Damage scaling (15-25-40 -> 30-50-80) was more fun than constant +25 damage. Make Abi more vulnerable if you feel the need to instead. There is no need for maximum duration of Shadow Sisterhood III to exist either

[Dingle]

2 minutes ago, Pig Princess said:

You can't really do moon quest line (Crab King, Celestial Champion), (Armored) Bearger, (Crystal) Deerclops, shadow quest line (Shadow Pieces, Ancient Fuelweaver), also playing for 1 season means you don't have to prepare for later stuff and multitask: you don't have to weave Pearl Quests into you shedule, same for repeated kills of bosses (CC, Dfly), you don't try Misery Toadstool and do regular one at most (difference between 40 000hp and 20 000 is significant considering this is the phase Abigail struggles in). You don't experience much of non-boss things Abigail exceels at (frog rain, sea encounters), but at the same time you don't see how she struggles against densely packed brightshades and how she brings more mess in Klaus fight than she helps (even with scare command, and I read that you can be unluckly and Klaus can enrage). Also limited utility outside of combat (I'm completely fine with that, but ).

In general though Bee Queen and Dragonfly are easier bosses, but over time you fight more things like CC and Armored Bearger/Crystal Deerclops (I agree that Varg just melts, but still).

I did multiple playthroughs. My rifts one went till Spring, off top of head. I'll look for it and post it later. Are you saying my playthroughs are invalid because I didn't do an all possible boss speedrun? What if I did a slower all boss run? What's my time limit there?

I did get experience with a lot of those fights though. Such as Crystal Deerclops.

Densely packed brightshades were no problem. I tested that a lot. Not sure why people keep bringing those up. Again, I'll look for my rift playthrough later.

I thought Klaus was way easier for me, and safer to prevent the enrage, due to Team Spirit.

 

2 minutes ago, Pig Princess said:

It's peculiar how in my playthroughs nightshade is used only for 3 bosses, for everything else I prefer revenant restorative or vigor mortis. I actually find that Wendy with MG II is almost exclusive user of this elixir among both sisters, especially because dusk damage is usually good enough and vigor mortis allows Abigail to catch up faster after Wendy's movement/commands and deal more hits per kiting cycles. There are also fights like Bee Queen where I either find revenant restorative and waiting for dusk cheaper, or I don't use nightshade at all for how little benefit it gives, i.e. total damage Abigail deals in the fight (Armored Bearger/Crystal Deerclops, fight is too short for elixir alone to do anything significant + planar reduction if murder buff is not used, contrary for Dragonfly fight that is long, or Bee Queen where killing crowd faster has significant advantage, or Crab King where I use it because Abigail doesn't need anything else, fight is relatively long, so I might as well use it, but I don't fight it more than once). Not to mention that most of the damage is done by Wendy anyway, so 15/25->40 increase per second (roughly 13.5-7.5 per hit effectively) doesn't feel that impactful, while 30/50->80 does (25-15 effectively per hit), and it was enough to convince me to use nightshade more. I'm just lazy to burn my mouring glories for nightshade, and then possibly cure-all if alternative is revenant restorative from the beginning. And there is also an option to use natural dusk/night or manually-triggered day of full and new moon, so I don't use nightshade then as well, but damage increase dynamic still works.

I'll respond to this more fully when I can, but it does seem funny that you brought up this "kill every boss in a short time" situation, and then you also say Nightshade isn't that important because you can just stand around waiting for dusk. Seems like that time waiting around would add up.

[Koomin]

Very weird that people are now attacking the only person who gave actual in depth playthrough feedback, when most other peoples' feedback was just announcing that they think things based on little to nothing.  Now you are upset that the seasons long playthrough time was too short or their inventory management was too poor for it to mean anything???

I also do agree that the change to 25 flat planar damage was good.  Nightshade nostrom being the default potion for everything was bad.  It still has a good effect despite the change, since it boosts the baseline Abigail damage component, so is still strong. It doubling damage was dumb, and Abigail just demolishing everything in the caves because of permanent night was also dumb.  The current version allows for other options to shine while keeping nostrum strong.

[Pig Princess]

2 hours ago, Dingle said:

Someone requested that I do a rifts playthrough, because there was an often repeated lie that Wendy was weak on rift content. Ironically, the person requesting I do the playthrough was someone that was lying about Wendy being weak, so that they could request lots of buffs for her.

I actually considered to give feedback in the form of long playthrough, but didn't want to play with BS III out of principle, and without that I felt like it's not needed. Plus Lardee already has shown how healing and BS III affect Wendy, including some of the toughest fights. Maybe I was mistaken, and should have done something like 2 separate playthroughs. But then again, I enjoyed playing UM instead of vanilla and to figure out how to fight reworked bosses there, so I can't say I regret.

40 minutes ago, Dingle said:

Are you saying my playthroughs are invalid because I didn't do an all possible boss speedrun? What if I did a slower all boss run? What's my time limit there?

No, I don't say it's invalid. But for full picture it's important to showcase as much as possible. And if Abigail happens to be stronger at earlier bosses and weaker/less fault-tolerant at later ones, 20-days playthrough is not going to capture this trend. You feedback was valuable, no question about that. Also I read first playthroughs, but if you posted some later in the thread, I might have missed it. There were a lot of things happening in the forums, also it was a while ago and I didn't specifically reread that thread. I might forget something, in which case I'm going to apologise, but first I'll check again.

40 minutes ago, Dingle said:

Densely packed brightshades were no problem

Yes, I saw people said that, but in practice it was never practical for me to synchronise all 3, it was faster and safer to just do it as Wendy only. Maybe it's because I like to base near shore and it was less convenient to access brightshade flowers than it would from 360 degrees worth of directions.

