I don't know why, but this variation of "truly one of the [x] of all time" joke doesn't make me nearly as angry as the other ones. Maybe it's because it doesn't sound incomplete? It's gramatically correct and all.
The lightning reed is like the sten gun. It's a lightweight machine gun that gets work done, its easily mass produced, and almost anybody can use it just by putting it into their hands. You'd find it hard to mess up with a sten gun when you don't go out of your way to mess up.
On strategic level it's also like the T34s. Why make a tank that can last for years if it won't survive 6 months of combat anyway? Yes, there are DPS plants that can deal much more aoe damage than lightning reeds like winter melons. But you'll never reach critical mass with Winter melons before a level end. Lightning reeds only need to hold that long. it appears that sun production in PvZ2 is lower than PvZ1 and the average levels are shorter, which doesn't benefit a high level DPS plant.
@@frowner_and_co Nightshade is one of the few DPS plants that gain permanent boost after using plant food. And the fact that it can serve both as melee and ranged plants making it both the walls and the guns. Slapping some gloom vines on it and you have a solid defense at an affordable price.
I thought there was no way that lightning reed could be good, but then I tried out the lightning reed spam, and it's amazing. It's a great strategy for the "Plan your defense" levels, or for when I can't think of a good strategy to use
The summary of the video is that lightning reed works when there’s multiple of them but since all you need to do is place it down, it is a plant made for braindead people or people who can’t strategize
@@tendiest9253 but it doesn't specify much about banana's usage. It's only like a comparison between it and cob and why cob wouldn't fit in pvz2 (haha I accidentally made up a pun there). There's no memtion about the fact that you can get 2-3 lanes of banana launcher. Or that you can get one before the first flag.....
I like how the lightning reed is similarly described to the wh40k laser gun "Those whom underestimate the power of the humble lasgun, has clearly not ran out into a field of a thousand of them"
Starfruit can be applied to that to my brother, one of all of them is straight up pathetic, huge swarms of them are devastating to whoever is being fired at by them
tbh, ive almost always used lightning reed in BwB since it loves to spam zombies later for early game I use stallers I dont get why, but I love it, even if i can agree, yes, sometimes its good, sometimes its shit
I don't know how strong it would be, but in my opinion, all plants with electric attacks should Deal more damage on the beach, because the zombies are walking in water
@@CocawithCola there is a beautifull strategy called lilypad + puffshroom which even makes lightning reed better since it has a target it can get its chain lightning from
This kind of got me thinking, if the issue is the lack of reason to use different plants, and eclises forcing of x strategy or die doesn’t work either (the mod isn’t really fun imo), what if we have a mode similar to pvz2 endless, but instead of selectable cards, everything’s unlocked. The gimmick is however, you can’t use the same plant on a level after you use it, e.g. for level 1 garlic is picked, for level 2 garlic is locked out but can be used again on level 3. There would definitely be exceptions such as sun producers, lily pads and a few misc plants, but it might encourage diversity and have the player use multiple plant counters against x zombie types, instead of just spamming the same strategy. Maybe have a higher coin drop rate similar to altverses endless, and now there’s an incentive to use different plants without the mandatory locked and loaded seeds levels with a gimmick strategy in every world (still an option though). I don’t know just a fun thought experiment for a fix
People might just rotate between two sets of plants. And it would be a problem where a plant is needed in level 2 but you didn’t know you’d have needed it so you used it on level 1 anyway.
First impressions: the title is the most accurate description of lightning reed and I am surprised nobody mentioned it before. Lightning reed is busted for the late game but disappointing for the early game Edit: it is busted if a mod has weak sun production and has a rushed early game Edit 2: just watch the video, it's a pretty good video and that is a pretty accurate way to look at lightning reed. Ok, now for me here are when I use lightning reed and don't use it Vanilla: the game isn't heavy enough and too fast to use other plants. Sure laser is good at piercing but the wave is too light so why bother. Banana and winter melon is busted but the game end too fast. I don't use it IF the first few wave are powerful zombie. Mod: i use it if the level have too much grave and grave buster cost sun. It is good for mod with 25 sun due to reed is usually cheap. However, reed is mod is too weak for a heavy and powerful zombie spam mod (like Eclise)
_"Lightning reed is busted for the late game but disappointing for the early game"_ I thought it'd be the other way around, since Reed can cover three lanes at the same time. Then again, I also think of Reed as just Chicken counter and nothing else.
@@robertlupa8273 well it is and it isn't. Since 3 lightning can kept simultaneously atk 1 zombie from 3 different line. But if the zombie has a bucket then it become early nightmare and feel very under whelming but then late game is just a laser show of too many lightning that it just either give people epilepsy or lightning show good unga boonga
@@randomperson4198 Potato Mine is my go-to remedy. It usually isn't a huge issue. Lightning Reed damage kinda sucks, but you patch with a fairly cheap nuke solution while flooding board with Sunflower and Reeds. Then you get the even more expensive option once you've done Future with Turnip tiles for plant food spam. Thundercloud swarm basically fixes the main issue with Lightning Reed spams with single target removals. Though... I haven't played in years, so who knows what the state of the game is tbh =/ strat probably doesn't work as well nowadays
Reed is in a weird spot where it's low damage means you're stalling the waves so you have time to plant more and gather more sun, as it's chain attack ensures it can deal with high numbers. This leaves it only weak to big zombies which since you have free seed slots you shouldn't have issues.
Lightning Reed is an S Tier Plant IMO.. I find it especially useful in many levels where you can't use Sun Producers, it's also nice that there aren't any zombies that counter Lightning Reed.. I almost always use it and it pairs very well with Winter Melon..
You did say something about the games’ lack of encouragement for experimentation and I think that should be a video on its own. Maybe something like “the fundamental issues of pvz” or something like that. This goes back to the risk and reward thing back in the Strawburst section where you said no one used Strawburst because it’s difficult to use. The reward seems to cap while the risk varies. This may be for much different situations but the issue remains the same. Going back to why certain plants are overpowered, I think it’s because they’re too safe. Notably Pokra who requires no skill for her ludicrously high damage output.
lightning reed isnt low dps when fighting high amounts of zombies and chain to hit like 3 zombies effectively multiplying it's damage but its spread around
It still has poor single target damage, which is what he meant. The time it takes even for a full field of them to drop Knight-strength enemies and above should highlight that weakness.
by the time knights come there should still be a swarm of other zombies and backup plants, like I wouldnt just keep lightning reed only by the time those strong zombies come, I have rarely seen just like a few very powerful zombies on the field unless there are like 5 king zombies, but far future has a bunch of high health machines soooo point taken, the time that single target comes is like the beginning of the game where you might have like potato mines and iceberg lettuce to help stall
@@milkmonstrosity only noobs plant single reed. Reed is a gang up plant and upgrading it is very meaningful compared to other plants. For each level up the damage increases 4+ when it multiplies and hit quad of zombies it’s a gang of killers. Also knight zombies are nothing
@@alcatraz_444 Besides, a single knight won't last long being focused down by 3 lanes of reeds. And because lighting reeds will clear out most cannon fodders, lightning reed plants food ability will most likely focus on it.
