Nerf Maxwell and Wanda

[Vinja]

12 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Here’s the thing: You only need to kill CC and AFW ONCE, and as Any character you want to do it as (including Wolfgang) and once you do that- Affinities are unlocked permanently and forever across any and all future play sessions.

Meanwhile: I’m over here watching in horror as Klei makes the repeated mistake of adding extremely powerful Affinity perks to characters like Wurts Mutated Merms, Wendy’s Boss killer Abigail Buffs, and Willows Kamehameha blast from hell..

It would be DIFFERENT if players had to kill the CC & AFW per game world, per character they want to unlock these powerful skills as.

In an intended gameplay loop: your meant to struggle your way through killing several other bosses before finally reaching CC & AFW.

Not Steam Roll through the game at 175 MPH because you beat those bosses ONCE before five years ago then stopped playing, came back five years later after a ton of new updates and content was added that was balanced around not yet having access to those Ahem … “END GAME” Perks…

and you blew through five years of new content because Klei didn’t take into account that you’d have CC or AFW affinities in all future game sessions.

Or worse: Maybe they DID take that into account, but did not care.

Some people have things they'd rather do than spend 40 hours on every single new world they play to slog through all the fetch quests and random crap you have to do to be able to even fight CC.

Also with this horrible implementation of the affinities you propose you can practically kiss lunar affinities goodbye because unless you intend to play solo or only play worlds you host vast majority of people would likely never play in a world long enough to kill CC. Take official servers for example. Most of them don't even last past the first winter. 

That's why it's implemented the way it is, and the game is better off for it. Do it once and you're good, no need to invest 40 hours in each new world you play to able to enjoy the benefits of your character. Killing cc/afw once is a worthy enough task for that.

[Mike23Ua]

2 hours ago, Vinja said:

Some people have things they'd rather do than spend 40 hours on every single new world they play to slog through all the fetch quests and random crap you have to do to be able to even fight CC.

Also with this horrible implementation of the affinities you propose you can practically kiss lunar affinities goodbye because unless you intend to play solo or only play worlds you host vast majority of people would likely never play in a world long enough to kill CC. Take official servers for example. Most of them don't even last past the first winter. 

That's why it's implemented the way it is, and the game is better off for it. Do it once and you're good, no need to invest 40 hours in each new world you play to able to enjoy the benefits of your character. Killing cc/afw once is a worthy enough task for that.

Not really no it’s not? Klei intends you to use these abilities AFTER Killing CC & AFW, otherwise they shouldn’t even require killing them..

it would be like if the “Morph Mods” for Minecraft let you unlock all available morphs once (probably in creator mode) and then have them all unlocked in all future worlds you create. (Which defeats the point of needing to kill or scan mobs to morph into them)

Affinities are intended for Post game and should be locked to Post game.

[00petar00]

3 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Not really no it’s not? Klei intends you to use these abilities AFTER Killing CC & AFW, otherwise they shouldn’t even require killing them..

it would be like if the “Morph Mods” for Minecraft let you unlock all available morphs once (probably in creator mode) and then have them all unlocked in all future worlds you create. (Which defeats the point of needing to kill or scan mobs to morph into them)

Affinities are intended for Post game and should be locked to Post game.

If klei intended for affinity to be after cc/fw we would have to kill them on every world so they clearly didn't intend for it to be like that. 

[Swiyss]

I believe that most of these "balancing" issues comes with the fact that when you have a 2k days+ world, you just wanna chill and not have to deal with the insane annoyance that it is to constantly do the same task with the same bad items over and over again. The brightshade gear helped that a lot.

But in my opinion, I believe as well that the player SHOULD have to go through all of these tiring tasks BEFORE achieving nirvana as the base game. You can already allow rifts to spawn on day 1, but that's not 100% intended as it is just an optional setting.

Now when it comes to skills trees, it all falls down. Some characters are meant to disrupt these survival mechanics at day 1, like Maxwell, which already starts with a very high native sanity gain, and Wanda whom can negate sanity auras as long as you know how to properly manage her weird HP bar.

The problem for me comes when a skill tree like Willow's, will simply break balance and define what the character is BY the skill tree, not the intended character design itself. That's why I believe that Wilson's skill tree is fine, Woodie's skill tree is great and Wormwoods skill tree too, cause they actually make sense with the idea of the character.

