What are Wolfgang's disadvantages?

[Yifei_]

I'm curious about what Wolfgang's disadvantages really are.

Faster sanity decrease: The biggest impact of low sanity is that shadow creatures will attack you. However, under Lunar Affinity, a strong Wolfgang's damage multiplier against shadow creatures is 2*1.3=2.6 times. This means that a newly - made Hambat (154.7 damage) can kill Crawling Horror in two hits and Terrorbeak in three hits. At the same time, an axe made of a twig and a flint can deal 70.7 damage to shadow creatures, not to mention the Glass Cutter's 176.8 damage. So, is this feature really a "disadvantage" rather than free nightmare fuels?

Strength setting: I admit that this issue may be faced by some DST newcomers, but it can be easily overcome with a little practice. In terms of strength recovery, you just need to pick up a dumbbell and click the mouse, and the strength will automatically increase. The cost of a dumbbell is not high, and the recovery speed is not slow. For maintaining strength, fighting and daily labor will automatically increase it. Keeping a reasonable combat rhythm and a high level of hunger basically eliminates the need to worry about strength issues.

[Evelo]

For newer players who don't know how to kite shadow creatures, the increased rate of sanity loss is a big downside.

I think he also has increased hunger drain when at full might? idk for sure.

So if you are an experienced player, he has no significant downsides. Increased sanity loss is typically an upside as it allows faster and more consistent gathering of Nightmare fuel (see Wormwood).

Oh I forgot one thing: He talks in 3rd person which is the biggest downside and why I will never play Wolfgang.

[Cheggf]

He wastes a ton of time lifting weights (and also at least one inventory slot) all for the advantage of dealing slightly more damage than several other characters achieve for free (also those other characters have a bunch of extra upsides instead of just being about damage). His animations for tiering up & down are also annoying and can get you stunned, or even briefly stunlocked, which can lead to you getting zero to deathed. He's got some of the biggest downsides in the game, look at every other character's downsides like Willow, Wendy, Maxwell, Wanda, etc. Most characters have basically no downside at all, wasting time lifting weights and having the transformation animations is unfathomably huge when compared to things like "If the current season is winter and you're using clothes instead of a thermal stone you will technically freeze slightly faster but it's completely unnoticeable and nobody would even know this was a mechanic unless they looked it up".

The question to be asking isn't what his downsides are, it's what his upsides are. If you're speedrunning killing one boss then deleting the world maybe he's alright but for normal play he's not particularly powerful. Why are we still pretending like Wolfgang is so strong in a skill tree world with characters like Maxwell? Wolfgang basically doesn't even have a skill tree, there's like one okayish perk in that entire thing. 

[Jakepeng99]

3 hours ago, Evelo said:

think he also has increased hunger drain when at full might? idk for sure

No

[Mike23Ua]

21 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

He wastes a ton of time lifting weights (and also at least one inventory slot) all for the advantage of dealing slightly more damage than several other characters achieve for free (also those other characters have a bunch of extra upsides instead of just being about damage). His animations for tiering up & down are also annoying and can get you stunned, or even briefly stunlocked, which can lead to you getting zero to deathed. He's got some of the biggest downsides in the game, look at every other character's downsides like Willow, Wendy, Maxwell, Wanda, etc. Most characters have basically no downside at all, wasting time lifting weights and having the transformation animations is unfathomably huge when compared to things like "If the current season is winter and you're using clothes instead of a thermal stone you will technically freeze slightly faster but it's completely unnoticeable and nobody would even know this was a mechanic unless they looked it up".

The question to be asking isn't what his downsides are, it's what his upsides are. If you're speedrunning killing one boss then deleting the world maybe he's alright but for normal play he's not particularly powerful. Why are we still pretending like Wolfgang is so strong in a skill tree world with characters like Maxwell? Wolfgang basically doesn't even have a skill tree, there's like one okayish perk in that entire thing. 

The hilarious thing though, is that Klei probably would have made things like rowing boat oars faster, pulling up boat masts faster, pulling up anchors faster etc locked behind skill tree point investments.

But luckily, Wolfgang got those nice bonuses outside of the “everything must be part of skill tree” phase of updates.

Ahem, however… because of this, his skill tree feels like just a bunch of stat boosts for stuff he already did.

