Wendy skill tree: thoughts, criticisms, and suggestions

[Catuna_]

Wendy's a character I very much enjoy playing, and despite that, I had been quite discouraged to majorly voice my opinions on her tree due to the current general atmosphere of the forums... At least regarding Wendy discussions. But, I figured it would be worth a shot anyway.

The first step is to ask "What does Wendy's character aim to accomplish?" and, well, she's a very unique follower character who revolves around her dead sister Abigail. What this means is that Wendy should be rewarded for keeping Abigail alive, and punished severely for doing so. The game does this by making it so that Abigail takes double damage from bosses, and making it so Wendy deals 0.75x damage on her own which creates a learning curve for players to overcome, and I really enjoyed this hurdle and it solidified Wendy as a really fun character for me.

What this means, in my opinion, contrary to what a lot of people are complaining about; it's okay for Wendy's perks to revolve around Abigail as her core concept is to tend to her sister. Let's go over Wendy's changes first, before we talk about her skill tree.

Wendy's whisper UI

Wendy's control scheme has been reworked, as she was decently clunky before. Potions only require a right click to apply the respective buff, this is a huge improvement as it made no sense to have to drag your potions over her flower or Abigail herself considering that Wendy only has one follower. However... I found myself accidentally cancelling this action a lot, as moving in the slightest will bring you out of said action... Could it present a lockout, similar to book casting? It's not something I can't get used to, but I feel like it adds a layer of clunkyness to the character that I didn't have to worry about before.
Wendy now has a spell UI... Or whisper UI? She's not casting spells, I suppose. Wendy's rile up/soothe prompts have been moved to a circle UI, and along with them came three new actions which I will talk about later. That being said... I do not like this UI. It messes with my muscle memory lots, and doesn't feel great to use, mainly the rile up/soothe action ESPECIALLY when you have no perks invested, as the only two commands are opposite to each other rather than being close.

Wendy's skill tree

To indicate which branch I'm talking about, I'll just be highlighting it by taking screenshots with its perks selected.

Blessed sisturn is a rather forgettable branch, in my opinion. Its best perk is actually the second one, it amplifies the sisturn's sanity gain to (up to) 37.5/min, and increases Wendy's insanity aura resistance from 25% to 56% while reducing it by 25% for anyone standing near her. Blessed sisturn 3 and 4 are rather underwhelming, in my opinion. An over heal is not a bad idea, don't get me wrong, but with the rate of 2/s (or a whopping 2.5/5 minutes) for health that can't be restored it's extremely mediocre. This is because Revenant restorative is a ridiculously cheap potion which heals Abigail for 3hp/s for an entire day (or two days) which is a total of 960 health (or a whopping 1920) each which completely blows these two perks out of the water. How would I fix it? Buff the overheal from 2hp/s to 5hp/s, meaning that it'd take only 30 seconds to reach 900 health. Furthermore, rework Blessed sisturn 4 to a new perk: It will now transform spoiled petals into 1-2 mourning glories, aswell as Blessed sisturn 1, making it so that Wendy can place mourning glories into the sisturn, lasting for double (or triple) the duration of regular petals. This adds a big thing that was on my wishlist for Wendy: passive mourning glory generation. To compensate, Wendy could be limited to only having one sisturn active at a time if the reason for not adding this is that it'd invalidate going after pipspooks.

This branch is quite decent, in my opinion, and it's nice to see how it reflects Wendy's development as an ectoherbologist... But I still have some critiques. I think it'd be really cool if the picnic basket could store mourning glories, and I wish that strong brew and ghastly elixir would be swapped around, as Wendy has a lot of skills and needing to invest into an elixir that more experienced players wouldn't need to get to a perk that's more widely useful would be a better route for the branch in my opinion. Also extra yield is NUTS and a must-have as it rolls for a 30% chance twice to get an extra elixir (42% chance to get two elixirs, 9% to get three elixirs). Ghastly experience is an underwhelming potion when you're able to keep Abigail alive reliably, especially considering that the sisturn already addresses the concern of Abigail dying as well as the new controls that help Wendy manage Abigail and keep her alive. I learned that you can still use this potion even if Abigail is at level three, and I had a cool idea that the potion could temporarily unlock a "Level 4" for Abigail that has a special effect. Dunno what it'd be, though.

