🏅 [June 9, 2019] 8th Raid Tournament! — 4* Bloody Battle, All Elements

[zephyr1]

NOTE: Based on the volume of posts from the previous Tournament, there will not be a separate thread for matchmaking feedback this time. Please share matchmaking feedback in this thread.

(A separate thread for Defense Team performance tracking will be created as usual, however.)

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Schedule

Preparation Phase Begins	Battle Phase Begins	Rewards Distributed
2019-06-09T08:00:00Z (08:00 GMT)	2019-06-10T08:00:00Z (08:00 GMT)	2019-06-15T08:00:00Z (08:00 GMT)

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This Week’s Restrictions & Special Rule

Elements Allowed	Hero Rarities Allowed	Troop Rarities Allowed
No Restrictions	or lower	or lower

Special Rule: Bloody Battle

Healing or resurrection have no effect!

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Before and During the Tournament: Share & Discuss Your Teams, Thoughts, Feedback, and Questions!

Some topics to start off with:

• Do this week’s restrictions on hero/troop rarity and elements make your bench depth better or worse suited to this Raid Tournament than Regular Raids?

• Are there heroes you’re likely to use for this Tournament that you normally don’t make use of anymore?

• Are there heroes you plan to power level for this Tournament, or level before the next time a Tournament like this one rolls around?

• What are you thinking about using for your Defense Team?

• Are there heroes you expect to see on Enemy Defenses that you think you’ll have a harder time dealing with than usual because of the restrictions or special rule in this Tournament?

• Which of your heroes will you be likely to use on your Attack Teams?

• Will the restrictions or special rule of this Tournament change your usual approach to color stacking or team building?

• Are there elements of this week’s Tournament that are unclear to you?

• Do you have feedback on the Tournament matchmaking?

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After the Tournament: Share Your Results & Rewards!

• What was your score and ranking?

• What did you get for loot?

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Overview of Weekly Raid Tournaments

Tournament

Click for the Overall Process for the Tournament

@EmpiresPuzzles

Raid Tournaments have 3 phases:

• Preparation Phase that lasts for 24 hours. During the preparation phase you join the up coming Tournament and prepare your defense team. You can only use defense teams that match the event rules.
• Battle Phase that lasts for four days. The Battle Phase is divided to four Battle Days where you have five attacks available for each Battle Day. You can only use attack teams that match the event rules.
• Reward Phase that lasts two days. Your final score will determine your reward tier. You get rewards only from the highest reward tier that you belong to.

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Attacking

Click for How Attacking Works

Other than restrictions on heroes/troops and Special Rules, the Raids themselves in Weekly Raid Tournaments work the same way as regular Raids.

Each day, you’ll be able to attack up to 5 teams.

The flags used for Raid Tournaments are separate from regular Raid flags.

NOTE: Kills in Raid Tournaments count toward your Wanted: Heroes Raid Chest, so Raid Tournaments also effectively give you extra flags to potentially help fill your chest.

One notable difference to Regular Raids — you can’t reroll.

For the whole of the Tournament, you have 4 “Lives.” Each time you lose a Raid, you lose one life.

The lives do not reset across days of the Tournament. Once you’d lost 4 times at any point during the Tournament, you are out.

If you choose, you can pay some gems to reset your lives after 4 losses — but your score and ranking would still be lowered because of the losses. Paying to reset your lives does NOT give you an advantage from the Raids you’ve already fought. It simply allows you to continue using your normal 5 flags per day and not be “out” of the Tournament.

There is no way to buy additional flags. So everyone ultimately had the same number of maximum flags to use for attacks during the Tournament. The only thing gems allow you to do is continue playing if you’ve used up all of your lives.