[lio516]

45 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

He wastes a ton of time lifting weights (and also at least one inventory slot) all for the advantage of dealing slightly more damage than several other characters achieve for free (also those other characters have a bunch of extra upsides instead of just being about damage). His animations for tiering up & down are also annoying and can get you stunned, or even briefly stunlocked, which can lead to you getting zero to deathed. He's got some of the biggest downsides in the game, look at every other character's downsides like Willow, Wendy, Maxwell, Wanda, etc. Most characters have basically no downside at all, wasting time lifting weights and having the transformation animations is unfathomably huge when compared to things like "If the current season is winter and you're using clothes instead of a thermal stone you will technically freeze slightly faster but it's completely unnoticeable and nobody would even know this was a mechanic unless they looked it up".

The question to be asking isn't what his downsides are, it's what his upsides are. If you're speedrunning killing one boss then deleting the world maybe he's alright but for normal play he's not particularly powerful. Why are we still pretending like Wolfgang is so strong in a skill tree world with characters like Maxwell? Wolfgang basically doesn't even have a skill tree, there's like one okayish perk in that entire thing. 

Are you kidding me? Exercise doesn't take a long time, nor does it require you to have very complex operations, just right click dumbbells, other characters have exclusive items to occupy the inventory grid, it is almost impossible to change back to the weak state in the battle, the damage is still doubled, only two attacks can kill ordinary shadow monsters

[DegenerateFurry]

30 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

He wastes a ton of time lifting weights (and also at least one inventory slot) all for the advantage of dealing slightly more damage than several other characters achieve for free (also those other characters have a bunch of extra upsides instead of just being about damage). His animations for tiering up & down are also annoying and can get you stunned, or even briefly stunlocked, which can lead to you getting zero to deathed. He's got some of the biggest downsides in the game, look at every other character's downsides like Willow, Wendy, Maxwell, Wanda, etc. Most characters have basically no downside at all, wasting time lifting weights and having the transformation animations is unfathomably huge when compared to things like "If the current season is winter and you're using clothes instead of a thermal stone you will technically freeze slightly faster but it's completely unnoticeable and nobody would even know this was a mechanic unless they looked it up".

The question to be asking isn't what his downsides are, it's what his upsides are. If you're speedrunning killing one boss then deleting the world maybe he's alright but for normal play he's not particularly powerful. Why are we still pretending like Wolfgang is so strong in a skill tree world with characters like Maxwell? Wolfgang basically doesn't even have a skill tree, there's like one okayish perk in that entire thing. 

Wolfgang's downsides:
You have to right-click while holding an item and then wait a few seconds if you want to give yourself double damage. 
...except you kinda don't have to do that, because you're not gonna be wimpy very often unless you're either AFK, fishing, or literally just running around and not doing any work or rowing. You can just fight as normal Wolfgang and become mighty if the fight lasts long enough - normal Wolfgang has no real negatives in combat (and, with perks, might even have an inherent 10% speed boost!)
Literally the only thing that's actually a downside about Wolfgang's mightiness mechanics is that the transformations can be inconvenient, but actually being put in danger by them is highly niche - I've only had that happen while fleeing shadow splumonkeys when trying to leave the ruins. I honestly notice it more when trying to fish. When you're not stupidly outnumbered, it's typically better to just fight as Mighty Wolfgang with a marble suit. You're probably gonna win if you do.
You have slightly harder sanity management.
...which doesn't matter because you two-or-three-shot sanity monsters with any weapon you're likely to actually use, you have above-average max HP, and you don't get a speed penalty from wearing a marble suit.
Oh, also, that last one means that you get extra inventory space for free because you don't have a downside to using the Piggyback when you're mighty (and it's super easy to get and stay mighty).

TL;DR, Wolfgang's downsides barely exist and are super easy to work around. They don't meaningfully impact a playthrough.

