Dooku and Barriss endgame? Viability?

WWJDl

I see many posts on the forums stating both sided. I am through and through completely at a loss.
Are Dooku and Barriss not good end game heroes, or is it that they are simply harder to level?
If they are fully 7* with full gear, are they good as endgame characters?
WhipiT says you need 2 healers 3 damage based, so could barriss and Dooku fit those slot endgame, or do their stats and functions go down after 5*?

Keaven

There is no one size fits all, eg 2 healers + whatever. Healers are great for GW and PVE and a few are good options for PvP.

I'm quite certain every Hero has its own merits at end game as long as you can fully promote them, but the practical reality is you cannot fully promote every character as f2p (and in my opinion 99.9% of p2p as well given the crazy amount needed for chromium pack gambling).

So that being said the time to 7★ a Hero is very relevant.

The problem isn't that Dooku or Barriss's stats scale terribly, its the fact they will sit on 4/5★ for a long time while you face off against full 7★ squads.

From what I have heard there are still good squads that use both these Heroes at 7★ dispite Dookus glass veneer, and Barriss's budget lightsaber.

Qeltar

Despite the conventional advice I am continuing to build Barriss. If nothing else, she is extremely useful in Galactic War, really has no replacement.

ZarAzi

Like what the other players have mentioned, there's no fix answer. It really depends on what you want and what your team needs. I found myself not using dooku anymore but I am using Barriss however.

Skye

Are you get higher up, you start to find characters that can apply status effects much more important than pure damage or pure heals...

That's the problem with Dooku and Barriss... They're kinda one trick ponies, they do one and one thing alone... Although Dooku does bring something in the way of anti-jedi ability and the off chance of a stun, but it often pales to other characters that can apply upteen effects on you...

Don't get me wrong Barriss is still a very good healer and is perfectly viable for that purpose, but in a way she can be exploited like Talia... bring her health down and when she uses her heal, she actually damages her team due to the equalisation. then you just pick off the biggest threat or secondary healer before focusing her down before her heal comes back up

Dooku also can be countered just by applying an offense down on him, and a defense up on your team, his counter attacks no longer bothers whoever he is attacking anymore. In fact in most cases you find people replacing him quite quickly with characters like Sidious, Luke, Lando etc because they bring a heck of a lot more to the table than Dooku

However Dooku still retains some use against AOE teams, usually in the form of Ima-Gun Di counter attacking teams...

So all in all it depends where you want to go...

In a way you can't really make a bad decision in who to level up.. which is a really good thing!

WWJDl

Thanks Keaven (love your NS build by the way--who's your fav leader for PVP?) , Qeltar, ZarAzi and Skye for all these great answers. Very very much appreciated!

God bless ya one n all~

Qeltar

Barriss is actually not a one-trick pony.
1. Her basic heal is unique, bypasses healing immunity and is immensely useful in combination with taunters. Most players will try to focus down one character at a time, and no other healer can bring a near-dead character back to full health in one shot. Chewie+Barriss is MUCH better than Chewie and anyone else.
2. Her passive health regen leadership ability is incredibly useful in both PvP and especially GW.
3. Same for her regular attack ability. I now get 1200+ health for every team member when it procs, and it's basically free.
Will I keep using her at level 60? I don't know. But I'm level 53 now and she still anchors my team. My guess is we will all be using different characters once new ones are introduced anyway. In the meatime she (and Asajj) have allowed me to be competitive on my server.

Darkness

They have limited value in the end, dooku and barriss really don't put out decent damage. Health is also a problem for dooku of course barriss has plenty.

It would take a special team setup for dooku sadly

Cythis

Both nice characters and super strong at lower levels. I'm not finding them as useful at 60 when DPS starts to catch up.

djlott

Too bad this is my first post but what I have to say about Dooku is f*** him. I'm level 40 and seem to be the only player left in the universe that doesn't have him. So I get to watch him single-handedly dismantle my entire team by 1) Always going first with a f***ing lightning strike to my Jedi Consular (usually stuns), then 100% counter attack with additional bonus attacks on the f***ing counters, and then just his normal turn which also features bonus attacks! I swear sometimes I watch him go 3 to 4 times in a row.

