Arena: Shaak Clones or Padme?
So, I'm planning on making a new account, which will probably involve a Hyperdrive Bundle. With that bundle, I'd be able to farm up Arc Trooper relatively quickly, and a few thousand crystals can get a 2 star Shaak Ti to go along with the 501st Clones. Or, I could farm for GBA and (somewhat less quickly) get a Padme team.
So, which team is better? Specifically, which team is better against the Bastilla lead / JKR teams that make up most of the top of new shards? From what I can see both teams can crush JKR on offense but lose fairly easily to them on defense.
Teams would be Shaak Ti/Fives/Echo/Rex/Arc (could sub JKA for Arc) or Padme/GK/JKA/Ashoka/GMY (could sub Barris for GMY).
If there's another team that can counter JKR teams relatively well on defense, that would be nice to know as well. Only ones I've found are GLs, GAS, DR-Malak, and Sep Droids, none of which are as accessible as JKR is.
So, which team is better? Specifically, which team is better against the Bastilla lead / JKR teams that make up most of the top of new shards? From what I can see both teams can crush JKR on offense but lose fairly easily to them on defense.
Teams would be Shaak Ti/Fives/Echo/Rex/Arc (could sub JKA for Arc) or Padme/GK/JKA/Ashoka/GMY (could sub Barris for GMY).
If there's another team that can counter JKR teams relatively well on defense, that would be nice to know as well. Only ones I've found are GLs, GAS, DR-Malak, and Sep Droids, none of which are as accessible as JKR is.
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Think about this:
The Shaak squad needs fewer zetas to work.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with the game (just because you're starting a new account doesn't mean you don't have an older one), so forgive me if this is all information you already have, but zetas are going to be hard to come by early on.
Both Padmé and Shaak TI squads need 2 zetas just to be minimally viable, but really significantly more than that to work as intended. The difference is that with a Shaak Ti squad 3 zetas is plenty (that gives you both of Shaak Ti's zetas + 5s sacrifice zeta). More zetas is gravy, but 3 is good for Shaak. Meanwhile Threepio can't do much for you without 2 zetas of his own, so the Padmé squad doesn't work as intended without 4-5 zetas. You can go without Threepio, of course (and at the beginning, you will have to) but then you run into other problems: Ahsoka, for instance, adds a bunch of assists with her zeta, enough to put her on par with Echo's AoE dispel, but Echo doesn't need a zeta to get that job done. Remember that getting GK is going to take a long time - there's no way around the HAAT slow-farm requirement there. Threepio's event is going to require at least one ewok zeta, and if you don't want to waste g11 finishers on your ewoks, you'll need 2 or 3 zetas total on your ewoks just to unlock Threepio at 7*. Again, this is a zeta tax that the Clones just don't face. So you're likely going to be using CloneWars Chewbacca in your early-version Padmé squad, and that's not bad, he does surprisingly well there, but it is gear you're spending on a character you will later retire - so that's a gear tax. You may very well also run Barriss, and again, that's not a bad character for this squad, but Padmé, Anakin, Ahsoka, CWC, Barriss is simply an inferior squad and you can't get GK or Threepio right away. So there's that gear tax again - plus a zeta tax if you want to make Barriss work.
Add to this that the gear requirements for Padmé are worse than the gear requirements for Shaak Ti and I think if the purpose is to gear up a viable Arena squad quickly that you'll be better off with Shaak.
Success will probably be better in the short run, slightly worse in the long run, but you avoid steep zeta and gear taxes that can hurt an early player account.
Again, I don't have data on your original question - which one is harder for Bastila and JKR squads to beat - but I hope these additional thoughts are helpful in putting together your ideas about which is nonetheless the better squad for you.
Padme squad: if enemy revan marks anakin its a gg, if padme dies early - gg. Team requires way too many zetas to function reliably and not really usefull in raids.
Shaak+clones: falls apart if fives dies first, same thing if shaak dies. Requires at least 2 zetas shaak and fives uniques to start rolling, deals nice damage in raids.
Since you asked for easy revan counter... palpatin led siths, he easily destroys him on offense/defense but easily looses if the owner puts bastila in the lead xD. Requires like 2 zetas and does even less damage in raids than padme team
Also, while Padme vs JKR is a bit of a timeout nightmare, the same is true in reverse. Meaning JKR risks timing out and sometimes losing against Padme on offense. Ahsoka constantly assists and dispels GK, Anakin's AOE can be brutal, and one lucky team assist can take out their Jolee.
Whereas Shaak Troopers are easy to beat with JKR and will drop like a rock on your server. Kill Shaak, kill Fives, mop up. There's a reason https://swgohcounters.com/ lists JKR as a hard counter for Shaak Ti and a soft counter for Padme.
There is also GAS to consider. You'll ultimately want both teams when you're going for GAS, but you don't need the clones to unlock him. You can initially run GAS on your Padme team in place of JKA, which already holds a lot better on defense, while you're gearing your clones. The only argument in favor of gearing clones first that I can see is their vastly better HSTR score.
I think you're missing the point that this is a quick-fire squad for a new account. No one expects the OP to try to stay with one squad (either Clones or Padmé) for any long period of time.
