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

Kabam Miike

Path Identities

Updated June 30th

Easy and Normal:

Intermediate, Hard, Challenger, and Expert:

*Nodes in Blue have been changed after gathering Player Feedback.

WikiLeaks

Fixing AW Matchmaking alone will bring an immense smile to my face.

GroundedWisdom

My question is what's going to stop Tanking and manipulating War Rating off-season? It's not just Tiers 1-5 that do it.

GroundedWisdom

I'm all for changes as long as they don't sacrifice fairness just to make people happy.

Stagedear85

So far i like what i see im looking forward to the new rewards and defensive tactics.

SpideyFunko

me likey

Mcord11758

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

Raganator

Can't wait to see how much worse defensive tactics make these new nodes. I would have started with rewards before announcing this new map and nodes. This looks no more fun than the current map.

Pulyaman

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

Does incoming damage include DOT and passives like plasma? Also, Hazard shift sounds like a pain, incinerate and poison immune? Mephisto comes to mind. Iceman, red hulk and BWCV depending on her curse. Anyone else?

unknown

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Agent_X_zzz

Interesting stuff, happy the way that it is going so attackers get bonuses for being a Control or A Villain champ etc

VanillaCoke

Hey MeeKay, is path 7 still hidden or no?

Lvernon15

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

Basically glorified aegis intercept

Mcord11758

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
Basically glorified aegis intercept

But you have to keep intercepting the entire fight in order to do damage

Eb0ny-O-M4w

I honestly don't like the idea of adding new nodes to AW. And these ones specially, which basically force you to change your playstyle to counter the node.
The champion itself on those nodes will already be bad as their base, and now the nodes may make the fight nearly impossible unless you have a specific champion for it.

I don't know how to feel about this. It just seems the concept went backwards on it's progression. But I'll wait and see how it will turn out in the end

unknown

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mum_m2

My question is what's going to stop Tanking and manipulating War Rating off-season? It's not just Tiers 1-5 that do it.

It doesn't sounds like you're in a tier 1-5 alliance and tanking hasn't been a thing for almost a year now.

This is due in part to an announcement made last July that stated that all War Ratings for tiers 1-5 will be locked and tiers 6-9 will decrease the amount of war rating they can achieve.

unknown

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joke1004

How do the links interact?
What are they?
Do we have to take some fights linked?
Is there a hidden lane?

Werewrym

I'm curious if the changes are supposed to address shell alliances, because I really don't see what has been done to fix that. We are going to run into the same people trying to get away with the same kind of cheating as before.

I also see a lot of nasty combos of nodes for minis and basic fights. And there are way more minis than what we have currently. Really hope the attacker tactics are going to make it easier for us.

KnightZero

Yup these new nodes are really going to be a pain. Footloose, Rage, Oscillate+Aggressive Fury+Tunnel Vision. Nice mini bosses to face just based on nodes. Going to make AW even more specific and upon that we have Defender tactics. Hazard Shift doesn't have many proper counters.

unknown

This content has been removed.

GroundedWisdom

My question is what's going to stop Tanking and manipulating War Rating off-season? It's not just Tiers 1-5 that do it.
It doesn't sounds like you're in a tier 1-5 alliance and tanking hasn't been a thing for almost a year now.

This is due in part to an announcement made last July that stated that all War Ratings for tiers 1-5 will be locked and tiers 6-9 will decrease the amount of war rating they can achieve.

Tanking has been a thing all along. We've encountered a number in the off-season. I'm all for using War Rating as long as it can't be manipulated outside of Seasons. Otherwise you might as well use Tic Tacs to gauge War ability. It's unfair to people being ambushed, and it doesn't reflect actual ability.

GroundedWisdom

This whole idea that only Tiers 1-5 do it is simply not true.

GroundedWisdom

Then you have Shells who drop down in the off to peck off other Allies.

GroundedWisdom

The only way to solve it really is to freeze War Rating altogether in the off, or not allow a change of a marginal amount outside of Seasons. No more than 10 perhaps, on either side.

Championcritic

Hey MeeKay, is path 7 still hidden or no?

Looking at the map graphic, it looks like only the 6 miniboss nodes are hidden.

unknown

This content has been removed.

Jaded

Haha see the hype for the “road map” dying 😂. Leave it in the hands of kabam and it’ll always look the same.

Kabam Miike

How do the links interact?
What are they?
Do we have to take some fights linked?
Is there a hidden lane?

On the Easy and Normal Maps:
Nodes 13 and 14 Link to 19, 15 and 16 link to 20, 17 and 18 link to 21, 38 and 39 link to 44, 40 and 41 link to 45, and 42 and 43 link to 46. Finally, 48, 51, and 52 Link to the Boss.

On the Intermediate, Hard, Challenger, and Expert Maps:
Nodes 10,11,12 link to 19, Nodes 13,14,15 link to 20, Nodes 16,17,18 link to 21, 36,37,38 link to 45, 39,40,41 link to 46, 42,43,44 link to 47, and 49,52,53 Link to the Boss.

You do not have to take any fights linked this time.

There is no hidden path anymore, but Nodes 19,20,21,45,46,47 are hidden.