@NPNKY explained this well:

@NPNKY

Done for the tournament after 4 total losses. 4/20. You can reset the counter with gems and continue in the tournament, but there isn’t much point to it because if you’ve lost 4 matches, your score has already taken a big hit. Assuming you don’t pay gems to continue, your score stays where it is except for the defense performance component. At the end of the tournament, you still get prizes based on that score, so probably the bottom tier participation loot

CAVEAT: How this worked in beta changed SEVERAL times during testing. It’s very possible we’ll see how all of this works evolve over time, much like Alliance Wars have changed many times since initial release.

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Matchmaking

This is an area of the Raid Tournaments that’s obviously had significant problems, and continual revision.

The developers are continuing to work to refine and improve how matchmaking works, so we don’t know exactly what to expect yet, but they’ve set up a Raid Tournament Change Log, which you can monitor for updates.

Matchmaking for Attacks

Click for details on Matchmaking for Attacks

As of the Third Raid Tournament, initial matchmaking was based on your Top 5 strongest heroes that qualified for the Tournament’s rarity and elemental restrictions:

@Petri

Morning all, I double checked this from our developers and seems like there was incorrect information in the change log, it has been now corrected. Since previous Raid Tournament, this is valid:
“The difficulty of enemies that the players face at the beginning of the Tournament is now determined by the 5 best heroes in their roster.”

@Petri

To clarify, the best 5 heroes within the rarity and element limits of the current tournament.

@Petri

The special skills of the heroes are not taking into account, so for example in this tournament healers are indeed included for the matchmaking.

This was slightly amended as of the Fourth Raid Tournament:

• The difficulty of the opponents reduced slightly in the beginning of tournaments.

Matchmaking for Defense

Click for details on Matchmaking for Defense

As of the Sixth Raid Tournament, matchmaking for Defense teams was changed again:

• Further improvements to the distribution of attacks, especially for the top players.
  • Keep in mind that if you’re in the top, your defense team will receive more attacks. This is due to the fact that there is a small number of top defense teams that are good matches for a large number of top attackers. We try to prioritize choosing a good opponent over choosing a too easy or too difficult opponent that hasn’t been attacked as much. We have also implemented a limit on how attacks count towards your Defense Grade. After the first five attacks of the day, only one attack per hour counts towards the grade.
• Changes to the starting difficulty of opponents your defense team faces.
  • It is no longer based on the defense team you pick, but your best heroes that match the tournament requirements. We’ve brought this rule back because we want to encourage players to choose the best defense team they can, and thus provide a better challenge to their opponents. Due to the way the Team Power is calculated it was possible, for example, to pick a defense team of two fully leveled, fully ascended heroes that were on paper equal in Team Power with a full team of lower rarity heroes, but in practice that full team would be defeated in most cases.

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Some thoughts on Raid Tournaments...once matchmaking works properly

Once matchmaking is working correctly, Raid Tournaments should offer some interesting shifts vs. normal Raids, because everyone is playing under the same restrictions — if the week’s Tournament only allows 3* heroes, it’s not like you’re taking your 3* team up against someone’s 4* team.

Players with deeper benches meeting the requirements will obviously benefit, but just having a pile of maxed 5* or the best HOTM won’t do anything for you in a tournament that doesn’t allow 5* heroes.

In the long run, that should make Tournaments interesting — but we’ll need to see if the changes to matchmaking have resolved the problems from the first two Raid Tournaments.

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Scoring

Click for details on Scoring

@EmpiresPuzzles

Raid Tournaments are scored based on four factors:

• Enemies killed: The amount of enemies killed during your attack.
• Winning: Victorious attack will award extra points.
• Difficulty Bonus: Winning the attack will award points based on comparing the performance of the opponent’s defense team with the performance of your attacks.
• Defense Team Grade: Your defense team will receive points in the end of each Battle Day based on their performance.

NOTE: Hat tip to @DracoLovesRi for pointing out that there haven’t seemed to be “extra points” for a victorious attack:

@DracoLovesRi

This wasn’t true in the first tournament and they haven’t announced a change. You get 40 points plus 20% of the difficulty bonus for each hero killed.

