Abilities Build
Disclaimer
Before I get into this, just need to state that card build credit goes to Gamers Fitness Group on Youtube (with just 1 minor card adjustment). I've played around with other builds but this one works the best for me. Although I will keep this updated as I get more cards.
Summary (TLDR)
Avoid too much enemy fights, focus on attacking lanes, and defending lanes.
Key Points:
Gadget seems to be the underdog of Paragon, but I feel that its more of how she's being played and not Gadget, herself. Gadget is a strange Hero as she, in my opinion, is a combination of Gideon and Dekker. She has the laning capabilities of Gideon and the CC capabilities of Dekker. She is a different type of support. She doesn't give shields or rack up kills, instead, she creates a snowball effect on enemy lanes which adds more pressure to the enemy team, forcing them to leave your teammates alone or results in a tower being destroyed.
Strengths:
-Controls the flow of lanes (speeding up minions)
-Destroys rooted enemies
-Decent Aoe damage
-Decent CC
-Good at escaping
-Can clear out several minions in an instant
Weaknesses:
-Squishy (at least with this build)
-Slight learning curve
-Utilizes Damage Over Time (Instead of instant damage)
-Uses a ton of mana
-Can only kill using combos (which uses a lot of mana)
Abilities Overview
Haywire
-Gadget deals increased damage to minions.
Haywire is Gadget's passive, and it is for this reason that she is the master at killing minions, and this will show throughout the use of this guide.
Plasma Blast
-"Gadget fires a medium damage plasma blast from her gauntlet."
This is Gadget’s basic attack ability. It’s alright. It doesn’t deal too much damage, but it great for poking.
Seek and Destroy
-"Gadget fires a bot that moves slowly in a straight line, granting vision within a radius. Reactivating the ability halts the bot and begins damaging and slowing enemies beneath. If the bot collides with an enemy Hero, it will auto trigger."
This is a great CC and dps ability (especially with the recent buff). This is used for escaping, helping your friends escape, damaging minions, and slowing down enemy movements enough to combo them.
Sticky Mine
-"Gadget fires a Sticky Mine to a target location. After a short time, the mine will activate, sticking to anyone within the radius. A few seconds after activating, the mine explodes."
This is Gadget’s main source of dps against both minions and enemy players. Sticky Mine is great for clearing the gunner minions, and scaring off enemies who get too close. It is also great for sticking to enemies who are low and attempt to run away. It has an amazing amount of range, and can deal a good amount of damage. Although it cannot crit unfortunately.
Speed Gate
-"Gadget fires out a Speed Gate. Upon deploying, allies that pass through the gate will gain a large burst of movement speed. Enemies that pass through it will take damage."
This is what makes Gadget so amazing at what she does. Speed gate allows you to speed up minions in a lane which will cause them to crowd up, and overpower other enemy minions. This can be used to pressure an entire lane without you having to do anything basically. You can build up minions on a lane, and then go torment another lane. This is also great for escaping sticky situations.
Tesla Dome
-"Gadget places her Tesla Dome over a target location. After a short delay the Dome activates, dealing damage over the course of a few seconds."
Now Tesla Dome is a strange ult in my opinions (especially in the manner that I use it). The main purpose of this ult is to kill large hords of minions in an instant. If your lane is being pushed too hard and there’s a large group of minions attacking your tower, just drop a Tesla Dome on top of them and they will all be dead in 3 seconds. If you’re pushing a tower and want to move faster, you can drop a Tesla Dome on the next wave of minions and pass through as if they never existed. The only time I use Tesla Dome on enemies is if I surprise them with a combo, have them rooted, or need to separate them from each other.
Because this doesn’t really have a slowing effect or a pull like Gidgeon’s ult, it’s basically useless against enemy players as they can simply walk out of it before taking any major damage. So I would not recommend using this regularly on players unless they are rooted or slowed via Seek and Destroy. Its main purpose is to clear minions (especially large quantities).
Abilities upgrade priority
I don’t think that there is a definite way to upgrade your abilities as Gadget. I typically look at the situation and base my upgrades on that. The only thing that is you NEED TO UPGRADE is your Sticky Mine. This is your main damage dealer, you need to for clearing minions, and scaring (and possibly killing) enemies. Everything else is up to you.
