UPDATE: Removed old post about cc-chaining and abusing the cc meta. Added priority blocking mechanics and few more laws to abide to positioning.
Laws to abide to positioning
1. 1,2,3,4,5 is sequenced in skills
2. If 1 is a healer and 2 initiates, the sequence will carry on to 3 4 5 and back to 1.
-if 1's initiation range is shorter than 2, and 2 initiates first, the sequence will carry on to 3 4 5 and back to 1
3. If 1 initiates, and 2 is CC-ed, sequence will follow to 3 4 5 and back to 2.
4. If 1 initiates, and 2 and 4 is cced, sequence will follow to 3,5 and back to 2 then 4.
5. Arena position 1 of your team will always draw aggro to their position 1(no matter if range or melee)
6. Arena position 2 of your team will always draw aggro to their position 2(no matter if range or melee)
7. Aggro will only drop and swap IF the hero has not attacked for several seconds approximately 5-6 seconds, and detects the nearest hero next to him
e.g if your position 1 is confused for 4 seconds followed by another 3 seconds flinch, he will no longer target their position 1 and instead, simply the nearest to him.
*Note: Skill priority is also based off it's range. Placing a melee skill like wintere on 1 or 2 does not give him priority. Mobility affects this as well, the first person on your team with the longest range to reach the first opponent will have highest priority. Hence: An Idris with high movement speed will upmost be guaranteed 100% priority.
Extreme upgrade Patch & Changes to arena:
Priority Blocking
Post patch, choosing your initiation has been more vital than ever. Prepatch, you could throw and 2 type CC in 1 and 2 and it didn't matter. Since if 2 went first, 3 4 5 are cc based heroes and then finally 1 will go after all the CC. Now, if you did the same, and 2 initiated, by the time 3 4 5 goes, 1 would be a sitting dead duck, and die probably even before he uses his skill.
So what should I do?
This is how you priority block:
Understand your overall strategy first. Know what kind of team you want to make, whether it is a burst, overall cc-damge tanky type, melee based team is the first step. 2nd step is to understand how you can prioritize them and position them well. and 3rd step is to understand it's detection range and base mobility.
Priority blocking with a healer:
The ideal situation priority blocking with a healer:
What happens if their position 2 has an extremely high mobility champion? Then you need to create the ideal situation so you don't mess up: Attachment
Understanding your hero's skill detection range and mobility is key to priority blocking. Next up, i'll show you some type of teams that fully uses this to their advantage, overcoming even the hardest of teams.
patch changes rundown:
1. CC resist was buffed slightly on armor
2. Defence attack hp on all 3 item types has been increased
- this means everything now is tankier more or less.
3. Position 1,2 gap distance has been increased from 3,4,5 - this means, initiators such as idris,deb,ifrita etc. has gone down in value, they no longer can hit 3-5 units, but 1-3 maximum.
4. bonus eff, cooldown has been removed from items
- I'd like to point out to those people who were angry about this: Does it make sense, that everone who achieved these 5* items, were already considered end game? Meaning: there's no further progression. Revival rings were Best in slot. Hell weapon drops were uneccessary, the 5* versions were good enough. What i'm trying to say is, prior to these patch, 5* weapons, rings, with 5 cc characters, the game was done, you could quit because that's all there is, it would make no difference if you had a graves or deb, all you needed was any 5 characters with Cc and these 5* items.
CC META IS DEAD
- if you are using 5 x cc, note that you're not going to be doing any damage more or less.
For the time being, until I have more time:
These are the general strategies that will work now(they still need to fix the DoT damage)
1. Suicide healers with mobility
- i explained this a long time ago
2. Hard flinch initiators like Ciel, dmitry, humba(this was explained before), rabbit, mistra
3. Aoe map wide CC/flinch initiators: Lana, Lyonesse, blue fairy girl ice thingy
4. Mobiity now plays a huge role. If you want your frontline to soak damage, and you have really hard hitting backliners; high base mobility + mobility armor heroes on 1, 2 will seperate a huge gap, causing alot of aoe skills to focus on your front line only.
5. Skill prioritizing and mobility is extremely important now. Pre-patch, if you threw a lana on 1, and graves on 2, it didnt matter who initiated, if their position 2 was moving fast, graves would initiate and 3,4,5 would just dump CC all the way till lana could throw her CC again.
- now, if this happens, lana would be dead. Hence, prioritizing your intitator is vital now. Understand your intiator's range, and make sure position 2 does not ever take the priority in any situation.
e.g: If you did idris 1, cynthia 2, there's no way your skill priority will be messed up. If you did: Wintere 1, idris 2, theres a chance idris will go first and wintere will do nothing for a long time.
