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

Amadeo01

Fighting NF on ebb and flow node. With protection, he cannot degen on second phase lol. It's like fighting nF twice with the boosted version on his second phase.

Wait really? Did you test this and found he actually doesn't degen in second phase? That'd be insane!

Imt1

Finally New maps, new (insane) nodes,... To this point, I haven´t played enough to see if those nodes can be played propperly somehow.
But seriously: Only real (amazing!! ) buff in prizes are for alliances platinum3 and above. So that the rest of alliances are every wqar season thrown morer and more far from the "top" alliances in the game... Absolutely lost your mind there!!
In Gold 2-1 I see everyone with 5*r4 and r5, and also some 6* r2, but we just get a ridicolous amount of 6* shards from war season, as if we still where playin with 4* or something like that. But a Platinum 3 has an entire 6* per war season, with such a nice way to rank it up to r2 and start building some 6*r3...

EnderDarkan

Idk. I think AW might be over for me. This new map with nodes is insane on tier5.

Deadpool87

Last season I was able to get to the boss by myself....now I can't even get by the tunnel vision node....I think I'm done with war. Not worth the effort especially when they increase the difficulty and don't increase the rewards

theMercenary

✅Rank up unorthodox champs, check your roster, Ok..
✅Longer fight durations, seems doable with high concentration. Fine.

I’m really ok with those. That’s the way I like this game.

But.. a big BUT

You guys forgetting that AW is a team play. Just one or couple men/women cannot carry the whole team. Every teammate has different motivation to play. And they can be frustrated with this nodes. Alliance Wars shouldn’t be this level of complainant by almost everyone.

I did my best optimism here. I’m with the community. It’s best to cancel season I don’t give a **** with the rewards either. Just fix it with balance please. Thanks

Reference

After playing the new map AW, I can’t connect it with the blog from Dev Team. And I start to worry what do Dev Team claimed “they have listened the community” mean as it is totally detached from what the players in general feedback thread have mentioned: reduce nodes and scale down the war, make it less time restrictive for players who need to work / study.

Frankly the current war map look like a revenge from Dev Team to the community rather than positive response. And I seriously wondering what comments the Dev Team have taken.

I saw a separate post in which the OP suggest Dev Team to form an alliance and join the AW with unedited livestream, let the community know what the Dev Team feel when they walk through the entire AW, not an edited screenshots.

Matthew2387

I haven’t posted on this but I am in a gold 1 alliance that plays map 6 100% in all bgs. You have completely butchered AW and I am going to leave my alliance. I enjoy the people in my alliance and consider them friends. This is unfair, complete garbage. I can’t believe you all went in this direction. It obviously has to be for money. Thanks for taking a game that I enjoy and destroying a part of it. I’ve done abyss, competed act 6, and enjoyed both to an extent. I truly think you have lost it here. I don’t even have tactic right now but if I did I could only imagine how many deaths we would have, 32 right now.

FlavorFlave

Initial reaction to the new nodes in AW:

1. Scrap tunnel vision node - It's just overkill, and certain defenders are just impossible. There are not enough counters for the node with a can't miss mechanic.

2. Tune down Ebb and Flow nodes - Aegis was tough enough on the last map, but this is too much against the typical Aegis Heavy/Intercept defenders.

3. Scrap Hazard Shift - It's not a bad node with the right counter, but does not fall in line with allowing players to open up their rosters.

It might be a good idea to take this week of AW like a beta test a tweak things to keep players interested in war, because the feedback I am getting from friends and alliance members is this will not be worth the effort and will push players to step back from their alliance or the game all together.

akki_champ1

Seems like Kabam has taken all the attack value from act 6 and put them back into AW new map. the path nodes are so tough and our alliance is still in tier 7. I cant imagine what it would be in tier 5 and below. I have been taking path 9 in Tier 5-7 for long but never died on my path. May be once or twice in whole season but today my team was all knocked out in 2nd section... Need to nerf this Map.

Amadeo01

Initial reaction to the new nodes in AW:

1. Scrap tunnel vision node - It's just overkill, and certain defenders are just impossible. There are not enough counters for the node with a can't miss mechanic.

2. Tune down Ebb and Flow nodes - Aegis was tough enough on the last map, but this is too much against the typical Aegis Heavy/Intercept defenders.

3. Scrap Hazard Shift - It's not a bad node with the right counter, but does not fall in line with allowing players to open up their rosters.

It might be a good idea to take this week of AW like a beta test a tweak things to keep players interested in war, because the feedback I am getting from friends and alliance members is this will not be worth the effort and will push players to step back from their alliance or the game all together.

Would add a 4th. Window of Opportunity with Flow pretty much screws you. Need well timed block to get rid of flow power gain. But with this, if you well-time block, stun gets reflected to you and you die.

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Jcobra25

Another lame update

The increase in the rewards isn't tasty for the people that already aren't playing wars, especially mid-tier alliances.
Then the solo-events are a joke and to make things worse, new impossible nodes
Are you guys really reading the complaints of people? Because it looks like you are still missing the problem.

