Dear Challengers,

On 26 April, Arena of Valor official servers will be taken offline while this update is being applied. You will not be able to log in during the maintenance period.

 

1) Battlefield

 

 1. Lane Features Improvements

 In battlefield 4.0, we noticed some unwanted laning scenarios occuring due to recent tweaks, which will be adjusted accordingly in the upcoming version.

For new players who are unfamiliar with the mirroring lay-out of the battlefield, it's hard to tell which lane they are supposed to go down. To resolve that, lane guidance will now become visually clearer, and will also be shown on mini-map. 

Taking Spirit Sentinel have been a hugely rewarding option in the early phase of a game, however slayer laners from both sides are no longer the only ones fighting over it. Players from other lanes, even marksmen, tend to crowd in slayer lane for a bonus chance to farm. This not a desirable outcome, which is why we decide to postpone the first spawn of Spirit Sentinel, remove healing blobs, and add extra golds to balance the gain. Meanwhile, tanks have been struggling with the comparatively lower efficiency of taking Spirit Sentinel than warriors, so we're adjusting the basic stats of Spirit Sentinel identical to Cruiser Hawk's.

 

Spirit Sentinel:

Gold: 25 → 35

Armor & Magic Defense: 100 → 0

Health Growth every 30 seconds: 10% → 5.5%

Max Health Growth: 250% → 180%

First Spawn: 30s → 40s

Healing blobs removed 

 

Cruiser Hawk:

First Spawn: 30s → 40s

 

In previous versions, minion waves in mid lane were often snatched by junglers/side laners. As an intervention, we took actions to minimize its negative influence, including increasing gold earning in mid lane, bringing forward the minion wave convergence in side lanes, and adding Devotion effect for jungler's equipment. Statistics show that the latter two measures turnd out to be quite effective, so we're rolling back the first tweak of extra gold earning in mid lane.

Minion waves in mid lane will no longer provide extra gold.

 For marksmen, carrying a teamfight always requires plenty of farming. But currently their investments of time and patience are rarely paid off. Given that, we are going to boost them up to the pace by giving dragon lane a slight tap of extra gold in early stages of the game.

In the first 4 minutes of a game, each ranged minion in dragon lane will provide 30 → 65 gold.

  

2. Mini-map Clarity Improvements

More information will be displayed on mini-map. Now when an epic wildling is going to dissapear, there will be a 30-second countdown on its sign (Slayer and Dragon will dissapear at 7:30, Dark Slayer and Holy Dragon will dissapear at 14:00). Icon of the player who captures Dark Slayer will be highlighted in mini-map, until Dark Slayer is summoned. 

Epic Wildlings Dissapearing		Dark Slayer Capturer

 There will also be a 15-second countdown for Might/Sage Golems when they're about to respawn (Only visible when Golems are killed within ally sight). Hopefully our players would benefit from these improvements, and focus more on the combat without being disctracted. 

Might/Sage Golem Respawning

In recent patches, we've been tweaking Spirit Sentinel, now that the gain has been balanced to an average degree of non-epic wildlings, so should the icon follow the same logic.

Apart from all that, signals and signs on mini-maps are also going to be visually refined. 

Signals On Mini-map 

3.Unit Health Bar Visual Upgrade

Slayer/Dark Slayer/Infinite Slayer summoned by players now has a clearer health bar separated into multiple blocks (2000 HP of each). Different types of minions also vary in the length of health bar, making it easier for players to distinguish the most threatening hostile unit among the battlefield. 

Dark Slayer (Summoned)	Infinite Slayer (Summoned)

Cannoneer And Ranged Minion

 

4. Tower Overdrive Visual Upgrade

The mechanism of tower attack has been under the cover. We're trying to address the increasing damage that a tower inflicts on a hero. The more it launches attack, the bigger its bullets get. Stay alert and stay away! 

5. Bounty Calculation Tweak

The bounty reiceved by the team battling uphill will be more parametrically reasonable.

In previous versions, the amount of gold gained through killing an enemy hero was based on the enemy's level, but the bounty that stacks upon the killer was a consecutive and constant progression determined by body count. We're coming up with a new algorithm which, in plain words, will make the bounty growth adaptively equitable. 

6. Slayer & Dragon Debuff Tweak

Taking Slayer/Dragon before 7:00 binds players to a debuff which decreases the damage dealt to evolved Slayer/Dragon after 8:00, resulting in a tactical dilemma of whether to take the initiative and attack epic wildlings. We want to make it less complicated for our players.

