Philodendron melinonii
A fast but frail native-only carrion-aroid that sickens the enemy bench and poisons through its moves, though its raw stats are weak.
Wave of Love is a carrion-aroid, one of the neutral Weird categories. It is native to South America and has no invasive range in the game, so it only ever fields as a native card - a fast but fragile disruptor rather than a heavy hitter. See categories for what the Weird group is about.
Its kit unlocks in three stages. Heat Burst is the starter attack from Lv 1 at 2 Sun, a 27 pulse that catches the foe and singes its bench. Cadaverine Flood is the free once-per-battle ability at Lv 25: Refuses to be replaced: heal 60%, and the foe can't heal. It deals no damage but sickens the foe's entire bench. Oxalate Overload is the advanced attack at Lv 40 for 6 Sun, 35 of needle crystals that poison and weaken. No move carries an initiative rider, so it acts in the normal order.
From its trait schedule it keeps two working always-on traits. Thermogenesis arrives at Lv 10: the spadix genuinely self-heats, Burning the opposing active a little on each checkup for steady chip damage that bypasses the overshield and ignores DEF. Lure stacks on at Lv 68 as a working taunt - a decoy that soaks single-target incidental damage off its allies: wherever the engine would pick one victim out of a group, whether a splash, scatter or bench-reaching hit, this plant takes that hit instead, and at its Lv 68 mature tier it always taunts. At the snapshot level of 40 only Thermogenesis is active; Lure is still ahead of it. Note that although the plant is not tagged toxic and holds no Toxin contact-recoil trait, its Oxalate Overload move still applies Poison directly through its effect.
It carries no special combat keywords and inflicts no contact recoil (no Thorns, no Toxin trait). It is not a climber, so it is not Moss Pole eligible. With floor DEF, a Calcium/Magnesium field gear amendment is its most useful defensive pick; it is not edible, so amendments otherwise feed XP.
At Lv 40 it shows 103 HP (including the +15% native cushion), a low 19 ATK, and 1 DEF at the floor. Retreat costs 12 Sun. Speed is its one strength: initiative 38 orders turn 1 and SPD 39 orders the rest, both high, so it is quick both off the mark and in the sustained fight. Benched it lends a green HP overshield bar to your active; on the field it can hold up to four from benched natives. Being native-only, it never pays invasive self-damage.
HP swells to 190 but DEF stays pinned at 1 - a frail card that gains biomass and nothing else defensively. Retreat rises to 23 Sun and even its strong tempo falls to roughly one percent of cap, so the speed that defines it at Lv 40 is largely spent by the endgame. Age mostly buys it the durability to keep applying its Poison and bench-sicken effects.
Carrion-aroid is in the Weird group, which sits off the succession wheel: it deals and takes even damage against every category, with no x1.5 strengths and no x0.667 resistances. Its matchups are decided purely by stats and status effects, never by type.
This is a weak card in raw terms - low ATK and floor DEF - so it is not a reliable finisher. Its value is speed and disruption: it moves first, sickens the whole enemy bench with Cadaverine Flood, and stacks Poison with Oxalate Overload, chipping bulky foes it could never out-slug. It needs stronger teammates to close games. It is not edible, so any fertilizer banks x1.25 XP rather than coins, and it is mainly a family-tree collection piece with a niche support use. It fights as a fast skirmisher until about Lv 29, after which its growing bulk outweighs its fading tempo.
Leveling trades speed for power. A plant’s tempo (SPD + INI, the turn-order edge) fades as it grows, while its power (HP + ATK + DEF, net of the rising Sun cost to retreat) climbs. The crossover is the level where power overtakes tempo: below it the plant is a fast skirmisher, above it a heavyweight. Shown for each stance this plant can actually hold — native adds a HP cushion, invasive an attack edge, neutral neither — with the card at its crossover and fully grown at Lv 100.