No Mercy!: S3 Guide

My apologies as I did not mean to try hijacking the guide or anything, I appreciate that you put the effort to create it. Of course I read it, then I read the discussion in comments, another guide, their comments and so on. Ultimately I decided to write a comment on this one as I felt it might promote your guide perhaps as I put a lot of effort to convey my thoughts too. So I spoke in part about the community as a whole and in part regarding your guide, but most importantly about Ares in general to give a contribution of my own as food of thought which you don't have to agree with if you don't want to. You are free to consider those thoughts and whatever might stem from them, as I see people like you (who write guides) genuinely valuable to the community :).

Why I brought up Anubis as an example of scaling was because his abilities are dots which do scale rather well with magical power, despite especially the ultimate having a low % in the tool tip. Still, the focus seems to be too much on either relative (dmg added to ability Base dmg) or absolute dmg gained (total dmg "dealt" by the magical power). Assuming single target, 7 out of 8 chain ticks and all ticks of flames + ilt, ares has 201% of his power dealt to the target. How is that bad for a guardian? Bacchus who hits his every ability, all ticks from breath does 200%, Him I mention because he is not really considered to have poor scaling and often built for damage too. Ymir is hard to beat with the scaling from his ilt though.

The reason it might feel to someone that bacchus has better scaling is because that base dmg doesn't come close to Ares. It would take much less power to double the base dmg for bacchus abilities (therefore doubling his output) compared to Ares, but ares stil gets more damage from power compared to bacchus assuming same conditions as before. I say he has good scaling on top of extraordinary base damage, but I guess debating it is pointless unless we define what exactly we mean by scaling, as an abstract concept discussing it doesn't benefit us that much anyway. Increasing your damage isn't fruitful if it doesn't translate in to a kill and if the amount of power needed to kill someone isn't much relatively speaking, doesn't that mean he has good scaling with magical power?

So for a practical example, let's think about lvl 20 Ares and Apollo in a simplified example. Assuming the same conditions above (7 second shackles) with 0 m.power you would deal 735dmg from shackles, 280dmg from searing flames plus 24% of Apollos max hp (he has around 1900hp at that point). Using rough math, it would translate to 1900 * 0.76 - 735 - 280 = 429 hp left, assuming enough pen to reach pure damage (obviously you would have some power from having that much penetration, but let's ignore that for a moment). You abilities will not do enough damage to kill him, unless you ult, and even then it's a stretch because he would very likely heal through life steal or soul eater passive. Now, let's say you have 200 magical power, which translates into 322 damage in the above scenario when we aren't using our ultimate. Still not enough to kill him with 1 and 3 alone, but at least gives you a lot better chance of killing him when you use your ultimate too. Add mystical mail, let's say 8 seconds, that's 320 additional damage. Now you can suddenly kill him with your 1 and 3 alone, you have a new capability to kill an enemy assassin, adc or mage by yourself without necessarily using your ultimate. This is only possible through the scaling that m.power offers and building mystical mail means you need much less of it. You can look at it this way too, Ares scaling from magical power is effectively increased because his searing flames mean his opponent will have only 76% of his max hp available. Every point of damage from magical power becomes even better. I'm not suggesting hoarding it by any means, just that there is a sweet spot where your killing capabilities reach a new plateau.

So yes, I honestly believe that the extra damage is rather good indeed. It's almost like you now got an extra member in the team who can kill those squishy enemies alone (they are usually the biggest threat anyway). If this doesn't seem like a big deal, well I promise you it is. He can do it in a team fight too, meaning he can peel a full health threat by just bluntly killing them if he wants to. Certainly the damage should be respected enough to stop pursuit when the first shackle hits, unless going kamikaze. If you opt out of this capability by building CDR and protections without reaching high enough damage, your peel will be sub-par as the enemy isn't forced to make the choice of dying or pursuing a friendly target, they can keep pushing for the kill and have the opportunity to flee when you are waiting for your (shorter) cooldowns. So having good peel is a matter of choice as is having peel that isn't so good for allies (not an inherent weakness of the god).