@@DannyCheezits not necessarily, a lot of plants will get stronger as you spam them, sure, thats expected but ones like reed get *much more* power from spam, 5 peashooters are gonna be way weaker than 5 reeds, specially since reeds get more effectiveness from fighting multiple enemies when you have many of them so basically they grow in power in a above-average way when compared to other plants, the snowball being specially notable
Not JUST damage, the levels in vanilla also upgrade the number of targets for the ark bounce. At max level just 1 column can deal with entire waves on their own (provided there's no gargs, then you need some instas).
@@Have_some_plasma Let be real, people who say it sucks because it can't handle every type of zombies are just ignoring that other plants can't do that either. Even if I can't use heavy hitters I can just fill the rest of my slots with utilities and bomb plants. Shrinking violet alone can make lightning reed melt through everything and it's already strong at level 1. If things get too heated you just use spring beans and blovers to oneshot everything.
I couldn’t understand a specific sentence you said so I turned on captions not expecting much. And to my shock, *the video was properly captioned.* Proper captions are probably one of the biggest turnons in a youtube video and has single-handedly earned a sub. Thank you🙏
Hi, I'm one of the ppl who really love Lightning Reed. Yes, I think their abilities work well when used in large numbers, even though they are spread thin individually. I sometimes use them in conjunction with other plants to help counteract their weaker stats.
Wait, has lightning reed been nerfed?? The last time I played pvz 2, lightning reed I can just spam them any world (except jurrassic marsh and frostbite caves). It was an op plant the last time I played. The only reason I stopped spamming lightning reed is when I challenged myself to only use the plants of a world minus lightning reed.
Actually buffed. In the newer pvz2 reed's splash damage deals the same damage as its regular one. In the older versions it dealt half of reed's base damage
@@notsocube8452 it has been nerfed and then buffed later on. It was nerfed so its direct hits would deal the same damage as chain hits(so essentially direct hits dealt half the damage compared to what they used to). Then it was buffed so the direct hit damage was reverted and the chain hits deal the same damage as direct hits(meaning chain hits deal twice the damage compared to old versions).
It's been a couple of weeks since this video made me come back to pvz2 after a couple years, and I absolutely loved using lightning reed, it does suck against some high health opponents even when you spam then, it is still extremely satisfying to see hoards of zombies completely disintegrate with all the lightning on screen. Anyways, thanks a lot for getting me back into the game again, I've been having a blast going through all the worlds again together with a classmate of mine, the game has became a bit p2w since the last time I've played, but I still really enjoyed it :D
I like to use lightning reed as an early game attacker to store up sun for more powerful attackers. I also found that it’s use is dependent on the zombie lineup. Good for specialized low health zombies but does nothing against a cone mech.
I recently got into PVZ2 and I gotta say, its surprisingly difficult to set up a lot of lightning reed. I'd rather use high damage close range plants, like combining snapdragon with barrier plants and spikeweed just because they can actually get a lot more done with comparable setup time
@@rednetherbrick3178 I agree. This joke is unfunny. But if someone likes it, I'll just sigh and go away. No point in offending them. It won't change their opinion. Keep that in mind, everyone.
Cool how this was seemingly the inspiration for electric/power plants in the Garden Warfare games. (For anyone who doesn’t know, in those games, plants of the “Power” element tend to fire electric attacks which, upon hitting a zombie, chain to nearby zombies.)
AltverZ's Reed used to be vanilla Reed + one extra bounce for 200 sun It could beat every normal level released at the time as a the only attacker Do not underestimate Reed
I swept through the entire campaign usong lightining reed as much as possible, good overall arc damage, simple setup, and high single target damage when necessary. Had to use speciality plants for certain mechanics but I loved it
For me it was just a strategy that I could occasionally used. I just thought it was decent but like most plants in the game, sometimes they are going to excel in different maps
Gotta agree with this video. I play vanilla PVZ2 and my sister does as well. She always comes to me for advice about the game, and once she wanted help beating a level. I told her to stall and spam lightning reed. She came back five minutes later, saying she lost. I told her: "Lighting Reed is good, but sometimes it's not."
Would love to see you analyze sapfling, potentially one of the most controversial plants released. Note that it cost like $7 on initial release LOL. I like it
For me, the Lightning Reed is how I would put it, Situational I can’t put him in every level and expect to do super well with him, however he can do great in other levels where he’s needed.
I never thought I'd get to the point of being a video recommender but I think the idea of a video dedicated to mods having too many instas / why too many instas shouldn't exist like grape would work
@@Creeps20 hey if your interested on idea for retrospectives for pvz2, there is one version that you haven’t mentioned (or that I haven’t seen you talk about) that is completely different ( and possibly better in almost every single aspect ) than vanilla pvz2 but takes more effort to get and understand, that being the Chinese version.
@@diegoizaguirre3452 PvZ2 Chinese is interesting, but better in every aspect? That’s really stretching it a bit. As someone who’s played it, the new plants and worlds are hit-or-miss. Only a select few Chinese edition plants are as useful as many of the international ones. Heck, there’re even some that have uses so niche that even using them when intended would be a waste. (I’m looking at you, Flat-Shroom!). The worlds are.. eh. The only one that was consistently fun was sky city, mainly because of how unique it is. While difficult, I found myself having a fun time. Kong-Fu world was alright, but the others are mediocre at best, and absolutely horrendous at worst. Finally, game’s monetisation system is terrible. They are WAY worse than the international version’s. 90% of the plant’s you’ll get are from these puzzle pieces, which are like the game’s equivalent of seed packets. While they can be obtained without paying any money, it takes so much time that you could just get a job and pay them anyway with your real money. Not to mention, the levelling system, that makes many plants overpowered - at the cost of many, many seed packets. Overall, I hate the Chinese version.
I beat every adventure mode level in PvZ2 with Lightning Reed as my only source of damage (although I did use Char Guard). Conveyor belt levels and levels that choose ALL of my plants were ignored. No powerups, but lawnmowers are still allowed. Lightning Reed was level 1. The only level that was impossible was Neon Mixtape Tour Day 13. I never completed Modern Day 30, but I believe it is possible. Anyways, I can confirm that Lightning Reed is both underpowered and overpowered. Even with a lot of stalling, early zombies were able to make it pretty far into my lawn. Lightning Reeds also tend to struggle with graves, frozen plants, and octopi, but luckily its plant food ability can target those objects. Speaking of which, Lightning Reed + Tile Turnip is an INSANE combination if you can get yourself a lot of sun. Even just one plant food (with a few power tiles) can tear down huge waves of zombies found in the last three worlds. Overall, I’d say that Lightning Reed is a solid choice, but only if you spam it a ton or hook it up to Tile Turnips.
