- Don’t Fly Solo: Work with teammates, if you have them. This mode accepts up to four players for a reason. You can certainly run through lower difficulty settings alone, especially with a leveled-up plant, but you’ll do better consistently with backup. This also extends to what you do during an actual game. Running around by yourself on the map, especially during later waves, is asking to get vanquished. If you’re too far from backup, they won’t be able to revive you.
- Use Potted Plants: While they are far from invincible, Potted Plants enhance your defenses significantly. However, you don’t start with Potted Plants in your inventory, and it costs time and gold to purchase them from the Sticker Shop. Just because they’re an expendable commodity doesn’t mean you can’t use them.
- You Need Healing: You’re going to take damage. It’s inevitable. You might get lucky during early waves, but when the zombies ramp up their assault, you’ll wish you had healing available. Use the Sunflower Potted Plant to support you near the Garden during last-stand situations, play as a Sunflower to heal your allies, or set down a special Heal Flower whenever needed.
- Choose the Right Class for Your Team: If you join a Garden Op mid-match, take a look at the team composition before you enter the fray. Do they need the healing support of a Sunflower? Do they need the artillery that a Cactus can call down? Or do they need the frontline prowess that a Chomper or Peashooter can offer?
- Chomper Has It Rough: Chomper’s ability to vanquish zombies it strikes from behind can be very useful at picking off dangerous zombies, but swarms of Engineers throwing their Megaphones can easily interrupt its Burrow ability. Additionally, Chomper must be up close to the enemy to be effective, which means that it will always be in danger, and almost always be taking damage. While its other abilities are very useful when combined with support from other players, this is not a Class you can easily or safely play solo, much less without attentive healing support from a Sunflower. These challenges do not mean Chomper doesn’t have a place in a team—far from it! The ability to vanquish zombies in one bite, especially the Armored and Hero Zombies, can be incredibly useful. However, a Chomper really needs the support of teammates to get zombies to turn their backs to it.
- Sunflowers Are Not Just Healers: Just because the Sunflower is more or less the designated healer of a group does not mean it can’t fight. Use the Heal Flower to support yourself at the front lines, while tethering a heal beam to your allies as necessary, but don’t forget that the Sunflower has its own primary weapon to blast zombies with! If you’re well protected, you can also use your powerful rooted ability to burn down the zombies quickly. Just don’t ignore your friends in need!
- Cactus Runs D: Of all the plant Classes, Cactus is best suited to locking down chokepoints on a map. The Tall-nut Battlements force zombies to blast through them or go around them, helping to block narrow passages, and you can set Potato Mines near them to vanquish melee zombies. Most importantly, the Garlic Drone can wipe out huge groups of zombies over a wide area with its Corn Strike, a good way to eliminate many zombies gathered around a Garden. On top of all this, all Cactus variants are well suited to wiping out basic zombies with well-aimed Critical Hits from very long distance.
- The Peashooter Roams: Consider the Peashooter to be the “sweeper” of the plants, able to play many roles as the situation demands. The Hyper ability can help Peashooters get to where they need to be in a hurry, or help flank dangerous groups of zombies. Its Chili Bean Bomb is great in conjunction with chokepoints set up by Cactus Tall-nuts, and if the Peashooter needs to hunker down and deliver pain on a single target in a hurry, the Pea Gatling can do just that.
- Variants Mix Things Up: As you play the game and unlock additional Class Variants, you’ll find that the differences in their primary weapons can radically alter how you approach battles. For example, an Ice Pea might want to aggressively attack enemies when they fall in range of Potted Plants, in hopes of freezing them in place and letting the little potted buddies get some extra licks in. The Mystic Flower’s charged shots might encourage long-range combat. Experiment with the variants you unlock to see how their primary weapons can serve you best.
Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare eGuide Co-op Garden Ops