Plant Man

Brief overview of the character. Try to "sell" the character.

Overview
Plant Man's stats are all completely basic to the base class in vanilla MM8BDM, aside from HP value, which is 90 instead of 100. The reason a class like this is capped at a base hp of 90 instead 100 is due to the class' unique health sustainability from being able to leech health from his enemies.

Main
Plant Buster

Plant Buster is a machine gun styled buster that fires at an arc, and has minimal spread. This mainfire weapon deals 5 damage per pellet, as well leeches 1 HP per shot landed. (Leeches 2 HP per shot landed if game mode is (T)DM, Duel, etc.)

Alt
Plant Barrier

Plant Barrier is a shield that is capable of doing close range damage ranging from 3-11 depending on the distance from the opponent. You can also shoot his barrier as a slow moving projectile. Landing a projectile Plant Barrier on an enemy not only damages them for 11 HP, but can also apply an additional leech poisoning that deals 3 HP per 2 seconds over time, in three sets, adding the total damage up to 20.

Plant Barrier can also be used to heal an ally from a distance, just so long as you're able to land your shot onto them.

Reload
Plant Pot

Plant Pot is Plant Man's main to-go-to method for ally support healing. Pressing the reload key places a stationary Plant Pot that can do either do the following... Apply a healing effect to the player if they're an ally, or damage the player for the same damage properties as a Plant Barrier if they're an enemy. (11 HP (2s) + 3 HP (2s) + 3 HP (2s) + 3 HP = 20 HP worth of damage)

Basic Tips & Strategy
When playing Plant Man, your most important goal in-game will be to survive, and stay stocked on healing ammo that is gathered through screws dropped by players upon death. As stated before, Plant Man is not only a squishy class, but also lacks any and all mobility options necessary to get out of any harsh situation that will threaten him.

As added insult to injury, Plant Man is also the most efficient support healer in the game, packing the most powerful ally support healing factor, as well as being incredibly versatile in how he is able to heal said allies. Because of this, Plant Man will just about always immediately be seen as a massive threat that should be taken out first.

Now, pile this on with the fact that Plant Man is frail and has no mobility or defensive options to save him, he is then ultimately a sitting duck for rushdown classes and comps. Plant Man's offensive capabilities, while are pretty flexible, it's still not enough to save him from sudden mortal danger.

Taking these negatives into consideration, you will have to play this class as cautious and carefully as possible, as you could die to a powerful assassination class like Slash Man, Metal Man, or Burner Man at any time. You will have to stay on high alert of your surroundings, and most importantly 'stick with your teammates'. Plant Man has plenty of weaknesses on his own, but they can still be worked around as the team is well equipped and ready to protect him.

Make sure to play very defensively, and take risks only if you're either very confident, or are well aware that the class you are going to tackle from behind has no means to counteract CQC (close quarters combat). Remember, each of your attacks are able to leech HP off of enemies, Plant Barrier hugging being the most effective, yet riskiest means of recovering your HP.

Speaking of which, do not fall into the trap of becoming too self-absorbed into Plant Man's HP leeching abilities. They may look potent, but playing carelessly can still get you killed much faster than what you can recover from, so don't play dumb.

Healing. When healing with Plant Man, good strategy would be to save your healing ammo for which ever class is keeping the entire comp together. Examples would include... a tanky + playmaker class like Hyper Storm H or Wood Man, a master area denial class like Fuse Man, or just an overall elite player in general. These should be top priority, everyone else should come next, or last.

The solid mindset would be to pick out your target allies to heal based off this hierarchy for max efficiency, unless you just so happen to have a near infinite supply of screws on the battlefield for additional healing ammo. This scenario however, only exists in public game servers with a high volume of players. You could try and heal everybody at once, but the more allies that Plant Man tries to heal at once,

the faster his healing ammo bar is going to deplete, so be mindful and watch out for that. For example, you could forget that you left a Plant Pot some place, and an ally may have just picked it up and began healing while you're trying to heal your best teammate back to full health. You'll end up healing them up to only half HP because your healing ammo drained too fast from trying to heal two allies at once.

In a private game environment, you're quite limited on the amount of screws you can gather and healing ammo that you can gain up to. Another valuable pro tip is that long as Plant Man can slowly regain healing ammo after dealing damage to an enemy with any source within his arsenal, just so he has full 85 HP. If Plant Man is anywhere below 85 HP, then he cannot regain healing ammo in that way.

So that alone should also give more incentive to play as cautiously and defensively as possible. One more tip to give is to not only look at Plant Man's reload feature as purely a means to heal allies. The Plant Pot itself can also be used a minuscule, yet surprisingly effective means of an area-denial trap for potentially easy 9 HP leeching. An example of this would be any extra narrow hallway area on a map.

Overall, this class requires above-average fundamentals in order to play at it's maximum efficiency, hence the "Hard" difficulty listed earlier. If you're going to get around to playing this class on a regular, then best of luck!

Gondola V2.4

 * Plant Buster spread random(-5,5) > Flashman-esque wave pattern
 * Plant Buster gravity 1 > 0.75
 * Plant Buster initial thrust 8 > 6
 * Drain fixes from UEC Patch imported
 * M1 healing in LMS games 2 > 1
 * In non-LMS 0 > 2
 * Fixed Plant Barriergetting heal ammo off non-players
 * Secondary damager for Plant Barrier has special obit
 * Pot gained +DONTREFLECT

Gondola V2.4.1

 * Plant Buster has new SFX

Gondola V2.4.1H

 * Second firing frame for skinsprite added

Gondola V2.5

 * Health 85.0 > 90.0
 * Plant Buster shots bounce off of walls with reduced velocity
 * Plant Buster speed 43 > 48

Gondola V2.6

 * Plant Buster spread multiple of 1 doubled (-2/-1/0/1/2 > -4/-2/0/2/4)
 * Now has 9 tics of endlag once mainfire is released
 * Health 90 > 85

Trivia

 * Did you know that you can spawn in than one Plant Pot in rapid fire succession as long as you're hugging a wall with a cliff above? You can spawn in an entire army of Plant Pots on the edge of an elevated platform that way.


 * Anti-Gravity areas on a map like MM9DW3 can have an odd effect on Plant Man's Plant Pots as well. Plant Man is able to spawn seemingly endless amounts of stationary Plant Pots that stay on the map for an infinite duration.
 * - This can make it so that Plant Man booby trap the entire area in a sea of 11 damage Plant Pots for whoever is inattentive enough to traverse the area.


 * When applying a leech poison effect onto an enemy, as long as Plant Man has is alt-fire Plant Barrier active, he is able to leech an additional 1 HP per damage interval due to the properties of the Drain Rune that the effect is built off of.
 * - Due to the time it takes for the leech effect to wear off exceeding the time it takes for Plant Barrier's active duration, you are only able to leech an extra 3 HP from the effect before your Barrier wears off. This was tested from a full bar of Plant Barrier ammo.