Alliance Battles

This article is about the 12 player PvP battles. For the Zaishen Challenge Quest, see Alliance Battles (Zaishen quest).

Alliance Battles
Campaign	Factions
Takes place	Kurzick-Luxon border
Party size	4
Parties per team	3

Alliance Battles are 12 versus 12 (3 parties of 4) PvP battles that determine control of the Kurzick-Luxon border in Cantha. Luxons wear their traditional red color and appear as red dots on the map while Kurzicks wear their traditional blue color and appear as blue dots on the map.

Access

Guild Wars Factions or the PvP Access Kit must be added to your account in order to reach the Alliance Battle outposts.

To access Alliance Battles, you must enter a guild hall that's allied with either faction. If you don't have a guild, a guest pass to another guild's hall will suffice. Talk to the Alliance Battles representative, the Kurzick Kommandant or Luxon Navigator, to be zoned to the respective outpost of the current arena.

You must form a party of 4 level 20 characters to enter. You are not required to team up with members of your guild or alliance.

Before battle, you will be joined randomly with two other parties, forming a team of 12. During the battle itself, skills that affect "party members" will only affect the 4 players of your party.

Arenas

There are 5 different maps. The map in which the fight takes place 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.

Map	Side	Attacker underdog bonus	Border
Kaanai Canyon	Deep Luxon	+ score * 5 (Kurzick side)	Kurzicks control at least 4 Jade Sea outposts
Etnaran Keys	Luxon	+ score * 3 (Kurzick side)	Kurzicks control 1 to 3 Jade Sea outposts
Saltspray Beach	Neutral	None	Kurzicks control no Jade Sea outposts and Luxons control no Echovald Forest outposts
Grenz Frontier	Kurzick	+ score * 3 (Luxon side)	Luxons control 1 to 3 Echovald Forest outposts
The Ancestral Lands	Deep Kurzick	+ score * 5 (Luxon side)	Luxons control at least 4 Echovald Forest outposts

Battle objectives

Winning the battle

Winning conditions

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

• Accumulate 500 points before the other side.
  • Holding all 7 control points for 60 consecutive seconds sets the holding team's point total to 500.
• If every member of the opposing party resigns or leaves, i.e. a white towel win.

Accumulating points

Your team gains points by killing opponents or holding control points:

• 3 points: each time you kill a player from the opposing faction. (Killing pets, minions, or shrine NPCs will not award points.)
• 1 point: for each control point owned by your side; awarded every 7 seconds.

Control points

There are seven control points on the map. They will be placed on the map closer to the faction that is losing the overall border war; they are the same distance from both sides only when the Kurzick/Luxon border evenly divides the Echovald Forest from the Jade Sea.

Capturing control points

Each control point starts the battle in neutral status; they are captured by standing on or next to the shrine:

• If one team has more characters nearby, then the control point starts to shift in the direction of that team.
  • The speed of transition is one pip for each extra member that the team has nearby. e.g. if there are four members from Team A and 1 from B, the rate will be 3 pips.
• The control point's ownership will not switch if both sides have the same number of players.
• If one team already owns the shrine, the opposing side has to neutralize it before it can start to take ownership. Neither side receives points for neutral shrines.
• Allied NPCs are counted, including those that guard shrines and any that follow the team.
• Pets, minions, and spirits do not count as allies when affecting the shift.
• The maximum transition speed is capped at 4 pips.

Captured shrines

Once captured, a control point will spawn NPC guards and offer some other special ability (resurrecting allies closer to the battle, increasing characters speed, elemental protection, spawning NPCs that follow players around). The NPC guards generally do not respawn, 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. (The saltspray dragon hatchlings do respawn.)

Base defenders

Both the Kurzick and the Luxon base are guarded by invulnerable Base Defenders that can kill players in a single hit, which prevents the enemy team from capturing the base.

Bug. If the both teams reach 500 points at the same time, the win defaults to the Kurzicks regardless of the final score, because Kurzick points are distributed first. For example, if the score is 499 each and the Kurzicks own 1 flag, but the Luxons own 6, when shrine points are awarded, the Kurzicks will reach 500 first (and win), even though the ending totals will be Kurzick: 500, Luxon: 505.

