Dooku Led Teams CAN be defeated, and here is how I did it
April 2, 2016 6:11AM
edited April 2016
I've been looking through the forums and I noticed that there have been a number of threads screaming for some form of balancing Dooku's leader ability and truthfully, I don't think the developers are likely to ever fix his evasion and as far as I have noticed in my server, based on the countless Dooku led teams that I have faced, that his leader ability is working as intended. I am not really a Star Wars fan, but this is still a game of strategy no matter how "broken" the meta is, which is why I really love this game. There will always be players innovating new ways to play and more importantly, I would like to stress that as a person facing such a meta, I have foreseen this and have already tailored a team in advance to fix this issue. This is going to be a long post so for those who hate reading, you can just skip to the STRATEGY now.
The meta as we know it now is not as broken as the Poe or QGJ meta because honestly I would call these two metas "Coin toss" metas, people had legitimate reasons to complain because 1 character was controlling the meta. I myself found it clearly ridiculous because once i lost the coin toss, it was a complete faceroll. Based on forum pundits like Qeltar (thanks for all your informative posts), I knew that the Poe nerf was eventually going to come, and therefore I avoided farming him. But I have to disagree that Dooku led teams are "Coin toss" teams, because you can still REACT to them. I know Qeltar has posted a guide on how to deal with Dooku, but I would like to shed light on how to defeat him in a full lineup.
Here is my current lineup:
QGJ (lead)
Yoda (MOST IMPORTANT CHARACTER)
Luminara Unduli
Poggle the Lesser
Geonosian Soldier
Yoda, in my opinion, is the key to defeating these teams as far as I am concerned, and it is important that he has QGJ lead because he MUST GO FIRST. Dooku will always go after Yoda. The thing that is so amazing about Yoda is that he is by far the most powerful and versatile toolbox character in the game. Knowing when to use his abilities at what moments will be the key to defeating Dooku led teams. He can currently be gotten even as a F2P (I a completely F2P), and he is viable once he is 6 stars.
STRATEGY
It is VERY important to know who is going to take their turns (look up the guide on speed by Team Instinct http://www.teaminstinct.net/swgoh-guide/speed-and-you-a-team-instinct-special/)
At the top 20 of my server, the following is the general meta of teams
Dooku (Lead)
Royal Guard
Rey
Geonosian Soldier
Old Daka/Poggle/Luminara, FOTP, (either a toolbox or DPS)
Dooku is really scary at the start. If he double stuns the team, the fight is pretty much over. As the match progresses and more enemies are killed, he becomes generally weaker because his base DPS is not that great. The moment the fight begins, I use Tenacity Up by Yoda. This almost guarantees and prevents your characters from being stunned to oblivion. Next, I go for the main DPS, which is Rey. Note that you cannot bring her below 50% hp so what i tend to do here is to use a base attack by QGJ, and then finish her off with a double attack from Geonosian soldier.
Four scenarios can happen at this point:
1) Rey dodges one of the attacks, leaving her with low hp but Royal Guards taunt coming up. This is fine, simply attack with Poggle the Lesser and and Heal with Luminara to get the heal over time buff on your characters. Use QGJ's special to remove the taunt and buff your team.
2) Rey dodges more that one of the attacks, leaving her with more hp but and the offense up buff. If she doesn't kill QGJ on her turn, Use QGJ's special to remove the buff and finish her off with Yoda's AOE attack. Take note of her hp in choosing which skills to use to kill her.
3) Rey dies and auto resurrects from Daka's 10% buff if Daka is on the team. When this happens, I just go OMG I HATE THIS RNG, and then attempt step 2.
4) Rey dies and does not resurrect. I would proceed with Poggle's basic attack with the intent of silencing Old Daka, or buffing my team as per normal if there isn't an Old Daka. Luminara will heal as per normal. If Daka is silenced, this is the best case scenario.
Also keep in mind that if situations 1-3 occur, you are likely to lose a character on the first turn. Fret not, and just focus on killing the high DPS char first.