New as of the Second Raid Tournament:

@EmpiresPuzzles

The amount of Difficulty Bonus is increased and has more emphasis on the performance of the opponents Tournament Defense Team.

Defense Team Grade

Click for How Defense Team Grade Works

@anon96970591

I found this was actually very clear and useful — and I think provides some insights into regular Raid Defense Teams too.

The grades are assigned based on a percentage of wins by your Defense Team:

The Defense Grade is determined based on the win percentage of your Defense Team. At the end of each Battle Day, you receive points based on your grade.

Percent Won	Grade	Points
60%	A	900
50%	B	650
40%	C	500
30%	D	400
0%	E	200

My Personal Take on This:

The top grade in this approach was awarded to a Defense Team that won 60% of the time. To me, that’s a good confirmation of what many of us have long accepted: Raids are unfair, but not for the reasons you think - Raids MASTER — that is, they heavily favor the attacker, and even a top-notch Defense Team will lose much of the time.

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Restrictions

Each Week can have restrictions on:

• Hero and troop rarity — e.g. only allowing 3* heroes and 2* troops or below

• Elements — e.g. no red/fire heroes allowed

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Special Rules

Click for details on Special Rules

Each week has ONE Special Rule in effect.

(At least in beta; it’s possible live Tournaments may sometimes have multiple Special Rules at once. If that ever happens, I would be surprised if we see that before core elements like matchmaking are working properly, so I anticipate a single Special Rule for the foreseeable future.)

The possible Special Rules are:

@EmpiresPuzzles

• Rush Attack: All Special Skills are Very Fast.
• Bloody Battle: Healing has no effect.
• Buff Booster: Each active buff gives +20% attack.

Whichever Special Rule is in effect for a given Tournament remains in effect for the entirety of that Tournament.

The Special Rule affects both Defense and Offense teams.

Some Clarifications/Expansions

• Rush Attack makes all hero specials of any speed Very Fast — it doesn’t require Very Fast heroes, it turns all heroes into Very Fast heroes. Heroes that are normally Slow or Average can become quite powerful in this setting.

• Bloody Battle makes any healing effects do nothing. It doesn’t prohibit healers, it just prevents the healing portion of their special skill from having any effect.

• Buff Booster adds a stackable 20% attack buff to each hero for each active buff on that hero. Using heroes with special skills that grant buffs or multiple buffs can lead to very high attack boosts. These buffs stack with each other and normal attack buffs.

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Rewards

As of the Second Raid Tournament, loot was temporarily reduced while problems with the Raid Tournaments are fixed:

@EmpiresPuzzles

• The amount of loot given from Raid Tournaments has been reduced for the meantime.

For discussion/feedback about the reduced loot, please see this thread: Reduced Raid Tournament Loot During Work on Matchmaking [Developer Response in Post 334]

NOTE: The loot as of the Seventh Raid Tournament was very slightly tweaked. For discussion about this, please see this thread: The New, NEW Raid Tournament Loot

Click for details on Slightly Modified Loot as of Seventh Raid Tournament

@zephyr1

The loot does appear slightly updated, but it’s much more similar to the “Reduced in the Meantime” loot than the original loot.

Comparison of First Raid Tournament Loot and New Loot

Changes are marked as Original New

Acronyms in this table:

• AM: Ascension Materials
• EHT: Epic Hero Token
• ETT: Epic Troop Token

Any of the tiers starting at top 75% have a chance for ascension mats.

Here’s the current breakdown for ascension mats, tokens, and Emblems (for simplicity, I didn’t include the Flasks, Atlantis Coins, Battle Items, and Crafting Materials that are in loot in addition to these):

