A closer look at her kit and her potential value in the game.
In This Post:
- Introduction
- Tamamo’s Skills (Updated: June 26, 2024)
- My Results From Testing Her (Added: June 26th, 2024)
- Your Options To Get Her (Updated: June 26, 2024)
- Is She Worth It? (Updated: June 26, 2024)
- Conclusion
Introduction
Hi everyone! Welcome back to my blog, GameFi Nexus.
We’re officially a week past Tamamo’s arrival to Guild of Guardians (GoG), and I’ve had plenty of time to try her out in the game’s three modes. This post is an update of the preview article I did a week ago.
In that version, I said that I didn’t think she was a meta-defining Guardian, and that I wasn’t convinced she would displace upgraded Founder Guardians in your current squad.
I wasn’t convinced
I based those statements on information we had available at the time…which wasn’t a whole lot.
Did she fare better in testing?
Somewhat…
Tamamo didn’t break the game for me, but she did play better than I was expecting.
In this article, I’ll cover Tammy’s kit, the results I got while testing her, your options for adding her to your roster, and whether I think she’s worth reaching for.
Let’s get started!
Tamamo’s Skills
Tamamo (or “Tammy” for short) is a Vulos mage from the Redeemer faction.
Her Vulos domain means that she doesn’t have an advantage or weakness against any other Guardian.
As a Redeemer, she gets access to attack speed, life drain and regeneration on critical hits from her faction runes.
Tammy’s skillset is all about crowd control. In fact, she only has one move with an actual damage multiplier.
Let’s have a closer look at each one of her abilities.
Mind Break
Her big AoE skill, Mind Break, puts the entire enemy formation to sleep for four seconds and deals damage equal to 40% of the HP they had before being put to sleep.
Used at the right time, Mind Break can be a life saver.
She won’t kill many targets with it, but stopping the enemy formation for 4 seconds is huge.
That’s enough time to finish charging an ult, apply healing or kill an enemy damage-dealer. Your team also gets a break from taking damage will this is going on.
Mind Break can interrupt ults or active skills mid-cast for added utility.
Manual players will definitely put this skill to good use in PVE and arena modes.
Soul Drain
Soul Drain is Tammy’s first active skill.
When it activates, Tammy teleports behind an enemy for three seconds and heals herself by draining her target’s HP. She also takes them out of the fight for the entire duration with a stun effect.
Soul drain has a very short initial cooldown of 5 seconds, and it’ll activate regularly throughout the battle. It’s a great move to help keep her alive long enough to cast Mind Break.
The description says she targets a random enemy, but in practice, she only targets the back row.
The only downside is that Tammy will draw a lot of attacks from back row foes when she uses the skill. You do need to think about how you’ll prevent her from dying right away.
Allure
Allure is her second active skill, and it activates 15 seconds into the fight.
It casts charm on two random Guardians and makes them move towards Tamamo.
Allure can also be a life saver.
It can interrupt ults and abilities mid-cast, and it pauses your opponent’s damage dealing for even longer than Mind Break.
In a nutshell, your opponent will be very hard-pressed to beat you once the fight reaches 15 seconds without crowd control resistance or a cleansing skill.
Taking two Guardians out of a fight for five seconds can absolutely turn the tide in your favor in Arena, and it can prevent a killing blow in PVE.
Fox Fairy
Tammy’s last move, Fox Fairy, seemed to be one of the worst passives in the game…but the team updated the description today to reflect how it really works.
It creates a shield that, when triggered by a crowd control effect, makes Tammy teleport behind an enemy and strike it for up to 230% of her attack. The shield also cancels the effect.
The shield mechanic is better than how the skill was described before, but its damage is relatively low.
The targeting is a bit unclear too. A random “affected” enemy might refer to targets of Allure, however that skill only triggers every 15 seconds. Who would she target if she were hit with a stun after 11–14 seconds?
In the end, I don’t think the offensive portion of this skill is all that useful, but partial immunity to crowd control is very good.
Impressions On Tamamo’s Kit
Tammy won’t really kill anyone.
Mind Break will only finish off a foe if your other Guardians weaken it to below 40% of its pre-sleep HP. Soul Drain is her hardest hitting move, but it doesn’t scale with her attack power.
