** Ares (Dark Avengers) **

Unknown

Not so sure about him on defense, since he'll waste your green at every opportunity and give the opponent a free round of Wolvie strike tiles each time. He won't get much benefit from red, either. His yellow is good, but it's still less damage than Thor's if they manage to destroy the countdown tile. That being said, Thor is getting nerfed soon, and there might not be any other character with this much unconditional damage.

Unknown

Defense doesn't mean your character actually beats the opponent. This is very rare because if your characters are strong enough to win on defense the opponent won't attack you to begin with.

It's because Ares has such high unconditional damage that it'll make people think twice about attacking you. That is, if Ares can reliably down one character or even just have a high chance of downing one character, most guys will avoid fighting you and look for someone without Ares, since health packs limit your rate of playing. Now, of course this assumes your opponent is actually familiar with the character. I'ts similar to why Juggernaut is a good defense character (at least compared to character in his level).

Looking at his stats from level 120 fight and extrapolate it a bit, I'm pretty sure a fully resolved yellow is going to leave a character in the 2 star range crippled, and even 3 star characters will take a beating. The question is does Ares have enough survivality to threaten a major move before he dies. That will take experience to figure out, but he certainly has the potential.

Unknown

Health is pretty much the same, average damage is pretty much the same, except Ares gets a much more useful green in exchange for gigantic (66%) self-damage on his yellow. The important factor when comparing the two is that Thor has a 6AP skill which starts his own chain rolling, whereas Ares' 6AP skill starts his opponent's chain rolling instead. 6AP is hard to deny; 10 isn't. Ares might get off a green or two, but that's not as intimidating as Thor getting off a couple of reds, because it doesn't lead into more massive spike damage, and you can definitely keep Ares off of yellow while using the green he gives you. So, I don't think Ares is scarier than Thor on defense at the moment, but after the nerfs, we can expect Thor to be easier to deny. With Rags and Thor gutted, this guy probably takes the crown for most damaging skills that the AI can't mess up.

Unknown

Unless the board is already saturated with yellow tiles, it's rare to get more than 6 yellow AP from a Myolinar and that's including your own match (2 cascades of match 3s require a saturated board or extreme luck) so you basically need 6 red + 6 yellow AP, which is no more than the amount Ares needs for any particular skill. More often the AI gets the 12y for Thunder Strike simply because they're good at making miracle cascades and don't need any combos to begin with, and if you get a miracle cascade Ares's skills are just as potent as Thor's.

Again on defense you're not talking about some miraculous game where your defense team somehow picked up like 20 red and 15 yellow and did like 3 Myolinar into 2 Thunder Strikes into a Call of the Storm and you actually gained points for defending. These events are too rare to rely on. Against Thor he will usually only get off one Myolinar (6r) because you'd want to kill him first (assuming he's the strongest character present, and he usually is if we're talking about two stars). In terms of damage done by a single move, both Rampage and Onslaught is likely to have a bigger threat. It doesn't matter if you feed them 5 green AP after you did a 10 point Onslaught because that's going to take down a weak character like Classic Storm and put serious damage on anyone else. Taking a big hit really slows down the attacker in general, so even if they do win, it'll make them think twice the next time they attack you.

In particular self damage on yellow is irrelevent on defense. You do start with full HP against every unique opponent, and nobody is going to want to trade HP with Ares even if his CD did not resolve successfully, because that initial hit pretty much forces you to use a health pack. The cheaper cost also matters on defense, since the AI doesn't prioritize on getting enough for a move, so even a small AP difference does matter.

Unknown

As far as I can see ares is the 2* version of the 1* jug
He got updated red to heal. His green is still a double-edged sword as 1* can destroy your special tiles too, the 2* can also give enemy advantage in terms of giving him green AP. And yes, the yellow - he got promoted and got a new skill. Welcome jug v2.0!

Unknown

Has no one thought of the possibility of teaming thor and ares together, thor uses red which generates yellows for ares skill. Also it would be interesting to see ares v ares with his green skill.

Unknown

bongo king wrote:

Has no one thought of the possibility of teaming thor and ares together, thor uses red which generates yellows for ares skill. Also it would be interesting to see ares v ares with his green skill.

Nice idea. But what I'm sceptic about is that Ares' red hits the entire enemy team and even doubles the damage done when L5 red is achieved (when below 30% health)

Unknown

From the Hunt, Ares seems really an upped version of juggernaut in built, tremendous damage but a possibility to recover (if you cannot destroy the yellow tile, it gets really tough). Pretty interesting. Makes me hesitate which to attack first Ares or Ragnarock (that can still deals tremendous damage if you leave him alone too long)

Unknown

So I think I'm going to use this guy with Punisher and OBW. With Punisher at lv115, you'll have:

Punisher: Green+Black
OBW: Blue+Purple
Ares: Red+Yellow

Ideal gameplan is to match tons of red+yellow to get Ares' health down for an early powered red, then heal up with OBW's blue, but every color is useful and OBW can steal to fuel all of the damage skills. Strike tiles work well with both AoE abilities and OBW's passive.