Wow, a comment that echoes every one of my concerns.
I wasnt interested in playing AW before the update. But because my alliance is in tier 10 I decided to take a look at it.

For context our alliance is ~9.8k prestige. We arent exactly the creme of the crop but we are seasoned, somewhat stronger players.
Playing at tier 10 should be a walk in the park. But this new map yielded us 15 defensive kills(on an alliance of similar stats) while their defense killed is 16 times. At that point we decided to just not give a #@#% about finishing.

But the point is that, wasnt this supposed to "encourage" us to get back on the proverbial horse???

^^ @Kabam Miike just one example of how badly these nodes were thought out.

And the solo event, sigh...I dont even think it deserves being a topic of conversation in that it is pretty much worthless.

Captain_Cayman

I was looking forward to the changes, but Kabam, this new AW map is a huge fail. The only thing you will succeed in if you keep it as it is, is alienating more of your player base.

Node combinations are just plain ridiculous and make certain champions unreasonably difficult for the level of war we're playing at. In addition to that Flow defense tactic is still overpowered and combined with these new nodes just removes the few remaining shreds of enjoyment from playing wars.

Seriously, defense tactics should be scrapped altogether, especially when you're overpowering nearly every node on the map in the first place.

I hope these changes were done before your recent blogs about reviewing the game based on player feedback. If not, then you appear to have completely missed the message or just not listened. I had so much optimism about coming changes after those posts, but if this is a sign of what is to come then I am preparing to be massively disappointed.

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Carmel1

can you be a bit less lazy with your nodes descriptions and mention how much attack on this fury and how much power drain?
you release new champs that have 10 pages of complicated ability and "developer notes", but here you keep it vague?

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MSL

New aw map is horrible same as act 6 Idk how kabam came up with this garbage they need fire off their developers and hire new more sensible persons

KnightZero

Unlimited power is one thing. Basically can't parry. So you need to intercept or bait heavy and retaliate. But then you have a mini where you can't bait heavy and retaliate. So you need to face 200k health with only intercepts. Wtf is that. If you parry with the furies, you're losing a bunch of health. Basically making you boost and use items or intercept.

MSL

We got 3 alliances and we are not going to participate in seasons from here on probably retire soon if kabam continues with this and cool part is we don’t need loyalty for aq thanks to them

KnightZero

Annihilus on Unlimited power basically removes most of his counters except Blade and Cap. Since all of them nullify, and each nullification of fury gives them 15% power.

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Vuska

What do you think about this Kabam ?

I just think this is too much in Tier 4.
My enemy ally even cant pass that Korg...

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Carmel1

What do you think about this Kabam ?

I just think this is too much in Tier 4.
My enemy ally even cant pass that Korg...

and this is"just" a R4 korg...

Mqc19

Season 19 ‘revisions’ are a complete failure and utter disappointment.

Kabam there is a big difference in hearing something and listening. You missed the collective point yet again!

KnightZero

If I was still officer, I would go for a 6 path exploration for a platinum 3/4 alliance. I don't think this map is made for itemless clearance.

6 path clearance is what many would do. Unfortunately, it may not be able to land in P3/P4. So alliances have to decide what to do. Use items or stay where the want. It's basically a no win situation tbh

SiriusBreak

I wanted to wait and see how a war would play out before saying anything. Welp, section 1 down and WOW... I have to agree with what appears to be the general consensus, this is rough. In the worst of ways. Some combos alone without the addition of a champ that can turn up the already high heat from a 10 to a 50 are just wrong. I sincerely hope some adjustments are made before Season 19 kicks off. Hearing that a Defense Tactic got nerfed before it's launch is also kind of disturbing.

Now, the optimistic part of me wants to believe that we the players can adjust to this. That we can conquer the challenge that lay before us. However, even that part of me is questioning if that's even possible for certain instances without some heavy item expenditure on the regular. I'm all for challenging content, but there's a fine line between challenging and downright madness. I think Act 6 displayed that in spades.

I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt that Kabam will listen to some degree. I do not expect the map to be scrapped. I do hope that certain aspects get deleted. Where's that dang gon' Buff deleter when yah REALLY need it? Lol Seriously though, my greatest concern is how much more will the already apparent high difficulty increase with the addition of the new DTs? Again, challenging is good. Over the top and ridiculously difficult? Not so much.

Side note - Please.... get rid of that bright white and blue background. It's visually jarring and seriously cannot be good for anyone's eyes. I felt like I was going cross eyed trying to focus on reading the node descriptions while getting blasted by that bright white. I keep my brightness on my phone down to about 1/3 to 1/4 of what's available if that's any indicator of how bright it is.

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NoOnexRO

From the map build, to map background, to nodes complexity the changes are awful.
I have no idea how in the world anyone in your team that worked on these changes felt that they will bring FUN back to a module that was already semi-hated.