What... can you, DO with Wurt?

[Primalflower]

I wrote a really long post here but I feel like i got lost in my words and the point was obfuscated. The summary of my thoughts is, I feel like wurt has a toolkit that, with a lot of setup, is very good at very specific things (chopping trees, mining rocks/marble, tilling, killing like... 1 or 2 bosses?), but sadly... sort of, falls short, on a lot of other things, because she just doesn't have the tools to leverage the power she technically has.

Wurt has a lot of ways to buff merms so they last longer, do more damage, can be recruited for longer... but at the same time, she has extremely little control over them in a way that really limits her usability and makes her a lot less versatile. Even webber, a character who has been long on the shorter end of the power spectrum honestly kind of feels like a more capable character when it comes to controlling and leveraging his minions, because of the webby whistle, & nurse spiders and the intricacies that lie with those things. Without a way to call merms to her, to tell merms to not kite, to efficiently heal merms, to tell merms to focus on specific areas when working, perhaps... It feels like for a ton of things, you're frankly better off just using pigs or something for the tree chopping, and benefitting from another character's perks while you're at it.

Am I missing something? Is there a way to use wurt's merms that doesn't... kind of just, feel bad, especially after you consider other options to do the work that you'd be missing out on without merms? I don't know. With all of the characters in this game that naturally have grown a lot more adept at a ton of situations, it feels like wurt is still stuck in her little box of mainly just uhh, fast tilling, marble growing, and bee queen.  I'm not asking for wurt to stomp every challenge, but it would be nice if there were more ways to control the power she eventually accumulates so she could use it in more places with sufficient merm-leadership skills.

[Well-met]

Kinda like... getting personal buffs? 

[Jakepeng99]

She is already the strongest

[Nini voovoo]

I think you drastically underestimate how strong merms get when you have a full setup, if you have 20-30 merm guards and gave the king all gear, there is practically no boss that can kill all your merms. You can kill even higher health bosses within less than 5 minutes without having to do anything.

[Jakepeng99]

She needs rebalanced

[Primalflower]

8 minutes ago, Nini voovoo said:

I think you drastically underestimate how strong merms get when you have a full setup, if you have 20-30 merm guards and gave the king all gear, there is practically no boss that can kill all your merms. You can kill even higher health bosses within less than 5 minutes without having to do anything.

What perks are you thinking when you do stuff like this, are you shadow aligned or lunar aligned? I feel like CC no matter what I did totally destroyed merms, as did every single zombie boss, as did brightshades, etc...

[HowlVoid]

Wurt is about power not complete control.

Instead give that to Webber so they can be different from one another.

Its not hard to think of Wurt's merms as a very powerful army that doesnt need super specific control. I'm not saying that's how you have to use them, but that's one correct way of using her army.

[Nini voovoo]

4 minutes ago, Primalflower said:

What perks are you thinking when you do stuff like this, are you shadow aligned or lunar aligned? I feel like CC no matter what I did totally destroyed merms, as did every single zombie boss, as did brightshades, etc...

I usually use shadow merms because they are more convenient to use and you can get the mudslinger before rifts, cc is one of the very few bosses that can be dangerous due to it's spin attack. I assume you mean the lunar rift bosses with zombie? If merms struggle with that it does sound like you have simply not enough and may have not geared your merm king, they shouldn't struggle against those.

[YouKnowWho142]

I’m a little confused by what is trying to be said here. I really do believe that wurt is a contender for one of the best characters in the game already, if not already. Shadow wurt superbuffs her merms, get 2 lives for each merm, and the mudslinger just increases the dps of every merm even further and is available pre rift. Her downside is entirely negligible due to gaining more hunger value from the food she can eat and There’s barely any grind since merms can grind all the materials she needs for more merms. I actually have a hard time playing wurt since at around day 30 I always have so many guard merms that every boss dies in literal seconds and it wasn’t very fun

[Radicaljoe]

18 minutes ago, HowlVoid said:

Wurt is about power not complete control.