Daka is unlikely to stun my team as well, because I still have Tenacity Up on her turn. If Poggle doesn't silence her, I keep my fingers crossed that she doesn't resurrect Rey. If she does, I proceed to step 2. From here, I continue to take out Daka, GS and finally Dooku. Sometimes it can turn out to be a nail-biting finish, but hey, that's what makes this game fun, seeing your team succeed at the very end. There will be times you lose because of RNG, but at least you have options.
Of course it isn't going to turn out great all the time, you will lose, but I tend to have roughly a 75% win rate against such a lineup. Of course there will be that match where they literally dodge almost everything (You can bathe in saltwater if you want I don't blame you). Of course you are going to get punished for running a semi-meta lineup where you get targeted more, but the way I see it, if you hate Dooku, then other than just requesting balances, seek out some ways in which you can beat such lineups first. Ultimately, what makes this game fun is being able to develop counter-meta strategies, which I do not think were present in the previous few metas.
Sorry to make your eyes bleed for the long post, but I hoped I have shed some light as to a possible counter-lineup to make Arena more diverse and competitive. Cheers.
The meta as we know it now is not as broken as the Poe or QGJ meta because honestly I would call these two metas "Coin toss" metas, people had legitimate reasons to complain because 1 character was controlling the meta. I myself found it clearly ridiculous because once i lost the coin toss, it was a complete faceroll. Based on forum pundits like Qeltar (thanks for all your informative posts), I knew that the Poe nerf was eventually going to come, and therefore I avoided farming him. But I have to disagree that Dooku led teams are "Coin toss" teams, because you can still REACT to them. I know Qeltar has posted a guide on how to deal with Dooku, but I would like to shed light on how to defeat him in a full lineup.
Here is my current lineup:
QGJ (lead)
Yoda (MOST IMPORTANT CHARACTER)
Luminara Unduli
Poggle the Lesser
Geonosian Soldier
Yoda, in my opinion, is the key to defeating these teams as far as I am concerned, and it is important that he has QGJ lead because he MUST GO FIRST. Dooku will always go after Yoda. The thing that is so amazing about Yoda is that he is by far the most powerful and versatile toolbox character in the game. Knowing when to use his abilities at what moments will be the key to defeating Dooku led teams. He can currently be gotten even as a F2P (I a completely F2P), and he is viable once he is 6 stars.
STRATEGY
It is VERY important to know who is going to take their turns (look up the guide on speed by Team Instinct http://www.teaminstinct.net/swgoh-guide/speed-and-you-a-team-instinct-special/)
At the top 20 of my server, the following is the general meta of teams
Dooku (Lead)
Royal Guard
Rey
Geonosian Soldier
Old Daka/Poggle/Luminara, FOTP, (either a toolbox or DPS)
Dooku is really scary at the start. If he double stuns the team, the fight is pretty much over. As the match progresses and more enemies are killed, he becomes generally weaker because his base DPS is not that great. The moment the fight begins, I use Tenacity Up by Yoda. This almost guarantees and prevents your characters from being stunned to oblivion. Next, I go for the main DPS, which is Rey. Note that you cannot bring her below 50% hp so what i tend to do here is to use a base attack by QGJ, and then finish her off with a double attack from Geonosian soldier.
Four scenarios can happen at this point:
1) Rey dodges one of the attacks, leaving her with low hp but Royal Guards taunt coming up. This is fine, simply attack with Poggle the Lesser and and Heal with Luminara to get the heal over time buff on your characters. Use QGJ's special to remove the taunt and buff your team.
2) Rey dodges more that one of the attacks, leaving her with more hp but and the offense up buff. If she doesn't kill QGJ on her turn, Use QGJ's special to remove the buff and finish her off with Yoda's AOE attack. Take note of her hp in choosing which skills to use to kill her.
3) Rey dies and auto resurrects from Daka's 10% buff if Daka is on the team. When this happens, I just go OMG I HATE THIS RNG, and then attempt step 2.
