Controversial : The biggest issue with Wendy's tree is Cure-All, not Blessed Sisturn.

[WenericMember]

This may be a controversial stance to have, but I think the root problem of balancing Wendy's tree is not Blessed Sisturn, alignments, or ghastly experience, it's the nature of spectral cure-all.

To elaborate: before Wendy's tree, spectral cure-all was effectively Wendy's only tool to give Abigail survivability. As such, Cure-All is readily available (only costing a telltale heart), and can fully heal Abigail in ~30 seconds.

The issue with this is with her skill tree, there are a number of better designed tools to aid Abigail's survivability, but most of them become broken when combined with cure all. - Cure all + Blessed Sisturn (immortal Abigail), Cure all + Ghastly Experience (Instantly fully reviving abigail). Debatably, Cure-All + Shadow sisterhood III is also too potent of a combo. It is possibly why team spirit has been neglected.

As such, I believe the best way to fix Wendy's skill tree is to rework Cure-All's function in Wendy's kit. Specifically by reworking Cure-All as an  expensive super potion.

Currently, Wendy is locked to one super potion at a time without resetting her tree. This means that the super potions are essentially free buffs once crafted. Additionally, the mechanic is (almost) completely locked behind rifts, which is kind of a shame when playing a world from scratch.

Firstly, to compensate for being a super potion, the material cost should increase - 1 life giving amulet rather than 1 telltale heart. Notably, Wendy still specializes in producing this resource, as she can haunt hounds for gems, gather nightmare fuel with haunt & graves, and robbing graves, while still being significantly more expensive and time consuming to build a stock of potions to spam through a boss fight than a telltale heart.

So how would making a Cure-All a super potion improve things?

1. Super Potions are mechanically introduced to the player pre-rifts
2. It becomes mutually exclusive with Wendy's damage buffs - you are now unable to stack Cure All + Alignment potions, meaning that by using cure-all, you are reducing Wendy's overall damage output.
3. Cure-All ceases to outclass all other basic potions - Vigour Mortis and Nostrum would likely see more usage in combat, along with unyielding draught against hordes.
4. During combat, it doesn't require reapplying other potions once the 30 seconds has expired.
5. Wendy's skill tree doesn't have to be kneecapped to compensate for dated design
6. The increased cost means that Spamming them is a less viable strat for taking out most bosses, while remaining an option for those who wish to progress at a significantly slower pace.

I understand making changes to Wendy's base kit may be controversial, but I believe it is necessary for the health of her tree, and will ultimately also bee needed to balance future skill trees, such as Maxwell and Wickerbottom.

[Arepantera]

Specte cure all has alwasy been an oppresive potion, why would I use all the other cool potions when I can use spectre cure all?
The only other one that came close was revenant restorative and only because it was dirt cheap for a good effect.

However nerfing wendy's base kit is NOT the way to go and it will only make everyone mad. Like I said in another thread, Winona mains are still mad about this when it happened to them. Out of all of the possible solutions to the sisturn 3 problem, this is in my opinion the worst one.

[Debruh]

Personally, If I were to make a super elixir, it would be unyielding draught. (Well, distilled vengeance too, but it would still suck.)

Unyielding draught's main competition isn't cure-all, it's restorative. Restorative costs the same amount, lasts the same time, and easier to get due to spiders being everywhere. As opposed to logs. And not needing an axe to get, just Abby herself can kill spiders. As well as healing Abby after the fight ends.

Other than restorative, Nightshade is also a heavy competitor. As it makes Abby able to kill hordes quickly, sometimes more optimal than cure-all, restorative, or the shield elixirs, for example beequeen.

Ghastly experience really only needs the % removed.

All other elixirs, except the damage ones, are basically a way to do something less skillfully and easen stuff up. Vigor mortis is a replacement of attack at and gives you a bigger window to dodge. Cure-all and restorative heal for mistake, and shield elixirs... do something ig.

If Ghastly experience was made so that it simply changed Abby to lvl 3, then it would be a way of making unsummoning Abby when she's at low health easier, as you wouldn't have to unsummon her. If Abby is at low health, you unsummon her and heal her with cure-all or restorative. This would practically be the same, but if you can't unsummon her, you have to give up mourning gloey+forget me lots.

