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Arguably one of the most sought-after characters inThe First Descendantis Gley, a scientist turned berserker. Her signature Frenzied state allows Gley to turn any weapon into a DPS machine through infinite ammo and increased damage. Juggle her Frenzied state correctly, and you effectively become two Descendants in one.
Gley is one of First Descendant’s hardest characters to earn, but she’s also one of the game’s most rewarding to play. The right build can give her infinite ammo forever, make her virtually unkillable, and capable of making every gun in the game a boss melter. Let’s go over how to get Gley, explain how her kit works, and go over some of the strongest builds you’re able to use with her.
How To Unlock Gley
Gley can technically be acquired through Normal mode content, but the drop rates on her parts are so low that we suggestwaiting until you’re able to farm her Amorphous Materials on Hard difficulty.Most of her parts have a 3-6% drop chance by default, but if you farm for some of her rarer Amorphous Materials in Hard mode, her drop chance skyrockets to roughly 32% per part.
Most of her Amorphous Materials drop fromHard difficulty Recon missions and dungeons. These materials can then be cracked open at Void Reactors in patrol spaces, usually the same location where you acquired the Amorphous Material. Once you have her components, you’ll need to acquire some rare components from various endgame regions, notablyCooling Metallic Foil from White-Night Gulch vaults.
Extra Recon Rewards
You can hack the generators found in Recon missions to gain an extra chance of earning an Amorphous Material.Sharen is requiredfor this strategy. This makes the grind for Gleymucheasier.
Gley Spiral Catalyst
How To Unlock Ultimate Gley
Ultimate Gley is obtained similarly to base Gley, although Ultimate Gley’s drop rates aresignificantlylower and come from endgame Amorphous Materials.Ultimate Gley’s parts have a 6% drop rate, whichyou can increase to 10% with Shape Stabilizers. This resource is fairly rare, but it’s worth using since her drop rates are otherwise exceedingly low.
Her Amorphous Materials are all tied toHard mode content, mainly Recon missions and dungeon clears. Make sure you have a good Sharen and Bunny build before you start farming for these materials. Beyond that, the only notable resources you’ll need areThermal Metallic FoilsandCooling Metallic Foils, obtained from vaults found in Echo Swamp and White-Night Gulch, respectively.
Gley Abilities Explained
Passive
Gley has no MP or shields.She instead uses her HP to fuel her abilities, encouraging a more reckless playstyle. The lack of shields and MP alsoopens up many module optionsfor her that’d usually be detrimental to other Descendants, notably mods like HP Amplification.
Since she lacks a casting resource, Gley has an additional source of healing that’s baked into her passive:Life Spheres.Enemies you kill have a 30% chance of spawning an HP orb you may collect from their corpse. This orb despawns after eight seconds (affected by mods), so be sure to collect it when it drops. Each orb you collect grants a stack ofPower of Life, a required resource for some of Gley’s abilities. You can have up to ten Power of Life stacks at a time.
Frenzied
Gley enters a Frenzied state. While Frenzied, she gains increased attack power and bullet penetration at the cost of HP recovery and damage resistance.
10% of max HP
N/A
Frenzied is a skill you can toggle at any time; it has no set duration.Activating this ability will enrage Gley, increasing her damage output by a static 15%.This is a mutiplicaitve buff that you cannot modify through standard means, although it can be enhanced through thePredator Instinctaugment mod.
Being frenzied also increases all damage you take by 15%and halves the effectiveness of HP recovery sources (excluding the HP Recovery module). Casting the ability also drains a small amount of HP, which can actually be advantageous for some of Gley’s abilities. In fact,Gley’s other abilities are altered based on her current state.If Frenzied, her abilities deal more damage and scale based on her missing HP. While calm, her abilities offer utility bonuses instead.
The only modifier that affects this skill is Cooldown Reduction(CDR).You’ll want plenty of CDR for the rest of Gley’s kit, so you shouldn’t have to worry about any lockout period for this skill. Optimal play encourages you to juggle both of her states to maximize her effectiveness, but many players simply remain in Frenzied state throughout an entire mission. For newer players, keep it on until you start taking some serious damage.
