Burning Bernie and Willow's stagnant playstyle

[Catuna_]

Willow's skill tree is one of the more well regarded ones, and for good reason! It took a character who had very little going on and gave her a lot of things that made her a flexible powerhouse as long as you have somewhere for her to stock up on embers. However, addressing the elephant in the room, she has very little skill tree variety...

With the way her skill tree is structured she has two choices to make: the obvious affinity choice letting her pick between AoE capabilities and single target spammable damage. And firefighter vs burning frenzy which does not alter the way she plays in any meaningful way, as both are stat changes. 

But within Willow's skill tree lies a completely forgotten perk in Burning Bernie that puts her into a Bernie-focused play style. This perk is very very fun for me. I've done two playthroughs with it during and after the beta. However, it's so unpopular, for a very valid reason...

This skill inexplicably costs 8 Bernie perks to unlock. This means that you'll need all of Bernie max health and regeneration perks, sanity AND 1 Bernie speed perk. This perk is quite bad, as Willow is able to calm down Bernie and redeploy him anyway meaning that she really does not need him to have... +15/30% speed. You're forced to take this perk, too! This is because Willow's Bernie affinities do not count as Bernie perks... 

I feel like this should be fixed, and I feel like the requirement should be lowered a bit to 7 perks. Doing so will let her pick all of fireball, Combustion and burn duration AND burning Bernie without having enough insight for an affinity spell which means that you are not buffing the usual build that characters go for. This would give her a new playstyle that does not affect her old one, which is still admittedly weaker but unique and fun. 

Edited Saturday at 10:14 PM by Catuna_

[Jakepeng99]

I got an advertisement to tell me to go to rhis post and like it

[Grove]

Just now, Jakepeng99 said:

I got an advertisement to tell me to go to rhis post and like it

Me too, I'm expecting my payment.

[Mike23Ua]

I forgot how many skill points are actually wasted just to get one decent perk on old characters, especially when we got whatever WX78 is now.

Willow does a cute animation of grabbing small Bernie and hugging him, I’d love to see Burning Bernie grab enemies and hug them in the same way with AoE fire damage.

If not in DST, then 100% in DSE.. its too cute of an Animation to pass up.

[Cheggf]

Her playstyle is stagnant because you wish you had a single extra skill point?

[Baark0]

Burning Bernie is great a skill for unexperienced players who struggle with fighting day to day mobs, but a more experienced player will likely get bored of it, especially since you have to sacrifice your fire affinity skill in order to unlock it. The real issue with Willow is her over reliance on bees in order to cast her spells, an issue that plagues many characters and their skill trees.

You want to talk about stagnant playstyles? Lets talk about how Willow has to spend a considerable amount of time farming bees for the entire game in order to do the cool things in her skill tree. Trying to play Willow on a world without killer bees is such a slog, I'd never pick her on a world that doesn't have killer bees. It's genuinely absurd how inefficient even the 2nd best options are compared to bees, and Willow actually even has it worse than every other character who relies on them. The fire damage from the bees and stingers can eventually kill your bee hives, something that is very unlikely or straight up impossible to happen with other bee reliant characters.

[Catuna_]

8 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Her playstyle is stagnant because you wish you had a single extra skill point?

You misunderstood my point... Burning Bernie is not played because it locks you out of too many other skills. Making it less costly on insight (the post says two btw not one) would make it more appealing for people to pick and wouldn't affect the usual Willow skill tree that people play. Doing this allows for more customization for the player which I feel like should be one of the things that a skill tree offers. Otherwise the only big choice that Willow gets is lunar vs shadow flame and that doesn't really change the way she approaches most things significantly. 

4 hours ago, Baark0 said:

Burning Bernie is great a skill for unexperienced players who struggle with fighting day to day mobs, but a more experienced player will likely get bored of it, especially since you have to sacrifice your fire affinity skill in order to unlock it.

