Ok I know this is really soon out of the gate to be making a post but I need to get this off my chest.
I'm pretty much entirely disappointed in the news in Willow's rebalance, and I want to explain why. As someone with about 1700 hours playing both Don't Starve Willow and Don't Starve Together Willow I have the authority (at least on some level) to appraise the rework.
What I was hoping for was a rebalance that gave Willow that unique fire-based niche she has in Don't Starve, the niche which impacts all skill levels of players and all levels of the game (Willow has an absolutely incredible endgame in Don't Starve with Inventory Burning Arenas and FireFarms).
This niche is what made her fun, what made her interesting to play, and it's also the same concept of a niche that makes the other characters interesting to play, for example Wolfgang excelling in combat, or Wortox excelling in team heals and teleportation. Something unique that makes them enjoyable to play.
While others may disagree with me, I think there's no question that Willow's Fire Immunity coupled with her infinite lighter and Inventory burning gave her that incredible niche in Don't Starve (also improved firefarms)
This is Don't Starve Willow in a nutshell:
I don't even necessarily need this in DST (although it imo would be perfect) all I'm arguing is that it's what made her fun, which in my opinion is what should really matter at the end of the day.
But instead of this fun unique niche we got this:
Since it may not be obvious, especially to newcomers to the games why this isn't good, I'll break down each point and explain the issues I find with them, then wrap it up in explaining why these even combined don't help the issue.
- For the first point, sure I'm glad insanity freezing is gone, it was admittedly kinda useless. It even got nerfed to the point it couldn't actually freeze the player outside of winter, making it a completely nonexistent downside to begin with, so its removal is a good thing.
- For the second point, this harkens what is arguably the most serious problem with this rework, the fact that this downside will only impact newer players (not to mention it sounds like something a mod character would have tacked on for no reason, even if it is logical for Willow).
- The third point is identical to the second in that it'll literally only impact beginner players in any appreciable way, and also once again feels like something that would be thrown onto a mod character for no reason.
- The fourth perk: Why? Why no fire immunity? Why is that just too much to ask for? It's something I don't think I've ever heard someone say they have an issue with. Willow having fire immunity in no way increases griefing, and besides they shouldn't be balancing a character around griefing to begin with!
- The fifth perk: This no damage already was a thing, and was about as helpful as it sounds. Faster extinguish is absolutely useless unless you decided to run summer with no flingos for no reason. So this perk is a total wash.
- The fuel perk is negated because Maxwell exists, I'm sorry but it's true. When adding character perks it's important to consider whether or not another character already solves the problem (which isn't even a real problem except maybe to beginners). So this perk only maybe helps newer players.
- Bernie being equipped for Sanity and Warmth is cool and all but beefalo hats exist and Willow is a sanity tank thanks to her fire regen. I could see this perk maybe occasionally helping for very specific situations, overall not really game changing.
- The new Bernie perks do actually sound potentially interesting beyond that, and it's really telling that in my opinion the Bernie perks have the most potential out of all of this.
- And she keeps her previous perks, which honestly I'm completely neutral on, I'd be ok if they removed the cooking of the lighter at the cost of infinite durability, but that's another topic for another day?
So what's the takeaway from all of this? The takeaway is that none of these perks actually make her anymore fun to play and don't help anyone besides maybe new players, they're just kind of a cobbled mess that appears to be thrown together. Whether or not that's actually true I have no idea, but certainly if Klei can make Wortox they can do better than this for Willow, this is what I'd expect from a mod character's perk list. I would rather she have less perks and a real downside granted the perks actually matter for once, and impact all skill levels of players and all levels of gameplay. I want that niche that makes her great in Don't Starve.
I just want Willow to actually be decent again, to actually not get insulted and instabanned from servers for picking her, I've dealt with that for the past 3 years and I finally had some hope she'd be good again in this rework. However if this is what we're getting the reality is she'll be almost identical to her status now.