This Week in PvP - A Game of Thorns

[Nicko]

Another week – another meta change.

But BIG congrats to Mjmxiii! He’s a great example of the dedication it takes to become eternal.

I work some Saturdays and yesterday was one of them. I was up at 6 am – which was 4 am his time – and saw him climbing the ranks. 4 AM! And he was still moving later in the morning! When I got home around 3 pm I took an hour or so and climbed within 250 – but when he started moving again I realized he was not going to surrender.

So congrats again to the new – and I’m sure exhausted – eternal. And also big props to Caretaker – his first time on the podium! He’s often in the top 10 – was top 5 last week – is an Eternal coming?

1. MJMXIII
2. NICKO
3. CARETAKER
4. Carlos
5. Dje

This week brought a new update – and some serious stability issues. I started some photo journalism…

Thorn Holocaust

3748

Team Staredown

3749

Buff Stack

3750

Cinema Bug (due to the black bars top and bottom)

3751



Thorn Shields – with their nasty damage and permadeath - are the new meta – and yet they can also be your worst enemy. Almost all of my losses this week were due to Thorn Shields – specifically Thorn vs Thorn – and the crashes that ensued. There needs to be a fix for this – and fast. I always like meta changes – I know many complain they happen too frequently in this game – but for me – without other games as reference – they keep things challenging and rethinking strategy is always fun. But if they’re broken? That’s a problem.

I’ve seen people say (R1ck) they’re leaving them off their defenses because they know there is an issue. I think that’s really admirable – but I also think it’s unnecessary. We as attackers know they’re out there – and we also know theyre the source of a potential crash. In my opinion it’s up to the attacker to determine if the benefits of having them on your attack team are worth the risks. I’m personally still weighing that out and am curious to see how others feel.

I’ll say the daily rewards last week were great – even how they were presented (Advantage talismans already Lvl 5 – 3 Skillshards instead of one) – and this weeks event is really cool as well. But a hotfix is sorely needed – I don’t think I’ve ever seen a less stable PvP environment.

At this moment the competition is already stiff – it makes sense with these exclusive toons dangling as carrots. In fact ShaolinLondo was already up 500 points in 36 minutes after reset yesterday. That’s some fast playing! Certainly faster than I can play…

Good luck earning those toons and see you in the arena!

[R1ck]

Congrats to MJMXIII for Eternal, well deserved one.
As stated by Nicko I tried to keep Thorn talismans out of my defense, but after one day they were on everybody defense so I put them on again. As many others mentioned, it is not players fault that NF brings such terrible bugs and take so long to fix.

Congrats to podium and everybody who plays this buggy game just for Iron Maiden.

UP THE IRONS!!!

[T-Man]

Congrats mj and the rest of the podium. The arena was a nightmare last week with the bugs! Kudos to you guys for fighting through it. I did just enough for top 50, and that was all I could stand. Didn't purchase any refill.

This weeks events are really cool, though the 3 star toon doesn't appear very interesting. The chance at skill shards and other frags is really nice though!

Hopefully NF will hot fix these Arena bugs asap.

[IceManFerrar]

Congrats MJM, well done mate...and very well deserved. I’m playing a bit this week due to the 7-day rewards and wanted to see how is the Aces High buff after the update. All in all it is good, but not liking the bugs.
Lost a game last night to Blacksteel due to his VHE reviving inspire of my Aces High killing him with the “Do or Die” Permadeth move, and then AoF giving his entire team an extra turn when my Red Buzz was killed indirectly (and that is after I killed his VHE first). Sigh, not fun in PvP when you lose a match due to the bugs in logic.

So definitely sincere congrats to MJ to win Eternal inspite of the bugs...hats off to you, mate. Not sure my return will be long lived if the bugs continue.

[slauki]

congrats to mjmxii, nicko and caretaker good job guys.
not much more to add to nickos analysis. one thing i like about talisman based metachanges is that everyone can use them. it's not toon based so you can work for it. this update is a step in the right direction (in theory) i feel, if the bugs would have been solved, we would have a good game by now. but unfortunatly that's not the case.

well another topic last week was the attack exposure, still not sure about it, as stated before, prolly very good for low and midrank guys but bad for competitive highranks. that's why i would like to repeat my suggestion. add some shadow of war to the top 250 guys or so....at least an option to hide the attacking team....

