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

IndridCold

If you have the same war rating as someone twice your size, your war rating is a fiction that needs to be corrected
Really? Fiction. They must have artificially inflated it. Oh, wait. It went up based on how they performed in their Wars. If you have the same and your Rating is twice their size, then they're doing as well as you with what they have to work with. Sorry about the Ego.

It’s not about doing well with what you have to work with. It’s about being the best. I’m glad they are finally changing this. You’re not because you know you didn’t deserve your rewards. You know without an unfair matchmaking system that limits your opponents you won’t be able to breeze past harder AS’s who’d crush you.

winterthur

Seems to be that the majority of the problem comes from shell alliances and people selling off their champs to deliberately get easy wars. With these kind of leaches existing in the game, I am wondering if we will ever get a system which could be fair. I am seeing the top alliances in the last season have 1 member out of 30, where did they go? We all know what's happening. Wonder if we could start assigning war prestige to each account for war like champ prestige for aq. If you place Master this season, even if you move alliances, the points will follow you, and the alliance war prestige could be based on that. Anything I am missing? @Sensei_Maat @GroundedWisdom ?

1. how to approach it when alliances run 1 or 2 bg wars. it is possible that they again would recruit 10 people with low war prestige to lower their average war prestige and then run 2 bg wars using the other 20 and getting easier matches.

A simple method could be weighted average. I am sure this is not an issue if it is viable.

Of course if 29 members have prestige individually between 1-2k and the 30th member has 10k, it is going to be a problem.

Sensei_Maat

Seems to be that the majority of the problem comes from shell alliances and people selling off their champs to deliberately get easy wars. With these kind of leaches existing in the game, I am wondering if we will ever get a system which could be fair. I am seeing the top alliances in the last season have 1 member out of 30, where did they go? We all know what's happening. Wonder if we could start assigning war prestige to each account for war like champ prestige for aq. If you place Master this season, even if you move alliances, the points will follow you, and the alliance war prestige could be based on that. Anything I am missing? @Sensei_Maat @GroundedWisdom ?

1. how to approach it when alliances run 1 or 2 bg wars. it is possible that they again would recruit 10 people with low war prestige to lower their average war prestige and then run 2 bg wars using the other 20 and getting easier matches.
A simple method could be weighted average. I am sure this is not an issue if it is viable.

Of course if 29 members have prestige individually between 1-2k and the 30th member has 10k, it is going to be a problem.

thats what i was getting at. alliances specifically having some very weak members to lower the average and only compete in 2 bg wars.
akin to how people were selling champs to drop account ratings at one point.

would be the same as how prestige manipulation can happen now.
Not something that i have exploited but have noticed with prestige when my alliance has had a mix of strong and weak peeps we get easy matches. We have a mix of peeps just cus you know some newer guys with low accounts but good skill, whatever.we have a couple guys that struggle in attack, but due to the lowered average prestige our top guys are able to demolish the defense and place a defense that holds up the opposition well.
say you have 10 guys at 1 mill, 10 guys at 600k, 10 guys at 300k, ur prestige gets lowered a lot, but splitting those guys across BGS enables you to still have solid war attack while placing a defense much stronger than what your opposition can handle as they don't have any attackers as strong as your strongest.
not something that would be a huge issue as most allies want 3bgs and to be at the top of AQ and AW but i am sure some would find any way to exploit any system.

Thecurler

A fairly simple solution would be if everyone leaves an alliance, reset that alliance's war rating to zero.
Not sure if it's that simple or opens up other ways of manipulating the system.

unknown

This content has been removed.

unknown

This content has been removed.

GroundedWisdom

Seems to be that the majority of the problem comes from shell alliances and people selling off their champs to deliberately get easy wars. With these kind of leaches existing in the game, I am wondering if we will ever get a system which could be fair. I am seeing the top alliances in the last season have 1 member out of 30, where did they go? We all know what's happening. Wonder if we could start assigning war prestige to each account for war like champ prestige for aq. If you place Master this season, even if you move alliances, the points will follow you, and the alliance war prestige could be based on that. Anything I am missing? @Sensei_Maat @GroundedWisdom ?

That's part of the need for a stabilizer. One Account holds the place of the Alliance, and the rest go down south for the winter. Only, they end up fighting people lower than them and 50% is still an effect on people. Essentially, it's taking up the top spot and taking up whatever other spot they want to. The Player Prestige already does that. They join an Alliance and the Matches adjust because of the Prestige they carry. Without it, they can just peck off whoever they want.

