**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
15.0 Alliance Wars Update Discussion Thread
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
if Diversity Parade "wars" continues as is through end of the year, i'll be quitting. Hate when developers destroy the games I love.
Then there's the real problem - last time your map changed, my alliance took you at your word and went with an actual difficult defense. We then had two wars in a row with over 200 defender kills, and lost because of diversity, your little tiebreaker. We would've won if kills counted for basically anything. That exact same dynamic can happen again here. Can you please explain to us why defender kills are so bad, because I don't think anyone's been satisfied with previous answers, and it really feels like they'd fix war pretty quick.
I feel this needs to be said. This was *never* the optimal strategy. If you are surrendering an entire path and giving up while you still have live attackers, the odds are pretty good you are going to lose. I don't argue with the notion that some players did this, but when you say this shouldn't be the optimal strategy you are supporting the notion that an intelligent player might choose to do this for good reasons. A player might do this, but it would never be the right choice.
This won't work. The map might be different, and it is possible that there might be a reason to place a specific defender on a specific node now. But that calculus is going to be made in the same way by basically everyone. You are basically presenting me with the kind of decision I don't want, where either I place a random defender on the node because it doesn't matter, or I place a specific defender on the node because it is built for that defender. To overcome the diversity point disadvantage, being able to generate a single kill is not enough. And I can't rely on cumulative kills on a path, because the rest of the path isn't going to generate kills unless the entire path has the strongest possible defenders. Which means forfeiting a huge amount of diversity points. That's an all or nothing situation.
If you want players to actually make strategic decisions about placing a defender, they have to weigh two different things and choose between them. Right now the two things being weighed are diversity points on one side, and the ability for the defender to generate more points than diversity would have granted on the other side. But the only way for a defender to currently generate points is to show-stop a path. Being strong enough to generate a kill is worthless, unless you place other defenders on the same path that can also generate even more kills.
Until Kabam recognizes that node tweaks only work in conjunction with a way to measure the effectiveness of a node-defender combination, no node tweaks are going to work. At best, you will create a new optimal defender configuration that will be just as forced on the players as defender diversity currently forces players to place now.
The sound bite version of this is this: in 14.0, a defender's value was based on whether it could generate any sort of kill. In 15.0, no defender is worth anything by itself. The only thing with actual value is the sum total of all the defenders on a particular path. If all of them combined can stop the opposing alliance, that path generates points (in unexplored territory). If not, nothing they do ultimately means anything. So nothing Kabam does can encourage a player to place a single defender on a particular node if it costs diversity points, unless that one single defender all by itself is a one-champ wrecking machine that can kill a path dead.
Is that what Kabam is trying to do? Make nodes that allow an alliance to place one defender there and stop the other alliance dead? Because if Kabam is doing that, good luck, 90% of all alliances. If Kabam isn't doing that, the node tweaks won't change the strategic situation.
You could make this a fair, balanced, competitive, and lucrative game mode. But you simply do not want to.
Still no penalty for defender kills and added nodes that will force more potions to be used. Hmmm....sounds like Kabam is really listening to the community.
Mathematically you have to run 50 unique defenders in each battle group, then you have to have the highest defender rating possible. You'll find that the top rated alliances are all running max pi builds (a variant of suicides) and they place with boosts to increase their defender rating.
Again, alliance war is a war of defender rating and at it's current condition the new nodes will not slow us down from 100% the map.
Alliances are swapping their defender rating scores to determine if it's even worth 100% the other alliance if they need to use items, I've only used 2 items since AW season 2 started and that's because they we're expiring.
As of right now there are a few changes I would suggest
1: Add back defender kill points. We've lost wars that we would have won with defender kills counting. There is nothing we can do to win a war if the other alliance has a higher defender rating. If you continue to say that defender kills was causing people to just quit playing, add it back to at least expert tier, nobody in expert tier AW will quit if they lose one champ and get frustrated, if they do then they will be kicked from their alliance as they are not capable of contributing towards their alliance.
2: Change how defender rating is calculated. Boosts should not count towards defender rating as they are only a temporary thing, yet as of right now one boost will extend your rating for a maximum of 48 hours while your champion is on defense. Make the rating based on the base pi of the champion with synergies included. Fighting people who have suicides is boring, the champions are draining their health because willpower only heals off base health and the modified amounts of health is what the suicides masteries are using to deal damage. Using the base pi of the champion will reward alliances and players that have spent time to earn the rewards to be able to take their champions to 5/50, 3/45, 4/55, etc. and still provide a level playing field for alliances that are able to die less if you add defender kills back.
3: change the crit buffs interaction with dexterity. The crit buff from dexterity is what makes it difficult to fight a number of champions. The buffs interaction with Dormmamu is why he is a popular AW boss, he constantly puts degeneration on you that you are getting wether or not you have brought a champion that gains buffs or not without the mastery. The crit buffs interaction with mystic dispersion is another problem for Dormmamu. I can fully evade the special attack 2 of Dormmamu but in doing so I have refreshed dexterity upon my self a minimum of 3 times. When you are fighting a Magik with mystic dispersion every evade will give her a maximum of 12% power, three evades and she's at a bar of power, allowing her to have a chance to activate limbo which deals unavoidable damage to you, it's also extremely easy to push champions like Magik and Dormmamu to their special 3 solely because you evaded their attacks and not because of anything else.