Just by having 322 (over 400 with ult) more damage to your 1 & 3 from 200 m.power in team fights means everything dies faster and more reliably. It is so much easier to reach the sweet spot in terms of magical power thanks to aura items providing it. Also, let's not forget that the scenario discussed was level 20 vs 20, magical power boosts your damage output much more relatively speaking when you don't have rank 5 abilities, it makes you more competitive in terms of damage when you are behind and allows you to snowball better when you are ahead. This is why in your second build I would definitely go for void stone as second or third item, otherwise in my opinion you will have a really hard time getting to the point of being ScAres. The breastplate is a solid item choice, I personally like having 20% CDR from items, the mana is useful and physical protection is a stat that has a pronounced effect early on (you don't have to fear minions as much, it's vital for tower diving and so on), but to become someone everyone fears, mystical mail fits the purpose better even if it doesn't offer the same 'quality of life' benefits. Void stone is nice, giving you great early damage but you will be vulnerable without physical protection or HP from the second item you build. The further you postpone getting the offensive capability/utility you need in the spirit of that build, the later you become useful in that sense. Having to spend 4700g + what goes in wards before you ramp up the damage means you are sort of playing catch up until then. Let's not forget that CDR becomes more valuable with damage too. Like you said, Ares doesn't get to rapid fire his abilities, wouldn't it be nicer if all you had to do is fire them once? I'm trying to say neither CDR or mana is needed to be aggressive, as listed in your cons and pros. If by aggressive we mean an offensive threat that is.

I understand your argument for survivability, but what you might not realize is having proper offensive capability translates into survivability. You need less bulk when you are deadlier and a lot more if your strategy is to soak damage while waiting for cooldowns. It's a form of art to balance this correctly according to the flow of the match, that's why it's extremely hard to stick to a certain item build or the same order of items built in any given build, but generally speaking, going for either extreme (pure offense vs pure defense/utility) is rarely the best choice when it comes to item progression. Hybrid build should have a more hybrid build order, otherwise you end up a sub-par jack of all trades type until your build is nearing completion (and the game is usually almost over). Not useless by any means, but you could be even better.

You mention how bursty the current season is, I won't argue with that, but why not embrace this and be as bursty as you can yourself instead of trying to resist the change? In the duo lane, you most likely aren't the primary target anyway, unless you decide to be with your own positioning. I know that 'bursty' and 'dot' rarely fit in the same context, but having to use 2-3 abilities to output enough damage to kill someone is a lot more bursty compared to having to use 4-5 waiting for cooldowns in between.

Parallel to what RanC said, Ares scaling isn't bad, especially on his Shackles. I've been working on adjusting information in the database to better clarify how ticking damage increases scaling. Now, for Shackles, the max 180% scaling that is stated won't happen unless you hit 3 individual enemies, and they remain in proximity the entire time...so the actual damage is spread out 3 ways. But hitting all 3 shackles on an individual target could potentially get you 8 ticks of damage if you throw your 2nd and 3rd shackles @ 2 seconds. That's still 120% scaling, which isn't bad at all.

But definitely, as you argued, Genius, getting aura items for the very specific sake of utilizing his own passive can cripple his effectiveness. In his case, fine, Sovereignty and Heartward Amulet are great for a Support. Mystical Mail (bought early as long as you're not behind as RanC said) and Void Stone are also great for his own protection and damage, with Stone being helpful for his magical teammates as well. But getting Pestilence or Pythagorem's Piece because they're aura items won't be nearly as effective as enhancing his own damage with Spear of the Magus, or countering enemy ADCs with Witchblade (yes, another aura item, but with specific intent this time).

But most of these are situational to an individual match. So better not to focus on the aura aspect, but absolutely get if it's going to help in your specific match.

2) The biggest problem with build 2 is that the build costs 13,650 gold, only gives you 20 magical power, no pen, meaning chains only do 83 damage per tick (at lvl 20), and the build is 100 percent countered by weakening curse. Gods that build qin's or soul reaver also chunk your health much worse if you had just build defense instead.

I can see the tactic, but its expensive, you lose offense, and overall is very risky.

3)Say if you are level 6 and you back for the first time to buy boots and you pick up pen boots. Once you return to lane, fighting an enemy who say has 35 mag prot. Your chains will do 60 damage per tick.

Say if you had bought Shoes of Focus instead, your chains would do 53 damage per tick. Not a huge difference in damage overall, with the benefits being you get +250 more mana so you can use your chains more freely, as well as save 100 gold that you can buy wards with instead, which is huge at level 6, thats usually the time frame that jungle starts looking to gank.

Im just saying, I prefer blue boots overall.

4)Actually in your build, you have 10 pen from boots (not 25), 20 aura reductions, and 30 with spear at max stacks. Thats 60 flat pen, leaving the enemy with 40 prot.

With shard instead, yo would get 33% of a hundred which leaves them with 66 prot, then 10+20 from boots and void stone leaving them with 36 prot.

Spear = 100 -> 40
Shard = 100 -> 36

Shard wins and thats only with 100 prot. When we start talking about MORE protections, shard becomes more useful. It also effects towers which spear doesnt, and is 100 gold cheaper. So shard is the better pick imo.

Spear = 150 -> 90 (with boots and void)
Shard = 150 -> 70.5 (with boots and void)

Shard becomes more and more useful the more protections they have. Say if they build full tank with 270 prot.

Spear = 270 -> 210
Shard = 270 -> 150.9

Shard wins again, sadly.