Devs should honestly stop focusing skilltree buffs on combat

[FluffyBun]

Don't Starve is a game about not starving. It's not a game about combat. I mean, it has combat, and combat is becoming more important over time, but it's still a game about not starving.

However, recent balance patches don't exactly reflect that. All characters are getting primarily combat hyper-buffed in their skill trees. The sole exception is Wilson, who I think that despite everything, actually had the correct skill tree design philosophy.

Let's see:

Willow: Both lighter and bernie buffs are entirely combat focused. Fire Ball and Controlled Burning are her only utility skills.

Wolfgang: Okay, this one is actually warranted.

Woodie: The only buff to his collection abilities is the near-unusable Tail Slap which is more useful for griefing than harvesting trees. In my opinion, it should be nerfed to only insta-hammer crops, but buffed to instantly chop trees/mine boulders and uproot them. Goose Mastery is not to be spoken of. Woodie STILL cannot pick up stuff in Beaver Form - Quick Picker being buffed so that Woodie can collect things in Wereform (and also pick ground stuff faster) should make Woodie a fair bit stronger.

Wigfrid: Okay, this one is actually warranted as well.

Wurt: Only has Industrious Merm and All-Weather Scales as strictly non-combat skills. This is despite the fact that Wurt fulfills the civilization-building fantasy.

Winona: Aside from teleportation and hotlights (and bridges), almost everything focuses on her catapults. On a side note, Lunar Strike is honestly my favourite skill because of the utility it brings.

Wormwood is good.

In the coming skill spotlights, Wendy, Walter, and Wortox had their combat potential buffed to ridiculous levels. Meanwhile, they are not exactly that much better in gathering things.

Wendy, in particular, has almost all skills being related to combat, with the sole exception being the altar. While people are complaining about the "damage" of things, she still has to mine things with a pick and chop things with an axe. Abigail still brings almost no non-combat utility.

Wortox, despite being mischievous, does not have a skill allowing him to scam pigs into chopping things for him for free. Meanwhile, he has a free bone armor, a decoy thing which is a free bone armor, etc. etc.

Walter notably does not have many useful utility skills despite his character fantasy revolving around utility. If I wanted to do nothing but shoot different pebbles from my slingshot, I would play Wixie.

Buffing everyone's combat just makes the game samey. I think it's ok for some characters to have Wilson-levels of combat while having god gathering abilities. Combat powercreeping is an issue and the game is worse for it.

Characters should be allowed to be Wilsons in combat. Buffing utility over damage should honestly be a valid way of improving the power level of a character. Not everyone needs to be Wolfgang or Willow. Gathering should be easier for some, while combat should be easier for others.

EDIT: suggestions for non-combat buffs

Winona: Combine Hotlight and Spacious Spotlight, Quick Charge and Energy Saver, create upgraded "electric" equipment (lamps and lanterns) in 1 more skill, create sprinklers, drills and chainsaws in another skill. Buff affinity to make Gemerator passively charge equipment in inventory, and make her gadgets refuelable with nightmare fuel.

Wurt: Crown, Trident, and Pauldron each unlocks new shop merms. Shops are disabled if Merm King is dead or does not have them. Shops can only be built after Merm King has them.

Willow: Bernie skills additionally provide improved Bernie cold resistance. Fire skills improves Willow's summer resistance. Brighter Lighter I allows lighters to emit light when placed down, Brighter Lighter II increases map reveal radius.

Woodie: Goose Mastery allows directed travel. Quick Picker improves item pick up rate. Tail Slap now instamines/chops.

Walter: Better, more frequent trails  Thank you devs, for finally giving Walter the utility perks he deserve!

Wendy: Abigail gives general QoL tied into random skills. Ghastly Experience allows Abigail to haunt trees to shake their branches, for twigs. Grave Beautification allows Wendy to regenerate grave loot with Mourning Glories. Pipspook Quest III causes Wendy to get random resources per toy found (twigs, grass, gold, etc). 

