Blessed Sisturn III is a problem, Overheal needs to come back.

[ArcAngela]

Strong title I know, "Overheal needs to come back"? This will probably be the only sentiment I hold for Wendy.

I'm not going to deny that the old overheal mechanic certainly needed fine-tuning, but I want to paint a picture on how good it was for Wendy and why it should return instead of this "player" tag that Abigail got:

For starters: People don't play Wendy for fighting bosses. While that is a strong assumption, I believe we are on the same page here; if you're playing Don't Starve to slaughter bosses and fight 24/7, you're not picking Wendy. This doesn't mean players should be prevented from having a chance at fighting bosses, but from the very beginnings of this game it has been always clear that Wendy is more of a passive character that doesn't excel in combat like others, and that this became most clear when it came to fighting bosses. Why am I bringing this up? Well, it's become clear Klei wants Blessed Sisturn III to offer a solution to this or an option that enables Abigail to fight bosses.

So what was the initial solution?
The Overheal, and it's really disappointing to see it being replaced, overhealing certainly needed better stats, it took too long to build up and 300 Health didn't quite do the job at giving Abigail a fighting chance against bosses, that is of course assuming that Klei made this skill with this in mind, but considering it was replaced for a skill that does only that, then it's a safe assumption to make.

But there was something great about this skill, it synergized with Wendy in various ways that enriched the experience overall:

1. Overheal synergized with elixirs and elixir skills, it allowed people to use the lesser popular potions since the need for healing isn't required until Overheal ended. All elixirs currently suffer this mild problem that they're "not as good as healing" making them absurdly situational in comparison to the healing elixirs, this skill allowed breathing room for players to consider using different potions.

2. It enriched the interaction between the two sisters, Wendy players as previously mentioned don't fully focus on combat 24/7, so between the options of: Punching Abigail so she stops being a nuisance VS. Leaving her by her sisturn so she could benefit from a buff and dance around while you do base-tending activities was a night and day difference. It felt like you were caring for her, not taking 15 sanity to the face and being mad at her for getting in the way of farming.

3. Overheal synergized with gravestone skills, since Abigail is essentially parked elsewhere and Wendy is made vulnerable it allowed Bigspooks to become a possible alternative for people to choose from when considering base defense. Right now the idea of Bigspooks is clearly for fun at best when base defense is a concern since Abigail is a better alternative in every situation, parking Abigail opened up ideas on how to optimize her overheal by not interrupting it with sudden combat, and Bigspooks fit the bill.

4. Optimization also comes at play here, it's not that deep but the skill held some depth, more depth than the "player" tag anyways...
Disabling Abigail temporarily so that you can prepare her for tougher battles rewarded the smart player, it gets you thinking on how to best optimize or use this feature so that you can rip the benefits the most out of it. It allowed you to strategize and think ahead and be rewarded for doing so, and as mentioned previously, it also got you thinking on what potions to use to work with Overheal in mind or if Bigspooks could be an alternative so you don't have to interrupt her overhealing.

5. Overheal applied to all cases of combat, not just bosses. Current Sisturn III only applies to bosses and it feels like this was basically a trade-off so that Abigail's health can be useful against them. Which is.. very disappointing, if you didn't want to use Abigail against bosses you could still find other uses for Overheal, but right now the new skill is entirely one-dimensional.

What is the current solution, and why is it problematic?
Well, Blessed Sisturn III right now sacrificed all this just so Abigail can have a "player" tag if you put a resource on the sisturn. While many might disagree with me on overheal we can at least agree that the player tag is a very shallow, boring "solution" that is also uninteresting to balance.
How much damage is enough? 20%? 60%? We'd be here all day fine-tuning a singular dial to fix a problem we created that is: "player" tag on Abigail is too strong. But why is it?

Althought it's been mentioned in other posts that I do recommend reading like this one, the player tag essentially doubles Abigail's health and her healing, If bosses are half as effective, then it also means Abigail's Health is twice as effective, but this becomes problematic when we introduce healing, since that also doubles as a result.

So what do I suggest to fix this?
I propose we bring back Overheal and fine-tune it's stats and perhaps add other mechanics so that it can fulfill this purpose of giving Abigail a fighting chance against bosses if that is what Klei desired out of this skill, for example:

The "player" tag could've been exclusive to Overheal, meaning NO healing until Overheal is lost, but every point of Overheal is essentially twice as effective against bosses. This would encourage players to not get careless around this mechanic and add a more intuitive approach.

As I've mentioned before, Overheal was interesting, synergized with Wendy and her skills, enriched the experience and were fun to work around, obviously not every player was fond of it, but some players are also not fond of potions or the gravestones, it was still a very welcome addition and I'm a bit sad to see it get replaced for "get A resource for B benefits" approach.