I honestly don't mind losing and I've had my share of losses. But it's sort of ridiculous how much damage he does alone with a 40% higher attack rate then the rest of the team.

Yes rant reply here. I know, I need better toons, higher levels, more gear, etc. I'm fully geared to level 5 and promoted Chewey and Talia up 1 star. F2P so far following WhipIT's (and other's) advice on leveling and gearing. I feel like I'm doing well and have a solid team but **** if Dooku doesn't **** on me every time. I guess I wouldn't be so crossed about it if everyone didn't somehow already have him.

Chewdoka

Dooku is very strong early game and at 7* would be A beast. His speed and his ability to stun make him extreamly useful and outshine his repost late game. A team with Old Daka and Dooku can potentially stun 4 opponents before they even have a chance to do anything. The only problem with Dooku Imho is is how hard he is to get to 7*.

Barriss is the best pure healer and has tons of health. A definite step up from JC if equal stars. Luminari and Old Daka are both good also but in terms of healing I think Barris does a better job.

Scoobings

Dooku still drives me crazy, and if I get too many teams with him early on in GW then I fail. Straight up. If I don't I win. IMO, at least at my tier (not maxed), is still totally viable.

Barriss... I just don't get. End game to me seems about 2 healers + whoever can burst the fastest and if you have Barriss on your team it's just not going to happen. This is going to sound weird, but she's too fast. She's usually second to act, and then immediately after she attacks with her K-Mart lightsaber, my team goes and burns someone before she gets a second turn. It just doesn't make sense to me that she's so popular. When the computer defends with her, sometimes she doesn't even drop her heal on the second turn if the person in question is still standing. She's just not good for arenas given the current heroes available. Also, I love coming up against her in GW because I know I'm going to have a long time to reset my cooldowns and heal up for the next fight when she's the last one standing hitting like a wet noodle.

That said, I could see how she would be really boss in GW. The sustainability would be useful in later games.

Slewfoot

almost every player has some utility at endgame, whether it be in PVP or GW, or the LS/DS, as long you try and synergize your teams strengths it should be fine. That being said, done expect to get a top ranking in PVP unless youre forking over some cash

Time

Still amazes me that people think bariss is better then luminara. Dooku is a pain, but once you get some better heros you can kill him very easy. Even then you will get fights where he opens with a double stuns and will still be difficult. The good thing is dookus regular attacks do half what other dpsers do.

Rheen

WWJDl wrote: »

I see many posts on the forums stating both sided. I am through and through completely at a loss.
Are Dooku and Barriss not good end game heroes, or is it that they are simply harder to level?

They are just harder to level.

Qeltar

Time wrote: »

Still amazes me that people think bariss is better then luminara. Dooku is a pain, but once you get some better heros you can kill him very easy. Even then you will get fights where he opens with a double stuns and will still be difficult. The good thing is dookus regular attacks do half what other dpsers do.

I use both Barriss and Luminara. They have different strengths.

Everyone bashes Dooku but he's much more useful and can wreak a lot more havoc than many other characters that are considered top notch. Especially Darth Maul, who IMO is incredibly overrated (and is lucky if he gets even one basic attack in any match I fight against him before he dies).

Can he be killed? Sure. But not easily, not when he is well-geared. I keep wanting to take him out in favor of someone else... but I keep not doing it because he is so useful. Especially against all the Jedi healer teams (just fought one with 3 healers, all with huge hit bars, and the stuns are very important).

Camalus

djlott wrote: »

Too bad this is my first post but what I have to say about Dooku is f*** him. I'm level 40 and seem to be the only player left in the universe that doesn't have him. So I get to watch him single-handedly dismantle my entire team by 1) Always going first with a f***ing lightning strike to my Jedi Consular (usually stuns), then 100% counter attack with additional bonus attacks on the f***ing counters, and then just his normal turn which also features bonus attacks! I swear sometimes I watch him go 3 to 4 times in a row.

