake, poll was made during Update 643115].

[WenericMember]

Wendy: There's really not much to this tree, a large number of skills don't particularly add new mechanics with a lot of depth, which is sad after how interesting and varied most other skill trees have been. It just lacks a cohesive "thesis statement" I suppose (like Embers, Weapons, Merms, etc), as pretentious as it sounds. There's some nice ideas, and it will probably end up okay once all features are added, but a lot of skills are still fundamentally broken, like Team Spirit, Dark Petals I, Graves by Wendy & Deep Draught.

Even compared to another survivor with a weaker tree - Wigfrid, while her container for character specific items was a standalone skills, Wendy's is locked behind an additional two skills that are mostly useless in the deep draught lines. Which is a good analogy for the entire tree. Wendy does have some good stuff, but its few and far in between, and involves far too  many hoops.

Simply converting between petal types? Requires NF & Mourning Glory, when it can be done for free with haunt, instead of wilson's 2:1 ratio.

Increasing Abigail's max HP? Requires storing her in the sisturn, unlike Willow who gets the same improvement, off a higher base Hp, for free.

Creating a new grave? Requires placing on a skeleton, requiring death or a rare natural spawn.

Beautifying graves? Hard cap of four at a time, unlike Wormwood who can craft infinite saplings 

Walter: Looks mostly fine, though I admittedly don't play the character. It would be nice to have better balance and a few filler options for his more random perks (stories, tent, hat), but it still seems to have a solid core.

Wortox: Conceptually interesting, and the only thing Wortox ever really needed was improved soul capacity. Which he has, so I'm happy.

[viblym]

Walter's skill tree addresses a lot of issues with him as a character, but it's not very interesting.  8 perks just to let you craft new ammunition types isn't doing much for me, even if I like the new rounds.

Wendy's skill tree improves a already good character, but it feels like she's missing something big, Lunar Alignment is very ambitious but shadow Alignment isn't nearly as interesting in comparison. Some of her perks could be condensed and rebalanced.

Wortox's skill tree is remarkable, it really changes how playing Wortox feels (for the better). I have high hopes that by the end of the beta with a few tweaks it'll feel even better.

[WenericMember]

2 minutes ago, viblym said:

Wendy's skill tree improves a already good character, but it feels like she's missing something big, Lunar Alignment is very ambitious but shadow Alignment isn't nearly as interesting in comparison. Some of her perks could be condensed and rebalanced.

Honestly, with how Wendy's alignment perks don't have a min skill padlock, it would be cool for her alignment to be a much bigger part of her skill tree. It'd be something unique to her, curb power creep by having skills be mutually exclusive, and while it would require much work, there's a lotttttttt of room between Wendy & Abigail for skills.

[Hollow soul 3]

I think it's hard to say for wortox right now. I wasn't a fan at first, but I was wrong about a few of his mechanics. Im still a little mixed on the bag, as a weapon it's nice when you have it on. I'm just a little mixed on the utility. It's nice that it does anything extra, and the utility will be nice for cleaning up. Scooping stuff up in combat is nice too. I can already imagine the reduction in lag on console. It's different enough from the other characters with mechanics for picking stuff up to stand out. I just think it would be cool if it could also scoop some bugs or hold a few things. 

[Mdz]

For Wendy, speaking for my husband, the skilltree feels like a real bonus. He's very happy to see the latest reworks on it even tho he wasn't even complaining in the first place.

And about Wortox, my beloved main, it's both very good and pretty frustrating. I really love pretty much everything it offers even though i'm not a fan of the fighting mechanics the knabsack comes with (but i really enjoy using it to gather resources off the ground! It's a really great addition on that front!). Guess i'm just a bit frustrated by having only 15 insights to make a build. I constantly wanna change it in favor of naughty or nice. Which i guess is probably the point of the way it was designed.
I love the piercing souls and the decoys are so much fun to use but i also took the habit of being the guy who jumps from one end of the map to the other and i'm more support inclined..
So overall, i guess i'm not really complaining, as always, Klei treats us well but damn... Still rough love lol

For Walter, guess i'm just glad the two ppl who mains him have a bone to nibble on ^^'

[Dingle]

I'm waiting for some remaining missing things for Wortox, still. His alignment scale bonuses, an answer on beefalo teleporting and heavy object teleporting, and a Neutral branch rework. Some other things like the knabsack not doing its group pickup on spacebar, and maybe getting a function to catch bugs and animals. Looks like he's really going in a good direction, though.

