Caught up with Playtesting the Beta, my balancing suggestions

[WenericMember]

So after finally getting to playtest the beta after being unable to for a significant portion of the beta, I would say I'm overall entirely happy with the design of the tree. It adds a lot of new variety to Wendy, largely without making her overbearing or entirely eliminating her weakness. I've also found that I'm having to make significant decisions in regards to which skills to take, which is something I haven't felt about any of the other trees.

That said, a good number of skills still need further refinements to perfect the balance & QOL of the tree. Red is nerfs, green is buffs.

• Flower Crown (Mentioned in Patch Notes): Consider reworking it to be a purely utility item. Combat armour is a heavily competitive category, and the crown will likely never see use as a combat item, unless it becomes an infinite durability item with 40-60% armour. Effect suggestions are:
  • Spectral Cure-All: Prevents Food Spoilage
  • Unyielding Draught: Blocks Wetness
  • Distilled Vengeance: Prevents Freezing
• Perrenial Altar: Currently is just a cheaper meat effigy. Considering all the other survivor's resurrection items have unique attributes, this one could use some too, especially as a tier 3 skill. Personally, being able to retrieve items would be a nice buff, and the cost could be increased to compensate.
• Vengeful Ghost: I like the skill, but I would say that It doesn't make sense that Wendy is the worst user of her own skill, as her 0.75 damage multiplier still applies as a ghost. Either remove that, or give Wendy some other buff to compensate, such as planar damage or better speed while vengeful.
• Decorated Graves: Graves evil flower production is completely outclassed by Haunt in both quantity and efficiency. I'd at least make the graves produce 4 evil flowers, maybe even up to 6. Also, I'd add a third tier to the skill that makes decorated graves drop grave-robbing loot.
• Team Spirit I: Needs usability buffs. Remove the animation for the command, and add a shortcut to triggering the command, this should probably be a global shortcut for all survivors, but is especially relevant here..
• Team Spirit III: Needs a QOL buff and a nerf. Buff haunt by greatly improving (doubling?) the rng of all effects. For most players, as they're dead the rng has limited effect on gameplay, as they likely wouldn't be doing anything urgently anyway. However, Wendy, as a living player, will always have something better to be doing. Scare needs it's own dedicated, longer cooldown. It's far too easy to lock large mobs into a permanent panic at present.
• Blessed Sisturn III: This one has been discussed to death. At least remove the spectral cure-all combo, as Strong Brew specifically avoided buffing that potion, so the fact that it currently doubles the effectiveness of Cure-All isn't healthy.

A large amount of tweaks still to go, but it's night and day from the start of the beta, and the tree is only a few balancing changes short of being the best in the game IMO.

[Lee lol]

I think the main function of decorating the grave is to get friendly ghosts. Are dark petals just incidental benefits? Considering that a large number of dark petals can be obtained through haunting, I don't think the yield of dark flowers in the grave is so important.

I agree with the suggestion about the third tier of the grave. I think we can let Wendy repair the grave. The drops doesn't matter, at least let those dirt not be exposed.

Regarding team spirit 1, I don't understand what the animation you mean. Do you mean Wendy's action?

[WenericMember]

2 minutes ago, Lee lol said:

I think the main function of decorating the grave is to get friendly ghosts. Are dark petals just incidental benefits? Considering that a large number of dark petals can be obtained through haunting, I don't think the yield of dark flowers in the grave is so important.

I agree with the suggestion about the third tier of the grave. I think we can let Wendy repair the grave. The drops doesn't matter, at least let those dirt not be exposed.

Regarding team spirit 1, I don't understand what the animation you mean. Do you mean Wendy's action?

It's kinda hard to say - I do know the grave skills were described as "an intended new source of dark petals" in one of the update posts, and that they were intending to have a look at production very early in the beta. I think it just got overlooked compared to other skills. Either way, I don't think it should be worse than haunt, which is also in combination with terrorise, and comes with a swiss army knife of other uses.

Fixing graves would be nice qol. I'm sure they could do a fun way of balancing, such as needing bone shards or other rare materials.

I do mean wendy's action in terms of team spirit 1. Funnily enough, when you want abigail to dodge, you typically want to be dodging as well, which makes the forced animation cumbersome.