If they're going to make a maxwell skill tree, I just expect for small +10 planar damage on attack maximum IF you add pure horror to the Codex Umbra, Some shadow gathering QoL and a bunch of filler lvls skills for more time locked in shadow prison, less nightmare fuel needed to fuel, more sanity gain etc.. I really expect it to be extremelly underwhelming since his Character Rework basically already added everything they wanted. The character is already overpowered.

Now I got no freaking idea on what they'll do with Wanda, but I believe that literally making her Alarming Clock upgrade with pure horror and give it +30 planar damage per hit will already fix all the issues she has. She's already extremelly overpowered as well. She DOES NOT need more raw power aside from the math fixed on her current damage against planar mobs with her clock.

Reality is that, both characters don't need a nerf and are basically done, they just need planar hotfixes, another random skill for max and another clock for Wanda.

[Vinja]

7 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Not really no it’s not? Klei intends you to use these abilities AFTER Killing CC & AFW, otherwise they shouldn’t even require killing them..

it would be like if the “Morph Mods” for Minecraft let you unlock all available morphs once (probably in creator mode) and then have them all unlocked in all future worlds you create. (Which defeats the point of needing to kill or scan mobs to morph into them)

Affinities are intended for Post game and should be locked to Post game.

In my experience klei tends to be very intentional in the way they update the game. They typically don't let things go into the full game until it's exactly the way they want it to be. If they intended for the affinities to be locked to post game as you suggest, they would already be locked to post game.

Klei knows that if they made it a requirement to kill each Affinity related boss in every single world you play in order to use the skills, vast majority of people would never use the skills. I enjoy playing official servers. We rarely make it to first spring and before we can join the world again it's been reset. Have fun never using these skills. I also enjoy joining other people's worlds and playing with them. Vast majority of the time you never see that world open again. Have fun never using these skills.

Its not practical. They want to make it a challenge to unlock the skill, but not make the skill so challenging you rarely ever get to see it in use. They have a great middle ground here.

Also, imo you can tell by the character design that this is the way they intend for it to be. Take willow for example. She's got a lot of gimmicky skills. The mini dwarf star is cool and all but not enough to justify playing her in itself. Light sources aren't incredibly hard to come by. She can catch a mob on fire from range, buff the fire damage of her attacks, aoe catch mobs around her on fire but without lunar/shadow flames all of this is a bunch of small stuff that is individually cool but not really cohesive. If this was how you spent 99% of your playtime as willow people would quickly stop playing her because it's obviously missing something. Lunar/shadow flames ties it all together and completes the tree. It makes all her perks beforehand make sense.

Forcing you to play an incomplete character in every world you play until you've put 30 or 40 hours into it isn't fun. The way they've implemented it is the best way they can, if they decide to change it to what you suggest they would also have to go back and rebalance every skill tree around the lunar skills being locked that way. Not worth the effort especially when it's a bad idea in the first place. 

[Monkey Cups]

I'll be honest lads I don't give a carrat's behind what they do to Wanda I've resented her ever since they recoded everything but her damn clock to nerf her. It made fighting things as anyone else an absolute pain. If I see another tallbird slide forward while being hit I'm going to delete her from the game myself.

[Cheggf]

Why nerf Wanda? She isn't overpowered, she's boring and unfun. If she should receive any changes it should be ones focused on making her more engaging, not weaker. She isn't even particularly good. She has a damage bonus less than Wolfgang's and a teleport that takes much stuff to set up that it only ends up saving time in day ten trillion worlds. 

[Dingle]

4 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Why nerf Wanda? She isn't overpowered, she's boring and unfun. If she should receive any changes it should be ones focused on making her more engaging, not weaker. She isn't even particularly good. She has a damage bonus less than Wolfgang's and a teleport that takes much stuff to set up that it only ends up saving time in day ten trillion worlds. 

She was powerful at some point, and now she must PAY FOR HER SINS.

Doesn't matter that she's not particularly good anymore.

SHE MUST PAY.

[Frosty_Mentos]

Balance in numbers and math doesn't matter much if playing the game feels good as those characters.

Satisfaction is higher priority than some stupid useless balance. Wanda and Maxwell are one of most satisfying characters to play the game as.

Well, apart that Wanda's clocks need walrus tusks which isn't satisfying nor feels great. Too expensive compared to cheap travels that Wortox has, takes too much effort in walking into ruins, having decon staffs, killing walruses or doing treasures just to get specific teleport markers.

