**** Gamora (Awesome Mix Volume 2) ****

Rick_OShay

Daredevil217 said:

Rick OShay said:

How do you spec SL when you run him with her?

Well this depends most on your 3rd ally, and the team you are against. 
Mostly, I was running 4SL at 3/5/5. This only allows him to place 2 CD's instead of 3, but having his yellow 5 reduced AP costs on his purple power which helped a lot. Setting SL at 5 in purple to get a 3rd CD was not very important since Gamora would usually be able to cover all purple in specials. I almost never take his red down from 5.

Most Dark Avengers have cheap powers (Venom stun, Ares, Daken), so you will get SL's passive out easily. But vs. Moonstone and Bullseye, they may take too long to fire a power to reduce your AP costs. Versus these two I may spec SL at 5/3/5 in case you just need to get powers rolling on enemy 1 before you can get his AP cost reduction.

So, having Gamora's Black and Blue ready (blue twice if you can), and SL's purple, you are sure to fill all open purple tiles on the board versus a final enemy that you can stun (up to twice). Again, there is no need to try to have Gamora down the 1st enemy, it's too inefficient to set up properly.

It helps to have an active Green and Yellow user for these two. 2* Bullseye was great for green since his purple passive worked well, but he provides no yellow power and no CD's to help make good use of SL's big red. 
No other 4* fills this 'green/yellow' and CD-creating role well, but in the 3* tier Squirrel Girl is great for reasons mentioned a few times above. Her green may disrupt the board more than you would like, but this power gains you AP, hits pretty hard, and her CD's make SL's red do max damage. 

On a side note, Sentry is actually a decent 3* partner here as well (try not to laugh). His green may turn a few straggling purples into CD's, play his decently strong strike tile right before you sucker punch an enemy out, once Sentry's CD's go off you'll probably have 1 enemy left for Gamora to drop.


Waaay TL;DR: Mostly 3/5/5

TPF Alexis

I've been trying to get Falcon to work with her in Sworded Affairs. Seems like Redwing could be a huge help here, especially in the PvP, where the other team is also spamming purple Specials, but it's just not clicking for whatever reason. The need to hoard blue for Redwing definitely makes it awkward.

I also tried Medusa, but there always seemed to be one enemy purple Special in the corner that Hair Meddle wasn't grabbing and I couldn't match.

Gonna keep trying. I like the Bullseye suggestion, tho I don't think I can afford to bring a 2* along in PvP, so I guess that team would just be for PvE. Same with Moonstone. Her Black could really help in some matchups, but she just can't hang in PvP at even moderate levels.

Jarvind

Finally managed to trigger her instakill. I spent so long setting it up and having it foiled by ONE FRIGGING PURPLE DROPPING IN that I ended up killing a level 420 Thanos just from match and attack tile damage. The instakill ended up hitting the other team's loaner Gamora for a grand total of about 6k damage.

Obviously it would be easier with a fully covered character, but even then I feel like it's just not worth doing it intentionally. If the stars align and you happen to get a purple starved board then take a whack at it, but it just can't be relied upon.

robertbah

I have been playing her instabkill and I did use her passive three time in one game. Don't force it because the luck has to be on your side to successfully activate it. When the board is low in purple and I usually just stun the whole team and use one black to fill the rest of purple tiles. Choose the one I want to kill and hope for the best. When it comes, it could help you finish the tough match faster. 

wingX

I just succeed in activating her passive in her PVP by using 3Wolv and Loki. I used 3Wolv green twice in a row and use Loki's black and then stun the last enemy using Gamora's blue and with some luck of not dropping a pink tiles following turn the enemy ( a 5* Cap with 6000+ health)  is KO!

TPF Alexis

I've been liking her with Patch as well. Even without triggering the instakill, she fills up enough purples that it really takes away most of the drawback from Berserker Rage.

I did finally manage to get the instakill to go off, but it was on the last opponent, who was down to less than 500 health anyhow, and I had a couple thousand points worth of Strikes out by that point, so it really didn't matter.

D4Ni13

pabasa130 said:

G4mora not counting purple trap tiles as special tiles needs to be discussed. In her release article, it clearly said that she pairs well with Ant-Man. Not counting Antman's trap tile negates this pairing. 

On the other hand, counting purple trap tiles makes G4mora a ridiculously overpowered pairing with Doctor Doom, where given enough time Doom can make all available purple tiles into purple trap tiles. 

Can @Brigby get a confirmation on whether Gamora's black not working with purple trap tiles intentional? Basically goes against the article, but the interviews always had a problem with accuracy anyway. 

Thanks. 