Tier	AM Chance	EHT/ETT Chance	Emblems Chance
75-100%	0	0	1 Draw: 100% x1
50-75%	1 Draw: 5%1% 3*	1 Draw: 5%1% EHT, 15%3% ETT	1 Draw: 20% x3, 30% x2, 50% x1
25-50%	1 Draw: 18%20% 3*, 2% 4*	1 Draw: 15%3% EHT, 25%5% ETT	1 Draw: 40%5% x5, 60%20% x3, 35% x2, 40% x1
10-25%	1 Draw: 22% 25% 3*, 3% 4*	2 Draws: 20%4% EHT, 40%8% ETT	1 Draw: 40%25% x5, 35% x10, 25% x20, 35% x3, 40% x2
5-10%	21 Draws: 45% 3*, 5%1% 4*	21 Draws: 25%5% EHT, 45%9% ETT	1 Draw: 10% x50, 20% x30, 30%10% x20, 40%20% x10, 30% x5, 40% x3
1-5%	2 1 Draws: 95%99% 3*, 5%1% 4*	2 Draws: 40%6% EHT, 60%10% ETT	1 Draw: 5% x100, 30% x50, 30%5% x30, 35%30% x20, 30% x10, 35% x5
Top 1%	2 1 Draws: 90% 98% 3*, 10% 2% 4*	3 Draws: 50% 10% EHT, 50% 40% ETT	1 Draw: 25% x100, 50% x35, 30% x40 25% x30, 35% x20, 40% x10

My Take

This doesn’t seem like a notable return toward the original loot.

My expectation (hope) is that further updates will come that return the loot far closer to the original — as you can see above, this slightly tweaked version is nowhere close to the original.

Click for Archive of First Tournament's Loot, before reduction

Acronyms in this table:

• AM: Ascension Materials
• EHT: Epic Hero Token
• ETT: Epic Troop Token

Any of the tiers starting at top 75% have a chance for ascension mats.

Here’s the current breakdown for ascension mats, tokens, and Emblems (for simplicity, I didn’t include the Flasks, Atlantis Coins, Battle Items, and Crafting Materials that are in loot in addition to these):

Tier	AM Chance	EHT/ETT Chance	Emblems Chance
75-100%	0	0	1 Draw: 100% x1
50-75%	1 Draw: 5% 3*	1 Draw: 5% EHT, 15% ETT	1 Draw: 20% x3, 30% x2, 50% x1
25-50%	1 Draw: 18% 3*, 2% 4*	1 Draw: 15% EHT, 25% ETT	1 Draw: 40% x5, 60% x3
10-25%	1 Draw: 22% 3*, 3% 4*	2 Draws: 20% EHT, 40% ETT	1 Draw: 40% x5, 35% x10, 25% x20
5-10%	2 Draws: 45% 3*, 5% 4*	2 Draws: 25% EHT, 45% ETT	1 Draw: 10% x50, 20% x30, 30% x20, 40% x10
1-5%	2 Draws: 95% 3*, 5% 4*	2 Draws: 40% EHT, 60% ETT	1 Draw: 5% x100, 30% x50, 30% x30, 35% x20
Top 1%	2 Draws: 90% 3*, 10% 4*	3 Draws: 50% EHT, 50% ETT	1 Draw: 25% x100, 50% x35, 30% x40

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Feedback on Raid Tournaments

• For feedback on Matchmaking: please discuss in this thread

• For feedback on the temporarily reduced loot: Reduced Raid Tournament Loot During Work on Matchmaking [Developer Response in Post 334]

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Bug Reporting

Please see these threads for existing bug reports before creating a new report

Click for Existing Bug Reports

• Met myself in the raid tournament

• [KNOWN ISSUE - Raid Tournaments / Bloody Battle] Atomos and Hero Talents Healing/Reving Enabled

• Raid Tournament Leaderboard Shows Rank 1 Before Tournament but with previous Tournament’s Laurels Shown on Leaderboard

• Bug: No tournament tab in raids despite joining and setting a defense (V20, First Raid Tournament)

• Refill available glitch? Raid Tournaments show refill available when out of flags – appears likely due to Raid Flask in Inventory

• :b BUG?: tghots big us - fG rhd - g1 - #16 by yelnats_24

• [KNOWN ISSUE] Raid Tournament Defense Grade Low Due to Not Being Attacked - Staff Response Post #7

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Related Topics

• 🏅 [Eighth Raid Tournament] How is your Defense Team doing?
• Reduced Raid Tournament Loot During Work on Matchmaking [Developer Response in Post 334]

Click for Older Threads

General

• SGG Official Documentation: What Are Raid Tournaments?
• Has it been confirmed whether or not some of the Raid tournaments will only feature 1* and 2* heroes?

