Quote Originally Posted by Slashley View Post
Awakened Ares gains the very impressive self-Elem+ 50%, which is basically her own personal Belial. Combined with her higher rate of Combo due to being on fire, once Awakened she does deal quite nice damage. Even then... honestly? Awakened Ares doesn't impress me much. I'd drop Yamaraja before Ares, but only because I have Amaterasu's Blind to somewhat cover up for the loss of combo-. But if I had any two of Mars/Svarog/Raguel, I'd drop Ares (currently running Ares, Yamaraja, Amaterasu, Heph).
You'd prefer Raguel over awakened Ares? Seriously? The only encounter i can think of where you really want BP currently would be soloing raids, but then again, for Amaru I subbed out Brynhildr instead of Ares for Raguel, because Ares was just too important to lose for my team. What else is there? AQ4 Joan beats BP by so much, no matter how new you are. If you can't beat her with Joan, you won't be able to beat her with BP either. And Ares really helps push through wave 1 easier. Upcoming guild orders? Ares takes care of trash, once you enter wave 5, you'll have burst up, so the only important part is getting to rage asap so you can burst -> Ares great for it. Advents don't have much HP -> Ares nuke once again shines.

The only reason Ares often doesn't make it into an ideal team is that there are other SSRs that can either do her job a bit better (Uriel f.e.) or do her job + more (Svarog f.e.). But if you don't have any of those, she's still a great addition to a team and definitely not worse than any SRs. I'd even use Konohana + Ares over Raguel + Brynhildr 90% of the time if I had to decide between the 2.