Lightning Reed is both Overpowered and Underpowered: heres why

Lightning Reed is a weird plant. I don't care much about him, but hes cool to talk about, so we are going to talk about him. I don't have too much to type here so I'm just gonna drop, byeeeeee

Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
1:31 - What is Lightning Reed?
3:53 - What makes a plant overpowered?
8:38 - Ease of use VS Effectiveness.
13:17 - Modded Lightning Reeds.
17:10 - Conclusions.

Footage is from:

Plants VS Zombies 1
Plants VS Zombies 2 (and it's mods)

Mods used (in order of appearance):

Eclise Alpha (from 0.11 and beyond in the video)
AltverZ (from 0.17 and beyond in the video)
Into the Storm (from 0.23 and beyond in the video)
Nightcast (from 1.01 and beyond in the video)

Music used (in order of appearance):

Dave's Theme from PVZ2 (Unnamed)
PRANKED. from OMORI
Faint Glow from Deltarune
Pirates Seas Wave 1 from PVZ2
Grasswalk from PVZ1
Ancient Egypt Wave 1 from PVZ2

Outro is an original track.

[trickywickbow]

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

[itzastro_]

Despite how good/bad lightning reed is, you gotta admit he has an awesome visual design

[K-yu-kodv]

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

[foojo]

Out of all plants, Lightning Reed is truly one of them.

[raejannmelchor]

In my personal opinion
A single lightning reed is underpowered

But a swarm of them is an overpowered force to be reckoned with

[numimio]

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.

[takebacktheholyland]

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"

[ahuman]

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

[agustin]

Now we need a video about how underrated is Banana Launcher. Banana Launcher forever.

[LanaIsUnderrated]

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

[staticsphere_]

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

[andrewgreeb]

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.

[minh]

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)

[jeanalex]

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..

[togarashi]

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.

[danielbras]

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...

[trickygamer]

He's balanced until you look at it's levels. It's damage goes up insanely quickly.

[DiSableye_]

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!

[DaRainbowDude]

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

[RedStinger_]

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.