The point is, you can’t rely one her to carry damage-dealing duties on your squad.
That said, Tammy’s sleep, charm and stun effects can really mess up your opposition’s timing and neutralize them long enough for your real damage dealers to finish them off.
Her best moves take a long time (for GoG) to activate.
That’s why you should build up her defense first by stacking gear that increase her HP and defense.
You can also increase her survivability with secondary stats like crit defense, crit resist, magic defense, magic resist and physical resist.
My Results From Testing Her
I pulled a copy of Tammy on the first day she launched and I was able to test her base version (5/0) across every game mode (PVE, PVP, and Raid).
I ran her at either level 130 or 140 with her skills upgraded to 4/4/3/3 and 4/4/4/3 respectively.
Let’s go through her setup, the squads I put her in, and the results I got in each mode.
Gear Setup
Unfortunately, I only have two intelligence sets for my main party. One is customized for Flix, and the other for Lia.
Obviously, I had to give her the one that wasn’t in use, but if I had to settle on one, I would pick Flix’s.
(add gear pic)
My Flix build focuses entirely on HP, so it isn’t exactly optimal for Tammy.
Ideally, I would focus evenly on her robe and head gear to balance her defense and HP. I would also choose footwear with as many defense stats as possible to increase her durability and let Soul Drain do the rest.
Some of the secondary stats were useful, like the crit resist on her headgear and the crit defense rating and physical resist on her robe.
If I were building a set for her, I would reroll some of the offensive bonuses to defensive ones. Anything that can stretch out the fight to charge up Mind Break and Allure is a good thing with her.
Squads
I started the week by inserting Tammy in my usual PVE squad.
It was tough having to chose between benching Flix or Lia, but I eventually settled on Lia since healing is more important in Endless mode.
Of course, healing doesn’t matter as much in Challenge Rooms since they only last three fights. I was able to pair her with Lia and landed on the build below.
Aloria was a revelation. Someone suggested her to me as a sleeper on my X account a few days ago. I was impressed with her Victory Horn skill.
Since I don’t have Tieroc — a legendary Founder with a passive that recharges your squad’s energy — Aloria is the next best thing to help Tamamo charge Mind Break.
In Raid (i.e. Boss Rush), I had to include Guardians who could hit Oxellus through her physical invulnerability shield. After doing some testing, I landed on the following squad.
Lia was a must given how hard she hits with her magic damage. Prielle’s Sanctuary, Huurk’s Flame Cloak, and Kanreh’s poisons were effective against Oxellus as well.
Arena is where I wished I had more than two intelligence sets. I would have loved to include Morax and Phoenicia to stack more defense and crowd control to the mix.
Instead I had to settle for the following squad.
Results
Overall, these squads performed relatively well considering Tamamo is only at 5 diamonds and 0 radiance.
Let’s see how she did in all three modes.
PVP
My strategy in PVP was to stall the opponent long enough for a level 145 Lia to charge her ult and end the fight.
Enemy Dersida tend to cut things short, so I included Duren as a counter to take her out.
It was an effective strategy against weaker or equal teams.
Duren and Tammy would sometimes tag-team the enemy Derisda to take her out of the fight and deal big damage. It wasn’t consistent, however, since Soul Drain targets random enemies.
The TL:DR is that the match is usually over once you charge Mind Break. Allure’s cast is usually right around the corner. That means you can take out two of your opponent’s Guardians for what feels like a very long time.
Against stronger teams, my 7/3 Duren just couldn’t get the job done, and that led to my 5/0 Tamamo dying very quickly.
So, I wasn’t able to take out much stronger teams, but an upgraded Tamamo with a good defensive gear setup can be quite a terror in PVP.
PVE
Overall, replacing Lia for Tamamo reduced my score in Endless by about 20K — 50K per run on Master-level difficulty.
Her low diamond rating definitely had something to do with that, but the reality is that Tamamo can’t dish out damage the same way a Lia or Atticus does.
She’s the one who sets up those Guardians for success by giving them the space to charge and activate their ults.
My optimal pairing would have been Lia, Tamamo and Flix…and I decided to give it a try in Adventure mode against the Challenge 3 room in Warden’s Way.