Dayv

I just discovered a bug with Ares' Sunder ability: if self-damage from the skill downs Ares, his countdown tile can damage you from beyond the grave.

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2130&p=29888#p29888

Unknown

DayvBang wrote:

I just discovered a bug with Ares' Sunder ability: if self-damage from the skill downs Ares, his countdown tile can damage you from beyond the grave.

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2130&p=29888#p29888

not sure if it's a bug per say considering attack/strike/protect tiles don't disappear when a character dies. Thematically speaking you could make the argument for either case, but it wouldn't hold up for every ability unless the descriptions were rewritten.

For instance it makes perfect sense for Punisher's molotov cocktail to continue to spread fire even after he is dead, but that means it should also be doing so when he is stunned.

Or if Spidey puts up a web wall (protect tile) it makes sense that would still be there when he dies. But if Cap's protect tiles are supposed to represent his Shield then those should disappear when he is downed.

There is probably no good way to address this issue so it works and makes sense in all cases.

Dayv

beezer37_84 wrote:

DayvBang wrote:

I just discovered a bug with Ares' Sunder ability: if self-damage from the skill downs Ares, his countdown tile can damage you from beyond the grave.

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2130&p=29888#p29888

not sure if it's a bug per say considering attack/strike/protect tiles don't disappear when a character dies. Thematically speaking you could make the argument for either case, but it wouldn't hold up for every ability unless the descriptions were rewritten.

It's absolutely a bug. It's a countdown tile. Countdown tiles disappear when a character who made them dies. Dead characters don't get to make countdown tiles.

Whether you can justify it for the description of a given countdown tile's power is meaningless. Nobody's giving out No Prizes for that.

Unknown

After playing with Ares, I've decided he earns a spot on my roster. Punisher + Ares = 2 aoe attacks for lowish ap. Strike tiles before, then savage the other team. Hood or OBW in third spot to steal ap.

With shields in the game now I don't care about retaliations like I used to, but once its time for defense, throw out the all health all stars of hulk, im40 and rags. Lala.

eidehua

_fulu_ wrote:

After playing with Ares, I've decided he earns a spot on my roster. Punisher + Ares = 2 aoe attacks for lowish ap. Strike tiles before, then savage the other team. Hood or OBW in third spot to steal ap.

With shields in the game now I don't care about retaliations like I used to, but once its time for defense, throw out the all health all stars of hulk, im40 and rags. Lala.

Hood does have some interesting synergy with Ares and punisher. I suppose if you have a few molotovs out already, a hood black could speedup both Ares and punisher countdowns.

Unknown

_fulu_ wrote:

After playing with Ares, I've decided he earns a spot on my roster. Punisher + Ares = 2 aoe attacks for lowish ap. Strike tiles before, then savage the other team. Hood or OBW in third spot to steal ap.

With shields in the game now I don't care about retaliations like I used to, but once its time for defense, throw out the all health all stars of hulk, im40 and rags. Lala.

Did you HP-train him up?

Unknown

So what's the best build for Ares? 5/5/3 given that Sunder self damages?

Unknown

5 in green is pointless as it drains your AP anyway, so the reduced cost won't help much. The 5th point in red increases its threshold to 30% instead of 25%, which sounds pretty important to me, since this synergy is the main appeal to playing him. I'm thinking 3/5/5 or 4/5/4 depending on how often I end up using the green.

Unknown

jozier wrote:

So what's the best build for Ares? 5/5/3 given that Sunder self damages?

I'd say 3/5/5

- 3 in green reduces to cost to 6, 5 would drop it to 5. That's still both times twice a green match, unless you'd get lucky with matching a L/I/T-Tile
- 5 red is a must because the reduced health requirement for the double damage
- 5 yellow reduces the healing/damage tile countdown to 2 rounds, which is an enormous advantage. One less round to deal more damage and get health back.

That's just my opinion. In a team with OBW you could maybe run 5/5/3 because she can heal.

Unknown

Celerity wrote:

5 in green is pointless as it drains your AP anyway, so the reduced cost won't help much. The 5th point in red increases its threshold to 30% instead of 25%, which sounds pretty important to me, since this synergy is the main appeal to playing him. I'm thinking 3/5/5 or 4/5/4 depending on how often I end up using the green.

IMO 4/5/4 is a bad build. There is neither an advantage of 4 green nor 4 yellow. As posted above, with 5Y the countdown drops to 2 rounds. 3/4G makes only a difference in the outcoming damage, cost stays the same. And as you said, the green will be consumed, no matter if you start it with 5 or 6 greens. The only downside I see is the additional green ap the enemy gets - which also depends if there will be two or three given at a cost of five.

Unknown

I see your guys' point. I think I'll go 3/5/5 then. I think I was more influenced by the fact that Green has been his rarest cover so far and was wondering if the Devs were hinting at going that route.