Seventh Raid Tournament

• [Seventh Raid Tournament] Discussion and Feedback on Raid Tournament Matchmaking
• [Seventh Raid Tournament] How is your Defense Team doing?

Sixth Raid Tournament

• 🏅 [Sixth Raid Tournament] Discussion and Feedback on Raid Tournament Matchmaking
• 🏅 [Sixth Raid Tournament] How is your Defense Team doing?

Fifth Raid Tournament

• 🏅 [Fifth Raid Tournament] Discussion and Feedback on Raid Tournament Matchmaking
• 🏅 [Fifth Raid Tournament] How is your Defense Team doing?

Fourth Raid Tournament

• 🏅 [Fourth Raid Tournament] Discussion and Feedback on the Updated Raid Tournament Matchmaking
• 🏅 [Fourth Raid Tournament] Attack Tracking – How is Your Defense Doing?
• 🏅 [Fourth Raid Tournament] Final Results & Rewards – Share Yours & Discuss!

Third Raid Tournament

• 🏅 [Third Raid Tournament] Discussion and Feedback on the Updated Raid Tournament Matchmaking & Difficulty Bonus
• 🏅 [Third Raid Tournament] Attack Tracking – How is Your Defense Doing?
  🏅 [Third Raid Tournament] Final Results & Rewards – Share Yours & Discuss!

Second Raid Tournament

• 🏅 [Apr 9, 2019] 2nd Raid Tournament! — 3* Buff Booster, All Elements
• 🏅 [Second Raid Tournament] Discussion and Feedback on the Updated Raid Tournament Matchmaking & Difficulty Bonus
• New Raid Tournament any correlation between team power and the difficulty bonus?
• [Second Raid Tournament] Tournament Attack Tracking-How is Your Defense Doing?
• Reduced Raid Tournament Loot During Work on Matchmaking [Developer Response in Post 334]

First Raid Tournament

• 🏅 [Mar 23, 2019] 1st Raid Tournament! — 4* Rush Attack, All Elements
• 🏅 Weekly Raid Tournaments – Post-Launch Feedback – Unfair Matches [dev response on post 476] and Scoring? Appropriate Difficulty? Loot Tiers? See thread for more topics
• Theorycrafting the Raid Tournament
• Will there be compensation? (For Raid Tournament Matchmaking Problems)
• [KNOWN ISSUE] Raid Tournament Defense Grade Low Due to Not Being Attacked - Staff Response Post #7
• 1302 post screen shot if this is your current score for the First Weekly Raid Tournament
• Version 20 Official Release Notes: Version 20 Release Notes
• Discussion of Version 20 Release Notes: :riubased - W changes aasas

Older Threads from Before Raid Tournaments Launched

• Answers to some questions before first Raid Tournament: Raid Tournament - Understanding the Rules and Requirements
• Recommendations and discussions about leveling priorities for Raid Tournaments: Raid Tournament Preview – Planning Leveling Priorities & Strategy in Anticipation of Release
• (Old) Discussion about possible ideas before Raid Tournaments started beta development: Weekly Challenge Raids - Ideas for Devs (Pre-Release)

[yelnats_24]

@zephyr1

What are you thinking about using for your Defense Team?

I don’t even have a choice… these are my only maxed non-healer 4☆ heroes… (4 others are healers)

@zephyr1

Which of your heroes will you be likely to use on your Attack Teams?

I honestly don’t know, I can’t even use 3-2 combination without at least a healer…

@zephyr1

Are there elements of this week’s Tournament that are unclear to you?

