Update - Thursday, May 17, 2012

Alliance Battle Updates

Increased Alliance Battle score multiplier for Imperial faction gain from 4 to 10.

Decreased win bonus for Alliance Battles from 2000 Imperial faction to 1000 Imperial faction.

Increased underdog multiplier for Alliance Battles from 100% and 200% to 300% and 500%.

Increased Imperial faction per kill in Alliance Battles from 30 to 40.

Increase Balthazar faction per kill in Alliance Battles from 10 to 20.

Title Change

Decreased the title rank required to get maximum effectiveness from title-based PvE skills.

Environment Effect Update

Stone Spores (PvP): causes a 33% reduction in outgoing damage and healing, as well as -2 to all attributes. Additionally, areas affected by Stone Spores always remain active, instead of toggling on and off.

Miscellaneous

Added a sweets-exchange NPC to the Great Temple of Balthazar.

Honeycombs for Root Cakes? Sounds silly, but alright...

Anyways, will AB finally be lively again, letting ANet take out the JQ botters?

Also, I see no change in the titles. Am I missing something?

You only need r5 in EotN reputation titles to get your PvE skills to max effectiveness.

I think for SS/LB you only need r4.

...Why would you want to trade the bigger AB win for the smaller individual kill bonus?

I assume its because you get more during the game.

Which is probably the only way to make the random chaos worth playing, considering so many people just run after players and don't bother capping.

Interesting to see so many changes. I guess we were a little presumptuous to wail about the sky falling when they said they'd be moving the live team over to GW2.

I have absolutely no idea why they changed PvE skills, though, with all they've been doing to make it easy to max our titles. *shrug*

Sweets trader is interesting. Removes necessity to kill ourselves over and over to use up DP removers, I guess.

People feel compelled to grind out the rep titles because you get skills that increase in effectiveness with higher ranks. They did this because of their anti-grind philosophy.

I also assume the underdog bonus was increased to nudge the kurzicks out of shitterlands. This will probably keep AB on the middle map more.

You can also exchange pumpkin cookies and candy canes for delicious cakes. Spammable sweets ftw

Holy smokes, I have to say I am really surprised AB got any kind of update. I have missed the time I spent in AB. We'll see if this means more warm bodies...

Ive always wondered about this. Ive been playing MMOs for over 10 years and have never played a game with anywhere near as much grind as this game has.

Changes are nice though. I expect they will continue doing little things like this, or maybe even major changes once GW2 launches.

Wow, that PvE update is actually a pretty huge power creep for a lot of us players. I know a lot of you are running around with GWAMM's and maxed PvE titles but personally I tend to play a crapload of different toons and this is great.

This coincides greatly with the AB bonus weekend.

This is great. Seems you get a +5 rank PvE skill effectiveness from this update, so if you are r5, you can already get the old r10 PvE skill effectiveness.

That's actually what has me scratching my head. With all the bonuses we've been getting lately, making it so easy to have full halls and GWAMM, I can't imagine there being a significant portion of the community that needs this.
And the difference in effectiveness between R1 and max was so slight, the only people I can see really benefiting are the farmers and SC'ers.

Not that I'm complaining, mind you (I have a lot of non-max alts, too, and do a bit of solo farming). It's just a surprising change at this stage of the game.

It certainly explains the abrupt deviation from the automatic schedule we'd been following for the past two years. Looking forward to seeing some life in there this weekend (I'd like to see that border move!).

on the contrary...ppl like me have main chars that they play..say ranger and ele?which aren't used in some SC, as well all know Sins are the most used in most SC (or maybe that just got I see it) so if I were to make a sin for SC only or farming I would not have to farm r8 or 10 norn, asura etc before being able to use it for SC....so I think its a ncie update and I might make a sin now

anti-grind philosophy?
Then why have a I spent years of my life getting titles..lol
Took 3 years to get Max Lucky title & Only 5,423 more chest to open.
The 7th birthday bonus week was the real anti grind game..lol

And finally after every update for more then a year to murder Alliance Battles something was done to balance something out.
I guess after the population of Zaishen quest days and weekend bonus was still at zero, it was time to do something about it.

Due to the boost in the underdog bonus, I'll be surprised if it doesn't move.

Actually... this will make for much more active farming and speedclearing too. All it takes is 3 full NM books + the one you do while finishing EotN, and you get LB to 3-4 just by finishing the campaign. I wonder if we'll see DOA groups open up for the first time.

Aesthetic grind is optional. When people say GW doesn't have grind, they mean that someone who has been playing 7 years isn't innately more powerful than someone who's been playing for just a few months. Reducing the title requirements to get max effectiveness on these skills is consistent with this philosophy, and it really takes care of one of my biggest problems with these skills.

>>Decreased the title rank required to get maximum effectiveness from title-based PvE skills.

Wow, they buff that as if PVE skill isn't OP enough.