Wanda's downsides: 
You are constantly, although slowly, dying.
Yeah, it's easy to control moment-to-moment, but it can definitely kill you if you've been using your watches to heal and get hit one too many times. 
You can't heal normally. 
This matters a lot in the early game (when you don't have spare watches) and affects the playthrough throughout. 
Your strongest form has less effective HP than Maxwell, and it constantly goes down even if you don't get hit.
If you do the math, Wanda effectively has 150 HP (same as Wilson). However, Old Wanda effectively has as much health as a player with 30 HP left. Yes, armor negates this to an extent, but it's a meaningful downside all the same because it means you just outright cannot tank if you want to maximize your damage.
Crafting things as Old Wanda is painfully slow. 
A minor downside, but it's on-par with Wolfgang's sanity management, I feel.
You have to give up lots of inventory space for your character's gimmicks. 
This is an unspoken downside, but it matters: you're typically gonna have two or three Ageless Watches on you at all times (I go with three), either for fighting or for emergencies. If you use the Backstep Watch, that's another one. You'll also have the Alarming Clock and a stack of Nightmare Fuel to refuel it with. That's six slots gone, so you're gonna have a backpack. Also, since you're probably fighting at old age, add in a Night Armor (seventh slot) to make the most out of your health. So, seven slots, assuming you don't have any Second Chance or Backtrek Watches. 
Wolfgang, meanwhile, just has some health food, a weapon, a dumbell, and maybe a marble suit (he could do fine with just a football helm, which leaves your inventory free by taking up a head slot and not needing to be swapped for your backpack in fights) taking up his slots. Only one of those is non-standard. 

[Edible Coal]

i guess this question really ends up being how u play dst, i know most chinese pub are focus on fighting both boss as soon as possible so wolfgang is literally design to do that, he can get material fast enough and can clear ruins with minimal resources. Move statues with ease and can just do things faster

Wilson is never the base line character and you no longer can compare anyone to him anymore, so if you ask what are wolfgang weakness then it would be the stuff that he is unable to do when you compare him to other characters, like : cant mass produce resouces, cant teleport, cant make useful equipment , doesnt have spammable AOE attacks ( i dont consider dumbbell to be spammable)

 

[Yifei_]

17 minutes ago, Edible Coal said:

i guess this question really ends up being how u play dst, i know most chinese pub are focus on fighting both boss as soon as possible so wolfgang is literally design to do that, he can get material fast enough and can clear ruins with minimal resources. Move statues with ease and can just do things faster

Wilson is never the base line character and you no longer can compare anyone to him anymore, so if you ask what are wolfgang weakness then it would be the stuff that he is unable to do when you compare him to other characters, like : cant mass produce resouces, cant teleport, cant make useful equipment , doesnt have spammable AOE attacks ( i dont consider dumbbell to be spammable)

I actually think this may have little to do with the gameplay style. I like to build my base with Wickerbottom. Wickerbottom does indeed have her strengths in this area, but at the same time, she also has her flaws: she has higher requirements for the recovery of sanity/health/hunger, and combat against low sanity shadow creatures. So I think “whether one likes combat” and “whether a character has flaws” may not be closely related.

Moreover, when Wilson is no longer the “baseline character,” I feel that the design and balance of the characters have already started to have problems. If a character is not excellent enough in a certain aspect and cannot be overpowered, this may even be considered a...flaw. I have some concerns about this phenomenon.

Wolfgang is indeed a combat character. The positioning of this character even gives me a feeling somewhat similar to Wes, but at the other extreme: Wes is about maximizing the restriction on challenging your personal limits, while Wolfgang is about making the character as strong as possible to challenge the limits of the game.

[kroban]

His only drawback is that hes intentionally boring to play. Like thats why even his skill tree is the way it is, hes supposed to be the "easy tutorial mode" of DST. If you are a newbie I guess playing him can be pretty cool for the first full run, you can 1-shot most mobs with basic mighty/hunger management, and bossfights need way less resources. And for tryhards welp hes "fun" for emptying ruins + rushing all bosses by day 50 to flex on some randoms in a pub, but even they get boring pretty quickly and quit after the first year lol.

 Had Klei wanted to give him serious disadvantages, they could have given him Walter’s "sanity loss per hit" trait, for example. That would have actually suited Wolfgang better, since he is supposed to be "mighty but cowardly" and like you said, he can kill terrorbeaks on 2 hits, so yeah it would have been a big downside still, but Wolfgang has a way to kill nightmares easily

[GrapeVruit]

1 hour ago, kroban said:

His only drawback is that hes intentionally boring to play. Like thats why even his skill tree is the way it is, hes supposed to be the "easy tutorial mode" of DST. If you are a newbie I guess playing him can be pretty cool for the first full run, you can 1-shot most mobs with basic mighty/hunger management, and bossfights need way less resources. And for tryhards welp hes "fun" for emptying ruins + rushing all bosses by day 50 to flex on some randoms in a pub, but even they get boring pretty quickly and quit after the first seasons cycle lol.

