Orcs Must Die! Unchained – FAQ/Walkthrough

Heroes

Gabriella

Overview

My Personal Rating: 6.5/10

Gabriella is one of the 3 starter Heroes available to everyone when they first start the game. Out of the 3 starter Heroes, Gabriella probably has the most utility, primarily in the form of crowd control. Gabriella also uses Arcane magic, which applies a debuff on minions that are hit. The Arcane debuff allows subsequent Arcane hits to deal more damage, and stacks up to 3 times.

Abilities:

Kinetic Pulse (L2) - Gabriella will cast an Arcane wave, that projects outward in a cone shape. This ability will cause a knockback to minions, and it will also activate any traps within its range.

• Mana cost: 65
• Cooldown: 15 seconds

Blink (Triangle) - Gabriella will teleport a set distance away from her current position, remove any crowd control effects (such as Freeze) and will also restore 65% of her HP. This ability can be used while moving, and using it in conjunction with the analog stick will teleport you in that direction; in other words, holding left and using Blink will teleport you to the left. By default, if Gabriella is standing still, Blink will teleport her backwards.

• Mana cost: 50
• Cooldown: 10 seconds

Devious Allure (Square) - Gabriella will mesmerize minions in a radius around her for a short duration. The mesmerize works similar to stun, but if you hit a mesmerized minion, it will break. If the mesmerize is broken, a movement Slow will be applied for a short duration.

• Mana cost: 50
• Cooldown: 12
• Mesmerize duration: 4 seconds

Passive: Limitless Magic - Gabriella's Unchained duration lasts 50% longer. This equates to roughly a 25 second Unchained duration.

Pros

Out of the 3 starter Heroes, Gabriella probably does the most consistent single-target damage. She is also probably the most straightforward to play, because her damage output is heavily dependent on using her Primary.

She has great survivability due to how Blink was given HP restoration in one of the patches. Since she's a ranged Hero, if she gets into trouble, she can simply Blink away, restore any lost HP (or remove any stuns or anything like), then go back to dealing damage very quickly.

Kinetic Pulse hits really hard, and its range is fantastic, allowing you hit a ton of minions at the same time. The knockback and the "trap refresh" are just added bonuses that makes it a really awesome ability.

Devious Allure can be quite helpful when things need to be slowed down, and can make a big difference with Runners. The range is so large, that if a Runner manages to get by you, you can catch them with it before they get too far away. Do keep in mind it doesn't work on Earth Elementals though.

Gabriella's Passive is also really helpful, because a 25 second Unchained is a lot of time. Remember that during Unchained, you get increased damage, increased HP, and all cooldowns are also reduced.

Cons

The first thing you'll probably notice with Gabriella is that her Primary attack speed is decently slow. This is to balance out the damage, but it does take some getting used to. It can also be a problem with Runners, because a slow attack speed means you have to be accurate with each shot.

Although Gabriella gets a lot of various crowd control, I found that crowd control in this game is not really necessary. With enough damage, minions are dying quickly, and hence, there's no real reason to slow them down.

Combine that with the fact Blink and Devious Allure have a decent Mana cost. So if you're using all of her abilities constantly, you'll be starving for Mana pretty quickly.

As a result, you may not really use Devious Allure much, and since Blink is somewhat situational (no real reason to use it if you don't need to travel, or don't need to escape), that boils Gabriella down to mostly using her Primary and Kinetic Pulse. Then combine the fact that Kinetic Pulse has a decently long cooldown, and you may find yourself simply constantly using her Primary.

For me, this makes Gabriella very uninteresting to play. Since she only has access to a single damaging ability, I do think this hurts her overall damage output somewhat. She does get some upgrades that help the damage of Kinetic Pulse and her Primary, so she does kind of even out, but her performance still drags behind a little due to her crowd control abilities having questionable use.

Upgrades

Upgrades I use:

• Wand Polish (Level 2)
• Power From Control or Old Habits (Level 4)
• Power Word or Extra Commandments (Level 7)
• Enthralled or Retaliate (Level 10)

Upgrades Analysis:

