Slow Dancing with Poe and his DPS Minions; Countering Poe at 143 Speed
Doing this on a tablet, so I'll add more context in the morning and check any questions / comments. First off, I want to credit @Pilot for estimating long ago that high health toons could challenge the speed meta at this new cap and @Cythis for helping strategize this build as well. We toppled Poe with more speed at cap 60, this was a different challenge though with Poe now turn 1. Additionally, @CronozNL thanks for the Vent video and showing how vulnerable this squad was to offense up AOE.
The heroes: Sid lead, Old Ben, Phasma, Kylo, Poggle
The enemy: Jinn, FOTP, GS, Poe + various 5th members
There are a few key aspects to this that make it work:
1. Toons with the health to withstand the round 1 assault - this requires a different config of heroes
2. Powerful aoe to kill the tanks and hit through the taunt thanks to poggle
3. Meter control from phasma / Ben to get initiative in round 2+
4. Damage down from Ben turns these one trick ponies in to limp noodles
5. Kylo is legitimately dominant attacker when properly positioned in a team
Total result over the last 24 hours since I've had the build viable: 14/19 (74% win rate)
Below I'll make a separate post for each set of battle pics so the post doesn't get too long.
The heroes: Sid lead, Old Ben, Phasma, Kylo, Poggle
The enemy: Jinn, FOTP, GS, Poe + various 5th members
There are a few key aspects to this that make it work:
1. Toons with the health to withstand the round 1 assault - this requires a different config of heroes
2. Powerful aoe to kill the tanks and hit through the taunt thanks to poggle
3. Meter control from phasma / Ben to get initiative in round 2+
4. Damage down from Ben turns these one trick ponies in to limp noodles
5. Kylo is legitimately dominant attacker when properly positioned in a team
Total result over the last 24 hours since I've had the build viable: 14/19 (74% win rate)
Below I'll make a separate post for each set of battle pics so the post doesn't get too long.
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Replies
Dooku fits well here as a 5th as he hits quick, counters aoe, and can stun...his leader gives evade and offense up on evade.
I win against better teams than that even if their Poe wins the taunt roll 99% of the time barring huge crits on the wrong attacker.
Edit: Lumi could be better or worse than Phasma, probably better on offense than defense. The clutch heal is nice and the burst 10k damage is great in a pinch. Phasma can take a bit more damage and has the slow turn meter manipulation, but offers little more to the team. On defense Lumi is likely to die fast with Poe's taunt dispelled.
Outside of his mindtrick and his passive he's kinda dead weight. You can neutralize the big attackers before their damage matters too much.
Offense down resists are common. Even against an Old Ben my aoe team wins.
One odd thing is offense down can show that it's overwriting offense up, but once it fades often the offense up symbol will still be there, sometimes not though. I believe he's the best counter to this team for sure.
Nice work JSA!
Bulky teams like OP's example can survive even if their Poe taunts first though, and when yours taunts first you win easily.
It's a win-win.
The offense down effect is overridden by Poggle's offense up.
Yea I think he gets a measly 20% at gear 9.
Glad it worked out! It's certainly not impossible to beat as you have showed us as well. However Dooku as lead?
I'm curious to see what a Sid lead would have done instead of Dooku.
Nevertheless it's starting to get better
My top 10 stopped using Poe all of the sudden. Mostly droid teams and some weird other setups atm.
At any rate, I am just holding out waiting for the update to hopefully return some diversity and sanity to PvP. I can still get into the top 10 with my same old team that I haven't changed in weeks, but I hate relying on lucky stuns to win.
I'll post 2 other Phasma screen shots from battles in separate posts.
She's great against Poggle teams as well.. though probably would do better with a Poe to protect her. (What team wouldn't?
I find Daka is very helpful against these Poe teams if you don't have all tanky chars. The ability to fire a heal early in the fight is essential.
Good game AI, good game.