4: champions that deal unavoidable damage need to have that changed to their base attack + masteries and synergies and not the modified attack from the node. This includes champions such as Magik, Dormmamu, and Iceman. Previously you had recognized the issue that champions were giving alliances that had a heal that was based off of the modified health from that champion. A Wolverine, Ultron, Cable, Iron Man, etc. could present themselves as unsurmountable roadblock for certain alliances. Unavoidable damage does the exact same thing but in a different way. Before I stepped up to 4L0ki, I was in tier 2 AW. Tier 2 AW is a different animal from tier 1 (well, it used to be). My 4/55 Magik with 5/5 Mystic Dispersion would routinely get 20+ kills. I've seen over 40 kills before and this was when defender kills counted.
I'm going to include screenshots of different war win results and include a breakdown of how the war could have been different if defender kills counted. Keep in mind every one of these wars had both alliances 100% the other with max diversity.
This war was lost on defender rating alone. We would have won with defender kills.
This alliance died 204 times to us, a crazy amount of kills. We won on defender rating alone.
This is just showing that even against the number one alliance you can still get more kills then them. This also showcases the inflated defender rating you can get with a max pi build and placing with boosts.
Same alliance as featured above, same deal we lost on defender rating alone.
More of the same, losing by defender rating alone but we would have won if defender kills counted.
You haven't listened to a single thing we've been saying. This is radical.
Plus that dexterity buff, you guys can't make it a passive buff?!
And brought back all or nothing.....lol
We got trolled hahahaha
lol we jumped to the ''this wont work'' conclusion the first time and we were right
I don't want or need defender kills back. What I want is a way for a good defender to help me win the war in a way other than pray that the other alliance gives up and stops fighting because they are afraid of it.
Defender kills did that. A defender was worth placing on the map if it could get even a single kill, because that single kill helped me win. In 15.0, that single kill is worthless. Kabam would say it is not worthless because a kill helps stop the other side. That is a meaningful statement if your defenders got an assist like in basketball. Kabam is wrong: they do not.
Defender kills were just a tool. There's nothing special about defender kills. But if we are going to eliminate them, we need something else to judge the performance of a defender by. RIght now, 15.0 has no way to judge a defender, except by some nebulous idea of oh, maybe, if we are really lucky, this defender might help stop the path by some miracle.
Give me another way to judge a defender. Give me some way for a good defender to earn me points, or cost the attacker points. This thread has at least six separate suggestions on how to do that, that does not involve bringing back defender kills. Give me any one of them, and lets test it out to see if it works.
So in the new aw you bring us
Flare: unavoidable degeneration
Bane: somewhat unavoidable degeneration
Spite: if you gain buffs you cant control = l3 to the face multiple times
So these aint BS? And these are fun?
Very well sir, very well......
And mashocism, buffet and arc overload are based from modified health? I hope not!!!!!!
Will there then be some announcement that rewards will be increased as requested, then I will pull better dupes of someone actually worth of some t2a I had before then? But then, the plot twist is t2a will still be rare?
Are you twisting my arm to r4 5* kamala khan for wars? Diversity is awesome and should include everyone, so do all champs matter? Even the ones I feel deflated just looking at in the reel, while praying not to land on them, and I more than likely will?
Once I do this, will you then reinstate defender kills- of which she will get none- then she will have been exponentially more useless than before ranking up?
If you cannot figure out how to make wars interesting for some reason, is this our fault?
Why is the play experience of war going to continue to be underwhelming and so time consuming? It's 48 hours and decided in 24 hours. What for?
Why is the map so goddamn big for no reason? Why did the map need to be changed? Why did slashed tires and starburst go away to make it "too easy", then we could just get bane and other Act 5 buffs? This makes sense, right?
Why can't diversity just be based on class? I mean all champs are useful and all classes are balanced, right? All class masteries are useful too, right?
While we keep getting resources to do this, we should rank champs for a constantly changing war format because of this? It's fair to continually change the scoring system and then make our ranking choices based on it invalid repeatedly because you continually refuse to get it, right?
I mean it contributes to summoner advancement and level up, and class advancement, so it's not like we don't get anything once we end up regretting these choices, right?
We should not 100% the map anymore because the map is hard? That is why we should not win? Not because my champion on that node is actually good, but because the opponent just sucks at the game? So while kills don't count, if and only if they decide to try again, and again, and again until they get it right, I should feel a moral victory when they finally pass my lockdown node? Then I can collect some shards for wasting 5 of my champions for a day or two and 3 more for a day?
I'm sorry, I just see all of this as laughable. And that's the bottom line.
Try again
@Kabam Miike I have a slightly different perspective than many here, but still feel it needs to be considered. I am in a mid-lower tier alliance (and very content there), our rating is typically 1250-1300's (occasionally into 1400's), which puts us in roughly tier 6-7 war. At this level, diversity does not really affect us and has not yet decided a war either way. So, it does seem to be the scenario you intend in that it can be a tie-breaker for us. And in fact, my alliance is enjoying war right now.
However, increasing the difficulty of our nodes while you are tuning the maps for higher alliances will greatly impact us. As of yet, we have not 100% completed an entire war map, or had an enemy do so to us in this new war system. In fact, many of our wars end up with 0 boss kills on one or both sides. Of our last 5 wars, none have ended with more than 2 boss kills combined for both teams (these were all 3bg wars). That is out of a possible 6 boss kills.
My point is, the difficulty is already tuned well for our level, adding in bane, flare, arc overload, spite, and other stuff will only make the difficulty to where there is rarely any boss kills on either side. If we know we will never have a chance to kill the boss, the fun of war is already gone. So, please take a close look and consider us lower tier guys while you ramp up the difficulty for the big guys.
you and me both bro
Now we’ll be forced to spend more and more to still 100% and tie but lose to whomever has the higher defender rating.
But it’s okay, Kabam Miike says it’s a “rarity”.