• Level 2:
  • Scared Stiff: The immobilization granted to Blink makes this upgrade interesting to consider, but personally, I don't like using Blink as an offensive ability. Consider how this would work - If you're standing in front of the group of minions, and want to use Blink to immobilize them, you either have to get in front of the group and teleport in (putting you right in front of a bunch of minions), or jump into the group initially and teleport out. The latter might be preferable, but personally I find it awkward to try to reorient my aim after teleporting.
  • Concussive Strike: A 2 second stun to Kinetic Pulse is actually pretty good, but Gabriella really doesn't need any more crowd control than she already has. If you take this upgrade, you may feel even less inclined to use Devious Allure, potentially making Gabriella more dull to play.
  • Wand Polish: This is the upgrade I normally choose, because Gabriella's damage is so focused on using her Primary, and since her Primary attack speed is fairly slow, this upgrade improves two things at once. The 15% increase really helps when you need to kill something quickly (such as Runners). Note: Watch your aiming reticle! Normally, without the upgrade, Gabriella's attack speed allows you to not be concerned with her aiming reticle expanding. With this upgrade, if you hold the Primary down, you will see a severe drop in accuracy, which will force you to miss shots. I would recommend paying attention to the reticle, and briefly allow it to reset after you see it expand to a large degree.
• Level 4:
  • Loving Glow: This upgrade is more meant for co-op play, as Gabriella certainly doesn't really need any more HP restoration outside of Blink. Since I've never actually taken this upgrade, I'm unsure if the heal is 9% per minion, or it's just 9% per Devious Allure use (assuming it mesmerizes at least 1 minion). Even if you're in co-op, the "nearby heroes" might be something to concerned about, because that doesn't really indicate the range, and so it may not even be reaching your allies, depending on what's going on.
  • Power From Control: Although I sometimes take this upgrade, it's unfortunately not as good as it sounds. The reason is that the buff only lasts as long as minions are mesmerized; which is only about 4 seconds. Given Gabriella's slower attack speed, this means she may only get 2 Primary uses out of this buff. Although it's possible it's really meant to be used in conjunction with Kinetic Pulse, but personally I don't think it needs the damage increase that much.
  • Old Habits: Still kind of a "meh" upgrade, but that's primarily because I use a lot of Fire traps, which breaks mesmerize. Still, two extra seconds of stun can be pretty useful at times, but it doesn't change the fact that if you're dealing enough damage, you won't really be relying on Devious Allure.
• Level 7:
  • Power Word: This does increase the damage of Kinetic Pulse by a lot, which is great, but it really takes some consideration when comparing it to the "Extra Commandments" that is also offered at this level. For me, I think this upgrade makes Kinetic Pulse do too much damage, because it'll only really affect larger minions. If Kinetic Pulse is killing (or nearly killing) smaller minions normally, which there are generally more of, all of that extra damage is lost. Also consider that it stacks with Unchained's extra damage, which gives it even more damage, and thus, a lot of that damage is just overkill. It can still be good though, and on paper at least, it does translate to higher damage-per-second in comparison to Extra Commandments.
  • Mana Drain: If you're using all of Gabriella's abilities constantly, this is actually a pretty good upgrade, as it should keep her Mana topped off. For me though, I don't use her abilities much (besides Kinetic Pulse), and so I generally don't have Mana issues.
  • Extra Commandments: To compare this to "Power Word", a 3 second cooldown increase equates to a 25% increase to damage-per-second to Kinetic Pulse (I think), so in terms of damage, Power Word is better. However, the shorter cooldown can help make Gabriella a little more interesting to play (because it'll equate to less Primary use), but it has other factors to consider as well. Since you have a shorter cooldown, this also allows you to reactivate traps more, which can be helpful in certain situations. Also consider that in Unchained, taking this upgrade will put Kinetic Pulse to an extremely short cooldown, allowing you to frequently use it during Unchained, which can be extremely helpful.
• Level 10:
  • Slippery Witch: It's kind of interesting, but I'm not sure how practical this upgrade is. It is actually pretty nice to traverse maps with, but other than that, I don't see the point. You generally don't ever need to Blink twice in a row in combat for any reason. This is potentially helpful for catching up with Runners, but ideally, you don't want to be chasing them down in the first place. Not only that, but it may not be able to close the distance quick enough, because Blink only moves in a straight line, and most maps have twists and turns. So if a Runner turns a corner, another Blink won't help much.
  • Enthralled: I think this is the most useful if you decided to take the "Old Habits" upgrade at level 4. It is important to note though, that if you did take that upgrade, Enthralled pretty much negates it; the 6 second duration will be reduced down to its original 4 seconds. Without the Old Habits upgrade, it's not a gigantic deal (as it equates to about a 1 second loss), but still, I'd rather keep them mesmerized for as long as possible. This upgrade works really well if you use a lot of Fire traps like I do, because it'll allow you to rotate Devious Allure in more, if you wish to.
  • Retaliate: Kind of an interesting upgrade, but like other upgrades for Gabriella, it looks better on paper. The problem is you clearly don't get to choose which minion this activates on. In normal situations, you're going to be attacking the closest minion to you. The closest minion to you is generally the one who will be attacking you first. So this means that chances are the minion (if it has higher HP) will already be reduced down to a lower amount (say 50% or less) before this skill activates, and hence, it doesn't really ever see its full effect. It's still kind of helpful for larger minions though, such as Trolls, because on higher difficulties they can have a tremendous amounts of HP to whittle through. There are other situations that might trigger its use though, such as Archers shooting at you, or Gnolls breaking through to attack you, which (in my opinion) wastes the activation. It also should be noted this does not work on bosses or Mercenaries.

Synopsis

Gabriella does have one vital thing to note - She can be very useful to earning the Combo Quest trophy/achievement. This is due to how Kinetic Pulse reactivates traps in its range. While trying to getting a 15x Combo, the window that the combo needs to occur is fairly small, so traps need to be activated in a fairly quick succession. If the traps are on cooldown, obviously it makes it difficult for them to add to the combo, and thus, a reactivation can potentially help with things.

Other than that, Gabriella is actually extremely easy to understand since her damage focuses almost entirely upon her Primary. Out of the 3 starter Heroes, Max probably takes the most thought to play as, and with Blackpaw, you have to understand how his abilities combine with each other. Gabriella doesn't have any of these issues, and you don't really need to strategically use Blink or Devious Allure at all (you don't even necessarily need to use them period).

In turn, Gabriella becomes really basic, which can be good and bad. It can be good because it doesn't really require much thought or skill to do well with her. It can be bad, because as a result she doesn't really feel unique and she also doesn't get any opportunity to combine abilities for greater effects.