Playing against AoE grip/ring combos (eg Hades/Ares)

Hi all.

I'm fairly new, and i just have one question.

How do you play against, counter, and/or avoid these combos? Mostly in Arena, Joust or ***ualt i guess.

What i'm talking about is a god that can grip or trap multiple people, like Hades, Ares, Odin, and Nu Wa to a lesser extent. Followed by super hard hitting aoe, such as Poseidon, Ao Kuang(sp?), a lot of other gods really.

So Ares just runs, or blinks in, hits his ulti, and then the mages just pile on whatever on top of him and kill everything that gets caught.

Do you stay spread enough so that not many can be taken at a time? It's not really possible in some game modes. If you want to engage the enemy team, you need to be close, you can't run in one by one.
Do you need to buy particular items, such as combat blink, or the one that gives you immunity for 1-2 secs? They will only save you once every ~3mins. And if everyone on your team is required to buy these items just to counter a particular god, that's a huge gold lead to them, before the match even starts.

Not sure how to play against these comps.

Thanks :)

First, welcome to Smitefire!

Now, Active items; you must know them i suppose.
Purification Beads cleanses all CC and makes you immune to it for a few seconds (depends on its rank). It's the best counter to Ares or Hades. You can also use Aegis Amulet - it provides you immunity to everything, but you can't move or cast spells or be healed.

Against Hades' ult, you can jump away from it and out of Odin's Ring of Spears you can jump away too, depending on the jump ( Anhur's Disperse can get out, but Agni's path of flame can't).

There is also an active called Combat Blink, which allows you to blink away from a fight, even while in-combat, but it has a long 180 seconds cooldown. But it's very useful, especially against Odin. Regardless, you should always keep your distance from Odin, or atl east be ready for when you see his jump, (which has quite a long animation) then jump away immediately.

There are also abilities that grant you CC-immunity, such as Recall Demons of Zhong Kui, or the seconds part of Xbalanque's Rising Jaguar - the part when he is up in the air.