The stoic leader of the Crystal Gems joins MultiVersus as an all-around Bruiser. She’s considered a “recommended” character in-game. That means she’s easy to learn for beginners and, more importantly, inexpensive. Despite her alleged ease of use, Garnet has never been considered especially good compared to other characters. She’s slow, fairly short-ranged, and her specials are unwieldy. Nevertheless, she offers a variety of unique abilities. Also, with the speed of incoming MultiVersus patches, you never know who’ll be the next top tier. In this MultiVersus Garnet Guide, I’ll review her attacks and their uses, along with general strategy.
MultiVersus Garnet Guide – Basic Attacks
For the first section of this MultiVersus Garnet Guide, I’ll describe her attacks and their uses.
- Neutral Ground Attack: A big charged punch. Strong but slow, and with no armor protecting it like some other characters have, it’s risky too.
- Side Ground Attack: A flurry of forward punches. It locks Garnet in place briefly, but has a powerful follow-up attack. Pressing forward, up, or down attack after the flurry performs a different move, similar to Marth’s side special from Smash Bros. The forward follow-up is most important: it’s the slowest, but it can kill horizontally at high damage and has armor. Up and down aren’t armored, but they steer the attack in the held direction. The upward follow-up travels a fair distance. The flurry into follow-up can also reverse direction, which can catch enemies sneaking up from behind.
- Up Ground Attack: Two quick punches thrown upward. Garnet is considered a Horizontal character, and this often means that many of her vertical attacks are difficult to land. This is the case here. It does have an extra attack if fully charged, a jump with good range and power, but charging a full attack leaves you extremely vulnerable. Throw it out once in a while to catch enemies who have forgotten Garnet can do it.
- Down Ground Attack: This impressive attack launches bolts of lightning along the ground! It extends farther if charged, and can cover most platforms entirely. It’s armored, too. Best of all, enemies hit by the bolts are flung towards Garnet, allowing her to easily follow-up. Of course, it’s easy enough to avoid with a jump, especially if Garnet is taking time to charge it. Use it as a surprise long-ranged attack – or against enemies who are focused on your teammate.
- Neutral Air Attack: A simple air strike in all directions. Charging this can let Garnet stall in the air for a while, but also leaves her more vulnerable to counterattack. Even so, this is a decent way to reach enemies who are a little too far away for regular punching.
- Side Air Attack: A one-two forward punch. It’s strong and fast, and the second hit is optional – you can throw one punch and back off, or follow up with a different attack. It makes a great horizontal kill move offstage… but its small hitbox means it has to be aimed carefully.
- Up Air Attack: A pair of upward punches. This is essentially the up ground attack, air version, but without the powerful follow-up. Not great, but it can add a couple extra hits onto a vertical air combo.
- Down Air Attack: A big dunk punch. As you’d expect, it makes a powerful finishing move against offstage enemies. It’s useful onstage as well: it emits a shockwave on landing, and if it hits, Garnet can immediately combo into her up air special for big damage. Go for it when you can, but make sure the timing is right – it’s a little more precise than it seems.
MultiVersus Garnet Guide – Special Attacks
Most of Garnet’s special attacks behave the same in the air as they do on the ground, but her upward special is a notable exception.
- Neutral Special: Singing! This musical aura has a couple notable effects. Firstly, it applies a stacking buff. One stack grants a speed boost, and two stacks grant universal armor break. The buff affects your allies, too, if they’re nearby. Speed is always good, but the armor break will only matter based on your opponents. The aura’s second effect is to freeze enemy projectiles. Simply holding down the special button is enough to wall off most enemy bullets. Then, the frozen projectiles can be attacked to reflect them. It’s a powerful anti-projectile force, but it’s not a cure-all – it takes a second to activate, and leaves Garnet vulnerable. This move is best used on a team, to shield an ally from projectiles while they launch them back, and apply a buff to both of you.
- Side Special: Garnet launches her gauntlets forward as a projectile. Holding the special button lets you control its direction as it flies, and releasing the button sends it forward quickly. It’s a strong all-around projectile, and it can even kill offstage enemies, but it has a cooldown.
