Marvel Avengers Alliance: PVP Season 14 Launches! Patch Notes!

Season 14 of PVP for Marvel Avengers Alliance just launched yesterday and brings with it a couple of balance changes and two new heroes for grabs.

Big changes include splitting the armory bonuses between your attacking and defensive teams with a one time reset available.

Prevalent weapons from last season: the Vigilante Toolkit and its various components, the Protector of Attilan combo, and avoidance effects have all been nerfed to some extent.

Domino is the PVP reward if you manage to finish in Adamantium and Sabretooth is available if you get lucky with lockboxes (or just manage to get a lot).

Here are the full patch notes:

PvP Season 12 & Game Balance Changes
Season 12 PVP Rewards
Scrapper’s Empowered Armor

• Close the Gap
• Extends Rest, allowing a Scrapper to gain Close Quarters Combat as a quick action.

Beyond Corp Can Opener

• Customized, Melee, Slashing
• Counter against attacks with Metal
• Melt Armor
• Shield Breaker
• Mechanical Stress
  • The cooldown of all abilities except Recharge is increased by one round.

Domino

• Bio: Neena Thurman was genetically modified in a top-secret government breeding program, one of only two individuals to survive the process. After she was freed by a religious cult called the Armajesuits, Neena became the mercenary known as Domino. Her skill with firearms and her mutant powers of probability manipulation make for a potent combination.
• Class: Blaster
• Self Passive : Something About Us
  • "I roll twenties"
  • The attacks of Domino and her allies are more likely to be critical hits
• Self Passive : Get Lucky
  • Chance to manipulate probability, dodging attacks, countering attacks, following-up attacks, ignoring enemy defense, or avoiding debuffs
  • Chance to make Hold Up a Quick Action
• Level 1: Spinal Scratch
  • One Enemy
  • Slashing, Ranged
  • Paragon Exploiter
    • Deals extra damage against targets with Combo Setup, Dizzy,Exposed, Slowed, Stunned or Weakened
  • Target Debuff: Disadvantage
    • Creates a negative effect according to the class of the target
• Level 2: Hold Up
  • All Enemies
  • Ranged
  • Domino shoots upward, knocking debris onto enemies and causing random debuffs based on the debris:
    • Concrete
      • Pain
      • Staggered
    • Glass
      • Tenderized
      • Bleeding x 2
    • Exploding Barrel
      • Burning
      • Pyrophoric
    • Radioactive Ooze
      • Poison
      • Radiation Exposure
• Level 6: Around the World
  • All Enemies
  • Ranged
  • 2 Round Cooldown
  • Team Buff: Rising Up
    • Has a chance to gain Focused, Fortified, Agile, or Strengthened
  • Target Debuff: Pressure Points
    • Has a chance to cause Dizzy, Exposed, Slowed or Weakened
• Level 9: Aerodynamite
  • All Enemies
  • Ranged, Explosive
  • 2 Round Cooldown
  • Target Debuff: Disoriented
    • Has a chance of attacking allies
  • Target Debuff: Incapacitation
    • Chance to lose a turn
    • Counts as Stun for actions that affect those targets

New Collection: Sabretooth
As promised at New York Comic Con this year, Sabretooth can now be unlocked as a playable character via Fanged Lockboxes.

Fanged Lockboxes can be obtained via two methods (similar to Elektra and Juggernaut previously).

• One lockbox for each of your first five wins per day
• A Covert Task that rewards groups of lockboxes for completion of each subtask.

