2020-04-07 21:21:58

Dear Challengers,

Arena of Valor will be taken offline on April 9th for maintenance, during which the game will be updated to the new "Light Chaser" patch.

After "Magic Academy" went online, many players said that they really enjoyed the time spent with the instructors and students at Carano Academy, but they also felt that the campus life was missing some really interesting extracurricular activities. We hear you! In this new version, we will introduce the most popular club activity in the Academy, the all-new Carano Chess! Come and experience it for yourself. At the same time, with the new season, you can expect a whole new Ranked Match experience with our major updates, as well as system improvements in the match environment and matchup rules. Also, to improve the refresh experience of Middle Lane Mages, we'll make further tweaks to the battle mechanics and equipment system in this update. What's more, when we unveil the new "Light Chaser," we will also welcome the Light Chasers Team to come on board and share their stories in the world of Athanor. Come, let's get ready to follow them in their adventures!

I. Carano Chess

1. Overview

Carano Chess is a new casual match mode in Arena of Valor that pits players' strategies in the different rounds.

Carano Chess is an ancient game played among the mages. It became popular after D'Arcy, the legendary mage from Carano Academy, replaced the chess pieces with heroes of the day and modified the rules of the game.

2. Enter Carano Chess

Enter the world of Carano Chess from the main page.

Tap to enter the exclusive Hall of Carano Chess and select either "Casual Match" or "Ranked Match" to play.

You can invite friends to pit your chess skills against them, but not in the same camp. This is an individual game where players fight on their own.

3. How to Play

Rules

1) There are many rounds in Carano Chess. In each round, players challenge a random opponent or a target PVE stage.

2) As chess pieces, the heroes battle on the chessboard automatically until there is a winner or the time is up.

3) Points will be deducted from the loser accordingly. Ranking is done in real time and is based on the current score at the end of each round.

4) Player has to eliminate all other players to win. Rewards are handed out according to the ranking. The higher the ranking, the better the rewards.

How to Upgrade Your Combat Capability

Part 1: Hero Recruitment

Purchase your desired hero when the game starts officially. Drag your hero into the battlefield to form a sensible team lineup, and tweak the hero's position accordingly (make sure your rear is protected).

Part 2: Hero Upgrade

When you purchase three of the same hero (same star grading), you can combine them to form a hero with a higher star grading (up to 3 stars).

Part 3: Activate Combos

Every hero has two kinds of combos: Class and Camp. In a team, the combo effects are activated when there is a certain number of heroes with the same combos.

Part 4: Essence Upgrade

Upgrade the level of Essence, up to a maximum of level 9, to increase the number of units deployed in the lineup.

Part 5: Equipment

In the PvE round, monsters will drop equipment that can be used to equip the heroes, and this will improve their combat capabilities significantly.

II. Ranked Match 2.0

In AOV, the ranked match system has always been the most popular system with the highest usage. To offer players a better game experience, we went through the game functionalities and realized that it's been a while since we last introduced new content to the ranked match system. After we reviewed your feedback on ranked matches, we decided to introduce a great number of changes to the ranked match system to improve your ranked match experience. We've made some improvements to the contents in this version, but you can expect to see more in subsequent updates.

Improved Ranked Match UI

- Behind the changes:

We noticed that the current ranked match UI is relatively outdated. By improving the artwork presentation together with more refined artistry in the scenes, we hope the revamped ranked match system UI will offer players a new and fresh experience.

Details:

We will revamp the ranked match system by enveloping the scenes with better artwork display. You can also expect to see a better presentation of the skin effects in this season.

We have re-organized the system entry positions of the same functions such as the "Legendary Zone", "Hero Proficiency", "Recent", and "Season Results". The entries for these four functions are now placed in a menu in the lower-left corner of the screen where players can expand the menu to view the relevant functions.

To enable players to quickly understand their current tiers, we have also integrated the display of Tiers and Brave Points as these two functions are closely related.

New System - Hero Challenge

- Behind the changes:

Ranked Match is always the top popular game mode for players. Once the Placement for the new season is completed, players will each receive a Hero Challenge Card that indicates the ranking goal that the system has set for the individual player in the new season. The challenge rewards are not the only things that players can expect. We will offer assistance to help players complete the challenge. Let's get to the top together!

