Guide to Galactic War for the rest of us.

Tiggus
766 posts Member
edited February 2016
There are already a few very helpful guides to GW, which I found genuinely useful, but they often lose me when they mention things such as "Assume you're maintaining a rank of 50 or above in Arena", "Barriss Offee", "focus on the End game", all of which don't even appear in my wildest dreams.

So I thought I'd complement that valuable info with a few hints aimed at the 9950 top-10000 players that are, like me, not making top-50 in the Arena, and most likely, never will.

1. Intro

So let's say you're at level 45, you opened Galactic Wars a few days ago, won some and lost a lot, and wonder where to go from here.

First of all, congratulations: you've reached the good place to get great advice (the forum, I mean)... read on, read more, experiment, read some more, and you'll get much better.

A good start to your journey through Galactic Wars is to set your expectations right: It's meant to be a hard challenge, so it's ok to lose. Set your goal to reach battle 6, then battle 8, then celebrate any additional milestone you reach until the final one. Make sure you fight until the last man every day and press 'restart' every day: there is no benefit in waiting longer: your damaged heroes will not regain more health if you leave them alone longer, and the rewards are good enough even in 6 battles that it's really worth fighting it as much as you can.
I managed to reach battle 8-10 in average until level 50, then it became quite harder the more I progressed to level 60, and I started to win all the way to battle 12 once I was past level 60, but I'm sure other players have experienced it differently.

While we're here, learn how to use and not to overuse that convenient "retreat" option: it lets you undo and restart the current battle, with the same or a different crew. Nice fallback when things don't go the way you like, or for experimenting a new formation. But can also become a real test to your patience if you're trying to replay that same battle for 300 times until you get the right outcome. Probably not worth the frustration. It's totally ok to lose, there will be a tomorrow.

2. Your team (now)

Ok, now that the stage is set, let's look at your team. At level 45 - 60, your team very likely consists of some variation around:
  • Attackers: Jawa, Clone Sergeant, Ewok scout, Snowtrooper
  • Tanks: Chewbacca, Royal Guard
  • Healers: Jedi Consular, Talia

Hopefully some other guy that was given for free at some point or you received from some card. I assume 5 of them are reasonably levelled up to somewhere close to your own level, and equipped with as much gear as you could lay your hands on.
We'll see next who to develop more, and who else we want to hire (mostly from GW or Arena tokens, as they are the quickest way to hire someone new).

But first, let's have a closer look at what's the story here, what kind of abilities we need the most.

3. The race

The Galactic War is like a marathon. You don't want an Ursan Bolt who'll triumph in the first battle just to collapse in the second or third one. You want stamina. So sure, you want to win each battle. But more importantly, you also want your toons to be ready for the next battle:
  • in good shape
  • with all abilities ready to use.

A nearly dead character isn't worth much more than a fully dead one, as he'll just die in the first turn of the next battle, leaving you fighting 4 against 5.
A healer who can't heal for another 3 or 4 turns isn't going to help you a lot either.

So the ideal outcome of any battle is: all of your surviving toons are green and have reset all cooldowns (or perhaps have at most 1 turn left for a heal). It's better to have 1 dead character and all other in good health than a few of them in the yellow.

Knowing that, you want each battle to last at least 5 or 6 turns (that's time enough for damage - heal - reset cooldowns). Your priority is not to inflict damage, it's to take less damage than what you can recover.

So it means that an otherwise great guy like the First Order Pilot is very unwelcome in GW: He'll either die quickly, require premature heal, or finish off your opponents too early.

The abilities we are after are: evasion, self-heal, group heal, defense up, offense down, ability block, stun, slow and other turn meter manipulation.
Other useful abilities are: some actual damage (mainly for taking down that annoying Sidious), damage over time (good way to inflict damage on Dooku without counter), heal block (for making sure that the annoying guy you want to take down doesn't accidentally goes up again).