Sabretooth

• Bio: Though Victor Creed's mutant healing factor and claws may resemble those of Wolverine, the comparison ends there. Sabretooth is feral, bloodthirsty, and utterly without humanity. These qualities served him well in the Weapon X program, where he and Wolverine forged their mutual hatred. Sabretooth now works for S.H.I.E.L.D., though not by choice; the bomb in his head, implanted by an unknown organization, is the only thing keeping him from killing everyone around him.
• Class: Scrapper
• Self Passive : Bloodlust
  • Gains X stacks of Blood Rage when attacking a target with Bleeding, where X is the number of Bleedings on the target
    • Blood Rage
      • Increases Attack
      • Regens Stamina
      • This effect can be applied 5 times
• Self Passive - Healing Factor
  • Gradually restores Health during combat
  • Reduces durations for Bleeding and Poison
  • Guaranteed to survive being KO’ed once and restored to half health
  • Gains Frenzy after being KO’ed
    • Frenzy
      • Increases the health restored by Healing Factor
      • Takes 2 actions every round
• Level 1 : Claw Swipe
  • One Enemy
  • Slashing, Melee
  • Adamantium
    • Attacks ignore the defense stat
    • Attacks do no bypass shields
  • Target Debuff : Bleeding
    • Taking damage every round or after performing hostile actions
    • This effect can be applied 3 times
    • Lasts 3 Rounds
  • Target Debuff : Pain
    • Increases damage taken by 8%
    • This effect stacks up to 3 times
    • Lasts 3 Rounds
  • Target Debuff : Ravaged
    • Takes increased damage from Bleeding
    • Lasts 3 Rounds
  • Self Buff : Sharpened Claws
    • The next attack that hits is guaranteed to be a critical hit
    • Lasts 2 Rounds
• Level 2 : Brutal Slash
  • One Enemy
  • Slashing, Melee
  • Adamantium
    • Attacks ignore the defense stat
    • Attacks do no bypass shields
  • Exploit Attrition
    • Deals extra damage against targets with Bleeding, Burning, Chilled, Dark Void, Iso-8 Corruption, Poisoned, or Radiation Exposure
  • Blood Frenzy
    • Consumes all stacks of Blood Rage to deal increased damage
  • Target Debuff : Bleeding x 2
    • Taking damage every round or after performing hostile actions
    • This effect can be applied 3 times
    • Lasts 3 Rounds
• Level 6 : Berserker
  • Self
  • Buff
  • Self Buff : Berserker
    • Chance to join in on an ally’s attack
    • Chance to retaliate when an ally is hit by single-target attacks
    • Lasts 2 Rounds
• Level 9 : Tantrum
  • All Enemies
  • Ranged
  • Hemorrhaging Attack
    • Causes all applications of Bleeding to trigger
    • Target Debuff : Stun 40%
      • Loses next turn
      • Reduced chance to dodge
      • Lasts 1 Turn
    • Target Debuff : Exposed
      • Defense reduced by 25%
      • Lasts 3 Rounds

Armory Upgrades
Armory Sorting and Filtering
When adding items to the PVP Armory, the Inventory panel on the left side now displays all items in a single interface. By default all items are displayed, but players can choose to only show gear, uniforms, supplies, or resources. In addition, the items with the highest PVP bonus are sorted to the front of the list. Players may choose to sort by highest total bonus, highest offensive bonus, or highest defensive bonus.

In addition, players who need to do a lot of resocketing can check a box that will suppress the warning message about permanently losing the item that is being socketed, and destroying anything you socket over. Please exercise caution when using this feature, as destroying items in your armory is permanent and cannot be recovered.

Split PVP Armory
The PVP armory received an upgrade to accommodate different Attacking / Defending team loadouts. Now, items in the armory either boost the Attacking Team or Defending team depending on which side they are socketed in. Items in the Attacking side will only increase the stats of a player’s Attacking team, and items in the Defending side will only increase the stats of a player’s Defending team. This allows players to use different strategies that support their different team compositions.

Armory Unsocketing
Did you accidentally put your Golden Screaming Eagle in your armory, or just want to reorganize to maximize Offense on your Attacking Team? Now you can, for a modest price, unsocket all of the items in your armory at once, giving you a chance to get back socketed items and resocket them as you see fit.

Note that any Customized gear socketed lose their level and will be their minimum level when unsocketed. However, once unsocketed, gear may be reforged up to the Agent’s current level as usual.

