whats the consensus of wendy from chinese players nowadays?

[nimzowitsch10]

I know when she first got her skill tree every Chinese dst player started complaining online, im curious how they feel about her now?

[Cassielu]

Same as then. The worst skilltree, on par with that of Wig and Wilson.

Seriously, what are you expecting? After more people had a deeper experience with it, they merely confirmed that it was indeed a failed skill tree.

Edited July 4 by Cassielu

[Cruvimaster]

Only those dissatisfied with something show up here on the forum. What really matters is the objective data on how many people choose Wendy over the other characters—and the developers surely have a record of that.

[Jakepeng99]

I also kinda want to know what they actually wanted.

[YouKnowWho142]

I’m not a Chinese player but I’ve appreciated the skill tree more and more for having a lot of skill expression compared to other characters. I think a common trend with other skill trees is that they make characters stronger but don’t really make an effort to raise the skill ceiling on those characters. Wigfrid is a good example, she is an extremely easy character who only became even easier after the skill tree.

Wendy’s commands and new forms offer a way to play her that feels rewarding to pull off and very skillful to accomplish, when otherwise I would’ve easily not given her a chance if the skill tree gave her nothing but raw power. She went from a character that felt impossible to play due to how beginner focused she was to a character I want to constantly improve with, and that feels pretty healthy. A lot of stuff in her skill tree won’t be too useful for newer players who often won’t use elixirs, commands, sisturn, etc, but for veterans it lets you bring out her max potential as long as you play into it, and that’s what I find so enticing, and it should be the purpose of skill trees to push players into mastery of a character.

i obviously have a few nitpicks though, it will definitely be one of the tweaked skill trees that Klei mentioned will probably happen

Edited July 3 by YouKnowWho142

[Walrusst]

2 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

I also kinda want to know what they actually wanted.

I remember seeing a lot of people who were upset and asking for more survivability when the wreaths ability to give her your chest armor was taken away.

TBF, we do have tank minions in other trees from stuff like Bernie, but mixing abby's raw up front area damage with that tankyness is a slippery slope if you just had it be unlimited and free.

I kinda have thought about this and I think there is a way to make the survivable Abby a timed ability you use in the harder fights instead of just a freebie. Like, you limit your use of her to gain extra power instead of just leaving her on and having an infinite lifespan tank.

[Well-met]

They are still forever mad about it

[Teaose]

On 7/4/2026 at 4:14 AM, YouKnowWho142 said:

I’m not a Chinese player but I’ve appreciated the skill tree more and more for having a lot of skill expression compared to other characters

All of this skill expression comes from 4 skill points in the team spirit line. These are the arguably the only skill points that matter excluding affinities. 
The skill tree still lacks actual good diversity that makes players make hard choices like Wortox, WX or Walter. 

Ultimately, pipspook quest and Brews skill lines serve the same purpose of getting more potions. I say this because most mourning glories are exclusively spent on potions, and of the potions most players will probably be using a only few particular ones for boss fights. If players aren't using cycling many potions on day-to-day survival, picnic casket becomes a solution to a problem that most will never encounter. Up to 7 skill points of could be spent here, that's 36% of the skills on the tree excluding affinities. 

Blessed sisturn line is a skill sink for experienced players, as most do not use sisturns for sanity nor find low sanity to be a blight anyways. The capstone effect of giving abby player tag doesn't matter if you are skilled in controlling abby from those skills. 

Wreath line seems good in theory, but the utility outside healing is outcompeted by other head slot items despite having a relatively limited duration. That being said, it does force you to choose other headslots or it, which I like. Reviving butterflies for shadow abby requires mourning glories, or players could just craft a new bug net and catch some bees?

Vengeful ghost is something.

The gravestone skills give players ways to use graves effectively, that's a good niche! Bigspooks are bad fighters though.

Excluding affinities, that is 36% of the tree on mourning glory/potion gathering, 16% on sisturns (sanity), 16% on wreath line (mourning glory sink for bad pay-off), 5% on vengeful ghost, 10% on graves, 16% on abby commands.

IDK, but if 16% of the skills are a must pick for skilled play and everything else is a meh choice, the skill tree doesn't rlly look like a tree, just a skill branch. To me, a good skill tree should make players make hard choices because most skill points are equal, not some skill points are more equal than others. 

[Walrusst]

1 hour ago, Teaose said:

Blessed sisturn line is a skill sink for experienced players, as most do not use sisturns for sanity nor find low sanity to be a blight anyways. The capstone effect of giving abby player tag doesn't matter if you are skilled in controlling abby from those skills. 

The gravestone skills give players ways to use graves effectively, that's a good niche! Bigspooks are bad fighters though.

