Alliance War Season 19: Node Combination Feedback
Kabam Miike
Moderator Moderator › Posts: 8,269
Hey Summoners,
A lot of you have shared your opinions on Alliance War Nodes that you feel are more punishing than they should be. We've been reading through all of your feedback, and have learned a lot, but there are a lot of you, and feedback can get lost. This thread is for feedback only and has some different rules. Any posts that break these rules will be deleted immediately.
We want to hear from you, which Node Combinations do you think are more punishing than they should be? We are interested solely in Combinations of buffs, and not necessarily the Champions on a single buff. For example, Ebb and Flow - Intercept is a version of Aegis Intercept that lets you do some damage, even if you can't hit the opponent with an intercept, but the addition of Tenacity makes it too difficult because you can no longer Slow Rhino. This is what we want to hear about.
One action we are already taking is retooling the Aggression Fury+Oscillate combo. If you have more feedback on that, feel free to share it, but know that we are already working on it.
Important things to note:
- This is not a thread for conversation because we want to get direct feedback here. There will be no discussions in this thread. If you want to agree with somebody without adding more to their comment, give it an "Agree". If you disagree with them, give it a disagree. Give your own feedback, and avoid debates with others.
- Generalizations will be deleted. Comments like "Scrap it all" are not helpful, and will be removed.
- The goal here is to eliminate overly punishing nodes. Not everything listed here will be actioned on, as these Maps still need to challenge Alliance.
- If you have not experienced the new Map, or do not have insights from those that have, please refrain from commenting in this thread.
Thank you all for your feedback in advance, and we hope that we can use your feedback to make AW Season 19 and beyond the best it can be!
A lot of you have shared your opinions on Alliance War Nodes that you feel are more punishing than they should be. We've been reading through all of your feedback, and have learned a lot, but there are a lot of you, and feedback can get lost. This thread is for feedback only and has some different rules. Any posts that break these rules will be deleted immediately.
We want to hear from you, which Node Combinations do you think are more punishing than they should be? We are interested solely in Combinations of buffs, and not necessarily the Champions on a single buff. For example, Ebb and Flow - Intercept is a version of Aegis Intercept that lets you do some damage, even if you can't hit the opponent with an intercept, but the addition of Tenacity makes it too difficult because you can no longer Slow Rhino. This is what we want to hear about.
One action we are already taking is retooling the Aggression Fury+Oscillate combo. If you have more feedback on that, feel free to share it, but know that we are already working on it.
Important things to note:
- This is not a thread for conversation because we want to get direct feedback here. There will be no discussions in this thread. If you want to agree with somebody without adding more to their comment, give it an "Agree". If you disagree with them, give it a disagree. Give your own feedback, and avoid debates with others.
- Generalizations will be deleted. Comments like "Scrap it all" are not helpful, and will be removed.
- The goal here is to eliminate overly punishing nodes. Not everything listed here will be actioned on, as these Maps still need to challenge Alliance.
- If you have not experienced the new Map, or do not have insights from those that have, please refrain from commenting in this thread.
Thank you all for your feedback in advance, and we hope that we can use your feedback to make AW Season 19 and beyond the best it can be!
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This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Edit: This was a fight in tier 4.
1. node 23 - we got 17 kills with Domino here today. 17!!! This is Tier 5, Gold 1 level - our opponent was not a bunch of scrubs. I don't think any champ last season got more than 10 kills in any war. This node is way overtuned. I felt sorry for our opponent.
2. The ebb/flow intercept. We didn't see a Nova there, but we're already salivating for someone to rank one up and put him there - b/c how do you intercept someone who can't be intercepted to clear this mechanic? Even with a 5min timer, a 90% reduction is damage combined with not being able to intercept is a certain timeout.
3. Flow....my god....every war is a flow war...every one....I have to think the back-end server stats would back this up? The reason flow is used isn't b/c anyone finds it fun. It's because you know your opponent will use it on you, and so you're hoping to screw over the other team more than they will do to you.
Hazard shift cold turkey and champions who also place another form of dot on you like abom ms and iceman. You need 3 full immunities, you can’t just purify the debuffs. Having poison and incinerate immunity on the same chanpion is rare as it is, add that to removing pirify and then needing a bleed or coldsnap immune and all it really leaves you is captain marvel and her indestructible or quake who is also somewhat countered by iceman.
There are other nodes that need looking at, but these are the biggest issues I see
Also there’s a bug in the description of hazard shift where it says the debuffs deal 0.3 damage rather than 30% of the defender’s attack
The ebb and flow node is going to be difficult enough on its own when adding autoblock champs, champs you can't parry easily and the fact that you only have a 6 sec window to do damage. Anything added on top of that is killer. especially things like tenacity and rapid metabolism taking away any DOT possibilities.
Another node where opponent becomes unblockable if you have three or more debuffs: invisible woman and mr fantastic are in my opinion too powerful for that node. Silver surfer is also annoying, but at least you can get around his armor breaks with dr doom or Thing, who are immune to it. However IW and MrF don't have counters and Will be unblockable for most of the fight. Maybe make them unblockable for a certain amount of seconds periodically, or you force people to use either quake or ghost.
You knock Darkhawk over, he goes into Shield Mode for ten seconds, which as we know means tons of autoblocks, but also a much higher armor rating, essentially completely nullifying the fury you get.
Oh, so I'll just use True Strike, right? Corvus will just shred him anyways!
Shield Mode also cuts Critical Damage to 0. Your crits will hit for the exact same damage as if you had never crit at all.