Killing Slayer/Dragon will grant you Stigma I, causing your damage dealt to Slayer/Dragon decrease by 50%.

Killing Dark Slayer/Holy Dragon will grant you Stigma II, causing your damage dealt to Dark Slayer/Infinite Slayer/Holy Dragon decrease by 50%.

 

2) New Hero–Yan

 

Yan, The genius painter of Dragon Kingdom, has set off on his journey to the Antaris battlefield. Wielding the mythical brush named Dragontail, he is coloring the world with finesse! Join Arena of Valor to be the witness of true masterpiece!

Passive: Flash of Inspiration

When Yan uses skill 1 or skill 2, he stacks 1 mark. When the quantity of mark accumulates to 2, next normal attack will be enhanced, and will apply different effect depending on the last skill he cast. Hitting an enemy will increase Yan's attack speed and restore his HP.

Skill 1: Splash Ink

Dealing physical damage towards a sector area, causing the enemy within to slow down.

Enhanced normal attack: Yan jumps up and thrust downward, dealing physical damage and knocking up the enemy.

Skill 2: Coiling Dragon

Yan becomes untargetable and dashes in a curved route, dealing damage to enemy in his path.

Enhanced normal attack: Yan dashes towards enemy, dealing physical damage and having an extra attempt of skill 2 prepared immediately.

Ultimate: Crushing Mountain

First move: Yan deals damage to nearby enemy and activate the second move of his ultimate skill, gaining extra penetration, increasing skill damage. Enhanced normal attack will contribute to the duration of this ultimate state, and enables second move of ultimate skill to be used multiple times (acquire lv.2 ultimate to unlock). Enhanced normal attack will also stack 1 mark (acquire lv.3 ultimate to unlock).

Second move: Yan dashes onward, dealing physical damage to enemy within the area and knocking them up.

 

 

3) Combat

 

1.Command Feedbacks

1: Fully upgraded skill indicators of all heroes.

2：When overlaps with terrains, the indicator becomes partially translucent.

3：Indicators for charging/channeling type of skills will not be disabled by control effects.

4: When using flicker, if it's unable to teleport the hero across a terrain, the hero will still be teleported along indicated direction instead of ending up in the original place.

2. Effect Visualizations

1: Fully upgraded fonts and animations for digits of damage dealt, gold earned and HP restored.

 

2: Newly designed signs for control effects such as stunned/taunted/silenced.

3: Improved animation for death, respawn, restore and trail effect.

4: Preview added for demonstrating the total amount of continuous HP restore effect. 

HP Restore Effect	HP Restore Preview

 

HP restore preview is added to following skills/equipments:

● Restore–Enchantment, healing pack behind outer towers
● Cleansing–Mother Eart: Cleansing, Tidal Force: Cleansing, Wildfire–Cleansing
● Regenerate–Belt of Clarity, Gaia's Standard
● From the Ashes–Pheonix Tear, Orb of the Magi
● Roar–Talent
● Contaminate–Mganga
● Assassination–Quillen
● Natural Affinity–Y'bneth

5: Existing buffs will be presented as icons beside hero's health bar.

 

Existing buffs including：

Example: Capheny's Armor Penetration Effect  

6: An activated passive skill will be priorly displayed in colors, while one on cooldown will be displayed in black and white.

Example: Zuka's Strength Stack

We aim to have passive skills better organized in the upcoming update, recreations have been made upon specific skills with icons missing, which will contribute to the clarity of the combat interface.

Skills/equipments involved:

● Life Shield–Rhea's Blessing
● Rapid Blade–Zweihander
● Regenerate–Gaia's Standard
● Berserk–Hercules' Madness
● Adrenaline–Odin's Will
● Angelic Guardian–Enchantment
● Sacred Spirit–Enchantment
● Awakening Devil–Enchantment
● Curse of Death–Enchantment
● Explosive Shield–Enchantment
● Nature's Rage–Enchantment
● Lasher–Arduin
● Tread Softly–Lindis
● Natural Affinity–Y'bneth
● Doom Lord–Volkath
● Reign–Thane
● Strength Stack–Zuka

7: Improvements have been made to distinguish three different situations of skill unavailability, which are being disrupted, being conflicted and being uncancellable. It will also be applied to normal attack button.