You would still have to wait for he to fully heal up. The instant fully revived Abby wouldn't be a problem.

Vigor mortis wouldn't really benefit from a cure-all change. They're not directly competitors. Vigor mortis is either, downright harmful, not helpful,  or the only usable elixir. And this wouldn't really change.

Downright harmful like in werepig, where a vigor mortis would make Abby catch up to you and get hit by him.

Not helpful in a lot of cases, which wouldn't change.

And situations such as ancient guardian, CC |&||, and crystal deerclops with no ranged weapon, also would still have vigor mortis as the main elixir, and pretty much the only usable one

Nightshade nostrum is actually pretty good. It's the true main source of Abby's damage. And the elixir that you're gonna use on Gestalt most of the time as she doesn't get damaged often

Pre rift: Lunar elixir not available, unless via Wilson very late. And vex is in short supply. Only way to further biff Gestalt. And works very well with shadow Abby. With shadow Abby, it adds 25+40planar in daytime. And 15+40planar in dusk.

Post rifts: Since it increases Shadow Abby'a damage, allowing her to do more planar damage, I'm pretty sure it's superior to vex. Have no idea of the lunar one's stats.

And recently, it provides night vision. Its relationship with cure-all is basically just damage vs survivability, which is fair. Its main opponent is the fact that the caves do its job for free. And the fact that team spirit (including cure-all) does do the job of a lot of these elixirs would make Nightshade even better

Also, cure-all+restorative would be possible via this..

--While cure-all does outshine the other elixirs, I do think its price and limited time make up for it. It recently outshone restorative in Wraith's Wreath, which should be addressed, but other than that. I think cure-all is pretty cool when not with player tag.

All of Wendy's elixirs are situatonal. And cure-all's situation happens a lot. Nerfing it wouldn't turn the situations it's made to handle, into situations that they can handle. 

And tons of people choose survivability over damage, which is probably why Nightshade is underrated 

[WenericMember]

49 minutes ago, arepana said:

Specte cure all has alwasy been an oppresive potion, why would I use all the other cool potions when I can use spectre cure all?
The only other one that came close was revenant restorative and only because it was dirt cheap for a good effect.

However nerfing wendy's base kit is NOT the way to go and it will only make everyone mad. Like I said in another thread, Winona mains are still mad about this when it happened to them. Out of all of the possible solutions to the sisturn 3 problem, this is in my opinion the worst one.

I don't think my proposal is particularly a nerf - it's a rework. Cure-All becomes more potent overall, as both a super potion and skill synergy, but it becomes more expensive.

[Soul7k]

hear me out. its the potion that fully levels her and doubles her hp which not only doubles the hp from cure all but doubles it again from sisturn 3. I do not think there is a problem with sisturn three, but the cheese caused by this interaction

[Steorra]

To make CureAll become super potions is neat for solving both problems of "other potions is too weak to use" and "Cursed Vex is a bit OP for pre-rift". But it is not enough. Other weak potions still need to buff or to adjust, and Cursed Vex still need to improve for its post-rift performance imo.

However, I believe that to change CureAll basic recipes is not so impactful to current problems - the telltale heart need 40 HP healing for Wendy, which makes to craft massive Cure-All become time-consuming and we know that time is another cost of DST. Dumplings could be cheap for fighting but it were expensive for cure-all crafting for me personally. Though I'd prefer to use life giving amulet as a change which could helps me to consume my endless useless amulets and red gems.

 

And regarding the Ghastly Experience Elixir, there might have a hidden truth, which is that this elixir was not popular for both side of people -

1. Who think Abi is too strong now would not like it, it delete the punishment of Abi's death and it makes the original decorated Sisturn effect become useless.

2. Who think Abi's survival is not enough were attended to find a more convenient way to fight with Abi, the Ghastly Experience Elixir is not convenient so it would be unpopular for these players.

For these reasons I think to rework or delete the Ghastly Experience Elixir as a cost of balance would have a possibility to satisfy more players than keep it at the current stage.