Garden Warfare 2’s first free DLC drops tomorrow

A map, more missions, and character reworks

This week, there’s almost certainly going to be a big dropoff in the number of Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 players who stick with Rose because they like to top the scoreboards. And thank goodness for that. PopCap is releasing a major update on Tuesday, March 8 with a new multiplayer map, more missions for the hub world, and much-needed balance adjustments to characters like Rose.

The all-seeing, all-knowing plant class is being “completely re-tuned” to fit into her originally intended support role. That means lower health, less effective homing capabilities for her primary attack, and a reduction to her Time Snare ability, among other changes. With this update, PopCap is also touching up several other characters like the Imp (more health) and Chomper (less spammy Goop).

As for the new Team Vanquish map, it’s a refresh of Garden Center, which was a staple of the original Garden Warfare. This new “Zomburbified” version for Garden Warfare 2 is called Aqua Center.

The update will hit PlayStation 4, PC, and Xbox One on Tuesday. Here are the full notes:

March 2016, Garden Warfare 2 Tuning/Balance Notes

New Features

• Added new co-op/team vanquish map “Aqua Center” which may seem familiar, yet completely different!
• Added night version of the Great White North map to the Turf Takeover Playlist
• Added Hide n’ Find missions to Backyard Battleground
• Added Bot & Pot Missions to Backyard Battleground
• Added unique character variant images to group HUD
• World Options now shows all friends playing the game, not just the joinable ones
• Added classic setting in options to change primary fire button (PS4 Only)
• Added Aim Sensitivity slider to now allow more precise control over aim speed (for PC this is broken up into both mouse and gamepad sensitivity)
• Added ability to select between hold button to aim or toggle button to Aim
• Added kick player option to the in-game scoreboard for easy access (player hosted modes only)
• Added difficulty to Pause Menu for some game modes
• Game Now defaults to common chat in Private Matches
• Added ability to view scoreboard while vanquished

Critical Fixes

• Reduced length of round timer between rounds in Multiplayer matches
• Imp now properly earns XP when in Mech
• Players can now see other players’ Backyard customizations when visiting their Backyard
• Players can now see stats on other players stats boards when visiting their Backyard
• Improved audio for garlic drone primary weapon
• Setting HUD to “Light” now also hides XP Meter
• Major improvements to hit reaction “flinching” animations
• A plethora of quality & bug fixes

Tuning/Balance Notes

Overall

• Improved regeneration upgrade for all characters
• Re-tuned all hit reactions for both players and AI to reduce the flinching effect even more

Rose:

• Completely re-tuned Rose class, bringing her back into playing as a support role
• Reduced Rose’s health
• Major changes to her homing abilities, ineffective at range, requires player to lead target in order to land more hits
• Slightly reduced rate of fire for Magic Thistles
• Significantly reduced length a victim is trapped in Time SnareChanged how Goatify ability works so that damage does not break Goatify, creating a more predictable and less jarring experience and lowered time as a goat
• Slowed down rose variants (Fire, Ice) when charging their weapons to make them more vulnerable

Citron:

• Slightly decreased the Party Citron laser damage

Corn:

• We needed to improve Corn’s ability to be a front-line fighter so we increased his health and also improved his long range damage
• Reduced Party Corn’s damage output

Chomper:

• Decreased the digestion time after a chomp escape (i.e. your victim got away using anti-chomp ability like jackhammer)
• Brought Chompers regeneration delay to parity with all other playable characters
• Fixed a bug where Chomp Thing’s health regeneration didn’t match his weapon description. He now regenerates health slightly sooner and faster than default
• Increased Unicorn Chomper’s Rainbow Warp cooldown time
• Increased goop cooldown so it couldn’t be spammed quite as much

Cactus:

• Zen Cactus was too damaging and needed some damage and reload adjustments

Imp:

• Imps tuning focused on ensuring he had a bit more survivability outside of his mech, and also improved his primary weapon slightly
• Increased Imp health
• Fixed a bug where the Imp couldn’t receive damage while he is making his Z-Mech phone call (he’s now only invulnerable when the beam of light appears)
• Reduced Party Imp’s damage output

Super Brainz:

• Slight cooldown reduction to Super Ultra Ball and Super Multi Ball abilities
• Minor speed improvement to Turbo Twister but at the cost of decreased his armor while in Turbo Twister
• Removed the decay from Toxic Brainz legendary meter to make it more useful
• Damage reduction to Party Brainz

Captain Deadbeard:

• We wanted to bring Captain Deadbeard closer to damage parity with Cactus, but just slightly below since he also benefits from his close range scatter shot
• Made some movement speed improvements to his barrel when unlit
• Made some damage reductions to Captain Partyman