With the release of Split PVP Armories, all players will gain one free use of “Unsocket All.”

Armory Page 6
A sixth page of armory has been added. Players at level 150 can research Armory Expansion V, granting the sixth page. In addition, the level required to research the previous armory page has been lowered across the board.

• Armory Expansion I now requires level 10 (previously 25)
• Armory Expansion II now requires level 25 (previously 60)
• Armory Expansion III now requires level 60 (previously 100)
• Armory Expansion IV now requires level 100 (previously 150)
• Armory Expansion V now available for players level 150 and up

Season 12 PVP Balance Tuning
Stat Boost Calculations
The way the engine calculates the final stats of a character with multiple buffs has been changed. Previously, all increases to stats were calculated independently and compounded each other. Now each buff will be calculated based on the character’s pre-combat stats. This means that multiple stacking buffs will add up rather than multiply each other.

Take for instance World War Hulk with a pre-combat Attack of 200. During combat, he gains Strengthened (30%), 3 stacks of War Frenzy (12%), and 3 stacks of Hulk Up (10%).
Previously, the total bonus would have been 1.3 * 1.2 * 1.2 * 1.2 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.1 = 2.99 x Hulk’s base Attack, for a final Attack of 1495.
Now, the bonus is 0.3 + 0.2 + 0.2 + 0.2 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 = +1.2, for a total bonus of 2.2 x Hulk’s base Attack, for a final Attack of 1100.

This should help alleviate problems that arise from players stacking many different similar stat-boosting effects. While boosting stats is still valuable, the total will no longer escalate exponentially.

Avoidance Effects
There has been a game-wide change to the way avoidance effects work, such as those granted by effects such as Storm’s Protective Shroud or passive effects such as Scarlet Witch’s Reality Warping.

• All passive avoidance effects now have their rate fixed at 20%
• Characters may have several passive avoidance effects - such as the Synthetic Cube’s Reality Hacking or Fantomex’s Misdirection - but the chance to avoid attacks does not stack
  • A single trigger check is made regardless of the number of avoidance effects
  • If one effect triggers, all effects will trigger
• Temporary avoidance effects now have a rate of 50% (such as Protective Shroud) or 70% (such as Mirror Images)
• Characters may only have one temporary avoidance effect at a time
• Temporary avoidance effects have priority over passive avoidance effects - these effects do not stack
• Avoidance effects will now dodge every hit of a multi-hit attack
• Mirror Images will still only avoid up to 2 hits of a multi-hit attack
• Tooltips now explicitly state the rate of avoidance

The following characters’ passive avoidance effects have been updated:

• Blazing Speed (Human Torch)
• Dancing Queen (Spiral)
• Density Shift (Vision)
• Invisibility (Invisible Woman)
• Master Assassin (Elektra)
• Misdirection (Fantomex)
• Oracle (Oracle gear)
• Reality Hacking (Synthetic Cube)
• Reality Warping (Scarlet Witch, Hex Wand)
• Super Squirrely (Squirrel Girl)
• Techno-organic Wings (Angel)
• Whiff of Brimstone (Nightcrawler)
• Seventh Sense (Ms. Marvel)

The following temporary avoidance effects have been updated:

• Mirror Images
• Nimble (Wasp, Vigilante Toolkit)
• Protective Shroud (Storm)
• Psionic Shadow (Psylocke)
• Smoke Grenade (Punisher)
• Stepping Razor (Magik)
• Skittering Darkness (Daimon Hellstrom)

Hero Changes
Rogue

• Southern Comfort now gives In The Fray even when it misses
• Rogue’s class powers from Absorb Class are no longer removable with buff removers. It will still be removed by Generalized.
• Brawl now applies Combo Setup and Exploit Combo Setup
• Brawl no longer has Deadly Crits
• Absorb Power and Drain Essence are no longer Bio Attacks
• Reduced the stat bonuses on Ubiquitous Power
• Rogue now starts combat with Ubiquitous Power
• Various other improvements

