Thoughts on Wendy's skiltree problems

[Vek-606]

Hi, I'd like to share what I think are the main problems with Wendy's skilltree, I think it's no secret that for a large part of the community it was disappointing, it's not completely bad but it's pretty mediocre.

So here we go,
1. Skill tree or QoL? : I've already expressed this several times and it's that a large part of Wendy's skilltree seems like quality of life upgrades that are made mandatory to take in order to avoid excessive grinding, leaving you with few insight points for the rest of the skills.

Those skills (like all those related to collecting mourning glories, making potions and storage) should have been implemented as such in the core of the character, not in a skill tree, and I'm not saying this because I want Wendy to be disproportionately strong, but because I think the most important thing is that she's fun to play, and for now she's more of a character that forces you to grind.

Oh, and I forgot about the whole Team Spirit branch, I think it's a nice addition to the character, but here we go again, this is nothing more than a quality of life improvement, now we'll have more control over Abigail with a few extra actions, but this is something you'd expect to have been added to the core character to make Wendy more fun to play, what's next? A skill that lets you tell Abigail what action to take with a hotkey instead of several clicks?

2. Cisturn: This has been talked about a lot, but cisturn is incredibly underused, I don't know why they haven't implemented different effects depending on the petals you store in it, I know there's Blessed Sisturn III (more on that later), what I mean is that they could implement things like extra damage for abi against shadow enemies if you store Lune Tree Blossoms, extra damage for abi against Lunar Aligned creatures if you store dark petals, extra lighting if you store cave light bulbs, and things like that.

3. Blessed Sisturn III: I already mentioned it before so let's continue with this point, the positive effect of this ability seems pretty good to me (even if it doesn't work on all bosses), but why does it have to have a counter that basically cancels out the positive part?
The truth is I think the devs are somehow 'afraid' that Wendy is too good and any advantage that is added to her is practically cancelled out by a disadvantage like in this case, and I think this is also partly the community's fault, I think everyone has seen what happened with the first version of Shadow super elixir (abi pre nerf), the community jumped on the devs' necks insulting them and treating them in the worst possible way, just because this way Wendy could reach higher damage figures than Wolfgang but, what they didn't take into account is that this was only possible after an abysmal investment of resources, while Wolfgang has had access to his maximum potential almost from day 1 and in fact that excessive grinding is something that remains in the core of the character today, only the reward is considerably lower.

4. Wraith's Wreath: I have a lot of mixed feelings about this item, I don't think it's very useful beyond Nightshade Nostrum, but I think that for it to be more interesting to use it shouldn't be a perishable item, in fact it doesn't make sense, mourning glories aren't perishable, why is this crown?

5. Perennial Altar: I think there are already enough resurrection methods in the game to add another one, it seems to me that it's unnecessary. Maybe it could be interesting to take it since it's cheaper than its alternatives, but it's very likely that you won't have any extra insight points since most of them will have to be used for skills that will avoid excessive grinding.

6. Vengeful Ghost: Similar to the previous point, this one seems particularly interesting to me, but with the same problem that since it is not something significantly beneficial, you will probably not take it because you will not have points left for it, in fact it seems to me that it is something that should have been incorporated into the character's core and not into his Skilltree.

7. The 2 skills of the Graves: This one seems really a success to me, a very good addition, nothing more to say about it.

and now we go to the most disappointing part, the affinities

let's start with the lunar one
Lunar Sisterhood: My problem with this version of aby is having to depend on the lunar cycles, it reminds me of how tedious it was to play with Woodie before his skilltree, I think an improvement could be that the first transformation has to be done on a full moon but once done, you have the freedom to reverse it or do it again without depending on the lunar cycles.
And finally another improvement would be to allow gestalt abi to deal damage with the attack command.

Now the shadow one
Shadow Sisterhood: I completely hate this affinity, the only positive thing about it is that you can access Shadow Super Elixir's faster compared to the lunar version, and I think that after the nerf it received it is not as decisive as before, now my main problem is that to get Shadow Abigail you have to embark on this tedious task of killing butterflies, then farm mourning glories to revive them and once in combat kill them again for 30, 50 seconds of power? nahhhh

When all the controversy with the Shadow Super Elixir nerf happened I thought that if something good could come out of all that it would be that they would eliminate everything related to killing creatures, it seemed like a reasonable exchange, a considerable nerf to damage in exchange for eliminating a set of tedious tasks, but they left those tedious tasks with a much smaller reward, I pass on it. A solution for this situation could be reworking the concept of shadow abi, someone in a post presented an idea of spamming shadow tentacles like tulecita swords do, something like that seems creative to me.

But anyway, in summary I think Wendy is still a good character, beginner friendly and difficult to master if you want to exploit her maximum potential, my problem as I said so many times is that there are so many tedious tasks in between and excessive grinding, and her skill tree is bad precisely because to solve the grinding half the tree is dedicated to that, the new things that are added are not novel or interesting enough and the potential of the affinities are blocked behind a wall of tedious tasks.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not a greddy who wants Wendy to be the best DPS in the world or to have all the advantages without any cons, my main interest is that she is fun to play, and her skilltree is on par with others like Willow or Walter.

[Steorra]

We did had many advices about a variety function of Sisturn by different flowers during the whole beta. But all of them got ignored by mystery reason.

