I will use this post to discuss many of the types of summonables in general.
I will start with the Battle for Neighborville summonables: I do appreciate the cooldown system and it is a nice feature to have in my opinion. While I do not mind having to earn them from Sticker Packs and I own a lot of additional summonables that I can easily place at any time, having a cooldown system provides a more strategic placement, as once you have placed a summonable, you have to wait a cooldown before placing another one, except for the basic ones which is nice as you always have the option to place a summonable. The problem is that almost all of the summonables in Battle for Neighborville have bad accuracy and hit detection, making them nearly worthless in general situations. You will nearly never earn a vanquish with a summonable that you placed, except for perhaps Doom Shrooms and Explody Bots, which is quite disappointing overall.
All of the summonables on Garden Warfare 2 have had at least some use for me and I have had viability with each of them. Placement is always important though, depending on which summonable that you place. The close range summonables are probably the worst ones in my opinion, which is really unfortunate as I really do like these ones, although even the close range summonables have their uses if you place them strategically, if you force your enemies to engage up close to them to attack them or if you place it in an area where enemies want to be, you can get some good results from them. The heal summonables are always useful to have around, even if your team has a healer. The armor penetration ones have use under the right circumstances when you can use them against armored enemies. The airstrike summonables are rarer to come across, although they can be hidden away and can continually harass enemies with the airstrikes. The sniper summonables are insanely accurate and hit for high damage, so if they can be protected can really be useful against your enemies. The explosive summonables are great for dealing heavy damage to or clearing hordes of enemies. The freeze, electric, toxic, fire and stun summonables are great for additonal damage and for inflicting status effects on your enemies which make them easier to take out. Finally, the remainder of the summonables are great for ranged support and for dealing additional damage to your enemies.
Now to discuss the legendary summonables: I am quite sure that these have been discontinued and can no longer be bought. It is really cool that some of the legendary summonables are actually direct upgrades, especially the DJ Uplink Bot as the airstrike is more powerful and the bot has more health so it is more likely to survive. The Monk Choy is still useful, having more health and damage, which really benefits a close range bot. Even the Gatling Bot and Perfume Shroom are cool, they are simply reskins with no extra benefits, although I still enjoy the reskinned looks. The seasonal summonables, while simply being reskins, do have unique descriptions, really do look cool and I reckon they are amazing. I stocked up on each of the seasonal summonables, simply so that I can place them if I feel like doing so, even though it is more expensive to buy them overall.
Summonables are always great fun to experiment with and use, especially when I play Garden or Graveyard Ops!
@TheSprinter85I'm on the opposite end in that I really don't like the cool down system as it doesnt feel like it encourages strategy so much as it forces you to only play with the free spawnables as the tvheads/wildflowers will practically wipe out every unique spawnable before you get a chance to save them, even when the hit detection is good for a majority of the game. I would much rather have the coin system many have recommended for the series.
Its hard to find legendary spawnables in games now a days and its a shame as a quick program fix would make rux sell them again and PC modders often add them back proving its possible.
I don't mind the cool down system in BfN as it means someone like me with thousands of consumables in GW2 can't just spam the best stuff while a newbie is stuck with small numbers of even basic ones and may have none of the rarer stuff, and that's not even including the legendary ones that Rux hasn't sold for a couple years now. My main issue with BfN's cool down for spawning AI is that there's so little variety in what you can summon, and of course the summonable TV Heads and Wildflowers that ruin the defensive summons at range which we've mentioned many times before.
While this is more about the bots/pots, it does extend to the mobile ones, and as I'm sure we've all seen in GW and GW2, the attackers will often spam nothing but the coffin/pirate barrel/outhouse zombies or vase/porcelain vase weeds which can get tedious to deal with. The timer system addresses this somewhat as it means the team has to allow others on their team to use the summon spots for the better stuff, but again, the lack of variety and those ranged focused AI mess the idea up. BfN often comes off like it wants to encourage teamwork, which I fully support, but then takes it away with some of the new abilities and design decisions.
They could keep a timer system for a new game, but they have to get rid of the TV Heads and Wildflowers (both from summons and from the game in general, it's rare I dislike something in PvZ, but these guys are just awful) and vastly increase the variety of stuff we can summon on both offense and defense.
