Alliance War Season 19: Updates to Path Identities and New Nodes! [ June 30]

Summoners,

After his defeat at the hands of the Summoner and Carina, the Grandmaster has been an elder without a calling. Despite the problems and conflicts that the Grandmaster and The Collector have caused, they are still Carina’s family, and she loves them very much.

Instead of banishing them to a far off land, she’s worked with her council to create a plan to keep the two of them busy, and out of trouble.

The Universal Gamesman

Carina knows that a game with changing rulesets and unpredictable pieces is the perfect distraction to keep En Dwi Gast out of trouble. Under her supervision, The Grandmaster will transform Alliance Wars into his tournament, where he seeks the strongest Alliances every season to crown as his victors!

Recreating the Battlefield

The Grandmaster has never been shy about wanting to mould the Contest to his vision, and making sure his presence is noticed. He’ll be starting with the Maps on which you fight.

So first, we’re going to take a look at the new Nodes, Path Identities, and Layouts of the Grandmaster’s New Maps. All Map Changes will take effect on June 24th!

New Maps

First, we've got 2 Brand New Maps! One for Alliances playing on Easy and Normal, and one for Alliances playing on Intermediate, Hard, Challenger, and Expert. If you'd like to take a closer look, we've attached the High-Resolution versions of these maps to this post.

These new more simplified Maps eliminate Portals and bring the entire Battlegroup back together and key points throughout the Map.

Easy and Normal:

Intermediate, Hard, Challenger, and Expert:

New Local Nodes

The Grandmaster has crafted the following nodes for Alliances on the Intermediate, Hard, Challenger, or Expert Maps.

Path Identities

If you like to plan ahead, the Grandmaster is happy to provide you with a list of all buffs on all nodes across the Maps. There are lots to look at, so we've attached the lists of Nodes in the next post.

Matchmaking Updates

The Grandmaster wants to ensure that his tournament stays as competitive as possible. To do so, he is updating the parameters of Matchmaking. Matchmaking will now emphasize your Alliance's War Rating above all else. This will ensure that Alliances vying for the crown will be competing against other top Alliances.

This will be a big adjustment for a lot of Alliances. Currently, many Alliances are either have an inflated War Rating or a Deflated War rating due to the current system. To expedite the process of Alliances finding their "true" War Rating, we will be reducing every Alliance's War Rating by 50%. This will affect every Alliance in-game and will accelerate the rate at which Alliance's find their true position faster because of the concentrated War Ratings of all Alliances.

The Change to Matchmaking and the War Rating reduction will occur on July 8th.

What's Next?

There's still so much to reveal about Season 19 and beyond. Next week, we'll cover:
- Reward Changes
- Defense Tactics and Attack Tactics
- Alliance War Solo Events

Remember, Alliance Wars Season 19 Starts on July 7th, and there will be no war starting on July 5th!

Stay tuned for more information on everything else about Season 19!

Comments

Carmel1

Stunning reflection with Flow! It's still there. Goodbye war. I don't want to waste items on stupid Mojo or Dora fighting only with magik all the time @Kabam Miike

Yeah, also one of the minis.
ugly design

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hungryhungrybbq

amazing job, you just entirely killed Ghost and Quake, who is the next? Corvus and Doom I guess?
I was told many many times flow killed corvus
Not entirely, with proper boost you still can play Corvus against flow, but it's very expensive.
But quake against Stubborn, she is dead I'm afraid.

And Ghost.

Gamer

amazing job, you just entirely killed Ghost and Quake, who is the next? Corvus and Doom I guess?
I was told many many times flow killed corvus
Not entirely, with proper boost you still can play Corvus against flow, but it's very expensive.
But quake against Stubborn, she is dead I'm afraid.