[Monte47]

This weeks events are really cool, though the 3 star toon doesn't appear very interesting.

Tridimensionale, one of my troopers, had him as his champion last night. He hits pretty hard, I thought he was worth getting.

Congrats mj and the rest of you!

I finished 20th, didn’t have too many bugs until a couple hours before reset. Well, really the last 45 min, I lost probably ten total because of bugs last week, we 8 being in the last hour. Concur we need a hot fix.

Loved the daily gifts last week. Having fun with the soul event.

Cheers all.
Eskiggalu

[Tridimensionale]

Tridimensionale, one of my troopers, had him as his champion last night. He hits pretty hard, I thought he was worth getting.




Nope it s the purple one ;) i just get the red one too but no time to test it...

[Monte47]

Nope it s the purple one ;) i just get the red one too but no time to test it...

Ah... he was fun to play with. Hits pretty hard.

[Tridimensionale]

Ah... he was fun to play with. Hits pretty hard.

Yep.. it s passive could be good too but only 50% trigger chance so it s too random for pvp.. still pretty funny in pve

[Kamuz24z]

Congrats Mj on your first Eternal well deserved man with all the bugs it must have a pain loosing 20 points for every freeze I tried arena last night used all the sow I’ve collected in past weeks mid way getting the Gunner guy, 3 skill shard so far the event itself is good the ugly side is all the bugs I’m still not ok with the new feature showing the attack team currently I’m using a team that is slow but effective I’ll play the whole event after that I’ll wait until we get the final decision from devs I really hope they decide to remove it

[Askora]

Congrats mjm, awesome job. Congrats to Nicko and Caretaker for making podium, and to all the others at the top.

Friday was bugged for me, more than normal. Crashes and server errors. Saturday only played part of the day, then went to jam with a coworker. Ended up in the top 50 at reset.

[gmac]

Grats MjM

I'm happy for you dude :) (cleared my inbox btw!)

Actually, everyone playing arena after the update deserves big props.

It's a mess like many pointed out already.

Thx Nicko for the thread and grats again!

gmac

[HomemLivre]

Congrats on your Eternal, MjM!

Just like Kamuz reported be the eternal with so many bugs/freezes must have been a pain in the ***!
Congrats to the other winners to!

[mjmxiii]

Thanks for gratz guys and cheers to you Nicko and caretakerii for sharing my first and probably only time on top of the podium. I really thought for a while that bugs would be too much of a handicap to sit on the mountaintop for at least one week.

The arena is insanity defined at the moment. I kept playing thinking that it couldn't possibly get any worse... I was wrong. At one point on Saturday, I couldn't log back into the game after a crash. This week was like taking a class on how to obtain mental illness. I am exhausted. Completely brain dead. Cheers to all who were brave enough to grind the arena this week. I share the Eternal with you all.

[Patrice-1201]

Congrats MJM it was a tough week. I finished 6th within 12 points of Dje... for me the week was bug ridden 32 crashes in total which from the top spots mean a loss of around 30 points per game (so 900), 90 ironites and 480 Iron coins...

I had to stop playing for 3 hours with 5 hours to go when I went from 3rd within reach of Eternal to 17th and then climbed back up. All I needed was an extra 10 seconds to get to King 1 but a never ending thorns loop decided otherwise.

Biggest task for NF is to fix these bugs now :-)

[MoonShadow]

I think is the first time when one of my troopers reaches the highest place in the Arena, so congrats @ MJMXIII for Eternal, a well deserved one, I bet, its hard to play so much to get and, most important, stay that high.

Also, congrats @ Nicko (love the name of the thread.. when comes your Eternal..?! :)) and @ Caretaker (another trooper) for the podium!

[DaveMurray]

Gratz mj for the eternal, it was a must have after what happened the last time you tried, unfortunately i wasn't around for a few days and i missed the race but i am sure it was a hell of a fight.
Gratz to the rest on the podium too ofc.