I honestly don't mind losing and I've had my share of losses. But it's sort of ridiculous how much damage he does alone with a 40% higher attack rate then the rest of the team.

Yes rant reply here. I know, I need better toons, higher levels, more gear, etc. I'm fully geared to level 5 and promoted Chewey and Talia up 1 star. F2P so far following WhipIT's (and other's) advice on leveling and gearing. I feel like I'm doing well and have a solid team but **** if Dooku doesn't **** on me every time. I guess I wouldn't be so crossed about it if everyone didn't somehow already have him.

This exact thing just happened to me although Ive known how OP this character is I didnt know he would be there.my Jedi consular was stunned the entire match until his death he got 2 pre-emptive strikes on my underwolrd policeman to bring him to yellow and I think that was before I could get a strike on anybody. Then chewie taunts and nobody gets a chance to try to take him out. Unreal, and if that wasn't bad enough they only offered him for sale for a very short time, I'm guessing legal told the store manager to pull him hes too OP? not to mention this dooku is one level behind all of my characters. I know they are working on a nerf but I can relate to your frustration, this is amateur balancing at best. They have the most experience in play for free games but they refuse to learn anything from the past.

JohnnySteelAlpha

Anything with anti-Jedi skills will be viable long-term, like Dooku. Droids would be another group - HK for example. You also have to take in to account if you're talking about Dooku in a D slot or Dooku being used by a human not playing on auto. Sure Dooku has lower health, but the enemy AI really doesn't try to expose that. So many are running Jedi now - and I can't ever see this SW game not featuring Jedi prominently as we have no shortage of more strong Jedi yet to be released - Dooku is a great tool. He leads off matches with a high stun chance vs. Jedi - great tactical tool to use vs. Jedi. His ability block / stun chance on basic vs Jedi is valuable too when trying to prevent all the great Jedi specials from firing while you damage down a target...Ben, Barriss, Lumi, etc. with their specials.

Also, on him being a slow farm - maybe compared to Lumi yes, but tomorrow will be 3 weeks of playing for me. I have Dooku for example at 40/65 to 5*. So I've farmed 70 Dooku Shards in 3 weeks. He needs 110 more shards to get to 6* for example - that's a little less than 5 weeks form now and he will be 6* - should be 5* in a week or so. I don't think that's so bad.

Want to make a comment on "end game" as well....really no one knows the end game because we are capped at 60 currently, but we won't be indefinitely. Levels are capped, but more importantly specials, gears, and leader abilities are currently blocked as well with the level cap. Let's take Darth Maul as an example. His Dancing Shadows leader provides him with evade and turn meter - his two big weaknesses are health and slow speed. Well as his evade % and meter % from evading scales up, this will help address his two biggest holes as a toon. Those are all blocked though due to 60 cap. So no one for sure knows how Maul plays out when he's fully built. While you could say, well everyone else will be built too so it evens out...that's not necessarily the case. Maul's leader skill specifically covers up a weakness of his - health / speed. Other leader skills do not really cover up a weakness. Barriss for example just has a leader that gets more and more tanky. As her leader scales up, you just get more and more health / tankiness; her skill just accentuates her current strengths. If as it scaled she gained damage that'd be filling a weakness like Maul. Maybe the scale on Maul ends up not being good enough to overcome his deficiencies, but you can't know for sure. This doesn't even take in to account new toons released over time and how that can shift meta.

Lastly - just play the game more before you say anything is OP. I'd say Old Ben is way more tactically challenging than Dooku by a mile - at first I just couldn't see how he could be countered and thought he was OP, but after fighting him so much he's now pretty manageable once you build teams that can counter him and his healing Jedi units. You start to build a pattern and understand when to fire a special, timing to pull an ability block, when to attack and damage down a specific unit. Takes time to learn nuances of a battle and certain opponents. When their specials fire, etc. We are only 3 weeks in - wait to judge units until you have a good chunk of the roster to work with. Nerfing Dooku would be silly because he's not even close to the toughest toon to manage. I'd say even like HK47 is tougher to handle for me than Dooku. His aoe special just splatters all over my Jedi team and I'm dealing with ability block, damage down, and speed down...and he has a cooldown of just 2 on that move Can seriously weaken my entire team. Dooku just hits one toon mostly.

