Easily one of the most overlooked skills in strategy games like War of Ninja, learning to dissemble your opponents team is vital if you want to get higher in the ladders.

I noticed while reading Mastering the Character Swap by Mirroga, that some of it's steps require you to be able to pinpoint your enemies teams weaknesses, without actually telling you how, so I decided to make this guide.


First things first however, so What is Dissembling?
Now in War of Ninja, you have up to 40 seconds to work on Dissembling, however you must learn to do this in 10 seconds or less, otherwise you will be unable to swap Items and Characters effectivly, or even at all.

Dissembling will require that you keep up to date with Character/Item stats, Meta teams and Personal teams of players at your level. This is so you can spot rip-offs of teams (ie Teams that use one or two different characters but with a similar synergy or central character) which will greatly lower the time it takes for you to dissemble a team. Also, it is important that you learn good counter characters for any currently popular characters (ie Daiki and Amaya work well against Jun).

Now onto the proper steps:

+Step One+
Team Type?
Knowing what type of team your opponent is using is easily the single most vital step towards countering it. Currently the major teams Types are;

-Spike Teams: Quite simply these are teams based around cheap and quick damage. Counter strategies seem good, but are really just a waste of time as very few counters in-game at the moment deal damage and so just slow down the inevitable. Instead try to turn your team into a Cost increaser/Energy control team as they will destroy enemy synergies. Yume is currently the best spike team counter as her cost increase also deals good damage AND her tactic stun prevents almost all prep spikers from prepping.

-Hybrid Teams: These are teams which have no single character type in their ranks. The best example of one of these is the Meta team Akira-Shoji-Yuzuki. The reason these teams are so deadly is because they have multiple high priority targets, making it hard to pinpoint exactly who you should be targetting. Most people will mistakenly try to take out Yuzuki because of her anti-invuln, but realistically Shoji is the most dangerous character on that team with his huge affliction. There's no set way of countering a hybrid, you instead have to look at it and decide which character is going to deal the most damage during the match or else is going to be the most deadly overall.

-Instant Kill Teams: These are teams which feature characters which can deal 80+ damage in one turn. The most common Instant Kill Teams at the moment are Ryu-Jun-Other teams as both Jun and Ryu are very defensible high priority spikers. Jun can kill any character in-game in 4 turns with a total of 140 damage, 80 of which is piercing, Ryu likewise in 4 turns can deal 80 affliction damage for basically one Intelligence energy. The best way to counter these teams would be constantly stunning one (or the only if that's the case) of the Instant Killers while trying to spike out the other one or two (very rarely will you see a full instant kill team). The most dangerous instant killer at the moment is Jun, closely followed by Jikkosu with her broken channeling ignoral.

-Affliction Teams: Affliction damage bypasses Protectors, Limitation and Reduction. The main affliction type at the moment is Burning, so the best defense is the give a character Cleansing Water from the outset. The best counter strategy in general is to swap in a character like Hai or Jinsei and equip them with Painkillers or Cleansing Water, thus allowing you to nullify as many types of affliction as possible.

-Stun Teams: These are teams which have two or more reliable stuns in their total skillset (ie Asami or Yukigaaru). Counter with Warbanner of Resistance, Sake or Stun ignoral characters like Tadao and Kamiko.

-Energy Control Teams: These teams normally become Meta everytime a new Drainer/Leecher is released. However they almost always have crap damage output, exceptions are Amaya and Kao. Counter with characters like Jinsei or Ryu.

-Wall Teams: These are teams based around invulnerability or partial-invulnerability. They are easily and completly countered by a Yuzuki swap and so rarely pose much of a threat. Other counter characters include any of the Kozan with their Village Item equipped.

-AOE Teams: Aoe teams aim to damage all enemies at once. Their attacks generally deal a lot of damage, but spread out over your entire team. Counters are generally the best defense as even counters like Yukigaarus will stop and ENTIRE melee Aoe attack, not just the part aimed at him.

