Assaulting Ares: How to beat the toughest boss we've seen in MCOC in years
Grootman1294
Member Posts: 968 ★★★★
Man, Kabam has gotta stop pulling me out of hibernation like this. Time to make some guides for the Epoch of Pain! In this one, we're just going to be going over how to beat Ares, since he seems to be the main problem for most people. I'll put out guides for the paths later on, but I want to get this out first so that I can tear apart each of his mechanics and hopefully motivate people to push for exploration and those juicy rewards!
First off, just going to start by saying that Ares is easily the toughest boss we've seen in this game for a long time, probably since the Abyss Collector, so DON'T BEAT YOURSELF UP IF YOU DIE A LOT. If anything, poor mentality will make this go even worse since there's a lot of stuff you gotta pay attention to.
Some important things to note about the fight in general before we go into each phase:
1. Ares is permanently stun immune, and hits quite hard into your block. Make sure your intercepts are point if you want easy openings. Relic openings are still fair game so you can use those as well to get your hits in.
2. You cannot have more health percentage than Ares, and you'll degenerate until your health bars are equal percentage. This part isn't bad at first, but it makes the later phases way more scary, so watch out.
3. Every time you enter a new phase, Ares gets some intimidate debuffs, and then goes unstoppable, unblockable and indestructible for 5 seconds. You cannot counter this unstoppable with slow, grit or halt, so you gotta wait it out.
4. Ares takes no damage from any damaging effects. Any sort of red numbers will not do anything against this guy, so keep that in mind when you are team building
5. DO NOT USE HERC AGAINST THIS GUY. Ares gains ridiculous power gain if you do.
6. Ares' heavy attack is interesting. He does a shoulder tackle, then a hit with his minigun. You can't interrupt it after the shoulder tackle, and the minigun hit covers the ENTIRE STAGE. If you want to bait heavies, make sure you dex to avoid the minigun hit before you go in and punish. The punish window is also very short on this guy, so you gotta be on your toes.
7. Phase effects are culmulative, which means that you still have to deal with the phase 2 mechanics while he is in phase 3 and up. Make sure to keep those in mind!
8. During Ares' special attacks, time is slowed down substantially during Phase 1, but it speeds up with each phase so it gradually gets faster. Be wary of the new timings whenever you enter a new phase!
9. Whenever you die with a champ, they get a persistent stacking vigor that boosts your damage by 100% each. This encourages you to use the same champ for most of the fight, but it massively boosts your damage each try so you can eventually just brute force your way through the fight.
Now, let's break this down by phase:
Phase 1 (Start of the fight onward):
Phase 1 is a nice introduction to his main mechanics. Basically, during his special attacks, Ares uses different weapons, with different methods of avoiding each. Whenever you avoid a weapon, you get a nice damage boost that lasts until the next phase or until you die. Ares' special attacks always start with him pointing at you and locking you in place, then he does a kick which can be avoided with dexterity before he starts pulling out the weapons. The order of his weapons are as follows (again, these come AFTER he does the first kick):
Sp1: Dex, Parry, Parry, Light attack, Dex
Sp2: Parry, Parry, Light attack, Dex, Dex, Swipe up once (you can avoid all the gunshots with one swipe so no need to spam it)
You MUST remember (or write down) the above combinations in order to stand a chance in this fight. However, time is also slowed down substantially during his specials in Phase 1 so you can take your time to get the timings right.
Phase 2 (91% health onward):
This is where things get real, and where most people (including myself) seem to start getting stuck. Ares will now only throw specials when he has 2 bars of power, and the special will randomly be either a sp1 or sp2. The problem is that, especially in the later phases when it gets faster, it is very difficult to tell which special attack he is throwing, which makes it very easy to get rekt. There are some VERY SUBTLE visual cues that will help you distinguish the sp1 from the sp2:
- When Ares points at you during his specials, his eyes glow red and flash. When the eyes flash once, he will throw a sp1. When the eyes flash multiple times, almost like a twinkle, he'll throw a sp2. This was the visual cue that worked best for me, and allowed me to go from getting rekt by every special in phase 4 to being able to consistently evade them all
- When Ares kicks you, watch the position of his right hand (the one further away from your perspective). If his hand is below his shoulder when he kicks, he's going to throw a sp1. If his hand is above his shoulder, he's going for a sp2. This one is courtesy of Seatin.
- Right as Ares draws his weapon, pause the game and take a look. If the weapon is orange, he's going for a sp1. If it has a blueish tinge, he's going for the sp2. This one is courtesy of Nagase.
IF THERE'S ANYTHING TO TAKE AWAY FROM THIS GUIDE, IT IS THESE VISUAL CUES ABOVE. Watch other Ares takedowns on Youtube to see them for yourself and make sure you know exactly what each tell looks like. This is easily the worst part of the fight, so don't beat yourself up over it if you do mess up.