[Theukon-dos]

"Skill trees aren't power creep, they're just helping you balance charactwrs!"

 

*6 months later*

 

"Yeah Wanda is pretty weak and doesn't need any nerfs"

 

I swear to God, the writer has been on the wall for months now and y'all still manage to ignore all of it.

 

Do y'all realize how insane Wanda's kit is? Damage on-par with Wolfgang, Teleportation more effective than Wortox's, insanely effective health management that's supposed to be a "downside", an affinity for anything and everything dark magic, and a signature weapon that was so broken on launch that it forced Klei to rework the entire hit registration system and the Ancient Guardian fight along side it.

 

Call me old fashioned, but back in the day there was nobody who could do as much as Wanda could. But now a kit like that is something you dredge out of the Walmart bargain bin. Maxwell and Wanda should have never been used as a standard for what characters should do.

 

And the best part? Because Klei doesn't have a coherent vision for what the game should be and what skill trees should accomplish, there's like, a 50/50 chance of those two either getting a sane and reasonable skill tree or getting utterly broken skill trees that just sets us back to square 1.

 

 

[Arthiez]

On 1/11/2025 at 9:49 AM, Steorra said:

If you want to nerf Maxwell I have no argument with that, but abiut Wanda, have you ever played as Wanda in post-rift endgame? If you insist to nerf her, I would ask to nerf Jakepeng99 first.

What's with rift that is bad for her?

Is there any character that would be better post-rift, and why? (This is a serious doubt haha)

[Mysterious box]

3 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

"Skill trees aren't power creep, they're just helping you balance charactwrs!"

 

*6 months later*

 

"Yeah Wanda is pretty weak and doesn't need any nerfs"

 

I swear to God, the writer has been on the wall for months now and y'all still manage to ignore all of it.

This made me spit my drink out laughing...you owe me a new drink. 

[Malfario]

On 1/11/2025 at 4:06 PM, Jakepeng99 said:

I think a way to nerf him would be limiting the shadow prison, and making spells impossible to use at 0 sainity, and a new downside.

 

This would make all his spells not worth to use, your reason for balance its just on the fact that you can pull insanly efficient stuff, you are not having into account the fuel costs, the cool down, the time of animations required to pull it of, the inventory mangament, the positioning etc. Maxwell is balanced, you need skill to pull of his stategies and his true power is locked after the most dificult boss in the game. Going back to caping how much he can use his spells and how efficient they are, the only thing that you will be doing is making it an annoying grind.  Sure there is room for more aditions in the downside department, but i dont think we should think of donwsides as restricitons to the potential of the player. The same way every character should have a downside, every downside should be able to be overcomed.

And the other thing i think a lot of people forget about talking about "balance" is "how good will it actually do", a game is not better for being balanced, and this goes in both ends. Sometimes in game desing there is a need to make concesions to the player, and some other times there is a need to make a challenge a bit unfair. If we simply make it so "maxwell its simply worse than before" the game will not feel better, it wont be better just cause of its harder or grindier, especially if you dont offer a way to overcome it.

Maxwell is not the most efficient rusher, he is not the mpst efficient character for megabasing, and has the most challenging lock to his abilities in the game, i think making him worse for the sake of "its to good", which upon itself its an extremly subjective opinion that doesnt include all the playstyles of the playerbase, will simply make it so the people who do enjoy him would stop doing so, and the game would be a little bit worse fot them, and nothing will change for everyone else.

Once again, i am not opossed for maxwell to have more challenges, but those should arrive as a conclusion of a bigger desing, not just for the sake of "dificulty", which has a diferent definition for everyone.

[Jakepeng99]

1 hour ago, Malfario said:

This would make all his spells not worth to use, your reason for balance its just on the fact that you can pull insanly efficient stuff, you are not having into account the fuel costs, the cool down, the time of animations

Nightmarefuel is really cheap for Maxwell, there is no cooldown in the first place, and the time of animations doesnt mean much.

 

Also, i mean only the shadow prison and sneak will be affected by the sainity change.

[Bumber64]

Just need to reduce the duration of shadow prison on bosses, IMO. You shouldn't be able immobilize a giant for any period of time beyond a stun.

[Jakepeng99]

15 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

"Skill trees aren't power creep, they're just helping you balance charactwrs!"

