Board Thread:Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time/@comment-4804333-20140211150305

Now we all know that the Laser Bean would highly likely be a new plant that would come out in the Far Future update so to drum up some interest, let's make up some possible stats and weigh in the pros and cons of the plant.

What we know about the plant already:

1. It fires a laser down the entire lane it is planted on.

2. It hits all zombies on the lane.

3. It's characteristics are a combination of the bloomerang and the Fume-shroom (i.e. It is deadlier the more enemies it's up against like the fume-shroom but has a larger range than the fume-shroom though not a very high damage output plant)

What we don't know:

1. How much damage each shot deals and it's firing rate

2. The cost of the plant as per it's use.

3. Specific uses on Far Future.

So let's make up some stats and weigh in the possible uses of this plant on the levels we already have (i.e. Ancient Egypt, Pirate Seas and the Wild West):

Damage output:

1 NDS per second per zombie (bascially it fires the same rate as a peashooter would) or,

0.5 NDS per second per zombie or,

1 NDS every 2 seconds per zombie...

Cost:

If the average damage output per zombie per second is 1 NDS per second per zombie it should cost roughly 250-300 sun.

The price should be reduced slightly if the laser beams do thaw out chilled zombies.

If the damage is around 0.5 then the cost should be roughly 150-250 sun.

Pros:

It's a very effective filter plant. A filter plant as defined by me as a plant that deals more damage the more zombies it's up against. 2 on each row can easily help to thin out weak but important zombies on a map or it could help to always target other zombies that need time for it to be effective.

Cons:

It still doesn't do a lot of damage overall, especially if it's up against heavily armoured zombies. Sure it can help reduce the amount of munchers on the field but it needs good backup for the plant to properly work it's magic. Filter plants like the snapdragon and spikes will always leave tougher zombies standing therefore other high burst damage plants like the bonk choy or repeater can focus on the heavily armoured targets left over. Some strategies may become very ineffective if the lasers do thaw enemies.

Uses on current levels:

Ancient Egypt: It's great against Camel Zombies but it's most important use is against Explorer zombies especially if there are heavily armoured zombies already in front of it that block the damage from the burst fire type plants.

Pirate Seas: Very useful against Barrel Roller Zombies and Imp Cannons. In a previous post, I complained how spawned zombies acted as meat shields for the imp cannons until they've exploded. Now with the laser bean, this threat is heavily negated. As the imp cannons will always take damage.

Wild West: Zombie Chickens! Of course it won't have the ability to arc damage to other zombies in the other lanes which still makes spikes and lightning the best plants to use against chickens. Also, it suffers from having a very high sun cost compared to spikes and lightning reed. In general not much use anywhere else in Wild West other than the chickens.

There you have it, what do you guys think? 