If Lightning Reed had a much higher damage output, it would be a very powerful plant in my opinion. That's the only real reason why people don't use the plant. And yes, like you ssaid it seems to be only useful against those small, rushing enemies like the squirrels, chickens, and etc.
We need a video on Guacodile, its so underrated and underapreciated. I love it, its a good plant but It gets sweeped under the rug like it's worthless.
I've never understood why people liked lightning Reed before this video. You really hit the nail on the head on the ease of use vs effectiveness aspect of plant balancing. Also I am also someone who never really experiments. Before leveling was added I typically used winter melon with fume or lazer bean or dusk lobber when it was added. After leveling I just use three peater because everything became op
Lighting Reed is much like it's namesake lighting. When a single one strikes, nobody really bats an eye. But when you have a thunderstorm, everybody starts running.
loving your content, your dedication clearly shows and it will get your really far :D btw could u or anybody else in the comments tell me why are sun generators in the video sbeing planted at second to fourth row? im kind of interested in the strategies and would like to know what difference it makes
Id pick lightning reed over E Peashooter . E Peashooter is kinda bad against bosses, but other one paired with turnip, you can melt boss hp within few seconds in vanilla. The firerate of E Peashooter is slower than regular peashooter and if the fast critters somehow manage to get to eating range, the E Peashooter straight dies, Reed doesnt have this issue . Reed is also way cheaper and can be deployed in faster rate than the other one.
I didn't buy Elec Pea in vanilla but I was never impressed with him because of how hard he is to use. The free levels he's in (some Pinata parties and Wild West day 27) aren't particularly well designed and don't showcase the plant well. Low level Elec Pea requires a lot of support but like you said, shreds with Turnip. This is unlike GT Elec Pea which carries medium-difficulty levels. It has insane damage despite firing slowly and can destroy Armor 3s and 4s faster than many plants.
Enjoy these analysis style videos- Ive never really liked lightning reed and I can't understand why people use it with its low dps. That's just my opinion..
Honestly I just use it for the nostalgia Ever since I was young I loved that plant, despite it's simple design, and I saw that it was pretty good for my tiny brain, so I just kept it
Why do I keep watching these I don't even play PvZ2 The fact that I keep clicking on your videos and watching them all the way through is an enigma, have a like
When I first saw lightning Reed when I first played the game I instantly fell in love with it because of how much I loved aoe, then after forcing myself to use it through some levels since I liked it and I was the type of person to try and experiment or use atleast 3 attacking plants per level for some reason? (Probably symmetry reasons I don't remember) I started to like it less because I realized "wait a sec... holy the damage on this plant SUCKS!" and then after I forced myself to use it for every wild west level I could except for 2 and then for half of future age since I still loved how it worked enough to do that I was like "ok yeah no I'll just use better plants" I assumed I was just utilizing it not very well and that's probably right but its shocking to hear that people actually consider it overpowered Sure when you multiply it by 10 each zombies is taking that much damage but its low damage it has very slowly became a big turn off for me
Tile turnip is my favorite plant in the entire game - except Lightning reed Holy shit, both of these combined are beautiful, I love using them together. Good video on the best plant in the game ;)
If the plan is to stall to get the big guns plants like melon it's solid, otherwise unwanted or unnecessary. Eclise did buff the butter rate to 50% so kernel can perma stun which makes it way better.
Seems to depend somewhat on what zombies you are up against. If against hordes of low toughness or medium zombies than this reed seems very strong. But when you throw in zombies like gargantuars they seem less powerful
3:33 so that is your Strategy as well, Removing the sunflowers around and exchange it with attackers every time it's charging or maybe if you have enough suns to fill the area I Really love this strategy Pretty awesome, I actually put the range attackers behind 👀 I mean, The sunproducers are chip and extremely important plants
Tile Turnip is probably the most well known plant to benefit from the leveling system when it was added. In base form the turnip was essentially useless level it up to silver and it becomes workable max it out and you'll wonder how you played without it. Tile Turnip went from F-tier to S-tier in a single update
@@togarashi6437 Several of the other Far Future plants actually benefit quite a bit. Infini-nut's special ability has its delay reduced, and so it can heal itself between waves more consistently. Since it also gets the universal HP boost, this makes the plant's ability to survive grow quite a lot. Granted, leves where you need that are rare because the plant is already quite good (and its plant food effect of the wall is one that can be considered "overpowered", as it can tank otherwise unblockable zombies and even completly or partially disables a wide variety of special abilities). Citron is a really good example of a world plant which goes up in tier as you raise the level of all world plants - as an expensive non-instant plant with a lengthy recharge time cost reduction actually matters for it, and in addition to the general damage benefits all plants get it also gains increased attack frequency as it levels up, substantually increasing its DPS relative to other plants. Finally, Laser Bean does benefit a bit more than normal from levels, as its most important stats are the Sun and tile cost of getting enough of it to effectively permanently remove basic/conehead/buckethead zombies from the level so you can build the rest of your lawn to kill Gargs and high HP/speed special zombies.
@@alexstewart9592 They benefit too, but not significantly as most of those are stat boosts. The three I listed feel like their usage changes entirely because of it.
My favourite plant!! I agree with all your points really, i just really really like reed. I certainly can see why people hate lightning but it just feels so good when i use it. At 2:51 though, lightning reed is not the only plant to deal less damage than a peashooter in most cases. Puff-shroom and... spikeweed! both do the same damage as lightning reed lol. i can't wait for the next plant video!
"overpowered" "underpowered" it's a really big issue in this community. That's why eclise and GT has so many bullshit changes What we need are *fun* plants.
Gt absolutely redid rotobaga, and I'm not a fan. By equivalent sun cost it's 800 sun (400 sun on a 25 sun meta), rotobaga is a spam plant not a bulk plant. And the only thing they buffed was that it has pierce attacks.
One thing I noticed is that when playing the first Far Future last stand level, I first tried placing 2 rows of Laser Beans and 1 row of Lightning Reeds. It failed. Then however I used exclusively lightning reeds. It won. From what I gathered from this, I believe Lightning Reed is actually more sun efficient than Laser Bean, the more popular choice against crowds.
i was actually scrolling through the comments to see if anyone mentioned this. lightning reed, in my personal experience, does a far better job grouped than other plants that cost the same. yes things like laser beam technically counter it but those are way too expensive. not to mention any extra sun can be used to pair the lightning reeds with more heavy hitting plants.