 Had Klei wanted to give him serious disadvantages, they could have given him Walter’s "sanity loss per hit" trait, for example. That would have actually suited Wolfgang better, since he is supposed to be "mighty but cowardly" and like you said, he can kill terrorbeaks on 2 hits...

Yeah, they really should've played more into his "afraid of the dark and monsters" downside, cause how it stands, it's pretty redundant with how fast he can take out nightmares. I think in order to reinforce this downside, they could reduce his max sanity down to 120 or so, if his sanity is under half he'll lose a little mightiness when hit and more when close to insanity, shadow creatures will cause immense mightiness loss on hit, and screw it, he does half as much damage to them as well. I feel that would be a better downside than just being so strong you make the game boring. 

[Frosty_Mentos]

tldr:

temp change depending on form affecting him more

swarm enemies or repeated attacks might make him stunned from form change

sanity management isn't easy for newbies to deal with or being unlucky for to become too swarmy on anyone else

takes time for him to reach his full damage potential, but it's a meager downside

whimpy form sucks unless summer survival

[AriaMain]

This forum seems to really value character downsides (i do too) but i don't think Klei wants downsides on their characters. at all. They are straight up removing then ever since the first wave of refreshes and now with skill trees (Beefalo taming too!) there are so few perks that are actually downsides that changes the gameplay loop and not a small inconvenience that's easily solved. The only characters that has ACTUAL downsides that i can think off are Wigfrid, Wurt and Warly's limited food options, Walter's sanity managment, Wortox's half nourishment and Wormwood's healing (And i think Maxwell's 75 hp is a stretch of a downside). 

Everything else feels like minor tidbits that is there for the sake of characterization because of how easy they are to solve and they NEVER impact how i play or pick them for my world

 

[Yifei_]

3 hours ago, kroban said:

 Had Klei wanted to give him serious disadvantages, they could have given him Walter’s "sanity loss per hit" trait, for example. That would have actually suited Wolfgang better, since he is supposed to be "mighty but cowardly" and like you said, he can kill terrorbeaks on 2 hits...

2 hours ago, GrapeVruit said:

Yeah, they really should've played more into his "afraid of the dark and monsters" downside, cause how it stands, it's pretty redundant with how fast he can take out nightmares. I think in order to reinforce this downside, they could reduce his max sanity down to 120 or so, if his sanity is under half he'll lose a little mightiness when hit and more when close to insanity, shadow creatures will cause immense mightiness loss on hit, and screw it, he does half as much damage to them as well. I feel that would be a better downside than just being so strong you make the game boring. 

I once saw a Wolfgang rework mod in Steam's Workshop. In this mod, Wolfgang's sanity cap is adjusted to 120, and the lower the sanity is, the faster it decreases. Moreover, when Wolfgang is attacked by "terrifying" creatures such as shadow creatures and ghosts, his sanity will be additionally reduced. When Wolfgang's sanity reaches 0, he will be forced into a weakened state.

At the same time, this mod further optimizes the combat experience in the strong state and provides Wolfgang's unique sanity recovery methods, as well as a series of quality-of-life improvements. I think such a design is more in line with Wolfgang's character image and also makes the gameplay more interesting.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3166415014&searchtext=沃尔夫冈

[Mysterious box]

His biggest downside is having the worst skill tree. Wilson is a close second though.

[Cheggf]

11 hours ago, Yifei_ said:

“Slightly more,” are you deliberately play the devil's advocate or joking? Anyone with even a bit of actual gaming combat experience wouldn't say that double attack multiplier is “slightly more,” let alone when considering faction affinity.

2 is only slightly more than other numbers like 1.75, 1.68, and whatever Maxwell's is (somewhere around 1.9 I think). Reread what I said. 

11 hours ago, lio516 said:

Are you kidding me? Exercise doesn't take a long time

I don't think you play Wolfgang.

[Well-met]

upkeep is his downside

[DegenerateFurry]

8 hours ago, Cheggf said:

2 is only slightly more than other numbers like 1.75, 1.68, and whatever Maxwell's is (somewhere around 1.9 I think). Reread what I said. 

