We’ve added some PVP change notes to the weekly event blog here that we wanted to highlight.
PvP Changes
We have a couple of changes in PvP going out this week.
Alliance Balance
We are increasing the skill point bonus for Alliances with 0-1 Citadels.
0 Citadel Alliances – changed from 20% skill point boost to 40% skill point boost
1 Citadel Alliances – changed from 10% skill point boost to 20% skill point boost
As it does currently, these apply to the attackers only.
We will have an additional change coming in the next update to try and further aid these Alliances, and may test applying them to Defenders.
This change will be released today.
This is just one small change to Alliances, it is not intended to be “the” fix to the Alliance balancing. The reason for this change is to make it a little easier for members of smaller Alliances to win battles against the top Alliance. We will be watching how this change goes and making further tweaks as necessary as well as continuing to look into the overall Alliance membership and balancing.
Stellarix and Wand of Stars
We are aware of the ongoing concerns about the strength of Stellarix and Wand of Stars in PvP Battles.
While we are looking into addressing this, we will be temporarily replacing Stellarix and Wand of Stars on opponent teams with Diamantina and Prismatic Orb respectively.
This is to help reduce some of the frustration around encountering them in PvP battles, as we investigate, plan, and test any changes around them.
Players will be able to continue using Stellarix and Wand of Stars themselves, as this should only affect opponents’ teams.
This troop swap in opponent teams will be released tomorrow.
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Thank you all for your patience and feedback so far!
With this change (and even before it), the alliance system is completely fine.
A 40% stat boost just for joining a losing alliance is absolutely huge. You can use those stats to stomp the PVP leaderboard with an insanely buffed stellarix/etc; also helps new players who don’t care about gold marks yet.
Or you can play ‘hard mode’ with no stat boost, do the daily citadel grind, and get some heavily nerfed daily gold marks. Something for everyone here.
It does not seem like a good idea to give 40% stat buffs to defenders.
This doesn’t really help smaller alliances win more points, it just makes the bigger alliances suffer occasional point losses (on top of just being annoying as stuff to play an imitation blood frenzy for daily citadel battles). The bigger alliances will still win due to sheer number of players even if the experience is just a lot worse to play.
This sentiment was noted in Beta feedback - from my understanding, it was originally going to apply to defenders as well before this feedback was given.
If so, props to IP2 for listening to feedback!
None of these PvP tweaks are solid long-term solutions, as Kafka noted, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction while other changes are planned.
Still reluctant to bring back the random defenses that most players enjoyed before you broke PvP?
Even if it was just in slot 1 or 1&2, so those who want a challenge can still face it in slot 2/3?
All I can say is thank you for removing Wand of Stars from enemy teams…after my week of endless suffering against that weapon’s looping this is a relief.
And also thank you for not nerfing Stellarix.
I think this is a brilliant plan.
As for Alliances, I think the number of players per Alliance should have been limited from the start…
The community has discussed in length about the problem with wand of stars and Stellarix. They are the frustrating META that people have to deal with all of the time. Troops like The Gray King can stop this overpowered duo, but it is not guaranteed. Plus, it takes a longer amount of time to defeat, so you actually end up losing more VP over time.
Wand of stars with Elementalist can bless the whole team, give full mana to the whole team, cripple the enemy team with status effects and barrier itself. Stellarix can defeat most enemy teams in one or two casts, and it has a high extra turn chance off of it’s boost ratio or elemental/umbral star creation.
This is wonderful for daily tasks or explore, and it is clearly the best option for pvp. I have tried using other teams, but Stella and Wand just get VP the fastest, and even if I’m up against the same team, I flip a coin (er, I mean Takshaka or Leprechaun), and if they get their team up before me, or I lose an extra turn, I just exit out of the battle and try again. We are not penalized for losing, and the time it takes to carefully work your way through Stella and Wand with a special set-up makes you lose more VP over time.
This new pvp isn’t even close to the technicality and careful decision making of guild wars. It’s a poor substitute that rewards people for just blasting away with the quickest teams using Wand and Stella. The problem is that you just can’t remove them either because it would make getting VP harder.
I’m going to have to go to the drawing board on this one…I’m trying to find a solution, but for every problem solved, several more take it’s place…Limit the number of battles we can do in pvp per day? Grant bonus points for having a winning streak? Such a mess…
Sounds like one part of a viable solution would be improving the VP award system. You know, the thing that grants you bonus VP if you don’t lose any troops, or win within a certain number of turns.
They could start by adding a bunch of new categories and then give certain ones big bonuses. Then, if you play using careful strategies, you get big bonuses, making it worthwhile to carefully outmaneuver enemy teams.
I’d suggest:
Bonuses for having less rare troops and/or weapons - no mythics, no legendaries and no epics would each give increasing bonuses. Maybe +50% for no mythics, +100% for no mythics or legendaries, and +200% if you win with no mythics or legendaries or epics.
Bonuses for counter-maneuvers. So, for each turn your enemy takes, where they don’t cast a spell, or do skull attacks, you get a bonus, because you put them in a position where they weren’t able to make a strong move.
Bonuses for skilled play. Stuff like winning while not getting an extra turn, or not taking any damage (multiplied by the number of enemy turns you avoided damage), or whatever.
At least this way, they could encourage players to use less powerful teams and play with more skill, since we’d actually get better rewards that way. And it would leave some less powerful enemy teams in defence for players to go up against.
Not the only thing they’d need to do, but it could be one step.
Do you mean that there was no need to nerf the Pathfinder and break the Journey? You could just replace him in pvp with someone else. It’s not too late to do this and fix the Pathfinder for the Journey. We all wait it half of year. Or you did it especially?
This is what I have missed with not having guild wars–limited battles that reward players for making careful decisions while trying to maximize their score. This dumbed down version of pvp has made many players, even myself, forget about different strategies and just use the most powerful weapons and troops available to get VP as efficient as possible.
It’s hard to fix pvp in its current state because the rewards are good, but it needs to be easy enough where it doesn’t feel like a chore. If every battle feels like the old guild wars, it would be too much. Once a month was more than enough of those difficult battles. It gave you enough time to process why you won or lost. Pvp is too fast nowadays and players don’t have time to make calculated decisions…
If enough bonus points were rewarded for careful decisions and team creation, it might work. Epic troops like daughter of time could be used to great effect to make an endless loop that could defeat the enemy team without even using a mythic.
I guess this proves that the Journey troop nerf was a ’ cash grab’ as if they can just replace troops willy nilly then they could have done that with them and not broke journey
You could just replace him in pvp with someone else. It’s not too late to do this and fix the Pathfinder for the Journey. We all wait it half of year. Or you did it especially? 