I don't really play PvZ2 that much but I do play a ton of BTD6 and when I first saw the lightning reed I immediately recognized it as just a high pierce, low damage tower, and it's interesting to hear how that functions in PvZ, where most things tend to have a lot less pierce by default than in BTD6
Pretty much completely agree with this, while I've been too harsh on him in the past since they did at least buff his chain damage, I think he's the most overrated plant in the game. The whole 'if he's spammed he's OP' argument is pretty dumb IMO since you could say the same for pretty much every offensive plant. It's a bit of a red flag when it takes at least 2 Reeds to do what one standard Peashooter can do. Plus there are many plants that deal with crowd control far better, i.e. Laser Bean, Spikeweed, Fume Shroom, Electric Peashooter Pokra etc. Plus there are actually better counters for chickens and weasels, such as Endurian
But here's the thing about that "it takes 2 Reeds to do what 1 peashooter can do" thing, 2 lightning Reeds do cost more than 2 peashooters, but it's more cost efficient to have 2 Reeds do half damage, lane-wide. For half the price. For full price on the other hand, you do what a peashooter could do for 500 sun if you put down 4 Reeds. Lane-wide.
I use lightning reed as a support plant in early game alongside puff shroom and celery stalker to then set up offensive plants like snap dragon and winter melon
@@robertoms3000 I mean, I'd just use Snapdragon for that, as just two can cover all lanes to deal with the first few zombies. Only issue is that on level 1 a Snapdragon can't kill even a regular zombie by himself without getting eaten at least a little if in the lane he's planted on.
A good metaphor for Lightning Reed is a *crutch*. It can help new players who are just starting to walk through the game, but as the player learns to walk better and smarter with time, they don't need crutches anymore because they're more of a hassle to use/ cause discomfort. Crutches are great for new players, but they're more so a discomfort for experienced ones, which why you rarely/never see Lightning Reed being used in mods.
Lightning Reed is one of my favourite plants and I have not played this game in really long, I am pleasantly surprised to see people finding Lightning Reed a good plant
Reed is like the star fruit
When it isn’t being spammed it’s just pathetic
But when it’s spammed it can dominate levels
pretty much
I get it
Every DPS plant is good when spammed, why should lightning reed be considered good when there's better options to spam
@@shadelightss because it attacks multiple lines, which makes it one of the easiest to spam
@@donovangallegos7839 and 25 sun less. The sun cost can make a bigger difference than you think.
Despite how good/bad lightning reed is, you gotta admit he has an awesome visual design
the bug zapper costume is the best in the game
Yes
You can say its shocking, eh? Eh? Ok imma shut my mouth
@@A_very_creative_TH-cam_alias good one *knee slap*
@@A_very_creative_TH-cam_alias that wasn't a very electrifying joke.
Out of all plants, Lightning Reed is truly one of them.
I don't know why, but this variation of "truly one of the [x] of all time" joke doesn't make me nearly as angry as the other ones. Maybe it's because it doesn't sound incomplete? It's gramatically correct and all.
@@robertlupa8273 same
@@robertlupa8273 yeah, It's true that The Lightning Reed is one of the plants in PvZ2.
Yup, one of the plants of all time right here.
but...is it?
In my personal opinion
A single lightning reed is underpowered
But a swarm of them is an overpowered force to be reckoned with
If i support my statement
It is made to deal large hordes of small hp zombies
Until theres a level with a garg in it
@@hooparainbowbraceypkmonand7862 doesnt matter you can just use two explosive plants
kinda like bees
also I mix it with snow pea and it works wonders, almost nothing can get past the first 3 lanes
@@hooparainbowbraceypkmonand7862 If a lightning reed cloud focus on it it won't last very long. Granted the cloud picks its target randomly.
The lightning reed is like the sten gun.
It's a lightweight machine gun that gets work done, its easily mass produced, and almost anybody can use it just by putting it into their hands.
You'd find it hard to mess up with a sten gun when you don't go out of your way to mess up.
On strategic level it's also like the T34s. Why make a tank that can last for years if it won't survive 6 months of combat anyway? Yes, there are DPS plants that can deal much more aoe damage than lightning reeds like winter melons. But you'll never reach critical mass with Winter melons before a level end. Lightning reeds only need to hold that long. it appears that sun production in PvZ2 is lower than PvZ1 and the average levels are shorter, which doesn't benefit a high level DPS plant.
@@minhducnguyen9276 nightshade, Moonflower and lightning Reed is op
@@frowner_and_co Nightshade is one of the few DPS plants that gain permanent boost after using plant food. And the fact that it can serve both as melee and ranged plants making it both the walls and the guns. Slapping some gloom vines on it and you have a solid defense at an affordable price.
Is a “sten gun” an actual thing or is that a spelling mistake (I’m asking because you called it a sten gun twice)
@@AceTechn0 it's Stun gun
18 minutes of plant love, 18 minutes of plant love, 18 minutes of plant hate and 18 minutes of plant neutral. The cycle is complete
_The holy trinity_
We did 18 minutes of plant neutral, now we need 18 minutes of plant mix-up
@@InsertFunnyThingHere Plant Okizeme
Plant Wombo
now we need plant evil and plant good
I thought there was no way that lightning reed could be good, but then I tried out the lightning reed spam, and it's amazing. It's a great strategy for the "Plan your defense" levels, or for when I can't think of a good strategy to use
Its also has good level scaling cause it gains chain count as it levels up
And also it's not as expensive as other plants with the same purpose
I thought I was the only who uses lightning reed spam on plan your defense
The summary of the video is that lightning reed works when there’s multiple of them but since all you need to do is place it down, it is a plant made for braindead people or people who can’t strategize
Now we need a video about how underrated is Banana Launcher. Banana Launcher forever.
BANANA!
660nj did a video recently(13 days) on it
@@tendiest9253 but it doesn't specify much about banana's usage. It's only like a comparison between it and cob and why cob wouldn't fit in pvz2 (haha I accidentally made up a pun there). There's no memtion about the fact that you can get 2-3 lanes of banana launcher. Or that you can get one before the first flag.....
Up up up! Banana!
I eat banana
I like how the lightning reed is similarly described to the wh40k laser gun
"Those whom underestimate the power of the humble lasgun, has clearly not ran out into a field of a thousand of them"
Starfruit can be applied to that to my brother, one of all of them is straight up pathetic, huge swarms of them are devastating to whoever is being fired at by them
The problem is that you only get 20 of them
Not even a plant its plants vs zombies not laser guns vs zombies
tbh, ive almost always used lightning reed in BwB since it loves to spam zombies later
for early game I use stallers
I dont get why, but I love it, even if i can agree, yes, sometimes its good, sometimes its shit
I don't know how strong it would be, but in my opinion, all plants with electric attacks should Deal more damage on the beach, because the zombies are walking in water
@@brainiac0141 Well, they are undead, why can they die in the first place because they are already dead
@@LanaIsUnderrated what about the octopi
@@CocawithCola there is a beautifull strategy called lilypad + puffshroom which even makes lightning reed better since it has a target it can get its chain lightning from
What is BwB?
