[details=Summary]Gloria Grayson the Hopeful Healer is one of the more complicated characters in Yomi. However if you are up for the challenge she can be just as rewarding as any other member of the cast and she has a very unique play style, she’s a card engine/combo deck character.
Gloria’s innate ability, Healing Touch, allows Gloria (at the end of the turn if she isn’t KD) to discard two non-Hearts cards to gain 4 life and fetch a Hearts card from her discard pile. This has several uses. For starters, it heals Gloria and gets her her best or missing option back in her hand as long as it’s a Hearts card. Because of her innate the opponent will be forced into action vs Gloria. They can’t just go block/block with her to try and build up a large hand because if they do Gloria will be able to heal a lot of life in the mean time.
Gloria’s innate also means that if she has two copies of the same rank in hand (with one of them being Hearts) and she wants to play a card of that rank she should always play the Hearts version. The reason for this is because she can get the Hearts card back if needed and Hearts cards can’t be discard to fuel her innate.
Gloria is also pretty decent at keeping opponents off of her. While she doesn’t have any super fast moves and her normal attacks and throws are slow; her face cards are solid speeds and generally have strong rewards for winning combat.
Now let’s get into her normal moves
Gloria’s normal attacks are slow, they are speed x.8. She has the normal spread of attacks (on ranks 2-6) so it is possible to get a four card straight and search for two aces (aces are critical to her game plan but more on this later). This is a risky play though because of the speed of her normals. Since her normals are slow it can be difficult to make use of the normal attack side in most mu but if she can land a 4 card straight it has a large pay off (don’t blame me if your straight attempt gets undercut, you’ve been warned).
Gloria’s throws are also slow. She has them on the usual ranks as well (7-T). There is one throw in particular that will make Gloria go Yippee! Her 7 of hearts is that throw. This card will usually be the second fastest throw in the mu and she can get it back through her innate. The opponent will eventually run out of their 7 throws and then all of the sudden Gloria as the fastest throw in the mu. Being able to recur 7 of hearts is a powerful tool especially the longer the game goes on.
Gloria’s throws can also combo into good stuff. Like her J for example
First the ability on J allows for Gloria to heal even more then her innate already allows. If Gloria hits with either side of J she can return the card to hand and heal herself and the opponent for 4 life.
Gloria’s J has many uses and is an important card for Gloria. Ray of Moonlight is a great throw punish (since it is slow you’re going to want to be certain that they will throw or that they are playing an even slower throw punish) it is also a solid dodge follow up. J also works well with her Healing Sphere ability (more on that later).
Moonlight Sphere is just an all around good card. Having a 2.2 speed linker that heals and recurs on win is great stuff.
It might not sound too exciting at first because it heals the opponent as well but J is a very good card. It allows Gloria to get free damage (because the card returns to hand) and heal herself. Let’s take a look at some sample combos (all of them assuming Gloria hit with Moonlight Sphere):
J6J6 = 14 damage, Gloria heals 8 life and she only lost 2 cards from hand
J456 = 16 damage, Gloria heals 4, she gets an ace, and her hand size only goes down by 2
throwJJ = 8 damage, Gloria heals 8, and her hand only goes down by 1 card
(the damage on all these combos can be increased by 10 thanks to her ace ability. More on that later).
This throw combo might not seem that exciting because of low damage but healing 8 life is strong and after the draw phase her hand size will remain the same. This allows her to be a bit aggressive right from the start of the game if she has the Js.
Just because Moonlight Sphere is a Linker doesn’t mean Gloria can’t use it to start combos. It is actually a good card for starting combos in a lot of mu.
Gloria’s Q is an interesting card. Sunburst is her fastest non ace attack, it is also her most inefficient face card. It deals a max of 13 damage which is pretty decent but it only does 6 up front and +7 if pumped with a face card.
Sunburst being speed 1.0 is great. This is a very important speed. In several mu this card can be Gloria’s saving grace. Getting Q of Hearts in a lot of mu is another card that will make her go Yippee! Knowing when and with what face card to pump with will also come down to the particular mu as well. Against some of the rushdown characters speed 2.2 is just too slow of a card and Gloria can freely pump Q with J or K. In other mu J and K will still be very useful and Gloria will just want to save Q to beat out or clash with certain scary mix ups.
Sunbar Cage gives her Q some nice utility. It gives her another throw and it is her most damaging non ace dodge follow up. It is also pretty inefficient but when Gloria can kill off a dodge with it she probably won’t mind it so much.
