I was looking forward to Winona being potentially a nice character, as before she was quite lackluster. Unfortunately from the get go, it was clear she still has glaring faults that sink her to bottom tier:
The hunger loss per craft is too crippling at 5 per craft. With the amount of crafting you do in the early game for every little thing, new tools, light sources, refining materials to go into larger crafts, you lose more hunger than a Wolfgang by comparison. If this were 2.5 hunger lost per craft, It would still be a decent penalty, but as it stands Winona's the biggest food vacuum right now. With the her slower crafting kicking in at 50 hunger, it only takes 18 crafts to drain 100 hunger. Paired with the standard hunger loss over time, it really is a little bit of an issue. There's also the possibility of increasing her hunger gauge from 150-200 as an alternative, but with that you run the risk of her having higher hunger overall when not crafting anything in the mid to late game. It's better to nerf the hunger loss per craft in my opinion.
Her Generator not being able to be turned off, this is something many find to be a large issue as well. It will drain within a day quite easily when hooked up to a meager 2 catapults while not really being used. I've seen that there is slight worry that it would be "too good" if you were able to turn it on/off or have an Emergency Mode, but I must disagree, for reasons I'll cover below with the Catapult itself. On top of that, it costs Nitre or Gems, making it quite difficult to refuel in the early game (Nitre isn't as plentiful as Rocks [materials] are, it could possibly use a buff to 3 Nitre dropped from each normal rock mining point, since Winona will be using so much of it now). There is also the option of making a Charcoal powered generator. Above all though, an off switch would likely be the best option.
The Catapult itself is sadly also lackluster, mostly due to its lack of accuracy. I know that it's meant to be a "power in numbers" type of unit, but the tracking on it isn't stellar for faster targets. It will airball on hounds / spiders that are chasing a player quite often, and might even be the primary target for the mob if there are no fences around it (Frog Rain possibly will be the largest destruction of Catapults). Rocks go into a fair amount of things early game for everyone on the server, so at 15 rocks per unit for something that isn't terribly accurate, I can't really justify making any over Tooth Traps- especially with how much fuel it drains. The Direct damage it does is the same as a spear, which is honest damage that I'm fine with, but it's still pretty inaccurate- since it doesn't end up getting a lot of direct hits, it might need a Splash Radius buff.
There is a lot of promise in Winona now, but in worrying about her becoming Overpowered, she's sadly still Underpowered. Clearly we don't want massive buffs that will break the game, but just a couple nudges here and there that will make her more balanced overall while still having her downsides.
Cheers for reading, as well as making such a fun game and keeping it updated, Klei. I hope that my input helps to make Winona a more well rounded character!
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