40 minutes ago, Dingle said:

I thought Klaus was way easier for me, and safer to prevent the enrage, due to Team Spirit.

In my fights that just meant I was lending less hits on Klaus if deers managed to cast spells because of fire/ice circles under Abigail, and Wendy was much more likely to get hit and dealt less hits because I wasted time on command animation.

40 minutes ago, Dingle said:

does seem funny that you brought up this "kill every boss in a short time" situation, and then you also say Nightshade isn't that important because you can just stand around waiting for dusk. Seems like that time waiting around would add up.

I don't stand and wait for the boss. If I can influence start of the fight, I usually plan my shedule in such a way that fight starts at dusk and I do other things before that. As for encounters that one can't control (like Bearger), I just find nightshade alone so inconsequential that I don't even bother. With how current buff is I can easily apply just murder buff if it's day, or skip it completely and free myself from holding critters if it's dusk/night. It's weird how SS III is now the most impactful when it's day. Because +25 relative to 15 is much more than relative to 40, not to mention Wendy's own damage output.

1 hour ago, Steorra said:

Here comes an argument of @DVGMedia for join the discussion, I.. was missed this 1 hour by my ADHD, I'm sorry...

I'm quoting you because DVG didn't join discussion for now.

Damage tresholds are important for non-boss encounters, but at the same time they are applied to check number of hits needed to kill something. Usually player is the only one who hits, so it makes perfect sense to talk not about number of hits, but about damage tresholds. Yet Abigail is support, and unless one sends her alone against something at day, one wouldn't notice those tresholds because Wendy helps as well. Wendy actually deals majority of the damage and Abigail just prevents enemies from hitting Wendy. Abigail does some damage, but from how DVG describes it all that +25 damage at day would do is to promote ignoring time of day and planning, as well as promote Wendy sending Abigail alone instead of helping her when she is the weakest.

For bosses damage tresholds have no meaning. It's single giant health pool of 10 000+ hp, and whether abigail deals 67 or 80 damage actually matters. It adds up.

[Yaorin yon]

2 hours ago, Dingle said:

I didn't have an agenda about Wigfrid. I really don't know what you're getting that from. I've made posts where I say "justice for Wigford", but that's just a joke.

Someone requested that I do a rifts playthrough, because there was an often repeated lie that Wendy was weak on rift content. Ironically, the person requesting I do the playthrough was someone that was lying about Wendy being weak, so that they could request lots of buffs for her.

In my rifts playthrough, I found out she was very strong against all rifts content. I was mostly just using a ham bat, too.

Sorry if you think I personally got her nerfed. If I did, it's only because there wasn't much real feedback for Wendy at the time. There was a small group of disingenuous Wendy players, filling the forum with false feedback. Just malicious strategy to get her buffed.

Again, it's really ironic, but this disingenuous strategy to get her buffed probably got her a much worse skill tree than she could have gotten.

The most ironic part is using something that everyone can easily deal with to prove that Wendy is too strong. It's as if Wendy can only be considered a normal character when she barely manages to defeat weak enemies using all her abilities.

From the very beginning, your perception of "weakness" wasn't based on comparing her abilities with those of other characters in the same role. That's where the real disagreement lies. If you can't realize this, then everything else is just a lie.

[Steorra]

24 minutes ago, Koomin said:

Very weird that people are now attacking the only person who gave actual in depth playthrough feedback, when most other peoples' feedback was just announcing that they think things based on little to nothing.  Now you are upset that the seasons long playthrough time was too short or their inventory management was too poor for it to mean anything???

I also do agree that the change to 25 flat planar damage was good.  Nightshade nostrom being the default potion for everything was bad.  It still has a good effect despite the change, since it boosts the baseline Abigail damage component, so is still strong. It doubling damage was dumb, and Abigail just demolishing everything in the caves because of permanent night was also dumb.  The current version allows for other options to shine while keeping nostrum strong.

More like being intentional blind to Yifei's deep feedback.

[Debruh]

44 minutes ago, Koomin said:

also do agree that the change to 25 flat planar damage was good.  Nightshade nostrom being the default potion for everything was bad.  It still has a good effect despite the change, since it boosts the baseline Abigail damage component, so is still strong. It doubling damage was dumb, and Abigail just demolishing everything in the caves because of permanent night was also dumb.  The current version allows for other options to shine while keeping nostrum strong.

Demolishing everything in the caves? Not only do you probably not have the resources to constantly use shadow Abby, but most of her being able to demolish stuff like the ink blight trio came out of her insane planar defense. Which everyone already agreed on removing.

Nostrum is nowhere near as strong as you or Dingle imply. Her healing elixirs are the best, even on the surface. And vigor mortis is situational, when it helps, it's the best.

45 minutes ago, Koomin said:

weird that people are now attacking the only person who gave actual in depth playthrough feedback, when most other peoples' feedback was just announcing that they think things based on little to nothing.  Now you are upset that the seasons long playthrough time was too short or their inventory management was too poor for it to mean anything?

Not really attacking him. Well, Steorra kinda is, but this isn't the first time the two of them fought. Aside from that his debate with piggy princess is honestly not that heated to call it an attack from either side.

Aside from Dingle, people who have given feedback, pretty good feedback not just 'things based on little to nothing': Picklesaurus, Lardee, Piggy princess/OP,  TarnishedMax? Or smth like that, idk I know that they're a Walter main, but they did provide pretty good feedback on Wendy, and yifei's ton of feedback on Gestalt Abby. There's also a small youtuber that did give them feedback, I remember they did the shadow pieces. All of which, or most of them, did also give feedback on Dingle's thread. 