@Petri the matchmaking system use 5 best heroes, what happen if the best heroes are healers? Are they still included in those best 5 even though the special rule is Bloody Battle?

[zephyr1]

@yelnats_24

I don’t even have a choice…

That’s actually a pretty reasonable team, all things considered.

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@yelnats_24

I honestly don’t know, I can’t even use 3-2 combination without at least a healer…

Last time I used Rigard sometimes for clearing, and Boldtusk/Kiril sometimes for the buffs. They can potentially fit into a stack, even without healing be needed. Likewise, Melendor can be useful for dispelling and high attack stat in a stack.

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@yelnats_24

Are they still included in those best 5 even though the special rule is Bloody Battle?

I think so, because healers aren’t disqualified, they just have no effect.

This was my default defense set initially, which I presume is what my top 5 was judged on for this Tournament:

[yelnats_24]

@zephyr1

Last time I used Rigard sometimes for clearing, and Boldtusk/Kiril sometimes for the buffs.

Good point, I have Kiril maxed to make it 3-2 combination with only 1 healer.

@zephyr1

This was my default defense set initially, which I presume is what my top 5 was judged on for this Tournament:

In that case, maybe I shall use Kiril + Grimm + 4/55 Sonya

[ochartier]

Many defense options, but leaning between those 2

Gonna attack depending entirely on the ennemy I face, but probably won’t go mono on a no healing battle, and probably will use Wilbur quite often to slow up the damage taken. Won’t bring any healer and will focus on fastest damage possible (bring all the ramming pulverisers!!!)

Thinking Wukong might have something to bring, offense or defense

[Vikingblood80]

Kiril …

Or no Kiril…

That’s the question…

Which Troops

Level 5 allround / Level 1 offensive

For Tiburtus (purple) and Colen (red)…

[yelnats_24]

You are not using Li Xiu tank?

[Schemerlamp]

Kiril will not heal.

[Vikingblood80]

So your answer is “No”? I know that healing is off…but I like to have his other buffs.

[Vikingblood80]

@yelnats_24

You are not using Li Xiu tank?

In my usual def team I have Li Xiu as tank. Tested with Sonya as tank…both are equally good in terms of cups (2150~2180). I get the better color distribution of my team with Sonya in the middle.

[yelnats_24]

I usually take down Sonya tank without using any green heroes. Don’t forget to post your defense result, I’m curious how Sonya tank will fare in Bloody Battle tournament.

[Raghstpart]

Last time I run with this defense team. And was pretty good on defense. I managed to stay in leval A defense. And top 1% overall

[Vikingblood80]

@Raghstpart

Last time I run with this defense team

I think there was no 4* “Bloody battle” so far.

[arios]

bit waste to use Gaderius , no damage , slow and heal wont work either

[arios]

i think better put Li in middle as tank , Li will punish more if opponent got bad board , Sonya is fast but only hit 1 hero and with low damage

[Rainee]

I wonder whether Boril can challenge Li as a viable tank in this tournament. I hesitate between one of the two following setups:
Wilbur - Tiburtus - Boril - Caedmon - Wu
Wilbur - Tiburtus - Li - Grimm - Caedmon.

There are some differences in amount of emblems per hero but this is relatively minor.

Edit: Another variant for consideration is this:
Wilbur - Tiburtus - Li - Captain of Diamonds - Caedmon.

Grimm is just a blue Tiburtus, so debuffs can overwrite each other, they are both average speed.
Captain is fast but its usefulness depends on whether we expect Buddy to be broadly used in attacking teams. I personally think ppl will use Buddy due to minion shield xD

Your thoughts?

[Syren]

I think this is what I have to work with. Not sure who to use as tank (normally kashrek) was wanting to do Li, but she isn’t fully leveled yet

[Olmor]

[Whiskey]

Could sub in grimm+17 (squishy, hits hard, not fast, same debuff as tibs) for sonya and/or proteus (no emblems, squishy for flank) for tibs or cyp. Any advice?