What makes Ares + OBW such a strong Defensive 2* team?

Arondite

Is it the fact that the computer can't boof up their skills because they don't have a specific ordering?

Is it just that the two characters are strong in their tier, period?

Is it a cohesion between the two units that makes them stronger than the sum of all parts?

Some combination of the aforementioned qualities?

What are some other stand-out defensive teams across each tier (1*, 2*, 3*... you needn't mention 4Verine and 4Hor, everyone should know that by now haha).

fmftint

AP steal
Heal
AI can suicide without repercussion

thanos8587

color coverage, ap steal and heal and incredibly quick damage from espionage and 6 mana onslaught. and yes the ai cant really screw it up.

i know i avoid them as a 2 star player unless im full on health packs because it can go bad fast. its also the perfect 2 star answer for storm/magneto on the attack.

NorthernPolarity

Assuming the OBW is 3 purple, 2 matches = you getting reconned.
Ares has active abilities in three colors, with onslaught coming out extremely fast and sunder being pretty efficient for a 2*.
Rampage and heals are meh, but two damaging abilities and a 2 match-3 AP steal is pretty much the best you can do as a 2*.

TLDR: 5/6 colors, recon OP, onslaught and sunder are very good.

Unknown

Arondite wrote:

Is it the fact that the computer can't boof up their skills because they don't have a specific ordering?

Is it just that the two characters are strong in their tier, period?

Is it a cohesion between the two units that makes them stronger than the sum of all parts?

Some combination of the aforementioned qualities?

What are some other stand-out defensive teams across each tier (1*, 2*, 3*... you needn't mention 4Verine and 4Hor, everyone should know that by now haha).

Purely for defense (which really doesn't matter all that much when any team can really beat any other team on offensive most of the time) having little to no overlap in skills per color is good. Or if there is overlap, having it be with two similarly powerful skills helps. If you have the option between the enemy AI using C-Mags blue, or Black Panther blue against you, you want it casting BPs blue. Same for CMags yellow over BP's strike tiles. So they may play nicely on offense, but not as great on defense. So Black Pather paired up with say.... Thor, is fine. You probably want the AI casting Thunder Strike, but wouldn't be upset it if cast Battleplan and got fat strikes down.

So for 3 teams:
- Overlap on yellow, no purple, and boring blue, but 2 hefty AOE skills, and both yellow are good.
- Daken will often get rid of his tiles a bit earlier than an active player would, but regen plus massive Thor damage can be obnoxious. No color overlap for skills or match damage.
- Not unbeatable by any means, but full match coverage, lots of strikes coming at you, and they both regen and really need to be hit hard.
- a newer one, and won't be played as great as you might play it, but Doom covering up purples to negate the downside to Beserker Rage is nice.

Unknown

color coverage is great

red green yellow for Ares
purple blue black for BWO

Further problem is you kill Ares or BWO first?

if you choice Ares. Please hope the board without good purple and blue. if you choice widow...Ares quick green is your nightmare

the impression is you can win but with big damage to your team

Arondite

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Assuming the OBW is 3 purple, 2 matches = you getting reconned.
Ares has active abilities in three colors, with onslaught coming out extremely fast and sunder being pretty efficient for a 2*.
Rampage and heals are meh, but two damaging abilities and a 2 match-3 AP steal is pretty much the best you can do as a 2*.

TLDR: 5/6 colors, recon OP, onslaught and sunder are very good.

I can't wait til I get 2 more blue obws.

I hate having 5 in purple.

Unknown

Ares does great damage at the expense of giving green AP with one ability and dealing damage to himself with another ability.

On defense, he could get down to 1 health and it wouldn't matter. Sustainability isn't a thing as a defensive character. So big damage is more important than the hits he takes back from giving green AP and for damaging himself.

Yes, they eventually take him down faster. But with 5880 health, he is hard to take down.

For that reason, you may want to take him out first before he gets rolling and starts throwing out 2k and 3k hits.

OBW, however, has two ticking time bomb abilities. If she farms enough for her blue, she just made most of what you did up to that point pointless.

And like self damaging abilities, the fact that her healing isn't true healing has no bearing on defensive fights.

And her other ability can set you back literally 4 or 5 turns.

If you need 12 yellow to kill her, and she casts her purple the turn you got your 12th yellow, it may take you multiple turns to get another yellow match.

That gives Ares enough time to farm yellow or green or even red and deal massive damage to you.

And OBW heals and steals more.

There really is no winning strategy. The best case is usually taking out OBW before she accrues 9 blue or 9 purple, but without your own Ares or even a 3 star, that is a tall order. And if she does get her blue off, now you have a half health OBW and a full health Ares and they've had like 5 turns to build up for Ares to wreck you.

Let me put it this way:
I have 7 maxed 3 stars, a 245 Xforce and multiple other high leveled characters.

Ares still stings.

