[Wortox] Skill Tree Tweaks Megathread

[Crimson Hollow]

Hi guys,

Now that the devs had stated that they are satisfied with what Wortox have so far, yet there are still many Wortox players unsatisfied with the tree, I have decided to create a thread where those who are unsatisfied can post their complaints, ideas and suggestions for tweaks before the final update.

Thank you for the hard work Klei, and I hope this thread will be of help with polishing the skill tree.

 

From what I've gathered so far:

 

1. Knabsack, being a capstone skill and Wortox's exclusive equipment, provides unstable damage and limited utility

Source: 

Knabsack should be a storage option 

Current issues with knabsack: Unstable attack power and clutters up inventory

Suggestions for knabsack design and visual effects

Knabsack needs attention

potential idea for knabsack

Swap Soul Jar with Knabsack in the skill tree layout

Too much durability loss when picking up items

What would make the knabsack better?

 

2. Soul Decoy II doesn't have a lot of practical value 

Source:

Soul Decoy II is harmful (delayed enemy movement, and insufficient aoe in fuelweaver fight)

Soul Decoy II is a filler skill because the decoy gets one shot anyway

Soul Decoy II is a nothing skill

 

3. Cloudy Carmen has only niche uses

Source:

Temporary mind control instead of putting mobs asleep

Ideas to replace Cloudy Carmen

 

4. His affinity perks, especially Lunar affinity, could use some work.

Source:

Poll on Wortox's affinities

Wortox's lunar affinity perk does not provide unique experience, very similar to shadow affinity

Slightly different affinity perks for Nice and Naughty side

 

 

5. Soul Pierce is inconvenient and annoying to set up and use in boss fights 

 

6. Other suggestions 

Twintailed heart temporary wormhole suggestion

Wortox Feedback Megathread (December 13)

Wortox Skilltree: Perk review and addressing certain issues (January 24)

Wortox skill tree is too "branchy", limiting player choices

Soul Pierce is underwhelming for most boss fights, Decoy is mid

 

 

Please let me know if there are any inaccuracies, or if I should add anything else, as I will be constantly updating the list. 

 

@JesseB_Klei  Thank you for your dedication and hard work in developing the skill trees. The Wortox skill tree, in particular, has an incredible concept and offers a highly engaging gameplay experience. However, there are still a few areas within the skill tree that players have identified as pain points and are eager to see addressed. I hope this feedback proves useful, and I wish you a wonderful weekend.

[Y0sH]

Honestly, it's nice what you're doing here it really is but at this point I don't even think it's worth the effort anymore. They've obviously been "done" with Wortox months ago.

[Koomin]

Since they have stated that they are happy things, I'm just limiting to the biggest issues:

-Nice Wortox builds are not possible in solo without putting points into legitimately useless skills.  Being completely unable to make use of the big choice the skill tree presents you with is bad, and solo players are quite a significant portion of the playerbase.  For nice inclination you need at least 7 points in nice, and it is not possible to put that many points in without picking a skill that does not function in solo play.  Just adding a solo player benefit to the bottom skill of the soul bastion line would help.

-Cloudy Carmen is really bad: the enemy will wander off so you can't hit it, it randomly smacks you without warning, and in multiplayer it just attacks others instead.

-Soul Decoy 2 has no real benefits: a decoy lasting longer that gets killed in one hit when it works does not improve it.  You are basically clicking a skill for no benefit at all.

There are a bunch of other issues that have been discussed, but these 3 (and especially the nice build one) should be addressed before releasing.

[Crimson Hollow]

8 minutes ago, Y0sH said:

Honestly, it's nice what you're doing here it really is but at this point I don't even think it's worth the effort anymore. They've obviously been "done" with Wortox months ago.

ik it's pretty sad, but looks like its obviously not what most wortox player wanted to see. I feel like its worth it to have a final round of ideas before the official release, aka aiming for the best lol

Plus on a personal level, he's the first character I played when I was introduced to this game, I learned all the basics with him. and thus I do have some sentimental attachments to this character. 

[asdsaax]

For me it's the most important to change Lunar Affinity and Covetous Collector

CC seems to be generally disliked for a good reason

and Lunar Affinity though...

 

I explain my problem with it here very well

+ Lesser QoL changes

 

[GimplyGoose]

4 minutes ago, Koomin said:

-Nice Wortox builds are not possible in solo without putting points into legitimately useless skills.  Being completely unable to make use of the big choice the skill tree presents you with is bad.  For nice inclination you need at least 7 points in nice, and it is not possible to put that many points in without picking a skill that does not function in solo play.  Just adding a solo player benefit to the bottom skill of the soul bastion line would help.