Reason most people didn't post whole playthroughs, is because they're mostly not filled with much stuff. Which you can see in Dingle's own playthrough, which did mostly confirm what was already known. Such as the player tag making Abby way too durable (like against fuelweaver in his playthrough) or how bigspooks are strong and good against beequeen. What I do distinctly remember was new was the ink blight trio soloing thing, which nobody took notice of due to the fact that the while doubling of planar defense thing wasn't really known. And most people don't really try to let Abby solo them.

Even more others include (the above are people who have posted videos/images and/or talked very specifically.): DegenerateFurry and WenericMember, who didn't post videos/images, but did provide some good feedback. And even tested the player tag thing against multiple bosses

[Dingle]

39 minutes ago, Yaorin yon said:

The most ironic part is using something that everyone can easily deal with to prove that Wendy is too strong. It's as if Wendy can only be considered a normal character when she barely manages to defeat weak enemies using all her abilities.

From the very beginning, your perception of "weakness" wasn't based on comparing her abilities with those of other characters in the same role. That's where the real disagreement lies. If you can't realize this, then everything else is just a lie.

Don't understand most of this, sorry.

I fought bosses though, including rift bosses. If that's what you meant?

1 hour ago, Pig Princess said:

I actually considered to give feedback in the form of long playthrough, but didn't want to play with BS III out of principle, and without that I felt like it's not needed. Plus Lardee already has shown how healing and BS III affect Wendy, including some of the toughest fights. Maybe I was mistaken, and should have done something like 2 separate playthroughs. But then again, I enjoyed playing UM instead of vanilla and to figure out how to fight reworked bosses there, so I can't say I regret.

No, I don't say it's invalid. But for full picture it's important to showcase as much as possible. And if Abigail happens to be stronger at earlier bosses and weaker/less fault-tolerant at later ones, 20-days playthrough is not going to capture this trend. You feedback was valuable, no question about that. Also I read first playthroughs, but if you posted some later in the thread, I might have missed it. There were a lot of things happening in the forums, also it was a while ago and I didn't specifically reread that thread. I might forget something, in which case I'm going to apologise, but first I'll check again.

Yes, I saw people said that, but in practice it was never practical for me to synchronise all 3, it was faster and safer to just do it as Wendy only. Maybe it's because I like to base near shore and it was less convenient to access brightshade flowers than it would from 360 degrees worth of directions.

In my fights that just meant I was lending less hits on Klaus if deers managed to cast spells because of fire/ice circles under Abigail, and Wendy was much more likely to get hit and dealt less hits because I wasted time on command animation.

I don't stand and wait for the boss. If I can influence start of the fight, I usually plan my shedule in such a way that fight starts at dusk and I do other things before that. As for encounters that one can't control (like Bearger), I just find nightshade alone so inconsequential that I don't even bother. With how current buff is I can easily apply just murder buff if it's day, or skip it completely and free myself from holding critters if it's dusk/night. It's weird how SS III is now the most impactful when it's day. Because +25 relative to 15 is much more than relative to 40, not to mention Wendy's own damage output.

I'm quoting you because DVG didn't join discussion for now.

Damage tresholds are important for non-boss encounters, but at the same time they are applied to check number of hits needed to kill something. Usually player is the only one who hits, so it makes perfect sense to talk not about number of hits, but about damage tresholds. Yet Abigail is support, and unless one sends her alone against something at day, one wouldn't notice those tresholds because Wendy helps as well. Wendy actually deals majority of the damage and Abigail just prevents enemies from hitting Wendy. Abigail does some damage, but from how DVG describes it all that +25 damage at day would do is to promote ignoring time of day and planning, as well as promote Wendy sending Abigail alone instead of helping her when she is the weakest.

For bosses damage tresholds have no meaning. It's single giant health pool of 10 000+ hp, and whether abigail deals 67 or 80 damage actually matters. It adds up.

I think we're kind of talking around each other a bit. I believe the issue may be this:

I did two big playthrough threads. One had multiple playthroughs. The second had one playthrough.

The second was "rifts open at start of game, to test rift content". I did this one by request (from a disingenuous poster, but it still made me curious).

This playthrough used shadow sister 3. It did NOT use blessed sisturn 3.

I fought everything rift related I could in the playthrough. I only didn't do Armored Bearger, though provided Lardees video on it, in place.

I'll post this when I can, have not had time to. I notice my playthroughs get lied about sometimes. It's another tiresome strategy to flood the forum with maliciously bad feedback, for Wendy Buff purposes.

Also a good strategy to constantly shift arguments. "You tested against brightshades? Well what about this?". "You tested against bosses? Well what about brightshades?". I tested lots of stuff.

Haven't had time to respond to all your other points. Though curious, how did you fight the brightshades? In my fights against them, I thought Wendy was a really surprisingly good matchup for them. Even with a hambat, which I limited myself to for the most part (to avoid another tiresome argument: "well, it doesn't count if you use the Reaper".)

[Yaorin yon]

13 minutes ago, Dingle said:

Don't understand most of this, sorry.

I fought bosses though, including rift bosses. If that's what you meant?

Only by comparing Wendy horizontally with other combat-oriented characters can you understand why many people say she is underpowered. Wendy's functional positioning is heavily categorized as combat, but in reality, after the rift, she clearly needs to make much more exaggerated efforts in combat for far fewer rewards. Just proving that she can fight doesn't demonstrate her effectiveness at all, because no character can't fight.