I don't play Walter. I don't envy Klei trying to balance a ranged character in this game.

Wendy's tree looks fun to me, but I also don't play her a lot, just off and on. I know she's one of the most powerful characters at a high skill ceiling. I also know that most people don't play her at a crazy kill all bosses speedrun level. I imagined she would get a kind of disappointing tree like Wigfrid did: mostly filler and items many players skip entirely, but one great new item for post-rift. I think the devs are in a bad spot as she is the most popular character by far, so I'm pretty curious how her perks turn out.

[HFLOVERUST]

Why is Wendy's update part so terrible? Have designers defeated any bosses by using this character? Don' t you guys know that Abigail is so hard to live and effectively damage the boss even if players use the Spectral Cure-All? If designers want to motivate players to use the ghostly elixir more frequently, then why can't Spectral Cure-All's recovery effect chases on the bosses's damage on her or improve this elixir? And what's the improvement? Turn the damage on Wendy to Abigail?

[Echsrick]

knapsack is the ONE THING i realy wish would change into a tool like a bugnet+ that can capture never before creatures like pigs and baby beefalos like medium sized creatures, and maybe some objects like suspicous marble, with the sack having its own inventory that can only hold stealables, it would fit so much more with the discribtion of wortox being close to krampus so he made his own stealing sack, and its alsol just so much more fitting

[Hollow soul 3]

21 minutes ago, Echsrick said:

knapsack is the ONE THING i realy wish would change into a tool like a bugnet+ that can capture never before creatures like pigs and baby beefalos like medium sized creatures, and maybe some objects like suspicous marble, with the sack having its own inventory that can only hold stealables, it would fit so much more with the discribtion of wortox being close to krampus so he made his own stealing sack, and its alsol just so much more fitting

I'll take every opportunity I can to echo this. Ive grown to like current function, but I would like it to be just a little bit more utility. With the crafting cost, a bugnet is always in your inventory. Currently, my plan is to 75/25 souls to bugs caught until I fill up a stack or two+ bundle wrap full. Too many problems get fixed with a fist full of bees

[arubaro]

- I like Walter's tree, i agree that is sad how they didn't added any boy scout perk and that the ammo needs to has more variety (2aoe pellets and 3 slow ones...). Atleast they said they will look onto the ammo variety problem 

 

- Wendy has interesting stuff like the gestal form, improvet pipspook quests or the tomb crafting which can open a good ammount of gameplay shenanigans 

 

- wortox is now less flat and funnier but i dont like most of the direction. The pouch weapon fells out of place, doesn't work as storage despite being an item used for storage irl, lacks of variety of perks for single player or veterans and there is room for funnier stuff like the soul pierce

 

[ShadowDuelist]

At this stage today (and we still have several patches ahead) IMO Wortox is probably the most fleshed out, and the one that currently "works" the best.

Wendy and Walter need more polishing, but I trust in the process Klei is doing. Not that they are unplayable by any means, but both made me feel like so many things are "off" that I rather wait for the next patch before testing more.

My only problem with Wortox is the knabsack and the soul jars, both things feel quite weird, clunky and/or wrong. I kinda wished you could just not pick any of the soul jar line, but realistically you can't avoid it because of how important it is for everything else to have more souls, which makes it worse to be forced to have to deal with those unless you want to power cap yourself.
The rest of his skill tree looks great.

[Kwaik]

How is Wortox voted so positively? 

 

It's legitimately one of the absolute worst skill trees I've seen. Addresses some issues, but does very little to make him stronger. 

 

Bad weapon, horrible affinities and most of his added damage is built around aoe which he's still going to be pretty inferior to other options (willow wendy Woody etc) 

 

Honestly Wortox skill tree is the first skill tree that makes me never want to play a character again

 

I get that he has some nice QOL stuff (soul inventory, teleporting with heavy objects) but as far as strength/buffing Wortox is moving towards the bottom of the food chain when it comes to being weak 

 

The Wendy/Walter skill trees are so much more interesting and those are characters I rarely/never played 

[Jazzuo]

22 minutes ago, Kwaik said:

How is Wortox voted so positively? 