4) Rey dies and does not resurrect. I would proceed with Poggle's basic attack with the intent of silencing Old Daka, or buffing my team as per normal if there isn't an Old Daka. Luminara will heal as per normal. If Daka is silenced, this is the best case scenario.
Also keep in mind that if situations 1-3 occur, you are likely to lose a character on the first turn. Fret not, and just focus on killing the high DPS char first.
Daka is unlikely to stun my team as well, because I still have Tenacity Up on her turn. If Poggle doesn't silence her, I keep my fingers crossed that she doesn't resurrect Rey. If she does, I proceed to step 2. From here, I continue to take out Daka, GS and finally Dooku. Sometimes it can turn out to be a nail-biting finish, but hey, that's what makes this game fun, seeing your team succeed at the very end. There will be times you lose because of RNG, but at least you have options.
Of course it isn't going to turn out great all the time, you will lose, but I tend to have roughly a 75% win rate against such a lineup. Of course there will be that match where they literally dodge almost everything (You can bathe in saltwater if you want I don't blame you). Of course you are going to get punished for running a semi-meta lineup where you get targeted more, but the way I see it, if you hate Dooku, then other than just requesting balances, seek out some ways in which you can beat such lineups first. Ultimately, what makes this game fun is being able to develop counter-meta strategies, which I do not think were present in the previous few metas.
Sorry to make your eyes bleed for the long post, but I hoped I have shed some light as to a possible counter-lineup to make Arena more diverse and competitive. Cheers.
0
- 60.8K General Discussion
- 9 Developer Q&A Archive
- 2.6K New Players
- 30.5K Arena and Character Strategy
- 4K Individual Events
- 4.6K Guild Events
- 4.6K PVP and Rivalry
- 50.1K Guild Recruitment
- 731 Art and Media
- 4.1K Off Topic
Howdy, Stranger!
Replies
Glad you liked it, cheers
once you heal, the AI is smart enough to debuff on defense.
Oh haha I'm so sorry I forgot about the update where they changed the way speed works, is there any guide that is updated though?
Oh yes, that certainly makes it harder if they debuff, but I still think Rey must die first because she dishes out the highest amount of DPS. And if QGJ is there, they Rey won't ever come back once shes dead (assuming he replaces Daka), which still makes it better even if the whole opponent team gets a buff off his special.
Qgj led,dooku,yodA,luminara,geo
The combination of yoda, plus your own dooku stun plus the fallback on lumi heals if needed almost never fails. I say almost never as I have had a match in recent past where rng really got the best of me. Dodge after dodge all match I couldn't do anything
Actually, that's a pretty good lineup too, but with the only concern being that theres the chance that your stun doesn't land because there is no enemy Jedi in the lineup. But I can see how this solves the problems I've had with Dooku-led opponents.
No problem bro, glad you liked it
No problem bro, glad you liked it
Mind you this is a level 71 team. Every move I made was well thought out and deliberate, yes even Yoda attacking RP with foresight on, I did it to get foresight on Yoda, I mean everybody knows this followed by Battle Meditation, but in this instance I didn't need it in the end.
[yt]
There's no need for a speed guide. What you see is what you get. Speed 143 is speed 143 unless buffed by leader/ special ability. Same speeds=coin toss on who goes 1st.
The problem in defeating Dooku led team is not strategy. It depends heavily on RNG. That is what the uproar on the forums is about, some claim there's a bias in the RNG favoring AI. I haven't noticed any such bias myself though.
Good that you're helping the community, kudos. But to be honest, this guide is pointless. Outdated information and pointless as there are multiple variations of Dooku teams plus it's still dependent on RNG. A good RNG, I defeat other Dooku, QGJ teams with all team members standing. Bad RNG, 3 against 1 remaining and I still lose. Since the major complaint about defeating Dooku teams are only about RNG, no guide/ tactic will help (not that your guide is bad, it can't help against RNG). Even if you do fight fire with fire (I run a Dooku team too), RNG rules.