Wendy's affinity I and II is more likely be divided intentionally. It's quite suitable if to merge affinity I and II into I, and make affinity II become a skill for Sisturn's lune/evil flowers.

19 minutes ago, Veklad said:

but why does it have to have a counter that basically cancels out the positive part?

Because our community have a mystery bias towards Wendy. They think resources dumping gameplay is ok for every other characters while they keeping their core feature. But they think this should not work for Wendy and Abby. They think resources dumping should only work for Wendy but not available for Abby which means if you want this gameplay for Wendy, you have to lose your core feature.

21 minutes ago, Veklad said:

I think everyone has seen what happened with the first version of Shadow super elixir (abi pre nerf), the community jumped on the devs' necks insulting them and treating them in the worst possible way, just because this way Wendy could reach higher damage figures than Wolfgang but

Hahahaha this must would trigger someone here. Beware of potential personal things (whether insulting, slandering or attacking).

Hope you would be peace and safe.

[Vek-606]

28 minutes ago, Steorra said:

We did had many advices about a variety function of Sisturn by different flowers during the whole beta. But all of them got ignored by mystery reason.

It's sad, wasted potential

28 minutes ago, Steorra said:

Wendy's affinity I and II is more likely be divided intentionally. It's quite suitable if to merge affinity I and II into I, and make affinity II become a skill for Sisturn's lune/evil flowers.

Exactly!! What you mentioned is a good idea.

35 minutes ago, Steorra said:

Because our community have a mystery bias towards Wendy. They think resources dumping gameplay is ok for every other characters while they keeping their core feature. But they think this should not work for Wendy and Abby. They think resources dumping should only work for Wendy but not available for Abby which means if you want this gameplay for Wendy, you have to lose your core feature.

I also believe this, Wendy is limited by the community itself, many people see her as a character for newbies that has to stay that way, I'm not surprised to see many people also asking for Wendy's synergy with the Beefalos to be nerfed.

36 minutes ago, Steorra said:

Hahahaha this must would trigger someone here. Beware of potential personal things (whether insulting, slandering or attacking).

It is not my intention to create chaos, that event influenced the development of Wendy's skilltree and that is why it is impossible not to mention it.

[WinterComputer]

3 hours ago, Veklad said:

1. Skill tree or QoL? : I've already expressed this several times and it's that a large part of Wendy's skilltree seems like quality of life upgrades that are made mandatory to take in order to avoid excessive grinding, leaving you with few insight points for the rest of the skills.

Imo the Pipspook Quest I and II should be combined into only one skill, the same for Strong Brew and some other from that branch. But I'm okay with the Team Spirit being in 3 parts.

 

3 hours ago, Veklad said:

Oh, and I forgot about the whole Team Spirit branch, I think it's a nice addition to the character, but here we go again, this is nothing more than a quality of life improvement,

I don't think this branch is bad. Yes, the first and partialy the third one (the scare option) are just QoL, but the second one feel like an actual ability and not just QoL, the same goes for haunting. Maybe that branch would've been better to be more compressed, but overall I think it's a good use of skill points.

 

3 hours ago, Veklad said:

I think an improvement could be that the first transformation has to be done on a full moon but once done, you have the freedom to reverse it or do it again without depending on the lunar cycles.

I think to improve it should be done using the Sisturn. Like you have to put petals or maybe something else in the Sisturn during full moon to transform it into a moon version. Then it would behave the same with added ability to transform Abi from and into the Gestalt form with no restriction.

 

3 hours ago, Veklad said:

Shadow Sisterhood: I completely hate this affinity, the only positive thing about it is that you can access Shadow Super Elixir's faster compared to the lunar version, and I think that after the nerf it received it is not as decisive as before, now my main problem is that to get Shadow Abigail you have to embark on this tedious task of killing butterflies, then farm mourning glories to revive them and once in combat kill them again for 30, 50 seconds of power? nahhhh

To me, the best fix, that would not require reworking the ability, would be to simply either increase the boost duration and make reviving butterflies cheaper (normal butterfly - 1, lunar - 2, instead of 2 and 4).

[Vek-606]

48 minutes ago, WinterComputer said:

I think to improve it should be done using the Sisturn. Like you have to put petals or maybe something else in the Sisturn during full moon to transform it into a moon version. Then it would behave the same with added ability to transform Abi from and into the Gestalt form with no restriction.

I think the tedious part is not building the Moon Dial, the tedious part is that every time you want to reverse the transformation or apply it again you have to wait for a new moon.

50 minutes ago, WinterComputer said:

To me, the best fix, that would not require reworking the ability, would be to simply either increase the boost duration and make reviving butterflies cheaper (normal butterfly - 1, lunar - 2, instead of 2 and 4).

I think that a solution of this type only makes the problem not so bad, or less worse, if you really want to attack the root of the problem I would opt for a more drastic change.

[WinterComputer]

37 minutes ago, Veklad said:

I think the tedious part is not building the Moon Dial, the tedious part is that every time you want to reverse the transformation or apply it again you have to wait for a new moon.

Yeah, I don't think building the Moon Dial is a problem, but I think it would be cool to have a moon version of sisturn. I completely agree that the wait time is the problem.