*** Gamora (Guardians of the Galaxy) ***

NorthernPolarity

Phantron wrote:

There isn't a good way to build a good team around her because her color coverage is one of the most common that you're bound to run into a 'soandso can do this better'.

For PvP she is immediately marginalized in any event you have a featured character above around level 120.

For PvE any consideration for red runs into Captain America, who is probably the #1 PvE character in the game. For green/black, the number of characters that does this color coverage well is significant. For anti-goon purposes, you also run into Falcon and friends, who mows down goons very easily. Now if you're missing all the characters who are on top of their respective roles she's interchangeable with someone like HT or Punisher, but you're more likely to have either of those two covered than she is because she's newer. If everyone gets a max covered/leveled Gamora it's still not clear if she'd be any better than either of those two and you certainly don't have that.

I'd agree that shes interchangeable with Pun/Torch if you aren't build around her black. If you ARE building around her black, then 1k in strike tiles for 12 black is much better than anything that Torch or Pun can put out in terms of sustained damage. And yeah, she's really not going to be the best in any one area on a standard team to really replace the top 10 guys on A teams, but she can definitely outperform Torch or Pun on a PvE B team as a commander. Eventually hopefully we get a format where you need to eek out every little ounce of value out of your roster to place well, in which case this discussion about Gamora's black suddenly becomes really relevant instead of dismissing her as yet another Torch / Pun.

Unknown

By the way I don't think not being special is necessarily bad. If everyone is special then it's the same as no one is specail. If Gamora was the first R/G/black character and Punisher is new we might be saying why bother with Punisher because he covers the same role as Gamora. But since she's not the first R/G/black character that's what she has to live with.

Phaserhawk

Well let's run theoretical's. Say you are able to match green and black 4 times for 12 each and you also matched red 4 times but got some 4 matches and you had 15.

Lets's also asuume you get 9 strike tiles for Bad Reputation.

Activate Bad Reputation
5/5/3--720 worth of strike tiles
5/3/5--1332 worth of strike tiles
3/5/5--1332 worth of strike tiles
4/5/4--909 Worth of strike tiles

You activate Skull Cracker

5/5/3--did 1148 + 720 AoE==1868
5/3/5--did 1148 + 1332 AoE == 2480
3/5/5--did 696 + 1332 AoE == 2028
4/4/4--did 1148 + 909 AoE == 2057

You use Razor's Edge 3 times
5/5/3--1868 AoE--2439(3)
5/3/5--2480 AoE--2256 (3)
3/5/5--2028 AoE--3051 (3)
4/5/4--2057 AoE--2628 (3)

Now with this 3/5/5 or 4/5/4 become the best builds, however that involes saving up all your skills at once, what if you put the hurt on with one target and use Razor's Edge 3 times before anything else.

5/5/3--4257
5/3/5--2772
3/5/5--4257
4/5/4--4257

then you go Bad Rep into Skull

at that point 3/5/5, 4/5/4, then 5/5/3 so at this point 5/3/5 rules itself out

Now what if you just go Skull Cracker and then use Bad Rep later.

well at that point 5/5/3 is better, followed by 4/5/4 finally 3/5/5

This is all assuming you can get 9 tiles out. If she's tanking only 2 colors and you get 4 tiles out well now Skull Cracker's extra dmg takes a bit longer to outdo but only by 1 turn. So after doing this I now find 3/5/5 or 4/5/4 to be the stronger builds, that is unless you think a 2turn stun is better.

simonsez

Phaserhawk wrote:

Well let's run theoretical's. Say you are able to match green and black 4 times for 12 each and you also matched red 4 times but got some 4 matches and you had 15.

5/5/3--1868 AoE--2439(3)
5/3/5--2480 AoE--2256 (3)
3/5/5--2028 AoE--3051 (3)
4/5/4--2057 AoE--2628 (3)

So for 12G, 12Bk, 15R, you can do a total of 15k damage, as long as you cripple your team enough and get a good enough board, so that she tanks enough to get 9 strike tiles out.

Or you could run a 2nd tier team like Patch, BP, and Deadpool, and use 9G, 12Bk, 12R to hit Beserker Rage, 2 LotP, and RotP and about 24k total damage.

I seriously don't get all this discussion trying to prove she's not as awful as most everyone thinks she is.

Phaserhawk

simonsez wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

Well let's run theoretical's. Say you are able to match green and black 4 times for 12 each and you also matched red 4 times but got some 4 matches and you had 15.

