We’re not going to lie, Arena of Valor has been all over the place this week. With the International Championship officially in full swing, it feels as Tencent’s attention has been on a successful worldwide event rather than keeping the casual playerbase in the know.
So much so, in fact, that the company has arguably alienated the Western audience who angrily took to the game’s Reddit page today to question the difficulty of finding any English-language coverage of the event. For those wondering, you can actually watch the event on YouTube.
But despite those frustrations, there’s still plenty more things to talk about in this week’s Arena of Valor news roundup; from big Black Friday deals to both sketchy and exciting Nintendo Switch version news.
Arena of Valor Black Friday Sale?!
I’ll admit that I naively didn’t expect to be writing about Black Friday when talking about a mobile game like Arena of Valor. I should have known better. Any free-to-play needs to make money somehow, and when this relates to microtransactions, of course there’s going to be a sale on the biggest shopping day of the year.
For Arena of Valor, this isn’t a discount on Voucher purchases. Instead, there’s a fixed 40% discount on any and all heroes more than 4 months old on your given server (except DC heroes, of course). If you’ve been picking up newer heroes as they’ve released lately, this “sale” could be a decent time to grab a recent meta pick you’ve taken a liking to during the Valor Series competition, or to finish off a collection if that’s what you’re into.
But while the discount is fixed at 40% off from every hero, picking up 3 or 5 heroes at once will net you an additional saving of 100-200 vouchers respectively. It’s not exactly going to reduce the amount of cash coming out of your bank to fund the voucher purchase, but it will help with voucher mileage in the long run (or you can pick up two Magic Crystals instead).
Moren Takes Aim At The Nintendo Switch!
Although the Arena of Valor subreddit would have you believe Tencent is neglecting the Nintendo Switch version of the game, the steady release of new heroes would suggest quite the opposite. With Lindis arriving just last week, tomorrow has already been confirmed to bring Moren, another character we didn’t expect to see quite so soon.
But while that may sound just great for the casual AoV Switch player, the more vocal side of the community seems to view it as something of an oversight. Almost calling back to the early days of the mobile game, Switch players are beginning to think the controller-enabled version of the game is going to heavy on the ranged champions rather than offering a reprieve with a tank, healer, or melee character in between.
Regardless of how you view the decision to add Moren into the game right after Lindis, the ranged heavy-hitter is here to stay. With a healthy amount of crowd-control and the unique ability to reset his primary skill with every fifth attack, Moren is a ranged hero that can easily snowball if given the chance. Paired with some Life Steal items to offset his relatively low defense and you’ve got a small hero packed to the brim with power.
Nintendo Switch Players Banned For Win-Trading
While we’re on the topic of the Arena of Valor Nintendo Switch Edition, Tencent has managed to somewhat reaffirm its support of the game by banning a bunch of players. Far from innocent souls, players have reportedly been banned for win-trading – or purposefully setting up and throwing matches to benefit mutual parties on the other side.
According to the report, which you can view in the Announcements page in-game, all players discovered to be committing the violation in question will be banned until the end of Ranked Season 1, which punishments ramping up for repeat offenders should they choose to carry on the practice into Season 2 and beyond.
Tencent thanked players for their efforts in reporting suspicious activity, giving reason to believe that Arena of Valor support staff are still paying attention to the game well after launch. It might not help the apparently sluggish queue times, but disallowing the game to be overrun with unsportsmanlike behavior should help convince remaining players that they’ve not been abandoned.
Nova eSports Hops On The Tier List Train
Lastly, we’re going to see this week’s roundup off with something that might stir up discussion in the comments down below – the arrival of yet another unofficial Arena of Valor hero tier list. We’ve come to know and love the ever-growing tier list over at Samurai Gamers, but Nova, whose teams are representing both Europe and Latin America at the International Championship this weekend, managed to find the time between strenuous practice to piece together their own unofficial list of the best and worst picks of the game.
Reposted to the Arena of Valor Brazil Instagram page earlier this week, Nova eSports’ Arena of Valor hero tier list stirred up mixed feelings from the AoV Reddit community, but the general reception seems to have picked up as the discussions run their course.
As you might expect with something like this, there are plenty of ways to construe the available data depending on your own experiences playing with or against characters on the list. One thing the whole world seems to agree on right now, however, is that Ignis’ redemption in the last major patch has solidified the fire mage as an S-tier damage dealer in the midlane. Surely it’s only a matter of time before he’s brought back into check, so make the plays last while they can!
For anyone wondering why Toro hasn’t even made the list, it’s likely due to the character not even being available in the NA/LATAM side of the game just yet. It’s been speculated to be caused by some kind of legal trouble with the design/name of the hero in those specific regions. There’s no way to confirm that right now, but it would be more than enough reason to leave the character out of the workload when piecing something like this together.
