Walter needs some help...

[Senji1]

I'm making this post after playing a few hundred days with a buddy on beta that is feeling absolutely defeated from playing with this new skill tree. Walter has some quirks that make him an unpopular character, but has some interesting play patterns to get around his downsides, which he had many before the tree and still does...

Walters major downsides:

-Woby is not viable over taming a beefalo in any stage of the game, except the first few days of exploring. The woby skills are not worth the time or effort because they do not give reasons to use him over a beefalo in ANY SITUATION along with the fact that the skills take ages to max.

-The slingshot does not out dps many early game melee weapons that could be obtained day 1-2 if spawned near pigs and this is true after the upgrades and ammo additions with the best upgrades. A range advantage allows for better kiting of monsters, but also requires better movement. Attack speed, range, damage, and crit are added to these characters to balance them in a way that feels rewarding, but not overpowered.

-Ammo costs resources and although the new ammo and insights made this easy, he has no good way of farming for ammo and the insights just added new types to invalidate existing ammos. Why make any of the base rounds after a certain point? Marble used to be the rounds that had to be farmed and will forever be retired to higher tier bullets.

-Aoe rounds were added to fix walter's ability to not be able to deal with hordes, but these rounds also aggro everything including random nightmare creatures that are lurking even when no one is crazy. The unintended results usually add to the aggro walter takes which he is trying to avoid by kiting.

-Walters sanity is an upside and downside. The best walter players love this because it allows for some of the easiest ruins clears and controlled sanity in the game. For newer players, it makes the game incredibly difficult and the character to feel extremely bad. I'm not saying this to change this downside, but helping newer players with this in some way would be incredibly beneficial since the older players wouldn't need it.

-Walter's utility is very low. There is little reason for me to want a walter on my team when playing. He does not farm any resources well, help his teammates in nearly any way but dps, and puts a lot of pressure on other players to put themselves in the danger.

Unlike others on here, I am not looking give specific solutions that I personally want to see changed with the character. I am looking to address the fact that walter is unpopular because he lacks in all categories for new and older players. He does not have good damage, survivability for new players, utility for the team or to help himself, and is rather difficult to make work. Please if you have made it to this point, address the actual issues this unpopular character has by making this character more beginner friendly, interesting, and worth the time put in to learn his weird quirks.