Instead give that to Webber so they can be different from one another.

Its not hard to think of Wurt's merms as a very powerful army that doesnt need super specific control. I'm not saying that's how you have to use them, but that's one correct way of using her army.

That's the main difference I've noticed between the two 

Wurt definitely has a powerful army, but they are very dumb and uncontrollable 

Webber has a more diverse and controllable army.

I lost at least like 6-7 merms to the lava pots while fighting dfly.

I think I only lost like 3 spiders. Webber's whistle is such a good item. Shame that spiders have the optimization of a burnt toaster or else I'd play him a lot more. But as is rn spiders lag servers too much.

[WilsonHiggs]

1 hour ago, Primalflower said:

chopping trees, mining rocks/marble, tilling, killing like... 1 or 2 bosses?

Killing 1 or 2? I think you meant being able to kill 90% of the bosses...

She is so strong when you set up a merm village that the game plays itself 

 

Also, do you consider underwhelming having slaves that not only chops but mine minerals and till the soil?

[Well-met]

comparing merms to pigs is a wild take

[Guille6785]

I'm with the guys who think she needs a nerf. Not because I think she's good, I just hate Wurt

[flamboyant wolf]

2 hours ago, Primalflower said:

What perks are you thinking when you do stuff like this, are you shadow aligned or lunar aligned? I feel like CC no matter what I did totally destroyed merms, as did every single zombie boss, as did brightshades, etc...

I actually used shadow aligned merms to farm CC in one of my worlds last summer. they take just a bit of set up to get going, but after that you got pretty much free kills. Merms kill the 1st two phases of CC easily, despite the powerful aoe attacks it has, but 3rd phase can be a bit of an issue, but shaodow alignment pretty much doubles your army's power, even more so if you got the dreadstone trident thing, so it makes quick work of it too. Just shadow alignment + king buffs will do usually. Helmets are nice, but it's additional resource cost per fight essentially, and grass is a bit more annoying to farm post cc, so I don't bother.

[Helord]

1 or 2? Misery toadstool is the only boss I find the merm army struggles with, and only because they get in the way of managing the sporecaps.

Seasonal giants? Deleted. Enraged Klaus? Deleted. Lunar mutations? Deleted. Dragonfly? CC? BQ? Deleted. And you don't need to kite or have healing food or rotate bone armors or anything, just point them at the boss, throw down the mudslinger, and watch.

Granted I've never tried using them against AG, AFW, or Crab just because taking a bunch of them through a maze or on a boat sounds irritating.

[chenxx]

2 hours ago, Primalflower said:

I wrote a really long post here but I feel like i got lost in my words and the point was obfuscated. The summary of my thoughts is, I feel like wurt has a toolkit that, with a lot of setup, is very good at very specific things (chopping trees, mining rocks/marble, tilling, killing like... 1 or 2 bosses?), but sadly... sort of, falls short, on a lot of other things, because she just doesn't have the tools to leverage the power she technically has.

Wurt has a lot of ways to buff merms so they last longer, do more damage, can be recruited for longer... but at the same time, she has extremely little control over them in a way that really limits her usability and makes her a lot less versatile. Even webber, a character who has been long on the shorter end of the power spectrum honestly kind of feels like a more capable character when it comes to controlling and leveraging his minions, because of the webby whistle, & nurse spiders and the intricacies that lie with those things. Without a way to call merms to her, to tell merms to not kite, to efficiently heal merms, to tell merms to focus on specific areas when working, perhaps... It feels like for a ton of things, you're frankly better off just using pigs or something for the tree chopping, and benefitting from another character's perks while you're at it.

Am I missing something? Is there a way to use wurt's merms that doesn't... kind of just, feel bad, especially after you consider other options to do the work that you'd be missing out on without merms? I don't know. With all of the characters in this game that naturally have grown a lot more adept at a ton of situations, it feels like wurt is still stuck in her little box of mainly just uhh, fast tilling, marble growing, and bee queen.  I'm not asking for wurt to stomp every challenge, but it would be nice if there were more ways to control the power she eventually accumulates so she could use it in more places with sufficient merm-leadership skills.

