User blog:KamiOfWind/Prototype of a thingy

So I had the idea of making crude reviews of various things in Garden Warfare. Ranging from varients to alternate abilities, to maybe even entire loadouts. Idk.

ANYWAYS, this is a prototype review of the Dark Flower ability for the Sunflower! So lets begin.

Overview
The Dark Flower is an offensive replacement ability for the Heal Flower. Instead of periodically generating sundrops to heal teammates and the Sunflower who deployed it, the Dark Flower shoots red lasers at zombies who near it, each laser dealing at maximum 5 damage. It shoots in round bursts, and is highly accurate.

Stage One: Practicality
Whether or not a Dark Flower is useful depends on your playstyle. It lacks all healing capabilities of its stock counterpart, and has rather limited range. As such, players who like to hang around with Cacti and/or use their Heal Flower as a last resort heal shouldn't use the Dark Flower. However, the damage it deals can be very useful, especially to offensive Sunflowers. Unlike a standard Heal Flower, Summonable Zombies can not 1 shot a Dark Flower, meaning it's highly useful for a player looking to distract a pesky Browncoat Zombie or two.

Stage Two: Strengths
The Dark Flower is comparable to a Gunslinger Mini Sentry in Team Fortress 2. While it can cause quite a bit of havoc, it is highly temporary, and is mostly offensive instead of defensive. The damage it deals isn't high enough to be useful in zombie hotspots, but it is just high enough to pick off weakened zombies. The Dark Flower fires in short, low damaging, yet highly accurate round bursts. It can serve as a distraction or can kill off an enemy that has recently vanquished you if it has been ignored.

Stage Three: Weaknesses
As stated above, the Dark Flower has absolutely no healing capabilities. Stray shots that hit allies do not heal them, nor are any sundrops generated. This is often seen as a dealbreaker, as most Sunflowers are played as a support healing class exclusively. The Dark Flower also has quite limited range, and any sniper can easily pick one off without opposition from the Dark Flower itself. It also is inneffective with groups, as not only is its damage light, but it can only target one enemy at once. Even just a duo of Summonable Zombies will have no problem vanquishing a Dark Flower.

Stage Four: Comparison
The Heal Flower and its devilish counterpart are quite hard to compare, as they are almost complete opposites. Firstly, the Dark Flower has more health, and can survive a bite without dying, unlike the standard Heal Flower. There is also no longer term version for the Dark Flower, unlike the Heal Flower which has a greatly improved potted plant version that has an unlimited natural lifespan, and much better healing capabilities. The less accurate Laser Bean could be seen as the Dark Flower's equivalent to this, however. Finally, the Dark Flower is arguably less noticable than its light cousin, despite its black petals which contrast with most GW enviroments, it doesn't ever produce the highly visible and bright sundrops that the Heal Flower creates.

Stage Five: Final Thoughts
Overall, the Dark Flower can be seen horrible for medic Sunflowers or perhaps amazing for more offensive players. Overall, neither is better than the other, it is all about preferences. The Dark Flower is superior to the Heal Flower in some circumstances, yet inferior in others. All in all, the Dark Flower is, in my honest opinion a sidegrade to its stock counterpart.