The difference between 1.68x or 1.75x and 2x is very substantial in combat. Warly's chili powder spice only gives an extra 20% (1.2x). You're leaving out 1.32x of damage when you act like it's a negligible difference. It can literally make the difference between hitting important damage thresholds (as in, the ones where it takes substantially less hits to kill things) or not - Wolfgang can one-shot mobs with 100 HP if he has a fresh ham bat because of that difference.

8 hours ago, Cheggf said:

I don't think you play Wolfgang.

Exercise only takes a considerable amount of time if you're using the stock dumbbell. You should be using a marbell at the very least from like day 1 or 2 onward. I've played enough Wolfgang while speedrunning Crab King/Fuelweaver to know that it's an insignificant amount of time once you have that or the gembell. Also, you can easily retain mightiness by just holding any dumbbell. 

[Yifei_]

8 hours ago, Cheggf said:

2 is only slightly more than other numbers like 1.75, 1.68, and whatever Maxwell's is (somewhere around 1.9 I think). Reread what I said. 

Go dream on. If you can't even overcome Wolfgang's shortcomings, how can you still entertain the delusion of playing other characters well?

[Edible Coal]

warly would also like to stand still for 5 sec to get 2x dmg for free

[Ratituee]

you also kill monsters twice as fast meaning you actually lose LESS sanity from them in total. i was playing original don't starve earlier, and was surprised how fast his hunger drains... i don't think that's a feature anymore, so he generally just has no downsides. if i could rework wolfgang, i would give him 30% faster hunger drain when normal and 60% faster when mighty.

8 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

His biggest downside is having the worst skill tree. Wilson is a close second though.

why does everyone hate his skill tree anyway? do they want him to have a bunch of special combat moves, dozens of weird dumbbells, and gyms for beefalos? its simple but that's why i like it. most skill trees add too many small, useless abilities onto characters that already have a lot on their plate. his adds a few major abilities (instant mine/chop, lift up to 150 mightyness, run faster in normal mode)

20 hours ago, Cheggf said:

He wastes a ton of time lifting weights (and also at least one inventory slot) all for the advantage of dealing slightly more damage than several other characters achieve for free (also those other characters have a bunch of extra upsides instead of just being about damage). His animations for tiering up & down are also annoying and can get you stunned, or even briefly stunlocked, which can lead to you getting zero to deathed. He's got some of the biggest downsides in the game, look at every other character's downsides like Willow, Wendy, Maxwell, Wanda, etc. Most characters have basically no downside at all, wasting time lifting weights and having the transformation animations is unfathomably huge when compared to things like "If the current season is winter and you're using clothes instead of a thermal stone you will technically freeze slightly faster but it's completely unnoticeable and nobody would even know this was a mechanic unless they looked it up".

The question to be asking isn't what his downsides are, it's what his upsides are. If you're speedrunning killing one boss then deleting the world maybe he's alright but for normal play he's not particularly powerful. Why are we still pretending like Wolfgang is so strong in a skill tree world with characters like Maxwell? Wolfgang basically doesn't even have a skill tree, there's like one okayish perk in that entire thing.

"lifts a ton of time lifting weights" is a massive stretch considering it takes all of about 12 seconds with the worst dumbbell, and his 2x damage mult is pretty much free while other high-damage characters have to jump through significantly more hoops to deal 2/3 of wolfgang's output. he gets less good late-game, but is easily one of the best characters (with his skill tree) in early game.

^ wolfgang haters, explain this

[DegenerateFurry]

Just now, Edible Coal said:

warly would also like to stand still for 5 sec to get 2x dmg for free

Oh, tell me about it! Hell, I'd take just being guaranteed a volt goat horn drop every other goat killed. Y'know, instead of killing four goats (leaving one alive) and that annoying 25% chance tormenting me by not even giving me a single horn. 
Or the ability to make things wet by throwing water balloons at them, that'd be sweet too. 

[Guille6785]

Wolfgang's downside is the sheer snoozefest that is actually playing him

[DegenerateFurry]

5 minutes ago, Ratituee said:

gyms for beefalos?

Now I want Wolfgang to be able to lift his tamed beefalo as a weight when mighty.

[Echsrick]

by this extension, what are wilsons, willow, wendy, wx, wickerbotom.....and all the others downsides?