Alliance War Season 19: Node Combination Feedback

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!

Comments

A_NAZ

Ebb and flow knock down just before the minis. This was paired with tenacity and I fought a duped invisible woman. Knock her down, she goes invisible and then you only have 6 seconds before protection is back up. I feel ebb and flow related nodes need a longer window for damage (up from 6 seconds to say 15-20 seconds) or in this specific scenario at least scrap tenacity please.

Edit: This was a fight in tier 4.

Sugoi_Dubai

Ebb and flow node reduces damage by 90%, when nick fury decoy dies, real nick fury should degen, but his degen is 90% weaker so fight becomes ridiculously hard and long

Cody4prez

Any node that switches from incenerate to poison. The amount of champions specifically immune to those debuffs are few, and even fewer are worth ranking up to play at a higher end alliance. If kabam wants to introduce more variety in debuffs, you should offer more champions that are immune to those debuffs and have a decent attack rating.

Chimpyboy

3 comments

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.

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Kabam Miike

Let's not include Defense Tactics in this right now, since the new ones and Attack Tactics are not live yet.

Lvernon15

The ebb and flow nodes alone need a change, I think the benefits need to be far better, so something like 3000 crit rate and 100% attack for each, and also don’t have the punishment be over 50%. The combination of ebb and flow knockdown with tenacity to stop you using heavies also coupled with someone like doom who can’t be knocked down with his aura is just too much. Also someone like nova or rhino is far too specific when combined with ebb and flow intercept, and we need other potential options to make it through if we can’t intercept easily

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

NerdNerdNerd1

ebb and flow knockdown doom, when hes in his aura of hazareth you cant know him down, hell just resist it

ExHavok

Aggression Fury with Oscillate, they put a Stealth Suit SpiderMan in there, so he played defensive when he had shield and gain 7-8 fury, after that I took 2-3k damage even from parry,then he evaded and I took direct hit 72k damage.

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horrendous_too

Hazard shift plus cold turkey is just mean. There are so few champs that can handle both poison and incinerate to take more off the table by making you take the same damage if you purify is just unnecessary.

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.

SandPounder

Tunnel Vision and Oscillate. Just need to put a Domino as the defender and with her double hit, you immediately gain a falter, then the attack boost just destroys

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Juggernauts

I fought iceman on the Steady buildup - unblockable node / biohazard on path 4. Node states defender goes unblockable once attacker has 3 debuffs. I used a BWCV planning to eat the coldsnap damage and heal back up. Iceman immediately unblockable at the start of fight with coldsnap being the only debuff. Can anyone explain this?

KoperBoy

Node where opponent gets furies every 10 seconds for each debuff he received, plus gets some power if furies are nullified, Works "too well" with Nick Fury. When I killed his life model decoy, he purified all furies and immedately got to SP3. That's too powerful in my opinion.

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.

Bawa69

Tunnel vision and aggression fury... a stacked emma frost destroyed my entire team of 5* 5/65 (nick domino and cmm) ... emma starts stun immune so we have no option but to intercept heavy and not the most convienient thing to do.. and if by chance u miss emaa has stacked abt 3 furys and u go down in 5 hits

Colinwhitworth69

This combo was awful.

Matthew2387

The far right paths are very tough. I agree with a limited amount of characters having immunity to incinerate and poison, on top of that they go unstoppable? I had to do tile 35 as well. It did not go well. I understand that you don’t want to parry (I guess) because the only counters are quake and ghost. Oh wait, not quake, because you have to actually stun the opponent while quaking. So I have to use ghost, who doesn’t have to parry, or intercept and block. It doesn’t make since. I ran into a CMM on node 23 which was insanely hard. We completed but it was tough. Node 47 was tough but I only took one death.

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YoMoves

Is nobody going to mention Darkhawk on the Ebb and Flow-Knockdown node?

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.

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Edeuink

I play tier 6 gold 1 war. So far, my only death in the off-season has been to a hazard shift, limber korg. It wasn’t the most stacked korg I’ve ever fought, so I gave it a try. I was using human torch, and was planning to dex during the poison period. So, I go in. In the first poison period, I dex and it feeds korg crowd excitement. So, I try to parry. However, limber shortens my stun and I get parried as soon as I try to hit korg once the poison phase ends. I then proceed to get comboed into oblivion. So, my feedback is that hazard shift is too punishing of a node with too few counters. In my opinion, it should be changed to either include DoT that more champs are immune too, or the potency of the DoT effects should be reduced.

Rotelly

Tunnel Vision with Elsa, whenever she evades she has the ability to punish
Tunnel Vision with Black Widow DO, whenever she evades she inflicts a sabotage debuff

gadgetfanatic

EBB AND FLOW

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.

Rotelly

Hazard shift - this has been said but there are currently only 3 defenders (RedHulk, Mephisto & Iceman) who are able to counter both Poison and Incinerate.

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

KnightZero

1) Ebb and Flow nodes are too punishing. 6 seconds to do damage is nothing, and the champs that are placed there are abundant. DarkHawk is an annoyance on Knockdown. Adding Heavy Hitter to the node means that if someone has limber, you're screwed. Similarly, adding Tenacity and Rapid Metabolism to the Intercept node is faulty design. In fact, 90% protection is a faulty design in the first place. We get that the point is to promote the use of intercepts or knockdowns, but 90% is too taxing a punishment.
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.

Jmille85

Worst Nodes IMO

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...

gadgetfanatic

OSCILLATE / AGGRESSION: FURY / TUNNEL VISION

1. switch tunnel vision with mix master
2. or simply remove tunnel vision

Rigid

Hazard shift poison and incinerate and resistor was difficult.

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.