System Rules:

The challenge goal for each player varies with the player's performance in the previous season. Players who perform better last season will receive more ambitious goals.

The player succeeds when the challenge is completed within the specified time. Otherwise, the player has failed.

During the challenge, players will get an extra star when they have accumulated a certain number of victories.

When the player collects the maximum number of stars for a tier for the first time, the stars continue to stay with the player even when the player fails the next round of challenge (not valid for players at Legendary tier).

Players will receive the corresponding rewards for each stage once the challenge is completed.

New Reward - Placement Completion Reward

- Behind the changes:

Placement is designed to help players score faster at the start of the new season. In this update, we improved the grading process of some placement matches and will reward those players who completed the placement matches accordingly.

New Rewards:

Players will receive a certain amount of gold once they have completed the placement matches.

In addition to the Placement Completion Award and the "Season Challenge" award, we've prepared other exciting ranked match rewards for players in this season. What are you waiting for? Hurry! Head now to the ranked matches and score.

III. Matchup Mechanism Improvements

- Behind the changes:

Starting from the previous version, we continue the efforts to improve the matchup rules. A fairer and more rational matchup mechanism is undoubtedly a must if we want players to have a good match experience. Fairness is definitely our primary focus in ranked matches. We constantly strive to make the average tier, strength, and hero pool configuration of both sides comparable to create exciting showdowns between equals.

We try to improve and adjust the assessment of each participant's overall capabilities in a match. These include factors that may affect the overall strength such as the player number of matching, the conversion of tier abilities for a team matchup, and hidden lane markings. We hope these tweaks will help to create a fairer and more rational matchup environment.

We also received many useful suggestions from players as we work to improve the matchup rules. This has been a great motivating factor for us. Working off of the existing base, we'll try some new adjustments to continue generating more balanced outcomes.

- Details:

We will introduce new matchup factors in the AOV ranked match mechanism to assess the actual strength of each participant in the ranked match more comprehensively. The goal is to minimize irrational matchups where team members with no compatible or complementary skills are put together.

We will continue to track the impact of the new matchup system adjustments on matches to further improve matches. At this stage, we will offer this to the gold, platinum and diamond tiers first.

Similarly, the new matchup mechanism will make the players' capabilities in a match more even. This will cause a slight delay in the time spent in matchmaking. We are monitoring the duration spent closely as we strive to build a matchup environment that is more rational and efficient.

IV. Match Environment Improvements

Mute any bad speech during matches in real time

- Behind the changes:

This will put a timely stop to any verbal abuse. With this, we hope that normal players will no longer encounter such malicious harassment.

- Details:

Offenders will receive a warning immediately when they commit their first act of aggression or harassment in any match. They will be blocked and temporarily muted for the second offense.

Algorithm to maintain the stars of MVP in the losing team

- Behind the changes:

We realized that the current algorithm does not address the disparities between different classes and positions, causing certain heroes to be at a disadvantage when protection is triggered.

- Details:

The revised criteria will take into account the disparities between different heroes. We also tweaked the data criteria. In general, the probability to trigger protection is now similar for all heroes. There is also a slight increase in the probability to trigger protection for all.

Fixed the bug where reconnection after being forced offline was determined as AFK during the character selection or loading phases

We fixed a bug where, in certain situations, AFK is considered even when the player reconnects back to the game quickly after being forced offline during the character selection or loading phases.

Linked Mayhem Mode to report system

After the update, you can report players who have behaved badly in the game.

AFK penalty in Mayhem Mode

A penalty will be imposed for AFK. Stars, gold and EXP rewards earned from the AFK match will be reduced in proportion to the AFK duration, with the maximum penalty reducing all rewards to 0.

V. Red Dots

- Behind the changes:

We are very concerned about "seeing red" feedback from players. On the one hand, we hope that these little red dots can help us to convey valuable information to players, remind players of updates to new functions, as well as remind players to collect their rewards. On the other hand, we are also worried that seeing too much "red" will affect the game experience. Therefore, in this version, we fixed the issues where too many red dots were displayed or unable to be removed.