 

*6 months later*

 

"Yeah Wanda is pretty weak and doesn't need any nerfs"

 

I swear to God, the writer has been on the wall for months now and y'all still manage to ignore all of it.

 

Do y'all realize how insane Wanda's kit is? Damage on-par with Wolfgang, Teleportation more effective than Wortox's, insanely effective health management that's supposed to be a "downside", an affinity for anything and everything dark magic, and a signature weapon that was so broken on launch that it forced Klei to rework the entire hit registration system and the Ancient Guardian fight along side it.

 

Call me old fashioned, but back in the day there was nobody who could do as much as Wanda could. But now a kit like that is something you dredge out of the Walmart bargain bin. Maxwell and Wanda should have never been used as a standard for what characters should do.

 

And the best part? Because Klei doesn't have a coherent vision for what the game should be and what skill trees should accomplish, there's like, a 50/50 chance of those two either getting a sane and reasonable skill tree or getting utterly broken skill trees that just sets us back to square 1.

 

 

Wolfgang in 2020: Best chararacter in the game. Makes game way too easy. Needs nerfed so bad.

 

Wolfgang: Gets insane buffs

Wolfgang 2024: Seen as a below average character by the community in terms of strength.

 

This is the textbook definition of powercreep and it affects the games enjoyment quite alot. Im finding myself enojoying Wilson the most now since he has no insane powercreep that makes the game too easy, no billions of powerful perks that outclass the tools the world gives you, and a decent downside (not being broken. The fact downsides changed from what a character struggles at to what a character cant do that another can.)..

[GrapeVruit]

1 hour ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Wolfgang in 2020: Best chararacter in the game. Makes game way too easy. Needs nerfed so bad.

 

Wolfgang: Gets insane buffs

Wolfgang 2024: Seen as a below average character by the community in terms of strength.

 

This is the textbook definition of powercreep and it affects the games enjoyment quite alot. Im finding myself enojoying Wilson the most now since he has no insane powercreep that makes the game too easy, no billions of powerful perks that outclass the tools the world gives you, and a decent downside (not being broken. The fact downsides changed from what a character struggles at to what a character cant do that another can.)..

Yeah...this isn't normal. And they say nerfing characters isn't healthy for the game.

[Jakepeng99]

8 minutes ago, GrapeVruit said:

Yeah...this isn't normal. And they say nerfing characters isn't healthy for the game.

Nerfing characters is very healthy. Buffing has a huge longterm effect, nerfing is like a few days of someone crying about something being nerfed without actually trying it.

[GrapeVruit]

9 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Nerfing characters is very healthy. Buffing has a huge longterm effect, nerfing is like a few days of someone crying about something being nerfed without actually trying it.

Makes me yearn for Klei to incorporate updates that scale back the power of some of the characters or just lock them behind game progression like Maxwell's Duelist's, the number of shadow puppets, and Prison. 

[00petar00]

20 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

"Skill trees aren't power creep, they're just helping you balance charactwrs!"

*6 months later*

"Yeah Wanda is pretty weak and doesn't need any nerfs"

I swear to God, the writer has been on the wall for months now and y'all still manage to ignore all of it.

Do y'all realize how insane Wanda's kit is? Damage on-par with Wolfgang, Teleportation more effective than Wortox's, insanely effective health management that's supposed to be a "downside", an affinity for anything and everything dark magic, and a signature weapon that was so broken on launch that it forced Klei to rework the entire hit registration system and the Ancient Guardian fight along side it.

Call me old fashioned, but back in the day there was nobody who could do as much as Wanda could. But now a kit like that is something you dredge out of the Walmart bargain bin. Maxwell and Wanda should have never been used as a standard for what characters should do.

And the best part? Because Klei doesn't have a coherent vision for what the game should be and what skill trees should accomplish, there's like, a 50/50 chance of those two either getting a sane and reasonable skill tree or getting utterly broken skill trees that just sets us back to square 1.

Wanda was nerfed already with rifts. I don't know how much you play her but I have so many hours and I still die the most when playing her since I always stay in old age.

My point of view has always been that everyone is free to do what they like and some characters are strong for players that enjoy playing with strong characters but others are weaker for players that enjoy that. This kind of revealed to us that most players want their character to be powerful and they don't want to play weak characters so why shouldn't klei buff them?

The standard was raised based on what players want, I think Wanda release and Maxwell refresh were done for players that want to play strong characters but klei didn't know that most of the players want that.