Oh yes, Ares also gains some power when he attacks, even if it doesn't hit you. This isn't too bad, and is actually very clutch for the later phases, as I'll talk about below.
Phase 3 (60% health onward):
This is where the special timing starts to get pretty fast, so make sure your weapon counters are on point! This phase also introduces a new mechanic where you must punish Ares' special attacks with certain actions or else he'll reversal you and very likely kill you. The potential special punishes are as follows:
- Punish with a Medium attack, then a Light attack. This is basically a normal combo, so nothing to note here
- Punish with a Medium attack, then immediately launch a Heavy attack. Ares will be inactionable if you launch a heavy attack with this punish, so don't worry about him avoiding it
- Punish with a Medium attack, then immediately launch a Special attack. This is easily the most niche punish since you need power to do so. If you don't have a special ready, you can punish with the Medium attack, then back off and wait until the reversal timer ends. This will be indicated by the red timer below Ares' health bar after you use the Medium attack, so DO NOT ATTACK IN until the coast is clear
- Dash back immediately after the last hit of his special, then dash in with a medium attack. This one can be confusing, especially after the sp1 since the final hit also requires a dash back to avoid the weapon. If you've performed the dash back successfully, a green timer will flash below Ares' health bar, so once you see that you can dash in and hit him
You can see which punish you need to perform via the icons under Ares' health bar. There are small letters of the alphabet corresponding to Medium, Light and Heavy, as well as a simple explosion icon for Special attacks. If you can't see them clearly, you can pause the game and get the details through the pause menu. These reset whenever the fight starts and when Ares finishes a special, so pay close attention to avoid getting destroyed!
Phase 4 (30% health onward):
This phase was the hardest for me personally. At this point, the special timings are borderline ridiculous in terms of speed, and you'll need to be able to react on a whim to stand a chance here. Additionally, Ares gets a Haste passive every 20 seconds which makes him unstoppable while dashing and thus unable to be intercepted. This is where the power gain from Phase 2 comes in clutch, as you can build him to 2 bars of power without hitting him.
At this point, I would recommend only using 40% revives as any healing will be wasted due to the degeneration. Once he goes below 20%, switch to only using 20% revives to minimize wasted resources.
Phase 5 (Final 1% health):
This phase is either good or bad depending on the AI. Ares gets 99 immortality charges, and cannot be blocked at all while these are active. You remove 1 by entering the fight (this is currently bugged so be careful), remove 2 by intercepting him, and remove 3 whenever you avoid a weapon hit from his specials. Don't bother healing as you will degen to 1% and he will kill you in a single hit anyways. Play around the Haste passive and his specials and you will inevitably get him down, the immortalities are persistent and thus you don't need to get all 99 down in a single try. This phase is a very good time to use team revives as your damage will not matter at this point.
So here's the general plan (I understand this was a lot of text):
Bring in any character who is non-reliant on red numbers and also isn't hercules, ideally use one character only to boost your damage
Know how to intercept and avoid Ares' heavy attack
Mind the phase transitions
Phase 1: Get used to the special mechanics and actions
Phase 2: Nail down the visual cues so you can tell what special he is using (easily the dumbest part of the fight)
Phase 3: Mind the special punishes
Phase 4: Mind the haste and time your intercepts, don't bother healing
Phase 5: Intercept like crazy and team revive
Do this plan, and you'll hopefully be okay. And trust me, you'll get better at this the more you do it. Don't believe me? Here are my revive counts on Ares for each of my runs:
Path 1 (Hulkling path): 10 single revives and 3 team revives, did this one as soon as EOP came out so there were no good strategies yet
Path 2: (Nebula path with tech/science): 9 single revives and 2 team revives
Path 3: (Nebula path with cosmic/skill): 6 single revives and 2 team revives
Path 4: (Cassie path with cosmic/skill): 4 single revives and 1 team revive, it was at this point where I fully locked down the visual cues, so if you get them down earlier you hopefully won't spend as much as I did on the previous paths
Path 5: (Cassie path with mutant/mystic): Revive-less
Path 6: (Spam path): 1 team revive due to bad AI in the final phase
And that's it for the Ares guide! Overall I still do think some aspects of him are borderline overtuned, especially with the visual cues, but I love the concept of this fight and the risk-reward aspect of it all. I'll try and have some path guides out for the weekend for the rest of the fights!
Thanks for reading, and as always, hope this helped y'all!
First off, just going to start by saying that Ares is easily the toughest boss we've seen in this game for a long time, probably since the Abyss Collector, so DON'T BEAT YOURSELF UP IF YOU DIE A LOT. If anything, poor mentality will make this go even worse since there's a lot of stuff you gotta pay attention to.