Details:

We have greatly reduced the number of red dots in the Main Menu such as those found in the following systems: "Player Stats", "Settings", "Hero Customization", and "Legendary Prime". These red dots will no longer be displayed in the Main Menu. We hope this gives the players a more conducive page display, and "seeing red" will no longer disrupt the game experience anymore.

VI. Battlefield Changes

- Behind the changes:

We've made several changes to the battlefield environment in the last version, some of which were well-received while some could be done better. We continue to find many Middle Lane Heroes struggling with their economic situation even when they took on more team responsibilities. To resolve this, there are some slight adjustments to how EXP and finance resources are allocated to the different lanes, as well as to the mage's equipment.

Details:

Lanes

Increased basic gold for Middle Lane Melee Soldier/Ranged Soldier/Ballistae: 40/25/68 -> 44/27/74;

Increased basic EXP for Middle Lane Melee Soldier/Ranged Soldier/Ballistae: 42/32/55 -> 46/34/60;

Reduced basic gold for Top and Bottom Lane Melee Soldier/Ranged Soldier/Ballistae: 40/25/68 -> 38/24/65.

Equipment

Arctic Orb

"In the previous version, we enhanced this equipment but its performance has been lackluster. To improve its low usage, we strengthened its basic attributes, reduced the cooldown as well as increased the shield value after use."

Basic attribute: 200 Ability Power -> 220 Ability Power

Only Active - [Diamond Dust]

Cooldown: 90 -> 75

Shield: 400 (+30/Lv.) + 0.4 AP -> 500 (+40/Lv.) + 0.5 AP

Frostguard

"This new equipment did not meet our expectations, so we changed some of the attributes like replacing HP with Armor instead. We hope it can now offer better protection to certain middle and short-range mages. The damage structure has also been tweaked to suit these mages."

Crafting: Spoopy Mask + Magic Ring + Ring of Vitality -> Spoopy Mask + Magic Ring + Knight's Plate

Base attribute: 500 HP -> 225 Armor

Unique Passive - [Chilling Frost]

Damage: 50 (+10/Lv.) + 0.5 AP -> 80 (+20/Lv.) + 0.3 AP

Berith's Agony

"Adapt the damage structure to make it more suitable for mages with sustained damage."

Unique Passive: magic damage equal to 3% per second of current HP -> 40 (+5/Lv.) + magic damage equal to 2% per second of current HP

Phoenix Tear

"The current price-performance ratio of Phoenix Tear seems to be too high so we decided to adjust the selling price and modify the skill effect to solve the issue that the mage's early equipment lacks diversity."

Price: 600 -> 800

Unique Passive - [From the Ashes] Restores 20% of HP and Mana in 3 seconds after upgrade -> Restores 20% of Mana and 600 + 30/Lv. of HP in 3 seconds after upgrade

Enchantment

Reaper’s Blessing

"We understand your agony. When you try to execute a kill that must not go wrong, the trigger of Reaper's Blessing can be so frustrating! We have many exciting ideas about the Enchantment of the League of Humans. But before these ideas can be implemented, we will make Reaper's Blessing weaker to minimize the bad experience it gives to players."

Time to effect: 3 minutes later -> 3-6 minutes

Effect duration: 1 second -> 0.5 seconds

Improved Special Effects

VII. Balance Tweaks

Violet:

Decreased damage by the bonus super long-range gunshot in Ability 1: 1.0 AD-> 0.8 AD. Increased the mana cost of Ability 1 by 5.

Players who are familiar with Violet should know that the enhanced normal attack after Ability 1 is activated includes a cannon attack and a super long-range gunshot, and both attacks can be deployed for critical hits. This leads to a "sudden death" in low-HP heroes when Violet's super long-range gunshot hit them in later stages. To give Violet a more balanced confrontation, we slightly decreased the damage of the second shot. At the same time, we increased the mana cost of Ability 1 as her strengths and damage quotient are too powerful. This will give her opponents some breathing space.

Wisp:

Removed the restriction that enhanced normal attacks by Ability 1 cannot get critical hits, and decreased the attack speed of enhanced normal attacks.