8: When character outline function is on, the part of a hero blocked by terrains will be outlined and highlighted to reveal hero's position.

9: Clearer visualization of combat power.

 

3. Fundamental Logics

1: Silence effect will no longer be able to cancel any normal attack.

2: Improved enemy-detecting behaviors of of wildlings will provide junglers with a better experience.

 

4) System

 

1. Skill Demonstrations

Skill demonstration system is added in hero details interface as a quick-learning method outside a real time match.

This system will brief the players through combat simulations along with explanatory texts to help them understand what kinds of roles these particular heroes should be playing. We will keep perfecting the system in the next following updates.

 

2.  In-game Strategic Communications

Players will be able to find more quick signals suited for different tactics, which allow them to share combat intel in time.

New signals including:

–Enemy invading jungle

–Enemy missing in lane

–Enemy low on HP

–Ally tower under attack

–Enemy minions swarming

–Devotion of jungler's equipment in effect

–Status of Enemy Might/Sage Golem

–Enemy Punish is on cooldown

–Enemy Flicker is on cooldown

–Enemy Purify is on cooldown

–Enemy Arctic Orb is on cooldown

–Enemy Blade of Eternity is on cooldown

–Enemy Mother Earth: Cleansing is on cooldown 

3. 'Wait Up' Option

When being invited, players who can click on this 'Wait Up' button to accept the invitation and pre-join the room without being directly dragged away from the current interface. The player will be automatically present in that room after 30 seconds.

4. Observer Mode

Players will now be able to observe the gameplay of others, including the top players of the server and friends of their own.The entrance to this mode will be placed on the upper right corner of the lobby.

5. Season Tracker

Season tracker mode will be available, in which players can review the graphic novels of every past season.

6. Friend Recommendation

Information displayed in friend recommendations are now more detailed in socialization preferences and history performances.

7. Quick Rally

A convenient option of quickly teaming-up will now be available. Players can freely search by filters and join together as a team to play.

The entrance to this function will be in the bottom right corner of the room-hosting interface.

8. Flexible Team Scale

Players will now be able to switch at will between premades of 3 and premades of 5.

9. New Season–Life's Inspirations

The upcoming season is themed 'Life's Inspiration', with new stories and new skins that worth anticipating for.

10. Placement Match Removal

11. New Tutorials On Training Camp

New tutorial quests on HP restoring, recalling, target selection and tower pushing.

12. Matchmaking

Specific Adjustment:

When the game is cancelled due to the abscence of one matched player, you will be sent back to the room rather than directly dismissed.

13.Hero Guidance

Background:

We would like to provide a better experience for beginners.

Specific Adjustment:

Hero guidance is added to the bottom right corner of the battle overview interface and the bottom left corner of hero details interface. Players can check out the most thourough introduction of a hero, including th biography, skill set, combo trick and recommended build. 

14.Hero Selection Animation Upgrade

Background:

Recently we've been curious about how players feel about the changes from last UI visual opmization, especially about the loading animation which is of great potential to be graphically elevated.

Specific Adjustment:

The system will now decide whether to play the animation during the loading phase of a standard game (regular 5v5 match, ranked match, Challenge of Valor match) depending on the hardware capability of your device.

Basically, devices of high performance will continue to play the animation before the game starts, while devices of relatively lower computing power will automatically skip the animation and start loading the battlefield resources.

15. Balance Tweak

Background:

Tweaks on heroes are so frequently made that our players are always digesting the changes. To ensure the accessibility of these latest info, we are placing the patch note at a conspicious spot.

Specific Adjusment:

There will be a regular banner for players to pick up the latest tweaks upon heroes.

Tweaks upon heroes will also be displayed during hero selection phase of a game.

 

5) Balance Tweaks

 

Aya

We would like to see a more consistent level of performance from Aya among both top-tier professionals and ordinary players, which is why we nerfed her ult and adjusted her skill 2 once again. The shield generated via possession will become more delicate for an equivalent opponent to be able to break, but the duration will be extended.

Skill 2:

Added:  When possessing an ally, the shield amount will be reduced by 50%, but the shield duration will increase by 100%.

Ultimate:

The slowdown effect during transfiguration will be removed.

 

Astrid

Astrid is overpowered among junglers, we would like to nerf her in this certain direction.

Passive:

Added: When choosing wildlings as targets, the cooldown reduction will only apply 50% of the effect.