[Yifei_]

Please do not revert Wendy's Sisturn skill branch to the previous version……

Having Abigail "stuck" near the Sisturn for 5 minutes to only gain 600 "fake" health (which cannot be restored through regular means) is very boring and silly. Using Lunar Petals and Dark Petals is a great idea, as it is both interesting and effective.

I hope future updates will further refine the effects of using these two petals, but please do not revert to the previous "fake" health mode. The fake health is neither fun nor practical.
 

[ArcAngela]

Just now, Yifei_ said:

Please do not revert Wendy's Sisturn skill branch to the previous version.

Having Abigail "stuck" near the Sisturn for 5 minutes to only gain 600 "fake" health (which cannot be restored through regular means) is very boring and silly. Using Lunar Petals and Dark Petals is a great idea, as it is both interesting and effective.

I hope future updates will further refine the effects of using these two petals, but please do not revert to the previous "fake" health mode. The fake health is neither fun nor practical.
 

a 6 minute read getting replied in 3? bold...

[Yifei_]

2 minutes ago, ArcAngela said:

a 6 minute read getting replied in 3? bold...

I've mentioned something similar elsewhere before. This branch of skill may indeed have some balance and design issues, but please don't revert it back to the previous "fake health"... that's just too boring.

[thesooz9000]

I agree with the idea of removing blessed sisturn III, way too strong for the little thought that you put into it, but the overheal mechanic that was prior to it was boring and not liked by many players, I believe letting gestalt abigail be the only version of abigail who benefits from the player tag is the best way to balance it for now, besides just removing it.

[Catapult 2.0]

14 minutes ago, ArcAngela said:

People don't play Wendy for fighting bosses.

I'm sure you shouldn't have a high level of proficiency in the game, and you shouldn't be able to play for more than 1500 hours before you say something like that. Should Wormwood go to battle, half of his skill tree is about fighting, and only one is related to farming. Now Klei is encouraging players to fight better with each character's own gimmick, and we're all enjoying that

[Yifei_]

15 minutes ago, ArcAngela said:

All elixirs currently suffer this mild problem that they're "not as good as healing" making them absurdly situational in comparison to the healing elixirs, this skill allowed breathing room for players to consider using different potions.

When facing AG, CC I&II, Toadstool, Vigor Mortis is better than healing potions; when facing DF, BQ (and maybe CK, I'm not sure about this), Nightshade Nostrum is better than healing potions. I find the two shield potions to be useless, but that's a design issue with the potions themselves. The current balance of potions isn't that bad, and other potions still have their uses.

[ArcAngela]

Just now, thesooz9000 said:

I agree with the idea of removing blessed sisturn III, way too strong for the little thought that you put into it, but the overheal mechanic that was prior to it was boring and not liked by many players, I believe letting gestalt abigail be the only version of abigail who benefits from the player tag is the best way to balance it for now, besides just removing it.

I strongly believe it was deemed boring because how long it took to build up and how it worked mechanically, which could've been certainly addressed instead of just being removed, if it gave other benefits while Abigail is at the Sisturn then this could certainly shift opinions around.

Example:
Sisturn could enable Abigail to become a brighter light source while parked, it could offer sanity, Overheal didn't have to not work with healing potions, it could very well be a stat that can be healed but decays overtime. These are all examples of different ways to approach this feature without outright removal, since I believe it was still a better alternative than unsummoning Abigail when not needed, and removing the extra survivability that applied to all combat just for bosses is very uninspiring.

1 minute ago, Natsuki Bamboo said:

I'm sure you shouldn't have a high level of proficiency in the game, and you shouldn't be able to play for more than 1500 hours before you say something like that. Should Wormwood go to battle, half of his skill tree is about fighting, and only one is related to farming. Now Klei is encouraging players to fight better with each character's own gimmick, and we're all enjoying that

Adding a developer compliment to your insult unfortunately does not make your comment any more constructive to the conversation.

[Catapult 2.0]

5 minutes ago, ArcAngela said:

Adding a developer compliment to your insult unfortunately does not make your comment any more constructive to the conversation.

So please answer me head-on why Wormwood, who is in charge of the farmland, has a lot of combat-related skills, but Wendy shouldn't be able to handle boss battles better

[ArcAngela]

36 minutes ago, Natsuki Bamboo said:

So please answer me head-on why Wormwood, who is in charge of the farmland, has a lot of combat-related skills, but Wendy shouldn't be able to handle boss battles better

Read my post.

Your attempt to strawman my argument unfortunately fails to land because at no point in my post I argued that Wendy shouldn't be able to handle bosses, in fact if you read past the first quote you singled-out you'd realize that it was merely a bullet point that lead towards the actual discussion that is: "Klei wants Blessed Sisturn III to accomplish that, here's how I believe it can be achieved by reusing the overheal"

Also can you not gatekeep discussions between an arbitrary amount of hours played, please? While I do in fact have that many hours in the game, that's just poor community etiquette.