[Dingle]

12 minutes ago, Debruh said:

Demolishing everything in the caves? Not only do you probably not have the resources to constantly use shadow Abby, but most of her being able to demolish stuff like the ink blight trio came out of her insane planar defense. Which everyone already agreed on removing.

Nostrum is nowhere near as strong as you or Dingle imply. Her healing elixirs are the best, even on the surface. And vigor mortis is situational, when it helps, it's the best.

Not really attacking him. Well, Steorra kinda is, but this isn't the first time the two of them fought. Aside from that his debate with piggy princess is honestly not that heated to call it an attack from either side.

Aside from Dingle, people who have given feedback, pretty good feedback not just 'things based on little to nothing': Picklesaurus, Lardee, Piggy princess/OP,  TarnishedMax? Or smth like that, idk I know that they're a Walter main, but they did provide pretty good feedback on Wendy, and yifei's ton of feedback on Gestalt Abby. There's also a small youtuber that did give them feedback, I remember they did the shadow pieces. All of which, or most of them, did also give feedback on Dingle's thread. 

Reason most people didn't post whole playthroughs, is because they're mostly not filled with much stuff. Which you can see in Dingle's own playthrough, which did mostly confirm what was already known. Such as the player tag making Abby way too durable (like against fuelweaver in his playthrough) or how bigspooks are strong and good against beequeen. What I do distinctly remember was new was the ink blight trio soloing thing, which nobody took notice of due to the fact that the while doubling of planar defense thing wasn't really known. And most people don't really try to let Abby solo them.

Even more others include (the above are people who have posted videos/images and/or talked very specifically.): DegenerateFurry and WenericMember, who didn't post videos/images, but did provide some good feedback. And even tested the player tag thing against multiple bosses

There were posters with really good feedback.

The strategy from the malicious Wendy Buff group was to cover up feedback they didn't like. They'd give blatantly false feedback. Lie about other feedback. Harass people on and off the forum. Harass the dev. Flood the forum with garbage.

It's more mellow now. It's just sad that, ironically, Wendy probably would have had an even better tree if the malicious group hadn't of done this.

The above stuff must have wasted a LOT of development time.

1 minute ago, Yaorin yon said:

Only by comparing Wendy horizontally with other combat-oriented characters can you understand why many people say she is underpowered. Wendy's functional positioning is heavily categorized as combat, but in reality, after the rift, she clearly needs to make much more exaggerated efforts in combat for far fewer rewards. Just proving that she can fight doesn't demonstrate her effectiveness at all, because no character can't fight.

She does either 15% more or 15% less than fully kitted out Wolfgang, now, depending on the fight.

According to the lastest math, off top of head.

I dunno, seems fairly strong.

[Guille6785]

here 5 minutes before joew locks the 4564598th thread

[Yaorin yon]

18 minutes ago, Dingle said:

She does either 15% more or 15% less than fully kitted out Wolfgang, now, depending on the fight.

According to the lastest math, off top of head.

I dunno, seems fairly strong.

Combat isn't about beating up a DPS counter. Using that as a benchmark, Winona would be the most powerful character.

If Lardee were to fight armored bear with Wolfgang , he'd admit it's at least three times easier than having Wendy do the same thing.

[Dingle]

2 minutes ago, Yaorin yon said:

Combat isn't about beating up a DPS counter. Using that as a benchmark, Winona would be the most powerful character.

If Lardee were to fight armored bear with Wolfgang , he'd admit it's at least three times easier than having Wendy do the same thing.

Well, maybe not anymore. The Cursed Vex "nerf" actually tightened the gap a lot. Wolfgang kills it about 15% faster, now.

I don't get what you mean by the Winona thing.

[Koomin]

1 hour ago, Debruh said:

Demolishing everything in the caves? Not only do you probably not have the resources to constantly use shadow Abby, but most of her being able to demolish stuff like the ink blight trio came out of her insane planar defense. Which everyone already agreed on removing.

Nostrum is nowhere near as strong as you or Dingle imply. Her healing elixirs are the best, even on the surface. And vigor mortis is situational, when it helps, it's the best.

I'm not too passionate about this caves/nostrum thing and definitely could see either way on it, what you said isn't wrong, I just think it's slightly better this way, but the other way also has merit.

1 hour ago, Debruh said:

Not really attacking him. Well, Steorra kinda is, but this isn't the first time the two of them fought. Aside from that his debate with piggy princess is honestly not that heated to call it an attack from either side.

Aside from Dingle, people who have given feedback, pretty good feedback not just 'things based on little to nothing': Picklesaurus, Lardee, Piggy princess/OP,  TarnishedMax? Or smth like that, idk I know that they're a Walter main, but they did provide pretty good feedback on Wendy, and yifei's ton of feedback on Gestalt Abby. There's also a small youtuber that did give them feedback, I remember they did the shadow pieces. All of which, or most of them, did also give feedback on Dingle's thread. 

Reason most people didn't post whole playthroughs, is because they're mostly not filled with much stuff. Which you can see in Dingle's own playthrough, which did mostly confirm what was already known. Such as the player tag making Abby way too durable (like against fuelweaver in his playthrough) or how bigspooks are strong and good against beequeen. What I do distinctly remember was new was the ink blight trio soloing thing, which nobody took notice of due to the fact that the while doubling of planar defense thing wasn't really known. And most people don't really try to let Abby solo them.

Even more others include (the above are people who have posted videos/images and/or talked very specifically.): DegenerateFurry and WenericMember, who didn't post videos/images, but did provide some good feedback. And even tested the player tag thing against multiple bosses

Haha yea at least someone was attacking him, didn't want to call them out by name.  Yes I said "most" on purpose since there was a huge contingent of people that was just spamming stuff based on nothing.  Definitely agree that many including those you called out above also put in a lot of effort with great testing.