5/5/3--1868 AoE--2439(3)
5/3/5--2480 AoE--2256 (3)
3/5/5--2028 AoE--3051 (3)
4/5/4--2057 AoE--2628 (3)

So for 12G, 12Bk, 15R, you can do a total of 15k damage, as long as you cripple your team enough and get a good enough board, so that she tanks enough to get 9 strike tiles out.

Or you could run a 2nd tier team like Patch, BP, and Deadpool, and use 9G, 12Bk, 12R to hit Beserker Rage, 2 LotP, and RotP and about 24k total damage.

I seriously don't get all this discussion trying to prove she's not as awful as most everyone thinks she is.

Obviously there are better teams, and none of this is to say how good she is, for me it's how best to maximize her skills, basically getting the most output for the smallest input and the way the math comes out it's better to run her 3/5/5 as you have more output for the same amount of input of a 5/5/3. Obviously your team comp has a much better input to output ratio which is why Gamora won't see much play unless she's featured or Heroic. Hopefully when she rotates out in a few months they tweak her. To me her skills are fine, its' the cost that is not very good. If her green was 10 and her black created strike tiles for every 3 symbols and maybe cost 10 as well then I think she would be one of the better characters but as is, she's just there so I can play all the PvE nodes.

Unknown

4/5/4 was always the best damage build because 5 is utility. To me, that utility is worth giving up some damage on especially with how situational it is.

I run Daken/Patch/Psylocke a lot. I like Pyslocke more than the average player I think, her cheap abilities pair well with Daken/Patch strike tiles and the two of them regen so you can sustain long play sessions. Daken/Patch/Gamora is more damage for less colors. Now all I need is Green/Red/Blue, forget Black. Yes it means the board can screw me a bit more but it also accelerates matches which is good. If she were fully leveled and put in front Gamora would only tank Green in this situation. Her is worthless to me. Since I already like Pyslocke more than the average player I suspect I will like Gamora more than the average player.

You could construct a team around her using and it might be good. I'm just not going to do it.

Human Torch puts out 1808 in for 10 Black. It's incorrect to say Gamora's can put out better sustained damage than either Punisher or Torch. Gamora Punisher and Human Torch all occupy relatively the same niche. R/G/B characters who have 3 damage powers and a high damage That doesn't make any of them any less useful. Every character you can sub in when a piece of your team goes down is one less health pack you need that cycle. Think of it this way, would you rather have 2 Punishers on your roster or a Punisher and a Gamora?

NorthernPolarity

Lerysh wrote:

4/5/4 was always the best damage build because 5 is utility. To me, that utility is worth giving up some damage on especially with how situational it is.

I run Daken/Patch/Psylocke a lot. I like Pyslocke more than the average player I think, her cheap abilities pair well with Daken/Patch strike tiles and the two of them regen so you can sustain long play sessions. Daken/Patch/Gamora is more damage for less colors. Now all I need is Green/Red/Blue, forget Black. Yes it means the board can screw me a bit more but it also accelerates matches which is good. If she were fully leveled and put in front Gamora would only tank Green in this situation. Her is worthless to me. Since I already like Pyslocke more than the average player I suspect I will like Gamora more than the average player.

You could construct a team around her using and it might be good. I'm just not going to do it.

Human Torch puts out 1808 in for 10 Black. It's incorrect to say Gamora's can put out better sustained damage than either Punisher or Torch. Gamora Punisher and Human Torch all occupy relatively the same niche. R/G/B characters who have 3 damage powers and a high damage That doesn't make any of them any less useful. Every character you can sub in when a piece of your team goes down is one less health pack you need that cycle. Think of it this way, would you rather have 2 Punishers on your roster or a Punisher and a Gamora?

From experience, I would expect Torch's black to be significantly worse than a fully powered Gamora, to the point where its not even a close comparison.
1. Torch black rarely gets out the 8 attack tiles because of TU tiles and potentially other special tile conflicts. I would argue that 6/8 tiles are out on average, making it more like 1.3k damage in attack tiles.
2. Torch black tiles are in such close proximity of each other that they tend to get matched in droves. Being in the middle of the screen also makes it more likely to get matched away than edge tiles.
3. Strike tiles are a LOT better than attack tiles. Attack tiles are strike tiles that only trigger once a turn: I would much rather have 1k damage in strike tiles than 1.4k dmg in attack tiles. The sustained damage you get from cascades and ability uses are insane with strike tiles: I would argue that even 1.8k dmg in attack tiles is comparable to 1k dmg in strike tile comparisons.
4. Reducing AP by 30% is a big liability, esp in matches where the sustained dmg matters, aka ones that don't end shortly after you cast black.

