Class Discussion: Cactus
On to cactus. I’m saving Peashooter and Foot Soldier for last from the original cast.
Cactus is a class that most love or hate. For me I like them, but on certain maps and capture points (like the Estate on Wall-Nut Hills), they can be super obnoxious. I don’t snipe all that often, but Cactus is certainly good at it, even with other classes being better at times, like Citrons back in the day in GW2. I know I bring that one up a lot, but having a frozen citron hide its hit box behind a rock while it has its weapon sticking out and freezing you at extreme range and unless you use a character with an AoE, you can’t hit it back, was an awful time in GW2’s history, and while I feel they overnerfed Citron’s longer range damage at least for most variants, it’s still better than having them being the best snipers in the game!
Their main weapon in GW/GW2 is course their needles that are mean at any range. Variants can change this up a lot, for example, Camo Cactus is great at range, but trying to protect the point and hit anything at point blank when you need to get your spikey rear on that cap point is a major pain. I’m partial to Jade Cactus myself, despite her being generally considered as a weaker variant. Petrified Cactus is probably the least annoying detonation variant but like all of them, they need to be looked at if brought forward to a new game. I am not a fan of BfN’s cactus attack as it’s basically just Widowmaker with that charging up. BfN also basically give Cacti the bandit Cactus attack for self-defense which matches the pirate able to snipe or shoot a close-range weapon for defense, which was a common complaint in GW2; that Cacti lacked that feature. I really don’t know where I stand on this one; Pirate has barrel blast and Cacti have potato mines, so do either need a point defense version of their main weapon? In GW2, the pirate definitely has an easier time dealing with plants that close range than the cactus does, even the barrel can save you from a burrow in GW2, but as they aren’t supposed to be (and shouldn’t be) exact mirrors, does it need to change or no?
Next up we have Potato Mines, Nugget Potato Mines, the bling version of the potato mines, and the BfN version of potato mines that have one huge issue that needs to change; get rid of that flashing light! We know it has that in PvZ and PvZ2 but it makes the mines more obvious in BfN so it’s harder to use them for what they’re for; vanquishing unwary zombies (players and AI). Some of the BfN upgrades for them are neat though. I like them giving tactical intelligence as one, as I’m a fan of BfN’s more active spotting powers and abilities over automatic ones like in GW2. I hardly ever see anyone use the nugget mines as they don’t cause enough damage (50 vs. 175). GW2 tried to fix this as they did with so many other alternate abilities, but with mixed success. The only real advantage of the nugget mines is they are smaller and more difficult to see, and can plant more of them at once, but that damage reduction makes them far less useful as it can’t even take out an Imp that isn’t already hurt. The bling mines are very shiny but even they aren’t as visible as the flashing light makes them in BfN. In a new game, I’d get rid of the bling version, fix that light on the normal one, and buff the nuggets; maybe increase damage to 75 which is still less than half the basic mine but is actually dangerous to the smaller health characters, or keep the lower damage but let us lay even more of them. One thing that is amusing in all 3 games is watching people lay all their mines in a single big blob in a panic!
Drones, thanks to GW2 we have a lot of them now; the basic garlic, artichoke, dark garlic, and the red artichoke drone. In GW1 we just had the garlic and the artichoke drone and I tend to use the artichoke drone there, but the dark garlic in GW2. In BfN we just have the garlic drone, although with upgrades like sustenance we can at least keep them around awhile if we keep getting vanquishes. The BfN drone however, is too slow, has a bad hit box (or just has odd hit registration issues), and its bomb attack is not up to the parrot’s. All 3 games have issues where you hit an invisible wall that can get it destroyed as you end up having issues getting it out of the situation intact. I’d really like to have all the drone options back in a new game and fix/eliminate the problems plaguing the garlic drone in BfN.
As for the tall nut rampart, iron maiden, bling maiden, I generally use the regular rampart most of the time and the bling maiden for messing about, while BfN adds the petal power ability. If not for how buggy petal power is, I’d prefer it to the nuts any day, but it often just doesn’t work well at all and can even get you vanquished when it bugs out and you’re a sitting duck in the air. Fix this ability and speed up how fast you move in it and it would be far more useful. I’ve found since even my early days of GW1 that the nuts aren’t all that great. Not useless of course, as they can be used to get to heights and hide potato mines behind them, or block a ZPG here and there, but it’s just too easy to shoot the things by accident when trying to use them as cover thanks to the 3rd person perspective, and some teammates go out of their way to destroy them even when you don’t put them in a bad spot. It can be fun to make weird buildings out of them when planting a bunch together with other Cacti though.
As for the models, I don’t hate the BfN model, as it doesn’t look as off as Rose or All-Star, but I do prefer the stockier GW/GW2 version. Like Sunflower she has a new voice actress or at least they sound like a different one, which I don’t really mind, but prefer the old version.
For health, having only 100 in BfN instead of the 125 they have in the GW games, doesn’t seem to be an issue. This may be at least partially from the general lower DPS in BfN, but also since the game tends to encourage more extreme range engagements, and especially for the 2 sniper focused classes.
For a new game, I’d largely prefer a return to the GW versions of this character, but with a fixed petal power available as the main or alternate ability in the same slot as the various nuts. Definitely remove the flashing light from the potato mines! Use whichever health value works the best overall, and if need be, give them a point blank version of their main weapon like in BfN although I don’t want to lose the Bandit Cactus whose main weapon is almost identical to the unzoomed version of the main weapon in BfN.