That run really showcased Tamamo’s utility. My 6/1 Aloria died during the second fight, and I had to face off against the boss with a squad of 4.
By timing Mind Break and Prielle’s Sanctuary at the right times, I was able to stretch out the fight long enough for Lia to use her ult twice to win the fight.
Raid
Like I suspected in the preview version of this post, Boss Rush isn’t Tamamo’s jam.
Soul drain can sometimes cause the boss to turn around and target her. That can spare your Guardians from its ult if it fires only in one direction (Oxellus’ doesn’t).
Other than that, she doesn’t contribute much since Raid bosses are immune to crowd control.
I did manage to hit 2.3M points with my squad, but most of that came from Lia and Huurk.
What Are Your Options To Get Her?
- The Altar of Sacrifice
- In-Game Premium Banner
- TokenTrove
- In-Game Regular Banner (Maybe)
- (Back To The Top)
Before we consider if she’s worth it, we need to understand how much it might cost you to pull for her.
There are four potential ways to get her, and their prices will depend on how soon you want Tammy in your squad.
The Altar of Sacrifice
The first way is to burn prayers at the Altar of Sacrifice.
You have the option of purchasing a Pious Prayer for 0.01 $ETH (around $35) or a Zealous Prayer for 0.04 ETH (around $140) to sacrifice at the Altar.
Using a Pious prayer gives you a 5% chance to pull Tammy. So you can expect to pay up to $700 with 1/20 odds and the price of $ETH today.
You can increase those odds slightly to 8% by burning any epic Guardian along with your prayer. They only costs $3 on TokenTrove at the moment, so it’s worth it if you’re limited to a few Pious prayers.
Zealous prayers, on the other hand, have a base chance of 50% to earn you a copy of Tammy.
You can also increase those odds to 80% by burning any three epic and a legendary Guardian alongside them. At current market prices, that will run you an additional 25 USD or so.
Even though that’s a lot of money without any guarantees of success, Zealous Prayers are a far better option than pulling on the in-game banners.
Just remember that GACHA can be a cruel mistress. 20% of us will get burned sacrificing players!
In-Game Premium Banner
The announcement says Tammy will also be available to Web2 players — likely through the premium banner that uses the orange calling stones.
If you’ve been following my advice and saving up your calling stones, then this is the perfect time to use them. Just keep in mind that the banner odds are much, MUCH worse than those from prayers.
On a regular pull, you have a 0.2% chance of landing the featured legendary unit compared to 5% with a Pious Prayer.
Your best odds are with the soft pity that kicks in every 30 pulls. Tamamo’s banner features 3 other legendary Guardians, giving you a 1 in 4 change of getting her.
A soft pity means that you’re guaranteed a legendary Guardian, but not necessarily the featured unit
Things get even worse if you have to pay for the pulls.
At $80 CAD (60 USD) a 10-pull, you could end up paying several hundred or even a thousand USD for your copy.
Now, do it nine more times to take her to 15 stars…and add the radiant souls for those missed rolls…and the Ascension Seals to mint her…
All that to say, you can end up paying A LOT of money if things don’t go your way using this method.
If you don’t have the crystals saved up already, there’s no point chasing Tamamo on the premium banner.
Bite the bullet and take those first steps into Web3. Check out my starter’s guide if you need extra help.
It’s still expensive, but you’ll get way better value from using the prayers.
TokenTrove
Or better yet…go shopping for your copy!
As expected, Tammy hit the secondary market the day she launched. Her price climbed to roughly 120 USD at first, but has since settled to less than 90 USD.
That’s a much better deal than paying for a 140 USD lottery ticket, even if the odds to win are 80%. That could be why there are quite a few Zealous prayers left for sale in Eri’s store.
Many people who pulled her from the premium banner with their free calling crystals took advantage of her low initial ascension cost to dump her on the market.
Things should stabilize eventually as her ascension cost keeps growing. It now costs 553 ascension seals at the time of writing — which amounts to roughly 63 USD if you purchase them from the in-game store.
Purchasing her second hand on TokenTrove is likely to stay the cheapest way to get her without messing with GACHA.