[Adachi69]

Might be the most factual thing I’ve come across about the skill trees on this forum.

[Mysterious box]

5 hours ago, FluffyBun said:

Willow: Both lighter and bernie buffs are entirely combat focused. Fire Ball and Controlled Burning are her only utility skills.

What about brighter lighter?

5 hours ago, FluffyBun said:

Woodie: The only buff to his collection abilities is the near-unusable Tail Slap which is more useful for griefing than harvesting trees. In my opinion, it should be nerfed to only insta-hammer crops, but buffed to instantly chop trees/mine boulders and uproot them. Goose Mastery is not to be spoken of. Woodie STILL cannot pick up stuff in Beaver Form - Quick Picker being buffed so that Woodie can collect things in Wereform (and also pick ground stuff faster) should make Woodie a fair bit stronger.

The only combat buff Woodie got was the weremoose line unless you're part of the group who sees the tree guard skill as followers.

5 hours ago, FluffyBun said:

Wurt: Only has Industrious Merm and All-Weather Scales as strictly non-combat skills. This is despite the fact that Wurt fulfills the civilization-building fantasy.

What about the fertilizer, bloodshot, swamp team speed boost, the merm regen/call button structure.

[Steorra]

5 hours ago, FluffyBun said:

Wendy, in particular, has almost all skills being related to combat, with the sole exception being the altar. While people are complaining about the "damage" of things, she still has to mine things with a pick and chop things with an axe. Abigail still brings almost no non-combat utility.

Wendy was just a character who focused on combat without tree like Wolfgang.

I have no idea why you feel satisfied with Wolfgang's tree but have different standard to Wendy.

 

5 hours ago, FluffyBun said:

Meanwhile, he has a free bone armor, a decoy thing which is a free bone armor, etc. etc.

Lunar Swindler is far stronger than Bone Armor ngl.

5 hours ago, FluffyBun said:

Walter notably does not have many useful utility skills despite his character fantasy revolving around utility. If I wanted to do nothing but shoot different pebbles from my slingshot, I would play Wixie.

And I personally think we should leave Walter be until his update patched out. Devs already clarified that Walter's other skill branch is coming.

[FluffyBun]

1 hour ago, Mysterious box said:

What about brighter lighter?

The only combat buff Woodie got was the weremoose line unless you're part of the group who sees the tree guard skill as followers.

What about the fertilizer, bloodshot, swamp team speed boost, the merm regen/call button structure.

Brighter Lighter is outclassed by lanterns and, more importantly, magi. It has the same problem as torch tree where nobody sane would ever use it (unless in a caveless world). Actually, scratch that, it's worse than torch tree. It's also strictly worse than Fire Ball.

Hard Hat, "walking stick" are both combat items for Woodie. While walking stick has early exploration utility, it's also an early combat utility for people bad at farming tusks.

Bloodshot, merm regen directly interface with combat. The call button structure, I guess can be considered utility. Fertilizer is somewhat useful, but outclassed by just growing 5 tomato 5 potato on 1 plot and never worrying about nutrient depletion.

1 hour ago, Steorra said:

Wendy was just a character who focused on combat without tree like Wolfgang.

I have no idea why you feel satisfied with Wolfgang's tree but have different standard to Wendy.

 

Lunar Swindler is far stronger than Bone Armor ngl.

And I personally think we should leave Walter be until his update patched out. Devs already clarified that Walter's other skill branch is coming.

Wendy existed for people who don't want to engage with day to day combat at all. Abigail's utility involves distracting mobs so Wendy can mine and stuff. Calling her a "combat character" is disingenuous because her perks (lower sanity decrease, abigail, sisturn regeneration) are all tailored so players only need to fight 1 deerclops every year, at most.

People specifically pick her to not engage in combat mechanics. Wendy's identity is mostly as a "safety net" character who can only really get jumped by shadow creatures (not even Charlie can jump her, since Abigail provides light). Even in areas like the Ruins, sanity items like Banana Shake can be easily mass-produced in order to get rid of the passive sanity drain of caves, and so on.