I mean I can see why it would seem that way on paper but Burning Bernie is not very good for unexperienced players , a lot of its power as a perk is how absurdly tanky aligned Bernie is. I tried it with regular Bernie to save some insight, and I just ended up having to be much more conservative or burning through many more sewing kits... They aren't expensive but it still gets very annoying. 

Besides, a less capable player can just use the fire lighter perks to extend their fire duration so that they can just use combustion and flame cast to make basic mobs panic for a long time and take a decent amount of damage without burning 9 insight. 

4 hours ago, Baark0 said:

You want to talk about stagnant playstyles? Lets talk about how Willow has to spend a considerable amount of time farming bees for the entire game in order to do the cool things in her skill tree. Trying to play Willow on a world without killer bees is such a slog, I'd never pick her on a world that doesn't have killer bees. It's genuinely absurd how inefficient even the 2nd best options are compared to bees, and Willow actually even has it worse than every other character who relies on them. The fire damage from the bees and stingers can eventually kill your bee hives, something that is very unlikely or straight up impossible to happen with other bee reliant characters.

I mean, yeah. Her spells are strong and so she needs some sort of concurrent cost. The alternative would be slapping a cooldown on everything which would be boring. I've seen people just set up an absurd amount of bee boxes and that looks like it would work wonders if you're unlucky enough to not get a killer bee biome. But I'd honestly just reset if I do not get one. As for the beehive damage, I never had that issue since you can drag them away from a hive and kill them 9 out of 10 times.

Edited Sunday at 09:12 AM by Catuna_

[Nikki Darks]

Ngl, I would say that Burning Bernie is 100% worth the skill points investment, it is a VERY good farming tool both for shadows and mobs like spiders...

It requires a lot of skill points because it is 50 physical damage every time something hits Bernie!.

This lets you use Bernie to farm mobs and shadows without needing embers, it helps Bernie do more damage to bosses if they hit him, etc, etc...

The skill is fine and the skill tree isn't "stagnant" because you can't have every skill you want.

Edit: I forgot to add that whenever I play I go for full Bernie + Lunar Bernie, 2 points into the fire effectiveness, points into refueling the lighter and 1 point into brighter lighter.

Edited Sunday at 03:37 PM by Nikki Darks

[Catuna_]

37 minutes ago, Nikki Darks said:

Ngl, I would say that Burning Bernie is 100% worth the skill points investment, it is a VERY good farming tool both for shadows and mobs like spiders...

It requires a lot of skill points because it is 50 physical damage every time something hits Bernie!.

This lets you use Bernie to farm mobs and shadows without needing embers, it helps Bernie do more damage to bosses if they hit him, etc, etc...

Bernie already farms shadows for you as long as you invest into the sanity related perks, he will attack shadows that aren't even aggro'd on you yet while passively regenerating health and takes forever to seriously get chipped even if he deals less damage than he would if you're actively lighting him on fire. 

I'm not saying that it shouldn't cost a lot, I agree with it keeping you locked out of a spell affinity. I'm trying to say that it's too restrictive right now considering that it's worse than the other two playstyles by a decent margin and that Bernie affinities not counting as Bernie perks is an inconsistency that doesn't make sense. 

I don't understand why you would farm without using embers. Willow's loop is that she will cast combustion to mass farm mobs. If you kill, say, 30 killer bees with one combustion cast then you'd have spent 4 embers to gain 30 which is a benefit of 26 embers. You're just actively choosing not to pick way more powerful perks, which is fine of course I don't mean any disrespect to how you play. But this isn't the way how most play Willow, there is no incentive to pick brighter lighter over fireball which is a literal 2 embers cost star caller that you can stack for sanity stations and there is no reason to not pick combustion since it allows you to mass gather embers with a button click.

Since getting embers in such big numbers is easy, Burning Bernie cannot compete with Shadow/Lunar fire when it comes to bosses since they offer more value at lower effort. And honestly, generally speaking, it's not very great compared to regular Bernie for many bosses that attack infrequently like Dragonfly or for Bee Queen since grumble bees will eventually start completely ignoring him, meaning that combustion is the best way of keeping them away regardless. It's not too bad for Klaus, though.  