This kind of got me thinking, if the issue is the lack of reason to use different plants, and eclises forcing of x strategy or die doesn’t work either (the mod isn’t really fun imo), what if we have a mode similar to pvz2 endless, but instead of selectable cards, everything’s unlocked. The gimmick is however, you can’t use the same plant on a level after you use it, e.g. for level 1 garlic is picked, for level 2 garlic is locked out but can be used again on level 3. There would definitely be exceptions such as sun producers, lily pads and a few misc plants, but it might encourage diversity and have the player use multiple plant counters against x zombie types, instead of just spamming the same strategy. Maybe have a higher coin drop rate similar to altverses endless, and now there’s an incentive to use different plants without the mandatory locked and loaded seeds levels with a gimmick strategy in every world (still an option though). I don’t know just a fun thought experiment for a fix
People might just rotate between two sets of plants. And it would be a problem where a plant is needed in level 2 but you didn’t know you’d have needed it so you used it on level 1 anyway.
Combining this idea with how endless works now has got me thinking about a pvz2 roguelike mod.
Now if only I knew how to mod.
First impressions: the title is the most accurate description of lightning reed and I am surprised nobody mentioned it before. Lightning reed is busted for the late game but disappointing for the early game
Edit: it is busted if a mod has weak sun production and has a rushed early game
Edit 2: just watch the video, it's a pretty good video and that is a pretty accurate way to look at lightning reed.
Ok, now for me here are when I use lightning reed and don't use it
Vanilla: the game isn't heavy enough and too fast to use other plants. Sure laser is good at piercing but the wave is too light so why bother. Banana and winter melon is busted but the game end too fast. I don't use it IF the first few wave are powerful zombie.
Mod: i use it if the level have too much grave and grave buster cost sun. It is good for mod with 25 sun due to reed is usually cheap. However, reed is mod is too weak for a heavy and powerful zombie spam mod (like Eclise)
_"Lightning reed is busted for the late game but disappointing for the early game"_
I thought it'd be the other way around, since Reed can cover three lanes at the same time. Then again, I also think of Reed as just Chicken counter and nothing else.
@@robertlupa8273 well it is and it isn't. Since 3 lightning can kept simultaneously atk 1 zombie from 3 different line. But if the zombie has a bucket then it become early nightmare and feel very under whelming but then late game is just a laser show of too many lightning that it just either give people epilepsy or lightning show good unga boonga
Long story short bucket is the ultimate armor
@@randomperson4198 Potato Mine is my go-to remedy. It usually isn't a huge issue. Lightning Reed damage kinda sucks, but you patch with a fairly cheap nuke solution while flooding board with Sunflower and Reeds. Then you get the even more expensive option once you've done Future with Turnip tiles for plant food spam. Thundercloud swarm basically fixes the main issue with Lightning Reed spams with single target removals. Though... I haven't played in years, so who knows what the state of the game is tbh =/ strat probably doesn't work as well nowadays
Reed is in a weird spot where it's low damage means you're stalling the waves so you have time to plant more and gather more sun, as it's chain attack ensures it can deal with high numbers.
This leaves it only weak to big zombies which since you have free seed slots you shouldn't have issues.
Lightning Reed is an S Tier Plant IMO.. I find it especially useful in many levels where you can't use Sun Producers, it's also nice that there aren't any zombies that counter Lightning Reed.. I almost always use it and it pairs very well with Winter Melon..
Lightning Reeds just
Ooga Booga Me use Reed
there are zombies that counter lightning reed. they have high hp
@@majorfender6054 cherry bomb
You did say something about the games’ lack of encouragement for experimentation and I think that should be a video on its own. Maybe something like “the fundamental issues of pvz” or something like that.
This goes back to the risk and reward thing back in the Strawburst section where you said no one used Strawburst because it’s difficult to use. The reward seems to cap while the risk varies. This may be for much different situations but the issue remains the same.
Going back to why certain plants are overpowered, I think it’s because they’re too safe. Notably Pokra who requires no skill for her ludicrously high damage output.
It's actually my favorite attack spam plant!
I thought a lot of people used it as well.. I'm so glad you made a video about it!
lightning reed isnt low dps when fighting high amounts of zombies and chain to hit like 3 zombies effectively multiplying it's damage but its spread around
It still has poor single target damage, which is what he meant. The time it takes even for a full field of them to drop Knight-strength enemies and above should highlight that weakness.
by the time knights come there should still be a swarm of other zombies and backup plants, like I wouldnt just keep lightning reed only by the time those strong zombies come, I have rarely seen just like a few very powerful zombies on the field unless there are like 5 king zombies, but far future has a bunch of high health machines soooo point taken, the time that single target comes is like the beginning of the game where you might have like potato mines and iceberg lettuce to help stall
@@milkmonstrosity only noobs plant single reed. Reed is a gang up plant and upgrading it is very meaningful compared to other plants. For each level up the damage increases 4+ when it multiplies and hit quad of zombies it’s a gang of killers. Also knight zombies are nothing
@@alcatraz_444 Besides, a single knight won't last long being focused down by 3 lanes of reeds. And because lighting reeds will clear out most cannon fodders, lightning reed plants food ability will most likely focus on it.
It's called "balanced"
weak on its own but snowballs as you plant more of them
@@wilsonweiseng6485 isnt that like half of the plants in the game though
@@DannyCheezits not necessarily, a lot of plants will get stronger as you spam them, sure, thats expected
but ones like reed get *much more* power from spam, 5 peashooters are gonna be way weaker than 5 reeds, specially since reeds get more effectiveness from fighting multiple enemies when you have many of them
so basically they grow in power in a above-average way when compared to other plants, the snowball being specially notable
After reading this multiple times, I can indeed say this is one of the comments i've ever seen
@@brunobruno-c1d true
Something that is not mentioned is that it is one of the only plants with no real weaknesses to gimmicks, like shields, umbrellas, jester, etc...
Also, if a zombie is in the back their gonna atack them anyway
He's balanced until you look at it's levels. It's damage goes up insanely quickly.
got mine lvl 7 it is insane
Mine is lvl 3 but still op
Not JUST damage, the levels in vanilla also upgrade the number of targets for the ark bounce. At max level just 1 column can deal with entire waves on their own (provided there's no gargs, then you need some instas).
@@Have_some_plasma Let be real, people who say it sucks because it can't handle every type of zombies are just ignoring that other plants can't do that either. Even if I can't use heavy hitters I can just fill the rest of my slots with utilities and bomb plants. Shrinking violet alone can make lightning reed melt through everything and it's already strong at level 1. If things get too heated you just use spring beans and blovers to oneshot everything.
