There are ways to combo into Pandora but like many have said here it is too situational to ever be of any use, and even with gems it sucks. I’m sure tehre are a handful of character combinations that can really take advantage of this but let me put this into perspective with my team.
I have nina/hugo. Now, I can do something like cr mk xx hk geyser, cr fp xx hk geyser activate pandora (hugo comes in ) super from anywhere on the screen. This will do something like 600 damage and with the ONE PANDORA DAMAGE DEALING GEM RELEASED, slightly more, like 630 or so. The problem with this setup, is that it requires two meter stocked, because when I activate pandora, the meter doesn’t build quickly enough to let the super hit.
also, even if I COULD somehow get more hits into the combo with some juggle, damage scaling would prevent the combo from doing any serious damage. Also, given the short time period of Pandora and the long animation of some supers, many options are limited. I’m sure someone is going to come up with some crafty combo that uses like 4 stocks of meter, but without a doubt, damage scaling is going to ruin its efficiency.
Now I’m not saying tis better than X factor or worse, but X factor’s damage scaling doesn’t work the same way that Pandora’s scaling works. In whole, Pandora effectively becomes a 12% damage increase (on already scaled damage because of your setup) and unlimited meter for 5 seconds. then you lose.
Sucky mechanic, and even if you build gems around it, how often are you getting its value? hard to say. I’m going to stick with it because I want to catch someone with some wild shit in a tournament but still – there are much better ways to loadout your characters and if you don’t loadout for pandora, I rarely see it worth using.
