Gloria is one of the most mechanically interesting Yomi characters that could in the future come to FS. With her gimmick being healing she would be a nice addition to the roster. It’s been discussed several times on Discord how she could be implemented. Now that I don’t for an uncertain amount of time have access to Discord, I have to put my creativity somewhere.
Studying Yomi the game, Gloria is …weird. She’s a very card game character with her gimmicks being dependent on deck building, having certain suits, and using the discard pile. Her attacks are fairly slow, fastest being 2.8 (which means she loses any attack trade when the players use same number card), she doesn’t have much reversals, overall her deck is fairly standard, and her health is below average.
Of course to adapt a Yomi character into an FS character many changes have to be taken, there is no spacing, block punishment, jump ins and stuff in Yomi. Midori dragon in Yomi for example is very hard and risky to get rid of, while in FS it just times out.
There are several concepts of how to interpret the main gimmick of healing:
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Fast taunt that heals much less than 1 hp, fills some sort of a bar, 4-5 taunts should be able to heal. Maybe decay so she has to do them fast.
That would make for the most faithful representation of the Yomi mechanics, Gloria can basically heal every turn by discarding a card as long as she has correct hards at hand. Can have it interplay with a Healing Sphere ability, in a similar way they interplay in Yomi. That would also require her to have good enough zoning tools, so that she can actually heal. It also might require a gauge to keep track of filled health, similar to Geiger and Grave. Adding gauges is not good. -
Slow taunt that heals a full 1 hp, can hardly use it, but can heal after combos - get 1 hp but lose the turn, also healing doesn’t happen at the end, so if she gets hit too late that healed hp mattered.
Could be really hard to actually be useable, at least it’s not the thing to base the character around of, seems more like a side gimmick rather than the core. -
Combine the first two ideas. let’s say gC is the fast taunt that heals 1/4 of a decaying bar, but you can also hold gC to keep healing for as long as you want to.
Does make the idea #2 a side gimmickto the core gimmick that is still healing. Still requires good zoning to get things done -
Fast-ish taunt that either restores the chip health or recovers 1 hp with 2 chips on it, only heals at the end.
Definitely a very powerful heal, doesn’t necessarily require zoning, doesn’t require any new UI elements. Could be hard to understand for new players due to the slightly complicated logic. -
Reverse poison fish deal. A taunt creates a pink hp bar that slowly recovers into a yellow hp. Lost when she gets hit only.
Also pretty strong. Doesn’t require Gloria to be a zoner, easy to adjust balance for different needs. Doesn’t make for a complete gimmick to base the character on, but isn’t too hard to use to be a very side gimmick. -
Passive heal, not a move, maybe she just gets healed every 10 in-game seconds or rarer
Incredibly strong, fairly faithful to the og mechanic, opens space for more moves to implement. Could be impossible to make feel balanced, similarly to the Guard Crush mechanic.
That’s my brainstorming for the Healing Touch gimmick
Next is the Healing Sphere. In Yomi if you manage to get one it increases your deck build speed as long as you keep healing. There are also ways to implement it:
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Ignore it. Make the poison fish healing idea and call it a healing sphere, ignore the existence of Healing Touch, ignore the og mechanics.
Not necessarily a bad idea - again - Yomi characters are often massively different from their FS interpretations. It also could make her look similar to Arg which might not be a thing we are interested in. -
A kind of charge, not Geiger/Guile style charge, some sort of buff you could as a player apply to yourself to improve the movelist, like make unsafe moves safe, cancel anything into anything, moves now launch, stuff like that. And you get to keep the sphere for as long as you can manage not getting hit and keep healing every so often.
Implies the healing idea #1, but does synergize with it. Also implies Gloria to become a not heavy rushdown when she can use it. Not heavy because she has to periodically give up turns to heal if she wants to keep the rushdown -
A similar idea, but she doesn’t need to manually heal, she still gets buffed, but it doesn’t stay forever. It would act similarly to the Dragon transformation, a super that changes the character, has a time limit and stuff. But a) if she gets hit she loses it, b) she passively heals during the whole thing poison fish style, like 2 hp if she manages not to get hit for the whole duration.
Uses up a super button, which might not be a thing we want, but it also might actually be. It’s a massive departure from the og character who while might be described a kinda rushdown is more of a set up character, and Gloria uses the sphere to increase the chance of all cards alligning, and becoming a heavy rushdown for a few seconds just doesn’t really give into the idea of “set up”. -
Really ignore it, just don’t put it into the game.
Self explaining, she probably just doesn’t need any kind of buff on top of the other gimmicks.
Next gimmick is Gloria’s J card ability: If you hit with J, you can choose to return the card and heal both players. It’s a very good combo card, and the effect is that if you don’t heal, it’s not the best damage, but does enough in conjunction with connecting moves to it. If you dop heal it’s like you didn’t do any damage with the card, but healed yourself. The three names that this gimmick can have are “Ray of Moonlight” “Moonlight Sphere” and “Bathed in Moonlight”.
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Bathed in Moonlight is the property of her B moves. You don’t get to choose whether use it or not, moves do 0 damage on hit, but heal 1 hp back to Gloria.
- Those moves could be like laser attacks, Robo-Fortune style. gB is a horizontal fullscreen beam, and jB is a vertically down beam.
- The gB could be a short range thing similar to Val gS, but repurposed to be useful as a gB
People don’t really like non-damaging moves with hitstun and stuff. Could imply no taunt like Healing Touch, this being the main heal gimmick
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It’s her throw, the throw doesn’t deal damage, but heals Gloria + knockdown.
Vast departure from the og design, it’s also messing with the throw design of FS, which none of the characters mess that much with. -
It’s her Yomi, no damage, heals Gloria.
An alternative, but seems just too remote from the og idea, could easily be just “also a thing”.
And finally - Overdose. If Gloria has an Ace at the end of the turn (Aces are stand in for supers), she can deal damage equivalent to 1hp to both players, if she also won the combat opportunity she gets buffed, and if Gloria dies, she dies first. The thing is, she can do it practucally all the time in Yomi, so much her actual supers don’t get much work.
So the main idea is straight up that it’s her Super, either gS or jS, homing full screen instant thing, blockable. Or not full screen, more like Jackpot kind of range, but unblockable.
Her attacks in Yomi look like this
Seems like a short range kick and a short range punch that hits pretty high.
Overall my personal vision is a kinda rushdown kind of character, she can choose to be a worse rushdown if she heals, and she has to heal a lot, she wants to get in to do any sort of damage, but can’t really pressure while trying to regain lost health, it’s also hard to stay out and heal that way, hard to force them to not hit you. But if she doesn’t care she can go in and apply heavy mix ups that yet don’t yield much damage, be it combos or chip, just good frames on the moves to keep the turn. Not so good that she doesn’t even need the healing gimmick to begin with, but good enough so she at least gets things done