I guess the minion control will be implemented in Webber & Maxwell update,  which will also bring huge perks to Wendy, Wurt, Winona and Willow.

[somethin]

I've never seen a problem you can't fix with merms. If you're still have problems it means you're not using enough merms

[Masked Koopa]

7 hours ago, Primalflower said:

It feels like for a ton of things, you're frankly better off just using pigs or something for the tree chopping, and benefitting from another character's perks while you're at it.

Advantages Merms have over Pigs at chopping:

1: Completely unafraid of the dark in every way, and available to hire during both the day and the night
2: Able to dig up stumps via the tool shed tools
3: Significantly cheaper and faster to hire en masse, only made faster by the Kelp dish
4: Not hostile to any playable character if Merm King is alive, making them safe to keep in base if you're not in a public server (i.e if you play with friends or whatever)
5: Much more tanky and just generally more capable in combat + have passive regen, making them much much better at dealing with treeguard spawns.
6: Easy to dismiss when you no longer need them (if normal merms), otherwise have the benefit of being hired forever (lunar, shadow).
7: Cheaper to produce a lot of.

I should like to point out that Merms are also capable of mining, which is something Pigs straight-up cannot do. As well as tilling farmland if they have the Merm tools.

And in relation to Webber there really isn't any comparison between Merm Guards and Spiders. Guards deal better damage than spiders, not getting stuck on one another due to their high movement speed and kiting attack style providing enough room for each Guard to take their turn. Not to mention the sheer bulk they have allowing them to survive things like CC's Beyblade attack just fine.

Personally I don't think this is an issue because there is definitely a pretty large setup time and just general busywork in getting this sort of thing set up. Sure it's cheaper than setting up a Bazillion Bunny or Pig Houses, but that's not exactly difficult given those have pretty poor returns as-is. I totally understand if the setup time is not your cup of tea, and id reccomend going for a more early-game oriented character to better suit your preferences. If anything it is a good thing that Wurt is so lategame-leaning, since it gives Webber something he can do better than Wurt rather than try to directly compete with her.

I do definitely want some work done to her still, but there is definitely no issue with her Power level or when competing with pigs. I think smooshing some of the Wetness Skills together to give her a Conch she can issue commands with would be a plausible solution to the complaints here. We are long overdue a way to dismiss Merms especially now that Lunar/Shadow Merms are immune to being dismissed via fish murder.

[Primalflower]

34 minutes ago, Masked Koopa said:

Advantages Merms have over Pigs at chopping:

1: Completely unafraid of the dark in every way, and available to hire during both the day and the night
2: Able to dig up stumps via the tool shed tools
3: Significantly cheaper and faster to hire en masse, only made faster by the Kelp dish
4: Not hostile to any playable character if Merm King is alive, making them safe to keep in base if you're not in a public server (i.e if you play with friends or whatever)
5: Much more tanky and just generally more capable in combat + have passive regen, making them much much better at dealing with treeguard spawns.
6: Easy to dismiss when you no longer need them (if normal merms), otherwise have the benefit of being hired forever (lunar, shadow).
7: Cheaper to produce a lot of.

I should like to point out that Merms are also capable of mining, which is something Pigs straight-up cannot do. As well as tilling farmland if they have the Merm tools.

And in relation to Webber there really isn't any comparison between Merm Guards and Spiders. Guards deal better damage than spiders, not getting stuck on one another due to their high movement speed and kiting attack style providing enough room for each Guard to take their turn. Not to mention the sheer bulk they have allowing them to survive things like CC's Beyblade attack just fine.

