Forum Discussion

9 years ago

Class Stacking, All-Star, and Citron: a thought

Hey all,

So I learned, being late to the party as usual, that Popcap has announced a nerf to the All-Star, but not a corresponding nerf to the Citron.

First of all I think All-Star should probably be left alone unless Citron is also going to be nerfed. The key way to nerf citron would be to roll back his damage increases while keeping the beam duration increase.

Back on topic, the reason why Citron and All-Star have been overpowered (but more specifically Citron) is because of their high health, high damage output, and insane abilities.

Citron's insane ability in particular is the EMPeach since with the damage boost it's nearly an "I Win" button when activated, and also foils anything a Super Brainz plans to do up close. For All-Star, the Imp Punt is a ridiculous attack that's nearly unavoidable since the bomb tends to latch onto you and ALWAYS does 150 damage if it hits with zero falloff or true splash damage. This was more evident in GW1 where stepping your big toe into the explosion of a chili bean or imp punt meant taking full damage, but I digress and think it's in poor taste to do this in a shooter.

Despite this though, at the start All-Star and Citron weren't really taken that much. They needed long periods of time to deal damage and had several weaknesses, namely Chomper has always (still is) been good at nabbing All-Stars and Citron was a huge whopping target for Deadbeard where his beam couldn't do sufficient damage.

TLDR Starts here:

But the real reason why I think we see tons of All-Stars and Citrons on the teams is not just their inherent power, but also because they are both ranged classes with 200 HP. If you haven't noticed in the patch notes yet, we've gotten damage buffs for everything. Sunflowers, Pirates, Electro Pea, all sorts of stuff got more and more damage buffs, with only the most broken things getting damage nerfs.

The more "damage creep" Popcap introduces to the game, the more people are going to gravitate to the 200 HP classes to survive all that firepower flying around, and the more the game's meta will shift towards burst damage vs healing and tanking, eerily similar to the 6 versus 6 competitive mode in another certain game with tons of silly hats.

In short, Citron and All-Star get OP when stacked because we can't chew through all the hitpoints, but Popcap wants to keep buffing damage which leads to a vicious game of musical nerfs. To better balance, we need to reduce damage output for both tank classes (at least Citron anyways) and stop giving needless damage boosts to character like kernel corn. If you're going to nerf All-Star, roll back those Citron beam damage buffs so we stop seeing tank escalation.

That's my two cents. See you in suburbia.

- ECM Atlas

12 Replies

Anonymous
9 years ago
Approved
When I play plants I play sunflower, chomper, and pea variants (right now ice pea is my fav), and I see a lot of people stacking imps more than all stars. I don't know why people stack imps either, I mean yeah we can all agree gravity grenade is annoying. but impakta isn't so bad and a lot of times mechs are blown up 5 seconds after being summoned (why do imps insists on summoning their mech in the middle of an open field?).

I do see all stars on the rise but honestly the only thing I hate about them is imp punt, with the maps being so tight imp punt is absolutely annoying. Honestly I cannot stand it, and I think the reason all stars are seeing a lot of streaks lately (according to popcap) is because imp punt is stupid. instant cast, imp on your face or near it, boom, dead peashooter, flower, and possibly chomper. The thing that makes the all star the most annoying character is imp punt onto a gnome bomb target, suburbination base, and to a lesser extent a turf take over base. I honestly couldn't care less about his long rate of fire or damage, I don't think that's the problem, it's his imp punt.

Also, I don't know why but when I play zombies I pretty much play super hero (cosmic brains now) and imps so Citrons don't give me any trouble, unless my imp goes into mech form then Citron wrecks my day lol. I have a hard time dealing with chompers, that goo is good, but no OP in my opinion.

Anyway just my two cents.
Screion
9 years ago
The problem with Impkata is, just like with the Gravity Grenade, that it requires 0 skill to use. It's just spray and pray until the clip is empty, and then use Impkata for spray and pray again to get a vanquish. Simply because it hits everything everywhere. And the good 100 damage it deals on a single target is too much.

Luckily Rose can nullify it with all 3 of her skills, but the sunflower is done when that happens in 90% of the cases.

Some people complain about the Imp Punt, but the Punt actually requires skill to be effective and can easily bounce off of tiny obstacles and miss the target completely. The Punt also does not hit you on a roof when you are right on top of an All Star.

The way Impkata emits bullets is cheap and broken. It should only hit enemies inside of a Doughnut shaped area. But instead it is just a complete sphere covering 360°, hitting everything above and below.

Dodging an Imp Punt with unpredictable movement on uneven ground is a lot easier than to avoid damage from Impkata. And just like with the Citrons EMPeach on Mechs, the Imps Impkata is rather ineffective on groups, but devastating on single targets. Which again does not serve its purpose.