4. Your team (soon)

Who's ticking all the right boxes? Luminara: Evades, helps other evade, heals, heals more, and then some more; blocks ability. Oh and she's an attacker actually, so she does damage too. She is the Queen of GW. Where to hire her? Conveniently, right here: use the precious tokens you receive by winning GW battles. Purchase as much Lumi as you can, the sooner you get her the better you'll do (and then, up to you really, but I'd suggest keep spending on her until at least 5 or 6 stars). Remember, every time you make it to battle 6, that's 5 shards of Lumi. Battle 10 is 10 shards and battle 12 is 15 shards, so it won't take that long to get her (... then, improve her).

Jedi Consular: You'll need a secondary healer, and since you have him, he'll do for now. He's like Luminara's little brother: heals less, hits less, dies quicker.

Talia: You'll probably also need a third healer when the second one is dead. Her self-heal comes handy (just got better actually), her special attack is not a joke and does damage over time, which is good too. I think she's rather good at levels 40 - 50, but gets outclassed later on.

Chewbacca: His stats (and description) are a blatant lie: he's not hitting hard. I'm not sure what he feeds his bowcaster with, probably spaghetti or something. At level 40+, he's probably making around half the damage of your next weakest toon. But he does have good health and a capable self-heal, and his taunt might help save an endangered ally at times, so perhaps worth using until you find a better fit.

Royal Guard: He might surprisingly become that better fit when you have some spare ability mats. As everyone else, I laughed the first (and, thought I, last) time I used him: he really hits like a wet noodle (yep, worse than the Wookie!). But after some levelling and some ability mats, he's gaining huge heap of health, and an opportunistic taunt for 2 turns (... which should be enough to get your other guys out of trouble), plus a defense up ability. He's still hitting with cooked noodles, but he might reduce turn meter, which is always a welcome bonus. I use him often in GW, and he dies often too, but allows the others to come out green.

Another easy-to-hire addition is Darth Sidious (with Arena tokens): He'll be in about 100% of the teams you'll face, and a real pain in the ****: anyone he tags with his heal block is a prime candidate for a quick death. Conversely, on your side, he'll distribute damage over time, and heal-block tags that will help make sure that the villain you're trying to take down will really go down. Then he'll repair himself for each casualty (on either side), and evade jedi attacks like crazy (always great to see the opponent Luminara waste her special on him).

Attackers: None of them is very inspiring. You won't face many droids (so poor Jawa won't stun), area attacks (Sergeant, Snowtrooper) aren't so great because one heal wipes all of the damage; they move at slug speed, too. The Ewok is fast, his special does good damage, but he's weak. Pick any, and replace as soon as you have a better choice. I received FO Stormtrooper and used that one for a long time because he had a decent damage and huge health that made him quite a survivor.

Others: Captain Phasma (who was also given for free at some point, otherwise available with GW tokens) is a great addition because of her 2 specials: speed boost for you, slow-down for the others. Her damage is not great, and she survives less than her health stats indicate, though. GW tokens should be used in priority for Luminara, however.

Cards: It's been said before and I couldn't agree more: Don't build hopes on Chromium cards. They mostly give you 12 shards of heroes you don't need, and sometimes a hero you don't need. I consider myself lucky to have had 1 good draw (Old Ben) out of 20 Chromium cards. But well, now I can't upgrade him much, too.

5. Show time!

Now take your team to the fight. You'll face a lot of Luminara - Sidious - Phasma + 2, probably a fair share of Dookus and Kylo Ren too.
Remember, your ideal fight is:
  1. exchange some damage, hopefully kill 1 and lose 0
  2. heal
  3. give some more damage, and take some less damage
  4. repeat for as long as it takes to recharge and reset all cooldowns.

The team you want to see in front of you is one made of tanks and healers (Chewbacca, Barriss Offee, Jedi Consular, Talia...): a long and relaxing battle with little damage (all good as long as you do a little more than them). Leave Chewbacca and Offee for the dessert, as they'll probably heal (which is good, as you're not taking damage, right?) and you'll have plenty of time to cool down.

