Upgrades Discussion: Sunflower Upgrades!

The upgrade discussion for Sunflower is here!

Unique Upgrades

Pocket Protection (3 upgrade points): You gain health while you are healing your allies, at a rate of about 10 health per second, which will effectively heal you as a reward for healing allies. You can use this healing as a way of keeping yourself in combat and to continue healing allies, which allows you to continue healing your allies and receive even more healing from this effect. You can use this upgrade to heal yourself on demand when you need healing without waiting or relying on natural regeneration. If your allies are at full health, you can continue healing them to keep healing you until you have full overhealth. If an ally is at full overhealth, you will not continue to heal with this effect, so heal a different ally. You will not gain healing if you are at full health.

Vampire Flower (3 upgrade points): Dealing damage to your enemies allows you to gain health each time that you deal damage, which gives you a source of health gain which can keep your health topped up. You will receive the healing regardless of the amount of damage that you deal to your enemies. This will allow you to stay alive for longer so you can continue healing your allies and yourself. You will still gain this effect if you deal damage to enemies with Sunbeam, and you deal damage at a faster rate, so this could be an even more useful source for healing yourself. You will heal about 8 health whenever you deal damage to enemies, and you will not heal if you are full health, but you will still be able to continue dealing damage normally. 

Unique Ability Upgrades

Sunny Side Up

Quick Egress (2 upgrade points): You gain a movement speed increase of 15% each time you activate Sunny Side Up for a short time, which can allow you to escape combat or get to allies more easily using this ability. You can use this improved movement speed for many reasons, and as you have 3 charges of this ability available at once, you can use this speed boost easily on demand. If you get yourself into a tough situation, use your Sunny Side Up to collect some healing, along with trying to escape from enemies. This can be used for travelling around a map more quickly, to get back to an ally, or to get back into a fight, so this upgrade has many uses, along with simply having the regular healing which heals you and nearby allies. 

Shove (2 upgrade points): Activating your Sunny Side Up will knock nearby enemies away from you, which you can make use of if you are getting surrounded by your enemies, or if you want to keep enemies away from you and your team. Depending on your location, you may be able to push your enemies away from a vantage point. This knockback can be used for many reasons, and as you have 3 charges of this ability available at a time, you can keep your knockback effects with you on demand. If enemies get up close and personal with you, use this ability to shove them away from you and buy you time to escape. In some cases, you may be able to push them off a cliff, which sounds like loads of fun and should be tried at some point.

Sunbeam

Recharge (2 upgrade points): You gain ammo for your Sunbeam whenever you vanquish an enemy with it, which allows you to use Sunbeam for longer and deal even more damage to your enemies, or you can cancel the Sunbeam after the vanquish and reduce the cooldown before being able to use it again. You may be able to vanquish many enemies in order to use this ability for a really long time. Improve your chances of getting vanquishes by aiming for critical damage and attacking enemies that are low on health when you are in your Sunbeam state, as it will be easier to trigger this effect. Aim to be as accurate as you can to get even more use from this upgrade, and try to prevent taking knockback as it will force you out of this ability.

Stuffy Sundrop (4 upgrade points): Each time you deal damage to your enemies with your Sunbeam 10 times, you will automatically spawn 5 sundrops at your location. This will be able to heal you, or nearby allies, effectively providing you a way to be supportive even while you use your Sunbeam. The sundrops produced will be similar to the Sunny Side Up ability, but not as many will be spawned and not for as long, although you can continue to trigger this effect if you continue to deal damage with Sunbeam. To get more use from this upgrade, you should aim for enemies that you can hit more easily or that are not paying attention to you, so you can land more damage. Activate Sunbeam when close to your team to provide them with nearby healing.

Heal Beam

Sunslinger (2 upgrade points): Allies that are on critical health are healed by you at an increased rate, which will be great for bringing them back into the fight more quickly and hopefully saving them from being vanquished during this tough time. This will only apply while your allies are on critical health, but you should be able to bring them into an amount of health where they can survive more easily before your enemies can vanquish your ally. This effect will trigger again if you heal your ally outside of the critical health range, and then they reach critical health again. You should aim to pioritise healing any ally that is on critical health first, and then you can focus on healing other allies that are not on critical health after that.

Cocoon (3 upgrade points): You can provide additional overhealth to your allies with your Heal Beam, to a maximum health increase of up to over 50% additional maximum health (instead of the regular 33% maximum health). This effect will only apply while you keep the Heal Beam on that ally, and once you disconnect your Heal Beam, their health will become their regular maximum overhealth. You can use this really well on allies that already have high maximum health, or when most of your allies already have most of their health restored. Any ally you that you heal that has quite a low amount of max health could be saved from some attacks they normally cannot survive with this, and if the ally has a lot of max health, they can become the ultimate tank.

Full Bloom (3 upgrade points): The range of your Heal Beam is increased by 50%, which can allow you to heal your allies from further distances. You can use this to your advantage by healing allies while hiding behind corners or out of the sights of your enemies, or if they keep moving away from you, it will be easier to maintain the heal beam without it disconnecting. If your allies keep moving around a lot, this improved range will reduce the chances of your Heal Beam disconnecting from being out of range, especially if you are moving around to follow the ally that you are healing. Your allies may sometimes end up moving away from you, however the improved range of your Heal Beam will improve your healing on them before your Heal Beam disconnects. 

Blossom (5 upgrade points): Your Heal Beam is able to branch out and heal another ally, which means that you can heal up to 2 different allies at a time, which can effectively double your healing when you have multiple allies with you. This is a great and efficient way to heal your team quickly, so if your allies stay in groups, this upgrade can be used to quickly heal all of your allies, especially when multiple allies have taken damage. You can quickly give your allies overhealth as well without much trouble, which improves their survivability. You are not able to heal yourself with the Heal Beam, even with this upgrade effect, and you will not gain any benefits from this effect if you only have a single ally with you, so stay with groups of allies for best results.

Those are the upgrades for Sunflower! There are plenty of upgrades here that allow you to gain health constantly, heal more allies more effectively, give your abilities added effects or to improve your movement capabilities when keeping up with allies or escaping. The upgrades are aimed at improving your supportive capabilities, so choose the upgrades that are best for you. If you heal your allies a lot and use your upgrades well, it can greatly assist you and your team during intense combat fights.