As stated i wasn't playing for a few days and when i came back last night i witnessed the game of thorns(lol Nicko), i had a fight where i did 200k dmg to VHE when he attacked me because i had a reflect shield on, game freeze and came back 2 mins later and i just saw the rest of the enemy team dying and then a maclo..
As most of the times nothing was tested before launching the update and we have to endure all the f.... bugs until the next update like we are their guinea pigs.
I really can't remember the pvp enviroment being so buggy in the past, it's by far the worst. Ofc i am not using those thorns on my def so everyone feel free to defeat me as usual ;)

[DickinsonMan]

Hi!

Congrats to the new Eternal, mj, and new TOP-3... great!!!

This week is crazy!... but I'm sure that the characters deserve the time and the ironite we will spend on getting them. Don't know what you think but I don't mind the % won/lost this week, I just want the fragments. What is bothering me are the fuck*ng errors, and freezes... I lost a lot of battles (fragments) only for those.

See you in the arena!

[Blacksteel]

Special congratulations to MJMXIII, Nicko and Caretaker!
Well done everyone else, great job keeping up.
As always thanks for the thread Nicko.

This was the weirdest week indeed.

I thought that I had seen every bug around before, but this week trumped it all.
It's sad to see that it's not only a few anymore but now everyone seems to catch bugs no matter platform or team, most new bugs seem indeed related to thorns as mentioned on various threads.
One thing I noticed is that if only thorns is present you might get away with it behaving kinda as expected, but if any other effect comes into play bug likelihood increases exponentially.

Weird events observed:
-Both teams getting full fury each round of the match, as well as free fury for either team at random on different matches.
-Crazy healing
-Retarded extra turns, especially when Angel of Fear or Prisoner were involved, extra turns got 'saved for later use', then after the prisoner died the extra was suddenly granted to the team and on a different turn no less.
-Damage reflection loop
-Damage reflection mirroring until one team dies, in the blink of an eye.
-Usual freeze on revival
-Camera weirdness
-Invisible characters and effects
-UI accepting double clicks and trying to launch double battles (causing app to close after the battle was started :/ ) or sending you to map levels directly from arena battle selection

Hopefully this will get fixed soon, but I won't hold my breath.

Regarding rewards I do think NF needs to re-work this and add more reward tiers variety to make every level feel like an achievement.

I got my lowest rank of the year at #25, ...just because.
Yep that is how I feel when I see this mess not getting any better, but is always nice to see this community here getting involved.

Just another week in LoTB, it's all in a days work they say...

[calizario]

Congratz MJMXIII

[calizario]

Special congratulations to MJMXIII, Nicko and Caretaker!
Well done everyone else, great job keeping up.
As always thanks for the thread Nicko.

This was the weirdest week indeed.

I thought that I had seen every bug around before, but this week trumped it all.
It's sad to see that it's not only a few anymore but now everyone seems to catch bugs no matter platform or team, most new bugs seem indeed related to thorns as mentioned on various threads.
One thing I noticed is that if only thorns is present you might get away with it behaving kinda as expected, but if any other effect comes into play bug likelihood increases exponentially.

Weird events observed:
-Both teams getting full fury each round of the match, as well as free fury for either team at random on different matches.
-Crazy healing
-Retarded extra turns, especially when Angel of Fear or Prisoner were involved, extra turns got 'saved for later use', then after the prisoner died the extra was suddenly granted to the team and on a different turn no less.
-Damage reflection loop
-Damage reflection mirroring until one team dies, in the blink of an eye.
-Usual freeze on revival
-Camera weirdness
-Invisible characters and effects
-UI accepting double clicks and trying to launch double battles (causing app to close after the battle was started :/ ) or sending you to map levels directly from arena battle selection

Hopefully this will get fixed soon, but I won't hold my breath.

Regarding rewards I do think NF needs to re-work this and add more reward tiers variety to make every level feel like an achievement.

I got my lowest rank of the year at #25, ...just because.
Yep that is how I feel when I see this mess not getting any better, but is always nice to see this community here getting involved.

Just another week in LoTB, it's all in a days work they say...


It was difficult to get any of these bugs after the update. The only ones I saw was the reflect shield and freeze when it revives.