The team you don't want to see is a fast high damage one (e.g. droids), and/or one that messes up your heals (Sidious / Ren). But well, since you don't get to choose, let's see how to handle that: I'd say Sidious is almost always your first target (fortunately, he'll do his special first, so you have 1 turn to take him down, absorb damage, then heal everybody). Use your own Sidious to avoid him to be healed. Don't let anyone else die before him, as he'll self-heal from that death. Beware Old Daka, as the old **** will resurrect him, just when you thought you were over him, talk about a demoralizing blow! Never use Luminara's special on him, as he'll dodge it 50% of the time, and that attack is too precious to be wasted. Use it on a healer instead.
Then take down in reverse order of damage: Maul/Geonosian Soldier/Pilots first (easy kills, otherwise massive damage), leave healers and tanks for the end, and let them heal: hopefully by then, you outnumber them and you re-gain (from self-/group-heal, and cooldowns) more than the small damage they still inflict.
Oh, and that pest of a Dooku: use self-healing, tanks or damage over time on him, make sure no one will heal him during the process. He's not that strong, so you'll take him down in 2 - 3 attacks, but you'll get your share of damage from his counters too. Don't attack if he has offense up, try to offense him down (or better, stun him), all good common sense...

If nothing works, you've tried that battle 5 times and couldn't come out of a battle with a team that's still good enough to fight the next one (remember it's ok to sacrifice attackers or expandable toons - if you lose your main healer, you probably won't make it much further), then it's time to think "Plan B".

The Plan B is to send a team of kamikaze to soften up the enemy team before sending in your main squad to finish them off. The kamikaze will all die (no retreat!) heroically, hopefully taking down at least one enemy, or at least exhausting some of their specials. The kamikazes are probably your former A-team toons which were replaced with better alternatives (Chewbacca, Jawa,...), and need to be somewhat menacing, not a bunch of level 1's that will all die in a single AoE attack. So keep levelling them, to about half of your player level. It's not that expensive compared to your top level: It costs the same to gain one level at level 60 as to promote a toon from level 1 all the way to level 40.
Hopefully, after the heroic sacrifice, your main team will have an easier time beating what's left of the enemy team, recharge and be ready for the next battle (which might well be easier than this one). If not, well, you've just had a tough draw, try again tomorrow.

Again, as a last advice, take each day as it comes: Sometimes you'll get a juggernaut of an opponent on battle 7 and it will stop you right there, sometimes the whole thing is a walk in the park. Usually I have 1 or 2 battles that are significantly harder than the others, anywhere in the second half of the sequence (difficulty is not always increasing).

Hope you enjoyed the read, hopefully learned something and got some fresh ideas,
Enjoy the fight!
☮ Consular ☮ - https://swgoh.gg/u/tiggus/

Replies

  • Not sure if I just overread it: you can retreat (even if toons of you have fallen) and the battle will reset to the point before you started (all your fallen toons will be alive again).
    It sometimes helped me to switch leaders for different RNG and hence outcome. For example sometimes you just need the bit of extra damage from Sids lead to kill an enemy before he gets his turn. Sometimes the extra 10+% evasion from the Dookster are working miracles - try it out! A safe bet is always Lumi: heal at the beginning of your turn+ evasion offer great sustain, specially in GW.
  • Jedi Consular always seems to get a bad rap ("Lumi's little brother") but he can serve a critical function in GW. His heal tends to refresh quicker than Lumi, so he is good for topping off the squad and letting Lumi concentrate on bashing skulls in.

    I read a tip when I started GW that improved my game immediately, and that was to use JC's heal every single time it was available UNLESS your squad is all nearly at full health. Save Lumi's heal for an emergency.

    Another tip: use Lumi's special on Chewie to keep him from taunting. I can't count how often I had someone in the red when Chewie would taunt and ruin my day.
  • I use lumi's heal early in a match if i think i will need it due to the long cooldown and heal over time.
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