Her identity is mostly as a "safety net" character who drastically reduces the dangers faced by a Wendy player, unlike Wigfrid, whose identity is a character who actually needs to fight but self-sustains in order to reduce the resource drain food typically imposes on a normal character. To put it simply, Wendy has combat perks so people don't need to fight, while Wig has combat perks so people can fight more.

Additionally, Abigail is the best tool for farming butterflies, something that can be hardly called "combat", and mainly solves hunger.

I would actually rate Wendy as 50% utility and 50% combat, since Wendy players don't really want to engage with combat content (unless forced to, or skilled)

That's just gameplay, though. Lorewise, Abigail is Wendy's sister. Surely Abigail can help Wendy in other, non-combat ways? Maybe she can vex resource boulders, shake twigs from trees, yield double gems (salt crystal girls), etc. as a tie-in with some of her other perks.

[Gashzer]

9 minutes ago, FluffyBun said:

Brighter Lighter is outclassed by lanterns and, more importantly, magi. It has the same problem as torch tree where nobody sane would ever use it (unless in a caveless world). Actually, scratch that, it's worse than torch tree.

Hard disagree here. Brighter lighter saves a inventory spot that doesn't need to be wasted on lantern and igniting mobs before attacking is much more fluid if you happen to already have willows lighter out (very convenient in caves/ruins). 

Definitely worth the skill points. It's one of them skills were once you start using willows lighter with brighter lighter you realise the convenience you were missing. But for someone who has never seriously tried it of course you would think it's bad.

[Mysterious box]

11 minutes ago, FluffyBun said:

Brighter Lighter is outclassed by lanterns and, more importantly, magi. It has the same problem as torch tree where nobody sane would ever use it (unless in a caveless world). Actually, scratch that, it's worse than torch tree.

Hard Hat, "walking stick" are both combat items for Woodie. While walking stick has early exploration utility, it's also an early combat utility for people bad at farming tusks.

Bloodshot, merm regen directly interface with combat. The call button structure, I guess can be considered utility. Fertilizer is somewhat useful, but outclassed by just growing 5 tomato 5 potato on 1 plot and never worrying about nutrient depletion.

Wendy existed for people who don't want to engage with day to day combat at all. Abigail's utility involves distracting mobs so Wendy can mine and stuff. Calling her a "combat character" is disingenuous because her perks (lower sanity decrease, abigail, sisturn regeneration) are all tailored so players only need to fight 1 deerclops every year, at most.

People specifically pick her to not engage in combat mechanics. Wendy's identity is mostly as a "safety net" character who can only really get jumped by shadow creatures (not even Charlie can jump her, since Abigail provides light). Even in areas like the Ruins, sanity items like Banana Shake can be easily mass-produced in order to get rid of the passive sanity drain of caves, and so on.

Her identity is mostly as a "safety net" character who drastically reduces the dangers faced by a Wendy player, unlike Wigfrid, whose identity is a character who actually needs to fight but self-sustains in order to reduce the resource drain food typically imposes on a normal character. To put it simply, Wendy has combat perks so people don't need to fight, while Wig has combat perks so people can fight more.

Additionally, Abigail is the best tool for farming butterflies, something that can be hardly called "combat".

I would actually rate Wendy as 50% utility and 50% combat, since Wendy players don't really want to engage with combat content (unless forced to, or skilled)

Then you should change your arguement to non combat meta viability than focusing on combat.

Also what your saying is just straight up wrong speed applies to every aspect of the game not just combat and the hard hats blocks debris from earthquakes so I don't get what you want there it's dual purpose.

Idk if you just haven't played Wurt but the bloodshot is horrible at healing merms and is mainly just used for day to day hp recovery for Wurt herself. Either way you can't say the utility offered isn't meta enough so it doesn't exist.