I couldn’t understand a specific sentence you said so I turned on captions not expecting much. And to my shock, *the video was properly captioned.* Proper captions are probably one of the biggest turnons in a youtube video and has single-handedly earned a sub. Thank you🙏
The creeps subtitling community is here to help you understand the foreign language that creeps is speaking
Hi, I'm one of the ppl who really love Lightning Reed. Yes, I think their abilities work well when used in large numbers, even though they are spread thin individually. I sometimes use them in conjunction with other plants to help counteract their weaker stats.
Wait, has lightning reed been nerfed?? The last time I played pvz 2, lightning reed I can just spam them any world (except jurrassic marsh and frostbite caves). It was an op plant the last time I played. The only reason I stopped spamming lightning reed is when I challenged myself to only use the plants of a world minus lightning reed.
Actually buffed. In the newer pvz2 reed's splash damage deals the same damage as its regular one. In the older versions it dealt half of reed's base damage
@@lebollsong oh wow didn't knew that. Might come back to playing pvz 2 solelyfor that lol
@@notsocube8452 it has been nerfed and then buffed later on. It was nerfed so its direct hits would deal the same damage as chain hits(so essentially direct hits dealt half the damage compared to what they used to). Then it was buffed so the direct hit damage was reverted and the chain hits deal the same damage as direct hits(meaning chain hits deal twice the damage compared to old versions).
It's been a couple of weeks since this video made me come back to pvz2 after a couple years, and I absolutely loved using lightning reed, it does suck against some high health opponents even when you spam then, it is still extremely satisfying to see hoards of zombies completely disintegrate with all the lightning on screen. Anyways, thanks a lot for getting me back into the game again, I've been having a blast going through all the worlds again together with a classmate of mine, the game has became a bit p2w since the last time I've played, but I still really enjoyed it :D
Ur a pretty underrated guy huh? The only person who makes videos like this, keep it up boss
I’d love to watch more vids of you just talking about plants. This stuff is really interesting to me
I like to use lightning reed as an early game attacker to store up sun for more powerful attackers. I also found that it’s use is dependent on the zombie lineup. Good for specialized low health zombies but does nothing against a cone mech.
Honestly I like using Lightning Reed in combination with other electrical plants like Electric Blueberry or Electropea. Its just really fun to do.
I don’t even play any of these games yet I am captivated by your PVZ videos.
I recently got into PVZ2 and I gotta say, its surprisingly difficult to set up a lot of lightning reed. I'd rather use high damage close range plants, like combining snapdragon with barrier plants and spikeweed just because they can actually get a lot more done with comparable setup time
Something he didnt mention is that as it levels up besides dmg increase it will get increased pierce
The strength of Lightning Reed is like that scene in A Bug's Life. Individually they weak but have massive strengths in numbers.
i can vividly remember placing a whole lane of lightning reeds in tourneys and just decimating the graveyards.
Truly one of the most plants of all time. I love when he said "it's reeding time" and lightning all over the zombies.
This joke is not funny
@@rednetherbrick3178 and so is you
This joke is funny
This joke is one of the jokes of all time
@@rednetherbrick3178 I agree. This joke is unfunny.
But if someone likes it, I'll just sigh and go away. No point in offending them. It won't change their opinion. Keep that in mind, everyone.
Cool how this was seemingly the inspiration for electric/power plants in the Garden Warfare games. (For anyone who doesn’t know, in those games, plants of the “Power” element tend to fire electric attacks which, upon hitting a zombie, chain to nearby zombies.)
AltverZ's Reed used to be vanilla Reed + one extra bounce for 200 sun
It could beat every normal level released at the time as a the only attacker
Do not underestimate Reed
i remember the days fondly
amazing, i will download old altverz just for this
I swept through the entire campaign usong lightining reed as much as possible, good overall arc damage, simple setup, and high single target damage when necessary. Had to use speciality plants for certain mechanics but I loved it
It's finally time to see another plant review from Creeps! Yes! Also a review of one of my favorite plants this time.
For me it was just a strategy that I could occasionally used. I just thought it was decent but like most plants in the game, sometimes they are going to excel in different maps
Back when I played this game, Lightning Reed had to be my most used plant.
I absolutely love lightning reed, one of my favorite plants, just so much fun to use even if it's a bit weak (decent when spammed tho)
Gotta agree with this video. I play vanilla PVZ2 and my sister does as well. She always comes to me for advice about the game, and once she wanted help beating a level. I told her to stall and spam lightning reed. She came back five minutes later, saying she lost.
I told her: "Lighting Reed is good, but sometimes it's not."
"Well yes but actually no."
Would love to see you analyze sapfling, potentially one of the most controversial plants released. Note that it cost like $7 on initial release LOL. I like it
For me, the Lightning Reed is how I would put it, Situational
I can’t put him in every level and expect to do super well with him, however he can do great in other levels where he’s needed.
I never thought I'd get to the point of being a video recommender but I think the idea of a video dedicated to mods having too many instas / why too many instas shouldn't exist like grape would work
how the mighty have fallen
anyways i think a video on the over-abundance of instas could be neat, its something to certainly consider
@@Creeps20 hey if your interested on idea for retrospectives for pvz2, there is one version that you haven’t mentioned (or that I haven’t seen you talk about) that is completely different ( and possibly better in almost every single aspect ) than vanilla pvz2 but takes more effort to get and understand, that being the Chinese version.
@@diegoizaguirre3452 PvZ2 Chinese is interesting, but better in every aspect? That’s really stretching it a bit.
As someone who’s played it, the new plants and worlds are hit-or-miss. Only a select few Chinese edition plants are as useful as many of the international ones. Heck, there’re even some that have uses so niche that even using them when intended would be a waste. (I’m looking at you, Flat-Shroom!).
The worlds are.. eh. The only one that was consistently fun was sky city, mainly because of how unique it is. While difficult, I found myself having a fun time. Kong-Fu world was alright, but the others are mediocre at best, and absolutely horrendous at worst.
Finally, game’s monetisation system is terrible. They are WAY worse than the international version’s. 90% of the plant’s you’ll get are from these puzzle pieces, which are like the game’s equivalent of seed packets. While they can be obtained without paying any money, it takes so much time that you could just get a job and pay them anyway with your real money. Not to mention, the levelling system, that makes many plants overpowered - at the cost of many, many seed packets.
Overall, I hate the Chinese version.
PVZ2 videos are making a comeback never thought I see the day.
3:56 Bruh I use that sound as my alarm lol
I beat every adventure mode level in PvZ2 with Lightning Reed as my only source of damage (although I did use Char Guard). Conveyor belt levels and levels that choose ALL of my plants were ignored. No powerups, but lawnmowers are still allowed. Lightning Reed was level 1.
