Ares: Best CC is Death (Patch 4.17)

	One of the most important support items. It sustains you through the game just for non getting the last hits on minions as well as providing extra gold as well. This adds up pretty quickly and if a support doesn't have this they will fall behind.
	A pretty good support item that Ares stacks decently well as he doesn't get last hits very easily. The bonus hp and gold is nice overall, but can slightly delay the overall powerspike.
	The other option if you don't want lono's. Ares likes movement speed to run down enemy gods and getting boots online early to outrotate the enemy support and gain that early powerspike can work in your favor. You also can buy a few more potions for laning.
	Ares can take a lot of damage if the lane does go poorly and tends to take minion aggro. Having more of these allows a decent amount of sustain for laning when combined with Watcher's Gift.
	Ares' isn't that mana hungry in lane, being able to get most of what he wants from Watcher's and not really spamming abilities that much. The extra health will allow you to pressure harder in my opinion. You really only want one when going Lono's as you can generally disengage in most situations to just let the health potions tick and give you a greater amount of sustain overall.

Travelers Shoes	One of the best shoes for Ares. It provides increased movement speed that allows you outrotate, the HP5 lets you recover from minion and poke damage, and Ares can easily get the gold as he is constantly trying to apply damage. You'll sell these for other boots after finishing your build.
	Probably Ares best end game boots due to the CDR, and the extra mana can be nice as well. If I already have a lead I sometimes go into these boots right away.
	Strong against DoT attacks and high CC comps. It can be good, but is generally a lot more situationally dependent. If you feel like you're being targeted you can get these, but more often than not the other boots will do just as well.
	These boots you're generally going to avoid in conquest. The damage is nice, but the extra cost can be a bit prohibitive. If I've gotten a strong lead, generally a kill or two, I'll pick this up. It can be another late game option as you can get the last bit of cdr from the power potion.

	Probably the strongest current option for physical defense on support and is an aura to activate your passive. Cheap, provides protections and health, as well as reduces enemy physical power by a significant margin. The aura runs the distance of a ranged auto attack so it's a decent size as well.
	A decent item overall. Rushing it after boots isn't the best idea as you'll still be fairly squishy. The immediate jump cdr is pretty nice though, I'd pick it up in the last three item slots though, as there are better options. You can also get the cdr other places that help your team more.
	A pretty strong item depending on the state of the game. I usually pick it up in the 4th or 5th slot if there are a decent amount of towers to siege down. The damage it mitigates and deals may not seem like a lot immediately, but it can dictate the outcome of a phoenix push for sure. AURA :D
	This is an option, especially with crit becoming more favorable. I generally want another auto attack dependent character, like mercury, before I pick this up though. It's a large jump in physical protections and can get you surprise kills against the enemy.
	This is generally my preferred item against auto attack characters and can be pretty underrated. It gives you a large chunk of health which plays well with the protections you get from Bolster Defenses. The passive is the true value though. If an adc hits you and gets slowed there are many scenarios where they have to beads or they will die. This easily sets you up for a gank or just continuing onto the kill if your ult is still up.
	While this is an aura item it's really not that great stat wise even with Ares passive. You can pick this up into 4+ Physical and have it be okay, but you would need to get it early and the protection aura falls off into the late game. Generally there are better options. *cough* Jade Emporer's Crown *cough*
	This item is very situational. If the enemy team has a lot of DoTs it can end up mitigating a lot of damage, especially if the DoTs are physical, like Bluestone Pendant. If you don't pick it up right after boots there are better things you can generally go into so I wouldn't get this any later than that.

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	A pretty strong item for what it does when you consider Ares gets an extra 30 power from it. A lot of protections plus health make this a strong albeit somewhat selfish item. If you find yourself doing a lot of damage by all means pick it up.
	While this item doesn't make you as tanky as other items, it makes up for it with a fairly strong aura with a large range. The aura extends beyond the distance a ranged auto attack can reach allowing you to play up while still buffing your adc. It gives you a bit of extra time to get that extra auto in during the Shackles uses as well, and the CDR and CCR are pretty nice.
	While the only pure magic defense item that isn't an aura it makes up for it by being really strong. The overall stat total hugely jumps your magical effective health while the 40 mp5 provides a lot of sustain as you are roaming the map, and with Travelers Shoes your overall regen is insanely high. The passive on the item is what makes it truly strong though. CDR on supports is never truly selfish and reducing all your cooldowns by being hit by magical damage, which is likely to happen anyways, is very powerful. If I don't have 2-3+ auto attackers on my team I generally build this.
	You're generally only going to get this if the enemy has a significant amount of healing, think healer mid or bracer of undoing that's not on the solo laner. Depending on the situation having two of these on the team isn't terrible as you'll likely be covering different areas of the fight, and the item is fairly stat efficient. However, it's not super worth building unless that healing is present and there are plenty of other magical auras you could get.
	The second best of the protection aura items as magical protections tend to not be as prevalent as physical protections. It can be worth picking this up if the enemy adc and/or jungler is magical in addition to the mid and support.
	A very strong very cheap item. You get this, blink in with a chains and bloser defense combo followed by an ultimate and you become extremely hard to kill.