5 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Wolfgang in 2020: Best chararacter in the game. Makes game way too easy. Needs nerfed so bad.

 

Wolfgang: Gets insane buffs

Wolfgang 2024: Seen as a below average character by the community in terms of strength.

Wolfgang is literally the only character that for some reason didn't get a decent buff from skill tree, firstly he was nerfed with it so players complained for a good reason.

 

[Theukon-dos]

21 minutes ago, 00petar00 said:

Wanda was nerfed already with rifts. I don't know how much you play her but I have so many hours and I still die the most when playing her since I always stay in old age.

See, here's the thing. I've been playing the game on and off sense rifts where introduced. And while I couldn't tell you exactly how long that's been for, it's still been a solid few hundred hours atleast. 

 

And in that few hundred hours, I have never opened rifts a single time. I fully acknowledge that Wanda gets hit harder by post-rift content harder than most. But I'm not going to consider it a nerf for her when over 95% of the game's content is still acessable without opening them. 

21 minutes ago, 00petar00 said:

My point of view has always been that everyone is free to do what they like and some characters are strong for players that enjoy playing with strong characters but others are weaker for players that enjoy that. This kind of revealed to us that most players want their character to be powerful and they don't want to play weak characters so why shouldn't klei buff them?

See, you miss-understand me. I'm not opposed to buffing weak characters. In fact, I fully support that descision. What I am actually opposed to is buffing everyone indescriminantly and using the strongest characters in the game as a baseline. 

 

I've done nothing but drag skill trees through the mud sense Klei started doing them. Yet I still absolutly adore Walter's skill tree over on the beta because Walter was a horrifically weak character that needed the buffs, and his skill tree actually feels like it was designed by someone sane because it only brings him on-par with the average DST character instead of trying to make him utterly insane by several different metrics. 

 

Most characters just don't need the buffs or are already in good spots. Characters like Walter and Willow? Yeah, they like having skill trees. But then you've got Wurt, who was already a fintastic character pick because of how strong her merms are. But because everyone is getting a skill tree, they still needed to buff her. So now she's got all those random mosquitomancy perks, her merms became even stronger despite already being the strongest minion in the game, and her alignment perks in particular let her strengthen said merms to even more absurd levels for no good reason. 

And then of course you have the characters who are already up there setting the baseline also getting skill trees. Wolfgang was definitly one of the strongest characters in the game even after power creep from Max and Wanda started catching up, and is one of the last characters that ever should have been buffed. But again, everyone is getting a skill tree, and Wolfgang is part of everyone. That skill tree may be a complete snorefest with how boring it is, and not as impactful as the trees weaker characters get. But they're still pretty substantial buffs in their own right. Especially his alignment perks that bring his damage up even higher against some of the most powerful and/or important enemies in the game. 

21 minutes ago, 00petar00 said:

The standard was raised based on what players want, I think Wanda release and Maxwell refresh were done for players that want to play strong characters but klei didn't know that most of the players want that.

 

What players want =/= what's best for the game. To quote the developer of a different indie game: 

Game design is extremely complex. Maybe giving all my opinions like this makes me the pot calling the kettle black, but there are a LOT of extremely blatant flaws with the direction that Klei's taking the game. And "Players like strong characters" isn't a good reason to keep on trucking despite them. 

[Jakepeng99]

2 hours ago, 00petar00 said:

Wolfgang is literally the only character that for some reason didn't get a decent buff from skill tree, firstly he was nerfed with it so players complained for a good reason.

He lost his speed buff, but was buffed in every other aspect.

1 hour ago, Theukon-dos said:

And in that few hundred hours, I have never opened rifts a single time. I fully acknowledge that Wanda gets hit harder by post-rift content harder than most. But I'm not going to consider it a nerf for her when over 95% of the game's content is still acessable without opening them. 

The dumb thing is, she is actually fine in riffs. Stay middle aged if you cant be the glass cannon, and maybe use something like the shadow scythe or gloomerang (you can use gloomerang as elder wanda) and your still a powerful character who still has teleports.

People just say she is bad because you cant play her using the optimal strat of alarming clock and elder age. She has powerful dps, and all this utility. Seems the standard klei has made with characters today makes combat the main need for every character.

[Malfario]

19 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Nightmarefuel is really cheap for Maxwell, there is no cooldown in the first place, and the time of animations doesnt mean much.