Some important things to note about the fight in general before we go into each phase:
1. Ares is permanently stun immune, and hits quite hard into your block. Make sure your intercepts are point if you want easy openings. Relic openings are still fair game so you can use those as well to get your hits in.
2. You cannot have more health percentage than Ares, and you'll degenerate until your health bars are equal percentage. This part isn't bad at first, but it makes the later phases way more scary, so watch out.
3. Every time you enter a new phase, Ares gets some intimidate debuffs, and then goes unstoppable, unblockable and indestructible for 5 seconds. You cannot counter this unstoppable with slow, grit or halt, so you gotta wait it out.
4. Ares takes no damage from any damaging effects. Any sort of red numbers will not do anything against this guy, so keep that in mind when you are team building
5. DO NOT USE HERC AGAINST THIS GUY. Ares gains ridiculous power gain if you do.
6. Ares' heavy attack is interesting. He does a shoulder tackle, then a hit with his minigun. You can't interrupt it after the shoulder tackle, and the minigun hit covers the ENTIRE STAGE. If you want to bait heavies, make sure you dex to avoid the minigun hit before you go in and punish. The punish window is also very short on this guy, so you gotta be on your toes.
7. Phase effects are culmulative, which means that you still have to deal with the phase 2 mechanics while he is in phase 3 and up. Make sure to keep those in mind!
8. During Ares' special attacks, time is slowed down substantially during Phase 1, but it speeds up with each phase so it gradually gets faster. Be wary of the new timings whenever you enter a new phase!
9. Whenever you die with a champ, they get a persistent stacking vigor that boosts your damage by 100% each. This encourages you to use the same champ for most of the fight, but it massively boosts your damage each try so you can eventually just brute force your way through the fight.
Now, let's break this down by phase:
Phase 1 (Start of the fight onward):
Phase 1 is a nice introduction to his main mechanics. Basically, during his special attacks, Ares uses different weapons, with different methods of avoiding each. Whenever you avoid a weapon, you get a nice damage boost that lasts until the next phase or until you die. Ares' special attacks always start with him pointing at you and locking you in place, then he does a kick which can be avoided with dexterity before he starts pulling out the weapons. The order of his weapons are as follows (again, these come AFTER he does the first kick):
Sp1: Dex, Parry, Parry, Light attack, Dex
Sp2: Parry, Parry, Light attack, Dex, Dex, Swipe up once (you can avoid all the gunshots with one swipe so no need to spam it)
You MUST remember (or write down) the above combinations in order to stand a chance in this fight. However, time is also slowed down substantially during his specials in Phase 1 so you can take your time to get the timings right.
Phase 2 (91% health onward):
This is where things get real, and where most people (including myself) seem to start getting stuck. Ares will now only throw specials when he has 2 bars of power, and the special will randomly be either a sp1 or sp2. The problem is that, especially in the later phases when it gets faster, it is very difficult to tell which special attack he is throwing, which makes it very easy to get rekt. There are some VERY SUBTLE visual cues that will help you distinguish the sp1 from the sp2:
- When Ares points at you during his specials, his eyes glow red and flash. When the eyes flash once, he will throw a sp1. When the eyes flash multiple times, almost like a twinkle, he'll throw a sp2. This was the visual cue that worked best for me, and allowed me to go from getting rekt by every special in phase 4 to being able to consistently evade them all
- When Ares kicks you, watch the position of his right hand (the one further away from your perspective). If his hand is below his shoulder when he kicks, he's going to throw a sp1. If his hand is above his shoulder, he's going for a sp2. This one is courtesy of Seatin.
- Right as Ares draws his weapon, pause the game and take a look. If the weapon is orange, he's going for a sp1. If it has a blueish tinge, he's going for the sp2. This one is courtesy of Nagase.
IF THERE'S ANYTHING TO TAKE AWAY FROM THIS GUIDE, IT IS THESE VISUAL CUES ABOVE. Watch other Ares takedowns on Youtube to see them for yourself and make sure you know exactly what each tell looks like. This is easily the worst part of the fight, so don't beat yourself up over it if you do mess up.
Oh yes, Ares also gains some power when he attacks, even if it doesn't hit you. This isn't too bad, and is actually very clutch for the later phases, as I'll talk about below.