Gregdagr8

A fairly simple solution would be if everyone leaves an alliance, reset that alliance's war rating to zero.
Not sure if it's that simple or opens up other ways of manipulating the system.
simply nobody would leave the alliance with 0 members just leave 1 member then put 1 fake id in it and let the last member leave too after that
"In order to carry the war rating to the next season, at least 15 members should carry over to the next season."

I think this should help in stopping shell alliances and I have never seen a 16 member turnover in a genuine top tier alliance.

They could even make it like 20% of the members that played war should carry over and it will be fine. Normally in shell swap, whole alliance move as nobody wants to sacrifice a season.

This is a REALLY good idea! Kabam, please take note of this and steal this idea.

Werewrym

A fairly simple solution would be if everyone leaves an alliance, reset that alliance's war rating to zero.
Not sure if it's that simple or opens up other ways of manipulating the system.
simply nobody would leave the alliance with 0 members just leave 1 member then put 1 fake id in it and let the last member leave too after that
"In order to carry the war rating to the next season, at least 15 members should carry over to the next season."

I think this should help in stopping shell alliances and I have never seen a 16 member turnover in a genuine top tier alliance.

They could even make it like 20% of the members that played war should carry over and it will be fine. Normally in shell swap, whole alliance move as nobody wants to sacrifice a season.

This is actually a pretty good idea. The main issue I see is that if you had a pair of alliances they could still work together to shell and trade off each season who gets to take the easier wars.

Onmix

@Pulyaman

A fairly simple solution would be if everyone leaves an alliance, reset that alliance's war rating to zero.
Not sure if it's that simple or opens up other ways of manipulating the system.
simply nobody would leave the alliance with 0 members just leave 1 member then put 1 fake id in it and let the last member leave too after that
"In order to carry the war rating to the next season, at least 15 members should carry over to the next season."

I think this should help in stopping shell alliances and I have never seen a 16 member turnover in a genuine top tier alliance.

They could even make it like 20% of the members that played war should carry over and it will be fine. Normally in shell swap, whole alliance move as nobody wants to sacrifice a season.

This could work... Kabam, it’s worth checking it out.

pseudosane

Wow this thread got derailed over the weekend. Lots of hidden messages for me.

The new war nodes are terrible. I'd honestly prefer any of the previous season iterations over this one. Any. Some of these nodes are just so painful with certain combinations ,and we havent even added defensive tactics yet. Unless attacker tactics gives us like a huge champion boost, this is going to be a painful wartime. Please reconsider the new nodes, most of these are a steaming pile of bs.

The hidden nodes are another pain in the butt. Multiple have to run scouter lens ( and have to somehow guess a damn counter which tthey may or may not have). We have just one backup.

Also, look at this combination. Aggression fury+ oscillate+ tunnel vision. Can a dev solo an r5/r3 6* champ there? I'd like to see how, especially since we have zero prior knowledge who it can be.

Kevo9513

I’ve been looking everywhere trying to prepare my alliance for all of this and still cannot find the “Cold turkey,” node. Can anyone give me insight as to what it does?

Dmc1990

so much to read through but eb and flow intercept reads awful. I guess its made for ghost to fight but I can see that node being a pain

It sounds like a painful node, for me Annihilus comes to mind & I’m glad i have a 5/65 one 🤣

pseudosane

Isnt there an update to this? Or is Kabam just "reading" again.

Greywarden

Remove hidden nodes, this is taking away the ability to counter play especially when the hidden nodes are minis.

The 90% reduced dmg nodes are the furthest thing from fun. We had the exact same issue in AQ with can't stop won't stop and you saw how that went. Drop the % in dmg reduction and/or make the reward for playing correctly a lot more rewarding.

Niche nodes with few counters to begin coupled with global and 2 new champs a month is asking for trouble. Fairly confident all combinations haven't been thought of and that the community will come up with something damn near impossible to solo as soon as this comes out.

Gregdagr8

The best announcement to the Grandmaster taking over defensive tactics would be ...

"The Grandmaster does not believe in hacks and cheats. He wants his tournament to be about pure skill. Therefor the Grandmaster will be canceling any use of defensive tactics and challenges his summoners to show him how you and your alliance can rise to the top with only skill".

pseudosane

The best announcement to the Grandmaster taking over defensive tactics would be ...