It actually does not. Ant-man creates purple attack tiles while that trap tile is on the board. That's the pairing. I had games when I still had the trap tile and no purple free tile to create attack tiles anymore.

There's no need of confirmation, since any trap tile can be disabled by other abilities that create special tiles. Happens with Doom, Daredevil and basically anybody who has trap tiles. One random special tiles simply destroys your trap tile if it happens to be that tile.

The problem with her passive is not the fact you cannot have the condition, but the fact that you have to maintain that condition on your end turn & on the opponent's turn. Only viable & consistent strategy is using her blue to stun the enemy and pray for some luck that your end turn match does not bring any more purple.

D4Ni13

zodiac339 said:

Brigby said:

@pabasa130

Good question! I'll reach out to the developers to find out what her ability considers is a friendly special tile.

Update: Trap tiles are not considered special tiles. The only tiles considered "Special Tiles" are Attack, Strike, Protect, Countdown, and Invisibility. 

You can find a full list of tile descriptions HERE

That's fair. Traps act different from any of the other special tiles, since they can easily be overwritten, even by other traps randomly landing on them. It's more like they're just basic tiles with a little something extra. Additionally, a Dr. Doom pairing won't just be a "do nothing and eventually the enemy will just fall over" strategy. And Ant Man would have been straight unfair with Pym Particles out. New attacks would have shown up at the beginning of the turn, then just activated the death passive. It may be what players were hoping for, but it probably would have been unhealthy for game fairness.

But Ant-Man do work with his purple atrack tiles, just need to remove the trap. What I mean is that the synergy is there and it's fair that there's a caveat for it.

D4Ni13

Jarvind said:

Finally managed to trigger her instakill. I spent so long setting it up and having it foiled by ONE FRIGGING PURPLE DROPPING IN that I ended up killing a level 420 Thanos just from match and attack tile damage. The instakill ended up hitting the other team's loaner Gamora for a grand total of about 6k damage.

Obviously it would be easier with a fully covered character, but even then I feel like it's just not worth doing it intentionally. If the stars align and you happen to get a purple starved board then take a whack at it, but it just can't be relied upon.

Maybe we'll get some hero in the future that will make her passive more reliant. Until then, nice to have, but not reliable.

Tiger_Wong

I'm telling you guys.....

Gamora
3* Iron Fist
Peggy

it works. Get 11 blue and hold until right before you kill 1 character. Preferably with Peggy's Ultimate Soldier. Fist's purple is hella cheap and feeds Gamora's black, which you will also hold until 1 character Peggy sets off her blue power. when you're about to kill one character.....

- Do as Peggy Says
- 2 purple tiles hit the field
- kill character
- activate Deadliest Woman....
- 4 or more special tiles hit the field. 

You now have 3 chances to kill one character and after those 3 turns, Do as Peggy Says activates and she kills the other one. 

Don't get me wrong..... sometimes I'll have a purple tile drop all 3 turns. But I usually get the passive to activate one out of the 3 turns. 

And man, is it an awesome feeling when it happens. 

himatako

I really enjoy using her even when she's 1/1/1. It's so satisfying when her black passive is activated according to your plan. It's unreliable, yes, but it's a good mix of puzzle and gambling for me. The payoff is worth it when it works. Who doesn't want to one-shot an opponent with 25k~ health?  

Königsmacher

Today I witnessed the insta-kill passive in a way I never would have thought possible. I played in the Gamora PVP against a team with Loki. My very first match 3 caused a cascade, leading to a (unintended) purple match 4. Now Loki does his thing and puts his CDs on the purple tiles. And here's the catch: There were just three purple tiles left. The cascade + match 4 wiped all other purple tiles away.

Now, with all purple occupied with countdowns and my turn finished, the insta-kill passive gets triggered at the beginning of the enemy turn and the other Gamora proceeds to down my 35k health Thing... before the AI even made a single move. I wasn't even mad about it, I just couldn't believe what I just saw. (I won the match anyway )

TL:DR: That black passive will mess you up when you least expect it.

DrDevilDinosaur

D4Ni13 said:

The problem with her passive is not the fact you cannot have the condition, but the fact that you have to maintain that condition on your end turn & on the opponent's turn.

This mirrors my own thoughts on the power.

I've seen a lot of people suggesting 3/5/5 as the desired build, but I'm not convinced that the extra 2 tiles from Rank 5 Black are enough of a guarantee that the passive will trigger for me. I'd be more interested if there was an "ends the turn" ability in the tier that I could partner with, but Drax got fixed.

That build might still be the optimal choice if her Black and Blue are the only abilities which you intend to fire off (i.e. teamed with a different Red user).

