So assuming the Wii U gamepad isn't physically smashed or dropped in water, what usually fails? I see lots of Wii Us for sale with broken gamepads, so there must be a common problem with them.
Well you really don't know what happened to cause the gamepads to be broken, it could be have been a fall or dropped in water. I'm not aware of any major problems with gamepad failures just on their own, but maybe they could with age like any controller can.
i have the same wii u since 2013 and the only ''issue was a drift in the left analog that got solved after I cleaned it...
But really they don't typically fail. My friends never had problems with their wiiu's, but did with their 3ds's (broken or malfunctioning circlepads/cstick) and switch (overheating, analog drifts)
So assuming the Wii U gamepad isn't physically smashed or dropped in water, what usually fails? I see lots of Wii Us for sale with broken gamepads, so there must be a common problem with them.
The Wifi-Chip in the gamepad itself is dying a lot of times if you use Wifi & gamepad´s Wifi as well (Combined). That seems to tremendously lower the lifetime-expectancy of the WiiU Gamepad´s cheap and slow Wifi-chip.
You can easily replace this though, since it´s a clip-on-solution and it only costs 5$ for a replacement-part.
While both activities, docking and blaster modding, are broadly similar, in that they're both sticking my smaller tool into a bigger tool for fun and pleasure and make me shoot harder, the mod I have in mind involves a little more cutting and dremeling and hot glue.