Pilot

Dooku becomes nich at higher levels. A component of your larger team. At lower levels, he just all out beast, and you have a hard time seeing his nich. I find they value of Dooku has become his speed and his stun, and i dont think much of his counter attack at all any more. When i pull Dooku from the bench, its because i need to be the first one to act at the start of a fight, and i need to be able to stun. When this is the case, i swap in Dooku. He is no longer a staple for me as he was at level 10 through 50. I keep him leveled and geared though, and once per day i sim his 2 nodes.

Keaven

WWJDl wrote: »

Thanks Keaven (love your NS build by the way--who's your fav leader for PVP?) , Qeltar, ZarAzi and Skye for all these great answers. Very very much appreciated!

God bless ya one n all~

My favourite leader in my Jedi Sister team is Ahsoka, but I haven't been able to use her till tomorrow because she lags in power to my other squad members. I've gone back to 2 Cantina refills per day to remedy and will likely continue as long as I'm earning enough crystals per day.

She promotes to 5★ and gears up tomorrow, so I'll finally be able to sub her back into my Arena squad and give Barriss the rest she deserves while she continues to captain my GW roster. I've been using Luminara in the mean time to captain my Arena squad.

Got Asajj to 6★ yesterday. Talia will join her tonight and Luminara in 2 days.

JohnnySteelAlpha

Pilot wrote: »

Dooku becomes nich at higher levels. A component of your larger team. At lower levels, he just all out beast, and you have a hard time seeing his nich. I find they value of Dooku has become his speed and his stun, and i dont think much of his counter attack at all any more. When i pull Dooku from the bench, its because i need to be the first one to act at the start of a fight, and i need to be able to stun. When this is the case, i swap in Dooku. He is no longer a staple for me as he was at level 10 through 50. I keep him leveled and geared though, and once per day i sim his 2 nodes.

I think this is very good assessment. I still haven't pulled him from my team yet as there are so many Jedi squads on the server (I think we're on the same server). If I was bothering to switch offense / defense I supposed I would re-fight and remove him from my team for a better defensive toon - I know at the upper brackets he's a liability in the D slot. AI doesn't use him smartly and the human attacker knows how to easily approach him.

FashionFett

I paid $55 for Barriss and Dooku.

I spent numerous energy to star up Dooku. I plan to do the same for Barriss. Both have gotten me from level 23 to level Now (and I plan to use them to level 60). Are they going to get me top 50 in PvP day in and day out? Not unless my other 3 supporting heroes can pull their weight!

Both also take me as far in Galatic Wars as my bench allows.

Both are great but RNG and other developing heroes play a large part of one's success in the game.

But for $55, I plan to develop both until endgame. One way or another, they are and will be useful.

As for Droid Pack and Windu Pack, I think Mace will be decent (if he is your only 4 or even 5 star Jedi hitter) and HK is a very under-valued Droid. Why not star up HK after getting Sidious? But for my squad, my top 10 heroes in the game, I can very well see Barriss, Dooku, HK, JC, Ashoka there. Those are heroes I spent real $ to buy, and those are possible to star up. Even if it takes months, they will be there for the "end game"

WWJDl

Wow thanks for all the answers everyone!
Like FashionFett I do love both Barriss and Dooku (waiting for General Grevious) and don't really want'a waste the $60 we spent to get these awesome units. I'll try and level them till the end as see what happens. JSA, great to see you here! I am so happy and thankful to see your insights on builds.
Keaven, do you think that the AI on defense for Asajj currently works better than Barriss for you? And in PVP is it ok to have Lumi as your only healer you if you are dropping Barriss from your NS team (as Talia really does't AI heal well).