51 minutes ago, Nikki Darks said:

The skill is fine and the skill tree isn't "stagnant" because you can't have every skill you want.

I'm not saying that it's stagnant because I can't have whatever I want. I personally would love to have lunar flames with it but obviously that's not realistic. I'm saying that it's stagnant because Willow has very little incentive to use Burning Bernie due to all that she loses compared to what she gains which overall kills her skill tree variety completely. 

Despite how much you and I enjoy this perk the original point is that people do not use it at all. Lunar/Shadow fire Willow is much more appealing due to the restrictions I already named in the original post. I'm merely suggesting an improvement that makes it more compelling that does not require much effort.

[Swiyss]

Burning bernie in it's current state makes you give up on lunar blast or shadow fire.

So either make burning bernie more impactful and more deeply thought out or make us able to give up an ember skill cast to be able to have both burning bernie and lighter affinity spells. The latter is a horrible and lazy implementation in my opinion.

Klei should very simply just remove speed skills, shrink down regen and hp into one skill, add more interesting and interactable ones in their places and make bernie more of a controllable golem/protector; or a single summon helper/damage dealer.

I feel like if they don't take a second look into Willow and Wigfrid's skill trees imma be very very dissapointed.

[Frosty_Mentos]

Burning frenzy is a very reliable waveclear tool akin to abigail without the cost of embers if you're going to have a miniboss with thorn damage added to it as your pet. It's the peak addition that makes him quite useful for swarm enemies that getting lunar fire or shadow fire is a more DPS choice against single targets than one.

I played a lot of Willow and generally never had issues with that perk being as is. Generally, she became so safe with him that you could roll your face on the keyboard and win against most small and mid enemies. It's not as effective against bosses, sure, but that's not his point besides acting as a neat distraction.

Most QoL I'd give her is combine the lighter light range with firefighter and ember skills but that is all. ... I don't remember, can we sew Bernie in his full state or nah? Might be unbalanced if can.

[Catuna_]

17 minutes ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

Burning frenzy is a very reliable waveclear tool akin to abigail without the cost of embers if you're going to have a miniboss with thorn damage added to it as your pet. It's the peak addition that makes him quite useful for swarm enemies that getting lunar fire or shadow fire is a more DPS choice against single targets than one.

I played a lot of Willow and generally never had issues with that perk being as is. Generally, she became so safe with him that you could roll your face on the keyboard and win against most small and mid enemies. It's not as effective against bosses, sure, but that's not his point besides acting as a neat distraction.

You're kinda just listing what Bernie can do in general, being able to have bernie at all serves as a distraction for horde mobs. Again, you kind of want to farm embers, so you're going to spend embers regardless on combustion. When it comes to a horde, you'd be getting way more than you'd spend. If it's a single target, cast flame or your lighter works just fine and the mob would just be panicking at that point. 

Willow's safety as a character comes just from her inherent beginner friendly "foolproof" design rather than Burning Bernie itself. Obviously the perk does function fine and does what it tells you it does fine, but I feel that it is extremely lacking compared to the other two and that's reflected in how little people use it. Bernie is always a neat distraction with regeneration and planar entity protection, but the thorns powerboost does not compare to 750 AoE damage or 5x150 damage tendrils when you have to be very limited on which lighter perks to choose. 

 

[Popian]

2 hours ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

can we sew Bernie in his full state or nah? Might be unbalanced if can.

You can't sew BERNIE!, but carrying or dropping multiple Bernies will limit BERNIE!'s downtime and give the opportunity to repair a downed one.

It becomes a logistics problem to answer the questions of how many to bring, whether to have a dedicated slot for embers, whether to have access to the mats to craft more Bernies/Sewing Kits, whether to let Bernie decay to combine 2 into 1 in the long term, etc.