Phase 3 (60% health onward):
This is where the special timing starts to get pretty fast, so make sure your weapon counters are on point! This phase also introduces a new mechanic where you must punish Ares' special attacks with certain actions or else he'll reversal you and very likely kill you. The potential special punishes are as follows:
- Punish with a Medium attack, then a Light attack. This is basically a normal combo, so nothing to note here
- Punish with a Medium attack, then immediately launch a Heavy attack. Ares will be inactionable if you launch a heavy attack with this punish, so don't worry about him avoiding it
- Punish with a Medium attack, then immediately launch a Special attack. This is easily the most niche punish since you need power to do so. If you don't have a special ready, you can punish with the Medium attack, then back off and wait until the reversal timer ends. This will be indicated by the red timer below Ares' health bar after you use the Medium attack, so DO NOT ATTACK IN until the coast is clear
- Dash back immediately after the last hit of his special, then dash in with a medium attack. This one can be confusing, especially after the sp1 since the final hit also requires a dash back to avoid the weapon. If you've performed the dash back successfully, a green timer will flash below Ares' health bar, so once you see that you can dash in and hit him
You can see which punish you need to perform via the icons under Ares' health bar. There are small letters of the alphabet corresponding to Medium, Light and Heavy, as well as a simple explosion icon for Special attacks. If you can't see them clearly, you can pause the game and get the details through the pause menu. These reset whenever the fight starts and when Ares finishes a special, so pay close attention to avoid getting destroyed!
Phase 4 (30% health onward):
This phase was the hardest for me personally. At this point, the special timings are borderline ridiculous in terms of speed, and you'll need to be able to react on a whim to stand a chance here. Additionally, Ares gets a Haste passive every 20 seconds which makes him unstoppable while dashing and thus unable to be intercepted. This is where the power gain from Phase 2 comes in clutch, as you can build him to 2 bars of power without hitting him.
At this point, I would recommend only using 40% revives as any healing will be wasted due to the degeneration. Once he goes below 20%, switch to only using 20% revives to minimize wasted resources.
Phase 5 (Final 1% health):
This phase is either good or bad depending on the AI. Ares gets 99 immortality charges, and cannot be blocked at all while these are active. You remove 1 by entering the fight (this is currently bugged so be careful), remove 2 by intercepting him, and remove 3 whenever you avoid a weapon hit from his specials. Don't bother healing as you will degen to 1% and he will kill you in a single hit anyways. Play around the Haste passive and his specials and you will inevitably get him down, the immortalities are persistent and thus you don't need to get all 99 down in a single try. This phase is a very good time to use team revives as your damage will not matter at this point.
So here's the general plan (I understand this was a lot of text):
Bring in any character who is non-reliant on red numbers and also isn't hercules, ideally use one character only to boost your damage
Know how to intercept and avoid Ares' heavy attack
Mind the phase transitions
Phase 1: Get used to the special mechanics and actions
Phase 2: Nail down the visual cues so you can tell what special he is using (easily the dumbest part of the fight)
Phase 3: Mind the special punishes
Phase 4: Mind the haste and time your intercepts, don't bother healing
Phase 5: Intercept like crazy and team revive
Do this plan, and you'll hopefully be okay. And trust me, you'll get better at this the more you do it. Don't believe me? Here are my revive counts on Ares for each of my runs:
Path 1 (Hulkling path): 10 single revives and 3 team revives, did this one as soon as EOP came out so there were no good strategies yet
Path 2: (Nebula path with tech/science): 9 single revives and 2 team revives
Path 3: (Nebula path with cosmic/skill): 6 single revives and 2 team revives
Path 4: (Cassie path with cosmic/skill): 4 single revives and 1 team revive, it was at this point where I fully locked down the visual cues, so if you get them down earlier you hopefully won't spend as much as I did on the previous paths
Path 5: (Cassie path with mutant/mystic): Revive-less
Path 6: (Spam path): 1 team revive due to bad AI in the final phase
And that's it for the Ares guide! Overall I still do think some aspects of him are borderline overtuned, especially with the visual cues, but I love the concept of this fight and the risk-reward aspect of it all. I'll try and have some path guides out for the weekend for the rest of the fights!
Thanks for reading, and as always, hope this helped y'all!
21
Comments
{editing because I asked for your guides for the paths but re-read and saw that you're going to do it. Reading is fundamental I have to remember].
Just finished my 1st run through & that's exactly what I did...
Didn’t complete a single sp1 or sp2 prompt the entire fight.
More than happy with that revive count given how I took the fight lol
Can I ask you a question.
What was your team for path 1 and path 6?
Also for cosmic/skill, who did you use to for destroyer?
Sorry ignore this, just saw your other post on your runs.
Thanks heaps.
I cannot swear I’ve ever heard it from an official source, but popular wisdom has always been “we ain’t getting ways to practice against GM/ Kang/ Maestro because it would save us revives and units, and lose Kabam revenue”.
the less cynical view is these fights were meant to be unique and experienced only as designed, and learned “in the wild”. but the net result is still us going in to this type of content with a backpack full of resources beforehand.
@Grootman1294 THANK YOU for the cogent streamlined guide, bro!!! for when I top my backpack back off and grow a pair to try this. o)
Sure first run will take most of your revives. But after that it will significantly go down like me who used 20 revives trying to learn Ares on my first run to using only 3 revives on him for the last run. At last I used about 53 revives in total to explore epoch.