WEBBER Brainstorming thread (Well ok I got carried away and now its a full skilltree idea.)

Originally I started writing bulletpoints here with the idea of having a few branch concepts to give people helpful ideas to start brainstorming, but 20 minutes later I realize I now have enough points for a whole tree. Feel free to drop skill replacements in because well, I'm no authority on what webber should be. I wanted to get the start of a skilltree idea going to get other people spitballing on what they want, not a full tree.

Well so here is what I'm thinking. Webber could use skills that encourage him to do a few things: 

1. Control spider populations globally to prevent lag.
2. Inspire you to make interesting armies of fewer, stronger spiders to be less likely to lag out the server.
3. Mixes a coherent survival strategy with some greedy combat tools, giving webber more power to live more sustainably off of morsels and giving him a natural enemy/rival in the rabbit king. For gameplay purposes and character flavor.

Ideally this would come with an update that reworks spider queen to have more interesting spawn conditions so the lag isn't exponential with longer world times due to spider queen multiplication being forever.

A TLDR: I thought of three branches.

• Webcraft: Portable spider storage, a few cute powers, crafting synergies with trapping/boomerangs, and some weapons designed to work with the spider front line. Has a bonus for making den decorations less of a pain to maintain.
• Synergies: Better spider behavior, and powers focusing around making vanilla spiders stronger when they work together. Bonuses for keeping the number of spiders in the world down by making it so spiders are stronger when fewer are left alive. Eating your own switcherdoodles for bonuses.
• Secret spiders: Switcherdoodles Spiders which don't exist naturally, these combine some combat power with utility, or resource creating perks. While you might use vanilla spiders for pure DPS, these spiders are also useful for day to day survival tasks.

I've also noticed that people have fatigue with purely post rifts affinities, so I've tried to design affinity skills so they have a weaker pre-rifts version with a rifts era-upgrade.