[Lee lol]

If kelei can improve overtreatment and make it less boring, I can accept it. Or as you said, let Aby have a larger light range when he is near the urn. To be honest, Abi is sometimes annoying when farming farmland, cooking or building a base. I always need to put her away... Maybe it's not a bad thing to give her a temporary resting place, but it always reminds me of tying beefalo to the makeup table...

[cyjs]

I don't want to wait 5 minutes, this is stupid

Do I need to tell my teammates to wait for me for 5 minutes before each battle?

[YuRinshue]

If you have actually used this skill, you will know that many of your 'ideal situations' lack feasibility. Fake blood volume can disappear in the world behind the cracks if you are not careful. Then you can only use blood returning drugs for remediation, there is no need to use other drugs, the reason for not using other drugs is never because the blood returning drugs are too strong, but because other drugs are too weak. At the same time, in order to earn less than 10 seconds of profit, you need to let Abigail hang up for 5 minutes and not allow you to participate in other battles before the boss battle, which is a very unequal profit. If you think this function is very good, I recommend that you express your hope that it will be incorporated into the current sisters urn 1/2 function, because it is not enough to complete the level 3 work.

[Ridepod]

4 hours ago, ArcAngela said:

For starters: People don't play Wendy for fighting bosses. While that is a strong assumption, I believe we are on the same page here; if you're playing Don't Starve to slaughter bosses and fight 24/7, you're not picking Wendy. 

I'm singling out one paragraph mostly and ignoring your main argument but like Wendy is a combat character in the same vein as Wigfrid and Wolfgang ... Abby is her kit and Abby is for fighting. My driving factor to main Wendy was almost entirely because of her ability to solo bee queen. I don't think this paragraph adds anything to your argument because of how off-base it is

[Arcwell]

4 hours ago, ArcAngela said:

For starters: People don't play Wendy for fighting bosses. While that is a strong assumption, I believe we are on the same page here; if you're playing Don't Starve to slaughter bosses and fight 24/7, you're not picking Wendy. This doesn't mean players should be prevented from having a chance at fighting bosses, but from the very beginnings of this game it has been always clear that Wendy is more of a passive character that doesn't excel in combat like others, and that this became most clear when it came to fighting bosses. Why am I bringing this up? Well, it's become clear Klei wants Blessed Sisturn III to offer a solution to this or an option that enables Abigail to fight bosses.

I disagree with this sentiment.

Wendy has (since her refresh) been a character that excels against some bosses while struggling on others. For a while I mained Wendy solely because I saw her as the best option against Bee Queen, who I considered to be the hardest boss in the game at the time. Even today on main branch there are players that use Wendy in both boss rushes and speedruns to great effect. While I don't disagree that Wendy's perks are probably more appealing for a playstyle that's not focused on bosses, I think it's unfair to subject the entire Wendy experience to this idea. It was certainly not my experience playing Wendy at least.

4 hours ago, ArcAngela said:

2. It enriched the interaction between the two sisters, Wendy players as previously mentioned don't fully focus on combat 24/7, so between the options of: Punching Abigail so she stops being a nuisance VS. Leaving her by her sisturn so she could benefit from a buff and dance around while you do base-tending activities was a night and day difference. It felt like you were caring for her, not taking 15 sanity to the face and being mad at her for getting in the way of farming.

I'm not following.

This might be a difference of playstyle, but I can say that especially when you don't visit your base very much, leaving Abigail by the sisturn is much, much more of a nuisance than taking a hit of 15 sanity that you will regain when re-summoning her. It feels like dropping your child off at day-care rather than bringing them along with you.

I understand you think the previous mechanic needed tweaks, and I don't disagree with that, but the waiting mechanic especially was always the worst part of the skill for me. It would not matter how much survivability that skill gave, if it required parking Abigail and waiting more than half a day to get it each time I wanted to use it, I would not use it.

 

As for the idea of bringing back overheal:

Honestly I don't know. I feel like any change (or lack of change) to Blessed Sisturn at this point has its issues due to all the overlapping mechanics, and it's hard to pick which is the least problematic. I agree that the current skill lacks depth, but I also think the only depth to the previous skill was tedium. Between the two I would take the current, although ideally neither of them go live. At that point it becomes an issue of what Klei settles on before the update deadline hits, which is why I think some of us (myself at least) defend ideas we don't fully agree with.

What I will say is that if overheal were brought back, I would not like to see the waiting mechanic return along with it. I would also like to at least consider the idea of making it true health instead of temporary health, although this has its own consequences that admittedly I am not fully sure would be good. Numbers could be tweaked as well, of course.