I do not see how this is a problem. If you want to achieve a nice inclination (imo I would rank the perks of the inclinations as so: Nice > Neutral > Naughty), you need to pick less of the more powerful naughty skills. To me, this makes the choices you make more interesting when selecting skills. I think it would be a shame if they buffed Nice skills, because then the choices you would need to make would be less interesting.

[Koomin]

1 minute ago, GimplyGoose said:

I do not see how this is a problem. If you want to achieve a nice inclination (imo I would rank the perks of the inclinations as so: Nice > Neutral > Naughty), you need to pick less of the more powerful naughty skills. To me, this makes the choices you make more interesting when selecting skills. I think it would be a shame if they buffed Nice skills, because then the choices you would need to make would be less interesting.

The problem is that the skills are legitimately useless to a solo player.  Like not weak, which is ok like you said.  Straight up having no function in solo is not ok

[Echsrick]

knapsack has been mentioned soo many times how bad it is

the affinitys being so restricted

filler skills....DECOY 2 enought said of how that is litteraly a nothing skill

the extreme need for soul jar and douple soul echo for affinity

knapsack i cant say it enought, its bad, terrible even

bottle rng for the jar

and many more that i cant think of right now


WASTED, IGNORED, LOST EFFORT
thats how i kind of feel like

[GimplyGoose]

19 minutes ago, Koomin said:

The problem is that the skills are legitimately useless to a solo player.  Like not weak, which is ok like you said.  Straight up having no function in solo is not ok

I say weaker because technically just about every nice perk except for the first 2 levels of twintailed heart grant some minor benefit to Wortox even in single player. You also have some strong skills mixed in with weak prerequsites (reverberation). Even if you have to take some 'useless' skills, you can build a Wortox with a Nice inclination that still has strong skills. You can take up to 6 naughty skills and still end up with a nice inclination (you probably only want to take 5 though).

Here are a couple screenshots of two different Nice-inclined builds that have access to either soul pierce I or soul decoy III (I think soul decoy III is more powerful than soul pierce I in this setup) + soul jar. If you are playing post rifts, you could swap Pleasant Pastorale for either affinity skill.

I like this because it feels like you have to make a decision when putting your skill tree together.

[Koomin]

5 minutes ago, GimplyGoose said:

I say weaker because technically just about every nice perk except for the first 2 levels of twintailed heart grant some minor benefit to Wortox even in single player. You also have some strong skills mixed in with weak prerequsites (reverberation). Even if you have to take some 'useless' skills, you can build a Wortox with a Nice inclination that still has strong skills. You can take up to 6 naughty skills and still end up with a nice inclination (you probably only want to take 5 though).

Here are a couple screenshots of two different Nice-inclined builds that have access to either soul pierce I or soul decoy III (I think soul decoy III is more powerful than soul pierce I in this setup) + soul jar. If you are playing post rifts, you could swap Pleasant Pastorale for either affinity skill.

I like this because it feels like you have to make a decision when putting your skill tree together.

Those are nice build examples - in those, what exactly did you gain from selecting Reaching Souls 1 for example as a solo player?  If the answer was at least something small I'd be OK with it, but the answer is "literally nothing at all beyond access to the next skill" unless I'm missing something?

[Dingle]

13 minutes ago, GimplyGoose said:

I say weaker because technically just about every nice perk except for the first 2 levels of twintailed heart grant some minor benefit to Wortox even in single player. You also have some strong skills mixed in with weak prerequsites (reverberation). Even if you have to take some 'useless' skills, you can build a Wortox with a Nice inclination that still has strong skills. You can take up to 6 naughty skills and still end up with a nice inclination (you probably only want to take 5 though).

Here are a couple screenshots of two different Nice-inclined builds that have access to either soul pierce I or soul decoy III (I think soul decoy III is more powerful than soul pierce I in this setup) + soul jar. If you are playing post rifts, you could swap Pleasant Pastorale for either affinity skill.

I like this because it feels like you have to make a decision when putting your skill tree together.

I need to check what soul bastion 2 does solo, now. I thought it's main point was for big multiplayer servers.