Fighting vs say, 395 goons, you'd see the difference between Torch and Gamora's black become much more apparent. Agreed on Torch / Pun / Gams occupying roughly the same niche, but Gam's black on tanking 3 colors is superior by far to Torch or Pun's black.

Phaserhawk

Lerysh wrote:

4/5/4 was always the best damage build because 5 is utility. To me, that utility is worth giving up some damage on especially with how situational it is.

I run Daken/Patch/Psylocke a lot. I like Pyslocke more than the average player I think, her cheap abilities pair well with Daken/Patch strike tiles and the two of them regen so you can sustain long play sessions. Daken/Patch/Gamora is more damage for less colors. Now all I need is Green/Red/Blue, forget Black. Yes it means the board can screw me a bit more but it also accelerates matches which is good. If she were fully leveled and put in front Gamora would only tank Green in this situation. Her is worthless to me. Since I already like Pyslocke more than the average player I suspect I will like Gamora more than the average player.

You could construct a team around her using and it might be good. I'm just not going to do it.

Human Torch puts out 1808 in for 10 Black. It's incorrect to say Gamora's can put out better sustained damage than either Punisher or Torch. Gamora Punisher and Human Torch all occupy relatively the same niche. R/G/B characters who have 3 damage powers and a high damage That doesn't make any of them any less useful. Every character you can sub in when a piece of your team goes down is one less health pack you need that cycle. Think of it this way, would you rather have 2 Punishers on your roster or a Punisher and a Gamora?

She would tank 2 in the lineup since she would take green and red, Patch would only have yellow and Daken would have black/purple/blue, where this would hurt you is you lose the ability of Patch's tanking, thus you would want Patch in front and Gamora tanks 0 rendering black as you said useless so you may as well go 5/5/3 if that is your prefered lineup because you will never be able to use Bad Reputation and for what you give up (Bad Rep strike tiles) for what you gain (a completely invisible character) may or may not be worth it. I do like that team combination though, Daken and Patch do all the work while Gamora smacks people around with red

Unknown

Gamora would probably be pretty good…

If Xforce didn’t exist.

But as she stands today, she has both a green and a black active, which makes her terrible when paired with Xforce.

And since this entire game is “Xforce and [blank],” except for the rare few that have either gotten a.) extremely lucky on token pulls or b) bought a bunch of her covers, the average player does not have a fully covered Thor yet.

So until either Xforce is severely nerfed or Thor becomes more attainable through normal means, Gamora’s only place in this game will be in PVE essentials, featured PVP tournaments and on subprime teams.

Now, that’s not to say that she is beast or Doc Oct tier. She has 3 solid abilities, one of which is, other than Devil Dino’s Purple, tied for the lowest cost ability in the game.

Her red is really her marquee ability. The other two are merely emergency/support abilities unless she is the only one on the team collecting those colors.
I think, given the number of strong greens out there, and considering the damage or stun isn’t all that impressive, I think her ideal build will be 3/5/5.

But ultimately, it all depends on who you pair her with. If you pair her with Black Panther, go with 5/5/3. If you pair her with Lazy Thor, 3/5/5. If you pair her Xforce…don’t. Don’t pair her with Xforce.

Some people make the argument that she is strong to pair with Xforce in fights that surgical strike is either taking Red or Black. Black because once you cast Surgical strike, the high AP color will not be worth casting surgical strike again, so you may as well grab some strike tiles. And red because Xforce wastes red and she could probably get 2 to 3 off on the red haul from SS alone.

I disagree with both of these ideas. Black: if you pair her with Xforce, she will only tank red and maybe blue/purple if your third doesn’t have anything in either of those. So how man tiles are you really getting out of it? Plus, with all of Xforce’s board shake. Using SS color AP to get some strike tiles that you’ll likely lose many of in your next Xforce seems silly.

And red because, if you want to bring someone along simply for their ability to use red, I implore you to consider She Hulk. For 4 more red AP, you will deal 3213 more damage (her red is AoE) and you also get even more board shake. More health and you can also cross blue off the list of unusable colors that now have some sort of use. Plus, on defense, She Hulk is not a threat to waste your black, like Gamora is, although she is still a risk to waste your green, like Gamora haha.

Bottom line, Gamora seems like a solid enough character that just doesn’t fit in the top tier of this game.