When I have more time i will go more into it, in the mean time, look into these strategies
If you already have read the below from the old guide, please skip on to th new section. The rules still apply in law of positioning, but everything else has changed. Scroll down to see the new updated. PLEASE READ LAWS TO ABIDE TO POSITIONING. Regarding the tier list 6* I'm busy revamping it now, too much needs to be changed. wait for it.
To the people that caused the drama: I figured that you guys won't even understand what I write. good luck.
1. Keeping your ratings
If your setup and positioning is good, most people will lose their win streaks against you and you're able to have an easier time with climbing. So how do you test if your "defence" is good? run your team on auto when battling other people. This will give you a good understanding of how your team's AI reacts in defence battles.
2. Position
Generally this is how it works:
Position 1: Tank cc or debuff or range cc
Left of screen frontline as attacker. The person here is usually most often a tank. This position is the most open to CC, and you want to have as much cc resist on him as possible. It also grants him the highest skill priority
Note: If you do want to use a range cc on position 1, do make sure position 3 has a fast tank *This is only applicable to mapwide CC like Idris or Ifrita, remember, once you go, it's their turn, which means if you have a cone CC, positions 245 is going to be very vulnerable
Position 2: Tank or ranged CC
Ranged CC- heroes like Idris/rabbit/Para etc. Can be placed on 2 to have very high priority on their skill. They also force the opponent's positions to stay in their formation close, allowing your other team members to follow up on their aoe cc(if you allow them to split up, aoe cc's like char or line skill shots will miss most members). The ranged CCer will then move a little behind your tanks in a safer position after using his skill. I highly recommend putting a ranged CC or line attack skills on position 2. However, it must be a CC that is similar size to Idris and Char.
Tank- if your skill isn't something like immortal skeleton, where he has a huge range, you're going to get cc-ed before you even cast, so if you're looking to put a tank on position 2, make sure he's stacked on crowd control resist.
Position 3: Melee attacker, ranged attacker with a large aoe,
melee attacker- At this position, you're usually safe from initial CC, unless of course the aoe is huge. Most often you want a hard hitting attacker/debuffer here. Heroes like wintere, Song, Mistra works good with your position 1 Tank. Most often you're going to find position 1,2 2v2 against their position 1,2
ranged attacker with large aoe- Heroes like Warp, Diel work good here due to their large Aoe skills which can reach opponent's 2,4,5. If you use heroes like para or kana, you'd find yourself hitting only 2 or 3 heroes at a time ultimately wasting your skills.
Position 4:
This position is extremely situational. And works differently for alot of heroes. Heroes like Graves works great here, he usually auto attacks while moving forward, allowing him to hit alot of people at the same time with his auto attacks. Heroes like Dark Deb has her position here where she can hit almost everyone with her skill. Remember position 4 also tend to love to cluster with 2 and 5. Making it a 3v3 battle. You usually want a CC-er on this position to help against a 3v3 bottom of the map.
Position 5: Tank CC or Ranged CC
Tank CC- If position 2 is your ranged CC, then you need a tank to move forward to protect him. As mentioned, 2,4,5 is mostly a 3v3 battle. It's a CC-Party on this positions.
Ranged CC- If position 2 is your Tank, Placing a ranged CC or a hard hitting range attacker is best on this position to wipe out the 3v3 at the bottom asap.
All in all, these strategies may not be in your favor if opponent is using confuse, or a displacer hero (heroes like song, wintere, creed tend to rush all the way into your backline, making your skills focused on the suicide melee. Then again, confusion is a double edged sword, where your melee could end up in their back line too.
There's much more to all these, so if people find this useful, I'll come back to write more. Have fun!
Regarding 5* and below: The concept of the above still works, a guildmate of mine climbed 100+ ratings easily just by swapping around positions and even beat a 2 6* team with 40k more hp than him, so you still can make your way to those free gems.
Healers in general are extremely bad, with the exception of nurse, cynthia with invulnerability where sometimes they pull off some RNG play, and waste skills on shields.
The AI is terrible for heals, so imagine this: for a single healer you are putting in, you could have used a 5 man aoe damage/cc skill user, Good thing is though, healers aid you in clearing scenario faster.
IF you have no choice but to use healers:
Melee healers: Throw them to suicide as tanks on 1.2, if you got no strong front liner CC and on 3,5 if you have a good front liner CC on 1 or 2. Put the healer behind or in front of the CCer.
Ranged healers: position 4. Try to save 3 or 5 for your high damage dealers/CC