- Up Ground Special: Garnet fires an electric ball in an arc from her finger guns. It does minor damage as it travels, and makes a painful field of electricity wherever it lands. It’s not a kill move – throw it out whenever it’s off cooldown to mess up the terrain for your enemies. You can also hold the special button to angle the shot upward. Aiming straight up will deposit the electricity right at your feet. Another reason to use this often is, when it’s recharging, it’s replaced with a quick upward handclap. The clap is surprisingly strong, and works great against enemies attacking from above, or anyone hit by your down attack.
- Up Air Special: Garnet travels a short distance into the air, then thrusts her fists out in a T-shape. This is an effective kill move, with good speed, range, and power. It’s easy enough to tack this onto the end of a basic combo, and can catch enemies who are trying to evade you in the air. Its downside is its height: it’s a very poor recovery move. Use your air dodges instead.
- Down Special: This places a little star onto the field. Garnet is linked to the star via a glowing line, and using down special again zips her right to it. The first enemy she touches during the zip gets grabbed and thrown at the end. It’s a quick attack that’s hard to evade, and it can help Garnet with her poor recovery, but it takes some setup to use right. The star has a cooldown, and it vanishes after a little while, so leaving it lying around just in case isn’t completely effective. Your ally can pick up the star to become the target of Garnet’s zip, which also lets her cancel their knockback and save them from a death. It won’t help you much without precise timing, though, since Garnet has to activate it manually.
How To Win Team Battles As Garnet
MultiVersus‘ Garnet makes a decent addition to any team. She can take the frontline and soak up damage with her weight and armored attacks, or she can hang back and harass the enemy with electricity, all while applying a speed buff. Having said that, her defense is better than her offense. An effective teammate for her would be an Assassin like Finn or Arya who can get quick kills while Garnet runs disruption.
Another teamplay option would be Steven Universe, whose bubble shield can provide extra armor to Garnet and keep her slow attacks a little safer. You could also pair Garnet with a powerful Vertical fighter, like Batman or Harley. Garnet’s powerful horizontal attacks are easy to avoid with some height, but less so if that would put enemies in range of a teammate’s deadly vertical kill move.
How To Win 1v1 Battles As Garnet
Garnet’s low speed, range, and recovery make this an uphill battle. Of course, nothing’s impossible for a skilled enough player. Victory will come down to exploiting the enemy where they’re weakest. If their range is poor, use down attack and side special, if they’re aggressive, use your armor, and if they rely on projectiles, quickly cancel them with some singing. Garnet isn’t a pro in any one area, but she has tools to respond to most situations. Just remember to stay mobile: in a one-on-one battle, her slower attacks are even easier to avoid.
Best Perks For Garnet
For the last section of the MultiVersus‘ Garnet Guide, I’ll go over her perk options. Garnet’s two Signature Perks are Electric Groove at level 8, and Marker at level 10.
Electric Groove is the preferred Signature for Garnet, giving her a stack of singing buff when the enemy touches her up special electricity. Since you should have the electric trap out whenever possible, this translates to a little speed boost from time to time. Simple and effective.
Marker leaves Garnet’s down special star where her side special gauntlets end up. In theory, this could offset Garnet’s poor recovery, letting her fire the gauntlets onto the stage, then use down special to jump to their position. In practice, however, it makes her gauntlets more awkward as a reliable projectile, since using this Signature triggers the down special cooldown. Being able to use each special independently allows for more flexibility.
The current secondary perk meta in MultiVersus is to focus on utility. Sure enough, Garnet can take advantage of her survivability to make the most out of Tasmanian Trigonometry and ‘Toon Elasticity. With a couple useful cooldown abilities, she can get a little use from Coffeezilla or I Dodge You Dodge We Dodge.
I should mention a couple of perks that aren’t useful. First, Percussive Punch Power, boosting horizontal attacks. You might think to use this on Horizontal Garnet, but there are two issues. First, damage perks are weaker on average than defensive ones. Second, several of Garnet’s kills come from upward or downward strikes anyway. Static Electricity, a late-learned Garnet perk, might seem like a good synergy with Electric Groove, but it requires you to stay grounded. That’s not viable in any platform fighter. Instead, consider situational use of the Armor Crush red perk. With that, Garnet can break defensive enemies from a great distance using her charged down attack.