 

Thorne

Design:

Thorne is slightly too strong in performance. With his combat style taken into consideration, we reduced his bonus physical damage of normal attack, encouraging players to choose the bullets wisely.

Normal Attack:

Physical Bonus: 1.0AD->0.8AD 

Skill 1:

Purple Bullet: Inflicts magic damage of target's max health 2/3/4% (increased by 0.5/0.75/1% from every 100 bonus attack damage) -> Inflicts magic damage of target's max health 2/3/4% (increased by 0.5/0.75/1% from every 100 total attack damage)

When choosing wildlings as targets: Inflicts magic damage of 30/45/60 (+10/15/20 each level) (+40/60/80% bonus attack damage) -> Inflicts magic damage of 30/45/60 (+10/15/20 each level) (+20/30/40% total attack damage)

Green Bullet: Every extra target+50% attack damage -> 40/60/80% attack damage (+8/12/16% each level) (quantity of green bullets)

Skill 2:

Purple Bullet: Inflicts true damage of target's max health 2/3/4% (increased by 0.5/0.75/1% from every 100 bonus attack damage) -> Inflicts true damage of target's max health 2/3/4% (increased by 0.5/0.75/1% from every 100 total attack damage)

When choosing wildlings as targets: Inflicts true damage of 30/45/60 (+10/15/20 each level) (+40/60/80% bonus attack damage) -> Inflicts true damage of 30/45/60 (+10/15/20 each level) (+20/30/40% total attack damage)

Green Bullet: Every extra target+100% attack damage -> 80/120/160% attack damage (+16/24/32% each level) (quantity of green bullets)

 

Wiro

Wiro has always been quite a bland hero, no matter played as a slayer laner or support. We gave his passive a boost, making his unique resurrection less dependent on his teammates. Also, we elevate his skill damage, now he is more comfortable with a typical tank build. The buff of his skill 2 has also been enhanced, let's just hope he can bounce back from the dust. 

Specific Adjustment:

Passive:

Changed: Immediately restore 60% health upon lethal damage → Immediately restore 90% health upon lethal damage

Removed: Every mark touched by teammates will restore 10% of Wiro's health

Skill 1:

Changed: Enhanced attack 100+40/lv+15%AD  →

First enhanced attack 100+40/lv+15%AD+2% max health

Second enhanced attack 100+40/lv+15%AD+2% max health

Third enhanced attack 100+40/lv+15%AD+4% max health

Skill 2:

Changed: Every enemy hero hit will provide 25% bonus attack speed → 40% bonus attack speed

 

Omega

Omega has never been favored much, mainly because its combo has never been smooth enough to effectively control the enemy. We're reducing the cooldown on Omega's skill 2, looking forward to a better performance from it as a support.

Skill 2:

Cooldown: 9s（-0.4s/lv) →  8s（-0.4s/lv)

 

Moren

We fixed a problem causing the tweaks upon Moren's normal attack interval to be ineffective. Meanwhile, his speedup effect benefits from the the cooldown reduction of skill 1 too much, which is not ideal for a marksman. We're cutting down the frequency of skill 1 usage, ensuring he's sturdy yet beatable.

Passive:

Interval (Bug fix): 1s→0.8s

Skill 1:

Cooldown: 4.5s all level→8s all level

  

Wisp

Since last tweak, Wisp is still not who we expect her to be as a jungler. We're going to further adjust her jungling ability for her to return to dragon lane. Additionally, being able to deal 2 times of damage with 1 normal attack has been a huge advantage of hers, especially when it comes to some effect that could be triggered by normal attack. We're not going to ignore that seemingly overpowered feature.

Passive:

Added: Wisp deals 50% damage towards wildlings (based on level, damage decrease will be fully recovered when reaches lv.15)

Added: 2 times of damage from 1 normal attack can only trigger orb effect/passive for once.

 

Equipments

Design Pattern:

To take down tanks with heavy armors, marksman will have to purchase equipments that provides percentage based penetration. The only equipment that meets the need is Muramasa, however it also comes with cooldown reduction which is not that essential for typical marksman build. We prepared something for traditional marksmen that rely on normal attack: Dawnbreaker, an ideal gear consists of attack speed, critical rate, percentage based armor penetration and extra damage adding to normal attack. With the all-round attributes, it will not be a bargain. To make the equipment attainable, we also introduced another mediocre equipment, the Bow of Chaos.

