A massive data-fetching feedback Analysis of each character's skill-tree update, based form various platform.

[Jakepeng99]

On 6/30/2026 at 2:37 PM, NNOUS said:

Wendy — highest share of "new" nodes, but the headline additions (the three Abigail commands) are widely considered redundant gimmicks, and the tree never touches her real combat weakness. Max novelty, minimum payoff.

this just seems really bias. The Abigail commands are some of her strongest parts, also removing points for the skilltree not removing her downside? Abigail already negates the damage downside. 
 

It just makes the list pointless if you were unhappy with the original results and then just add bias.

 

[DimokKio]

42 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

this just seems really bias. The Abigail commands are some of her strongest parts, also removing points for the skilltree not removing her downside? Abigail already negates the damage downside. 
 

It just makes the list pointless if you were unhappy with the original results and then just add bias.

 

To be fair, your words are just as subjective as the author's words that you are disputing. Nobody can't objectively evaluate a skill unless it provides a flat + or +% boost to a stat; the usefulness of all other skill types is already judged with bias."

[Jakepeng99]

9 hours ago, DimokKio said:

To be fair, your words are just as subjective as the author's words that you are disputing. Nobody can't objectively evaluate a skill unless it provides a flat + or +% boost to a stat; the usefulness of all other skill types is already judged with bias."

Ye though there isnt any data they used. Im just trying to speak generally since Pro Wendy plays i have seen preach about how amazing the scare skill is and i have seen it in their hands.

[Cassielu]

3 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Ye though there isnt any data they used. Im just trying to speak generally since Pro Wendy plays i have seen preach about how amazing the scare skill is and i have seen it in their hands.

The "amazing" you mentioned did not come from Wendy herself. Instead, it was the actions taken by those pros to make Wendy's poor skill set work, because she had the highest practice cost and the lowest tolerance for errors.

[Jakepeng99]

2 minutes ago, Cassielu said:

The "amazing" you mentioned did not come from Wendy herself. Instead, it was the actions taken by those pros to make Wendy's poor skill set work, because she had the highest practice cost and the lowest tolerance for errors.

Fear abilities in general are really powerful, you can stunlock most mobs.

[Walrusst]

Hence why i called this more a public sentiment poll.

Real data would actually be you know, in game, AB testing of whether or not an ability had a use, observing player habits in the wild.

Excessive padding on character buffs can be evaluated from space, but abilities are hard. Whether an ability is useful or can have an impact is not something that social media tends to capture well since if you treat it like a democracy a major portion of critical abilities for most players  will get called useless because players operate on differing levels of priority.

• Player A, B, C have their own pet skills they depend on and can use well.
• Player A, B, C all need to have skills that they aren't experienced with as insight gives them limited point budgets.
• Each player will rationalize their skill picks in a subjective light, but present their findings as if they were objective. (Player a will praise their skills but disown player B/C's skills, vice versa.)
• If a skill isn't so strong its a bread and butter option for all three dominating the game and becoming practically an insight tax and a base feature, about 40% of players will disown it (But people talking publicly will over-represent negative impressions, so we get an 80% negative feedback cycle at least here.)
• A large number of skills with a 33%-70% adopt rate now have public sentiments that are immensely tainted, despite a large player population gaining value from it.
• This largely is only averted for characters who at one point were miserable to play, as characters who were bad and now are in the runner to be one of the best so far have gotten limited skill hate brigades. When the discussion is whether or not every micro element is overpowered, obviously, you have hard time to claiming to be bad.

You'll still see people who are annoyed with playing strong characters, I really don't like how wx plays like a starcraft build order till day 30 and find the dynamics here feel kinda gross even if objectively its just a very long resource grind to overpowering the game so hard it can't even fight back. Its an experience not made for me even if the character is very clearly for a lot of people (And the grind is long enough that you could have beaten the game by the time you have a fully functioning wx and several specialized bodies....)

Other players main a character and dislike their skilltrees because they were strong, are strong, and just didn't get the same power spike from putting points in as they wanted as they didn't want skill expression, they wanted more power like the weak characters got because they were playing a character for it being powerful and easy. Obviously there is a contradiction of design and player intent from the character  mains here, but its not exactly because things are bad but the goals of a balanced game are at odds with what the players wanted in this case.
They probably couldn't have made the insight tree what wendy players wanted without doing things that insightless wendy genuinely painful.

I had fun using the attack command to hunt birds and butterflies and stuff because even the characters who have an easy time doing these things quickly don't get to do it for free, and its not like she can't be effective, it just takes effort like most characters do. Two of the abilities revolutionize bossfights for avoiding big damage phases and well, eliminating minions. So you have a branch thats good for hard encounters, normal survival, and one of the most generally useful skills there comes with fun side gimmicks. (Infinitely respawning pig warriors by having abagail haunt their torch is a fun gimmick tied to the side of a powerful status effect skill. Gimmicks can be fun on the side of powerful abilities.)

Edited July 3 by Walrusst

[Cassielu]

15 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Fear abilities in general are really powerful, you can stunlock most mobs.