• Webcraft branch: A mix of storage options for spiders and a number of weapons to help webber hunt for morsels more efficiently. Its more structured than the other two branches but generally consists of single skills that fan out into a selection of useful skills.
  • Webby hivesack: Learn to craft a backpack from spider eggs, Has 6 slots alongside 8 special slots that are dedicated to caring for spiders. Spiders in these slots have improved freshness. The hivesack may be used to call spiders in the world into the hive sack and deploy spiders in the hivesack out, If you have both in and out of the sack, the spiders will trade places instead.
    • You can upgrade the hivesack with a spider queen helmet for extra capacity in standard slots and the ability to naturally heal stored spiders.
    • Dropped hivesacks will act as a rally point which spiders which are called off with a shoebox will guard.
  • Helpful Hivesacks: Can upgrade the hivesacks with shells, beefalo wool, or straw to gain small amounts of protection from the elements. (Rain, Cold, or Heat.) Upgrades give small amounts of armor (15-25%,) and can be shaved off to revert them to a standard hivesack (Which they will also do when broken.)
    • The protection of upgrades is increased with the spider queen hivesack.
  • Baby Brawlers: A trio of baby spiders can be summoned by feeding the hivesack when you have no other spiders. They last for two minutes before returning home, and deal minor damage to enemies which are aggroed on webber without being able to draw aggro themselves.
    • One regular spider is spawned with the baby brawlers with the queen hivesack.
  • Silky snare: Learn to craft silky snares that work for both land creatures and birds. You may repair these with silk at a great discount.
  • Boomerang master: Auto catch boomerangs and learn a cheaper recipie that uses 3 wood instead of a plank, and drops the coal requirement. (This is an allusion to how the boomerang with animation canceling is often used to control spiders and make them attack certain targets.) Possible midgame boomerang upgrade but IDK.
  • Woofer Whip: Learn to craft a whip from houndsteeth, glands, and webs. This whip does 33 damage but has a venom that makes enemies vulnerable to spider weapons damage (25%.)
    • Shadow Smasher: Learn to craft a slow swinging bat of nightmare infused webs (Like the cork bat.) This bat swings slowly and does bonus damage in an area if its swung after another weapon was used. This bat may be infused with pure horror to grant it planar damage after the rifts open. This is designed to fit more of a hybrid playstyle where you use multiple weapons.
    • Shard Slasher: Learn to craft a fang and moon shard dagger, it has a spool up mechanic where it swings faster and faster if swung uninterrupted. It can be upgraded with brightshade at the brightsmithy. This dagger may also be used to shave animals. This gives you better overall DPS for encouraging a high commitment melee style.
  • BRANCH  BONUS: Webcraft expert.
    • Den decorations will repair themselves after one day when they are broken by player hostility.
    • Den decorations don't break when spiders are struck by always hostile mobs.
• Spider Synergies branch: Incentives to bring interesting and smaller groups of spiders. Acts like a grab bag after the first skill, webby honorguard is taken. 
  • Webby Honorgaurd: Spiders gain increased attack interval when fewer then 8 loyal spiders are deployed. Spider warriors and basic spiders get the biggest boost while spitters gain the smallest.
  • Combat nurses: Nurses gain a spit attack so long as there are more spitters than nurses in the party. Spitting spiders try harder to avoid the front lines.
  • Shattered shield: The explosions from shattered spider crystals heal nearby cave spiders and cause cave spiders to block attacks aimed at nearby spiders briefly.
  • Dazzling Danglers: Dangling spiders will coat nearby spiders with web armor when not in combat, giving them 35% protection when hit for 150 durability.
  • Spinning Striders: Striders get enraged when nearby allied spiders are hit, allowing them to do a spin attack similar to the skittersquid.
  • BRANCH  BONUS: Behaved bodyguards: (2 skills taken) Loyal spiders will wait a few seconds staring eagerly for permission when meat is dropped, staring longingly at the items they wish to eat. Blowing the webby whistle while spiders are waiting gives you sanity and makes your spider friends feast away.
  • Locked skill: Back from the brink (5 skills taken): You and all spiders gain increased stats when there are few surviving nests in the world, gaining assertive looking eyebrows when your kind are nearing extinction (<5 regular nests left in the shard.) This gives you and all your spider friends increased HP,  you gain some sanity aura resistance while they gain even more attack interval.
  • Sharing Switcherdoodle: You may eat Switcherdoodles. While you have basic spiders in your party, you share them with your friends. You and up to two spider friends gain a temporary transformation where you may use that spiders ability. Temporarily transformed spiders get the large attack interval boost of smaller spiders. Gain sanity when sharing.
    • Temporary transformations act like an ability with a finite amount of charges on right click. These abilities include the cave spider block, shattered spider slam, spitting, heals, the warrior leap, and the like. Some transformations like cave spiders and striders use their respective skills ability instead of their default natural ability.
    • Monster crockpot foods heal charges of your current transformation.
• Secret spiders branch: Learn to craft spiders not naturally found in the constant. Combining a little combat, utility, and resource generation features in a unique way. Structured like a grab bag with few dependencies.
  • Wooferdoodle: Learn to craft a hound like spider. Spiderhounds are surprisingly non-aggressive but their good behavior has its benefits, fetching items which webber is already carrying partial stacks of, and occasionally shedding fangs at an extremely slow rate. They are aggressive only when beardlings, bunnymen, the rabbit king, or nightmare splumonkeys are near, but are strong fighters against these opponents.
    • Gain bonus damage and sanity from using the rabbit kings cudgel.
    • Gain wonky style movement and a decent unarmed bite when you eat a wooferdoodle with Sharing Switcherdoodle. Both the bite and the run slowly run down your transform. The bite is super effective against rabbits.
  • Geckodoodle: Learn to craft grass spiders which drop grass when hurt over time. Grassy spiders boast decent toughness and great natural self healing out of combat. When they shed they emit a pulse that stuns nearby enemies but does no damage.
    • Gain the power to shed for crowd control when you eat a geckodoodle. Gain a speed bonus after shedding.
    • Can be shaved for non combat source of grass, but they won't let you repeatedly shave them without waiting a little or giving them treats.
    • Possible tilling behavior as a reference to webbers gorge appearance (Idea from dr webber.)
  • Griffadoodle: Learn to craft peacock avian spiders which can do a three target plume based tail attack on cooldown, these spiders occasionally drop feathers of their color when killing enemies with the slap. 
  • Weavers Den: Learn to craft weaver dens, weavers turn a number of neighboring trees into web traps which snare bug-net and bird cageable entities, putting them in an internal inventory. Weavers which are given a bird had attract and catch birds at a far greater rate  for a few days. Unlike normal dens, these spiders feel no need to leave their silky homes and can't fight (No entities, just a well animated building.)
    • Weavers also give you silk in exchange for fish/large meats, which they have a hard time gathering on their own.
  • Locked Skill: Princessdoodle: Learn to craft a spider princess switcherdoodle with a spider queen helm. The spider princess may be used as a moderately fast mount and will automatically tame up to 3 spiders when you have no other spiders aside from her (Including friendly spiders in your inventory or chests.) Like other mounts ranged weapons can still be used while mounted, as can the webby whip.
  • • Healing her works similarly to how the eye of cthulu items are healed.
  • • Her royal authority weakens temporarily when you murder spiders in your inventory.
    • Attacks stronger, hits more targets, but swings slower when dismounted. Making her a mount which is sometimes better fighting when dismounted rather than mounted since your weapons + her cc is a better combo in some matchups, but not all of them.
    • Can be stored in a spider queen webpack but not the standard one.
    • Get embarassed and refuse to eat princessdoodles.
  • BRANCH  BONUS: Switcherdoodle expert: Learn to craft bonus switcherdoodles when switcherdoodles are made, minor spiders like striders get a larger number of switcherdoodles.
  • BRANCH  BONUS: Switcherdoodle master: Learn to infuse level 1 decorated nests with a switcherdoodle to allow 1-3 of a specialized spider types to reliably respawn. (Aside from the princess spider, whose throne you can take her too to heal her if she gets knocked unconcious, but she won't respawn passively.)
  • Something regarding shadow affinity spiders that can see nightmares and help you fight, upgrades in shadow rifts with pure horror. 
  • Something regarding strengthening shattered spiders with moon shard fangs for tougher, higher hp and damage spiders, and giving them the power to pacify gestalts temporarily when fed pure brilliance.