Ares is my only 5*. I’ve ascended him once and just finished collecting materials to ascend him again. Problem is I have not found a good use for him. He doesn’t do direct damage, he just buffs other characters. I really only care about Titan damage. I keep my cups as close to zero as possible to easily mine raid chests. I find using a direct damage character like Scarlett is more successful than ares, and her ascention requires the same materials as ares. Have you found a good stack using ares?
Theoretically, as I do not have ares on an offensive team, the titan strategy for his use would be;
Alter your team setup prior to the fight so that ares is between two heroes of the color the titan is weak against and/or your hero with the highest base attack. As his ability does not have any effect on special skills, gem use would be the primary vessel of damage dealing. If possible, save gem matches of that color until he pops his skill, then let loose.
All in all, defensively, he can be very tough to take down. But his skill to increase criticals not having any effect on other heroes specials, along with only affecting the two next to him caps his potential on the attacking side. He’s kind of like a bad, but tank-y wu kong. I’d honestly recommend ascending a heavy attack 4* over him, if you’re not worried about defense. A large amount of the time, a maxed 4* will be superior to a 3^ 5*.
If someone who has actually done any extensive testing can correct me, please feel free. But that’s my initial assessment.
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His ability does buff base attack which does increase specials; however, since the majority of titan fights are tile based damage anyway, I absolutely prioritize double-stacking a color strong against the titan color… also this applies to raid attacking if you are doubling up on a color to exploit a weakness in a defense (or just to hopefully kill that damned Colen before he can get his special off when he’s tanking).
I don’t know how much of my recent gains in titan damage have been soley as a result of Ares (and I’m not going to test against titans which are kicking my ■■■ if I don’t perform as close to optimally as possible haha) and how much of it was getting second color and Tibby up to snuff too (and exploiting that Athena + Pulverizer damage I’ll admit) and also playing with Wukong in there… but I had a tile hit for 4400 damage in there on a crit on a 10*; needless to say, yummy.
Defense: I haven’t had any trouble bringing him down, the heal is just too small to be of use as it can’t keep up with incoming tile damage let alone anything else… for the heal over time to be effective in raid defenses it needs a pretty substantial buff, and this includes the time I faced a level 80 ares. While I applaud the HoT nature and it does apply better to everything other than raid defenses I think, here in particular I’d rather just have a straight heal.
To be fair I’m not really a big fan of buffing tanks with the exception of boldtusk, but Ares seems to be altogether easier than BT to whack; I would likewise suggest getting something else to tank with rather than Ares.
Thanks for the sanity check. I’m new to trying to figure out these more advanced strategies and it helps to get another opinion. It seems that my opinion of Ares aligns with yours and I’ll focus more on 4* direct attack damage (scarlett isn’t the best choice for this either, I need a red that hits a single target - Gormek might be the better choice of my 4* reds). I’ll also have to try out this double-stacking a single color that’s strong against the titan color. I had previously read never to do that in an attack because the one color you don’t have will do no damage, but I guess it makes sense that it would be offset by the higher damage done by the strong color vs the titan.
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I’d like to add as far as I’d tested atack buff of Ares stacks with Brianna 's. It might be useful on titans.
I’ve actually tested with brienne. Briennes buff (which is almost the same +attack % for allies buff ares has) was higher in my case and overrode ares buff. They didn’t stack. I use brienne so if ares becomes higher it might make sense to replace brienne with ares except she buffs all attackers (4) and ares only would buff 2. So that might not be a good tradeoff either though she does charge more slowly than ares iirc.
Hmm?
They stack according to tooltip and also apparent damage. With just Ares buff alone his attack was 885 for reference.
Ares explicitly does not stack with Boldtusk, and presumably Kiril’s attack buff; works with both Brienne and Wukong just peachy.
That’s odd. I just checked again and they did indeed stack. That was one of the first things I tested and I must have somehow gotten something wrong. Appreciate you clearing that up.
I see how I messed up. I expected the line item showing the % attack to increase further after the 2nd buff. I didn’t notice a second line item with a different symbol was created instead.
That stacking effect doesn’t seem right, a later same stat increase or decrease effect should always replace the previous one. Athena is bugged that she does stack, this seems like a bug too.
Ares shouldn’t be that bad on titans. His only problem is that it is just nearby heroes. Boldtusk heals and buffs everyone. That putting strong colors against titan next to him is good idea. Also on raids that heal being over time, can be advantage or disadvantage. If the heroes are high at health they can take same damage and get healed later. Prevent overhealing. But usually it is a disadvantage. They can be killed before the last tick. Very few run Ares on the top.
I don’t have him so I can’t speak from experience, but he would need to be 80 to be competing with bodltusk for me.
Well the stacking is addressed in 1.6; brienne / ares no longer stack.
The HoT, on raid attacks I think it’s OK, on defense I think it’s terrible, but I get 3 out of 4 use cases with Ares (map, raid attack, titans) which doesn’t suck for any hero in my estimation.
Ares is only buffing two cards, which sure, if you don’t get that color tiles (or gem) you’re losing out compared to BT, but he was part of my getting those two tiles to hit for 4450ish on a 10* dread titan, so when it comes to raw tile damage in that I really really don’t think Ares should be written off as a “worse BT”
My opinion and experience only, I didn’t have BT to be able to test it in a similar situation… course now that Athena / Tibby no longer stack, I will have to reset to a new normal anyway.
That said I do need to try to test how crits from Ares and troops effect weak spot hits which are auto crits anyway, is it still 2x damage or do we scale to 4x damage as might be the case from that 4400+ tile hit?
Ares buffs 3 heroes, himself included. Those 4000k hits are very special situations. A bug that has been removed and having Athenas buff maxed and getting the right gems with a team with 2 same color heroes and the right color gems to shoot and lucky crits. It was no way standard outcome for sure.
Sure boldtusk can’t compete with that, but I feel like the overall damage with boldtusk is in same line with Ares. Most people don’t have 2 leveled up heroes that are good for titans from every color either. If you swap in level 50 4* heroes you lose damage there too compared to a level 70 or 80.