We restricted the enhanced normal attacks previously to standardize the rules for critical hits from such attacks by shooters. For example, the additional damage dealt by characters like Violet, Lindis, and the Joker is not for critical hits. But this has caused some misunderstanding among the players, so we decided to reverse the restriction on critical hits and retain the capability to create large-scale explosions later.

In addition, after we increased the growth of here attack speed, we felt that the attack frequency was sufficiently high in the middle and late stages, hence we removed the additional attack speed of Ability 1 so that the explosion damage will be output slightly later.

The Joker:

Passive: Adjusted the slow down effect of Punch Line: 90% -> 50%-90% (will increase with character's level at a rate of 10% for every 3 levels);

Passive: Decreased the range of Punch Line: 8 m -> 7.75 m. Added a distance indicator that is visible to both sides when triggered;

Ability 2: Cooldown: 15 (-1/Lv.) seconds -> 13.5 (-0.7/Lv.) seconds.

The huge slowdown and physical immunity effect make the Joker a little too powerful in a showdown with other marksmen. We weakened the restriction on Punch Line in the early stage and lowered the cooldown of Ability 2 slightly to compensate. Hopefully, this will allow the Joker and his opponent shooters to have a better confrontation experience.

Errol:

Passive: The indicator will correctly show the furthest distance that every third enhanced normal attack can hit;

Ability 2: When the passive Berserk effect reaches 5 stacks, each refresh of the effect will reduce the cooldown of Ability 2 by one second at the same time;

Ability 2: Slow down effect: 80% -> 50%;

Ultimate: Returns 50% cooldown if take-off is interrupted;

Ultimate: Removed the action freeze before landing;

Ultimate: Adjusted the Knock Away duration after landing: 0.75 seconds -> 0.5 seconds.

In the escalating confrontations on the Antaris Battlefield, Errol appears somewhat clumsy and weak. We focused on improving the ease-of-use of his abilities. At the same time, we balanced this by reducing the control ability so that even when Errol is in an advantageous position, the enemy can enjoy a normal confrontation experience.

Eland'orr:

Increased the damage of passive mark: 150 (+8/Lv.) (+0.3 AD) -> 160 (+12/Lv.) (+0.35 AD).

A little bit of love is given to boost Eland'orr's popularity among marksmen (mobility) so that his execution output can be as high as other marksmen even with all the fanfare surrounding his actions.

Riktor:

Increased HP Regen in the brush to 2% per second; charge time of Ability 2 can be shortened by cooldown reduction (initial charge time: 16 seconds); adjusted the cooldown reduction of Ability 2 to 3 seconds.

Although Riktor can adapt to any terrain easily, he can't adapt to the escalating conflict in the Antaris Battlefield, so we slightly strengthened his adaptability.

Lu Bu:

Duration of passive attack speed buff: 5 seconds -> 4 seconds.

The 100% attack speed reward at the early stage is too easy to obtain. Now Lu Bu needs to decide if he will maintain his passive effect or retain his abilities.

Max:

Increased passive healing reduction to 50%, but this cannot be superimposed with Soul Prison.

We want each character to be picked for some reason. Hopefully, with this enhancement, Max can better counteract an enemy's lineup of multiple healers.

Superman:

Improved the touch and feel of Ability 2 when walking and flying as well as that of the Ultimate during walking;

Added a timer above the character's head when the Ultimate is effective;

Fixed the bug that Ability 1's indicator does not match the actual effective range when walking and flying;

Fixed the bug that the special laser effects of Ability 1 during flight disappeared;

With these bug fixes and improvements in usability, coupled with adjustments from previous versions, we hope that Superman can perform well in Slayer Lane conflicts.

Taara:

Taara can use the Ultimate during the spinning of Ability 2 now. We also made some minor improvements on the operating experience.

Tulen:

Fixed a bug that caused the damage of the Ultimate to be lower than expected.

As the Ultimate's damage directly determines when Tulen can start the harvest, we will follow up closely on how this adjustment affects Tulen's capabilities. If this increases Tulen's strength excessively, we may carry out a minor correction later.

Marja:

Decreased the range in Ability 2 indicator to make it consistent with the actual effective range. No change to the actual effective range of Ability 2.

