If you copy the WAR into the TOMCAT_HOME/webapps directory, the context path will be the same as the name of the WAR (minus the ".war" extension).
If you create a Context XML file in TOMCAT_HOME/conf/Catalina/localhost, the context path will be the name of the Context XML file (minus the ".xml" extension). But you would have to update the docBase attribute to point to the current version of the WAR
For
testing, I don't bother building a WAR file, i just point the docBase of my context XML file to my project's Maven target directory, where the exploded version of the WAR is built (and zipped from) in the subdirectory whose name matches the project. So there's neither major nor snapshot version names that have to be changed.
The secret of how to be miserable is to constantly expect things are going to happen the way that they are "supposed" to happen.
You can have faith, which carries the understanding that you may be disappointed. Then there's being a willfully-blind idiot, which virtually guarantees it.