So it's late and I thought I'd do a knowledge dump on the Ares matchup (My primary training partner is @
4x4lo8o, who can help give insight as well)
I will never put MU numbers out there, but I have a strong feeling Deathstroke takes this one pretty convincingly. I have a notebook with me that I use for studying characters and one of the first things I always look for is simply this:
How can they punish Low Gunshots?
Well, Ares doesn't have a lot to offer there. The only way he will get a punish is if he's relatively close enough to land a back 1 or down sword, neither of which will grant him that much damage, making the risk/reward pretty skewed. Of course, like any character, Ares can attempt to jump over the shots at range, but now he's guessing and this is in no way character specific. All in all, I would say Ares fares very poorly against Deathstroke's bullets.
The other problem I can foresee is that he simply has no way to approach safely that doesn't involve throwing out a teleport or MB teleport just for the hell of it. His jump
will be AA'd, whether it be by d2, sword flip or quick fire, and his ground approach is pretty standard, with only back 1 and godsmack serving as (just okay) extra ground options, neither of which will help him get in on Deathstroke any easier. He simply allows Deathstroke to almost freely build meter by being forced to have to take low shots over and over again since his Dark Energy and his sword lose to them, and his trait axe can be quick fired on reaction from most ranges, which wins since the axe goes away on a trade.
One thing Ares usually has as a plus is his ability to blow up the okizeme game with his mb teleport, but Deathstroke is an oki master who has enders that will even avoid the mb teleport punishes while beating all his other possible options. Simply ending the majority of his combos in 323, 23, jump 3 will be enough to cover any jumping out, backdashing and godsmacks, as well as land in time to avoid any possible mb teleport punish. This allows Deathstroke the option of pressuring Ares pretty freely after a combo, which is a rare thing to have against him. Even in the corner, attempting to meaty with b2 or b1 xx sword spin will cover him trying to teleport on wakeup, and will only grant him the ability to mb teleport far away from you, where he can't get damage. Worse, back 2 or back 1 xx sword spin is hit confirmable in the corner to mb sword spin, where Deathstroke can get around 35%. In the words of Batman, stay down!
Lastly, Ares usually has a hard time getting away with anything xx down sword on block, but Deathstroke can actually get out of it even easier. Deathstroke's space jump is enough to allow him to slip right through the down sword as it is coming out from a down 1, which lets him land a jump 3 combo which can be devastating based on screen position. Once again, the risk/reward is being skewed in Deathstroke's favor on almost every level.
Now of course, Ares one big caveat is that yes, he has a teleport, and as such doing most shots on him is pretty risky. While this is annoying, it really only will silence a part of Deathstroke's game, not the whole of it, which Ares still has a problem with. Being particularly slow does not help Ares when playing the odd shimmy found in Injustice, as he is pretty poor at catching back jumps and back walkers and his own walk and dash speeds are nothing to really special enough to warrant mention. As such, when he can't just teleport in, he's walking and dashing his way in, which means that even for a reduced chip Deathstroke, Ares is still very much playing his game the majority of the time.
So, to give it a TL;DR:
-Ares has little to stop low shots beyond the universal option of simply jumping and teleporting in on read projectiles. This opens up a great source of chip damage and meter build for Deathstroke, as well as being a consistently excellent mid range tool that Ares will have to jump to avoid.
-Has to play Deathstrokes's game on his way in. Ares MB and regular teleports are a bit stronger here but again, more of it relies on reads then actually being a really effective option against Deathstroke specifically.
-Deathstroke's enders allow him to freely pressure Ares on wakeup, even with mb teleport. Which of course means that on knockdowns, Deathstroke reigns again.
-Ares' mixups involving down sword can be jumped out of by Deathstroke, which turns it into a fairly risky option some of the time.
Again, I am not writing down any MU numbers, mainly just contributing my thoughts. I believe that Deathstroke is winning in most aspects of the game and the risk reward is more often than not in his favor for Ares to remain favorable. Plain and simple.
