Foreword

Welcome back to another season of Alliance War! We first want to acknowledge that we’ve had some teething issues regarding the tuning of Tactics and that there have been problems that stemmed from that. While we intended to increase difficulty within War, the number of players affected by this was not intentional. So we’ve decided to build up some foundations into the mode to give us the granularity we need to make war not only competitive for higher Tier Alliances but also create a better experience at the different Tiers of War. Not only that, but we have some exciting developments for the rewards coming to AW that we’re excited to share with you. Without further ado, let’s jump into the updates!

Timeline

Preseason Begins:
Wednesday, February 28th

Season 48 Begins:
Wednesday, March 13th

*NEW* Elite Map
We’ve wanted to do this for a while and we finally pulled the trigger on creating a whole new Tier of map called ELITE. This is reserved for the 0.15 percentile and lower.

Separating the Tier 1 Audience from the Tier 2 and below allows us to tune the War Experience appropriate for the Tiers affected separately. Before, whenever we’d change the hardest variant of the Tactic, the impact of those changes would affect more players than we intended. What was suitable for Tier 1 would unfairly cascade down to lower tiers who still need to fight on said most challenging variant of the Tactic. There was no mid-range between the Challenger and Expert Tactics.

The lack of granularity made tuning incredibly difficult. Separating the maps gives us another lever to tune with, setting a good foundation for creating a better playing experience for the players at these different tiers.

The map itself will still follow the same layout and format as the Expert Map. However, the Tactics tuning will be higher for the ELITE map, and the final Boss Node will have some buffs tuned accordingly with the map. To see all node changes, please reference this handy dandy Excel Sheet we have attached.

Bans on Expert and Elite will be split between Tier 2 and Tier 1, respectively. In regards to bans, Challenger will have 1 Whitelist and 1 Blacklist. Expert Map will have 2 White List, and 2 Black List, as will the Elite Map. Again, this granularity will allow us to properly tune each Map's experience.

Reward Update

To inject some novelty and identity into Alliance War Rewards, we’ve added some 7 Star Rank Up materials into the Season Rewards of Alliance War. Specifically, Tier 4 Alpha Shards from Masters into Platinum 2.

In addition, we have heard time and again from top Alliances that AW rewards don’t justify the time and effort required. We will be experimenting with some more novel rewards for AW, beginning with the X-Magica Saga. For Seasons 48 and 49 only, 7 Star Scarlet Witch (Classic) will be awarded in ranked rewards for the Top 10 Alliances in War. Aside from some limited pool X-Magica crystals, this will be the only place to get 7-Star Scarlet Witch (Classic) for the foreseeable future. We are excited to see how this shakes up competition at the very top AW.

7 Star Hero Crystal Shards are being removed from the ranked reward pool and replaced with Loyalty Crystal Shatter Tokens in their place. Loyalty Crystal Shatter Tokens can be traded for Loyalty Crystal Shatter or 7-Star Hero Crystal Shards, and 15x Loyalty Crystal Shatter can be traded in for a 7-Star Loyalty Crystal (Paragon+ only).

For example, if a Summoner wants to get the 7-Star Loyalty Crystal, they can follow this path:
A trade-in item will be made available to the players where they may trade in 100,000 Loyalty for

1. 1 Loyalty Crystal Shatter with no limits.
   
2. Players can trade in 1 Loyalty Crystal Shatter Token into 1 Loyalty Crystal Shatter (no limit).
   
3. Players can trade in 15 Loyalty Crystal Shatter into a 7 Star Loyalty Crystal (82 day limit).
   

However, if you aren’t Paragon yet or you are more interested in base pool 7 Star shards, will have the following option to play with.

4. Players can trade in their Loyalty Crystal Shatter Tokens for 1000 7-star Hero Crystal Shards with no
limit.

What these changes effectively mean is that players will have the option to use their ranked rewards to either access to the 7-star Loyalty Crystal or to access the same number of base pool 7 Star shards as were in the rewards before this update.

With 7 Star Hero Crystal Shards taken out of the rewards in Alliance War, here is what we’re adding to each affected bracket…

Masters

Masters 1
2 7 Star Scarlet Witch (NEW)
57,000 Tier 4 Alpha Shards (NEW)
15 Loyalty Crystal Shatter Tokens (NEW)

Masters 2
2 7 Star Scarlet Witch (NEW)
45,600 Tier 4 Alpha Shards (NEW)
12 Loyalty Crystal Shatter Tokens (NEW)

Masters 3
2 7 Star Scarlet Witch (NEW)
36,480 Tier 4 Alpha Shards (NEW)
10 Loyalty Crystal Shatter Tokens (NEW)