In-Game Regular Banner (Maybe)
In the regional test, some Gen One units like Salve and Tian Long rotated to the regular banner after they appeared on the premium one.
Chris confirmed during the last Townhall before the game’s launch that banners would work the same moving forward — although he admitted that there might be a longer delay.
Some Gen One Guardians — like Phoenicia — will remain “premium banner only”, so there’s no guarantee Tammy will appear on the regular banner down the line.
That said, don’t lose hope if you don’t have the means to get her now. She could be within reach at some point.
Is She Worth It?
- She can make a difference…in the right situation
- Very costly to upgrade
- Is she better than a Founder?
- (Back To The Top)
Now that we’ve gone over all of the relevant info, here are a few things you should consider before committing to her.
She Can Make A Difference…In The Right Situation
Don’t count on Tammy to end the fight. That’s not her thing! She won’t replace the main damage dealer on your squad.
Tammy will excel in situations where the fight runs longer than 10–15 seconds, or when you need to buy some time for your main damage dealers to operate. That makes her a great choice for PVE and Arena.
Mind Break is great in PVE to neutralize an enemy formation at the start of a tough fight to protect your Guardians. With Aloria in tow, you can easily recharge it every two fights.
Mind Break and Allure don’t really have a counter outside of neutralizing Tamamo before she can use them. She’ll be a huge nuisance for your Arena opponent if they can’t get to her early.
Based strictly on the value of her kit, she is worth picking up and upgrading.
Very Costly To Upgrade
The problem is just how costly she is to upgrade.
It’s a major issue with all Gen One Guardians — who require 10 duplicates to max out.
Your cheapest option is to pull her with free Calling Crystals and ascend her — although that option is getting more expensive by the day.
Otherwise, your best bet is to purchase her on TokenTrove for the current floor of $89 USD.
Even then, not many of use can afford the 10 copies is takes to max her out.
Ultimately, how much will she really help you advance if the best version of her you can field is 6/1 or 7/2?
Most eSports are out of favor because they start at 6/1, and they don’t cost nearly as much to enlighten as Tammy does.
That’s not to mention that you could just as easily buy any of the Founders below for cheaper than what it would cost you to upgrade Tamamo to 8/3.
Does that mean you shouldn’t pull for her? Not necessarily. You can totally build her over time or wait and see if her price continues to drop on the secondary market.
Is She Better Than A Founder?
In the previous version of this article, I questioned whether Tammy was as good as a Founder Guardian.
Now that I’ve played her, I can say that her kit is on par with some Founders and most (if not all) eSports.
The issue isn’t how good she is, but rather when she’s coming to the game.
Earning mechanics aren’t fully implemented and leaderboard earnings are still fairly top heavy. That means re-investing earnings is out for a big chunk of the player base.
If you have the budget to upgrade her, then I think she could fit in well alongside Tieroc, Helia, Tavros and Kharkuk.
If, on the other hand, you concentrated all your resources on your current squad, it won’t make sense to insert a Guardian with a much lower enlightenment and radiance score.
You may not notice that big of a drop to your PVE performance, but she probably won’t last long against top tier Arena builds.
Conclusion
Let me say this first! Tamamo is a great Guardian with a strong kit who can definitely give you the edge in longer fights.
Mind Break has great utility in PVE and Arena. Allure can turn the tide at the most critical point in a fight. Soul drain helps her survive long enough to cast her ult.
She won’t win you the fight single handedly, and she contribute much in Boss Rush, but she can prop up the Guardians who will.
Unfortunately, her price point makes her practically impossible to upgrade for most of us. Even if you manage to get a couple of free dupes, ascending them is way more expensive now than when she first landed.
Fielding her right now is reserved for big spenders…pure and simple.
For the rest of us, Tamamo is a slow build.
Maybe you pull a couple of copies this time around. Maybe you get lucky again when the banner reruns in a few months.
If you’re ok with that, then she’s absolutely worth adding to your roster because she’s one of, if not the best, crowd control Guardian in the game.
I hope you enjoyed this review and got some value out of it. Don’t forget to clap and follow me for more in-depth GoG analysis.
You can also follow my X account for more tips and news about the game.
