Shadow PeaShooter upgrade

I'm going to be controversial here and say that IMHO Shadow Peashooter isn't that great. It certainly does not live up to the hype. Mine is now at level 10, but despite that I'm still underwhelmed by it.

Okay, it has multiple abilities:-

[1] - Fires a laser once powered by Moonflower, but the beam isn't as strong as Laser Bean's.

[2] - Like Grimrose it swallows zombies that pass over it, but I've found that it more often than not fails to do so with fast moving zombies. EG Chickens, Charging Bulls, and irate Newspaper zombies. All it does with them is hide until they've gone past. During Battlez it sometimes even failed to drag slower zombies down.

[3] -  It hides far too soon. As soon as a zombie even gets within the square in front of it, it stops firing and hides and becomes next to useless - especially when it fails to drag that zombie down. (It's MEANT to drag down up to 3 zombies when powered up, but that's doubtful - at least in my experience.) That makes it a plant that should always remain right at the back of any defence, where the zombies will not get close.

[4] - The Plant Food effect may look spectacular, but, like Strawburst's PF effect, it's more for show than for its effectiveness.

For the above reasons, Shadow Peashooter makes me think of the old saying that goes "Jack of all trades, but master of none."

As well as all this, I find that Shadow Peashooter makes the game-play slow down. I get it in both Battlez and Adventure Mode.

Because it fires so many projectiles Dusk Lobber is known for causing game slowdowns, but, at least for me, Shadow Peashooter is worse.

During its dedicated week I tried SP as a means of stopping the early chickens, mainly because it refreshes more quickly than Dusk Lobber. In as much as it DID stop many of them, I suppose it did its job pretty well. However, even having a few of them active meant I had to go to turbo mode to make the game run at a reasonable speed. 

As the matches progressed I got more Dusk Lobbers out. Because Dusk Lobbers cover three lanes, rather than just one, I removed the few Shadow Peashooters I had planted. Lo and behold, the game got faster.

*

No doubt others may disagree with me, but after all its hype I was expecting far more from SP than I got.

HMMMMMMplemann, i think you're right about shadow peashooter not being all it's cracked up to be.

I noticed it vanishing when pirates swung near it and it's laser didn't always kill chickens even when levelled up, just ask my caulipowers (you could ask the survivors).

And don't get me started on the cost to upgrade it.

Perhaps thEAy will develop a shadow threepeater in your honour and we can call it Humplemann's threepeater!

I guess it will still be a good alternative to DL in Battlez containing Jester zombies 🙂

I have found it to be pretty good for many world levels but not the greatest choice for this past week's BattleZ challenge. Slowed down the Zombies too much !!

I tried to keep an open mind about SP, and try it out in different situations but I'm convinced now that there is no situation that I don't already have another plant that will do a better job.

I'm sorry I spent even a minute trying to get seed packets and level it up - its just not that great.

The fact that it takes itself out of the battle is the most annoying thing of all.  Sometimes you need a plant to stand there and fight to the death sucking up damage, slowing attackers and dealing out damage as it goes down fighting.

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@TempJmag wrote:

I tried to keep an open mind about SP, and try it out in different situations but I'm convinced now that there is no situation that I don't already have another plant that will do a better job.

I'm sorry I spent even a minute trying to get seed packets and level it up - its just not that great.

The fact that it takes itself out of the battle is the most annoying thing of all.  Sometimes you need a plant to stand there and fight to the death sucking up damage, slowing attackers and dealing out damage as it goes down fighting.

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I have gone past the point of maintaining an open mind regarding the Shadow Peashooter. I believe it to be, on the whole, pretty useless.

Except for when it was made Plant Of The Week, I have never used it in Battlez. I have only used it a few times in Adventure mode and each time it has been found lacking in comparison to F2P plants.

To me, it was over-hyped and most definitely way too expensive to anyone who fell for the 25 gems for just 10 seed packets rip off.

If it's an example of how good, bad, or indifferent any further shadow plants will be, I for one won't even bother to get them.

Using it with First Strike at the end of a challenge can be very beneficial

Slowing down the Zombies can be a drawback in BattleZ but it is helpful in Adventure node.