-Tank Teams: Tank teams are arguably the single most dangerous team type in the game. Tank teams revolve around dealing high damage while retaining survivability. Current in-game tanks include Takeko and Yuurin, both of whom double as heavy AOE users. Tanks can only really be stopped by energy control teams as they always have high energy costs



+Step Two+
Priority?
There are a number of factors which determine priority. The main one, and ironically the most commonly overlooked, is Synergy.
Take the Meta team, Yuudai-Asami-Hikaru for example. Most people when faced with this team try to take out Hikaru first, which is entirely wrong. Hikaru requires one specific and one random for every one of his attacks, Asami requires one energy and can deal up to 35 damage, or else can stun you with far mor frequency. Yuudai obviously does not factor into priority as he is, 90% of the time, going to be equipped with Katana, which results in him taking high amounts of damage whenever he attacks. Asami is the highest priority in this team as once she's gone, Hikaru loses a lot of effectivness too with the lowered energy gains.
Priority is a vital part of Dissembling. Only an idiot leaves Jun for last (Perma-Stuns or similar aside) in a regular battle situation, and inversly, only an idiot targets Arasoi first. Learn your character priorities off-by heart, it is vital in almost every battle situation to know who exactly to target.

Here's a general Overview of how priority works:
Which character has the lowest cost?
Which character has the lowest health?
Which character affects their teammates the most?
Which character has the greatest variety of effects?
Which character uses the least number of types of energy?
Which character has the least amount of clash with their teammates?

The character that comes out with the highest number of positive answers to this is your first target. Then you target the character with the second highest number of positive answers and so on so forth.

+Step Three+
Items?
Items cannot be viewed until the game has started, so you must not lock yourself into a priority set-up until you've seen your enemies items. If you face Asami-Hikaru-Yuudai, and suddenly the items are the expected respective Fire Arrows-Honoo Flame-Katana, but the unexpected respective Bow of the Aoiro-Fire Bomb-Feather, suddenly Hikaru is now your number one priority to kill. However, items will very rarely have such a large effect as this and most of the time you will be fairly safe to just follow your original plan, but you should always check just to be safe

That's all for now, if you can think of anything to add, please post in the comments below and it will be added as necissarry

First...

Nice guide, I thought It had already existed.

EDIT: It will be nice if you link my guide

Nice guide. I'd definitely be very helpful if you list the characters according to the specification. A list where each character is catagorized into the above listed types. This will be helpful, without having to decide for yourself if a character is tank, or stun or even AOE.

Well, anyone with common knowledge of things can know without much help, but for the others, I think it would be quite useful.

Alse, "-Affliction Teams: Affliction damage bypasses Protectors, Limitation and Reduction. The main affliction type at the moment if (should be is there) Burning,"

Nice guide. I'd definitely be very helpful if you list the characters according to the specification. A list where each character is catagorized into the above listed types. This will be helpful, without having to decide for yourself if a character is tank, or stun or even AOE.

Well, anyone with common knowledge of things can know without much help, but for the others, I think it would be quite useful.

Alse, "-Affliction Teams: Affliction damage bypasses Protectors, Limitation and Reduction. The main affliction type at the moment if (should be is there) Burning,"

Thanks for the typo, and that seems like it would be nice to add

@Sand: I made this before, but it was out of date and under developt, so I fixed it up and reposted

Very helpful guide, thank you! :)

If you have the time, I would recommend adding a few more examples; i.e. list particularly powerful or popular teams and explained what the kill order should be and why. I think that would really help to cement the information.

Great guide! Thank you!

In your overview of how priority works, you should probably also include damage output. For example, characters like Saigai, Jun and Ryu can dramatically increase the damage they will be dealing if you let them set up for a few turns. You would generally take out Saigai before you took out Asami even though Asami fits into more of the things you currently have listed.

This is an awesome guide, though. Basic things like this are very important but often overlooked.

In your overview of how priority works, you should probably also include damage output. For example, characters like Saigai, Jun and Ryu can dramatically increase the damage they will be dealing if you let them set up for a few turns. You would generally take out Saigai before you took out Asami even though Asami fits into more of the things you currently have listed.

This is an awesome guide, though. Basic things like this are very important but often overlooked.

Wrong
Saigai is a target to block, Asami is a target to kill

This is because all of Saigai's output skills require specific energy, and his main can be mostly stopped by one item, whereas Asami's most used output skill requires a single random energy, thus Asami can keep working eficiently with less teammates, whereas Saigai needs them in order to keep energy consistant.
Asami is also easier to kill, thus making her a better target to reduce your opponents energy gain and thus chances to use Saigai's skills AND his overall synergy.

Indeed a great guide. Quite Useful. Good Work! ^^