The OP needs both of these squads (and I think the OP knows that) but one is better for getting together quickly and one is going to take longer - much longer if you're talking about an ideal Padmé squad with Threepio.
Since they're going to need both, I strongly recommend Shaak & Clones to start off, then moving to Padmé rather than starting with Padmé and losing ground while trying to get the squad together, then trying to make that ground back later.
By the time OP has Shaak Troopers arena-ready, there'll be more DRs than JKRs. Padme only takes marginally longer if you throw in GMY as fifth, which works like a charm. In fact, I haven't found a better anti-GAS lineup for Padme. Shaak Ti also makes a great 5th if OP only wanted to gear GAS-relevant characters. And like Sanderzas pointed out, Geos make a decent arena team until Padme is up and running. Just as fast, superior team, needed for GAS, what's not to like?
My post-Hyperdrive path will likely be Shaak Clones > Geos > Padme, then go for Sep Droids and the other pieces for GAS. I'm not too worried about going straight for GAS with no wasted farms, especially since I want to get the Falcon for fleet as soon as I can. It's more a question of whether I spend a bunch of gear to max out my Shaak Clones first, or use them as a quick step before trying to max out Padme.
And if possible, I would like to stick with the team for a while. It seems like both can also beat Darth Revan, and Padme can even beat Malaks sometimes.
I'm leaning toward Padme. I think I can get C3PO as a higher priority than I've been planning. But before C3PO, would GMY or Barriss be a better 5th? GMY seems to be the more often used (and doesn't necessarily need a zeta to work), but zBarriss's healing seems like a good way to mitigate JKR and GMY's attacks.
As someone who runs JKR in arena, I'm more afraid of GMY than Barriss as the added health only comes into affect when a crit occurs. With GK, you get a lot of crit hit immunity. It only lasts one turn and will only pop up if there's no buff immunity locked. I'd do GMY if I were you.
Ok, i see your point. But...
#1 New account -> 0 GET to get 7* Malak or Gas.
#2 Don't spread wrong information, Shaak ti can beat both of those teams on offense. Mechanics wise same weakness as a Padme team, where loosing a specific toon at the start leads to loosing the entire battle (Anakin in Padme team, and Fives in Shaak).
#3 Right, new account, lack of zetas, Ahsoka zeta first or second...
#4 Absolutely agree with you here except, i highly highly advise you and everyone to join a discord server dedicated to swgoh modding instead of relying to outdated swgohevents.
#5 Smart idea to replace, ruined by replacing wrong toon. I mean you really want to get rid of JKA when you have less usefull Ahsoka???
And don't forget one thing, you can replace toons in Shaak squad aswell. Let's just pretend like you replaced Arc with let's say... hmmm... JKA?)
No personal offense, but i don't think you know what you're talking about
Hmm. Good to know, but JKR’s locked Buff Immunity is what I’m mainly worried about. No GK Crit Immunity or Prot Up there. Padme may give her locked Prot Up on assists like Direct Focus, but JKR and GMY can still punch through if assists are minimized, and if Padme falls it’s game over.
Is there anything particularly scary about GMY under Padme, besides another Prot Up ability?
Remember that Padmé brings the "courage" dynamic which multiplies damage. GMY already hits very hard, sooooo.... yes. There is something scary about GMY under Padmé.
Are you sure shaak doesn't beat DR+ malak . Because I've been consistently beating them with my shaak team since day 1
Mine (all r3 and shaak g12) can beat a relic Dr but only a 5 star g11 malak. Its a struggle beyond that and if I lose echo then its over
Mods are the key to most teams , rex at 300 base speed , arc with 12k offence and 8.5k on echo ,
Wait, what? Google translate can you help?
Ah, okay. Thanks.
Not at the top of the arena, no.
GMY is probably the best fifth against GAS and also works well against DR if you mod him for speed. I have relic 3PO, R2, Barriss and Shaak Ti, and I used GMY almost exclusively before I switched to GAS. 3PO has some strengths versus DR though and used to hold better on defense against Palp, but I'm not sure if that's still true after the Vader rework.
I have tried palp with vader against padme after the rework. Before the rework, you were almost not able to kill padme, now it's very difficult and I had to play very carefully. (my empire was a little bit undergeared in comparison with the padme team. It was G11 with G12 vader against G12 with r3 or 4 anakin and G11 C3PO)
Does full r7 count ? Because I don't know what I can do to make their team better for you lol.
When you mod properly it's quite easy ,if you are having problems defeating full relic DR malak teams inbox me I'll help you out .
I don't know what I'm doing wrong but I keep getting wins
Should I throw in JKA to help ?
I mean not as fast as the last one but I think you get the drift
I never tried it with arc because I don't have him geared up. it seems that with arc it's also possible.
So your telling me that you are not running the optimal clones under shaak ti leadership?
Seems weird but each to their own .
What relic levels are the rest of the team at ? Are you using JKA as your 5th ?
Also if you want to theory craft Youtubers like ahnald won't get you far.
it is just my laziness for falling out of top50
I'm using shaak with rex echo fives and sarge, but I don't use them to counter DR. I know arc is better, but at G1 I don't think he will be a great addition.
Think cody or Ashoka will be a better 5th than sarge .
You could also try zeta Barris as the 5th