 

New Equipment: Dawnbreaker

Price: 2980

Formula: Bow of Chaos+Shuriken+Gloves

l  50 Attack Damage

l  30% Attack Speed

l  10% Critical Rate

Unique Passive–Puncture: +20% Armor Penetration (Double the effect when equipped by a ranged hero)

Unique Passive–Dawnbreak: Each normal attack will inflict an extra 50 damage (Double the effect when equipped by a ranged hero with a cooldown of 0.35s)

 

New Equipment: Bow of Chaos

Price: 1100

Formula: Chain Hammer+Dagger

l  40 Attack Damage

l  10% Attack Speed

Unique Passive–Puncture: +10% Armor Penetration (Double the effect when equipped by a ranged hero)

 

To balance the total price of common build between heroes of different class, we reduced the price and took away some of the bonus attributes of Bow of Slaughter.

Bow of Slaughter

Price: 2550->2250

l  Attack Damage: 100->90

l  Critical Rate: 15%->10%

 

Gloves are now cheaper, and provides less critical rate.

Gloves

Price: 420->300

l  Critical Rate: 12%->8%

  

Jungler's Equipment Tweak：

Last time we took away the magic damage of Soulreaver in exchange for higher damage boost and longer duration. Statistics show that Soulreaver is a little too weak, causing assassins to purchase Leviathan instead. From designer's perspective, we hope assassins would make aggressive choices in equipment builds and benefit more from playing fiercely, so we extend the duration even longer.

Soulreaver

Damage Boost Cooldown 20s -> 12s

 

Leviathan fits pretty well in the hands of warrior class heroes, amplifying their might by a huge extent. The armor it provides turn out to be extremely formidable in the early stage of a game, that's why we're replacing some of its armor with bonus health.

Leviathan

Armor 250->200, Max HP 250->350

 

6) Mode Improvements

Mode Selection

With the addition of new modes, we decided to make it easier for players to find those modes and added shortcuts to the Lobby:

1. 5v5, 3v3, and 1v1 modes will be added to the Lobby.
2. Abyssal Clash, Karano Chess, Mayhem Mode will be sorted to the Arcade Mode.
3. All Create Room features will be united as one button.
4. Bot Match wil be accessed from the Lobby of match.

 

7) Concept Arts

1. Model Texture Upgrade

The pursuit of better art performance quality is our unremitting pursuit. This update has carried out new models for Krixi. Aleister, Arthur, Roxie, Tel'Annas, Veera, Zephys have been upgraded with a full range of quality, including models, lobby animations, and in-game effects. In upcoming versions, we will continue to upgrade the quality of other heroes.

(1) Aleister

Model remade

Skill effect remade

l  Skill 1

 l  Skill 2

l  Skill 3

(2) Roxie

Model remade

Skill effect remade

l  Skill 1

l  Skill 2

l  Skill 3

(3) Tel'Annas

Model remade

Skill effect remade

l Skill 1

l Skill 2

l Skill 3

(4) Veera

Model remade 

Skill effect remade

l Skill 1

l Skill 2

l Skill 3

(5) Arthur

Model remade

 

Skill effect remade

l Skill 1

l Skill 2

l Skill 3

(6) Zephys

Model remade 

Skill effect remade

l Skill 1

l Skill 2

l Skill 3

(7) Krixi

Model remade

 

2. In-game Models Optimization

In addition to the quality refreshed list, we have also optimized the in-game models and effects of some heroes to varying degrees, including several old faces such as Gildur, Toro, Quillen, Zanis, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc. We'll speed up to optimize more heroes in upcoming versions.

 

3. Background Music Renewal

We replaced the background music of the battlefield, and at the dark stage after game time 15:00, the background music will be switched to set off a more intense ambient.

 

8) Bug Fixes

1. Fixed a bug where some special effects would sometimes disappear.
2. Fixed a bug where buying equipement on the right side of the shop would cause a display error.
3. Fixed a bug where the amount recovered from Cleansing was less than the written description.
4. Fixed a bug where Y'bneth's passive recovery wasn't following the same logic as other healing effects.
5. Fixed a bug where max mana wouldn't level up as a hero leveled up.
6. Fixed a bug where Grakk's 2nd Skill wouldn't pull a hero towards him if he landed the skill.
7. Fixed a bug where Mina's 2nd Skill would pull enemies to different places based on the distance.