Jester, Man at arms Combo is plain Antifun and borderline Unfair.

[Woldy]

A Jesters whole gimic in the circus is his ability to instantly kill an opponent while ignoring Deaths door chance, after he uses finale he gets huge debuffs but at those buffs are not nearly enough to compensate for the loss of a Unit on round 2. The jester Gets 100% extra stress and loses 25 Dodge. That is all, The stress only matters if you fight a stress build and the dodge wont matter because 9/10 there will be a Man at arms babysitting the jester with defender. "Just stun the Man at arms", I would but its kind of difficult when hes got a 100% chance to resist and even with stun%+ buffs on it'll max go to a 30% of getting the stun off, killing the Jester or just CC'ing him is the only chance you have to win agianst a Jester Team, and the MAA just completly makes it impossible Because of his Defender skill and massive stun resist. The man isnt wearing a helmet yet he's got 3x the stun resist of the crusader, come on!

[Spitfyre37]

MaA is literally just an old man that yells at people. Why is he nigh invincible to debuffs/stuns?

Also, to some extent I agree with you that Finale is pretty powerful, but it makes sense in the context of the circus, so I'd be surprised if it got changed. (frankly I'd be surprised if anything got nerfed/buffed at this point, but hey, who knows. Maybe someday Bellow won't be horrible and Leper will actually have a decent amount of Move Resist.) That being said, I do agree that Jester shouldn't be able to be guarded after using finale. It's pretty broken.

As it stands, though, I guess we need to do our best to work around the broken mess that is Butcher's Circus. For strats against Finale, I'd recommend focusing everything you've got on the Jester in the first round. Scare 'em! Jester has to be in rank 1 or 2 in order to use Finale, so make it super risky to be in that spot! In most cases, the Jester'll use a move like Battle Ballad to buff up Finale first, so take that opportunity! put everything you've got into stunning, debuffing, bleed/blighting... make it stupid risky to use Jester's finale early. Moves that shuffle teams are good, like Purge, Come Hither, Bolas, etc.

Also, just in general, have a really good "finisher" move in your party, or at least a trinket that buffs deathblow dealt chance. Obviously Finish Him is awesome for this, but Dirk Stab also has a little bit of Deathblow on it so it's worth it in some circumstances. (It's a secret though, so don't tell anyone! I hate fighting Dirk Stab jesters!)

At least, that's how I deal with him. I usually run a Leper, Crusader, Support Jester (no finale bc frankly I don't think it's that good) and a Vestal. It's a pretty good generalist build in my experience, but also it's really bad against stress (like just about every other build) and gets super screwed over by shuffle so it's really more for casual battling.

[Jesterofgames7712]

Abomination breaks guard and pushes people back. Shield breaker breaks guards and pulls.
Aoe skills bypass guard. Plenty of ways around MAA’s
Babysitting someone outside of stuns.

[Woldy]

Originally posted by Jesterofgames7712:

Abomination breaks guard and pushes people back. Shield breaker breaks guards and pulls.
Aoe skills bypass guard. Plenty of ways around MAA’s
Babysitting someone outside of stuns.

So i should build my team around that one Hero to succesful? That is a problem in and of itself.

[Woldy]

Originally posted by Spitfyre37:

MaA is literally just an old man that yells at people. Why is he nigh invincible to debuffs/stuns?

Also, to some extent I agree with you that Finale is pretty powerful, but it makes sense in the context of the circus, so I'd be surprised if it got changed. (frankly I'd be surprised if anything got nerfed/buffed at this point, but hey, who knows. Maybe someday Bellow won't be horrible and Leper will actually have a decent amount of Move Resist.) That being said, I do agree that Jester shouldn't be able to be guarded after using finale. It's pretty broken.

As it stands, though, I guess we need to do our best to work around the broken mess that is Butcher's Circus. For strats against Finale, I'd recommend focusing everything you've got on the Jester in the first round. Scare 'em! Jester has to be in rank 1 or 2 in order to use Finale, so make it super risky to be in that spot! In most cases, the Jester'll use a move like Battle Ballad to buff up Finale first, so take that opportunity! put everything you've got into stunning, debuffing, bleed/blighting... make it stupid risky to use Jester's finale early. Moves that shuffle teams are good, like Purge, Come Hither, Bolas, etc.

Also, just in general, have a really good "finisher" move in your party, or at least a trinket that buffs deathblow dealt chance. Obviously Finish Him is awesome for this, but Dirk Stab also has a little bit of Deathblow on it so it's worth it in some circumstances. (It's a secret though, so don't tell anyone! I hate fighting Dirk Stab jesters!)

At least, that's how I deal with him. I usually run a Leper, Crusader, Support Jester (no finale bc frankly I don't think it's that good) and a Vestal. It's a pretty good generalist build in my experience, but also it's really bad against stress (like just about every other build) and gets super screwed over by shuffle so it's really more for casual battling.

I am not saying that Finale should be nerfed, that is litterally the jesters only thing, but what i find to be annoying is that i can hardly do anything agianst it when the MAA Guards him on turn 1 if i focus the Jester, it takes my entire strategy out the window, and if the enemy team has a vestal too its gonna be impossible to kill that MAA, not so much because of the healing but the sheer insane amount of Defence he gets from defender.
The team comp i use is Arbalest for high ranged damage and heal utility and stealth removal, BH for Finisher and Repositioning, HWM for high damage and Crusader for CC and heal utility. I have nothing in my kit that can deal with those two hereos and getting my HWM or BH killed by the Jester instantly just makes it even more impossible to win the fight as its gonna be a 3v4 on round 2. Sure the jester dont deal a whole lot of damage but that's not what hes meant to do, hes a support executioner but every hero has their Strong suits and even the
finale-debuffed Jester is still a threat.