Personally I don't think this is an issue because there is definitely a pretty large setup time and just general busywork in getting this sort of thing set up. Sure it's cheaper than setting up a Bazillion Bunny or Pig Houses, but that's not exactly difficult given those have pretty poor returns as-is. I totally understand if the setup time is not your cup of tea, and id reccomend going for a more early-game oriented character to better suit your preferences. If anything it is a good thing that Wurt is so lategame-leaning, since it gives Webber something he can do better than Wurt rather than try to directly compete with her.

I do definitely want some work done to her still, but there is definitely no issue with her Power level or when competing with pigs. I think smooshing some of the Wetness Skills together to give her a Conch she can issue commands with would be a plausible solution to the complaints here. We are long overdue a way to dismiss Merms especially now that Lunar/Shadow Merms are immune to being dismissed via fish murder.

Replying to you in particular but really I just address the whole thread with this thought, some things I learned that change my perception a little

- dreaded mudslinger does shadow tentacles for every ally & player, which is crazy, I thought it was basically just the speed boost of the marsh turf, am I crazy or is the balance between brilliant and dreaded crazy weighted in shadow's direction?

- I had totally forgotten about how with thulecite crown'd merm king, Merms will just null an attack every 10 seconds. This combined with their armor & shadow merm's being basically an extra life, means that merms genuinely can live for far longer than I usually experienced, even in high AOE scenarios like zombie bearger (what a hard boss, lol, feels like every character has to climb a mountain to get that one in particular) where in previous tests, they would genuinely die before the boss had meaningfully been injured

- I guess I should have seen this one coming, but merm guard leave-when-injured skill seems to be an active detriment to the point of being a single-handed nail in the coffin of the character's usability. The merms just don't do anything basically with this

These things definitely help a lot, and I'm coming to learn maybe I just... don't... like, wurt? anymore? Maybe i'm just past the point in my life where I find this character to enrich my experience. Which is weird! because I'm saying this from the perspective of someone who, I guess, begrudgingly, you could describe to megabase. I am someone who plays for hundreds and thousands of days, and my saves with her involved, intentionally or not, doing very similar things to what is described in this thread. The difference is it just doesn't really feel like I saved any time for lack of a better metric playing wurt than I did playing anyone else. When I think back to the experiences i've had most recently, hiring pigmen to chop down a huge forest and just manually shovelling a little bit myself felt faster. Or I guess, more ambiguously just, better. Like I feel like I barely wasted any time doing that. When I think about my wurt gameplay it feels like a lot of the wurt things I did were a huge waste of time, and I don't really think in these terms often. It's probably just me.

[kaTome]

8 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

I'm with the guys who think she needs a nerf. Not because I think she's good, I just hate Wurt

Thanks, you too.

[loopuleasa]

not be lonely even if you are

[Steorra]

Seems another potential bullying is happening, which only based on personal interest of "balance". 

Just to say, for me personally Wurt got too many perks she should not have - tilling, chopping, etc. These things only erode other characters' identity. And yes I do have same opinion to Woby's similar perk. 

Another thing for Wurt, her fish drops from merms farming is too much for collecting! It is the truly imbalance.

[chenxx]

I’ve been following this discussion about Wurt, and I understand the concerns some of you have regarding her power level. However, I believe Wurt doesn’t necessarily need to be nerfed. Instead, we could consider strengthening other aspects of the game to achieve better balance.

Actually, I had previously shared a concept to this.

[ChintzyGnat]

14 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

I'm with the guys who think she needs a nerf. Not because I think she's good, I just hate Wurt

All wurt haters should explode!

On a real note I usually make 60 to 100 warrior merms and I can kill every boss without getting new merms. Cc does maul alot but I can still do 2 before I need to do something myself lol.

[Jakepeng99]

5 hours ago, chenxx said:

I’ve been following this discussion about Wurt, and I understand the concerns some of you have regarding her power level. However, I believe Wurt doesn’t necessarily need to be nerfed. Instead, we could consider strengthening other aspects of the game to achieve better balance.

Actually, I had previously shared a concept to this.

Interesting idea, but it doesnt fix her power level at all. This is one scenario against 1 enemy.

 

Also thats the plant from plants vs zombies.