[2023] Don’t you feel like plants are too OP in Arena?

This is pretty much spot on. The game mode needs non-champion outputs that get players moving around the map, create ebb and flow to the action (it is desirable that sometimes teams fight for a bit, then break off the fight to trade plants, then get back to it), and create combat mini-objectives that can swing the tide of a battle that looks otherwise hopeless. Both the Plants system and the Cameos system are aimed at these goals.

If these things didn't exist, you'd see problems like: Their comp is better than ours, it's not worth playing out rounds... combat pacing is always max intensity all the time, so playing the mode is exhausting... 100% of combat power lives in champions, so the mode is excessively (i.e. beyond a dev team's ability to correct for) sensitive to balance... a swingy start to a round (e.g. one champion dies unexpectedly) removes all dramatic tension from the rest of the round... and more.

Are they too strong? They need to be strong enough to swing a fight - strong enough that it is clearly correct to play around them over just playing out a heads up 2v2 fight, or they won't succeed. That requires them to be very impactful.

(Two quick notes - the excessive respawns and starting fights spawned yesterday was a bug that has since been fixed, and the Guardian's Dirk meta of the last week is being corrected via balance)

There are definitely pros and cons to choosing basic attacks as the input for activating plants. Our belief is the pros outweigh the cons for now, especially given how hard the 2v2 shape of matches and the ring of fire favor melees.

In the longer run, if this mode were permanent, I believe we would eventually build out a more robust and more diverse set of map hazards to play around, instead of leaning so hard on this one.