Between Carol, Coulson, and the Drax rebuild, we've got good coverage on building teams which want to create a lot of CDs and have them run down to 0. It could be very interesting to introduce a character that prolongs the duration of friendly tiles. That could make a decent pairing with a 5/*/* Gamora (and a range of other existing characters like Antman, Medusa, even Carol). It would also make for a interesting change in the metagame as Carol and Coulson move closer to graduating from tokens and players switch from ending CDs to prolonging CDs. Anyway, that's a different discussion.

Spoit

Even ignoring the passive kill, those "extra 2 tiles" is actually a pretty significant difference in terms of special tile strength. 3*122 is 488, whereas 6*220 is 1320, a huge 832 point difference! Granted, you fill up on purple tiles to use it with fairly quickly, but still a 100 point difference in tile strength is not insignificant.

DrDevilDinosaur

Spoit said:

Even ignoring the passive kill, those "extra 2 tiles" is actually a pretty significant difference in terms of special tile strength. 3*122 is 488, whereas 6*220 is 1320, a huge 832 point difference! Granted, you fill up on purple tiles to use it with fairly quickly, but still a 100 point difference in tile strength is not insignificant.

I actually crunched the numbers at the time, because I figured that those special tiles do contribute to additional and ongoing damage. Full damage from Rank 5 Red (nuke + 4 turns CD) comes to 8903, and 4 turns of Rank 5 special tiles is 5280 additional damage.

Now that second value is not entirely accurate, since it could be any mix of Strike and Attack tiles, and those Strikes will get to double dip on (at the very least) match and attack tile damage. Those special tiles will persist even after an enemy is defeated too, whereas that Red CD disappears along with its target. Of course, if you do manage to get that instant kill then you lose all those purple special tiles at the same time (and I've already had more than one occasion where this was not ideal).

sinnerjfl

Even if her passive is hard to proc, she still seems very good so far, have her at 2/4/5 right now and she's already kicking ****.

1 enemy down and its stun lock city with 12 blue, her black makes strong tiles, cant tell about red for now but also seems legit.

Rick_OShay

Her red makes a world of difference if you have a partner with strong strike tiles. In general, there's better red users out there, but if you have Rocket's strikes for example, or someone buffing strikes, Gamora's red really adds up each round that it continues to hit the targeted enemy.

sinnerjfl

Ive champed her recently (thank you RNG) and she's boosted this week as well.

Conclusions, best stun in the game only behind Peggy & Iceman, she makes a lot of special tiles for cheap (9 black)
and they got decent base strenght.

Her red might look good on paper but it has too many drawbacks. The damage even at 5 is nothing spectacular, the CD won't live on after the target dies and that is if the CD survives long enough because it tends to get destroyed quite often (if only you could place it). A lot of the time it feels like wasted AP and thats pretty annoying considering its 10 AP.

3/5/5 all the way, she stuns reliably and its death by a thousand cuts. You can bring in Carol and a CD producer (Coulson is pretty great as a 3rd), the damage ramps up pretty fast.

Her passive is a gimmick, its fun and it happens sometimes, but in the ends its too much work. Also, a lot of goons happen to make purple CD tiles + Bullseye, you need to deal with that too. Maybe against bosses it would be worth it but heh, most of them are not stunnable...

DesertTortoise

Gamora's weird because when she's boosted you pretty much don't want her passive to proc unless there's barely any purples on the board for your special tiles. When unboosted, most times it'll be less heart breaking and I can see it as a larger goal. I had it proc semi-accidentally and was bummed to lose ~3Ks worth of strike tiles. Without the passive, she stands on her own between her powerful tiles and really great stun, but I imagine really going for the passive is more just a messing around thing. 

GrimSkald

I champed Gamora on Friday just in time for the current PVE and I've been playing with her on the non-goon nodes (I've been bringing Dr. Strange on the goon nodes.) My take is she's a lot of fun.  I'd put her stun on par with Iceman and Peggy's - it's cheap enough to stack them and her passive is amazing with it.  Her black is also very good.  Once you've downed one enemy, if you have enough for one shot each of her black and blue you can get her passive off about 50% of the time.  Stun both characters for one turn (get two purple specials,) flood the board with six more, then make as careful a match as you can.  If you get a purple drop, it doesn't go off, but you're still doing 2-3k of damage to your opponent per turn.

I suppose you can guarantee it with a turn ending power, but it hardly seems worth it.  In general, her instant kill is cute, but it's more of a nice bonus than anything else.  She's a decent character regardless, and good for stunning and flooding the board with damage.