Well just take a blok hits before the aftershock. And should be find

Rotelly

Korg on mix master with stubborn is a horrible idea

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hungryhungrybbq

The Stubborn global node is clearly an attack on Ghost and Quake players by the developers in my opinion. Why are Defender Tactics even still in the game after all the negative feedback? That's another discussion though. I'm really not happy about the idea of character bans in content via global node. At least with local nodes and path identities, you still have the ability to pick and choose which attackers will be successful for which paths or encounters, but when you use global nodes to ban attackers from an entire map.. it feels oppressive and controlling. Like our choices are being removed from us. After reading the roadmaps recently, I thought that restrictive content was something we were moving away from. Yet, here we are, business as usual.

I didn't use Quake or Ghost for a long time in AW because I was on path 7 (hidden nodes). I was using the same attackers over and over. It was getting stale. Usually Omega/Sabre and a third depending on common fights/minis/boss. I personally found Omega to be one of the safest options for hidden fights. So that's who I brought...every time.

With the removal of hidden nodes, I was excited at the prospect of being able to choose to bring whoever I wanted to attack. Depending on whatever my new path would be and the matchups. Freedom to use champs I want to use, not champs I need to use. And yes, I want the option to use Quake or Ghost sometimes. As well as the rest of the roster I've worked hard to build over years of playing the game. Those two champs in particular, take a ton of time investment to learn how to use them effectively. Please stop telling us who we can and cannot use via global nodes. As I said, you've already released plenty of counter champs and local nodes in an attempt to change the meta. Banning champs via global nodes is going to far.

Don't worry, players will still buy your new champions on their own (as long as they are useful and designed well). You don't need to try to force us to stop using our older champions to accomplish this. We want to use all of them, old and new.

Seraphion

Oh man. Offseason is still Flow. I was so hoping they would change or delete it bc its just so boring to play against. 1-2 look how many crits you had. Back of parry. 1-2 bait a Special. This is so bad. Everybody hates it (95% at least) just remove it. Or you know. Make the attacker tactic usefull. Bc if its doing nothing.

Mart83

There’s some horrible new nodes combined with flow again... season 3 of flow wars it is, stubborn doesn’t even seem that bad if you’re not using quake or ghost but that’s another story. Attacker tactics seem like a joke don’t help in anyway on 50% of the nodes certainly the flow one, all you’ve done is make siphon a pointless tactic now

Etm34

Man that window of opportunity - stun node is a real punisher. Brought a 6* R3 into war and they were out in 5 seconds.Maybe tune down the length of the stun to 2 seconds instead of 4? That’s two full combos you have to eat, and at 6k+ attack you’re not surviving that.

KnightZero

@Amazing_Demon05 did you even read what I said? I don't have her, so didn't know that her Degen was a DoT. I admitted I was wrong and that you could use her. Read the post first lol.
Also, yay! You found a counter to the node that not everyone may have. Good for you. Every node will obviously have a counter. But limiting it to barely any solid counter in war especially isn't fun.

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VvF2015

I find new AW Map totally exaggerated and frustrating. No desire to gamble.

VvF2015

In any case, reward should be better. Because:
The new AW Map is totally exaggerated and frustrating. No desire to gamble.

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KnightZero

@Amazing_Demon05 did you even read what I said? I don't have her, so didn't know that her Degen was a DoT. I admitted I was wrong and that you could use her. Read the post first lol.
Also, yay! You found a counter to the node that not everyone may have. Good for you. Every node will obviously have a counter. But limiting it to barely any solid counter in war especially isn't fun.

you say "stand corrected there" which now you say oh I am wrong
be clear on what you mean or learn how to write it in that way

If you think that because I didn't write 'I', then you may not know how to infer stuff.
I also wrote that you could use her from the start. I just said that you couldn't build her again, which I'm wrong about.

hungryhungrybbq

Keeping flow as well as now adding new nodes which remove and even punish the mechanic intended to play around it with skill (well timed blocks) helps promote new characters who don't crit. "Identify a problem, create a solution" is a traditional method for success in business. "Create a problem, offer a solution" also works I reckon. Or in this case .08% chance at a solution per crystal. There's also an anti-crit modifier being released in AQ. 🤔

Throw an anti Quake mechanic into his kit for bonus points, ey?