To be fair, really good newbie facing skills are good for a character that is specifically recommended to newbies.
The gravestones working as both a afk mob farm and a nightmare fuel farm from the flowers is kinda funny NGL.

Most skill trees are like 7 meta skills for your damage supply then you grabbing utilities though. Wx kinda being an odd one because he hypothetically only needs like 6 points to really start saturating on power (Affinity, extra slot, alpha, gamma,) but his ingame grind suffers for this flexibility.
The "Much better" walter skill tree has people taking two slingshot upgrades (Rate of fire), three ammo upgrades and then two speed upgrades before you softcap on combat ability. 
You can focus on utility (Frames that help you inflict status effects or save 1 bullet hunting weak mobs,) sanity management (hat/campfire,) resource gathering (Woby skills,) resource cost reductions, other player support, utility, or maybe a little more speed.

Its pretty much the same deal of seven power play skills then picking toys that you play with off to the side. Do you want to minmax the shortest grind possible or do you decide to play with gimmicky self drinking potions? Sanity management buff? Easier Abby health management? Funny farming buildings/turrets? A nice general purpose hat that lets you handle a small handful of situations better?

Do you take general purpose skills on walter like less expensive rope or play with a gimmicky fire that lets you heal teammates sanity slightly? Slightly more jerky despite having the worlds cheapest drying racks? Do you want every ammo despite only 3-5 seeing common use? A nice general purpose hat that lets you handle a small handful of situations better?

Edited July 5 by Walrusst

[Teaose]

^Good points that I did not consider, especially of the skill tree being more faced towards new players

 

I guess when you put it that way, my gripe with Wendy's skill tree is that the "toys" do not provide a large enough boon for their cost to actively integrate them into your playstyle. 

[Walrusst]

12 minutes ago, Teaose said:

^Good points that I did not consider, especially of the skill tree being more faced towards new players

 

I guess when you put it that way, my gripe with Wendy's skill tree is that the "toys" do not provide a large enough boon for their cost to actively integrate them into your playstyle. 

Most of the toys we got in both trees were player suggestions during the beta.
I asked for the portable drying rack/campfire, Abby being able to haunt things for you as an order was also someones suggestion IIRC. (As was moving graves I think.)

Toy skills got added with a pretty high % rate during the beta.

[Cassielu]

On 7/4/2026 at 4:14 AM, YouKnowWho142 said:

A lot of stuff in her skill tree won’t be too useful for newer players who often won’t use elixirs, commands, sisturn, etc, but for veterans it lets you bring out her max potential as long as you play into it, and that’s what I find so enticing, and it should be the purpose of skill trees to push players into mastery of a character.

A truly experienced player will easily realize that the return on investment of putting effort into these things is terrifyingly low compared to most other aspects of the game. Her "maximizing potential" will not exceed the B tier, this fact is so obvious that people cannot ignore it. She can't provide enough enjoyment to make player think mastery her is worthy, only make who use these skills look like a funny clown.

Edited July 5 by Cassielu

[YouKnowWho142]

19 minutes ago, Cassielu said:

A truly experienced player will easily realize that the return on investment of putting effort into these things is terrifyingly low compared to most other aspects of the game. Her "maximizing potential" will not exceed the B tier, this fact is so obvious that people cannot ignore it. She can't provide enough enjoyment to make player think mastery her is worthy, only make who use these skills look like a funny clown.

I’ve done three all boss runs with Wendy since the skill tree and I enjoyed it a ton each time. I’ve played with all of her skills and gotten value out of all of them. Getting a stack of mourning glories in under a day isn’t difficult and it can last you several bosses and encounters. I think her gameplay loop is a lot more fun than most others to me because it takes more effort to bring out her max potential, and it feels satisfying and fun to pull it off. You cannot push your opinion as an objective fact, and I definitely won’t let you treat people like they’re stupid for enjoying a character their own way.

 

 

Edited July 5 by YouKnowWho142

[Cassielu]

1 minute ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

You cannot push your opinion as an objective fact.

Its a theory better than "they just don't understand" to explain the objective fact is that a still large number of players who are proficient in the game are dissatisfied with this tree.

[Walrusst]

I mean its simple, the type of character she was differed from their expectations. There is expectation debt at play here, so even if they gained something from this they can still experience a sense of loss because many of the players going into this expected something closer to what happens when weak characters get skill trees.

What happened instead was a cautious skilltree that made the character tryhardy for mid-high level players and shaved off a few of the downsides that only the weakest players would experience (Making abby take player damage makes seasonal bosses far less likely to kill her in unskilled hands, but good players weren't going to have this happen.)
So its a tree that satisfies speedrunner level players because its the exact kind of gameplay those people want where the gimmick feels like as much of a liability against end bosses as it is a boon and there is micromanagement for raw unfiltered power.