[FluffyBun]

Brighter Lighter can't be dropped on the ground so you can fight, the primary utility of Lanterns. Almost any situation where you don't drop it on the ground, you are typically using the map to navigate anyway. Since like 90% of mobs a normal player fights are going to be either Terrorbeaks, which can't be ignited, or Hounds, which can be prepared for with Fire Ball, Brighter Lighter don't really have much utility.

I mean, if it lets me reveal a dark corner of my screen for 1% durability, maybe I will take it.

If this was a different game where vision was actually a big deal on the move, or map reveal radius without light is vastly nerfed, I will probably think more highly of that skill. However, right now, a normal lighter is about the same as a brighter one.

[Mysterious box]

Besides Woodie's skill tree is almost entirely utility based with a few combat skills sprinkled in.

[FluffyBun]

1 minute ago, Mysterious box said:

Then you should change your arguement to non combat meta viability than focusing on combat.

Also what your saying is just straight up wrong speed applies to every aspect of the game not just combat and the hard hats blocks debris from earthquakes so I don't get what you want there it's dual purpose.

Idk if you just haven't played Wurt but the bloodshot is horrible at healing merms and is mainly just used for day to day hp recovery for Wurt herself. Either way you can't say the utility offered isn't meta enough so it doesn't exist.

Healing damage is a component of combat, unless you are starving, freezing, or randomly getting hit by rocks or something.

[Mysterious box]

Just now, FluffyBun said:

Healing damage is a component of combat, unless you are starving, freezing, or randomly getting hit by rocks or something.

The key factor is that unless part because they are major features of the game.

[FluffyBun]

4 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

The key factor is that unless part because they are major features of the game.

I mean, if you are likely to actually take damage from those penalties (starving/freezing), you are likely to just outright die or enter an unrecoverable state from it anyway. Unless you take so little you can recover by punching 1 butterfly. Those are basically preludes to a game over.

Rocks are kinda off because typically, only people who already has armor will bother going down there for extended periods of time. It's also not a lot of damage.

[Gashzer]

4 minutes ago, FluffyBun said:

Brighter Lighter can't be dropped on the ground so you can fight, the primary utility of Lanterns. Almost any situation where you don't drop it on the ground, you are typically using the map to navigate anyway. Since like 90% of mobs a normal player fights are going to be either Terrorbeaks, which can't be ignited, or Hounds, which can be prepared for with Fire Ball, Brighter Lighter don't really have much utility.

I mean, if it lets me reveal a dark corner of my screen for 1% durability, maybe I will take it.

If this was a different game where vision was actually a big deal on the move, or map reveal radius without light is vastly nerfed, I will probably think more highly of that skill. However, right now, a normal lighter is about the same as a brighter one.

Its a good thing willow has bernie to absolutely massacre nightmare creatures... also brighter lighter synergises with burning bernie if you are playing a full bernie spec willow with bernie out 24/7, easier to light bernie on fire if you already have lighter out.

Clockwork, spiders, hounds can all be panicked with lighter, so it's a fantastic tool for willow.

Ps ignited mobs are your light source... no need to drop lantern or fireball.

[FluffyBun]

2 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Its a good thing willow has bernie to absolutely massacre nightmare creatures... also brighter lighter synergises with burning bernie if you are playing a full bernie spec willow with bernie out 24/7, easier to light bernie on fire if you already have lighter out.

Clockwork, spiders, hounds can all be panicked with lighter, so it's a fantastic tool for willow.

Ps ignited mobs are your light source... no need to drop lantern or fireball.

Then I might as well skip Brighter Lighter and rely entirely upon igniting mobs or bernie as my sole light source.

The extra light really don't pay off. Almost all places where it "does", you might as well just rely on sound, normal lighter, map as navigation tools.

[Mysterious box]

1 minute ago, FluffyBun said:

I mean, if you are likely to actually take damage from those penalties (starving/freezing), you are likely to just outright die or enter an unrecoverable state from it anyway. Unless you take so little you can recover by punching 1 butterfly. Those are basically preludes to a game over.

