Overstuffed Zombie with Deadly Doesn't Power Up [ Edited ]

[daalnnii]

Not the same correlation. The damageh from the car killed the person. The bullet damage did not. The effect from the bullet (poison) did.

The car and the bullet are the same, they both do direct damage. The poison is an effect after that damage. The car just didn't have "deadly" attached to it.

[GrinningRuiner]

You missed the point.

[Guacodile42]

Whatever, the point is that only Super Brainz could possibly use this combo and it just seems pointless to make Deadly even more powerful.

[AphidOfDeath]

Coming from an old-school CCG player’s perspective, the text of the card dictates/trumps how the game does/should work.*  Since I don’t have the game in front of me, I’m pulling the texts from http://plantsvszombies.wikia.com/wiki/Plants_vs._Zombies_Heroes, which is hopefully fully (or at least approximately) accurate.

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Deadly: Any fighter with this trait always destroys any enemy fighter it does damage to.  Heroes are not affected by it, and Armored enemy fighters can survive the attack as long the fighter’s damage does not exceed their damage resistance.

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Since it says “fighter… destroys”, a zombie with the Deadly trait is the one destroying the plant, not the Deadly trait itself.

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Super Stench: All Zombies get Deadly.

Toxic Waste Imp: All Imps are Deadly.

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Though not the same wording, it’s reasonable to presume that all zombies gain the Deadly trait in the former, and all Imps gain the Deadly trait in the latter.

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Overstuffed Zombie: This heals to full and gets +2(health) when it destroys a plant.

Vimpire: This heals to full and gets +2(strength)/+2(health) when it destroys a plant.

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Yes @daperson12345, I was playing the final campaign against Citron (good call!) when I pulled the Overstuffed Zombie with Super Stench combo.  However, as noted, this situation also occurs due to the Toxic Waste Imp and Vimpire interaction.  Since we’ve determined that it’s the zombie doing the destroying, both Overstuffed Zombie and Vimpire’s abilities should activate in this scenario. 

I think that what is happening is that the game compares the attackers’ strength/health values first to determine if abilities kick in.  This observation is based on the Zombot Drone Engineer’s behavior, whose ability is “Whenever a Science Zombie does damage, that Zombie gets +1(strength)”.  However, if a science zombie is destroyed during the attack phase, the ability does not activate.  (Technically it should, but then we’d all be annoyed at the wasting of our time for meaningless animations!) 

Therefore, since neither Overstuffed Zombie nor Vimpire destroy their opposing plant during the attack phase (i.e. their strength is less than the opposing plant’s health), their abilities likewise don’t activate even though they end up destroying the plant based on their Deadly trait.

Thanks for reading,

Aphid of Death

*Though this is an arguable point, it’s also slightly off-topic, so I’ll address it here as I don’t want to muddle the point above with this conversation. 

Let’s start with Monopoly.  When I roll the dice and land on a Boardwalk with two houses, I pay my friend $600.  When I draw a Chance card that says “Advance Token to Boardwalk”, I move my figure to a Boardwalk with two houses and pay my friend $600.  Now imagine that I am instead playing it on the computer.  When I roll the dice and land on a Boardwalk with two houses, the computer docks my cache $600.  When I draw a Chance card that says “Advance Token to Boardwalk”, my figure is moved to a Boardwalk with two houses, but the computer does not dock my cache $600 because I didn’t land there on a dice roll.  Bugged?  You betcha!

To bring this analogy to a similar setup, since PvZ: Heroes is in the CCG format, one could print the cards onto cardstock and use counters and whatnot to play the game.  To play, you would read the text of the cards to determine how the plants and zombies interact with other game elements.  As such, if the electronic version of the game behaves differently than I expect based on the text of the card, the electronic version is bugged, as concluded in the Monopoly example.  Is it possible that cards are miswritten yet behaving as intended?  Sure, but coming to that conclusion requires me to have the developers/designers’ knowledge… to which I’m not privy.  Additionally, I’m going to presume that fixing a card’s text is easy vs squashing a bug.

[daalnnii]

I wont choose just the past that puts my perspective in the light. Ill include the entire description. When you only include your side, it puts your integrity in question and makes you look like a whiner.

Looking at the full, though. It says at the very top deadly destroys... then it goes into yours, zombies WITH THIS TRAIT destroy. Both making me still believe it's the trait killing.