In the previous version, the actual effective range of Marja's Ability 2 was slightly shorter than the indicator's, causing Marja's Ability 2 to go into cooldown with no actual effect when she attacks the enemy with a range at the extreme end of the indicator.

Thane:

Decreased the range in Ability 2 indicator to make it consistent with the actual effective range.

Hilda:

Maintains the number of passive stacks when the Ultimate starts and ends. This tweak is a slight enhancement for Hilda.

Ormarr

We decided that paired with his ability set and HP, Ormarr was too safe of a pick. In order to stop this, we've toned down his survivability, this way when in a fight Ormarr can be punished more for his mistakes.

Base HP: 3800 -> 3650

HP growth: 410 -> 380

Yena

Desperate Duel is great for Yena's sustained damage output. She almost has no flaws in the hands of an experienced player, especially when defending against a wave of enemies in a lane. We have slightly toned down her damage reduction while in single weapon mode, so she is a bit more vulnerable when laning or in a team fight.

Passive: Lunar Phase

Damage reduction: 50% -> 40%

Ishar

Explanation Due to Furball's presence, we toned down Ishar's initial HP. But judging from data, the tweak reduced the margin of error for Ishar too much, as she often succumbed to assassins before Furball could be summoned, so we made a minor improvement to her survivability.

Base HP: 3206 -> 3438

HP growth: 234 -> 264

Capheny

Capheny doesn't perform well in Dragon Lane currently. Rapid Shot is not safe in mid to late game, and Pulse Shot doesn't do well until she has Crit equipment. We have changed her damage structure slightly and enhanced Armorbreaker a little bit, so she can cement her place as the default hit and run character.

Ability 1: Pulse Shot

Rapid Shot damage: 40 + 10/lv + 0.25 AD -> 30 + 10/lv + 0.3 AD

Pulse Shot base damage: 70 + 70/lv -> 100 + 60/lv

Ability 2: Armorbreaker

Rapid Shot speed increase: 100% that diminishes over 0.5 seconds -> 80% that diminishes over 1 second

Lauriel

Explanation Lauriel ended up being too powerful after we fixed the issue where she occasionally lost damage when using Blink. The damage from her Blink ended up being higher than before, so we reduced it to make it more reasonable.

Ability 2: Blink

Magic Damage: 175 + 15/lv + 0.24 AP->135 + 10/lv + 0.2 AP

Errol

Errol's recommended equipment has been adjusted. We hope this will give him more variety, especially when combined with the previous balance adjustment.

Equipment Adjustments

[Explanation] Lately, our focus is on improving Support Heroes, and we are starting with gold. In the previous version, wearing Support equipment led to zero gold/EXP earnings from the lane. Now we want to improve the gold earnings for Support Heroes and reduce the cost of Support equipment to make Support players get what they want sooner.

Support Equipment Cost Changes:

Tier 2 Support Equipment: 800 -> 600

Tier 3 Support Equipment: 1750 -> 1400

Wind Stone Passive

Ration: Earn 5 gold/EXP every 3 seconds if you are earning the least gold or have the lowest level out of everyone in your group. -> Ration: Earn 8 gold/EXP every 3 seconds if you are earning the least gold or have the lowest level out of everyone in your group.

Tier 2 Support Equipment: Armor 200 -> 150

Tier 3 Support Equipment: Armor 200 -> 150, HP 500 -> 750

VIII. Updated Worldview

Hero Encyclopedia

This time, we added the hero encyclopedia of seven heroes: Paine, Ata, Quillen, Veres, Sephera, Dirak and Keera. Do you know the mystery behind the three majestic heads of the Magic Academy? Are you curious about Keera's past? Go to "Stories" on the Heroes page and find the answers now.

Encounter Riddle

Added new fun Q&A about 15 heroes. Players can get more Hero Synergy when they explore the big map and answer these random questions.

IX. Hero and Skin Reset

Visual Effect Updates for Heroes:

A comprehensive rework of the artwork with improvements in the texture of Nakroth and some of his skins. These actions, models and special effects will bring about a more dashing Nakroth.

Upgraded the quality of the artwork in Astrid and some of his skins.

Bug Fixes and Other Improvements