[DVGMedia]

7 hours ago, Pig Princess said:

Damage tresholds are important for non-boss encounters, but at the same time they are applied to check number of hits needed to kill something. Usually player is the only one who hits, so it makes perfect sense to talk not about number of hits, but about damage tresholds. Yet Abigail is support, and unless one sends her alone against something at day, one wouldn't notice those tresholds because Wendy helps as well. Wendy actually deals majority of the damage and Abigail just prevents enemies from hitting Wendy. Abigail does some damage, but from how DVG describes it all that +25 damage at day would do is to promote ignoring time of day and planning, as well as promote Wendy sending Abigail alone instead of helping her when she is the weakest.

Well thats the points though.  You don't need to waste a nostrum to do standard damage with abby during the day. Wendy is only the majority of the damage during boss fights. Abby is doing way more in the groups.  And being able to take out a group faster thanks to shadow is good.
Its for the situational points when you need that bonus damage.
Which im starting to think still is much nicer It turns Shadow abby into the Day to day  Upgrade  instead of it being just the damage upgrade.
I think thats why klei made it so that each murder  only lasts up to 10 seconds?
I havent really kept up if they changed it i know it used to be 5.  But like thats perfect for whats needed. Its why i decided to talk about damage numbers and thresholds Because shadow abby makes regular abby do what she does best. which is taking on hordes.  And with her being able to take on hordes needing one less hit from some standard damage thresholds thats great.

Its more important for abby to hit those thresholds on each of her day dusk night times instead of her doing damage to bosses cause thats what lunar is for.

plus it would make shadow do 3 hits on 200 hp creatures.  which primarially for abbys sake would  include warriors dwellers and bunnymen. Which is not much but still pretty good.





 

[Peasant]

7 hours ago, Dingle said:

I don't get what you mean by the Winona thing.

I think they meant that Winona can surpass all the characters in DPS with enough catapults, but people won't take Winona the strongest character

[Lardee]

The formula is very simple: More unique and engaging = good. Less unique and engaging = bad.

Whether it be 15, 40, or 100 damage, locking Abigail into a set amount of damage makes for less unique and less engaging gamplay.

Having the damage vary with day/night cycle means you have more of an incentive to engage with the day/night cycle or forgo the survivability of healing/speed potions which then requires you to be more engaged with the Abigail management aspect of Wendy's character.

 

[Crestwave]

15 hours ago, Dingle said:

I like the change because it means you can use elixirs that aren't Nightshade Nostrum.

Nostrum worked really well with the murder buff, but I feel like it's fairly overrated outside of that. I personally used vigor and restorative most of the time, as Wendy herself significantly out-damages Abi for single targets and Abi stunlocks most groups.

My initial reaction to this change was that the consistency is neat, but after playing with it for a bit, it just feels boring. I wouldn't even say weak, but I don't really feel the urge to actually use it anymore. I think this is partially because cursed vex provides planar damage now, so why would I even bother murdering stuff? The old mechanic at least felt fun to maximize damage with.

Off-topic, but I have a similar reaction to the removal of Gestabi's Attack At. It's not the end of the world, but it's just very boring for it to do literally nothing. Skills are supposed to be fun and engaging! Even something non-damaging like a grazer sleep aura or iframes on dash would be great for it.

[Pig Princess]

17 hours ago, Dingle said:

I did multiple playthroughs. My rifts one went till Spring, off top of head. I'll look for it and post it later

 

17 hours ago, Dingle said:

Densely packed brightshades were no problem. I tested that a lot. Not sure why people keep bringing those up

 

17 hours ago, Dingle said:

I thought Klaus was way easier for me, and safer to prevent the enrage, due to Team Spirit.

I checked through activity and looks like I didn't read continuation of your playthrough with open rifts, not sure why (but judging from the dates of posting, it's the time when I had been away from forums/read very little - during second half of January).

Anyway, regarding playthrough itself. Looking at your brightshade flowers I can at least say that they are less dense that I'm getting on average. It's probably because your grass and saplings were planted in rows, but mine are tend to be batch of 4x10 or 5x8 (per stack) as densely planted as possible. Brightshade minimum distance between plants from one wave is about 1.5 wall units, as far as I remember and judging from my experience, so it makes sence why probability of you getting that minimum distance (2 valid positions in a row) was much lower than mine (8 valid positions for trouble). You even mention yourself that one time fight went smooth and the other time - consederably worse, even through you used the same equipment. Not to mention that rows scale linearly and batches scale with square, so if we count grass tufts across 2 other grass tufts as well, the number of trouble-making positions grows faster in batch scenario (also for batch there are more plants that are in the middle, and in case rows pretty much all flowers are peripheral). The fact that I usually make base near shore and have only half of directions to approach them doesn't help either, not to mention that at this planting density even berry bushes (0.5 pitchfor tile for them) start to block your movements. But planting dense is beneficial because one can use reaper on grass and because giant trees/flingomatic don't have a lot of place to work with if one wants to summer-proof base with the least possible resources. In case trees it's not 5.5 tile, but actually more like 4.0-4.5 directly in front of trunk. I also like to have everything nearby - and grass/twigs are not the only thing to be planted/placed at base - so even through it's possible to cover all biome edge with trees, it's impractical for my purposes, not to mention that I try to grow those trees as soon as possible and there is just not enough time to get more nuts, goop and figs at this point. I used flingomatic from ancient times and I don't mind it, however, it still encourages player to come up with densely-packed designs.

