Wizard Feedback
So I burned through my 50 bulbs, then got the 80s Action Hero challenges done and a few bulbs while doing so, and yes burned through some rainbow stars to unlock the wizard by barreling through the golden path once I used all my bulbs.
There's a lot to cover so I'll start by saying; good job PopCap! I was looking forward to this character a bit, I was more excited for Berry Brigade but he's an absolute joy to play. If you need to make some adjustments and I know the biggest issue people have is with Spell Disaster's orbs doing 80 damage each, do what you feel you need to do to balance him, but leave his playstyle where it is. I can't stress enough how great he feels to play.
His main attack does 18 normally and 22 on a crit. If you hold the button down you charge up an orb instead and can hold it shortly but like 80s' bow, it will auto-fire if you hold it too long. This orb does 4 per tick and can tick a few times, it also can bounce off of solid objects. The charged shot is far better against packs of enemies and rooted enemies than single targets. I got to specialist last night (first time since the tutorial that I used the xp machine), so unlocked the 'slow roll' upgrade where that charged orb will slow down so it ticks more when it hits an enemy.
Zee-lixir has a brief immortal buff on friendlies, including yourself, in a fairly decent sized AoE, about the size of the Imp's gravity grenade. I'm not sure how it works in PvP yet, I was all in Ops and free roams last night. For friendlies it lasts about 1.5 seconds or so, it's very brief but it has to be or it'd be far too good. It does not work on hypno-shrooms beams, but it did protect me and my host against the spooky squash stun.
Spell Disaster is the ability that most people are going to be unhappy with. It's powerful as you slam the staff down and 8 orbs head out in the main compass directions and they slowly travel outward, causing 80 damage each. If you're in co-star mode they have slight homing as well. The orbs don't go that far and even with the tracking, I saw weeds dodge it at times, but against tightly packed groups of plants, it's very effective. This is the ability that most likely may need a nerf, 80 per orb is a lot, even with their slow speed and limited time before they detonate. It does seem to have some splash damage for each orb too.
Co-Star is the ability that truly shines. You can fire pretty fast with a large magazine, you can still use spell disaster and zee-lixir. You can ride on any zombie, even bots. You give armor but no idea how much damage reduction it has. When you face the same direction as your host, and there's a very easy visual indicator to show this or not (good job on this btw, it's very easy to see and read and doesn't cause real visual obstructions), you get that starz align ability, where your spell disaster orbs will have homing to a degree, and you and your host can see with an effect similar to corn's butter beacon, plants show up green like zombies are purple.You can hop from host to host until the duration expires and the cooldown is pretty short. You have 65 health in this mode but I didn't take a lot of damage so can't say how easy it is to take a wizard out in co-star mode. If your host is vanquished you are briefly stunned but you can jump off before this if you're ready, you are auto-ejected when the timer runs out, I don't have the upgrade where you can prolong it by getting vanquishes.
The best thing I found last night was a trial by fire. My first Ops I jumped into was on the last stage against an elite spooky squash. I want to stress this next part: if you co-star the player with the soup buff, you are always in that aura! This means even if you get a host that leaps around randomly or otherwise is hard to stay near for normal character, you are right there on their head and this is huge against the Squash and the other plants.
I'm curious about his customizations though. I know we have 2 in the map and there's another legendary I'm sure Rux will sell but what about the less rare stuff I saw previewed? Surely some of it should be in the reward-o-tron! (give us something to spend all these coins on!)
As a final word; this character is wonderfully fun to play, feels like a true support character, has some great animations (his sprint is great), and even if he needs some damage nerfs (and possibly looking at some of his upgrades and the vision starz align gives) to balance him out, he's definitely a great addition to the zombie team. I look forward to Berry Brigade and beyond!