So I'll just Armor Shatter him!....except his modes aren't affected by ability accuracy, and good luck keeping Armor Breaks on with Medusa and Aarkus with that Tenacity.
How are you supposed to kill Darkhawk? Torch and blocking 1500 L1s? Throw in Tenacity eating all your Incinerates if you didn't go Nova Flame, and that's still a serious uphill battle.
Tunnel Vision with Black Widow DO, whenever she evades she inflicts a sabotage debuff
1. widen the cooldown time
2. put equally punishing (to the defender) passive buffs (for offensive champ) or debuffs (for the defender) during the cooldown time.
3. specifically for ebb and flow - knockdown, introduce a passive debuff to deactivate or delay defensive abilities from activating right after the knockdown or as a result of the knockdown (answering to darkhawk and the like defenders)
3. Remove the rapid metabolism and/or tenacity with it or,
4. introduce sidestepping and/or banking as a form of intercept for the ebb and flow - intercept, as a less popular but probably more skilled solution if you want to retain item #3.
If you factor in cold turkey than it goes down to two because RedHulk is not immune to Poison/Incinerate but purifies them.
If the defender is SilverSurfer than IceMan as an attacker is a no-go because his coldsnap counts as a buff for SS and doesn't do any damage.
So that leaves Mephisto, and let's be honest he isn't great for anything
2) Window of Opportunity directly messes with the concept of Flow. You can't do a well timed block during that time period.
3) Tunnel Vision- Aggresive Fury- Oscillate. Have to remove one of them, preferably Tunnel Vision. It doesn't belong in AW. The counters to this combination are very few and even then it's hard enough. Placing Domino/Thing/Nick etc there is deadly.
4) Unlimited Power+Heavy Hitter mini. This forces you to mainly only intercept. Would be better if the penalty for removing the furies was reduced. Not sure how to fight Annihilus using his COUNTERS there other than a couple options.
5) Please check the Steady Buildup and Unblockable nodes. Definitely a bug there.
Also, the Strike Counter nodes should reset the fury and power drain as well when the Specials are used. Not just the charges being reset.
6) Does EMP modification really belong in war? There are barely any champs that can counter this node without taking unneeded damage.
7) Cold Turkey+Hazard Shift. Bad combination. Only allows 2-3 champs on the node who are double immune.
8) Do the 2 champs between T1 and T2 need to have the health of Mini bosses? Never had 9 before. Doesn't need to be that much. 7 mini's are enough, can probably reduce the health there.
This is definitely a start. From what we could see from the first war itself.
1. Unlimited Power- If a defender on this node has suicides they instantly gain furies...
2. Tune down Ebb and Flow nodes - This node makes me miss the Aegis Node... did no one consider how impossible this node would be against certain champs like Darkhawk, Mordo, Korg, Nick Fury etc? Either extend the time damage can be done to longer then 6 seconds or lower protection from 90% to something reasonable like between 60%-80%.
3. Hazard Shift - There are not very many champs that can counter both Poison and incinerate which makes this node annoying...
4. Tunnel Vision- another node where certain defenders being placed here like Domino or Rogue with be almost impossible... There are not enough counters for the node with a can't miss mechanic.
Please consider beta testing nodes before releasing them... I was super excited about AW changes until I saw the measly increase in rewards for alliances below platinum 4. I feel the alliances hurt the most by these changes are the Gold 1-3 alliances because not only do we get this extremely difficult Hard Map with these ridiculous nodes but also barely any increase in AW season rewards...
1. switch tunnel vision with mix master
2. or simply remove tunnel vision
The counters all rely to much on either physical or energy as a damage type and you very quickly get into a situation where you can't damage what ever is placed there.
Rhulk and Quake were the only counters we could think of as a counter and can't test that.
1.) Ebn flow knockdown
Facing a hyperion I took nf and almost timed out as I had to bait furies and could only get one - two hits in before having to bait out a special 2.
Faced a killmonger with mighty charge, tenacity and ebn flow knockdown. This fight was literally the bane of my existence. The mighty charge caused all armorbreaks to fall off (I had CMM). Tried to stay close to him but with tenacity every heavy was almost shrugged off so there was little chance to counter.
Also we only get the fury buff AFTER knocking down the opponent and if they dont directly charge us we lose the buff because it was only 6 seconds. The node can stay but mightycharge should be removed and the fury duration should be doubled.
There are very few champs that cover both immunities. No need to add purifying prevention on this.
Ebb - Knockdown + Tenacity
Darkhawk. The best answer out there is Medusa and with Tenacity that’s a pain.
Ebb nodes (both)
The window to do damage is too narrow. If we can’t have Aegis we need more than 6 seconds.
And no. We don’t need more damage during those 6 seconds. We need more time.
Tunnel Vision
This isn’t a node for AW. There are very few counters and even with the new timer playing around the node is too lengthy. And different champs every war makes it very difficult to plan for it.
Going MLM every combo will make for a very long fight with increasing room for error
EMP modification
We have 4 (by my count) natural shock immune characters. This is not enough for a node we will play almost daily.
Window Of Opportunity - Stun + Unstoppable
How do you defend against an unstoppable defender every 8 seconds if you can’t even rely on parry?
Rage + Return Policy
There are 2 ways to manage rage. Deal low damage or nullify.
In AW you want to finish the fight as fast as possible to leave the least room for error possible. So, nullify is the solution. And then you punish that solution.
Buff Imbalance - Power Drain + Return Policy
So. If the defender gets a buff you get punished. And if you nullify the buff you get punished. Not a good combination
Looks painful