To be precise, there are 110 different types of mobs you can scare. But how many of them are helpful? I'd say no more than seven.

Edited July 3 by Cassielu

[Walrusst]

4 minutes ago, Cassielu said:

To be precise, there are 110 different types of mobs you can fear. But how many of them are helpful? I'd say no more than seven.

There is 300 mobs you can kill with a spear but only 15 are common threats. (Excluding bosses.)

Like I understand that you don't value the fear of bunnymen, birds, and that random butterfly that ran by but that's because the mobs list is padded with things we find fun and non-threatening that act as world flavor, resource sources, or food.

[Prinha]

55 minutes ago, Cassielu said:

The "amazing" you mentioned did not come from Wendy herself. Instead, it was the actions taken by those pros to make Wendy's poor skill set work, because she had the highest practice cost and the lowest tolerance for errors.

What is a DST pro? The Winona main who has 1001 cheeses to autofarm most resources in the game? The speedrunner who can kill AFW on day 3 with their bare hands and a loincloth?

I'm not a pro, but I main Wendy. 
All of the command line skills are useful, easy to use and some of them are really fun. 
1) Escape is a well working "oh ****!" button that removes the necessity to unsommon Abigail in those "oopsie" moments. It doesn't share cd with the other commands, so it's always available. It can also be used to dodge boss skills, but I found that to be too much of a hassle and not needed while doing bosses.
2) Rile up and Soothe just moved into the command wheel, they are not new. Well they kinda are, because I do remember the time before we had them, but they have been around for a while. 
3) Attack here! is very useful to quickly reposition Abigail midfight, however I mostly use it so I don't have to wait for Abigail slowly catching up when I want to fight something. 
4) Scare is just FANTASTICALLY good, kind of op. Watch me slaughter clockworks in the ruins by the dozens without using any resources at all, just Wendy's moggle vision and a beefalo, while Abigail keeps the clockworks scared indefinitely. It can also be used to perma scare Klaus's deer or Dragonfly's larvae, but I'm lazy, not a pro, so I don't bother most of the time. These bosses die just fine without that.
5) Haunt is situational and dependent on how well the players knows what things can be haunted into. I mostly use it to activate hunts while on beefback, rather than having to unmount everytime. 

The only issue I have is with the DST UI in general. As I'm on PC I'd much prefer if the commands could be mapped to individual keys, rather than having to do multiple clicks. I also understand that this is just a side effect, because the UI wasn't designed with command wheels in mind originally. Wendy shares this issue with Maxwell and Willow and possible others that I forgot. I also know that there's a mod that allows you to do what I just asked for, but I have some reservations about using it, not a pro, you see?

[NNOUS]

On 7/2/2026 at 7:46 AM, DimokKio said:

Wendy cultists

Wedny cultist is an amazing word i love it
 

15 hours ago, DimokKio said:

To be fair, your words are just as subjective as the author's words that you are disputing. Nobody can't objectively evaluate a skill unless it provides a flat + or +% boost to a stat; the usefulness of all other skill types is already judged with bias."

My internet scan is bascially a sum of all ''people's opinion'' / amount of filler presented. the Data is biased cuz it just is, the Data is people's opinions.

I do see how this post would rub people the wrong way tho

Edited July 4 by NNOUS

[Walrusst]

I mean I'm not against us gathering data its just that presenting it as a quality ranking is the issue.
We have seen many cases of people proving a characters good, but this doesn't mean a characters mechanical design aligns with their fandom ideals. 

The only time I saw fans and klei get in perfect alignment was when, walter got a skill tree that made walter fans really happy because walter fans complained about having a pure combat insight tree and asked for the number of killing and tanking skills to get turned down and replaced with utility skills (He didn't lose much other than woby not getting scared of enemy attacks after you got beat up a lot in this process, he kept the slingshot upgrades but became a utility focused character,) and klei was really happy to make a skill tree that was less focused on meta power chasing and sanding away character weaknesses.

If you portrayed this less as a ranking and more as a public sentiment poll there wouldn't be as much of a negative fallout.
I'd love to see stats on skills someone found evidence of competent randos using in actual games online, as that would be a really good bit of data driven work.
Issue is this sort of player ecology study takes too much time and I'd not ask anyone to spend the time on that alone.

[Grove]

7 hours ago, Prinha said:

Haunt is situational and dependent on how well the players knows what things can be haunted into. I mostly use it to activate hunts while on beefback, rather than having to unmount everytime. 

Haunt can also be used to grab stuff from the sea by making Abby fling it towards you using attack at as well (doesn't work on bottles)

It can also turn off dwarf stars, starcaller, mooncaller, or Willow's. Which is a rare but very helpful use when you're in that situation.

It's weak but it's also not original, Haunt being weak is because it was something the community wanted and wasn't in the first tree. And it comes as an addition to scare, which is op as you said.

Edited July 4 by Grove

[Walrusst]

The haunt can be very funny if you get certain setpieces because you can force spawn pig warriors. Endless bacon.