[Soul7k]

my main issue is covetous collector dips too much. It affects a total of 12 skill points in his tree (not all directly, but the ones that are require full commitment to even get to)

• soul decoy 3: 51(63) damage. 3 point investment
• soul pierce 1 and 2: 25(31) damage. 4 point investment
• pleasant pastoral. 2 point investment (this is also tied to soul pierce to make it do damage in the first place)
• nabsack 34(68) damage and requires a full inventory on top of the 3 jars.

soul decoy 2 lasting longer doesn't really make a whole lot of sense sense it gets one-shot. that should either just be baked in or replaced altogether with something that does anything.

meanwhile none of the nice side skills have this issue except for echo which doubles the effectiveness of both of the affinities. I am fine with this...its whatever... honestly it should probably be a prerequisite to affinities rather than a 3 point investment after soul hopping, but I don't really care since it doesn't encompass as much as the covetous dip.

[OMEGASCRUFF]

56 minutes ago, Koomin said:

Those are nice build examples - in those, what exactly did you gain from selecting Reaching Souls 1 for example as a solo player?  If the answer was at least something small I'd be OK with it, but the answer is "literally nothing at all beyond access to the next skill" unless I'm missing something?

Okay hold up, everyone. I have some opinions about Nice inclination + the Soul Bastion skill branch because I've been using it extensively in solo play now.

The pre-reqs are really useful, actually. It allows you to heal yourself a lot easier while running, which is a lot more useful than you'd expect it to be. You have to be careful not to run out of your own heal range without it, especially when you have the delayed heal from Soul Bastion on top of it (it's a pre-req tho so you'd never see this.) Reaching Souls just means you're more mobile while healing, and I don't think this is a bad effect for pre-req skills, even when it's clearly more catered toward multiplayer. It's been helpful to have, even alone.

In addition, Soul Bastion is not bad in solo play to begin with. It makes sanity control through healing better, saves a bit on Souls, and lets you take the Nice inclination perks, which are significantly better than those of the Naughty inclination perks. The only real issue is that you have to forfeit Soul Pierce, and I have absolutely no qualms about that, because the Soul Pierce cheese has usability issues despite being powerful on video footage, and overloading is super easy to avoid if you also take Overflowing Greed with 4 jars. I'm literally healing for double now (stupid self-heal nerf... To tell you the truth, I might not be running solo-Nice without that dumb nerf, but I DEFINITELY would if we didn't have the Soul Jar even without it), which saves me a little bit of time both for farming and in combat.

The only real thing that feels bad about it is the fact that you need Soul Bastion II, not just Soul Bastion I, to offset the inclination points, and Soul Bastion II doesn't really do very much. This wouldn't be the case if the Nabsacker branch were rearranged or split, because I could actually afford Pleasant Pastorale that way with Overflowing Greed + Soul Decoy III. But it's not like Lifebringer I does anything at all alone, so, Soul Bastion II it is, I guess.

Soul Bastion is deeply misunderstood. The skill itself, in a vacuum, isn't even remotely bad. It's quite good, actually. It just loses a lot of its purpose because we can easily hold 200 Souls at a time. It doesn't change your potential at all, it just makes life slightly easier. The same is true of the burst healing and inventory condensing ability of the Twin-Tailed Heart. Both of these skills are entirely clobbered in usefulness due to our Soul cap being effectively removed. God, it's true for Pleasant Pastorale too. Ughhhhhhh this skill tree, man. It's way messier than it appears on the surface.

In my observations, here's the current problem: Nice, when also including its skills, isn't very useful in solo play until late-game, when you can afford it better with skill swaps. It's REALLY comfy to have for day-to-day gameplay, and most boss fights if you're not relying on Soul Pierce cheesing. It's just harder to justify it early on, more than anything, when Soul Pierce + Covetous Collector provide you with more value. Even Neutral skills have increased value early on. But, I mean... Honestly, with this solo Nice experience under my belt, I think you can get away with Soul Bastion from the very start. It mostly just means your Soul farming will take slightly longer, and the Nabsack is out of the question as an early game weapon without Covetous Collector. You'll just have to wait to do Bee Queen for a skill swap for full AoE, or cheese her with the Twins instead (and we were just blessed with the Gift-Wrap-is-amazing event during the beta, so...)

It does really feel like we have the illusion of choice in our inclination though... Multiplayer? Nice inclination. Solo play? Naughty inclination. Probably. Late-game solo play? Either, but I really like Nice inclination personally. I think that's the truth of the situation, but it seems like a strictly binary choice in the surface.