	I don't really go this item unless I have an extremely large lead and am regularly soloing the enemy squishies. The tier two has some really good stats, but once you finish it the item only provides stats, and doesn't have a strong passive. It provides no real help for your team and so there are generally better options.
	A strong item that you can really look to get whenever in your build. It has a lot of protections, some CDR and CCR, but the passive is huge. You get 15% damage mitigation if the enemy team CCs you, which they'll have to do if you're chasing down one of their carries. So running in then ulting the enemy team when they try to stop you when this passive is up can help you survive the turn and burn they can try.
	A bit expensive to buy in most stages, but overall pretty strong. I generally look to get it last or sell another item for it in the end game. A ton of both protections, 10% CDR, and when you get below a point you stun enemies within a certain radius. Another item that can help you burn the enemy beads to self set up for your ult, but this one can be a bit risky as your health will be so low. Generally better to disrupt the team.

	AURA :D 300 HP is nothing to laugh at, and when you combine that with providing 15 of each protection it looks even better. Just an all around decent item especially since many of the more popular early items don't provide a ton of health.
	An often overlooked item. It provides cheap CDR, health, and a bit of movement speed which is pretty good. The 30s cooldown reduction on your relics is strong as well allowing for more blink initiations allowing you to play into that aggression that Ares really wants to put out.
	An anti slow item with good stats. Not a whole lot more to say here. It can allow you to run down the enemy team and is overall just a decent item.
	If you find you and your team getting ahead and the game is becoming a lot of fights you could look into this item. With 400 HP and 10 CDR the item has stats that you do want on support and if you can get a full duration of the item passive that is an insane amount of Effective Health that you'll be getting back. However, it is a bit of a win more item and as such tends not to be built as much.

	The relic you'll see on Ares 99% of the time. It allows you to blink in an ult as many people as possible, or go for the blink Shackles that can shut down an entire engagement or secure a kill. Just all around good.
	This relic can give you up to 400 HP shield across all allies within a small radius and two stacks of block once you upgrade it. This item was already strong and two stacks of block into Crit builds can be huge. One of the strongest relics overall, but generally better as the second one you get.
	One of the strongest initial relics you can get. It cleanses then provides immunity to slows as well as upping the movement speed of all allies hit by 40% for the duration. It works great for both offense and defense. Once upgraded it also removes basic attack penalties from the people affected.
	An extremely offensive relic. A 10% increase to damage is huge especially when you're looking at speeding up an objective or a siege. However, it can be fairly easy to waste if you activate it early as the enemy team can just back off. Activating as a counter-initiation or part way into the fight actually can work very well. The upgrade on this relic is also very good as increasing the duration and granting penetration allows for a good DPS increase.
	The anti healing relic. Always an option against healer comps but generally not necessary. If you do get it you generally don't want to use it right away, but instead when they try to disengage to try to sustain up. Once upgraded using it earlier becomes a bit more attractive, but still not necessary.

During laning phase you're really only getting one chance to ult which is once you hit five if your hp is even or the enemy is on cooldown. You're not always going to get a kill out of this as its likely the enemy has some sort of immunity you can use.
For best results you want to target the support, but if you've already forced beads on the adc you can generally at least force them to ult which is generally a decent trade.


When mid game comes around you're looking at two scenarios, the pick off ults where you keep one person down or looking for the big ults. This part of the game is where you're most likely to be able to get off the 3+ person ults and not immediately die.

With the pick off ults you're looking to find the person that either didn't grab beads or has an awkward timers when compared to beads downtime and your ult timer. In the first case you're looking likely looking at a jungler that went blink first relic or a support with really low escape potential, like a Sylvanus. Basically you'll follow them around and hit them on cooldown and look to take objectives off it. The second type has to deal more with gods like Hou Yi or Bacchus who lack CC immunity on their ults so that you have one less timer to track. Doing this should be able to get at least one lane far enough ahead to carry the game.

When looking for the big ults you'll look more into roaming with the jungler and starting fights over buffs or smaller objectives like oracles. This will force the enemy team into having to rotate to follow you and put themselves out of position. Bearing in mind that anywhere near a corridor against an Ares can be considered out of position as thats where his ult set up is the strongest. At this stage of the game you'll want the mage with you as DPS rather than the adc as the immediate ult damage will do more to run the fight than the hunters auto attacks.


Late game is where the playstyle changes a bit. You can no longer run into 3+ members of the enemy team as they will always have enough damage to destroy you before the ult ends, and they'll all have low cooldown on CC immune ults and beads, which could be upgraded. Now is where you're more looking to burn relics on a carry or have the enemy team burn some ults before an FG fight where another member of your team can re-initiate.

The corridors from midlane going into FG are excellent areas to set up ambushes as the enemy will be forced to ult or die and likely lose the game off it.

In actual teamfights you're really looking to not be the primary initiator and that's one of the main flaws when people build comps with Ares. They want him to be the primary set up and initiation, but that just doesn't work there are far to many things to burn to immune his very predictable ult. It's generally going to be much better to save the ult for mid fight when people are distracted and may have already burned ults and relics. He literally forces the enemy team to commit to fighting you to the end and even if you're not firing ults into his set up the one second stun gives you enough time to fire enough DPS into it to kill at least one person.

One of the best case scenarios would be blinking into the enemy mage and chaining them and one other person close by before bolstering. This will force the enemy team to deal with you because if you get full chain and flames durations off at lest one person will be at most half HP. Forcing them into a pretty bad situation for the incoming fight. Once your team catches up and the focus breaks for you is when you're looking to ult. Being able to find that small window is what will truly make or break your Ares play.