So. Its powerful, planar vex damage is strong, area damage is strong, causing fears is strong for a few of the most annoying bosses as is health regeneration effects. Its at odds with the fandom that previously willow and wendy had where they were more casual minion focused characters whose players wanted something more akin to the early game gameplay she had.
The end result is she is a strong and good character with a different audience than she once had.

Edited July 5 by Walrusst

[YouKnowWho142]

45 minutes ago, Walrusst said:

I mean its simple, the type of character she was differed from their expectations. There is expectation debt at play here, so even if they gained something from this they can still experience a sense of loss because many of the players going into this expected something closer to what happens when weak characters get skill trees.

What happened instead was a cautious skilltree that made the character tryhardy for mid-high level players and shaved off a few of the downsides that only the weakest players would experience (Making abby take player damage makes seasonal bosses far less likely to kill her in unskilled hands, but good players weren't going to have this happen.)
So its a tree that satisfies speedrunner level players because its the exact kind of gameplay those people want where the gimmick feels like as much of a liability against end bosses as it is a boon and there is micromanagement for raw unfiltered power.

So. Its powerful, planar vex damage is strong, area damage is strong, causing fears is strong for a few of the most annoying bosses as is health regeneration effects. Its at odds with the fandom that previously willow and wendy had where they were more casual minion focused characters who wanted something more akin to the early game gameplay she had.
The end result is she is a strong and good character with a different audience than she once had.

I think this is exactly how I’d put it. She is a very strong character the way she is now, but it doesn’t appeal at all to the people who liked her before the skill tree. I was one of the players who mained Wendy when starting off learning the game, but eventually she stopped appealing to me since she felt too noob friendly and unappealing to me after hundreds and now thousands of hours. Her skill tree now lets me play her a lot more seriously and adds elements I can minmax, toy around with, and learn and eventually master, and that’s why I appreciate it overall. I’ve never played a character in DST where I learned more and more about them the more runs I played them like I have with Wendy, and it makes her almost infinitely replayable and enjoyable to me.

Edited July 5 by YouKnowWho142

[Walrusst]

I'd still like to see one of the affinities have something for less skilled players so they get less frustrated, and I'd be happy if she got more "Toy skills" as well.
But I think its a very good tree that just has a different fandom than the core characters kit.

[Cheggf]

5 hours ago, Teaose said:

All of this skill expression comes from 4 skill points in the team spirit line. These are the arguably the only skill points that matter excluding affinities. 
The skill tree still lacks actual good diversity that makes players make hard choices like Wortox, WX or Walter. 

Ultimately, pipspook quest and Brews skill lines serve the same purpose of getting more potions. I say this because most mourning glories are exclusively spent on potions, and of the potions most players will probably be using a only few particular ones for boss fights. If players aren't using cycling many potions on day-to-day survival, picnic casket becomes a solution to a problem that most will never encounter. Up to 7 skill points of could be spent here, that's 36% of the skills on the tree excluding affinities. 

Blessed sisturn line is a skill sink for experienced players, as most do not use sisturns for sanity nor find low sanity to be a blight anyways. The capstone effect of giving abby player tag doesn't matter if you are skilled in controlling abby from those skills. 

Wreath line seems good in theory, but the utility outside healing is outcompeted by other head slot items despite having a relatively limited duration. That being said, it does force you to choose other headslots or it, which I like. Reviving butterflies for shadow abby requires mourning glories, or players could just craft a new bug net and catch some bees?

Vengeful ghost is something.

The gravestone skills give players ways to use graves effectively, that's a good niche! Bigspooks are bad fighters though.

Excluding affinities, that is 36% of the tree on mourning glory/potion gathering, 16% on sisturns (sanity), 16% on wreath line (mourning glory sink for bad pay-off), 5% on vengeful ghost, 10% on graves, 16% on abby commands.

IDK, but if 16% of the skills are a must pick for skilled play and everything else is a meh choice, the skill tree doesn't rlly look like a tree, just a skill branch. To me, a good skill tree should make players make hard choices because most skill points are equal, not some skill points are more equal than others. 

You say that Wortox's skill tree is a good example of a skill tree that gives you choices, but you can analyze it exactly the same way as Wendy's skill tree. Of the 27 skills, 22% are making his healing better, 26% are for dealing AoE damage, 15% are for holding more souls, 15% are for increasing mobility, 7% are basically just for the representing bonus, and 11% are his pan flute skills.