Fountain of Light is a solid card. It has the good speed of 2.2 and does 9 damage and KD. It being a Can’t Combo move is its only real downside. The KD can also be great in mu where Gloria is faster than the opponent. Not a lot to say about this card other then it is good and it can be used to set up some very safe Healing Sphere turns.
Gloria doesn’t have any super fast attacks and still needs to do a bit of hand building. Like most of the cast, she will have to block sometimes. Don’t try and use Gloria’s solid face cards to rushdown the opponent.
Healing Sphere is one of the cards that allows Gloria’s engine to work. This card’s ability stays in effect and allows Gloria to draw a card at the end of turn if she healed that turn. She has to discard all Healing Spheres from play if she didn’t heal or was thrown.
Without this card Gloria’s hand would shrink by one every time she used her innate and it would get filled with more Hearts making further uses of her innate less likely. But just having one copy of this card attached allows Gloria to go card even every time she uses her innate. The card draw gets even better the more she has attached.
The main way for most opponents to get rid of Healing Spheres is to throw Gloria or dodge into a throw. So if she gets the opponent KD and then attaches a bunch of Healing Spheres she can usually be guaranteed at least one turn of getting to use all her attached Spheres (as long as she attacks while she has the Spheres attached and the opponent is KD). Again this is mu specific and some characters can KD off an attack which would prevent Gloria from being able to heal.
The ability tied to Gloria’s slowest throw so this card is 99.1% of the time used for the ability.
Gloria needs to be careful when she attaches Healing Sphere. She is going to want several non-Hearts cards in hand so she can actually heal and make use of it.
Now getting to draw all these juicy Hearts cards and Healing Spheres would be a lot more difficult if not for Gloria’s ace ability: Overdose.
When Overdose is played it deals both players 10 damage, Gloria takes this damage first. If Gloria won combat she draws two cards.
So the ability alone turns Gloria into a card drawing machine and allows her smaller damage combat wins to turn into something special. Gloria should generally slam down this ability on any combat win if she has it. She really needs the cards and all the damage she can get. Dealing 10 damage to Gloria might seem rough but with all the healing from J and her innate she will actually be taking a lot less then the opponent from this ability (as said before she also really needs to deal this damage).
There are also times that Gloria should use Overdose even if she doesn’t win combat. These times include if it would kill the opponent (Gloria needs to be at 11 or more life for this to work) or if it could set up the kill for next turn. There are lots of things to consider when playing Overdose this way and this is just one of the things that makes Gloria a tricky character to play.
Overdose is extremely important to Gloria. It’s what makes her character work at its best. Gloria needs to get ace of Hearts into hand as quick as possible (don’t kill yourself trying to get it in hand though). When deciding what Hearts card to pull out of the discard, if the Ace of Hearts is in the discard she should usually take the Ace (having other aces in hand could change her priorities).
Gloria does have some strong attacks on her aces. These are not used as much because of how critical Overdose is to her game plan and she will often have to bust up pairs to power Healing Touch. Because of this it can be difficult to get lots of aces in the early and mid game.
Twilight Key can be attached onto any combat win that can combo. It really should only be used if it could kill or if Gloria has three aces in hand (two for the attack and the third to use for Overdose). If Gloria Can’t Overdose after playing Twilight Key she would usually have been better off comboing into something else and then Overdosing. If Gloria does have three aces in hand Twilight Key can make for some great damage. Throw into Twilight Key then Overdose is 34. Or J6AA then Overdose for 39 (as long as the J didn’t heal).
Sun and Moon is Gloria’s fastest attack. It requires three aces but does 29 damage for 1cp! It is a starter though so she either has to dodge into it or risk three aces by playing it. If it does connect it can do huge damage AAA56J then Overdose is 55 damage! While it is a ton of damage it can be a risky play because it puts so much on the line.
Gloria’s strengths included: solid face cards, lots of healing that can turn her 70 health into 94+, able to recur options, good spread of options, and can set up strong checkmates.
Her main weakness is that if she gets successfully rush downed or loses several combats back to back, it can be difficult to get her healing/card draw going which will make her 70 health look very sad. She also can have trouble with draws (she really wants certain cards in specific mu) luckily her abilities can help her there.
Well there you have Gloria Grayson. You may have noticed that I mentioned several times that the strength of several of her cards really depends on the mu. This is another thing that makes Gloria tricky to play as a starter character. It requires not only that you know Gloria but have a good understanding of the opponent’s moves as well. But if you want to play a character that sets up an engine, has a combo deck feel, and has to play a puzzle game with her own hand in addition to fending off the oppoent then Gloria is probably for you.[/details]