Life Siphon
Deals damage to targets within range and recovers HP. HP recovery amount increases based on the number of enemies hit. In Frenzied state, deals increased damage proportional to HP. In non-Frenzied state, gain Vigor. Vigor stacks proportionally to the number of enemies hit.
x3 Power of Life stacks
5% of max HP per enemy hit
Calm:Skill Power x 327.5%
Frenzy:Skill Power x 467.7%
DR:2% per stack (unmoddable)
Affects Vigor buff duration
Affects skill radius
Affects ability damage
Every enemy close to Gley will have the life sucked out of them, granting her HP in the process.This skill’s behavior differs based on your current state:
TheCalmversion of this skill will grant one stack of Vigor per enemy hit, up to a maximum of ten stacks. Each stacks grants 2% damage reduction, stacking additively with itself and multiplicatively with other DR sources. Using this skill before Vigor runs out will iterate its stacks butnotrefresh its active duration. You’ll need to wait for the stacks to drop before you can refresh your Vigor duration.
TheFrenziedversion simply deals more damage. It deals bonus damage based on your missing HP. The more HP you’re missing, the more damage you’ll deal. The skill gains roughly 10% of your Skill Power as bonus damage for every 10% of your HP missing. This isnotaffected by Skill Power Modifier sources.
Increased Sensory
While Frenzied, your bullets do not consume ammo. While non-Frenzied, you generate additional Life Spheres and gain increased movement speed.
5% of max HP
Affects buff duration
Increased Sensory is effectively two skills in one.
Both effects are affected by Skill Duration and can be active simultaneously, although you’ll need to spec forCooldown Reductionto reasonably maintain both buffs.
The real star of the show is the Frenzied buff. While active, your weapons don’t consumeanyammo. This allows you to use a rocket launcher as a primary weapon for a few seconds, giving Gley some of the highest single-target DPS potential in the game. It doesn’t last particularly long, butit’s possible to have 100% uptime on the infinite ammo buffif you get enough CDR and Skill Duration, which we cover in the builds section.
Massacre
Consumes Power of Life to spawn Gley’s signature weapon. Each stack consumes grants one bullet. While Frenzied, the weapon deals additional damage proportional to lost HP. While non-Frenzied, each shot inflicts Stun.
HP:15% of max HP
Base:Same as equipped weapon
Affects Frenzied bonus damage
Massacre is Gley’s signature weapon,inheriting your current weapon’s base stats and equipped mods.The gun only has three bullets to work with, increasing to ten if you consume all of your Power of Life stacks. That’s not much, but you may extend this with Increased Sensory’s Frenzied buff to ammo conservation. By default, this gun behaves identically to your currently-equipped weapon with two small differences based on Gley’s state:
Massacre doesnotinherit Ultimate weapon perks, such as Thunder Cage’s on-kill explosions or Nazeistra’s defense strip.
In practice,you need to use Increased Sensory in Frenzied state to use this gun effectively.That means you’re realistically only getting the Frenzied benefit out of this gun. The second bullet occurs with each shot andonlyinflicts a portion of your Skill Damage; this damage instance doesnotinherit your weapon’s stats or modules.
Since the Frenzied shot doesn’t have an internal cooldown or scale with weapon stats, you ideally want afast-firing weapon equipped when casting Massacre.SMGs and Machine Guns are ideal here. If you want to scale this damage further,spec for Skill Power Modifier.The base modifier on Massacre is a meager 68%, so any boost to this stat will drastically increase the damage of the second bullet.
How To Play Gley
Gley is a weapons platform above all else.Your weapon builds matter just as much as Gley herself.If you give her a bad gun, she’s not going to perform well. Conversely, if you give her a min-maxed weapon, Gley is going to top the DPS charts in virtually every activity. She ideally wants amachine gun or SMG, coupled with your choice of heavy weapon.Most Gley players are drawn to rocket launchers since their DPS is usually hamstrung by small magazines.