The only level that was impossible was Neon Mixtape Tour Day 13. I never completed Modern Day 30, but I believe it is possible.
Anyways, I can confirm that Lightning Reed is both underpowered and overpowered. Even with a lot of stalling, early zombies were able to make it pretty far into my lawn. Lightning Reeds also tend to struggle with graves, frozen plants, and octopi, but luckily its plant food ability can target those objects. Speaking of which, Lightning Reed + Tile Turnip is an INSANE combination if you can get yourself a lot of sun. Even just one plant food (with a few power tiles) can tear down huge waves of zombies found in the last three worlds.
Overall, I’d say that Lightning Reed is a solid choice, but only if you spam it a ton or hook it up to Tile Turnips.
If Lightning Reed had a much higher damage output, it would be a very powerful plant in my opinion. That's the only real reason why people don't use the plant. And yes, like you ssaid it seems to be only useful against those small, rushing enemies like the squirrels, chickens, and etc.
How in the hell did I not find yhis channel b4? Plants analysis sounds like such a good concept.
Can you do a video on quacodile? I personally find it very interesting of a plant
could be neat
@@Creeps20 can you do “why rhubarbarian is overpowered”
:troll:
@@Creeps20 PLEASE
I personally like Lightning Reed, but you've described the plant and it's pros and cons very well.
0:34 When you accidentally type 🧟♂️🕺💃:
This comment is underrated
We need a video on Guacodile, its so underrated and underapreciated.
I love it, its a good plant but It gets sweeped under the rug like it's worthless.
I've never understood why people liked lightning Reed before this video. You really hit the nail on the head on the ease of use vs effectiveness aspect of plant balancing.
Also I am also someone who never really experiments. Before leveling was added I typically used winter melon with fume or lazer bean or dusk lobber when it was added. After leveling I just use three peater because everything became op
Lighting Reed is much like it's namesake lighting. When a single one strikes, nobody really bats an eye. But when you have a thunderstorm, everybody starts running.
loving your content, your dedication clearly shows and it will get your really far :D
btw could u or anybody else in the comments tell me why are sun generators in the video sbeing planted at second to fourth row? im kind of interested in the strategies and would like to know what difference it makes
after being used to collect a bunch of sun they can act as a slight defense while he preps the defenses i think
Lightning reed has good design, works good against enemies like chicken and like 3 vertical lanes of it fighting zombie spam is pretty satisfying
Id pick lightning reed over E Peashooter
.
E Peashooter is kinda bad against bosses, but other one paired with turnip, you can melt boss hp within few seconds in vanilla.
The firerate of E Peashooter is slower than regular peashooter and if the fast critters somehow manage to get to eating range, the E Peashooter straight dies, Reed doesnt have this issue
.
Reed is also way cheaper and can be deployed in faster rate than the other one.
I didn't buy Elec Pea in vanilla but I was never impressed with him because of how hard he is to use. The free levels he's in (some Pinata parties and Wild West day 27) aren't particularly well designed and don't showcase the plant well. Low level Elec Pea requires a lot of support but like you said, shreds with Turnip.
This is unlike GT Elec Pea which carries medium-difficulty levels. It has insane damage despite firing slowly and can destroy Armor 3s and 4s faster than many plants.
That single target plant food carry me in far future
Enjoy these analysis style videos- Ive never really liked lightning reed and I can't understand why people use it with its low dps. That's just my opinion..
hey mate, love your videos, i think you're giving the aussie pvz community a nice spotlight. Keep doing what ya doing! - fellow aussie pvz player
@@NeoBing Thanks bro, love from Sydney
@@koalapvz hey mate, also from Sydney lol, not in the city though
Honestly I just use it for the nostalgia
Ever since I was young I loved that plant, despite it's simple design, and I saw that it was pretty good for my tiny brain, so I just kept it
Based.
Why do I keep watching these I don't even play PvZ2
The fact that I keep clicking on your videos and watching them all the way through is an enigma, have a like
When I first saw lightning Reed when I first played the game I instantly fell in love with it because of how much I loved aoe, then after forcing myself to use it through some levels since I liked it and I was the type of person to try and experiment or use atleast 3 attacking plants per level for some reason? (Probably symmetry reasons I don't remember) I started to like it less because I realized "wait a sec... holy the damage on this plant SUCKS!" and then after I forced myself to use it for every wild west level I could except for 2 and then for half of future age since I still loved how it worked enough to do that I was like "ok yeah no I'll just use better plants"
I assumed I was just utilizing it not very well and that's probably right but its shocking to hear that people actually consider it overpowered
Sure when you multiply it by 10 each zombies is taking that much damage but its low damage it has very slowly became a big turn off for me
Great analysis, not just of pvz, but of a wide reaching concept. Not an easy task. Well done.
I usually like strategies that rely on a lot of small units, not in PvZ only, but Spore Shroom (is that its name?) is way more fun for me
It’s nice and unsettling hearing Omori ost as background music.
red was at electrical
i saw yellow in o2
This rooms gonna be red if you don't shut up
But the body was at electrical! Its Yellow!
@@Quarkbrief OBJECTION i saw you vent to med bay
1 lightning reed on its own: 'I'm too weak..'
4 columns of lightning reed: 'UNLIMITED POWER!'
10:10 FINALLY, someone who acknowledges that lvl 1 bowling bulb can be useful in levels with a lot of zombies.
Tile turnip is my favorite plant in the entire game - except Lightning reed
Holy shit, both of these combined are beautiful, I love using them together.
Good video on the best plant in the game ;)
Infi-nut needs his own video. People always use it but never say thank you to the plant and appreciate how good It is.
It carries with its plant food during bwb levels with fisherman zombie
It carries with it's plant food -during bwb levels with fisherman zombies-
new subscriber for getting me back to pvz2 after not playing it for a LONG time! (around basically years ago)
10:03 I'm more interested in how Bowling Bulb could have any effective use. I've never been able to use it without it wasting space
Tile turnip + Bowling bulb + Appease mint
Regularly gets me over 5,000,000 score in arena
bowling bulb excels in arena.
Especially if you don't level it up so that it regrows the better bulbs first.
L-Reed is okay. I personally only use him for chickens and weasel when I don't have spike weed on hand
I would love a Tile Turnip video. I personally like the Plant because it's unique and fun to use. Although, I see how it is bad at level 1 in vanilla.
oh my god finally a vid about reed, i waited for this for so long
Nice video! Also, should I buff Lightning Reed or not? That's a question I still have.
yesn't
@@Creeps20 hmmm. Very good answer, I will indeed. I just want plants I never use to be more usable.