No - he's there to provide a critical 3rd AOE hit. Three hits is the magic number to sufficiently damage / kill the enemy hiding behind Poe. The DoTs he lays helps a lot as well. He also has good dodge and can avoid some kill shots, wasting this speed team's precious initial turns.
They offset each other. There's just a graphical display where it won't show both. If you look closely, it does still flash in red text that Ben's defense down is applying even when there's an offense up icon showing. Additionally, I saw this the case as I dispelled the offense up on a toon that had been hit by Ben, and when I dispelled then the red icon appeared -- so both offense up and defense down apply and from just observation it looks like they just cancel each other out based on damage numbers.
Is this team viable without Old Ben? Possible replacement? Poe? And how critical is Poggles *'s and Gear lvl in this setup? I got 7* Sid, Phasma and Kylo, all max gear lvl, so the AOE should be good, but my Poggle is only 5*. Still worth running?
I haven't tested vs. Sid lead as that's not a setup right now I can hit - but Phasma is from my observation, just as difficult if not moreso. I'd estimate vs. Sid it would be similar to Phasma - 55-60% or so win rate. Sid and Phasma both bring RNG-based higher offense. Sid's in the form of crit / damage and Phasma with multi attacks. The part about Phasma that adds more depth though is that she is tanky, so she doesn't die from my AOE barrage - Sid would generally as he's squishy. That's less hits I have to burn in round 2. Also, with Sid, I don't have to deal with the enemy Phasma's speed down on my + advantage call in round 2. So it loses meter control and as long as I can survive the initial onslaught, the path to beating Sid-based team after that is easier than vs. Phasma.
Dooku is actually a deadly lead for this team. He helps them evade and then he gives offense up. That generally means someone is evading one of my AOEs at some point and gaining offense up. That's a problem as you need all the damage you can get on these guys and you definitely do NOT want them powering up here.
There's been a mention of Plo - that's not bad as you get a 4th aoe in there - which would be big. That's the other approach you can take - skip Ben and insert another tanky 4th aoe in there that poggle can give offense up. Get a 4th aoe in there and you will have a decent shot of killing 2-4 enemy toons before you get to round 2. Just hit past Poe's taunt. Ventress is higher risk, but good gracious she's really OP if she doesn't get targeted - she would almost definitely wipe the screen with her aoe as the 4th. A sturdier option and one that has good synergy with Poggle would be HK - he's great too with the revive. Poggle gives O up - speeds him up - and with Jinn in there his meatbag AOE will be huge - and it will be good against the enemy as well. Remember, Jinn can dispel your Poggle O up buff and nuke his teammates - if you can ability block / slow / kill him with HK that's big. And from my experience with HK, him tossing that in to any 5 member crowd even the non-Jedi come out with some type of effect generally. That actually should work at a pretty solid rate as well. Especially if the Poe team you are using is using someone else like Lumi or another Jedi. Not ALL Poe teams that people are facing are the elite top tier types that I have posted above with Jinn / GS / FOTP as his sidekicks.
Healers can also work though - I think you could experiment actually with Barriss as a leader. I played with her as leader a little bit before going the "tank aoe + Poggle" route and she was a factor. Lumi can be good as a leader too with her evasion and heal / damage.
Star levels depend on what level your opponents are. Vs. the comps I'm facing in the top 5 in my server, I need every drop of health I can get - and aoe damage / skills as well. At least vs. these 7* FOTP / Jinn teams posted here, I like to have hereos with 14k+ health - Sid works ok here because he's also turn 1. He rarely is killed before getting to hit. So you can squeeze in another turn 1 hero I think. 5* Poggle would be ok, but you'd have issues surviving if you're trying to face off vs. higher skilled / starred / level hereos. My Poggle has about 12.3k health - that's the min roughly you want to have if you're facing similarly maxed opponents. So it just depends on what level you are fighting against. Poggle also is OK being lower on health because as a fast toon he will often get his turn before FOTP - so he's at less risk to get killed. As long as Sid and Poggle get their turns, even if they die immediately after that, you're good. You just need Sid for leader + his aoe / DoT and then Poggle for the offense up.