I'm with everybody on wanting bug fixes first.
d4 whiffing in the corner is a problem. If you have the opponent in the corner you cannot launch off of 22 or b1 or 3~d4 because the sword will whiff. On block f23~d4 will whiff against most characters and I've had 3~d4 whiff on block as well. Ares still manages to do pretty well in the corner, mostly off of set ups after a combo, but that's more than half his pressure and mix up game taken away once he gets to the corner. That's pretty fucked up.
112~d4 should also be fixed in the corner during juggles, we shouldn't have to time it the way we do but that change takes less priority than all the grounded stuff that whiffs. b1~d4 can also whiff midscreen for some reason. I'd hope there's some general fix or easy change to d4's hitbox they could make that would solve all of these
Making the second hit of 22 hit mid consistently would be nice, but I wouldn't consider it a priority. Most characters have strings like this, and in Ares case it only affects a few match ups and isn't too bad to work around.
The thing where you have to go to neutral before doing b4 if sword is recharging is annoying too. I think I've lost matches because of that before; you shouldn't have to stop blocking to throw Axe.
Also, the way forward advancing string make wake up teleport go in front of the opponent. This is not inputs getting crossed up while you're down, it's some kind of weird bug or mechanic where the opponent is clearly on one side of you as you're on the ground, you input wake up teleport behind, they do a forward advancing string into your invincibility frames, the animation for teleport behind happens, then you appear right in front of their string and get full combo punished. No reason for it, that's exactly the kind of pressure wake up teleport should be getting you out of(the opponent's not doing anything to respect that wake up option, just blindly pressuring without any thought) and you can't even blow them up for that with wake up Godsmack because they'd go under it.
As far as buffs, I don't know what to do. He has some huge problems against a lot of the top tier characters and he doesn't exactly demolish most of the low tier characters. I don't know what changes can be reasonably made without doing a huge overhaul though. I'm also sort of a proponent of just letting Paulo and Hector and Ed Boon do what they want and switching characters or dropping the game if I don't like it, I don't want to campaign for buffs. But since getting more community feedback is part of the reason we didn't get a patch today I'll throw in my two cents about stuff they could change if they're looking to improve Ares.
The biggest problem is wake ups. Ares wake ups are just completely non-intimidating. Every character in the game can punish Ares for trying to wake up while still being completely safe or getting free pressure if Ares decides not to wake up. I don't know how many people are doing it yet (the guys I play with offline have it down, no one really does it to me online, and there isn't enough tournament footage of Ares so I have no idea about that) but in the future it's going to be a huge problem that I think could prevent Ares from ever being tournament viable unless some really broken shit gets discovered in other aspects of his game. I don't have any idea what to do to fix it though. Adding more invincibility frames to his wake ups won't help. Even if you made Godsmack and Teleport completely invincible all the way through recovery (which a terrible idea and not something they should do) the opponent could still easily get free pressure. A better backdash or allowing his trait to be used as a wake up might help some
Some kind of increase to his mobility would be nice. Either a slightly faster walk speed or a little more distance on his back dash. Even a better forward dash would help, just because the range on his normals is so mediocre and the few characters I'm trying to get in on can pretty effectively keep Ares out.
I think his teleport could be faster. Either make the start up a few frames faster or the recovery a few frames faster. As it is now it's very difficult to use for counter zoning(you can't teleport out of the way of most projectiles on reaction and even if you do or you get a good read you often can't punish), basically impossible to use to whiff punish(too slow and stuff auto corrects), and isn't useful for mobility. I don't want a huge change, but I think shaving off a few frames on either side could make a significant difference to Ares players without being broken.
I'm a little confused why everyone is complaining about his trait. With the space control, damage, and knockdown Straight Axe gives on hit it makes sense that you can't trade. Sword is fast enough that it rarely gets stuff when I'm trying to trade. Maybe a change so that Sword/Axe becomes 'disconnected' at a certain point. Maybe around midscreen, so that it doesn't travel full screen just to get stuffed and inch in front of the opponents face.
Trait is fine on block. Downward Sword and Axe are both safe at all distance and Rising Sword/Axe are positive. Straight Sword is safe anywhere other than point blank and Straight Axe is safe from any distance where it makes sense to throw it out. Both are positive at full screen.
Recovery on his trait doesn't make sense to me. Why does Ares trait take longer to recharge than Superman's when Ares needs his sword to even combo off of most of his strings? It's already difficult for Ares to punish in many scenarios and it's even worse when your opponent does something punishable and you can't get good damage out of it because Sword isn't charged.
I'd guess that part of the reason sword takes so long to come back is so that you can't use it multiple times in combos, but even then gravity and damage scaling solve any real issues and there's no reason for Axe to have the same recharge time and there could also be a different recovery time on straight or downward sword so that those are more viable. Straight sword helps his zoning game immensely and being able to use that without giving up your ability to combo for 9 seconds would be completely fair.
I'd kind of like to see invisibility last longer, especially the MB version. It might be the length it is because they don't want you to do something like ending a combo in mb invis and getting a combo with an invisible mix up and still having enough invis time left to finish the combo and get another invisible mix up. Which is fair, but I'd like to be able to use invis fullscreen in my zoning game (there's no animations to react to - fireballs and axes and swords just appear coming at you and teleport becomes very difficult to punish) and with how short it is it makes it very hard to justify spending the meter, especially since I'm also working to avoid getting hit so I don't lose it that way. Even if they did some trade off like MB invis goes away once you land a normal but other it lasts longer I would take that(it'd almost be a double buff because it'd make combos you land while invisible easier to perform).
This one's a little weird, but I would really, really like the hitbox on his d1 altered. Its range is fine as it is, but it needs to connect higher. The problem is that so many characters float and they actually go over the d1. You can still connect with d1, but you need to be right up in their ass. Try testing d1 against Nightwing and against Wonder Woman. It literally has about 1/3 the effective range against Wonder Woman. Outside of his d1 he's already a very slow character(his 8f high s1 is his only other move faster than 10 frames, and it's not fast as far as s1's go and difficult to use because they're often already crouching because of d1) so neutering the range on it against certain characters really hurts.
The issue also has more to do with the position of the legs than the floating itself(it's only when they float with their legs back, likes Supes, WW, Raven, and GL when he's moving, character like Black Adam that float with their legs in a more normal position that's not tucked behind them aren't an issue) so it could also be fixed by normalizing the hurtbox on those characters. This could also fix the problem for other characters that may have the same issue(off the top of my head I don't know of any, but wouldn't be surprised if it at least affects the other characters with low d1's)
Ares also has a problem punishing. I don't know how to solve it, but there's a bunch of stuff that's supposed to be punishable or is punishable by most of the cast that Ares can't punish well(Scorpion's MB teleport or Black Adam's non-MB divekick if it doesn't hit very high, among others). Whiff punishing and punishing back dashes on read also ranges from hard to impossible.
Ares generally isn't getting particularly good damage anyway off of anything other than a jump in or blocked attack that's punishable by 3d2 so the complete lack of ability to punish in some cases really hurts. This is another one that I'm not sure how to fix, though. It’d probably require a major change to one of his strings.
I also think nerfs to the top tiers will help Ares. Most of his really big problem match ups are character that are already cried about a lot and give most of the cast problems. So changes to those characters could function as Ares buffs and do a lot to help the character in tournament.
Edit: I just want to point out that the last one wasn't a call for nerfs to other characters, just that I suspect some nerfs are already coming and that those will help Ares. I don't have a problem with NRS nerfing but characters(I even think they probably should for certain issues), but I don't want to be the guy calling for other peoples mains to get nerfed