 

It's legitimately one of the absolute worst skill trees I've seen. Addresses some issues, but does very little to make him stronger. 

 

Bad weapon, horrible affinities and most of his added damage is built around aoe which he's still going to be pretty inferior to other options (willow wendy Woody etc) 

 

Honestly Wortox skill tree is the first skill tree that makes me never want to play a character again

 

I get that he has some nice QOL stuff (soul inventory, teleporting with heavy objects) but as far as strength/buffing Wortox is moving towards the bottom of the food chain when it comes to being weak 

 

The Wendy/Walter skill trees are so much more interesting and those are characters I rarely/never played 

how the knabsack is a horrible weapon even tho is better than dark sword, and uses less space inventory than dark swords in the majority of raid bosses.

How making the shadow reaper aoe or single-target more dmg is horrible? and how is making the brightshade helm a bone helm is horrible?

The aoe of wortox is not made to deal with minions of raid bosses, it's made to gather souls more easily which it does, it's not made to replace willow, wendy, or woody in aoe damage

[Kwaik]

18 minutes ago, Jazzuo said:

how the knabsack is a horrible weapon even tho is better than dark sword, and uses less space inventory than dark swords in the majority of raid bosses.

How making the shadow reaper aoe or single-target more dmg is horrible? and how is making the brightshade helm a bone helm is horrible?

The aoe of wortox is not made to deal with minions of raid bosses, it's made to gather souls more easily which it does, it's not made to replace willow, wendy, or woody in aoe damage

The Dark sword is a fairly inexpensive early game item, and this one is now tied to your inventory. Plus constant new weapons have come out out dating the dark sword, and other characters unique weapons (wigfrid, Walter, sorta willow) absolutely blow the sack out if the water. 

Tying a single weapon to an affinity skill is stupid, speciallylly not a character unique. Same thing with the helmet, especially for an effect that's not particularly amazing. 

 

Okay so Wortox got a crap ton of skills. Go make gathering souls easier. Which comes back to my initial point, is Wortox really that much stronger after his skill tree? 

And the answer is it doesn't compare to the power buffs that many skill tree characters have gotten 

Wortox got some nice QOL and a ton of extremely niche conditional abilities. 

[Jazzuo]

1 minute ago, Kwaik said:

The Dark sword is a fairly inexpensive early game item, and this one is now tied to your inventory. Plus constant new weapons have come out out dating the dark sword, and other characters unique weapons (wigfrid, Walter, sorta willow) absolutely blow the sack out if the water. 

Tying a single weapon to an affinity skill is stupid, speciallylly not a character unique. Same thing with the helmet, especially for an effect that's not particularly amazing. 

 

Okay so Wortox got a crap ton of skills. Go make gathering souls easier. Which comes back to my initial point, is Wortox really that much stronger after his skill tree? 

And the answer is it doesn't compare to the power buffs that many skill tree characters have gotten 

Wortox got some nice QOL and a ton of extremely niche conditional abilities. 

even if you say that dark swords is fairly inexpensive, having a cheaper dark sword with double durability is still good tho, even if it's tied to your inventory it's not a big deal tho, most of the time you're going to have spare room especially when you prepare to fight a raid boss, yeah of course other unique weapons are better, this weapon only cost 4 souls y 2 silk like, what do you expect, wigfrid needs volt goats and the lunar storm event to have her best weapon, like of course is gonna be better, with walter and willow kinda the same, they need to use a lot of resorces or rush things to get their best weapon damage, like this only cost 2 bottles which spawn 1-2 days every bottle, marble and red gems, everything that you need you can get it in early game, that's kinda the point.

and that's why the affinity skill is attached to late-game weapons and armour, knabsack is not suppose to be a late-game weapon, only a early-mid game one, it's made that you want and the game kinda tells you that you need to replace your weapon now, because is useless.

and yeah wortox is stronger than before, not only you have a unique crafting that's better and cheaper than a dark sword, you also have unique perks to late-game weapons, and also you can have more souls, and you have the capabilities to farm more souls faster. besides the nice side has more healing and yeah that's like the whole thing wortox does, so yeah wortox is better.