A video on iceberg lettuce could be fun, its really well designs IMO trade a slot for one of the best utilities in the game
I asked for a reed buff for nightcast awhile back um maybe it was a bit much
what hell have you brought upon this world
@@Creeps20 I tried it thought it was shit asked for a buff then here we are
What kind of buffs did it get? I tried to search it and found nothing
Uh check out poll and annoucements in nightcast server you should find the update it got buffed in
Have not played PvZ in forever but I’m a sucker for a video analyzing like this
How Good was Kernel Pult ACTUALLY
If the plan is to stall to get the big guns plants like melon it's solid, otherwise unwanted or unnecessary.
Eclise did buff the butter rate to 50% so kernel can perma stun which makes it way better.
Lightning Reed is my dad's favourite PLANT
Seems to depend somewhat on what zombies you are up against. If against hordes of low toughness or medium zombies than this reed seems very strong. But when you throw in zombies like gargantuars they seem less powerful
use stunion and ice letturg or sm to kill it
prob like primal wall nutz if you dont have bombs (i use torchwood lmao)
3:33 so that is your Strategy as well, Removing the sunflowers around and exchange it with attackers every time it's charging or maybe if you have enough suns to fill the area
I Really love this strategy
Pretty awesome, I actually put the range attackers behind 👀
I mean, The sunproducers are chip and extremely important plants
Tile Turnip is probably the most well known plant to benefit from the leveling system when it was added. In base form the turnip was essentially useless level it up to silver and it becomes workable max it out and you'll wonder how you played without it. Tile Turnip went from F-tier to S-tier in a single update
For me, Tile Turnip, Bowling Bulb, and Stallia are the only pre-Arena plants to truly benefit from levelling.
@@togarashi6437 Several of the other Far Future plants actually benefit quite a bit.
Infini-nut's special ability has its delay reduced, and so it can heal itself between waves more consistently. Since it also gets the universal HP boost, this makes the plant's ability to survive grow quite a lot. Granted, leves where you need that are rare because the plant is already quite good (and its plant food effect of the wall is one that can be considered "overpowered", as it can tank otherwise unblockable zombies and even completly or partially disables a wide variety of special abilities).
Citron is a really good example of a world plant which goes up in tier as you raise the level of all world plants - as an expensive non-instant plant with a lengthy recharge time cost reduction actually matters for it, and in addition to the general damage benefits all plants get it also gains increased attack frequency as it levels up, substantually increasing its DPS relative to other plants.
Finally, Laser Bean does benefit a bit more than normal from levels, as its most important stats are the Sun and tile cost of getting enough of it to effectively permanently remove basic/conehead/buckethead zombies from the level so you can build the rest of your lawn to kill Gargs and high HP/speed special zombies.
@@alexstewart9592 They benefit too, but not significantly as most of those are stat boosts. The three I listed feel like their usage changes entirely because of it.
Lightning Reed is like a Warhammer Lazgun.
One Reed is weak. That's why there's never just one
Schrödinger's Reed
My favourite plant!! I agree with all your points really, i just really really like reed. I certainly can see why people hate lightning but it just feels so good when i use it. At 2:51 though, lightning reed is not the only plant to deal less damage than a peashooter in most cases. Puff-shroom and... spikeweed! both do the same damage as lightning reed lol. i can't wait for the next plant video!
"overpowered" "underpowered" it's a really big issue in this community. That's why eclise and GT has so many bullshit changes
What we need are *fun* plants.
* Sad gaucodile noises *
The melons
Gt absolutely redid rotobaga, and I'm not a fan.
By equivalent sun cost it's 800 sun (400 sun on a 25 sun meta), rotobaga is a spam plant not a bulk plant.
And the only thing they buffed was that it has pierce attacks.
hey excuse me have you ever used GT red stinger
Also, I am neutral on the roto rework, both are cool
Lightning Reed lovers
One thing I noticed is that when playing the first Far Future last stand level, I first tried placing 2 rows of Laser Beans and 1 row of Lightning Reeds. It failed.
Then however I used exclusively lightning reeds.
It won.
From what I gathered from this, I believe Lightning Reed is actually more sun efficient than Laser Bean, the more popular choice against crowds.
i was actually scrolling through the comments to see if anyone mentioned this. lightning reed, in my personal experience, does a far better job grouped than other plants that cost the same. yes things like laser beam technically counter it but those are way too expensive. not to mention any extra sun can be used to pair the lightning reeds with more heavy hitting plants.
@@SealyTheSealprice doesn't matter in pvz2 vanilla (barring objectives)
1:17 wtf 2 plants in one tile THIS IS MESSED UP
Waiting for da coconut cannon video, I always considered it kinda bad until recently and now I think it’s very strong
OMG 550 SUN LIGHTNING REED
I don't really play PvZ2 that much but I do play a ton of BTD6 and when I first saw the lightning reed I immediately recognized it as just a high pierce, low damage tower, and it's interesting to hear how that functions in PvZ, where most things tend to have a lot less pierce by default than in BTD6
Pretty much completely agree with this, while I've been too harsh on him in the past since they did at least buff his chain damage, I think he's the most overrated plant in the game. The whole 'if he's spammed he's OP' argument is pretty dumb IMO since you could say the same for pretty much every offensive plant. It's a bit of a red flag when it takes at least 2 Reeds to do what one standard Peashooter can do. Plus there are many plants that deal with crowd control far better, i.e. Laser Bean, Spikeweed, Fume Shroom, Electric Peashooter Pokra etc. Plus there are actually better counters for chickens and weasels, such as Endurian
But here's the thing about that "it takes 2 Reeds to do what 1 peashooter can do" thing, 2 lightning Reeds do cost more than 2 peashooters, but it's more cost efficient to have 2 Reeds do half damage, lane-wide. For half the price. For full price on the other hand, you do what a peashooter could do for 500 sun if you put down 4 Reeds. Lane-wide.
I use lightning reed as a support plant in early game alongside puff shroom and celery stalker to then set up offensive plants like snap dragon and winter melon
@@robertoms3000 I mean, I'd just use Snapdragon for that, as just two can cover all lanes to deal with the first few zombies. Only issue is that on level 1 a Snapdragon can't kill even a regular zombie by himself without getting eaten at least a little if in the lane he's planted on.
Lighting reed with the power tiles in fat future made that world a cakewalk. Spamming those thunder clouds was absolutely busted
A good metaphor for Lightning Reed is a *crutch*.
It can help new players who are just starting to walk through the game, but as the player learns to walk better and smarter with time, they don't need crutches anymore because they're more of a hassle to use/ cause discomfort.
Crutches are great for new players, but they're more so a discomfort for experienced ones, which why you rarely/never see Lightning Reed being used in mods.
Lightning Reed is one of my favourite plants and I have not played this game in really long, I am pleasantly surprised to see people finding Lightning Reed a good plant
So lightning reed is underpowered while lightning reeds are overpowered?
I don't know how I came across your channel, but thank you.