"Its main job is to deal damage and wall off zombies. But, its damage is super low. [Its] peashooter damage is really not good in PvZ2, and it's severely outclassed by most other plants in the game. Its wall HP is also very expensive. Keep in mind, Tall-nut has double the HP and costs less."
— Creeps20
on Pea-nut, "Peanut is a failure of Role Compression: Here's Why"
on Pea-nut, "Peanut is a failure of Role Compression: Here's Why" open/close all folders
Plants vs. Zombies
- The Chomper has the dubious honor of being the worst instant-kill plant in the game, and one of the worst plants in the game period. Sure, it's one of the only instant kills that can be used multiple times (aside from Cob Cannon), but it only eats one zombie at a time and takes forever to digest. Nearly every other instant-kill hits multiple zombies, which makes them infinitely better for dealing with big waves; spending 150 sun on a Cherry Bomb almost always kills more zombies than spending it on a Chomper. It's not even good at dealing with early lone zombies because Squash, Tangle Kelp, and Potato Mine do the same thing for less sun, and its short range makes it undesirable as an offensive plant with all of the long-ranged options available. The only environment where Chomper sees much use is in speedruns of the game, due to its fast cooldown time for an instant-kill plant.
- The Hypno-Shroom, unfortunately, ends up as an Awesome, but Impractical single-use plant. Although its ability to make a zombie fight for you sounds powerful for its price of 75 sun, especially on targets like the Football Zombie, the hypnotized zombies are deceptively weak; their bites do less damage than they do as an enemy, and since the zombie at the front will most likely be the one that eats it, it'll likely already have taken some damage, making it easier for the other zombies to defeat. Since a Hypno-Shroom must be eaten to take effect, it doesn't even work on many of the most threatening zombie types. Outside of night levels, its price doubles to 150 sun due to the Coffee Bean needed to wake it up, when a Cherry Bomb or Jalapeño can clear out way more zombies for a similar price.
- The Cactus attempts to counter both airborne and ground enemies alike but ends up becoming a Master of None. It's a slightly more expensive Peashooter that doesn't synergize with Torchwood, whose only real use is countering Balloon Zombies, and even in that one niche, it's outclassed by Blover (which wipes out every Balloon Zombie at once) and Cattail (which is just plain better). You'll probably only use it once for the level that introduces the Balloon Zombie and then never again because the Blover becomes available immediately afterwards.
Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time
- Cabbage-pult was already not a very good plant in the first game, but in PvZ2, it's even worse. In terms of stats, it's slightly weaker than Peashooter — the very first plant in the game — and has no synergy with Torchwood, leaving it hopelessly overshadowed by other offensive plants. Its ability to shoot over obstacles can be situationally helpful in Ancient Egypt and Dark Ages, but isn't a great deal of use generally — and even in this niche, it's also outclassed by other lobbed-shot and piercing plants. It doesn’t even work on Newspaper Zombies like in the first game.
- The most unanimously agreed on plant to be this is Spring Bean. While cheap at 50 sun and slightly useful in his home world of Pirate Seas, he has no other redeeming qualities. His knockback is measly, only affects one zombie, and he has a cooldown every time he uses it. Oddly, Spring Bean used to be part of Complacent Gaming Syndrome and a Game-Breaker, as its Plant Food bounced all zombies on the screen and could be used in conjunction with Blover to blow them away, giving the infamous "Spring Blover" combo. This got patched out and zombies bounced into the air by Spring Bean became immune to being blown away. After this, Spring Bean became outclassed in every way by the Chard Guard (who for only 25 sun more, flings zombies much further away, can affect multiple zombies in a single hit, and has no cooldown), and a Level 5+ Stallia (who is one-use, but costs no sun, flings a 3x3 area of zombies, slows the zombies affected for a while, and can be used alongside Blover). Then as a final nail in the coffin, Boingsetta was introduced, which does the same effect as Spring Bean's Plant Food in addition to chilling the zombies and wrecking obstacles when planted, and it can bounce the whole lane of zombies instead of just one after its recovery time.
- The Pea-nut is a textbook Master of None — it attempts to perform the jobs of a Peashooter and Wall-nut at once, but is incompetent at both of them. It's more expensive than a Peashooter and recharges much more slowly, so it can't be used for a quick defence at the start of a level, and its firepower pales in comparison to other, more expensive offensive plants. Equally, it's much more expensive than a Wall-nut (in fact, slightly more expensive than a Tall-nut) while providing the same defensive power, making it an inefficient use of your sun. To top it all off, it's also one of the only plants to avert Critical Existence Failure, because its attack, already weak, gets weaker when it's at half HP.