I was originally just going to say "No comment"... But I think it'd be fun if this perk allowed for Wendy to be able to use elixirs on dead players, allowing them to contribute a little bit more. Furthermore, I think this perk should make it so that ghosts only attack while holding the attack input, as to not accidentally kill mobs that you didn't want to kill. And finally, perhaps ghosts could apply a nerfed vex, only boosting damage by 5% that also applies to them, considering that you have to die and that your DPS as a ghost would still be rather low, I think these changes would be okay to make it a more fun tool to toy around with. Also ghosts keep their damage modifiers... I do not think that's intentional.

These perks are currently bugged and unintentionally all display the same name (while also misspelling "Mourning"), but I'll just glance over that when talking about them. This branch is rather odd, definitely my least favorite conceptually. It feels like has no particular focus aside from a way to spend excess mourning glories. That being said, 4 mourning glories to revive one butterfly is a big ask... Why not make it so that Wendy can right click butterflies with mourning glories to immediately revive many butterflies at once instead of painstakingly crafting them one by one? Why does the Wraith's wreath spoil considering that mourning glories don't spoil? Wouldn't a durability system be better? It could drain for each potion, or while wearing it. The effects are cool, but I think that vigor mortis could provide a 20% speed boost. A head slot item giving speed would be something new and pretty cool. Distilled Vengeance could also be buffed to provide a stronger shield, perhaps the shield could regenerate overtime for the duration of the effect? You do have to keep it equipped for that, I think it'd be fair. Perhaps Abigail could wear the crown herself, boosting the effect of elixirs, or sharing the potion effects with Wendy wearing the hat as a way to have two active potions at once. The perennial altar is odd as Wendy is among the best characters for farming beard hair, and 10 glories just for a meat effigy is rather underwhelming. Not to mention that it's odd that it's not a part of the graveyard branch, emphasizing this branch's lack of a focus.

This is a rather simple yet good branch, hunting for mourning glory has always been the most monotonous part of playing Wendy and having perks that make it quicker is always a big plus. I would always recommend at least taking the first one, as it reduces the distance you have to travel by 40% I believe. However, I'd still like more passive yet slow ways of gathering mourning glory.

I'm always against making these type of perks, people have been asking for ways to make their own graves for base building and to utilize the skins but then boom, it's a Wendy exclusive. Want to make fancy berry bushes and lunar saplings? Nope. Wormwood exclusive. More wobots? Winona exclusive and so on. My distaste for these recent character exclusives aside, I think this branch is cool, but it should have more to it than evil flowers and bigspooks... Perhaps when the flowers rot, it turns them into mourning glory? Or maybe bigspooks could give mourning glory for beautifying their graves. Also, it'd be really cool if the the embalming spritz made it so that graves don't get de-beautified, for decor's sake.

Team spirit is a pretty powerful branch, and I'm very okay with the abilities themselves despite not liking the clunkyness of the UI. I just wish not picking these abilities would let you use the usual old Wendy controls as I'm personally not very interested in these perks. I think Team spirit 1's description ("Wendy can remind Abigail that she's a ghost") is rather silly and should be changed to Wendy informing Abigails of the dangers she's unaware of, maybe mention that Abigail often gets way over her head? It's fitting for her personality.

