Treesile

Treesile is a plant that first appears in the Apocalypse levels. It will shoot explosive branch missiles at airborne zombie threats. It costs 200 sun.

Attack
5 seconds after being planted, the Treesile will create a missile-shaped branch that will protrude from a hole at the trunk, and another protruding from the top. When it detects an aerial zombie in its lane, it will release its trunk-staged missile towards it. The resulting explosion will be an instant kill for the target and any other aerial zombie on the same tile, and cause 24 damage to all other aerial zombies in a 3x3 area around the target, and 13 damage to all other zombies in the same range.

Also, when a Bungee Zombie (or varitaions of it), Sun Bomb, Parrot, or similar threat comes within a 3x3 area of the Treesile, it will launch its topmost missile to it, with similar results. If the Sun Bombs are the PvZ2 style instead of the Apocsalypse style, it will release its sun nevertheless.

Both missiles reload 12 seconds after firing, but each reloads individually.

Strategy
Most normal levels do not include too high numbers of aerial zombies, so one column of Treesiles should be more than enough to deter airborne zombies. It is generally best used on individual (or small groups of) targets with greater health than usual. Its splash damage can also serve well for great numbers of zombies with less than 24 health that will die from its splash, but generally spaced formations may -and most likely will- soon overwhelm the Treesiles' slow reloading, and those situations usually call for faster-shooting and cheaper AA plants (like CattailsWelove's AAA Gun or simply a Cactus), especially if said targets are Ballon Zombies -with some ground defense for the grounded zombies, of course.

Generally speaking, though, no matter which of them the situation calls for, it is not advised to pair this plant with other AA plants, unless the other plant can also prove itself useful in ground zombies too -2 columns with dedicated AA plants is an unneccessary waste of space that will only prove to have a use in special levels that call for big numbers of aerial threats.

If you want your Treesile to also serve in the anti-air role of the threats the topmost branch is used for, it is in you best interest -but not absolutely mandatory- to space your Treesiles a bit. An almost perfect formation would look like this:

Z Z X Z                                                                                                                                               Z X Z Z                                                                                                                                               Z Z X Z                                                                                                                                               Z X Z Z                                                                                                                                               Z Z X Z

With X being the Treesile and Z being any other plant you want. As this formation already gets a whole column of Treesiles, it would be a waste to expand the formation further -unless you really need to protect a certain plant, and haven't picked Umbrella leaves.

In this aspect, Umbrella Leaves would also be a waste when paired with such a formation, as the resulting formation would actually make it impossible to plant between the arrays of those two plants, who will end up protecting each other. Nevertheless, each plant protects against the exact same targets, while both are able to protect against those consisently in the low numbers they usually appear. The main differences are mostly that Umbrella Leaves are generally more reliable -as they have no reloading-, while the Treesile's splash damage gives it an effective 5x5 range. As with it and other AA plants, when each of them is better to be used is dependent solely on occasions and the player's preference.

However, on situations when both types of defense are needed, the Treesile is generally better, as it will save space in both seed packets and tiles. Also, levels with both types of threats usually have less from each so it will be more playable to the player, which helps its reloading time.

Almanac Entry
Treesile uses missile-like branches to destroy aerial threats.

Range: 3x3, Lane

Cost: 200 Sun

Damage: Massive

Recharge: Sluggish

Even though they know he's always ready to help them, other plants find Treesile a bit creepy. He never participates in conversations -in fact, he never talks unless to reply to a question, and does so very shortly and cynically. He seems to be interested in nothing but staring at the sun, ready for any threat that may try to pass undetected -and he will never give anyone the joy to humiliate him. He's this insecure about his dignity.

Trivia

 * It's name "Treesile" is a wordplay on the words "Tree", which it obviously is, and "Missile", a guided and propelled explosive weapon, which is how its branches are used.