[Suggestion] A bit of a tweak to the Summon Plant magic.

[Angel]

I seem to have stumbled across a rather broken build. I have fed my pet to give me energy, built entirely around having Magick Power and energy, and can generally spawn out like 6 or 7 of the Silver Tier Plants (the Pea Shooters, if you will). I even use the magick flower weapon to increase their duration. A squad of those tends to make for really good farming (albeit the screen gets a little cluttered and makes it a little hard to dodge attacks sometimes).

But I recently upgraded to Gold Tier Summon Plants, and my cast speed is a bit to high to consecutively summon the Silver Tier. I keep accidentally doing Gold Tier, which just relocates my plants and wastes the time on the ones that have timers...

So my suggestion: when you reach Gold Tier Summon Plants, have the skill have the option menu like Frosty Friend. But instead of the Defense, Frenzy, Slam, and Desummon, you have it do each tier of Summon Plant and maybe a flashy attack from the Big Boss Plant itself. I have noticed that the plants are pretty inspired from Plants Vs Zombies, so maybe a solar shockwave or something? In place of the Slam, for example. And have the Bronze Tier Plant instead of Defend, the Silver Tier Plant instead of Frenzy, and Move instead of Despawn?

It would make using the Summon Plants a bit more manageable as you progress into top tier gear and stats, yknow?

 

[The G-Meister]

I don't run into this issue much myself. I feel it charges slow enough that it does the job. I occasionally miss the odd time, but it's completely my own fault, nothing I think the game should change. Plus, as for summoning each type of plant from a selectable menu, that takes away the charge time for the stronger plants, which would be quite a big balance change. Without that charge time, I wouldn't end up putting points into defence while charging and movement speed while charging. It's actually one of the few downsides of the build. Removing that would make it yet more powerful, it seems to me

 

[Angel]

I don't run into this issue much myself. I feel it charges slow enough that it does the job. I occasionally miss the odd time, but it's completely my own fault, nothing I think the game should change. Plus, as for summoning each type of plant from a selectable menu, that takes away the charge time for the stronger plants, which would be quite a big balance change. Without that charge time, I wouldn't end up putting points into defence while charging and movement speed while charging. It's actually one of the few downsides of the build. Removing that would make it yet more powerful, it seems to me

The Frosty Friend has a charge time, so idk how adding a selection menu would unbalance that... and as is it would just mean less summons of the Silver Tier because of less time to recharge in between summoning. Soooo... if anything, it would be a nerf o_o I also didn't say anything about the passive perks like the Defensive Charge etc, which really have no impact on this build what so ever. Also, if it helps to clarify: You charge the Frosty Friend to summon, have the Gold Tier Summon Plant charge up, then any summon used from the options (Like Frosty Friend's Defense, Frenzy, and Slam) have a cooldown? It is pretty simple to balance that out by pretty much copying the code from that aspect of Frosty Friend and linking it to the Bronze, Silver, and whatever other option could go instead of the Frosty Friend actions.

Again, it is just something I stumbled upon while in like Seasonne, ended up using the Silver Tier Summon Plant to farm a particular room for like 5 levels... And money. It was very helpful in cutting down the grind of hours into like 1 or 2 hours? At which point I had all the drops filled in on the enemy chart from the elemental guards in the dungeon.

So yeh, again, to clarify: maybe adding a bit of an option menu to the Gold Tier (Charge Up included for first summon of course, and cooldowns respectively) and maybe have the Big Boss Plant do something other than just... stand there... I mean, c'mon, he is pretty much the Plants Vs Zombies Sunflower, I was expecting something actually useful! (Mind you I love the buff and small increase to plant duration, it does help)

(also sorry if this was long winded, just trying to clarify my suggested idea ^^; )

 

[The G-Meister]

and as is it would just mean less summons of the Silver Tier because of less time to recharge in between summoning.

Having extensively used a Plant Summon build, I've thought about this a lot, and I don't think this is the case. I can see your line of thinking, but actually one of the major limits of my build ended up being the short time after casting a spell in which your EP does not regenerate.

If EP regenerated constantly, it wouldn't matter which system was implemented as you'd still be limited by the rate at which your EP regenerated, regardless of how quickly you could summon a plant. However, this isn't the case.

What I realised through testing was that the way to get the most out of your EP regeneration is actually to use another skill while your EP isn't regenerating. Why? Because, by casting another skill, you cut off that wait time by a fraction of time, and replace it with the new wait time of the new skill you just cast.

Think of it like this. For arguments sake we'll take the wait time as 1 second. So if I cast a silver charge plant, as soon as I let go of the button, that wait time starts counting down. If, after 0.8 seconds, I cast the base charge for any skill, The wait time instead begins for the new one. So instead of using each skill after a short time to let EP regen (totalling 2 seconds of no EP regen), you've instead cut off a portion of the first second, making it a total of only 1.8 seconds without EP regen.

If this system was used in the way I'm thinking (no cooldown on the skills and uses EP like normal), it would allow you to spam silver charge plants fast enough to cut off that wait time, thereby increasing the amount of time you have to regenerate EP overall. You just happen to get through an EP bar quicker, and you summon in bursts rather than long periods.

And even if we did have a cooldown? That doesn't stop you using another skill and then quickly using the silver charge plants to cut off the other skills. You've also then got all of that time you would've spent charging the skill (which is most of the time for me) to walk around at normal speed.

All in all, I don't think trying a bit harder to nail the timing and mucking up occasionally is worth that sacrifice. I can't stress enough how much of the time I spend grinding is actually charging silver charge plants. It's certainly a very high proportion.