Reward

• The winning side receives 1,000 Imperial faction points.
  • Both sides also receive 10 Imperial faction for each point equal to their end score. This reward is increased by the map's Underdog bonus. (Neutral maps provide no bonus while maps deep into enemy territory provide an extra 50%; see Arenas (above) for details.)
• Each kill (excluding pets, minions, and spirits) awards all members of that side with 40 Imperial faction points and 20 Balthazar faction points.

Reward Scenarios

Scenario 1: Luxons won the battle 500 - 418 in Kanaai Canyon

Luxons = 5,000 (500 pts*10) + 1,000 (Victory) = 6,000 Imperial faction.

Kurzicks = 4,180 (418 pts*10) + 2,090 (50% Underdog Bonus) = 6,270 Imperial faction.

Scenario 2: Kurzicks won the battle 500 - 471 in Saltspray Beach

Luxons = 4,710 (471 pts*10) = 4,710 Imperial faction.

Kurzicks = 5,000 (500 pts*10) + 1,000 (Victory) = 6,000 Imperial faction.

Scenario 3: Luxons won the battle 500 - 392 in Grentz Frontier

Luxons = 5,000 (500 pts*10) + 1,500 (30% Underdog Bonus) + 1,000 (Victory) = 7,500 Imperial faction.

Kurzicks = 3,920 (392 pts*10) = 3,920 Imperial faction.

Tips

• Resurrection skills are not generally useful because:
  • Players are automatically resurrected 20 seconds after their deaths.
  • All resurrection skills target party members instead of allies, so only players from your own 4-man party can be resurrected this way.
  • There are no Morale Boosts so Resurrection Signets never recharge.
• 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.
• It is important to spread out early in the match. Having 4 players on each side portal and 4 out front will maximize the capping speed at the nearest shrines on Etnaran Keys and Grenz Frontier. This is sometimes called "4-4-4".
• Consider bringing running skills as there is a great deal of running between control points. The mobile nature of the battle also makes stationary skills like wards, wells and spirits less useful.
• 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, nearby teammates and NPCs (the orb will then disappear so you can't drop it repeatedly to make yourself immortal).
• It is useful to know which Control point, or points, you can capture on your own (solo cap).
• It is not an uncommon occurrence for two teams to collide and form a mob. A mob can kill anything in its path but it is a very inefficient way to cap shrines. It is a bad idea to try to fight the mob, instead, spread out and cap the shrines the mob is leaving undefended. Conversely, if your team ends up as a mob, and the other team is avoiding the mob, try to get your party to break away.
• Having the mission (U) map open and fully zoomed out allows you to see which team holds the control points.
• It is beneficial to have some Area of effect damage source in the team so that dealing with enemy NPCs is quicker reducing time for capturing as well.
• It is generally a bad idea to keep attacking a lonely "decoy" character like a 55 Monk, tanking warrior or a terra tank elementalist since unless your team has certain skills to quickly crack the highly defensive build, it could waste precious minutes that your team could have used to run and/or cap a shrine.
• Using a longbow or flatbow you can kill any of the NPC shrines (except the warrior shrine) without them fighting back.
• On maps where a particular faction has an advantage on the current map (Grenz Frontier and Ancestral Lands for Kurzicks, or Etnaran Keys and Kaanai Canyon for Luxons), this side tends to become overcrowded, resulting on long queues to enter battle. You can avoid long queues by fighting on your "underdog" maps which also yields higher rewards, but, of course, these are harder to win.

Notes

• There is no Death Penalty in alliance battles.
• By talking to an alliance spy, you will be sent to the opposing side's outpost.
• Drawings and pings on the map can only be seen by your party, so drawing instructions for other allied parties is futile.
• Usually takes around 10 - 15 minutes per battle

Bug.If your team loses and you go to another town before you are automatically sent out, but the town is full, you will stay in the area until you leave yourself.

Bug.If you are holding a resurrection orb and you die due to losing, you will be resurrected and can continue the game until you zone out.

Trivia

• Alliance battles began awarding Imperial faction instead of Kurzick or Luxon faction after the June 2, 2011 update.
• The amount of rewards were changed in the May 17, 2012 update.

---