The Eidolon slayer, glass warrior, walking maelstrom of death - Gara!
Passive: When casting an ability, Gara’s glass body has 15% chance to Blind enemies within 12 meters for 10 seconds, exposing them to Melee Finisher attacks. Blind chance increases by 20% until the blind triggers.
Shattered Lash - Lash out with stream of shattered glass, or hold for an arcing strike.
Splinter Storm - Gara’s armor splinters into a maelstrom of shattered glass that slices enemies and impairs their weapons. Allies who contact the cloud are fortified against damage.
Spectrorage - Trap enemies in a carousel of mirrors, forcing them to attack visions of their true selves. Destroyed mirrors damage their attackers, as does the collapse of the carousel.
Mass Vitrify - Create an expanding ring of molten glass that slowly crystallizes enemies who enter. When the expansion is complete, the ring hardens to block weapons fire. The ring draws extra strength from the health and shields of crystallized enemies. Use Shattered Lash to smash the ring and send razor-sharp glass flying outward.
Acquisition: Main blueprint is awarded upon completion of the Saya’s Vigil quest. Component blueprints are acquired from Plains of Eidolon Bounties.
Well that’s kinda lame then 😐. I might as well play some other frame with interesting abilities and use a regular weapon with melee influence then. Nova for example seems to outshine her in every way
I mean, you saw the line where I said everything dies? The build is still very good, and I would go as far as to say that all of the Exalted Melee Influence builds will outperform regular weapon Influence builds. Nova is really good, and you definitely get more utility out of being able to speed up enemies, but Antimatter Drop takes a bit of messin around to achieve a lower clearspeed than a Gara tapping 1 once.
I dunno if Gara is the one you have to go for, Khora and Excalibur and Baruuk are probably all much better for doing an Exalted Influence build, but you should have at least one in your arsenal. They’re very strong for stuff like EDA and ETA.
Oh yeah I know it’s powerful, I just think challenge is barely a thing in WF anyway so if I play something, it also has to be fun and synergetic a bit. I made the build and will try playing her a bit, always good to have it for archimedea as you said.
Shattered Storm looks interesting due to applying Damage Vuln to everything hit. I assume it suffers from LoS checks though.
Any thoughts as a Gara player?
I wonder if I need to keep Splinter Storm if I’m doing a Shattered Storm build, given it’s an augment for her 1 and triggers off her 4…
Honest thoughts is that Shattered Storm isn’t worth using. You already apply a damage vulnerability with Gara’s 4 to any enemies that get touched by the initial crystallizing phase of the ability. I think if you wanted to make her more of a support frame, it would be interesting, but whether you’re making use of Melee Influence or her traditional 1+4 combo with a raw damage build, you’re just going to be killing the vast majority of enemies instantly. Adding a damage vulnerability to dead enemies does not seem worth an augment slot.
After playing around with her a bit, I really don’t like how slow MV is (you’re talking to a Zephyr player, there is a certain way I need to play this game, and it starts but does not end at +90% parkour speed), so I think Storm at least lets you spread vuln further and faster than waiting for the cast to blanket enemies in nice warm glass.
How does she scale off cast speed in general? I notice the sweep variant of Lash is a full body cast, although I’m not sure if it’s subject to parkour cancels. I don’t think I’m going to click with this frame if I can’t remedy how much she needs to stop moving.
With just one Tauforged cast speed shard, I don’t really notice any issues spamming her 1 or hitting Pillage. I usually try to make sure I’m already moving while casting her 2, it’s still a lil clunky, but I don’t have room in my build for another cast speed shard. If your goal is to be constantly mobile though, her 4 puts a pretty huge stop to that. Full body, can’t maintain any momentum, casting speed doesn’t seem to effect the minimum channeling time. For most fast missions, I honestly try not to use it at all, and with the new build might be Helminthing over it soon and bringing back Spectrorage to be more mobile while still offering some utility.