General

• The stat bonus Enraged gives has been reduced slightly

Ares

• Reduced the proc rate on 10,000 Yard Stare
• The damage reduction on Broken Will has been lowered to 30%
• Broken Will and Migraine are functionally identical and no longer stack
• Hemorrhaging Attack has been removed from Art of War and added to Modern Warfare
• Fixed an issue causing War Never Changes to proc more often for Ares

Rescue

• Increased the cooldown on Reconstruction Matrix
• Reconstruction Matrix no longer performs an instant heal

Cyclops (Uncanny Cyclops Uniform)

• Don’t Die On Me can now only trigger a maximum of once per round
• Uncanny Leadership can now only trigger a maximum of once per round

Havok

• Uncanny Coordination now grants extra turns as intended

Ghost Rider

• A bug with Infernal Contract has been corrected

Phoenix

• Several bugs with Death and Rebirth have been fixed

Spiral

• Dancing Queen gives Exhaustion when an extra turn is gained

Squirrel Girl

• Super Squirrelly now allows Squirrel Girl to avoid non-melee attacks

Item Changes
An issue with damage calculations led to several of the the items released with Spec Op 13 to deal more damage than intended. Twisted Gift, Solar Storm, Might of Attilan, Attilan Cudgel, Attilan Mace, Cruel Glaive and Sunspike have had their damage reduced.

Guardian of Attilan

• Slight damage reduction
• Reduced the chance to reduce incoming crit chance

Watcher of Attilan

• Slight damage reduction
• Attack will now only apply Distraction to a single target
• No longer applies Distraction on counter attacks
• Watcher of Attilan buff cleanse will no longer stack with Rescue's Panacea Response, and has a 50% chance to remove a debuff.

Protector of Attilan

• Duration of the Protector of Attilan buff has been reduced to 1 round
• Protector of Attilan now reduces slightly less incoming damage

Emerald Prism

• Emerald Prism’s Glow will prevent the removal of beneficial statuses, but has a duration
• Emerald Prism Attack/Damage increases are now shown as stat increases
• Emerald Prism Attack/Damage increases will now expire if not maintained, can be removed and are susceptible to Neutralized

Biometric Card

• Can only fire once per round, instead of after every attack

Retractable Claws

• No longer grants a passive counter attack
• Attacking now gives Feral Stance, which grants a 50% chance to counter single-target and area attacks with Retractable Claw for 2 rounds

Holographic Shield

• No longer grants a passive protect
• Attacking now gives Selfless Defender, protecting allies from single-target and area attacks for 2 rounds

Wrist Slinger

• No longer grants passive avoidance
• Attacking now gives Nimble, giving a 50% chance to avoid attacks for 2 rounds

Vigilante Toolkit

• No longer grants passive effects
• The above attacks now grant their respective effects when used

Void Shield Generator

• The Void Shield will now absorb less incoming damage before breaking

Hex Wand

• Now gives Reality Warping as long as it is equipped

Skullthumper Empowered Iso-8

• No longer shows pop-up text every time a character attacks
• The stun chance is now displayed on the character’s attack tooltips

Kurse Tuning

• Dark Elves appearing with Kurse have had their damage reduced (both ranged and melee)
• Slight decrease to the Swiftness evasion buff for Infiltrator Kurse and his Dark Elves
• The counter rate for Infiltrator Kurse and his Dark Elves has been reduced and will no longer trigger off of counter or follow-up attacks
• Kurse's damage for all attacks and all classes has been increased
• Living Armor is now a Quick Action, so Kurse will now do an attack on the same round as it's used

Misc

• Blind and Distraction now have the same functional mechanics
  • The next single-target attack by the afflicted character has a 50% chance to miss
  • This is removed after the next attack, whether or not it misses
  • These effects do not stack
• Disoriented is now removed after triggering once
• Mind Control is now removed after triggering once