I can't stress heavily enough that this isn't a criticism of your effort per se, just trying to point out that no guide or tactic can help you defeat RNG. Kudos once again for taking the time out for the community.
Poignant -near enough. A bit harsh bro - could be misconstrued as borderline passive aggressive. But I get what you're saying. Both of you.
I know, that's why I bolded a sentence and added the last para. Words are best heard, not read, to get the nuances across, lol!
Edit: Just thought I'd add my line up here. Dooku, Daka, Lumi, Rey (6 stars), QGJ. No strategy, get the most dangerous enemy and blast off with a prayer to RNGesus. Win 8 out of 10, on a bad day. Against any/ all kinds of squads. Usually the 2 I lose is when I come up against a max RG, but even then it's on RNG.
[/quote]
Poignant -near enough. A bit harsh bro - could be misconstrued as borderline passive aggressive. But I get what you're saying. Both of you.[/quote]
I know, that's why I bolded a sentence and added the last para. Words are best heard, not read, to get the nuances across, lol! [/quote]
lmao true
My shard doesn't have highly metafied teams just yet though we should be getting there shortly. So while there are Dooku leads not enough of them have super dps (Geno and Rey) and Royal Guard behind it so aren't so worrisome. My team (Qui-Gon, Rey, Lumi, Geno and Sid/Ahsoka) has problems every once in a while but generally I don't find it that bad.
Yeah Rey - what an awesome toon - she is. Not a wise farm for f2p early Feb shard. Neither is RG but have prevailed, nonetheless. Our top ten is laden with Dooku teams from solid to the nasty comp you've mentioned. But you adapt... and need I say it?
What a joke.
The issue people have isn't that they can't beat Dooku, it's that RNG now has more of an effect, you are now more likely to lose due to RNG.
Definitely more constructive and useful than the "plz Nerf Dooku too strong" posts that are prevalent in these forums.
As other posters have mentioned it is a very RNG heavy team, hence if i can help it i skip Dooku lead teams especially if they have an enemy Daka.
This is the lineup i use to regular take them out:
QJG
JK Anakin
Yoda
Lumi
GS
Yoda Tenacity up, QJG Assist attack then JK Anakin finishes them off or regular attacks RG to make him unable to taunt. The only times i don't win with this team is if their high damage characters (Rey, RP, Yoda, GS) get more than 2-3 misses.
If they don't focus down a character, Lumi will heal and i'll quickly wipe one character at a time and if they start killing mine Anakin goes on a rampage and provided he doesn't miss too much can turn the tide in this RNGfest.
I definitely wouldn't stand a chance against that team without Yoda! haha
This
+1 Exactly that is the problem!
This.
Stallion is missing the point, confusing OP with "cannot be beaten".Stallion is neglecting the amazing utility of dooku's leadership ability, combining both offense and defense in a single package, and the multiple layers of rng when dooku's ability is combined with other RNG type abilities like daka's. Furthermore, dooku's leadership ability at 80 gives offense up for two turns which is something that is really ridiculous.
Is it wise, in any game, to give a character both high offense and defense? a tank type character needs to have low damage, and vice versa. This is to prevent characters from being too OP. The same thing applies to dooku. Why should he have a zero turn passive that can give both offense up and evasion to the entire team? This is especially thoughtless in a game where a character can die in 2 hits without offense up, 1 if the character has high dps and offense up. This makes no sense at all.
What about diversity? Is anyone going to run an aoe team with so many dookus? chances of at least 1 out of 5 people dodging is pretty high and that character is going to have offense up for two turns. What about countering characters with potent abilities? Most, like poggle and phasma, take at least 2-3 hits to kill(supposing no offense up), and we have no fast characters with good potency gear,ability block, and accuracy. Dodging makes it even harder for a player to kill another character in 2-3 hits.
Excellent points. Still, it will be interesting to see if Dooku maintains his presence post-combat pass. The rng problem will obviously remain but perhaps there will arise some mitigating factor.