But, just saying, I think people are overrating the value of both the Naughty skills AND the inclination itself quite a lot. After a couple hundred hours and over 2 months to digest this information with basically no updates (lmao) I've determined that the most valuable skills in the entire tree are, in order, Soul Jar (then a huge gap in value), Capricious Movement, Reverberation + alignment, Soul Decoy III, then Overflowing Greed. Lifebringer III for multiplayer somewhere below Capricious Movement. You can get either inclination while taking all of those, minus Lifebringer, but it feels really inorganic to consider the inclination perks/downsides themselves on top of the skills that we're trading, and the QoL Nice provides isn't really understood until experienced first-hand.

I think that covers everything I've learned about this topic, though. Just thought it would be a good time to share my experience on this.

[GimplyGoose]

49 minutes ago, Koomin said:

Those are nice build examples - in those, what exactly did you gain from selecting Reaching Souls 1 for example as a solo player?  If the answer was at least something small I'd be OK with it, but the answer is "literally nothing at all beyond access to the next skill" unless I'm missing something?

The main thing you gain access to is the Nice inclination. Outside of that there are niche situations where you can outrun the healing of a soul you drop that can be mitigated by taking the skill (minor positive effect).

[Crimson Hollow]

link to the last megathread 

[Mr. Furman]

I may be going sideways a little bit, but I think his idle animations could use some improvements.

for example, when he is in the nice side, he will sometimes... Play with his tail?

 

I admit that it's a cute animation and maybe it displays his playful side, but it failed to show his inner conflict against his soul-sucking nature. 

And his Naughty animation is him holding a soul in his hand, with a face of... Disgust? Viciousness? I can't really tell.

Either way, I think it does not represent his tendency towards selfishness that well. Sometimes I feel like this belongs to Nice side a bit more, but it could be due to the skin I am using.

This is just my personal opinion on his idle animations, and sorry for my English. 

[Echsrick]

i just HOPE...SOMETHING will be done a bit more about wortox instead OF GETTIN IGNORED AND WASTED COMPLETLY THE TIME, givven how many people actualy started to talk about wortox and being mostly consistend about the touch ups that are needed, just to just.....not get anything in the end is like kind of disrespectfull i would say

[Crimson Hollow]

Moved to Topic 

 

[Mr. Furman]

I think being a bugnet should not be the knabsack's primary function... 

He can directly kill bees and butterflies when he is short on souls, I don't see the bugnet function having any direct relation to his playstyle. Sure he will be able to catch fireflies very early game before you make a science machine, but thats all i can see in it...

[Crimson Hollow]

bump

[Echsrick]

still wishing that the feedback that has been given all this time does something

[ApoIIo]

My main beef is with soul pierce. It's good for satisfying soul harvest cascades but... eh? You have two other aoe options, decoy which does not require a weapon or nearly as much work or aiming to get going, or the shadow reaper, which is simple but very effective, and doesn't even require leaning towards the naughty side.

Killing bosses with a stack of butterflies is 1) tricky to pull off 2) takes annoyingly long to amass live butterflies for, so it's essentially a shittier gunpowder that's more difficult to make use of.

It's also alright for bee queen which means you sink 4 points to be better at killing exactly 1 boss (ignore that the two other aoe skills already work wonders vs bee queen)

Idk, I pick it because picking anything from the nice side with those 4 points makes me neutral (bleugh) but soul pierce is so meh in my eyes rn.

[Crimson Hollow]

9 minutes ago, ApoIIo said:

My main beef is with soul pierce. It's good for satisfying soul harvest cascades but... eh? You have two other aoe options, decoy which does not require a weapon or nearly as much work or aiming to get going, or the shadow reaper, which is simple but very effective, and doesn't even require leaning towards the naughty side.

Killing bosses with a stack of butterflies is 1) tricky to pull off 2) takes annoyingly long to amass live butterflies for, so it's essentially a shittier gunpowder that's more difficult to make use of.

It's also alright for bee queen which means you sink 4 points to be better at killing exactly 1 boss (ignore that the two other aoe skills already work wonders vs bee queen)

Idk, I pick it because picking anything from the nice side with those 4 points makes me neutral (bleugh) but soul pierce is so meh in my eyes rn.

Does it benefit fuelweaver or possessed varg fights as well?

[ApoIIo]

36 minutes ago, Crimson Hollow said:

Does it benefit fuelweaver or possessed varg fights as well?

fuelweaver yes, possessed varg barely, but it's not a big enough boon for fuelweaver to be "four points for good perk vs two entire bosses"

[OMEGASCRUFF]

Can't wait to be disincentivized from playing my own main on pubs on the prod branch cus they don't have a 20% chance bee biome.

Yayyyyyy!