Gomezlink

More and more ridiculous, a tactical defense node that if you give dexterity the opponent gains indestructible, they want to avoid Quake and with that they screw everyone ...The thing, which already has a rock shield, 2 more indestructible for your dexterity ... I stop here, I don't claim anymore

Dart1981

Outside of the nodes and tactics, has there been any sort of response relating to the terrible rewards update for P4 down. I think that it is very unfair to completely ignore and not address the situation at all, even just to simply say "we are not adjusting the rewards for S19 and look to an update for S20). We will be dropping down to a 1BG alliance if this stays as is.

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Speeds80

Still 50 kills each side in tier 11. Just not sure it’s sustainable design, when the other team use items and boss kill it means we have to to compete, “our intention was not to raise the difficulty of wars” tier 11 for 30m alliances I admit was too easy, but I think it’s still a touch hard, 50 kills is about what we got all season last season, again we are fighting for a few hundred 5* shards, everyone can keep saying don’t use items but if we use them and win and don’t use them and lose it puts a lot of pressure on alliances to use them, and pressure their members to do so

Smorganism_2

Been playing this game for 5 years, and have been leading my Alliance for much of that time.

I’ve not sure I’ve ever seen so many disheartened players in this game talking about quitting at one time.

Since this “improved” war map has landed I have had more of my players either retire, take a break or talk openly about quitting if the nodes aren’t nerfed, than I’ve ever encountered before. And I’m taking about players with 10k prestige and stacked rosters.

No one wants to max out items each war and spend all their glory on resources to win wars that give you such petty rewards in comparison.

Kabam, you are silently losing thousands of your core players in droves at the moment.

Gamer

The neft map is really okay

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SiriusBreak

The feedback and recent experience isn't exactly inspiring me to rally the troops. We've been running war full swing as a group before Seasons started, and throughout all 18 Seasons that have occurred. Season 19 will officially be our 1st Season ran non-competitively. It's sad. So many sounded excited when I announced we'd be taking it easy this Season.

I had some hope when the Node Feedback Thread was made. I had a bit more when I saw the updates. Then we tested it. We decided just to run a half hearted Boss Rush, and our opponents went for 100%. When I saw 134 defense kills that was the final nail in the coffin for us. We collectively decided we didn't want to be dealing with that.

For perspective purposes, we're a Tier 4/5 Alliance. This was Challenger. The Alliance we faced off against placed HIGHER than us last Season, and were generally similar in rating/Prestige. They died 134× and killed 136 champs. That's... crazy. I implore those at Kabam to really take a step back here and at minimum consider delaying the Season for further changes. Otherwise Season 19 may be the most memorable in the worst of ways.

It's almost like Challenger is Expert, Hard is Challenger, Intermediate is Hard, and so on down the line judging by the feedback from various tiers. I can't even imagine what the new Expert is like. Everything stated is coming from a place of genuine concern and care. We used to LOVE AW. This... this is too much for many. There's 2 major points I'm going to highlight here.

1. Challenge is only fun when it's reasonable. If the would be challenge becomes too much to handle for most, and the payout doesn't feel worth the effort; that takes all the fun out, and destroys the drive in many players.

2. There's a fine line between "rewarding skillful play" and "punishing less than perfect play." This Map in MANY places will punish you if you make the SLIGHTEST mistake. That's. Not. Fun.

If the game mode is lacking fun, I cannot in all good conscious as a Leader push my crew to compete. I've seen some of our best essentially say "screw this, not worth it." I seriously can't argue that one anymore. I really dislike the fact that I feel they're right. At this point back pedaling to the previous iteration of the Map would be a great way to go (although I sincerely doubt that will happen). I'm not sure if this Map can be tweaked enough to be fun. Just my personal opinion. For what it's worth, we wanted to like it. Truly, we did. Unfortunately, like many, we do not.

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