But I feel like me not being able to pop the vines simultaneously and enlightened crown screwing me from time to time makes bigger difference: gestalt can spawn in the direction of active brightshade and hit that instead of my target, which triggers quite big AoE that even surpasses Abigail's range, so even if I was fine before that, now I'm knocked back. Klei fixed being able to use "attack at" command without cooldown, and I tried to avoid abusing it previously anyway, so how do you do it now? When I try, I usually break 1 vine and the others just retreat, and while it buys some time, flowers stay active and prone to be triggered for AoE. If I'm going to wait, the first flower recovers. Does Abigail attack frequently enough to fend off the other vines from Wendy? I often find that Abigail is behind and vine is infront, so she doesn't even reach the vine while vine reaches me. So I find that it's just easier to do as Wendy, sometimes even without CC crown. If your suggestion is to use only Abigail to break vines so damage is evenly distributed, then my counter-arguement is in that time you could have killed at least one flower yourself in safer way.

As for Klaus, I guess you mean that scare command is better than no command other things being equal (Abigail present, time of day/elixir choice), which is true as night damage is probably going to kill one of the deers before Klaus toward the end of the battle if you don't pay attention and don't push her between deers mid-fight. However, fighting alone actually gives better results than both those approaches, unfortunally. If I'm going to press "scare" on cooldown, why would I do it instead of using this time to hit the boss? It's not the shortest animation either and I would rather not have additional fire/ice circle blocking my approach to Klaus. Without scare that is spammed on cooldown Abigail will be hurt by deers inevitably and she will need revenant restorative. I don't need crowd control for this fight either, and reaper/beefalo makes length of the fight perfectly fine, so why would I use Abigail's help if she brings more trouble than aid in this fight and would only get herself hurt?

By the way, considering Wendy is going to do all the bullying of bad Santas by herself in my hands, I would like Abigail to be able to celebrate with Wendy at least in some way. I wish it was possible to gift Abigail gift during Winter's Feast and she accepted (even small gift). It could give really tiny buff (DVG often proposed making her glow bigger - that would fit) or be just visual effect like holiday cheer effect. When I was little, I remember during one year I begged for the classic gift with shiny paper and bow-knot, and was happy to receive it, and the fact that it was tiny gift with 2 sweets didn't make it any less pleasant (tiny gifts are actually the cutiest).

Returning to the topic, I noticed that you didn't post anything shadow/lunar quest line related. Maybe you just didn't describe it in the same format, but up until your semi-conclusion on the first page (do I need to read all 3 pages?) of rift playthrough you killed shadow rift trios, brightshades in different ways, crystal deerclops and regular early game bosses. I don't imply that your feedback is invalid by any means, but since then BS III was nerfed so Ancient Fuelweaver won't be a breeze anymore, I'm curious about Shadow pieces and if you think it's more time/resources/fault-tolerance-efficient to kill tier 3 rook or bishop; I don't see Celestial Champion, as well as repeated Armored Bearger considering it's quite demanding fight even if it's true that Abigail can be kept alive and helpful during the fight. Do you agree with Lardee that spectral cure-all pre-skilltree is enough to not even try to manage Abigail at all during this fight? I find this not to be true; I find it not trivial to draw aggro from Abigail and manage position, and if Bearger manages to hit her even with one combo, she is going to be barely alive even if you unsummon quickly, and until stun phase you won't be able to summon her again. He always initiates triple combo for me, so I wonder how can people get only single hits for mistakes. There is no describtion of both Toadstools either (I'm interested in Misery). There is also the fact that rift masks actually auto-kill clockworks in the ruins, making any character's advantage there less relevant (I wish they didn't; do I remember correctly that now rift masks at least despawn with rift?). For inkblights classic trio you yourself said that big contribution was from Wendy drawing aggro and not killing Rasp's allies first. With less planar defence and fixes to their brains it would be fine though? As for rictus, while Abigail can solo them, she also tends to reveal 2 or even all 3 of them at once, meaning you can't have normal fight - so long as they are not synchronised, you can't practically fight them anymore because they are unsynchronisable, and you have to let Abigail kill them. Normally you fight them one by one, and this situation doesn't happen at all. I wish they could reaggro on Abigail, I would rather have a window to join the fight than agree to current situation when I have to let Abigail solo them, even if that means she can't solo them anymore.

10 hours ago, DVGMedia said:

Well thats the points though.  You don't need to waste a nostrum to do standard damage with abby during the day. Wendy is only the majority of the damage during boss fights. Abby is doing way more in the groups.  And being able to take out a group faster thanks to shadow is good.