The exact same forum post I mentioned in the other thread also mentions increasing dark petal production as a goal a future change.

[Lee lol]

7 minutes ago, WenericMember said:

I do mean wendy's action in terms of team spirit 1. Funnily enough, when you want abigail to dodge, you typically want to be dodging as well, which makes the forced animation cumbersome.

I think this can cancel the second half of the animation by moving quickly. When you choose the escape command, you don't need to stand and wait for the animation to finish playing. Click the command and move quickly, the rigidity can be removed, but I haven't tested it in actual combat.

[WenericMember]

5 minutes ago, Lee lol said:

I think this can cancel the second half of the animation by moving quickly. When you choose the escape command, you don't need to stand and wait for the animation to finish playing. Click the command and move quickly, the rigidity can be removed, but I haven't tested it in actual combat.

Oh you are correct. I hadn't tested escape in a long while and didn't see anything in patch notes. It must've been changed a bit ago.

The command itself feels good to use now, so there just needs to be a better way to select the command. Having a dedicated key to repeat "last selected command" for all survivors would be great.

[Picklesaurus]

On 12/28/2024 at 1:31 AM, WenericMember said:

•  
• Perrenial Altar: Currently is just a cheaper meat effigy. Considering all the other survivor's resurrection items have unique attributes, this one could use some too, especially as a tier 3 skill. Personally, being able to retrieve items would be a nice buff, and the cost could be increased to compensate.
   
• Blessed Sisturn III: This one has been discussed to death. At least remove the spectral cure-all combo, as Strong Brew specifically avoided buffing that potion, so the fact that it currently doubles the effectiveness of Cure-All isn't healthy.

I have a suggestion related to Perennial Altar but first I would like to make it clear that I hate the current implementation of the Blessed Sisturn III and I would also hate for it to double Abigail HP like people are suggesting, either make it give 300 extra hp - a 50% max hp increase Which would be boring but okay - or make the more interesting suggestion which came from you which is bringing back the sisturn hp shield but making it so her real HP is used before her extra HP from sisturn, making it like a resource Abi would tap in when you messed up and allowed her HP to become too low, instead of dying she would stay at 1hp and become protected by the sisturn extra hp shield and you could go above 1hp again by healing to stop using the rest of the extra temporary hp from the sisturn.

Perennial Altar suggestion:
I would like if the Perennial altar worked less like a meat effigy and more like a special touch stone Wendy has acess to.

Instead of one use and then the Perennial altar is consumed like it is right now, you would be able to recharge/refill it with mourning glory and a full recharge/refill would allow for 3 revives before you need to refill it again. The candle revive button would be kept for Wendy, allowing her to instantily revive at the nearest mourning glory filled Perennial Altar, while other non wendy players could either haunt a mourning glory filled altar like a touch stone to use one of its revive or Wendy could use one mourning glory on the player's ghost to reviver them at the nearest filled altar. 



Each one of those three flowers would indicate the amount of revives available, once a revive is used one of the flowers would wither, on the last revive use the third  - and biggest - flower would wither and the candle's fire would be extinguished, the flowers would only flourish again and the candle burn once the Perenial Altar is filled with Mourning Glory again. The recipe of the Perennial Altar would have to be changed to reflect it now being a permanente estructure.

[WenericMember]

7 minutes ago, Picklesaurus said:

I have a suggestion related to Perennial Altar but first I would like to make it clear that I hate the current implementation of the Blessed Sisturn III and I would also hate for it to double Abigail HP like people are suggesting, either make it give 300 extra hp - a 50% max hp increase Which would be boring but okay - or make the more interesting suggestion which came from you which is bringing back the sisturn hp shield but making it so her real HP is used before her extra HP from sisturn, making it like a resource Abi would tap in when you messed up and allowed her HP to become too low, instead of dying she would stay at 1hp and become protected by the sisturn extra hp shield and you could go above 1hp again by healing to stop using the rest of the extra temporary hp from the sisturn.

Perennial Altar suggestion:
I would like if the Perennial altar worked less like a meat effigy and more like a special touch stone Wendy has acess to.