Throughout his entire skill tree, only about a quarter of his skills are at all interesting. The vast majority of his skills are extremely boring things like "Souls move to you from further away", "Souls heal from a further range", "Souls heal from a further range", "Souls linger for longer before despawning". Almost all of his perks are the most boring things ever invented. Wendy's skills are way better. Even if you want to downplay their usefulness, at least a useless and unique skill is better than a useless and boring skill. 

[Baark0]

My interest in playing Wendy has remained exactly the same as it has since bosses started knocking you off beefalo, which is to say I'd rather play just about any other character in the game. I've also since grown to dislike ornery beefalo as the 45% minimum obedience they have is really obnoxious, and playing as Wendy without a beefalo sucks. Her skill tree changed nothing, as the only cool skills are gestalt Abigail (trade valuable AoE damage for more single target damage) and Shabigail (very cool visually but doesn't really add much to Wendy or Abigail's playstyle, also kinda annoying to use since you need to catch a bunch of critters).

The extra commands seem helpful, but I don't really like micromanaging other creatures, especially when its very important for keeping Abigail alive during bosses. I also really dislike the player tag effect since it nerfs your healing for no reason, effectively making it a net neutral change at best (and if the enemy doesn't do increased mob damage than its a straight nerf to Abigail's survivability, unless you desummon her for some reason but that's even more micromanagement when I could instead just play WX and spin all over the place). The wreath seems cool but there's only like two actually useful potions, the vengeful player ghost skill is a gimmick at best, reviving butterflies is frankly way too expensive imo, and relocating graves is something I genuinely can't see myself ever using for anything other than more convenient pipspook farming.

Oh my god I completely forgot about how much I dislike farming mourning glory, even with the skills that make it take less time and give more glories. Pipspooks are genuinely my most hated character specific gimmick, since it causes stupid ghosts to spawn from gravestones and drain your sanity even when you're not playing as Wendy. The minigame sucks too and is really time consuming for how little is actually going on.

[Teaose]

3 hours ago, Cheggf said:

The vast majority of his skills are extremely boring things

If you want to downplay the uniqueness of wortox's skills, his skills would be boring but effective. 

I do not feel like arguing on your stance of wortox. Just want to point out Wendy's skill tree still has value changes like in sisturn line, pipspook line, etc. Yet on wortox I would want more skill points, on Wendy I could use only 10 and feel no significant changes.

[Mysterious box]

12 hours ago, Teaose said:

If you want to downplay the uniqueness of wortox's skills, his skills would be boring but effective. 

I do not feel like arguing on your stance of wortox. Just want to point out Wendy's skill tree still has value changes like in sisturn line, pipspook line, etc. Yet on wortox I would want more skill points, on Wendy I could use only 10 and feel no significant changes.

I mean they aren't really downplaying it at all I wouldn't call either character boring but this is definitely a grass looks greener situation.

Wortox has

4 skills that are just about improving his souls healing functionality

3 skills that just say we make your soul hop better one of which just makes the echo last 50% longer

3 skills towards making a better telltale heart

3 skills towards his version of Wendy's basket

3 panflute skills one of which has a worthless effect

Most of these are passive number changes as well.

 

In the case of Wendy many of her skills have a decent use case as well it just comes down to actually making use of them.

[Walrusst]

Its sort of amazing how long the arguments from when these three were in beta have continued in perpetuity.

[Mysterious box]

12 minutes ago, Walrusst said:

Its sort of amazing how long the arguments from when these three were in beta have continued in perpetuity.

To be fair this was just op seeing if people still felt the same rather than the argument continuing...I hope. I will say my opinion has changed on how I look at them after all this time but that's probably for another topic.

[Cassielu]

4 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

To be fair this was just op seeing if people still felt the same rather than the argument continuing...I hope. I will say my opinion has changed on how I look at them after all this time but that's probably for another topic.

No, I don't have the same feeling. Wortox has always been the skilltree that I consider one of the best.

Apart from the fact that four of the skills on the Soul Bastion line were a bit messed up, its simple skills are merely superficially unremarkable but effectively contribute to the real change in a certain way. It's clear to see how much the entire gameplay has been changed, from the guides before and after the update, They have brought about greater changes with fewer alterations, which is the so-called resultful change.

  

Returning to the topic of Wendy, to a large extent, she is the opposite. Superficially there seem to be many things, but in the end, there are almost no changes in the gameplay. This is somewhat like a classic prank scenario - you make a simple matter overly complicated to confuse someone, and then finally tell them that none of it matters at all. Make this tree particularly irritating.

Edited July 6 by Cassielu

[linabagel]

Just trivial.