Wow, I wrote way more than I originally intended…

Unknown

You can't build around her black for PvP unless you don't plan on ever having most of your characters at level 120 or higher because of the featured format completely hoses tile ownership. For PvE, on top of the characters who are normally stronger than her (e.g. X Force), you have an additional hurdle of some characters being absolutely dominant in PvE like Captain America and Falcon + Daken/Blade (or both). If you don't have any of those guys plus X Force she's probably interchangeable as the generic damage role, but there are already many guys that fill this role and those guys start out at a higher level compared to her due to availability. I wouldn't mind to play her instead of Punisher but that'd have to wait until at least she's level 166 because Punisher is already level 166, and I don't even play him very often when you can use any of the aforementioned 3 powerhouse PvE combos mentioned above.

There would eventually have to be some kind of mode that's halfway between 'can use everyone' and 'can only use 3 3*s' from a heroic event. I imagine if you're given say 20 heroes to use, selected at random, she could be quite good in such an environment.

simonsez

Phaserhawk wrote:

Obviously there are better teams, and none of this is to say how good she is, for me it's how best to maximize her skills

Fair enough... I just see her as so far down in the pecking order, it'll be forever until she becomes one's best use of ISO, so best build seems pretty moot.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

ark123 wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

ark123 wrote:

And BP would be a thousand times better than her.

And xf ladythor is a thousand times better than any other character duo in the game, whats your point?

I'm comparing yellow strike tile generating, AoE causing 3* characters with big spells that cost 12 black.

Don't be purposely dense. I've seen your math thread, I know you're not dumb.

You're comparing Gamora to one of the strongest characters in the game. Saying that "Gamora is worse than BP" is a pretty bad argument because 90% of 3*s fall under the exact same category. It seems like for you, "average" tier is the exact same thing as "trash tier".

Phantron wrote:

There isn't a good way to build a good team around her because her color coverage is one of the most common that you're bound to run into a 'soandso can do this better'.

For PvP she is immediately marginalized in any event you have a featured character above around level 120.

For PvE any consideration for red runs into Captain America, who is probably the #1 PvE character in the game. For green/black, the number of characters that does this color coverage well is significant. For anti-goon purposes, you also run into Falcon and friends, who mows down goons very easily. Now if you're missing all the characters who are on top of their respective roles she's interchangeable with someone like HT or Punisher, but you're more likely to have either of those two covered than she is because she's newer. If everyone gets a max covered/leveled Gamora it's still not clear if she'd be any better than either of those two and you certainly don't have that.

I'm not saying she's trash tier because she's worse than BP, or because she's worse than lazyCap. I'm saying that she's trash tier because, unlike Punisher or even Psylocke, I'm hard pressed to find many teams - even the teams you guys are specifically building around her - in which I wouldn't rather have ANY other 3* character or even OBW instead of her (aside from literally uplayable characters like Beast)

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

Obviously there are better teams, and none of this is to say how good she is, for me it's how best to maximize her skills

Fair enough... I just see her as so far down in the pecking order, it'll be forever until she becomes one's best use of ISO, so best build seems pretty moot.

This is a good point. I won't be leveling her past 55 any time soon that is true. I have a long list of characters to max out, not the least of which is XF right now. Even still, discussing build possibilities is fun.

Unknown

Well, it's a lot easier for a character to be unplayable as R/G/black or R/G/Y compared to another combination of color.

Unknown

I believe she's designed to work with Groot and of course, Starlord

homeinvasion

Phantron wrote:

By the way I don't think not being special is necessarily bad. If everyone is special then it's the same as no one is specail. If Gamora was the first R/G/black character and Punisher is new we might be saying why bother with Punisher because he covers the same role as Gamora. But since she's not the first R/G/black character that's what she has to live with.

This is what I was saying, she is probably slightly better than punisher or HT, by virtue of her 8K health, but there is already 2 facsimile characters that fill this role, so releasing a slightly more powerful one is by definition 'power creep', lazy of the devs and giving the whales a slight advantage. I know my roster is screaming for more combos like




Why can't they make these 4 characters?

Phaserhawk

She does pair decently with Groot. As is she tanks 4, but assuming Starlord or Drax come to be they would have to be Purple as their primary because anything Else and you mess with both Groot and Gamora's ability to tank. They would need to be Purple/red,yellow,green/black,yellow,blue,red,green. I could see Starlord being purple/red/black or purple/red/blue

Unknown

Wait I was wrong, you can totally get value from her black. lol.

Unknown

ark123 wrote:

Wait I was wrong, you can totally get value from her black. lol.

The good old TBTI stun bait.

Works like a charm.

Infrared

I know, pair with colossus and use fastball on the 3rd character so that Gamora tanks more... oh wait.

Ok. Use surgical strike to get rid of tiles that Gamora doesn't tank and... D'oh!

Um, IM40 stun himself with recharge?