Edited Sunday at 10:38 PM by Popian

[Nikki Darks]

On 5/10/2026 at 6:38 PM, Catuna_ said:

Bernie already farms shadows for you as long as you invest into the sanity related perks, he will attack shadows that aren't even aggro'd on you yet while passively regenerating health and takes forever to seriously get chipped even if he deals less damage than he would if you're actively lighting him on fire. 

Can he farm shadows without the skill? Yes, of course.

Does he farm mobs and shadows a lot faster and more efficiently with the skill? Yes, of course.

[Nikki Darks]

On 5/10/2026 at 11:33 PM, Popian said:

You can't sew BERNIE!, but carrying or dropping multiple Bernies will limit BERNIE!'s downtime and give the opportunity to repair a downed one.

It becomes a logistics problem to answer the questions of how many to bring, whether to have a dedicated slot for embers, whether to have access to the mats to craft more Bernies/Sewing Kits, whether to let Bernie decay to combine 2 into 1 in the long term, etc.

You can't sew Bernie!... But! You can heal him with healing items for some reason. Healing salves, honey poultices, spider glands, etc, etc....

[mima_]

i dont have problem with burning bernie now but maybe what if we can light bernie and its turn into BERNIE! in an instant, no sanity threshold :3
 

[Gashzer]

Burning bernie build is the primary way i play Willow as an experienced player.

Its incredibly underrated, say goodbye to needing to farm an insane amount of embers! Saving you so much time!

Willow with burning bernie behaves like an upgraded, pro version of wendy. You can have increased burn time skill with burning frenzy while also having burning bernie/bernie shadow affinity, which burning frenzy does effect beefalo damage same as abigails hex!

But burning bernie is 100% better than abigail being able to tank entire hordes of nightmare creatures during nightmare phase in ruins without any other input by willow apart from casting catch flame on bernie every 20secs.

This is a far superior way to play Willow, flame spells and biden blast are fun but they are a lot less convenient to use requiring huge ember farming. A fully upgraded bernie with accelerant 2 and passive healing skills can consistantly outrun crawling horrors while keeping up with you on a beefalo, allowing  a net positive passive healing like abigail while also being always available to combat hordes with AoE, also stronger hordes that abigail cant deal with like bunnymen/nightmare creatures.

Bernie is, and has always been even before skilltree, Willow's strongest ability for a time-efficient/convenient playthrough.

 

Edited 2 hours ago by Gashzer

[Mysterious box]

While it's fine if people like it as is I do want to point out that if the goal is to handle smaller mobs and mini bosses that lighting those guys on fire already disables them from being threats and that lunar flames is still going to be much faster at dealing with shadows if it's still considered worth it despite that to each their own I guess.

[Gashzer]

1 hour ago, Mysterious box said:

While it's fine if people like it as is I do want to point out that if the goal is to handle smaller mobs and mini bosses that lighting those guys on fire already disables them from being threats and that lunar flames is still going to be much faster at dealing with shadows if it's still considered worth it despite that to each their own I guess.

Lunar flame requires manual input and farming of embers on the regular, even then it might not kill all of the 8 nightmare creatures that are attacking you from nightmare lights. Burning bernie kitted out with the right skills (speed 2 and health regen 2) all you need is light him on fire with a cheap 1 cast flame or a lighter for free. 

I can tell the willow noobs when they say the bernie speed skills are the least useful bernie skills when in fact are the most useful for having bernie out and self-repairing 24/7 as an upgraded abigail. If you need to make sewing kits for bernie then you are a noob willow. The speed 2 skill allows bernie to avoid the crawling horror that permanently chases him and allowing him to keep up with you on an battle saddle ornery beef.

Functionally lunar flame/combustion are far inferior to burning bernie for hordes outside of boss fights, inside of boss fights burning bernie kills nightmare creatures faster, resulting in burning bernie lasting longer during boss fights making using night armour/dreadstone armour/dark swords more viable for an insane willow to use during boss fights while also farming nightmare fuel for more darkswords/night armour, killing 2 birds with 1 stone.

Im not saying i like burning bernie, im saying burning bernie is already better than lunar flames.

A lot better!