Abilities Combos
Killing an Enemy Combo
-Seek & Destroy-->Tesla Dome-->Sticky Mine-->Basic Attack Spam
(So you basically use up a ton of mana for a chance to kill an enemy)
Early Game
Early game Gadget is very squishy, and you NEED TO NEED TO NEED TO check your surroundings via Wards. Your damage is not high enough to really scare enemies, or to clear minions in an instant. Thus you need to focus your time slowly clearing lanes (at a safe distance), upgrading cards, and leveling up.
Mid Game
Mid game, you are focusing on pushing lanes even harder now. At this point you are strong enough to clear minions a lot faster, and can speed up your own minions at the same time.
You want to help the front line minions kill what’s in front of them, and then use Speed Gate on the group behind them so they begin to snowball down the lane. You can then chose to follow the group up the lane to destroy a tower, or retreat to upgrade, terrorize another lane, or help out your teammates.
Late Game
Gadget is going to clear mobs like it’s nothing. You want to be continuing your snowballing and apply more and more pressure on the enemy lanes with how well you are at both defending and attacking lanes. (Basically you are continuing what you are doing mid game, but you’re just more efficient at it now).
Card Build
So, why so squishy?
Well I’ll tell ya why. Gadget is horrible at killing in all honestly. In order for me to get a kill the enemy needs to be rooted, ganked (and then I need to use up all of my abilities), or just weak to begin with. So you’re overall goal is to avoid fights at all costs. If there is one enemy in your lane you should be ok as long as you have a group of minions in front of you, and a ward checking your back.
All of this damage is to make Gadget better at what she’s good at doing, killing minions.
Laning!!!
Finally, the part of this guide that is the embodiment of Gadget, Laning.
Gadget is a goddess of laning, and will apply a lot of pressure on the enemy lanes if played correctly.
You want to optimize your snowballing as much as possible on enemy lanes to be constantly applying pressure to their lanes. What this does is force enemy players to separate from each other to go defend a lane, or just makes it that much easier for you to destroy an enemy tower.
My go to combo for killing minions is dropping a Seek and Destroy to drop some minor dps, and then throw a Sticky Mine to the back minions (the ones with guns). I then proceed to spam my basic attack on the melee minions. By the time Sticky Mine explodes, you will be done with the melee minions and the mine will have killed most (if not all) the minions in the back.
When engaging a tower, I will always make sure I drop my Ward behind be to ensure I won’t be disturbed. After killing any enemy minions in front of the enemy tower, I Speed Gate my own minions to get them to the tower faster. I spam my basic attack on the tower. When the next wave of enemy minions comes at me, I drop my Tesla Dome between them and the tower. This way I am dealing more damage to the tower and killing the wave of minions at the same time. This is important because you need to make sure your group of minions don’t get killed quickly, and that they don’t get distracted by other minions. Your minions will be safe, and focused on dealing more damage to the tower instead of fighting.
Tips and Tricks
-Gadget’s Seek and Destroy kills Iggy & Scorch’s turrets in an instant. Since they require 3 hits to kill, the constant damage from Seek and Destroy is a great and efficient method of dispatching these annoying turrets.
-NEVER NEVER NEVER use Speed Gate on a front line group of minions. Why? Well if you speed up the front line it causes a larger gap between your first group and the group right behind them. This allows the enemy minions a chance to add more damage to them (even if you are following them). Instead you want to speed up the group behind the front line group in order to have a larger group running down the lane. This is the snowball effect.
-NEVER NEVE NEVER use Speed Gate on your minions when there’s an enemy player on the lane (especially if they can kill them quickly). Kinda obvious here. If you speed up the front line group, you are basically sentencing them to death, and creating a larger gap so that the enemy minions will have more room to travel without resistance.
-Sticky Mine Priority
- Enemy Players 2. Allied Platers 3. Minions 4. The ground
In other words ,when you drop a Sticky Mine, this is its priority. BUT once it chooses its target, it won’t let go or change its mind.
FAQ
Frequent questions that may appear while playing this build and your answers
- Q:
A: - Q:
A:
@idontnoso, I'm glad to see Gadget is getting covered. She was not having good guides for a long time. Welcome to the frontpage.
Thank you. Appreciate the kind words.
Thanks for writing a guide on Gadget.