Sort order: role coverage, not a numeric ranking
Unlike the Best DPS and Best Units pages, this page doesn't rank units by a number — a loadout is about covering different jobs at once. This is the only page on this site that includes units with no DPS stat at all, since a support unit can be worth a loadout slot without ever dealing damage.
Loadouts are constrained by Placement Limit
Every unit has a maximum number you can field at once — you can't just pick your highest-value units and stack them freely.
| Unit | Placement Limit |
|---|---|
| Venus Flytrap | 4 |
| Bouncing Shroom | 4 |
| Rafflesia | 6 |
| Beehive | 3 |
| Stun Flower | 3 |
| Lucky Clover | 1 |
| Repair Worker | 1 |
Seven verified roles among currently-obtainable units
| Role | Unit | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Single-target DPS | Venus Flytrap | High cost-efficiency single-target damage |
| AoE / crowd clear | Bouncing Shroom | Bounces down the track, splash damage to groups |
| Trap / lockdown | Rafflesia | Attaches to a mob as it passes, drops and reattaches on death |
| Spawner / passive | Beehive | Infinite range, summons bees rather than attacking directly |
| Crowd control (stun) | Stun Flower | Stuns enemies on hit, stopping them in place |
| Support (damage buff) | Lucky Clover | +10% damage and bonus crit chance for all units in range — no direct DPS itself |
| Base sustain (healing) | Repair Worker | Regenerates base health over time, up to a 1,000,000 cap — also no DPS stat |
| Detection / anti-stealth | Umbra | Can attack enemies that are hidden from other units |
That's a genuine spread across offense, control, support, and utility — enough to build a loadout that covers more than one job, using only currently-obtainable units.
A role Golem used to fill, and still doesn't have a great replacement
Golem's whole kit was a stun ability, but it's no longer obtainable. Stun Flower now fills the crowd-control role instead — worth noting its stun duration (1.197s) and cooldown (3s) are different numbers from Golem's old 0.5s stun, so it's not a like-for-like swap, just the closest verified currently-obtainable option.
Second source: a tested starter pick, cross-checked against a real video
Per our sourcing standard, a ranking-adjacent claim needs either objective in-game numbers (above) or a named, dated creator video with a stated result — not a vague "many players say." We checked one: "Top 3 Best Starter Units for All Gamemodes in Garden Tower Defense" by RDO (30,470 views, published March 27, 2026, timestamped chapters for PvP/Survival/Classic/Endless).
In the PvP chapter, the creator ranks Glowthorn as his third-best PvP starter pick, describing it as a "full electric" unit doing roughly 3,500 DPS, and explains it isn't ranked higher only because a starter slot is better spent on a cheaper early pick.
This supports one concrete, checkable claim: Glowthorn is a real, named starter pick a tested creator ranks highly for PvP specifically, with a stated DPS figure (3,500) in the video. We have not independently verified that 3,500 DPS number against the Fandom wiki (Glowthorn is not yet in our checked-unit pool), so treat it as creator-reported, not wiki-confirmed — but it's a genuine, dated, named source, not an anonymous "best loadout" claim.
Unconfirmed
- No specific "best 3-to-5-unit combination" has full wiki-verified backing yet — the Glowthorn claim above is creator-sourced, not cross-checked against Fandom stats.
- Whether Glowthorn's 3,500 DPS figure matches the wiki once that unit is added to our checked pool.