Alliance Battle Information

I was not really sure where to put this, but my hopes that eventually we can do some AB battles even amoungst ourselves. Below is an overview of what an Alliance Battle is, when we get an opportunity to play one.

Access

To access alliance battles, your guild will need to be allied with either faction, or if you don't have a guild, acquire a guest pass to a guild. You then need to go to your (or host guild's) Guild Hall and talk to the [Alliance Battles] representative. You'll be zoned to wherever the fight is taking place.

Although the total team is composed of 12 players, teams are formed by 3 sub-teams of 4 players. You are not required to team up with members of your alliance. During the battle itself, skills that affect "party members" will only affect the 4 players of your sub-team.

There are 5 different maps. The map where the fight is depends on the red/blue border line of the faction war. Maps that are deep into Luxon or Kurzick territory are heavily weighted in their favor.


Battle objectives

Winning the Battle: To win a battle the winning side has to achieve one of the following conditions:

* Accumulate 500 points before the other side. (In the event that both sides get to 500 or more points at exactly the same time, it says that both sides win, and both sides get all rewards for winning.)
* Hold all 7 control points for 60 consecutive seconds. This will also set the winning faction's point total to 500.

Accumulating points can be done in two ways:

1. Killing players of the opposing faction adds 3 points. Killing pets, minions, or shrine NPCs will not award points.
2. Holding a control point: From the start of the match, every 7 seconds the game checks to see how many control points a side holds. 1 point is added to a side's score for every control point that side holds when the game checks.

Also, a white towel winning situation is if the entire opposing party resigns or leaves. This however will not set the winning faction's score to 500.

Control Points: There are seven control points on the map which are captured by having more players and allies in its vicinity than the other team. Depending on the specific battle map, control points will be at equal distance from either side or closer to the side that is losing on the border. By default, a control point will be in neutral status.

A team attempting to capture a control point will bring in a number of players to it:

* If the control point has the same number of players from both sides, then it will not start to shift in either direction.
* If the control point is neutral and one team has more players at it than the other, then it will start to shift in the direction of that team. The speed by which it shifts is dependent on the number of players that team has more than the other team in the vicinity of the control point. For example, if one team has 4 players and the other has 1, the control point will shift to the team with 4 players with a speed of 3 pips (the difference between 4 and 1).
* If the control point is already owned by one side and the other side brings more players to it than those of the team that owns it, the control point will first shift away from the side that owns it (speed again relative to the difference in presence). Once the control point has drained away all its allegiance bar to one side, it will be announced as "neutralized" and then it will start to shift towards the other side.
* The NPCs guarding a control point (see below) will count towards the team they belong to when the shift is taking place.
* Pets, minions and spirits do not count as allies when affecting the shift.

Once captured, a control point will spawn a few NPC guards (which count towards holding the control point) and offer some other special abilities (resurrecting allies closer to the battle, increasing characters speed, elemental protection, spawning NPCs that follow players around). The NPC guards do not respawn, except in some cases such as the saltspray dragon hatchling, unless the point is neutralized and then recaptured so it can often be advantageous to kill one even if it means your character's death.

Reward

* Both the winning and losing sides earn 1 Kurzick or Luxon faction points for each point they score in battle.
* Each kill (excluding pets, minions and spirits) awards all members of that side with 1 Kurzick or Luxon faction point and 10 Balthazar faction points. Each player kill also adds 3 points to your side's score, effectively giving 4 Kurzick/Luxon factions points per player kill.
* The winning side receives an additional 1000 Luxon/Kurzick faction points. To a maximum of 2,500 faction as reward on a map with a maximum disadvantage to your faction.
* The disadvantaged attacking side gets additional faction in an "Underdog Bonus". The bonus is equal to the attacking side's total score in Etnaran Keys and Grenz Frontier, and equal to double the attacking side's total score in Kaanai Canyon and The Ancestral Lands.

Tips

* Only those who have Guild Wars Factions can access Alliance Battle.
* Resurrection skills are not generally useful because:
o Players are automatically resurrected after 20 seconds of their deaths.
o All resurrection skills target party members instead of allies, so only players from your own 4-man subteam can be resurrected this way.
o There are no Morale Boosts so Resurrection Signets never recharges.
* There is no Death Penalty in alliance battles.
* Skills which profit from deaths, like the wells and minions of the Necromancer, are very effective in alliance battles due to the many corpses available.
* Consider bringing running skills as there is a great deal of running to capture control points.
* If your team holds the resurrection orb shrine, carrying the resurrection orb will give you "two lives" since dying will cause you to drop it on your body, resurrecting you and nearby teammates (the orb will then disappear so you can't drop it repeatedly to make yourself immortal).
* Knowing the maps is a big advantage, as you will know the shortest and quickest route to every shrine, as well as detours.
* In the mission entry point, (Grenz Frontier, etc.) if you are anywhere below level 20, a message saying " cannot play this mission. Players levels must be between 20 and 20." appears.
* On maps where a particular faction has an advantage on the current map (Grenz Frontier and Ancestral Lands for Kurzicks, or Eternan Keys and Kanaai Canyon for Luxons), they tend to become overcrowded, resulting on long queues to enter bat