Seriously deadly is strong enough. I'm assuming you're pretty high level. Since you're a ccg god... what winloss ratio are you supposed to be at? What are you at?

[daalnnii]

Basically, to me, the description of the trait itself says it kills zombies... and, youre right. It's says zombies WITH THIS TRAIT...

So, I'm going to ask this. Are there any effect zombies n that when given the trait of deadly, act like you think they should, or do they ask act the way i think they should and (hint) are?

[Guacodile42]

Wonderfully explained @AphidOfDeath.

[daalnnii]

It really was, guac... i still disagree and think everything is as it should be, but very well explained

[AphidOfDeath]

All apologies @daalnnii, I’m merely enjoying the debate and analysis of how the process currently works vs maybe how it should work.

I’ll start with a little info on me since you’re curious.  I played Magic non-professionally back in the 90s as well as Overpower (more so Marvel than DC).  For PvZ Heroes, I’m a tasty taco at level 41, playing fairly regularly since November or December.  I sometimes go up in rank… and sometimes I’m lucky that I can’t go below level 0.   So, when I’m on a lucky streak gaining rank, I’m probably at the 50-60% winning rate, though overall games count certainly puts me less.  Sorry to disappoint, but no CCG god here!

I assure you that I did not intend to mislead by only using the information that bolstered my side.  Instead, I didn’t include the game description because it seems like all game descriptions are merely simplified interpretations (or, as the name states, “descriptions”) of the actual “rule”.  For instance, Deadly says “Destroy any plant it hurts”.  Based on the wording, it’s feasible to say that Deadly is the one doing the destroying of plants, but I’d counter that Deadly would then have to be the one doing the hurting as well, which it doesn’t do. 

Perhaps our disagreement is in how we view traits.  You see them as “attached” while I see them as “inherent”.  After all, when there are game effects that give fighters traits that they don’t normally have (Bullseye, Deadly and Frenzy) and those traits can be taken away (i.e. fighters have this trait only while this other fighter is on the board and then that other fighter is destroyed), it makes traits feel even more like they are actually “attached” and separate from the fighter, so I totally get where you’re coming from. 

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@daalnnii wrote:
So, I'm going to ask this. Are there any effect zombies n that when given the trait of deadly, act like you think they should, or do they ask act the way i think they should and (hint) are?

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To the first question, I can only think of three zombies that benefit from plant destruction, Vimpire, Overstuffed, and Robot Shark (sans laser beam).  Robot Shark activates whenever a plant is hurt, so whether or not Deadly is involved is inconsequential and thusly it’s inapplicable.  The other two don’t work the way I think they should based on my readings, but they do work the way you think they should.  Am I missing any other zombies that could be tested?    Again, I think the order of battle processing is Attack Phase (strengths vs healths), followed by Abilities Phase (applied to those who survived the Attack Phase, applying abilities from other fighters from left-to-right), and finally followed by Trait Phase (also applied only to those who survived the Attack Phase).  Traits stack since Deadly + Strikethrough destroys all plants that take damage from the zombie’s attack.

As to your second question, just because things are working a certain way doesn’t mean that they are working as intended or as described.  Just check out @Guacodile42's list http://answers.ea.com/t5/General-Discussion/What-happened-cornucopia/td-p/5847675 of things that need to be fixed/addressed.

I really wish that there was interaction with the developer/designer team.  It’d let us know that they are aware of our issues, and they can address our questions and make us think that they care.  Because it is Valenbrainz after all. :eahigh_file:

[daalnnii]

No need to apologize! Like i was saying to guac, you made a very good argument... again (and i think you're right) we disagree on whether they're working as intended.

And... the wording doesn't really help. But let's not forget that either way. Wording doesn't equal what the card actually does. Glitch or not, look at teleport. I'm not sure which way that's supposed to work, and neither really seem op... they can have strong uses, but most cards can under the right circumstances.

I honestly don't even think what you want is really that game breaking. But, i also don't think it necessary.

That being said, watch the animation of that kind of turn. They damage each other, then after, the skull his and kills the target (irrc) it actually is the effect doing the final damage.

And 50-60% is actually a really good deck in most games. Hard to say in this one with the wacky matchmaking, but looking at other games like yugioh,magic and hearthstone, once decks start breaking higher than that, they start doing balance passes... they of course should fix matchmaking before any oases in this game. My CC deck winrate is disgusting (went from 40 to 41 in 28 games) but it's hard to say if it's OP considering i play a lot of sub 30s while in ranked.