Masters 4
1 7 Star Scarlet Witch (NEW)
28,500 Tier 4 Alpha Shards (NEW)
9 Loyalty Crystal Shatter Tokens (NEW)

Masters 5
22,800 Tier 4 Alpha Shards (NEW)
7 Loyalty Crystal Shatter Tokens (NEW)

Platinum

Platinum 1
18,240 Tier 4 Alpha Shards (NEW)
5 Loyalty Crystal Shatter Tokens (NEW)

Platinum 2
9,120 Tier 4 Alpha Shards (NEW)
4 Loyalty Crystal Shatter Tokens (NEW)

Platinum 3
3 Loyalty Crystal Shatter Tokens (NEW)

Platinum 4
2 Loyalty Crystal Shatter Tokens (NEW)

Platinum 5
2 Loyalty Crystal Shatter Tokens (NEW)

Platinum 6
1 Loyalty Crystal Shatter Tokens (NEW)

Defense Tactic Tuning

With the second season of Crush 2.0 ending, we now have a new tactic that we’ve been cooking up. We wanted to bring back some old favorites and give them a modern facelift in line with the rest of the current Alliance War meta. So without further ado, we wanted to introduce to you the new form of Stubborn… Magic Thief!

Defense: Magic Thief

Magic Thief - 1:
#Magic Thief Defenders gain a stackable Indestructible Passive every 5 seconds, or when their attacks are Dodged, Evaded, or Miss. Max stacks: 3. This timer is paused during the Defender's Specials. As long as this Indestructible Passive is on the Defender, they gain 5% of a Bar of Power when hitting the Attacker's Block. 1 Indestructible Passive is removed whenever the Attacker Well-Time Blocks. These effects cannot be affected by Ability Accuracy.

Magic Thief - 2:
#Magic Thief Defenders gain a stackable Indestructible Passive every 5 seconds, or when their attacks are Dodged, Evaded, or Miss. Max stacks: 5. This timer is paused during the Defender's Specials. As long as this Indestructible Passive is on the Defender, they gain 10% of a Bar of Power when hitting the Attacker's Block. 1 Indestructible Passive is removed whenever the Attacker Well-Time Blocks. These effects cannot be affected by Ability Accuracy.

Magic Thief - 3:
#Magic Thief Defenders gain a stackable Indestructible Passive every 5 seconds, or when their attacks are Dodged, Evaded, or Miss. Max stacks: 7. This timer is paused during the Defender's Specials. As long as this Indestructible Passive is on the Defender, they gain 15% of a Bar of Power when hitting the Attacker's Block. 1 Indestructible Passive is removed whenever the Attacker Well-Time Blocks. These effects cannot be affected by Ability Accuracy.

Attack: X-Magica

If the Attacker has the #X-Magica tag, their Well-Timed Blocks grant them an indefinite 2% Prowess Passive. Max stacks: 7. When a #X-Magica Attacker strikes a #Magic Thief Defender, they pause their Indestructible timer for 0.5 seconds. When a #Magic Thief Defender activates an Indestructible Passive, it and 1 Prowess Passive from this Tactic is instantly removed. These effects cannot be affected by Ability Accuracy.

Defense Tactic Champion List
Serpent, Sersi, Gorr, Silver Surfer, Corvus Glaive, Super Skrull, Odin, The Champion, Red Goblin, Deathless King Groot, Adam Warlock, Phoenix, Cosmic Ghost Rider, Gladiator, Vision Aarkus, Nova, Thing, Bullseye, Nick Fury, Agent Venom, Elsa Bloodstone, Kraven, Black Panther Civil War, Kate Bishop, Hit Monkey, Blade, Killmonger, Coming Soon, Jabari Panther, Crossbones, Baron Zemo, Black Widow (Deadly Origin), Kingpin, Masacre, Squirrel Girl

Attack Tactic Champion List
Longshot, The Hood, Doctor Voodoo, Mojo, Symbiote Supreme, Kushala, Wiccan, Sorcerer Supreme, Dragon Man, Deathless Guillotine, Coming Soon, Magik, Spider Man (Supreme), Werewolf By Night, Black Widow (CW), Scarlet Witch, Void, Colossus, Domino, Namor, Bishop, Jubilee, Iceman, Havok, Nightcrawler, Professor X, Sauron, Stryfe, Storm (Pyramid X), Wolverine (Weapon X), Dani Moonstar, Gambit, Coming Soon, Emma Frost, Toad

Season 48 Bans

Elite:

Blacklist - Ghost, Scorpion
Whitelist - Hercules, Warlock

Expert:

Blacklist - Ghost, Kingpin
Whitelist - Hercules, Warlock

Challenger:

Blacklist - Kingpin
Whitelist - Hercules