A perfect Plant? There is such thing as that in Axie infinity? The short answer is YES and the long answer is also YES.
But will only will be perfect for you and your team. What do i mean? Well, grab a cup of coffe or juice and get comfy, this one is a bit long, but also really useful.
Let's start from the beggining, a perfect Axie is an Axie most suited for it's role. Nothing more, nothing else. And a frontline Plant (yes, this guide is about frontline Plants specifically) is the anchor of the team, so you can have an excepcional carry and still have an unbalanced team because of the lack of synergy or some floor axies and do incredibly well.
So, how do you know what Plant do you need for your team? Well, for that you need to know what your team do. Let me explain with an example, what does this Axie do better than most?
The answer is Combo , so, what does an Axie that do combos need?
Two things: energy and time.
Energy to actually pull the combo off and time to draw all the combo pieces. Then the preferable frontline Plant should be an Axie with stellar defense and abilities that stall the game for more time.
So let me ask you this, which of this plants would you use?
Both are really good Plants, but one works better with the reptile above, and that's the one on the left. Why? Because it generates more energy (because of the Disguise), have a lot of armor (because of Pumpkin) and the other player want to be very precise about when to attack it because of the Yam. While the other spend more energy because of the Cactus and do not have that much armor, instead it has healing.
But now, imagine you have a regular beast, doble nut, sinister and heroic as it's skill set. Who would be a good frontliner for it?
Then now your team wants to do one thing and one thing only: to defeat the enemy frontline in the first two turns. Then, the best frontline is an aggresive frontline, cactus, hotbutt, turnip, serious (or zigzag).
And to clarify, why turnip in this case? Because birds are really dangerous for a beast.
Of course, none of this examples are "simple the best and that's it". In fact if you want an aggresive plant you can even think about running beast skills and it would be an amazing frontline too.
But the important thing is this, the concept of the team.
Do you combo? Do you aggro? Are you a balance team? Do you backdoor?
When you know what you do, you can start defining what your plant needs to do.
You don't need Serious for a good plant.
You don't need Pumpkin for a good plant.
You don't need Cactus for a good plant.
You need to know what your team needs from your plant for your plant to be good.
So, let's make a list of skills to think about based in what your teams needs:
I think with this small list of skills i'm pretty clear about how i personally think about a plant. A little tiny disclaimer is that i'm avoiding beast/insect skills in this analysis because is getting lenghty but the short explanation is: A plant with back insect skills is REALLY good and running nut cracker or sinister strike and specially Branc charge in a plant is incredible strategy.
Now, maybe you are wondering: "Where is the energy steal? Where is the life zigzag?" or "Why you didn't mention carrot hammer?". The answer is: talking about energy steal vs zigzag could be a guide all into itself.
And i did not mention carrot hammer for one short reason: Carrot hammer is not a good card.
Think about it, when is the best time to use carrot hammer? When you survive an attack because of it. But 40 armor is just too little, and the damage is not even that good. Basically for every situation where carrot hammer was useful for you, another nine times it was a dead card for you. So, avoid carrot hammer if possible.
Now if you want a review of a variety of Plants and what teams best suit them, just leave a comment and i'll do it. I find pretty fun the concept but i don't know if it would be good content for the blog.
If you want to talk with me hit my DM's in twitter: https://twitter.com/ChuntaroDS