It takes quite a bit of time to die from those factors and even then sometimes people delay dealing with them. Healing is utility ability not a combat one.

[Cassielu]

This is not the fault of the skilltree, is the DST itself is gradually becoming more focused on combat. Therefore skilltree must include combat skills, and these combat skills will attract more attention.

[FluffyBun]

Of course they must, but 90% of Wendy's and Wortox's skills focusing on combat? That's just absurd.

New content should, of course, have things that are more annoying for a Wolfgang to gather as opposed to a dedicated Woodie/Maxwell.

[Grove]

Lots of people pick Wendy because of the gameplay of managing both yourself and Abby. For the people you mention, the graves skills exists for bigspooks defenders. Not much, but there's not much that can be added for people that don't engage with a major part of the game. There's also the mourning glory branch, adding a revive for them as well as a healing item, and a molehat in one with additional stuff.

That plus haunt, good enough tbh

[Gashzer]

1 hour ago, FluffyBun said:

Then I might as well skip Brighter Lighter and rely entirely upon igniting mobs or bernie as my sole light source.

The extra light really don't pay off. Almost all places where it "does", you might as well just rely on sound, normal lighter, map as navigation tools.

Yeah but you are acting like the 2 skill points are better put elsewhere? If you go full mage willow, do you really need 2 extra bernie skills? Is extra hp or speed bernie really that useful for a full mage willow? With combustion you don't need big bernie for crowd control anymore. 

Juggling both ember stock and bernie durability is too much effort for what you gain so it's better to go full mage and use big bernie only when you really need him or to go full bernie and don't bother gathering embers. In both builds brighter lighter is more useful than the skills its in competition with.

[Walrusst]

Honestly with how they are gating the harder survival content in a few hardmodes al la terraria I assume the combat skills are partially here to help guide people to get good enough to experience the toughest raw survival content.

[Jakepeng99]

I agree it is kinda ineffective.

I like giving characters new combat options, but not turning almost all of them into combat characters.

 

I dislike what happened the most with Wurt.

[Walrusst]

All I'll say is the logical extreme is if I see powerful combat utility in wes's tree I will be of great concern if it isn't too funny.

[Guille6785]

considering the fundamental purpose of skill trees is to allow players to select their own perks and ignore the ones they don't care about (rather than being forced to have the character play in one particular way) I think it's justified for most skill trees to have a branch or two that enhances combat abilities, I think this post is a tad biased by painting every skill tree as combat-focused because most of them give the option for combat abilities (+ many of the characters that have received skill trees so far were characters that primarily had combat related kits in the first place)

I would obviously like to see more miscellanous stuff for characters like Walter so I'm not disagreeing but we'll just have to wait and see

[DVGMedia]

Thats kind of what ive always thought with wendy too.  Kind of felt like the whole focus of the lunar and shadow affinities should have been sidegrades to base abby instead of them being this whole thing.

One that provides more utility to the player in combat while the other goes more into the offensive form of combat.  Wendy has always been one of those character thats easy to pickup but has lot of skill to master her Primarially because mastering her ties into postioning and setting up abby correctly 

since im just a wendy main I have kind of felt like the tree never really pushed her fundamental character for both experts and novices.

[flamboyant wolf]

1 hour ago, Gashzer said:

Hard disagree here. Brighter lighter saves a inventory spot that doesn't need to be wasted on lantern and igniting mobs before attacking is much more fluid if you happen to already have willows lighter out (very convenient in caves/ruins). 

Definitely worth the skill points. It's one of them skills were once you start using willows lighter with brighter lighter you realise the convenience you were missing. But for someone who has never seriously tried it of course you would think it's bad.

I used to use em, and it's pretty convenient, but it ends up kinda being the choice between those 2 skills and having both affinities at the same time for me, and both Bernie and Fire affinity skills are pretty good value. 

I think flexibility of Willow's tree could be improved a bit in the future sometime, for example combining ember tender into hungry lighter could be good.