I agree that it's interesting potential interaction, like side-grade to nightshade nostrum for day damage, however, for dusk it's literally the same as scaling variant, and for night it's downgrade. However, I dislike that need to engage in more mechanics was reduced while planning skill ceiling was lowered, as well as overall damage distribution made more uniform so suddenly it matters much less when to fight your battles (because Abigail at night is about as strong as during day (25 vs 50 difference between damage models is a lot) it's so weird in flavor). And what is the problem of fighting at dusk and/or night anyway, considering they constitue from half to majority of day usually? Unless it's summer, I guess, and here is where synergy with nostrum comes to aid. If anything, it proves my point that scaling is good because it makes nostrum more worth the price. I also wonder what crowds are you fighting during day specifically where 1 hit would make a difference and where you don't want to use nightshade? One crowd I find important to take down is grumble bees, but here nostrum is worth it, and current day damage with buff (40) is much less than possible damage within synergy (80). For spiders you just let Abigail hit everyone and focus on warriors yourself (and everyone is killed in about the same time without any buffs), then kill the den together. For werepigs you want 80 damage exactly because it's crowd of the night (full monn specifically), and single converted werepig you fight one by one (or rather, 1 werepig vs Wendy, Abigail and the rest of the allied pigs that are waiting their turn). Moonstone defence looks more like 1 vs 1 fight, you just need to focus werepigs instead of random enemy, and, again, it's "crowd" of the night. Frog rain happens in spring, so day has very little duration, but even then are you saying that 30 damage per hit with revenant restorative is not enough? In that case you can just... help her? I experimentally found out even before skill tree that standing under her and helping turns day/dusk situation when she slowly drains her hp even under revenant restorative into situation where she breaks even or even heals a bit over time. Or you could use 2 spectral cure-all and she soloes frog rain ragardless time of day. I don't see a reason to kill regular/killer bees any faster. Would 4 hits instead of 3 even make a difference? It's literally one second and niche application anyway - it's specifically relevant only for clearing killer bee biome, which doesn't even spawn in every world and is one-per-world thing you do, and even then you can easily ignore it unless Wagstaff decides it's perfect place for research or something. But even then I find that running around with soothed Abigail and focusing bee hives is faster than trying to kill bees first. Basically it doesn't matter how quickly Abigail kills this crowd, it's killed passively behind me while I'm killing the hives. She kills hounds perfectly fine during day, provided you help with varglet. But why wouldn't you help her and just wait until she kills a single remaining enemy herself?

Also what about night/cave crowd damage suffering as a result of uniform damage buff? Wouldn't it be cool if scaling and hinger potential ceiling encouraged more people to explore better light sources to fight at night and to go down to the caves for maximum power?

Any why must Abigail's boss fighting properties suffer in favor of crowd fighting properties that are already excellent?

10 hours ago, DVGMedia said:

I think thats why klei made it so that each murder  only lasts up to 10 seconds?

Murder lasts 8 seconds per critter (but it has maximum duration, unfortunally). 

10 hours ago, DVGMedia said:

instead of her doing damage to bosses cause thats what lunar is for

I disagree with the idea that fate of shadow Abigail must be (or must be made) only day to day combat - which is not very engaging anyway and is in excellent state power-wise even without skills - just because we have lunar Abigail that doesn't even do her job. I think both Abigails should be interesting and powerful options for fighting bosses. But lunar Abigail is boring because she is less interactable, and because from Wendy boss fights what I actually want is not just damage, but position managment and differentiation of strategy from anyone else. Which happens with regular/shadow Abigail but not with gestalt Abigail, and Klei clearly want gestalt to be just auto-buff (disgusting) without managment, they clearly want lunar Wendy&gestalt Abigail fights diverge from Wilson even less. Lunar Abigail is out of character phenomenon for Wendy.

I think current disign of regular(shadow) Abigail is excellent for boss fights, and shadow Abigail should be as appealing as lunar Abigail, provided we assume that lunar Abigail is appealing or would be in the future.

I also think that a better way to make both appealing would be to play with role of sisters in the fight. Shadow Abigail is support, and while she can be buffed she is never going to do majority of the damage even with 80 damage per hit, meaning Wendy is going to deal majority of the damage. Nightshade nostrum +Shadow Sisterhood III combo promoted more proactive and aggressive playstyle, which fits perfectly into the concept. Lunar Abigail could flip the dynamic where it's Wendy who applies debuff to enemies and it's Abigail who reaps most of the benefit from it, gestalt Abigail could scale her damage with number of hits that enemy received between her attacks, so she would be buffed from different things than shadow one and Wendy would be encouraged to use different equipment (enlightened crown, any multihit tool, allies). All lunar needs for that is for her elixir to make all her damage planar, reversed vex, introduction of hit count to enemy (it's done to some enemies in Uncompromising Mode, which means it is possible) and ability for player to choose when to attack as Abigail (might be done as right-click option).

I think it would be interesting where one alignement would be Wendy leading the way for both sisters, the other - Wendy giving place of star of the show to Abigail but still doing a lot herself for both to shine.

[Yaorin yon]

I've discussed ideas about Moon/Shadow Abigail with others. I think a good classification would be as follows:

 

Shadow Abigail remains consistent with the past. She has AOE abilities and is designed to fight alongside Wendy in sync, staying close to her. Together, they achieve an effect where 0.75 + 0.75 > 2~3, requiring almost no potions. The trade-off is the doubled risk of taking damage (they are twin stars, inseparable like "shadows").

 

Moon Abigail represents a new mode. Her core strength is single-target damage, but she can also deal AOE damage through teamwork commanded by Wendy. The gameplay would involve Abigail on the front line engaging enemies while Wendy directs from the backfield. Wendy needs to use her teamwork skills more flexibly and frequently to command the battle, while also utilizing potions and other supportive functions. The damage Abigail takes is shared by Wendy, and her output level depends on Wendy's teamwork skill level. Of course, it will never exceed that of Shadow Abigail. It's a safer, less aggressive, and lower-yield playstyle, but one with its own unique charm. (Wendy is the sun, and Abigail reflects the sun's light like the moon.)

[Pig Princess]

4 minutes ago, Yaorin yon said:

Wendy needs to use her teamwork skills more flexibly and frequently to command the battle, while also utilizing potions and other supportive functions

How can that be made more interesting than spamming "escape" command and possibly applying healing? There needs to be something so fights are not reduced to this

[Steorra]

15 hours ago, Dingle said:

The Cursed Vex "nerf" actually tightened the gap a lot. Wolfgang kills it about 15% faster, now.