This branch is so disappointing for me, as it seems like Klei has abandoned the original concept completely for a rather lame one. Gestalt Abigail used to deal 10x the damage but attacked 4x as slow, meaning that Wendy could not benefit from her vex aswell as not having AoE outside of the dash. This was such a good concept in contrast to the shadow affinity, but the issue was that Gestalt Abigail was starting to solo bosses, a simple fix for this would just to remove her invincibility while attacking, which was done. Halving her damage was not needed, at all. Her dps went from 100 to a pathetic 50/55 which is genuinely just nothing considering you lose the AoE. The 25% health disengage thing sounds cool on paper, but it really sucks in practice as the player already has several tools to ensure Abigail's survival, and having her not wanting to do anything at 150 health (which is still plenty in a lot of scenarios) is so annoying especially since she can still be attacked. You don't see anyone picking sensible merm fighter for this reason. I think that Gestalt Abigail should have her damage changes reverted, and her vex completely removed with increased dash damage and increased movement speed while kiting, this would make her a contrast to shadow Abigail but still wouldn't let you solo bosses just by staring at her doing everything for you.

Shadow abigail is obscenely strong and should be nerfed, her vex potion is available to her before the rifts from just beating Werepig, a task that a lot of players are able to do in the first autumn. This makes Wendy able to reach absurd numbers of damage that I quite frankly think Wendy shouldn't have. Perhaps the vex potion could require dark tatters? Or be nerfed from 1.3x/1.6x to 1.2x/1.5x. Furthermore, double damage Abigail is way too much, I could just murder a moleworm in my inventory for 8s of double damage for a total of 640 damage, no bug net required. I found that it's insane in both bossfights and day to day situations, considering how easy rabbits and moleworms are to come across. Double damage or 8s is too much, and wendy can reach absurd damage numbers due to this:
(Dark sword) Wolfgang deals 136 damage, for a dps of 340
(Dark sword) Wendy deals 106.1 damage with a dark sword, for a dps of 265.25 + Abigail's DPS so up to 345.25 DPS
(Beefalo) Wendy deals 137.28 damage, for a dps of 343.2 + Abigail's DPS so up to 423.2 DPS

That's pretty much my opinion on every branch, I hope that Klei could improve the lunar affinity and make slight adjustments to everything else where it's needed... And I also hope that people on the forums also realize that unanimously screeching at Klei with seemingly no constructive criticism to offer isn't going to do anything, and that Klei's more than willing to accommodate with no need for cursing their entire bloodline. I've been seeing lots of angry posts with no real criticism or suggestions behind it, that does nothing. It's important to be civil, even if strong worded, and to thoroughly explain why something doesn't work and give suggestions on how to solve it.

[FourthLess]

I agree, cat  tuna

[Lee Sy]

对于月灵阿比，缺陷是显而易见的。将其合并在团队精神的轮盘中作为一个技能进行转换也不过分。但关于轮盘本身，过多的技能也显得十分臃肿，在第一次打开时我很难区分每一个图标对应哪一个技能，比如我经常在尝试让阿比平静时将其收回在花瓣里。

[aidankocherhans]

1 hour ago, Catuna_ said:

It messes with my muscle memory lots, and doesn't feel great to use, mainly the rile up/soothe action ESPECIALLY when you have no perks invested, as the only two commands are opposite to each other rather than being close

I feel like the rile up and soothe buttons should be in the same slot, and there shouldn't be a menu if you don't have relevant perks

[1007954611]

赞同

[Lee lol]

是的，我同意你的看法，格式塔应该被增强，无论是回调无敌帧或者增加伤害。它相对于暗影阿比来说太弱了。墓碑美化能打蜡很好！建家会用到这个

[HeatAndRun]

4 hours ago, Catuna_ said:

I think it'd be really cool if the picnic basket could store mourning glories

I thought about this too when I was playing beta as Wendy, and I think this is a very great idea to go with. As always, Abigail can apply only 1 potions (most of them) at a time, so 8 inventory slots for basket feels rather exessive for now. If mourning glory can go into the basket, it'll meaningfully help Wendy's inventory management while farming tons of mourning glory all around or making Wraith's wreath for herself or her teammates!

[Vasz_]

Great post, Catuna! I agree with most of these points and it gives a good overall idea of what can be improved in the skill tree.

[NatanUnderline]

(shshshhhhsssssss don't tell them that the shadow affinity perks are overpowered, this whole thing was a smear campaign from the shadows against the lunar skills so that klei would just keep nerfing the lunar skills and let the shadow affinity perks stay over powered)