"The Grandmaster does not believe in hacks and cheats. He wants his tournament to be about pure skill. Therefor the Grandmaster will be canceling any use of defensive tactics and challenges his summoners to show him how you and your alliance can rise to the top with only skill".

or,
"After this crushing defeat at the hands of the summoner, The Grandmaster has partaken the leaf, and the ways of the 'high' lords/ He does not wish for any conflict, thus by taking over the war ridden corner of the battlerealm, he has cancelled all wars, all conflicts."

unknown

This content has been removed.

Teaguearino

some of these new nodes are incredibley niche. Like you can only do dmg if you do a certain thing and you have to do that thing every 6-10 seconds. Also, I think changing window of opportunity to make it so the defender is stun vulnerable while its on cooldown would make it so much better- just little stuff like that

WeeHobbit89

I enjoyed the war map before the current one with most of it being hidden nodes. That put a lot of fun into a war (and fear)

MrTicTac19992008

Personally I would love if they implemented a league system with promotion and relegation. At the start of the season you decide do you want to be part of a 1BG, 2BG or 3BG war season. Ideally every group would have 13 alliances so you would have your 12 matches throughout the season. everyone plays everyone else in the group so no complaining of easy/hard match ups and no repeat matches as everyone plays everyone else. Now granted, as you go lower down, the number of alliances increases so there has to be more groups which may lead to some groups being stronger than other. I don't know how many alliances participate on AW but i would think you could have it something like this Group A1 = Master. A2 = Master 2 (This would be a new group so promotion and relegation can be even). B1 = Platinum 1. B2 = Platinum 1 and so on. As you go down the ranks, more groups would be needed for each tier. You would then know at the start of every season what rewards you will be guaranteed. If you start in Gold 1, you get those rewards no matter what happens. If you get promoted then next season you will be guaranteed platinum rewards, yes you may drop straight back down but at least you would get the rewards. Yes, that alliance could decide to take the season off and save resources, lose every match and drop straight down again but thats their decision. This would also stop shell alliances as would be stuck in a certain bracket. The map difficulty would be set for each level. So that would get rid of the scenario where alliances on the edge of tiers getting a lower multplier on a harder map. master play on expert, Plat play on Challenger, Gold play on hard and so on. As groups are set and everyone plays everyone else in the group you dont need to have the multiplier.

Sensei_Maat

could work if done well but i think rewards would need to be different for top of bracket v bottom of bracket and you would need to address what to do in the case of tanking every second season.
i for one know many alliances like mine are on the cusp of 15/t6. t6 is a much better place to be.
so we would push hard one season to try and go up a tier while we are in tier 6, but then the next season we would definately not try hard as we would be content to lose all our wars and fall.
so we would only be putting in effort every second season and we would be getting gold 1 rewards one season and plat 4 the next alternating between the two whilst intentionally tanking every second season.

now if you were play 4 and then intentionally tanked the entire season maybe you would get gold 3.
there would certainly need to be something to encourage you to not tank. maybe the potential to drop 2 or 3 brackets if your season was that poor.

i think its god in theory but too hard to implement

unknown

This content has been removed.

Little_Crocodili29

That would be a miracle! It takes them several months to implement something (cough HB buff cough). So all points to this "new" war having been in the works for ages. Plus it toes the exact same bs line of Act 6, AQ and book 2.

I reckon they only announced it coz they would've anyways. As we're all expecting changes for the better tho (with the road map and all) we got ice bucketed instead.

Remains to be seen what they meant about timers now. Other than that they said they wanted reduced stress. I don't see how right now.

pseudosane

Weird they haven't given node explanations, defense tactics, attack tactics, and the wars are supposed to be live in 24 hours. How do we test it with zero knowledge?

Renegädeツ

Weird they haven't given node explanations, defense tactics, attack tactics, and the wars are supposed to be live in 24 hours. How do we test it with zero knowledge?

I dont know, they've made it very confusing.

Renegädeツ

@Kabam Miike clarification on when all maps, nodes, attack tactics, defense tactics, and stress alleviation will be introduced to Alliance War please.

pseudosane

Hopefully they are posting the new announcements, fingers crossed!

bdawg923

What part of "nobody likes defense tactics" don't you guys understand. And the rewards are still trash. Highly disappointing

Raganator

Still underwhelming. You did not overcome the horrible nature of the original post. Everyone will still run flow. It will still be terrible. But I guess "Thanks" for allowing me to quake for 5 minutes an not time out against r3 6*.