Late thoughs about Wendy's skill tree

[CremeLover]

Hello
I am a bit late to the party, but I found out about the beta not too long ago, and reading some forum post and seeing how aggressive many messages

So even if I'm late, I wanted to at least try and post some thoughs to hopefully maybe influence some people and maybe someone at Klei into a path I believe could be more healthy for the game and cause less division, which very mainly focused on Gestalt Abigail. A bit late, but better than never doing anything.

 

 

So without further ado...

 

Blessed Sisturn Line:
I think this should work in a similar way as the Merm King buff from Wurt, or the regular sisturn effect, as in, works globally within the server shard, instead of getting most of the effects only if you rest at it for a long period of time. It would go from a buff that forces you to leave Abigail to rest for a buff that you lose pretty easily, to something you would actively want to keep active at all times.

 

Brew Line:
I think this line is fine, but I would've liked a few more elixirs added.

 

Pipspook Quest:
Makes her sidequest faster and you need to spam it less, I welcome this skill line.

 

Team Spirit:
I'm actually quite happy with the concept of this skill overall, however, I believe this might need some keybind mods to actually get full use out of it. Sorry console players.

 

Vengeful Ghost:
I don't think I would ever pick this skill unless I happen to be playing with a very very new player that I would expect to be reviving multiple times (or tell them to play Wendy and pick this skill)

 

Grave Line:
This gives Abigail the ability to relocate graves, which has the unfortunate nature of being something you most likely will only do once. Is overall nice, and while the grave is something you will keep using for the entire playthrough, the skillpoint itself isn't.

 

Morning Glory Line:
Resurrecting a butterfly is a nice idea, since many of Wendy's theme revolves around flowers, but 4 morning glory way too expensive. The flower crown is interesting, but many of the elixir effects are too lackluster to justify sacrificing a head slot imo, and in regards to the resurrection... the grave asset is lovely, and I would hate to get rid of it, but I would add a new craft with mourning glory and a telltale heart instead, that makes a new item moruning telltale heart that works just the same without the health penalty debuff.

 

For the Alignment branch, I would've focused on different aspects of Abigail, as I believe both current ones are just trying to step on each other toes, and Klei is having a though time getting the Lunar tree to be have a slightly different purpose while also not overshadowing the Shadow tree

 

Also note that this is mostly in regards to mechanics, the actual damage and defense numbers are a first thought/placeholder.

 

Lunar Abigail branch:
1st skill:
Gives Abigail 5 planar damage and 15 planar defense. Allows you to craft an elixir during a full moon near a moon dial, or whenever you have lunacy activated, that turns normal Abigail into a gestalt Abigail. If you're not near an altar or not affected by lunacy, you craft an elixir that allows you to turn Abigail back to normal from her gestalt form.

Lunar Abigail: She works a bit different than regular Abigail, she does no damage to regular mobs, her Rile Up option flips to Stay Still and does what it says on the label. Has 60%-80% damage reduction and 20 planar defense (give or take, I'm not too focused on the numbers) and creates a new Vex aura, that gives a new debuff to everything around her (automatically, without aggroing) that grants everyone that hits the target life steal (0.2 health per hit) and also gives players in range 10 planar defense. This makes her focus more on support and gives her a different role to her shadow form instead of competing with it, which I believe is the wrong approach

2nd skill: Allows you to craft another elixir, increase range of lunar Vex, its healing and defense effect on allies in range.

3rd skill:
Whenever you die, Abigail will sacrifice herself, bringing you to full health, and going on a cooldown period of 1 day that cannot be decreased in any way before you can summon her back at level 1.

 

Shadow Abigail Branch:

1st skill:
Gives Abigail 5 planar damage and 15 planar defense. Allows you to craft an elixir during a new moon or in caves, or whenever you're insane that turns normal Abigail into her shadow form. Requires a living critter. Similar to Lunar, you can craft an elixir that turns her back to normal if you cannot craft the transformation elixir.

Shadow Abigail: Same as current one, but has no planar defense, and instead moves all planar points onto attack.

2nd skill: Same as current one

3rd skill:
Grants a new action similar to the Team Spirit line, and similar to the shadow planar weapons, it increases the attack rate and attack range of Abigail. That's it, she get's move vicious and starts to attack faster, but this will also temporarily disable her shield, and disable all other actions for 10 seconds, both Team Spirit and even de-summon, focusing only on killing everything in sight.

 

The basis of this was to give Lunar Abigail a different purpose entirely to shadow Abigail, which expands Wendy's playstyles, makes her skill tree more interesting, and allows for different strategies and possibilities, instead of just turning Lunar Abigail into "Abigail but for bosses", and gives a few options to transform that don't require you to wait for full moon.
Lifesteal fits the shadow theme more, but it was something to give the Lunar vex that would grant support to everyone without being a straight up damage buff

[Steorra]

Lifesteal for Abi sounds creative and good. I'm glad to see the first friendly mob who have lifestealing ability.

[1007954611]

Shadow Abigail Branch's idea is good

[DVGMedia]

I really like the Idea Of making Lunar abby not a damage source but a support source.
Heck her aura field you suggested can be similar to the  grazers  aura around them.
Because  wendy does need a different form of playstyle outside of just damage i feel. And suggesting Lunar be a support is a great Idea

Since I feel gestalt abby right now just doesn't work as an alternate playstyle.

[Dingle]

I really like the general ideas here. Bumping this so it has a tiny chance to be seen over all the "fire Wendy's developer" threads.

[CremeLover]

Thanks, but really, this is mostly a proof of concept of what I think the direction should've been, since as it is right now, is a bit too late to radically change the direction the update has gone into, yet I still wanted to try and see if I could collaborate a bit with it.

Thing is, the beta is almost over, the official update will need to be ready by the next thursday, or the one before christmas if you're really pushing it, as the devs also take holidays, and I doubt none if them would want to work over christmas and new year.
Having a big radical shift in direction at this point is kind of wishful thinking, specially after all this time has gone by, and a large and vocal chunk of the community are already attached to the current iteration, but I still wanted to portray what I think a good direction for the skill tree could've been, in the hopes that it could influence a bit of the final product by at least pushing for a diferentiation in purpose of both forms of Abigail.

Thanks for the feedback and the bumb!

[Dingle]

17 minutes ago, CremeLover said:

Thanks, but really, this is mostly a proof of concept of what I think the direction should've been, since as it is right now, is a bit too late to radically change the direction the update has gone into, yet I still wanted to try and see if I could collaborate a bit with it.

Thing is, the beta is almost over, the official update will need to be ready by the next thursday, or the one before christmas if you're really pushing it, as the devs also take holidays, and I doubt none if them would want to work over christmas and new year.
Having a big radical shift in direction at this point is kind of wishful thinking, specially after all this time has gone by, and a large and vocal chunk of the community are already attached to the current iteration, but I still wanted to portray what I think a good direction for the skill tree could've been, in the hopes that it could influence a bit of the final product by at least pushing for a diferentiation in purpose of both forms of Abigail.

Thanks for the feedback and the bumb!

Yeah it's all pretty locked in at this point. I kind of expect the beta to be next week, from reading the last update.

I still provide feedback in case they do small adjustments in a hotfix. Though typically they don't unless there's a huge problem.

[CremeLover]

8 minutes ago, Fitzee said:

My guess is that the next Thursday/Friday will be the last hotfix, and the Thursday after that will be the full release.

In other words, this week is the final one to suggest certain mechanics of skills to be altered, but not expect skills to be added/removed/merged, or otherwise have the whole skilltree revised yet again; then next week, the most they'll likely do are simple number tweaks. 

Better late than never!