GothicKratos

Sunder hits damn hard for a 2*. Rampage has pretty awesome comeback potential, plus it's a damage all, which is pretty good in of itself. Onslaught is a fast, cheap ability with a pretty good punch.

Recon is amazingly OP. Gravity Device makes for killing an already tanky Ares pretty hard. Espionage is subpar, but the damage adds up.

Arondite

GothicKratos wrote:

Sunder hits damn hard for a 2*. Rampage has pretty awesome comeback potential, plus it's a damage all, which is pretty good in of itself. Onslaught is a fast, cheap ability with a pretty good punch.

Recon is amazingly OP. Gravity Device makes for killing an already tanky Ares pretty hard. Espionage is subpar, but the damage adds up.

Speaking of comeback potential, I still have a picture of the first time I ever beat a 166(Boosted by event) / 166 / 166 team.

Unknown

Ares is good and all but lets not kid ourselves here. If OBW had twice her health she'd make for a damn fine 3*. She turns cascades into tragedies if you pair her with anyone who can make good use of red/green/yellow ap. Sunder is specially good because you can even use it to heal Ares, but OBW is the real engine behind it.

Vhailorx

It's a combination of several factors.

(1) Both Ares and OBW are among the best characters in their tier.

(2) They also provide rainbow match coverage of 5/6 color active power coverage.

(3) Those powers are also combo-free (i.e. they are generally effective on their own and do no require combination or particular sequencing. helpful because the AI is dumb as a sack of rocks)

(4) Ares hits quite hard for a 2* AND does so in as little as two matches (the speed is especially killer, it's most of what what makes ares/obw better than thor/obw)

(5) Sunder is an especially powerful ability for the AI, which doesn't have to care at all about self-damage and so can ignore the major drawback.

(6) OBW can both steal AP and heal her own team, extending the match in multiple ways (this is what makes ares/obw better than ares/daken)

(7) AP denial against this team is hard. blue and purple both need to be denied to prevent OBW from stealing all your ap or healing herself back to max. Green should also be denied (both because green is always a good color to collect, and a to prevent onslaught). But that means that you can't really deny yellow, and sunder hits really hard. plus, if you start hitting ares first (which is the wrong order to try, but some people will do it), he can collect red and throw a surprisingly painful aoe rampage if you don't pay attention.

The only disadvantage of the ares/obw pair is that ares doesn't make strike tiles, which sort of cripples obw's damage dealing potential. but otherwise, this is pretty clear the best 2* defensive pairing. I even tend to skip them with a 3* team just because I know that ares is likely to do 1000+ damage no matter what, and a bad cascade or two can actually produce a loss.

Unknown

Vhailorx wrote:

I even tend to skip them with a 3* team just because I know that ares is likely to do 1000+ damage no matter what, and a bad cascade or two can actually produce a loss.

Lets not get carried away. Good as the pairing is, it still has an awful time dealing with maxed regeneration climbing team (patch/daken). And since when you're climbing you only ever see that pair until 500 or so, I don't see why you'd ever skip it.

Vhailorx

ark123 wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

I even tend to skip them with a 3* team just because I know that ares is likely to do 1000+ damage no matter what, and a bad cascade or two can actually produce a loss.

Lets not get carried away. Good as the pairing is, it still has an awful time dealing with maxed regeneration climbing team (patch/daken). And since when you're climbing you only ever see that pair until 500 or so, I don't see why you'd ever skip it.

I skip them for convenience, not because I think I will lose. When climbing, I want to get to 500 as fast as possible. That means no prologue healing and definitely no healthpack spent. when you fight ares/obw, there is a small chance that things will go badly, and a decent chance that daken will take some damage (patch might also take damage, but until its 4k+, it doesn't really matter as he can regen so quickly, but daken is a bit harder to heal). In and of itself, taking damage isn't that bad, but if you go into a fight without max health, and then have bad luck again, you can get seriously hurt (or even lose occasionally).

Yes, all of that is unlikely, but why bother risking it at all when I can skip for the price of 10 iso and move on to another stormneto team for the same 20 points? That's half the value of the ares/obw pair. Even when I can beat them, I don't want bother with the effort when I can just skip.

spectator

How do people feel about putting 2* daken and ares on defence in place of obw?
I use a 5 cover chemical reaction daken and tend to leave them in defence in preference over an obw/ares team

Vhailorx

spectator wrote:

How do people feel about putting 2* daken and ares on defence in place of obw?
I use a 5 cover chemical reaction daken and tend to leave them in defence in preference over an obw/ares team

Daken is a fine pair for ares, but not as good as OBW.

Daken's strike tiles hurt, but take a while to be crippling. And the AI doesn't play well with chem reaction, using it at inopportune times. He also brings one less active power to the mix. both of OBW's active powers are almost always damaging when the AI casts them (either healing up one character before you can drop them, or worse stealing all your ap). Daken can't match that type of game-swinging ability and therefore isn't as threatening.

He's fine if he's all you have, but obw is the superior defensive option.