 

Also, i mean only the shadow prison and sneak will be affected by the sainity change.

Bad chpice of words for my part, i meant how the effect of the cage last significantly lower when you attack a mob inside of it, which makes the window for using it very narrow

[00petar00]

3 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

See, here's the thing. I've been playing the game on and off sense rifts where introduced. And while I couldn't tell you exactly how long that's been for, it's still been a solid few hundred hours atleast. 

And in that few hundred hours, I have never opened rifts a single time. I fully acknowledge that Wanda gets hit harder by post-rift content harder than most. But I'm not going to consider it a nerf for her when over 95% of the game's content is still acessable without opening them. 

I have played much more since rifts were released and I activate them on every world because I'd be missing out on a lot of content otherwise and the items we get are solid.

Wanda only really gets strong once she has like 15-20 backtrek watches to teleport on most visited locations on surface and caves and by that time you'll have rifts active.

3 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

See, you miss-understand me. I'm not opposed to buffing weak characters. In fact, I fully support that descision. What I am actually opposed to is buffing everyone indescriminantly and using the strongest characters in the game as a baseline. 

I thought klei was going to have weak/average/strong characters but it turns out that most players don't want that but instead everyone wants their main to be the strongest.

I am not saying that all characters should be strong or buffed to match Maxwell or Wanda but I want to have strong characters to play because that is the type of gameplay that I enjoy.

3 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

I've done nothing but drag skill trees through the mud sense Klei started doing them. Yet I still absolutly adore Walter's skill tree over on the beta because Walter was a horrifically weak character that needed the buffs, and his skill tree actually feels like it was designed by someone sane because it only brings him on-par with the average DST character instead of trying to make him utterly insane by several different metrics. 

Most characters just don't need the buffs or are already in good spots. Characters like Walter and Willow? Yeah, they like having skill trees. But then you've got Wurt, who was already a fintastic character pick because of how strong her merms are. But because everyone is getting a skill tree, they still needed to buff her. So now she's got all those random mosquitomancy perks, her merms became even stronger despite already being the strongest minion in the game, and her alignment perks in particular let her strengthen said merms to even more absurd levels for no good reason. 

And then of course you have the characters who are already up there setting the baseline also getting skill trees. Wolfgang was definitly one of the strongest characters in the game even after power creep from Max and Wanda started catching up, and is one of the last characters that ever should have been buffed. But again, everyone is getting a skill tree, and Wolfgang is part of everyone. That skill tree may be a complete snorefest with how boring it is, and not as impactful as the trees weaker characters get. But they're still pretty substantial buffs in their own right. Especially his alignment perks that bring his damage up even higher against some of the most powerful and/or important enemies in the game. 

I don't like skill tree updates because they take time away from developers that can add content everyone can access, I think skill trees are a net positive for the game on their own but If we consider that only character mains will use them and we are losing out on content updates it turns into a net negative.

Wurt fits a different playstyle but I never really liked her and still don't even with the skill tree and she isn't really overpowered until very late into the game like Wanda. It is weird to me how people bring up Wanda and Maxwell but not wurt, once you get ice bream and scorching sunfish you can basically ignore seasonal temperatures that WX has to waste slots for and she is strong even without them.

Wolfgang was nerfed at first but players complained too much so he is average now with the buffs he got but he's still very boring and this is something that his skill tree should've changed.

2 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

He lost his speed buff, but was buffed in every other aspect.

After players complained.

2 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

The dumb thing is, she is actually fine in riffs. Stay middle aged if you cant be the glass cannon, and maybe use something like the shadow scythe or gloomerang (you can use gloomerang as elder wanda) and your still a powerful character who still has teleports.

People just say she is bad because you cant play her using the optimal strat of alarming clock and elder age. She has powerful dps, and all this utility. Seems the standard klei has made with characters today makes combat the main need for every character.

I don't want to stay middle aged and also her damage can't trigger the stun on armored bearger and maybe other post rift bosses too. Shadow scythe still requires you to be in old age for the damage bonus and I do use gloomerang now but you can't really say that she is overpowered when everyone can use that weapon and her weapon is kind of useless post rift. She is powerful because of her teleports and that is all she has post rift, other characters can have easier healing and don't need to waste as much inventory space for character perks/maintenance. 