[No One]

HWM get!

Full list so far:

MAA: unstoppable.
HM: unstoppable.
DoTs: unstoppable.
Stress: unstoppable.
BH: unstoppable.
ATQ: unstoppable.
SBR: unstoppable.
VES: unstoppable.
JES: unstoppable.
FLG: unstoppable.
ARB: unstoppable.
MUS: unstoppable.
CRU: unstoppable.
♥♥♥: unstoppable.
HWM: unstoppable.

[Spitfyre37]

Originally posted by Jesterofgames7712:

Abomination breaks guard and pushes people back. Shield breaker breaks guards and pulls.
Aoe skills bypass guard. Plenty of ways around MAA’s
Babysitting someone outside of stuns.

Again, I find this argument to be pretty trash. You don't have any way of seeing who you're fighting until you're actually in the ring. The argument that "comps are easy to beat with the right squad", while true, completely ignores the fact that if you center a team around defeating one build, you'll have very little defense if you come across a different build. Abomination is great for guardbreaks, but what if you encounter a stress build? The fact that he transforms back on affliction and is super vulnerable to stress would be a problem for you.

To your credit, you are correct that there are a number of ways around shield moves, and I'm not arguing against that. However, that doesn't mean we can just write off certain moves as a non-issue because in one or two specific circumstances they aren't a problem.

[Spitfyre37]

Originally posted by Woldy:

Originally posted by Spitfyre37:

MaA is literally just an old man that yells at people. Why is he nigh invincible to debuffs/stuns?

Also, to some extent I agree with you that Finale is pretty powerful, but it makes sense in the context of the circus, so I'd be surprised if it got changed. (frankly I'd be surprised if anything got nerfed/buffed at this point, but hey, who knows. Maybe someday Bellow won't be horrible and Leper will actually have a decent amount of Move Resist.) That being said, I do agree that Jester shouldn't be able to be guarded after using finale. It's pretty broken.

As it stands, though, I guess we need to do our best to work around the broken mess that is Butcher's Circus. For strats against Finale, I'd recommend focusing everything you've got on the Jester in the first round. Scare 'em! Jester has to be in rank 1 or 2 in order to use Finale, so make it super risky to be in that spot! In most cases, the Jester'll use a move like Battle Ballad to buff up Finale first, so take that opportunity! put everything you've got into stunning, debuffing, bleed/blighting... make it stupid risky to use Jester's finale early. Moves that shuffle teams are good, like Purge, Come Hither, Bolas, etc.

Also, just in general, have a really good "finisher" move in your party, or at least a trinket that buffs deathblow dealt chance. Obviously Finish Him is awesome for this, but Dirk Stab also has a little bit of Deathblow on it so it's worth it in some circumstances. (It's a secret though, so don't tell anyone! I hate fighting Dirk Stab jesters!)

At least, that's how I deal with him. I usually run a Leper, Crusader, Support Jester (no finale bc frankly I don't think it's that good) and a Vestal. It's a pretty good generalist build in my experience, but also it's really bad against stress (like just about every other build) and gets super screwed over by shuffle so it's really more for casual battling.

I am not saying that Finale should be nerfed, that is litterally the jesters only thing, but what i find to be annoying is that i can hardly do anything agianst it when the MAA Guards him on turn 1 if i focus the Jester, it takes my entire strategy out the window, and if the enemy team has a vestal too its gonna be impossible to kill that MAA, not so much because of the healing but the sheer insane amount of Defence he gets from defender.
The team comp i use is Arbalest for high ranged damage and heal utility and stealth removal, BH for Finisher and Repositioning, HWM for high damage and Crusader for CC and heal utility. I have nothing in my kit that can deal with those two hereos and getting my HWM or BH killed by the Jester instantly just makes it even more impossible to win the fight as its gonna be a 3v4 on round 2. Sure the jester dont deal a whole lot of damage but that's not what hes meant to do, hes a support executioner but every hero has their Strong suits and even the
finale-debuffed Jester is still a threat.

Here's a thought: doesn't Arbalest have a trinket that allows shots to bypass guard on marked targets? That may help to take out the Jester early on. Admittedly it's not a perfect solution, since you have to actually have the Jester marked to use it, and the Arbalest can't attack rank 1, but with a BH there to also mark and/or crit with Collect Bounty, that might help to scare off the Jester.

[Davrick]

Originally posted by No One:

HWM get!

Title says Highwayman but post is actually about MaA? Does this one count?

[Panfilo]

There's lots of counters, and I only seldom see Jesters in the highest ranks. Guard has many things that bypass it:

-Dirk Stab (from your own Jester)
-Grave Robber with cloak and dagger Ignores guard if she attacks out of stealth
-Arbalest trinket that bypasses guard vs marked targets
-Shieldbreaker Puncture
-Abomination slam

The latter two also prevent the Jester from getting guarded in the future which means you can use them proactively. If you go first use a guard break ability on him and the Man at arms can't protect him any more.

A round 2 finale kill is a big gamble on the Jesters part as well. Keeping your health and prot high messes it up. Typically Jesters will save their finale and instead resort to Dirk Stab if they get someone on deaths door early on.

[Woldy]

Originally posted by Davrick:

Originally posted by No One:

HWM get!

Title says Highwayman but post is actually about MaA? Does this one count?

Yeah it was a Typ-o. My bad.

[Spitfyre37]

Originally posted by Woldy:

Originally posted by Davrick:

Title says Highwayman but post is actually about MaA? Does this one count?

Yeah it was a Typ-o. My bad.

Confirmed HWM doesn't count for this one.