Gara Gameplay Guide

[Gara] is primarily known for her defensive abilities which provide a unique blend of crowd control and damage enhancement. She can also leverage special interactions between each of these abilities to go on the offensive in various content. Combining the individual strengths of each ability with the scaling damage from their synergies is the key to keeping her relevant in most missions.

📝 Build Overview 📝

Splinter Storm can absorb the damage from Spectrorage and Mass Vitrify explosions to increase the damage that the glass shards do to nearby enemies. This build utilizes that interaction along with the duration refresh on Splinter Storm when casting Mass Vitrify to infinitely stack damage until you're able to kill any enemies by simply running into them.

🔢 Helminth Options 🔢

Spectrorage is the weakest ability on this build even if it synergizes with the strategy. Waiting for enemies to detonate your mirrors takes far longer than constantly detonating your own Mass Vitrify.

Fire Blast, Shuriken, and other armor stripping abilities are necessary to kill high level armored enemies.

Eclipse, Nourish, and other damage boosting abilities increase the damage of Shattered Lash and are more impactful on unarmored factions.

Roar Increases the contact damage of Splinter Storm but doesn't increase the absorption rate when activating Shattered Lash. This is best paired with the previously mentioned damage boosting abilities that increase your absorption rate.

Silence, Gloom, and other crowd control abilities allow you to safely get near high level enemies but they may need more Range or Strength investment respectively.

Other abilities are decent but provide a lot of redundancy due to the existence of operator mode and the previously mentioned abilities.

📊 Ability Stats 📊

All abilities stats are normalized in this build as it utilizes several different abilities that have different mod requirements to be effective. If subsumed abilities are used then these stats should be tailored to your needs accordingly.

⏲️ Duration ⏲️

Duration is slightly increased to assist your micromanagement and energy economy. Flex mods can be swapped out with additional Duration if you want a bigger buffer in between each cast.

⛽ Efficiency ⛽

Efficiency is boosted to keep your energy economy in check. If you're confident with relying on outside energy recovery you can treat Streamline as a flex mod.

📏 Range 📏

Range is slightly boosted to give every ability a greater effect radius without having to constantly recast each one. Stretch is a flex mod on very small tilesets and Augur Reach may be necessary on larger ones.

💪 Strength 💪

Strength increases the effectiveness of Splinter Storm but it should be tweaked to your playstyle. Endurance runs don't need any Strength as you'll eventually hit the damage cap. Quick missions want as much Strength as possible since they only have time to set up a few casts.

↔️ Alternate Playstyles ↔️

Most builds utilize tools that can be swapped out to serve the same purpose albeit in a different manner. The following suggestions are an outline and aren't exhaustive.

🔧 Mods 🔧

• [Corrosive Projection] is necessary to squeeze out additional damage on high level armored enemies. It isn't necessary against factions with little to no armor and should be replaced in those scenarios.
• [Primed Sure Footed] is a strong defensive mod that keeps you from being slowed down or even killed by various forms of enemy or environmental crowd control. It's expensive and tied to the login system so it can be replaced if it isn't an option for you.
• [Stretch] is a flex mod if you're camping small hallways or a single doorway. It has little effect on the size of your Splinter Storm but it allows you to hit a few more enemies on your flanks when jumping around the rooms.
• Streamline is a flex mod if you're confident in your energy economy due to external energy regeneration.
• [Transient Fortitude] is a flex Strength mod that can be swapped out with [Blind Rage] if you're confident in your energy economy. It can also be replaced with [Speed Drift] if you're planning on going to the damage cap with Splinter Storm as Strength has no purpose after you've accumulated the maximum damage.
• Augments that add meaningful effects to your subsumed abilities can be added over flex mods but the innate augments have no realistic impact on this build.

⚙️ Arcanes ⚙️

Arcane Energize synergizes with [Primed Flow] and keeps your energy topped off. It can be replaced if you have other strong forms of energy recovery either through abilities or other energy support frames. Offensive arcanes like Arcane Blade Charger or Arcane Avenger are usually the call.

Arcane [Fury] boosts the damage of Shattered Lash which boosts the damage absorption from Mass Vitrify explosions on Splinter Storm. This isn't necessary if you're slowly building your damage to the cap anyway and can be replaced. Tertiary defensive arcanes like Arcane Aegis and Arcane Guardian are usually the call.

📋 Final Notes 📋

Shattered Lash can break Mass Vitrify to form a pseudo nuke. The Puncture or Slash versions should be used depending on the health type modifier of the average nearby enemy. This also requires you to build your Shattered Lash slightly different as you can't use it like a normal stat stick fueled melee ability anymore. Be careful when trying to spam Mass Vitrify too quickly when setting up this combo as you can get a fake version of the glass shield that's unable to be broken until you cast the ability again.

Splinter Storm can absorb a portion of the explosion from the previously mentioned combo as long as you're outside of the Mass Vitrify walls. This can infinitely stack damage on your shield and you can keep the shield going forever as long as you keep using Mass Vitrify to reset the duration. Be careful cutting the time too close as Mass Vitrify sometimes does not correctly refresh Splinter Storm and you can drop millions of stored damage due to your inability to cast it again.

Splinter Storm can also absorb some of the damage from exploding Spectrorage mirrors but this is nowhere near as consistent as the first combo mentioned above between Shattered Lash and Mass Vitrify.

🔄 Linked Builds 🔄

Frames

• General Use Shared Polarities
• Splinter Storm Tank Shared Polarities
• Mass Vitrify Nuke Shared Polarities
• Mass Vitrify Defense Shared Polarities
• Damage Vulnerability Buffs Shared Polarities

Weapons

• Kuva Nukor: Condition Overload Primer Shared Loadout

Ability Stat Sticks

• Shattered Lash: General Use Shattered Lash Loadout

Other Necessary Tools

• Smeeta Kavat: General Use Shared Loadout
• Panzer Vulpaphyla: General Use Alternate Shared Loadout
• Adarza Kavat: General Use Shared Critical Chance Loadout

📧 Contact Information 📧

Remnants of the Void / Phantom Vanguard Discord Server
If you have any questions or concerns please contact us through the Discord server. We appreciate all forms of support and welcome any criticism designed to help us improve. If you enjoyed this guide you can also support us by giving it a 👍 and sharing it with your friends!

This build is part of a collection that you can either find on the builder's profile or through a special bot we have in the Discord server. We have builds for every item in the game and we're adding new ones frequently. Come check it out!

🏆 Credits 🏆

• NICHE - Developed tools that made generating builds far easier.
• Dragazer - Helped to clarify certain melee interactions.
• Marr - Helped with proofreading original build format.
• Dystopia - Tested several strategies to the level cap.

🛑 Disclaimers 🛑

This build may make certain assumptions about mechanics that can change after a patch. Multiple unnecessary forma may be used to facilitate more options across multiple builds with one polarity plan. Certain sub-optimal mods may be run to fit them into the forma polarity plan. We do not make builds that purposely attempt to abuse mechanics that aren't intended by the developers. None of these previous statements are excuses for a fundamentally incorrect build and we ask that you please contact us when we're wrong. We do not consent to anyone other than the original author of this guide posting it without permission.