You mean that around 3% planar damage buff DO impact to the result? Could you stop lying for your own hidden intention?

[Pig Princess]

8 minutes ago, Steorra said:

You mean that around 3% planar damage buff DO impact to the result? Could you stop lying for your own hidden intention?

Speaking of vex elixir. In what way and how much do you think it needs to be buffed for post-rift so it makes a difference? Even nightshade alone feels not enough for possessed bosses, I myself was encouraged by combination of it and murder buff. To be fair I find even current damage (approximately 10 last time I checked) unnoticeble, because reaper does around 100 per hit, there is Abigail, and even without reaper it's pretty inconsequential even with brightshade sword. Would 15 or 20 extra planar damage as opposed to 10 on hit be enough?

It might be a good theme for separate topic as well

[Steorra]

54 minutes ago, Pig Princess said:

Do you agree with Lardee that spectral cure-all pre-skilltree is enough to not even try to manage Abigail at all during this fight?

Tbh I think Lardee was just used an extremely exaggerated argument. Pre skill tree you could manage Abby by sone specific skills, and it is doable once you leanrt it. But it's alnost only doable for lesser than 5% Wendy players. Lardee's feedback of Wendy is always from an elite view. They could be true but they are not true for mostly Wendy players.

8 minutes ago, Pig Princess said:

Speaking of vex elixir. In what way and how much do you think it needs to be buffed for post-rift so it makes a difference? Even nightshade alone feels not enough for possessed bosses, I myself was encouraged by combination of it and murder buff. To be fair I find even current damage (approximately 10 last time I checked) unnoticeble, because reaper does around 100 per hit, there is Abigail, and even without reaper it's pretty inconsequential even with brightshade sword. Would 15 or 20 extra planar damage as opposed to 10 on hit be enough?

It might be a good theme for separate topic as well

I was posted a thread for this topic which including math evidence. The new cursed vex only brings lesser than 3% damage bonus comparing with old version for planar mobs. Someone insist to say that the thulecite club build would being crazy after the change of cursed vex, but we all knew that the shadow tentacles has extremely lower efficiency than theory in practice - after all Wendy have no ability like Shadow Prison or Shadow Prison II (stackable slowing effect of Walter).

I was thought that 20 flat planar damage for CursedVex would be fine. 10 is almost... A benefit you could hardly to feel in practice - especially when you cannot handle the fight perfectly (which means you would have to use cure-all or even to unsummom abby during the combat).

10 minutes ago, Pig Princess said:

Speaking of vex elixir. In what way and how much do you think it needs to be buffed for post-rift so it makes a difference? Even nightshade alone feels not enough for possessed bosses, I myself was encouraged by combination of it and murder buff. To be fair I find even current damage (approximately 10 last time I checked) unnoticeble, because reaper does around 100 per hit, there is Abigail, and even without reaper it's pretty inconsequential even with brightshade sword. Would 15 or 20 extra planar damage as opposed to 10 on hit be enough?

It might be a good theme for separate topic as well

Here's my math evidence to prove why "Cursed Vex got almost no buff for post-rift comparing with old version".

Someone was insist to use Thulecite Club's shadow tentacle to against my argument. I have to say... You knew how ridiculous their argument is. They completely ignoring the shadow tentacle's missing-rate but only do the comparison based on theory.

[Pig Princess]

17 minutes ago, Steorra said:

But it's alnost only doable for lesser than 5% Wendy players. Lardee's feedback of Wendy is always from an elite view

But it's valuable feedback. If anything, it could be used to show skill ceiling (especially if developers indeed can't imagine it because of lack of game experience). But even through I like the idea of personal skill improvement influencing performance a lot, I think there should be balance between fault-tolerance and steepness of learning curve. Upon reading those discussions I realised that the best way to work toward it is to give player conditional instrument: it should not be just buff because of flowers in sisturn, it should demand performance, but be possible to fail or put the tool to great use (provided player is willing to learn/think outside the box). Team spirit commands are perfect example of such design, which is why I decided so start that topic of additional movements that would require more resources/planning/insight points but be a bit more tolerant to reaction and coordination. If one wants to limit tools for themselves, reward could be extra insight points that can go to something like pipspook/MG/elixir branch.

[Steorra]

1 hour ago, Pig Princess said:

(DVG often proposed making her glow bigger - that would fit)

not only DVG, I did noticed that many casual Wendy players who come from other communities prefer to have this effect from the incoming skill tree.

1 hour ago, Pig Princess said:

making any character's advantage there less relevant

I guess I have to point out, during this beta we have many dishonest arguments about Wendy which insist that the skill which only brings good change to what Wendy already good at would do an impact to Wendy's power, or even do bad impact to "balance". Dingle's "Shadow Abby could easily erase inker trios" was just an example of this. (Wendy mains all knew that pre-skill Abby could already easily deal with Inker Trios.)

1 hour ago, Pig Princess said:

and Klei clearly want gestalt to be just auto-buff (disgusting) without managment, they clearly want lunar Wendy&gestalt Abigail fights diverge from Wilson even less.

I must have to say "No, not true" about this.

According to the latest Lubby's change, we could see that Klei adjusted Lubby's design into a "You could not get benefit from micro-management of Lubby (AoE and I.Frame got deleted from her "attack at"); however, you MUST micro-manage Lubby for ensure her survive (according to Yifei's details test, Lubby performed worse than regular Abby to most bosses and the Ruin - the most worse part is you have to manage Lubby for her survive but you got no benefit except the survivability from the management, and Lubby's perform unworthy than regular Abby).