I’m reviving an ancient thread because the current Solo Shodown tournament has got me playing Gloria again for the first time in a long time, and I have a few thoughts that I’d rather get down somewhere less ephemeral and more conducive to discussion than live commentary on my Youtube channel.
Why is Gloria so difficult to play well?
She’s mechanically complex
I doubt anyone would disagree that Gloria is one of the most difficult characters in the Yomi cast to be successful with. Her turns have a lot of choices to make. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of choices which have a big impact but do not have one-size-fits-all answers:
- should I power up for A
early-game? - which non- do I discard to heal?
- which do I recur?
- how close to death do I need to be to heal for no/little value (no Healing Sphere up, no in discard)?
- do I play a second Healing Sphere to double down, or do I save it to re-attach if I lose my current one?
- do I use Overdose on low HP to dig for answers and/or force a result?
- do I use Bathed in Light when my opponent is on low life, to recur my Jack as a combat option or trigger Healing Sphere without spending non-?
Every combat matters
As well as the straight-up complexity of the character, the wording of Overdose to give a huge reward on combat wins, Gloria’s slow speeds and small HP pool and the requirement to not get thrown/KD and constantly be healing to keep your engine running all combine to make combats quite dependent on reads.
Compare this to a character like Setsuki: you just use moves like Q and 7 throw which are likely to beat 2/3 of the combat triangle and have good payoffs on each of them. With Gloria, you (often) just have to guess right just to use your kit effectively, to say nothing pushing an advantage and not dying really fast to characters like Midori, Zane, and Menelker who can blow through your whole life bar in a couple of combos.