General Skywalker Soft Counters

General Skywalker is surely meta defining, as he should be with those insane requirements! A minimum of 15 characters are needed to be 7* and fairly well worked to unlock the hero of the Galactic Republic.  A couple words of warning before we dive into this discussion:

1. We don’t know the best way to run General Skywalker or in what teams, and ARC Trooper hasn’t been released yet.  All of this will be subject to change as the community fine tunes him with an infinite amount of monkeys keying away at an infinite number of typewriters. These are soft counters at the time this article is being written in October 2019.

2. These are Soft Counters, which means that 100% win rates are not guaranteed, and as you will see in many of these videos, you should expect to lose one or more character per run if you win at all, which means a lot of lost banners in GAC.  No Hard Counters exist at this time. The definition of a soft counter for the purpose of this article is a team that is a viable counter when it has greater mods/gear and human strategy behind it. A soft counter has no shot at mod and gear parity and should be used with caution. It should be noted my guild bans the use of soft counters in TW, and soft counters should always be used with caution and only when no hard counter options are available.

All of the soft counters considered today will be against R7 General Skywalker’s, except this one.  I chose to include this one because it’s both intriguing and likely to still be viable at R7. The team involves Commander Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca, Han Solo, C3PO, and Thrawn. This counter really prefers some relics on Han Solo and Chewbacca, and then overcomes the team with complete damage superiority.  If you’ve tuned your CLS team to counter JKR, then you stand a good chance at counter General Skywalker as well.

Check out this video by Bulldog1205 to see CLS and Thrawn in action:

While Isolate is very easily cleansed on GenSky and it will not disrupt Five’s zeta where he sacrifices himself to save another clone and then adds his total stats on to each 501st Clone trooper, it can still be useful for cleansing buffs and giving some extra survivability to another member of your team.  The basic strategy here is to hide Nihilus, dispel Fives taunt and then Annihilate GenSky first. The biggest issue with most of the soft counters is that General Skywalker becomes a real menace in a 1v5 matchup, and it’s near impossible to avoid losing a couple people when he gains all those bonuses. Darth Nihilus avoids that whole dilema with his Annihilate.

Check out this great video by Kiaowe of Traya in action against GenSky.  I would recommend another character like Thrawn or Sith Trooper with a Defense oriented modset in place of Bastilla Shan Fallen since GenSky gives the entire team a large amount of bonus Tenacity and Rex gives Tenacity Up to all: 

Padme is a double edged sword, as the clones attacking out of turn will give her team more stacks of protection, but the team does seem to wane during the 1v5 last leg of the fight especially with all the offense he gains from all the buffs Padme’s team has gained.  Definitely expect to lose some people in the 1v5 stage of the matchup. This is probably the soft counter I would recommend the least. Only use this option if you have no other choice.

Check out this awesome video by It's Just Ian to watch this counter in action.

Sith Empire can be effective against GenSky since Ferocity adds more potency than GenSky gives Tenacity, and magically Anakin is not immune to fear. Bulldog1205 points out the extra flavor of him being susceptible to fear given fear of padme’s death lead him to his fall to the Dark Side of the Force.  Watching this video, it just felt like Malak wasn’t bringing much to the table-- I think there’s still room to tweak Sith Empire as a counter to GenSky. Sith Marauder could certainly add some much needed DPS to help topple GenSky quicker. GenSky’s zeta “The Chosen One” especially disincentivizes using Malak against him.

Check out this Great Video by Bulldog1205 on the Sith Empire Counter to GenSky.

Thank you for joining me over your morning cup of coffee or your after work beer to learn more about swgholand and how to counter General Skywalker.  I'd like to caution again that there are no hard counters to General Skywalker at this time, and the use of any Soft Counter should be discussed with your guild before attempting in Territory War, but I hope this advice helps you turn around a match you would have lost in Grand Arena or helped you climb to a new reward tier in Arena.  I'm very excited to see CLS, Traya, Padme, and Sith Empire teams fine tuned to counter General Skywalker more effectively as well as new and exciting teams yet to be tried.  I also suspect General Skywalker teams will change in time-- for instance does he have to be the lead? May the Force be with you on the Holotables!