And by the way the latter caught only against a player only .. BRADATA whenever he revives the Prisoner he attacks me and bummmmmmmm freezes everything.

[satani]

well, i'm 70 fights in this week. 1 disconnect (luckily before the battke started, so no point and sow lost. Could play again and the disconnect was due to sometimes poor wlan signal on my tablet - it sometimes disconnects mid-battle, gotta buy me a better repeater), no freezes and no buttons dissappearing for me. Had the "damage loop" nearly infinite 1-5 damage numbers on both sides after cycone shield triggered, yet i was able to normally play on. Just ignore the graphical numbers-overlay.
Well, thorn shield did not give me any problems as well.

Gotta admit, after ~70 fights and weeks (months) not having a freeze or bug, i just encountered my first freeze.

[Ubajoa]

Congrats Mjmx, your time has come! It is really amazing you get there with the huge bugs running around. And now the 3 big guys are tied 15 times in the podium congrats to you guys.

3757

[Chaosego888]

Congratulations mjmxiii, Well deserved. Everyone seems to be experiencing a lot more freezes and crashes. For some damn reason, I am experiencing less. I only had one where there was a Clairvoyant, Vampire Hunter and Corrupt Rescuer present I think, so it was kind of hard to keep them all from using their revive. The thorns only got me twice but I am just now getting around to maxing a set so I haven't really used them. At least Permadeath is finally working!

[mjmxiii]

Congrats Mjmx, your time has come! It is really amazing you get there with the huge bugs running around. And now the 3 big guys are tied 15 times in the podium congrats to you guys.

3757

Wow I'm on that list! :D thats cool... those guys at the top man... making it look easy.. its not... and Nicko needs some Eternals in that column! I would have been ok with it if he took Eternal this week, was even hoping he would be able to race me but he was working.. hopefully his time will come sooner than later.
Cheers guys 🤘

[druid138]

Congratulations mjmxiii, Nicko, and Caretaker!

Caretaker - thanks for bringing the imps back!

[mk ultra]

I think is a dick move to keep thorns in defence. Almost all my lost battles after the update, and they are not just a few, were more or less thorns related and caused by freezes, not the reflected damage. Since monday evening the negative effects of thorns seems to occur less freqwent but they still do affect the game. And it's the same with cyclone shields but those are far less used. And lately not having that many freezes i guess is more related to the fact that i did not use any reflective shields 9n my toons, no strikes.
Devs had made any announcements anout the current bugs in the arena?

[scott-5496]

Well done MJM - great to see you hit the heights this week. Well done to all on the podium as it was a crash hit week for sure. I seem to have gotten off quite lightly with crashes and only had a few - all VHE Fury move related for me. The thorns seem to sort themselves out even if the screen fills up with loops etc - I think maybe one or two crashes only to them - VHE is by far the worst one for me.
Hopefully we get a fix for this as well as for GCR power move not always working and for Prisoner Power move not working.

Cheers all.

[Monte47]

I think is a dick move to keep thorns in defence. Almost all my lost battles after the update, and they are not just a few, were more or less thorns related and caused by freezes, not the reflected damage. Since monday evening the negative effects of thorns seems to occur less freqwent but they still do affect the game. And it's the same with cyclone shields but those are far less used. And lately not having that many freezes i guess is more related to the fact that i did not use any reflective shields 9n my toons, no strikes.
Devs had made any announcements anout the current bugs in the arena?

Yeah, I took mine out, the only battles, besides two to Silentknight I’ve lost this week we’re because of thorn freezes. Which sucks, because on offense they are so helpful against immortality.

That said, I’ve had a couple of the same kind of freezes when testing defense and cyclone and void trigger together. So something is off all around when those effects imo.

[Askora]

About 20 battles lost in pvp yesterday due to freezes yesterday from thorn shields. Not a word from the devs on a hot fix. :mad:

[JJJ428]

It is strange to have silence from then with a big event going on and how bad these bugs are. Every time I start a decent streak in the arena I run into a freeze. I feel bad cause seems only way to avoid is to just battle the lower tier people in my list that won't have some of the glitched characters or talismans

[Dank Brew]

Sparton hasn't posted anything at all in 5 days. Hopefully they are busy working on the bugs and not on vacation...