Arena of Valor (AoV) - Patch 13 Coming to SEA Servers (EU/NA/SA Likely Soon)

The patch that hit the Arena of Valor Taiwan server on March 27 has been announced for all Southeast Asian servers and India. The released video displays menu screens from the Europe and Americas servers, so expect an announcement from Tencent in the coming days.

Patch 13 Coming to SEA Servers

The patch that went live on the Taiwan server on March 27 is now making its way across Southeast Asia and India. While the details on each server page differ slightly, the main changes to Arena of Valor can be found on this video from the AoV MSP (Malaysia / Singapore / Philippines) YouTube channel:

The awkward “Guild War” voice-overs aside, the video references multiple locations in North America and Europe, so it is likely that a similar video will surface on the official Arena of Valor YouTube channel soon – marking its entrance into the Americas and Europe servers.

New Additions

Now that the changes are official (at least for Southeast Asia), let’s go over the features set to hit all servers.

Guild Wars

Replacing “Training Camp” on the main menu screen will be the Guild Wars button. Players can form squads made up of players within their guilds and compete in server-wide tournaments that are adjusted for player level.

Enhanced Referral System

Players will be given a six-digit referral code that they can use to invite friends and receive rewards

Display Optimization

Those playing on large displays previously had the sides unnecessarily occupied by the hero display. The display is now full-screen, with the placements of the hero portraits mimicking that of devices with smaller screens.

Match Results Upgrade and Menu Lag Reduction

More useful data will be displayed in the match results, though they were vague with details. Players will also be able to select players at the same time (in non-draft modes), whereas previously some players would load the character selection screen faster and thus have an advantage.

Control Optimization

Four changes were made to optimize hero control:

  • Ability cancellation was moved farther away for area-target abilities like Maloch’s ultimate, making it more difficult to accidentally cancel the ability when aiming at full range
  • “Target tower” and “target minions” buttons will now enlarge after pressing them once, making it easier to continue pressing them
  • Tapping the “target minions” button will now properly target minions and monsters when heroes are around
  • Hero attributes screen reduced in size to allow players to continue to view the minimap and use the joystick while viewing

Art Upgrade

Arthur‘s model was updated, giving him a sleek, more knightly appearance:

Arena of Valor Arthur model update

Meanwhile, Lauriel‘s Smite was made more vivid:

Arena of Valor Lauriel Smite change

Roulette Rewards Added

Logging in at certain times of the day will give players a chance to win rewards via a new roulette feature

arena of valor roulette feature

Differences Between Servers?

There are multiple differences between the patch notes announcements for each Asian server. Some of them are positive: The MSP server, for example, is touting its Superman release (albeit on roughly the same day as the leaked Americas release) as well as the AOV Express Installer, giving players the option of playing after only downloading 100 MB.

However, some of the changes simply add to the inconsistency between servers, creating a potentially unfair playing field at the Arena of Valor World Cup and making it confusing for casual players.

Items

The MSP update only includes the Rankbreaker and Frost Cape changes, while the Vietnam update appears to fully include the changes detailed in the Taiwan patch notes, including the two new items.

Heroes

The hero balance updates for the Valiant (MSP) server differ slightly from the Taiwan patch notes for multiple characters. Because some of the inconsistencies are significant (for example, Veera is reworked on the Taiwan server but seemingly simply buffed on the MSP server), we’re holding off on analyzing each change until they’re definitive.

Update: It appears that many parts of the update have been updated to reflect the same changes in the Taiwan patch (including heroes, items, and bug fixes). There are still some differences though, so we’ll continue to wait until the patch notes are final to evaluate the changes.

Update 2: Patch evaluation complete

Dates

The MSP release is scheduled for April 13, while the Indonesia, Vietnam, and India releases are a bit more vague as to the timing. As of writing, the Europe and Americas releases have yet to be announced.

Arena of Valor (AoV) Recommended Article List

Leave a Reply



1 Comment

  1. I’m sorry but why do people keep forgetting the Thai AoV server? Our server and Taiwan’s server are basically the same you know. It’s annoying to see people mentioning only the Taiwan server, while completely ignoring the Thai one.