Again thanks for all the answers everyone, esp. to those I didn't mention above -- your answers really do help me out a lot!
Much Appreciated.
God bless ya'll

Preemo_Magin

Doku also add uncertainty, which makes him a top danger. A Doku at level 4 vs Luminara 7 or Consular 7 is very useless. Any character that doesn't have enough HP to survive first round, or barely survive, is a dead weigth to the team. So Doku, hard to farm, becomes immediately of less use that rhise highly farmable. Hiwever, given 7 stars, he will hit back EVERY TIME HIT. So he pretty much guarantes that he will almost always leave you EVEN, at worst. Which is why many team can't attack him first, if your Doku is same stars. Now the ones that say char synergies...well if you have offense, or high crit, or defense down, Doku will take advantage. He is some insurance against AoE heavy team. Countering twice increases the chance of a crit. If it's 30 percent, and does a doubke, there are 60 of one crit if (at my lvl 4) 1500 dmg plus the non crit of 800-900. He stuns very often, even vs high end teams. A stun preventing Ben's ability block can be life or death. Also, usually some teams have higher evasion. But since Doku does a lot of doubles, he is almost guaranteed to make some damage. Likelihood of two evasions is so small... So it can clear red enemies with higher certainty. Also, he ads risk. It can do regular, but if doubke, he'd usually do 900 plus 1800 (at 4 start) or 2700...not bad. I have faced Doku at GW level 60. Trust me, I avoid him intensely and avoid any AoE. It forces you to narrower plans. Sometime you will exclude from team, but overall, he is very risky for opponent, and very useful addition to the team.

Keaven

WWJDl wrote: »

Wow thanks for all the answers everyone!
Like FashionFett I do love both Barriss and Dooku (waiting for General Grevious) and don't really want'a waste the $60 we spent to get these awesome units. I'll try and level them till the end as see what happens. JSA, great to see you here! I am so happy and thankful to see your insights on builds.
Keaven, do you think that the AI on defense for Asajj currently works better than Barriss for you? And in PVP is it ok to have Lumi as your only healer you if you are dropping Barriss from your NS team (as Talia really does't AI heal well).

Again thanks for all the answers everyone, esp. to those I didn't mention above -- your answers really do help me out a lot!
Much Appreciated.
God bless ya'll

I'm still running Barriss at the moment, so time will tell re defense. I'm hoping evasion and more dps from Ahsoka will be more effective as Barriss can just be dead weight at higher levels. Even with Barriss still on the team I am focusing down the lowest HP opponent on the first round of attacks.

Basically once Barriss cannot prolong a battle to 5 mins she becomes useless on defense teams. So if your squad is not particularly tanky this will be sooner rather than later.

I'm already easily taking down a level 58 opponent who sits in top 5 of my Arena table.

One thing about Water of Life heals with Talia re AI is that your other allies still get 25% turn meter as well at level 5 so in a DPS and healer mix this should improve the situation.

As far as healers go, all of my team has heal or pseudo heal and as of tonight at reset will be:

Level 53
5★ VII Ahsoka
6★ VII Asajj
5★ VII Consular
6★ VII Talia
5★ VII Luminara

WWJDl

My goodness Keaven, all 7 equipments, do you have a way to farm equipment that I am sadly missing??

I'm sitting at level 49 with level 6 equips, but I can't imagine getting 7 with some parts costing over 20 pieces each, then six per unit, and some only drop 1-3 a refill.

Are there better nodes/drop rates to farm equipment at higher levels on the maps?

Thanks again for all your answers everyone

Smiles n God bless!

reizse

both will be useful at 7*. the thing you have to keep in mind is when will their usefulness taper off when the rest of your team is easily farmable to 7*, while they take longer.


my advice is to keep starring them up once you get nice replacements. if/when you get them to 7*, you'll reap what you sow, unlike players who toss them to the curb because they are difficult to star up.