Spawnables discussion: Heal zombie and Heal weed.

Healing in BfN is a mess, including these guys. The next game absolutely has to take a long look at healing and keep it useful without it being as obnoxious as it can be to deal with in BfN, especially overhealing, which I'd be more than happy to see removed. Since overhealing is a % based on the healed character's health it makes the big boys even more tedious to take out than they already can be, and is a huge factor on balancing things, getting rid of it would be best in the long term.

I've always been a bit sad that in the backyard battleground in GW2, we get heal weeds, but not the heal zombies, we just get flag zombies instead. I'd like to see them both spawning in the next game's version of the backyard. 

I've used both of these to get heal master in PvP matches in the games. Always felt weird getting heal master as an engineer just because I used several heal zombies to help out!

The BfN suns are indeed less appealing than before. BfN is so odd with its appearance, so many little touches are missing or made less interesting, but then they have some of the best looking outfits in all 3 games at the same time. It would great if the next game gave us those subtle, and no so subtle things we love as well as looking amazing and having great animations. GW2 downgraded a couple things; like the Sky Trooper's rocket missing when using his ZPG but it visually reappears when the ability is back and made the gardens and graveyards less detailed, and that's other stuff I'd like back as well.

@Iron_Guard8I Will stand by my opinion that gw2 had the best health system. Being able to regen to full health removes the annoying factor of gw1 half health but it's slow so it doesnt feel cheapened when the enemy comes back with full health like in bfn with upgrades that even speed along regen. Heal beams were slow but kept the heal target in the fight longer.

I think the idea of Overheal was handled best in tf2. A medic has to stick with a heal target otherwise it will slowly dissipate but healing many targets allowed your team to perform better. The ttk is also balanced better around Overheal as the 2 assassin classes and sentries can easily deal with overhealed heavies.

The zombies overall have less units in the backyard and it feels weird given that weeds seem to dominate the backyard for the most part. Though the backyard is also the only place we get house garg which is wierd.

Bfn's visual design and details are just so weird. A lot of the color scheme and animations of the characters and powers were bombed into the ground and the lighting does them no favors, which is strange given that with the removal of variants they had way less effects to design and animate.

The gardens being taken over doesn't result in stormclouds with lightning and it just feels lame to capture a point as it's just a color change.

This applies to 3 as well but the design just feels at times too cartoony and kid friendly if you get what I mean like the removal of the animated blood, zombies being dumb to the point of being inept (gw1: stop a cuke before it kills us all at zomboss mountain, gw2: create an eclipse to weaken plants, and bfn: OH NO, MARSHMALLOWS, MY HORDE'S ONE WEAKNESS!-zomboss after not opening doors to find humans in their homes)and needlessly changing fume shrooms description just to remove the word acidic.

Personally i prefer the gw2 tombstone but I love the gw1 garden with the vibing scarecrow and cute mini plants way more.

Some of the details from gw1 shouldn't have been removed (removing the zombies are coming voice is a crime against humanity) but gw2 at least introduced several of its own.

Time to heal up and get back in the fight with the help of these summonables!

Introduction

The Heal Weed and Heal Zombie are summonable variants which heal their allies, as well as still dealing damage to enemies when no allies nearby need any healing. They are fairly fragile, having more health compared to the basic Weed and Browncoat, but not as much as some of the other tougher and more resistant variants. These summonable variants operate differently to their counterparts. They both aim to heal their damaged allies, but will attack enemies if they get too close or there is no allies nearby in need of healing. The Heal Weed constantly throws out healing sundrops every few seconds, which provide a bunch of healing and will heal the closest ally that needs it, including itself. The Heal Zombie heals any number of allies in a close radius to it, gradually but constantly while close to it, but it cannot heal itself this way. These summonable variants work differently compared to other summonables as they mostly focus on supporting their team instead of attacking enemies, but they can still attack their enemies in some situations. 

My Thoughts

I really think that right now, these summonables are great as they are. They do their job well, healing the team and sometimes helping to attack enemies, but if not, that is the job for other summonables. The more allies that are with the Heal Weed or Heal Zombie, the more effective they actually become, as they will have more protection and they can heal more allies at once. I would suggest some buffs though, which include giving them a health boost (as they are quite weak), they can attack and heal at the same time (because this would not be a major buff) and give them the ability to heal naturally over time, unlike other summonables. With this, the Heal Weed would not be able to heal itself with the sundrops, but instead, like players, the Heal Weed and Heal Zombie would heal on their own over time after not taking damage for a while. They are the healers after all, and they do not have the most amount of health or anything.

With their toughness to defeat, it sort of depends on the situation, but overall I would give them an Easy difficulty to defeat. If they are on their own, they will not be able to heal their allies or anything but will probably attempt to attack instead. However, their attacks are as weak as a basic Weed or Browncoat so they are a low threat overall. If they are with their allies, they can be a problem as they will be constantly able to heal their allies and keep them alive, however they will be extremely unlikely to attack you so you can easily vanquish them without much trouble. Additionally, if you vanquish them quickly, you will limit the overall amount of healing that they will provide. Overall though, they are tougher with other enemies around due to their supportive nature.

Battle for Neighborville does indeed contain the Heal Weed and the Heal Zombie, which is great as they are really great summonable variants to use, and these summonables can be placed whenever a player is on low health, to heal them and then allies, as long as it is not on cooldown. Because of their great usefulness and the fact that they are not very offensive, I would only give them a 3 minute cooldown. They are not a great threat to the enemy team overall, but it is a good idea to have a decent cooldown because having to attack through lots of healing would provide more issues for the enemies. The other thing is that they are commonly used summonable variants so this quite low cooldown should encourage players to use these summonables often.

In A Future Shooter

As these are really useful and commonly used summonable variants, but are not too tough to defeat, these summonables should not be greatly expensive but should be a bit difficult to gain hold of in large amounts. I would recommend giving these summonables a cost of about 5,000 Coins each, as they can go a long way and should not be overpriced but it should deter players from amassing these summonables in large amounts. There could be an unlock cost of about 20,000 Coins before these can be used for the first time, to make them harder to gain hold of at first, but once obtained they can be freely used thereafter. Additionally, the unlock could come with a starter pack of 5 so you will actually get a better value upon the unlock, which is nice.

Overall

These are really useful summonables and are highly used, but they are quite easy to defeat. As a result, they should be quite easy to obtain, but not to the point where they can be amassed in large amounts easily due to how useful they can be, especially when needing to deal with many. Requiring an unlock before being available for use would make them a bit harder to start using earlier on, but once unlocked they can be freely used. Even though these summonables perform well, I would suggest a buff to health, being able to heal naturally and to attack nearby enemies even while healing allies.