- Chomper not only retains this title from the first game, but it's arguably even worse here. With larger clusters of zombies, a much stronger lineup of insta-kills, and having direct upgrades in Toadstool (Who has a longer range and turns digested zombies into sun), Snap Pea (Which shoots the zombies it ate towards other zombies), and especially Olive Pit (Who can eat multiple zombies before recharging, hides underground so that it can't be eaten, and spitting out slowing oil on top of it), what little Chomper had going for it in the first game is all but lost here. Even worse, it now has a longer lag time before it actually eats a zombie, making several zombies kill it before it can react. Chomper's only redeeming quality is its plant food effect, which not only kills three zombies, but pushes back all the other ones in the lane, serving as a mild alternative to Hurrikale. It got a buff that allowed it to eat two zombies (4 at max level) before becoming full, but its slow attack speed is still an issue for it, especially when Olive Pit can still eat more zombies and can't be attacked by anything short of Gargantuars and Jurassic Rockpunchers.
- Electrici-tea fries up any zombie that eats it, dealing that zombie's health to nearby zombies, and it can also area electrocute zombies around it. This is highly situational as there are several zombies that just kill it without eating (and are incidentally, also the ones you'd want it to kill, such as Gargantuars, Rodeo Legend, Mecha-Football, Jurassic Rockpuncher, charging All-Stars, Zombie Hamster Ball, Firebreather, etc). As for the area electrocution, it's pathetically weak as a form of offense. It does however have an extremely strong Plant Food ability.
- Garlic was a pretty good plant in the original game, but the sequel hit it with heavy Nerfs that dramatically reduce its effectiveness, perhaps to make up for there being more plants that can benefit from it. Not only does it have less health than before to begin with, but zombies also need to take multiple bites of it to switch lanes, reducing its longevity even further. Additionally, there are far more zombies that can either eat Garlic without suffering its effects or just kill it without eating. It only starts to work like it did in the first game at high levels, while other plants improve much more by comparison.
- Intensive Carrot sounds useful on paper, reviving any eaten plant at the cost of 100 sun. In practice, however, this is more situational than you'd expect, and it's usually better to just use another plant in its slot and just re-plant any eaten plants. It does get a cost and cooldown decrease down to 25 sun as it levels up, but other plants get a cost and cooldown decrease too, making it less worthwhile. The only gimmick it can be feasibly used for is that any boosted plant revived by Intensive Carrot gets to use their boost again, but that's it.
- Blooming Heart is priced at 7 dollars, which is awful for a single-target plant like her. Secondly, her ability isn't very useful, damaging zombies more and more as she hits them, but most zombies will be killed just as quickly by something like Cold Snapdragon. What really sealed the deal on her, though, is that she used to have a Game-Breaking Bug, where using plant food on her would make every zombie Nigh Invulnerable. While the last one was fixed, it did little to help her status. This seems to have settled when she was made a seed-obtained (read: free) plant, but even then she's still not very good. Even Cabbage-pult, a free plant obtained near the start of the game and is this trope in itself, actually outperforms Blooming Heart at higher levels due to the more consistent damage and faster attacking speed.
- Out of all the Power Mints, Winter-mint is generally seen as the weakest. When planted, it will chill (not freeze, chill) all Zombies on the screen while powering up ice plants. While this is great for powering Winter Melon, Missile Toe, and Cold Snapdragon, the effect on planting is extremely underwhelming, considering that Ice Bloom, PF'd Iceberg Lettuce, and Contain-mint actually freeze/stun all the zombies on the screen.
- SeaFlora is generally considered one of the worst plants in the game, and it shows. Her whole gimmick is that she fires piercing bubbles, which is ultimately dragged down by their weak damage and her slow firing rate (not helped by the fact that she always does a giggling animation just before firing a bubble), essentially making her into a worse version of Cactus (and even Cactus Took a Level in Badass in the sequel to make it more useful). Even planting her in the water does nothing but allow her to fire bubbles in three-lanes, making her into a Cactus/Threepeater hybrid with worse damage and slow firing rates. Even other Spear-mint family plants like Laser Bean, Bloomerang, or (once again) Cactus are able to deal with large groups of zombies with consistently strong damage and fast attack rates.
- Scaredy-shroom might've been a decent plant in the first game by being a cheap, long-range plant that serves as a nighttime substitute to the Peashooter with the minor drawback of hiding when zombies get close, but in the sequel, he's much less useful. Due to nearly every new zombie and game mechanic in the game having their own unique ability that can overwhelm your lawn (tombstones, Octo Zombie's octopi, Jurassic Marsh's dinosaurs, etc.), Scaredy-shroom will be hiding much more often than in the first game, not helped by his weak damage output and low health, making him obsolete in most situations. Even some of the zombies from the first game became much stronger to make Scaredy-shroom even more useless. While an update has tried to alleviate the criticisms by increasing his health and cower defense, it did nothing to improve his status.