[Theukon-dos]

1 hour ago, 00petar00 said:

I have played much more since rifts were released and I activate them on every world because I'd be missing out on a lot of content otherwise and the items we get are solid.

I didn't say that one should never open rifts. Just that I've never done it because of how much you can get without opening them. The rifts so far have, what? 3 bosses? Compared to the 20-30 bosses you can fight before even considering opening them. 

1 hour ago, 00petar00 said:

Wanda only really gets strong once she has like 15-20 backtrek watches to teleport on most visited locations on surface and caves and by that time you'll have rifts active.

You absolutely don't need that many watches, bar for a mega-base tier world maybe. But for the average joe shmoe? A single watch is enough to set a waypoint at your base, which can easily cut the time you spend going places by half. Then maybe three or for other watches for some notable POIs like the ruins, lunar island, pig king, pearl island. Possibly the Moon Quey. Honestly, I don't even know what you could use 15 backtreck watches for, much less 20 of the things. 

And then of course you still have everything else Wanda does on top of that. So I have no idea how you pulled "She's only good if you have 15-20 watches" right out of your ass like a rabbit out of a top hat. 

 

Also wow I just realized that I completely forgot about the her second chance watch. Just goes to show how loaded her kit is when something as insane as "Can make a really cheap life giving amulet" is barely a footnote in everything she can do. 

1 hour ago, 00petar00 said:

I thought klei was going to have weak/average/strong characters but it turns out that most players don't want that but instead everyone wants their main to be the strongest.

And that's stupid on both sides. 

1 hour ago, 00petar00 said:

I am not saying that all characters should be strong or buffed to match Maxwell or Wanda but I want to have strong characters to play because that is the type of gameplay that I enjoy.

And I enjoy characters who force me to play in unique ways with well-defined strengths and weaknesses. But screw me and everyone else who bought into DST for the challenge, right? Because little Strawman Timmy over there is upset that not every character can barf out high enough damage numbers to be found guilty of a DUI. Am I exaggerating? Yes, obviously. But that's really what it feels like whenever blokes like you talk about how and why they love skill trees. 

1 hour ago, 00petar00 said:

Wurt fits a different playstyle but I never really liked her and still don't even with the skill tree and she isn't really overpowered until very late into the game like Wanda. It is weird to me how people bring up Wanda and Maxwell but not wurt, once you get ice bream and scorching sunfish you can basically ignore seasonal temperatures that WX has to waste slots for and she is strong even without them.

People acknowledge that Wurt is plenty strong all the time. Pre-skill tree she was absolutly a fantastic character who's only real tradeoff is how long it takes to set up merms compared to other big hitters. My point is that Wurt was a fantastic character that Klei made better. Far, far better even. Becuase; again; they decided to give skill trees to everyone instead of buffing on a per-character basis. 

1 hour ago, 00petar00 said:

Wolfgang was nerfed at first but players complained too much so he is average now with the buffs he got but he's still very boring and this is something that his skill tree should've changed.

After players complained.

People didn't complain about Wolfgang because he was nerfed. Well OK some people did. But most people did it becuase those "nerfs" to his mightiness mechanic where really, really annoying to manage. Especially in the fights where he was supposed to excel. WX also got nerfed overall in their rework, being made more versitile, but having their overcharge and upgrade mechanics split into various upgrade modules that prevent you from having everything at once. Wickerbottom also saw some nerfs in her refresh, those being her spoiled food penelty and loosing a chunk of her max HP for some reason. 

 

Wait a second... Wolfgang, WX-78, and Wicker all got nerfed... Those characters where all considered the big three in the game's pre-refresh era. Damn, Klei actually is capable of nerfing the game's strongest characters. Or atleast they where before completely loosing the plot. 

1 hour ago, 00petar00 said:

I don't want to stay middle aged and also her damage can't trigger the stun on armored bearger and maybe other post rift bosses too. Shadow scythe still requires you to be in old age for the damage bonus and I do use gloomerang now but you can't really say that she is overpowered when everyone can use that weapon and her weapon is kind of useless post rift. She is powerful because of her teleports and that is all she has post rift, other characters can have easier healing and don't need to waste as much inventory space for character perks/maintenance. 

Wanda still gets a damage boost to shadow weapons with age, even if it's not as substantial as the watch's damage. And; again. You can do 95% of the game's content without opening rifts at all. So this is only relevant in a very small fraction of the game's play time.