Are Wormwood's saladmanders that bad?

[Memetan]

I started playing Wormwood and messing a little with his skill tree, I thought it will be fun to have all his summons, but... I kinda... don't get the point in saladmanders, unlock the saladmanders takes a lot of skill points, are the ones that require most health 25 hp, and dragon fruits don't grow in the wild like carrots or lightbulbs so are harder to get. When you summon the saladmanders they are really slow, they are the combat ones but must enemies just outrun them, I tried to use the "spore skill" to sleep enemies but saladmanders fall sleep too, 2 are the max you can have buffing his heath, but still, they just walk slowly and bite if the enemy is still there. No planar damage, no hidden mechanic or attack, just walk and bite if they can get to the enemy. Am I missing something? Am I using them wrong? What's the general opinion of the community about that? 

[Gashzer]

They have 900 hp each which quickly regenerates, they do 40 damage every 2 secs which is good. 

Best used if you kite mobs into them or just tank alongside them. Wormwood is an offensive tank character anyway with bramble husk recoil damage.

Dragonfruits are obtainable early from ripe saladmanders at lunar and once you have 2 dragonfruits you can infinitely respawn your saladmanders. Pretty good value followers tbh.

[Jakepeng99]

2 hours ago, Memetan said:

I started playing Wormwood and messing a little with his skill tree, I thought it will be fun to have all his summons, but... I kinda... don't get the point in saladmanders, unlock the saladmanders takes a lot of skill points, are the ones that require most health 25 hp, and dragon fruits don't grow in the wild like carrots or lightbulbs so are harder to get. When you summon the saladmanders they are really slow, they are the combat ones but must enemies just outrun them, I tried to use the "spore skill" to sleep enemies but saladmanders fall sleep too, 2 are the max you can have buffing his heath, but still, they just walk slowly and bite if the enemy is still there. No planar damage, no hidden mechanic or attack, just walk and bite if they can get to the enemy. Am I missing something? Am I using them wrong? What's the general opinion of the community about that? 

No, they are really good

just because your two salamanders are not single handed sweeping bosses, doesnt remove the fact they are a decent damage boost, and can tank even the strongest bosses (even post riff ones) to give you time to breath and heal, or absorb damage.

 

They are really good for splitting workload against groups, they are excellent for the lunar varg.

 

Edited February 15 by Jakepeng99

[Radicaljoe]

on paper they're fine. in practice they're meh. There's better things to spend skillpoints and health on.

[HowlVoid]

They aren't good but I guess they aren't supposes to be. Its kinda funny in that youd probably lose more hp trying to keep them in the fight than if you were to do the fight normally. Would be a diffrent matter if we had the simple command to get them to attack something. Given their slow speed youll end up losing more resources trying to get them aggro anything important. 

Theyre a fun novelty early game, a product of the rush job they did. The other lunar skills are probably a better investment, especially if luck becomes a thing you can procure more of outside the event (more luck=more tentacle spawns). Although i havent had a chance to test this.

[reddocc]

They do have their uses but mostly not with bosses what it really drives me crazy is how often they distract, their low speed,  and how if you have two they hate each other and let the other die while one sleeps. 

Uses I found for them, killing grass gators, distraction for monkey raids, killing regular spiders with a walking cane, killing tall birds, beefalo, killing other salamanders in lunar for more dragonfruit, treeguards, their main use honestly is distraction and tanking they're not great bodyguards but in terms of offence capabilities two are better than maybe 4 pigman????

[YouKnowWho142]

As a Wormwood main I'd use them more if it didn't require such a big skill point investment, half of the left side of the skill tree is borderline unusable (quarter of a skill tree dedicated to crafting plants is tragic, wormwood has zero build potential :((( ) and if you put in enough points to unlock saladmanders you're locking yourself out of a lot of stuff on the right tree. They're okay, they're nice to have. If the planting skills were something better then it'd feel a lot less bad committing so many points to get saladmanders but as they are if you want a dps boost then the right side is too good to pass up

[Ohan]

Their slow speed, very long “leash range” and short lifespan is what makes them very bad. 

You have to put a lot of effort in to make them useful. More effort than ud expend just fighting normally with not much extra payoff. 

Their leash range is so large that you can attack something or be attacked and the saladmanders will be too far away to pick up on the attack/defend command.

They just stand there, completely idle, literally doing nothing. And if you move back to get into their attention range u might as well have just fought normally and not lost the time moving back. 
 

The anti synergy with moonshroom cloud also makes them very bothersome to use and straight up impossible in certain fights.

Suggestion: after theyve fallen asleep, Wormwood’s attack command or defend prompt should wake them up. 
 

Their short lifespan and lack of any kind of notice whatsoever when they detransform means it is very easy to lose dragonfruit when running around the map with them, which is very detrimental before late game when u have a stack of it in an icker preserve. You have to desummon them early and thus waste HP if you want to guarantee getting the fruit back. 
 

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Before the clockwork changes i found some use for them when clearing ruins. They were  pretty decent at distracting and tanking clockworks. And since the clockworks are clustered densely their slow movement speed isnt as detrimental. I would still have to do a lot of maneuvering  to lure the clocks into the saladmanders or vice versa. 

After the newest changes to clocks idk. Does electric dmg light salads on fire? I hope not lmao…

Their best and least frustrating use case is probably against relatively stationary single target HP sponge bosses like Dfly and M/Goose. (And similar mobs like treeguards etc) 

14 hours ago, Memetan said:

No planar damage, no hidden mechanic or attack, just walk and bite if they can get to the enemy.

Yeah, theyre not very exciting on top of often being extremely frustrating to use. 

I wish Wormwood could induce blooming in them and then have some sort of ointment or something to make himself temporarily fireproof so he could fight with his firey salads. 

[Green latter A]

They are fine but not really worth using