How you play Gley will largely depend on the mission you’re in.For bossing, you want to immediately trigger Frenzied and Increased Sensory.This will give your weapon infinite ammo for a few seconds. Use this with a rocket launcher or sniper to dish out some absurd DPS. You don’t need Power of Life to use Gley’s first or third abilities, so you can comfortably do this in Void Intercept missions. Just keep an eye on your health bar.
If you’re playing more general content,start by casting her third ability while not Frenzied.You’ll generate a ton of Life Spheres by killing enemies, which you’re able to pick up to gain Power of Life. This fuels most of your Frenzied skills. Once full,toggle Frenzied and use the rest of your kit.Swap between both forms as needed to keep up your HP and Power of Life stacks.
The HP Collector module is fantastic on Gley. It doesn’t receive the 50% healing penalty from Frenzied, and it can be triggered every two seconds at max rank.
Ideal Stats
CDR, Duration, HP
Use this build with the Vestigial Organ rocket launcher. It has the highest fire rate out of all rocket launchers, making it an ideal weapon for Gley’s third ability.
This build hits the bare minimum threshold for achievingmaximum uptime on Gley’s infinite ammo ability.It’s a fairly straightforward build. We useMaximize DurationandSkill Extensionto buff Gley’s ability uptime, extending the ammo buff’s duration to 8.8 seconds.
We then lower her cooldowns withMP Conversion and Nimble Fingers. This gets your cooldown timer to 12.4 seconds. That uptime is more than good enough for most Void Intercept fights. If you’re in a coordinated group and want to min-max, throw on Focus on Non-Attribute and Focus on Dimension for an extra 12% CDR. Paired with a CDR affix on a reactor, you’ll achieve true 100% uptime, although fitting all this on will require a Reactor and at least one Crystallization Catalyst
If you don’t have an Energy Activator handy, that’s about all you can fit onto Gley. However, if you don’t mind installing one, throw onIncreased HPfor some much-needed survivability. You’ll want to scale her defense rating as well, although you can dropIncreased DEFif you aren’t running Void Intercept fights. Learn the boss mechanics beforehand, get elemental resistances on your external components, and you should be fine.
7
Blood and Iron
This build is intended for Ultimate Gley.
This is the ideal endgame build for Ultimate Gley, aiming to achieve maximum uptime on her third ability without compromising on Gley’s survivability or neutral game. As before, you’ll need to useNimble Fingers, MP Conversion, and any damage mods that give CDRto lower Gley’s cooldowns as much as possible. Focus on Dimension and Focus on Non-Attribute are ideal since they also buff her second and fourth abilities.
Duration is the next priority.Maximize DurationandSkill Extensionwill extend Increased Sensory’s duration to just shy of nine seconds, but you can take it even further withBattle of Stamina.This greatly buffs Gley’s HP while providing a small bump to her Skill Duration. Throw onany Reactor with CDR or Skill Duration, and you’ll achieve 100% uptime on your infinite ammo buff.
It’ll take quite a few Crystallization Catalysts to fit the next few mods in, but they drastically improve Gley’s neutral game.Increased HPandIncreased DEFare required for pushing difficult endgame content. Next, you’ll wantHP Collectorto restore some of your HP from kills. Void Intercept fights have plenty of trash enemies to kill, so this is surprisingly useful in bossing environments. you may also drop this mod forWalk a Tightropeinstead if you want more DPS.
To finish the build, we equipBlood and Iron.This augment module prevents Life Spheres from spawning, but it allows you to gain Power of Life by landing critical hits. This has incredible synergy with fast-firing weapons like SMGs and machine guns. Coincidentally, these weapons are also ideal for Massacre, so you can actually use Massacre in place of a heavy weapon for boss DPS. Land some critical hits, become Frenzied, spawn Massacre, and then use your infinite ammo to shred anything that gets in your way.