Instead of one use and than the Perennial altar is consumed like it is right now, you would be able to recharge/refill it with morning glory and a full recharge/refill would allow for 3 revives before you need to refill it again. The candle revive button would be kept for Wendy, allowing her to instantily revive at the nearest morning glory filled Perennial Altar, while other non wendy players could either haunt a morning glory filled altar like a touch stone to use one of its revive or Wendy could use one morning glory on the player's ghost to reviver them at the nearest filled altar. 



Each one of those three flowers would indicate the amount of revives available, once a revive is used one of the flowers would wither, on the last revive use the third  - and bigger - flower would wither and the candle's fire would be extinguished, the flowers would only flourish again and the candle burn once the Perenial Altar is filled with Morning Glory again. The recipe of the Perennial Altar would have to be changed to reflect it now being a permanente estructure.

There are a range of solutions for Blessed Sisturn 3 that I like to varying amounts. The rework to the old blessed sisturn is one of the ones I like best (although it removes the lunar petals quest, which I also like), but I doubt it will gain widespread support. Changing the interaction with cure-all is a significantly less sizeable change to the current version. Personally, I'm not trying to get to caught up on one solution because I have no idea what will happen.

I like the perrenial altar rework for the charge mechanics, though I don't think that would result in unique gameplay. Maybe have that mechanic, but when attuned to an Altar, Wendy can choose to be revived at her current position/place of death or teleporting to the Altar. That would give it some more choice compared to the Effigy, and overall make the item more distinct.

[WenericMember]

2 hours ago, Picklesaurus said:

I have a suggestion related to Perennial Altar but first I would like to make it clear that I hate the current implementation of the Blessed Sisturn III and I would also hate for it to double Abigail HP like people are suggesting, either make it give 300 extra hp - a 50% max hp increase Which would be boring but okay - or make the more interesting suggestion which came from you which is bringing back the sisturn hp shield but making it so her real HP is used before her extra HP from sisturn, making it like a resource Abi would tap in when you messed up and allowed her HP to become too low, instead of dying she would stay at 1hp and become protected by the sisturn extra hp shield and you could go above 1hp again by healing to stop using the rest of the extra temporary hp from the sisturn.

Perennial Altar suggestion:
I would like if the Perennial altar worked less like a meat effigy and more like a special touch stone Wendy has acess to.

Instead of one use and than the Perennial altar is consumed like it is right now, you would be able to recharge/refill it with morning glory and a full recharge/refill would allow for 3 revives before you need to refill it again. The candle revive button would be kept for Wendy, allowing her to instantily revive at the nearest morning glory filled Perennial Altar, while other non wendy players could either haunt a morning glory filled altar like a touch stone to use one of its revive or Wendy could use one morning glory on the player's ghost to reviver them at the nearest filled altar. 



Each one of those three flowers would indicate the amount of revives available, once a revive is used one of the flowers would wither, on the last revive use the third  - and bigger - flower would wither and the candle's fire would be extinguished, the flowers would only flourish again and the candle burn once the Perenial Altar is filled with Morning Glory again. The recipe of the Perennial Altar would have to be changed to reflect it now being a permanente estructure.

Addendum, but I also really, really like how the lune blossom quote shows that Wendy's making progress to reviving Abigail. It's been one of my main hopes since the start of Beta to have something like that added, and it was. My main concern with reverting to the old blessed sisturn would be the removal of that lore implication.

Player Tag is also just a bit more thematically interesting than more hp.

[WenericMember]

I think Beta resumes tonight....

So bump!

[EctoPlaza]

7 minutes ago, WenericMember said:

I think Beta resumes tonight....

So bump!

What makes you think that?

[WenericMember]

4 minutes ago, EctoPlaza said:

What makes you think that?

I can't remember which thread it was, but a content creator (I think Jakeysaurus?) asked in one of the threads when the beta would resume for content creation pipeline, and the answer was 2nd week of January.

Not sure if this is considered the second or first, but we'll see I suppose.

Edit: Found it

Not sure if you missed it @EctoPlaza

[WenericMember]

That said, It does imply that they've been working on the beta in some capacity before today. I wonder what this week's patch will be like.