Got an idea for overall favor. Inspired by Rushin Roulette's joke.
15 minutes of favor for completing an Elite Mission without any PvE-only skills.
10 minutes of favor for completing an Elite Mission without any En PvE-only skills.
5 minutes of favor for completing an Elite Mission without any Norn Blessing skills.
20 minutes of favor for completing an Elite Mission without any PvE-only skills or Elite skills.
That's just a crummy suggestion that (may) improve the favor system, AND will be a good "nerf" to Ursan (and PvE-only skills for those few QQers about those) once favor runs low. It's also a lazy way out for ANet. I still prefer adding a new area all together that is very hard or won't allow Norn Blessings in. (I got a basic layout of how such a thing can look like being tournament-style and still be PvE based, might add later.)
Edit:
Here is a basic layout of how the "PvE-Tournament" can look like.
(sorry that it's a little hard to read the writing)
It would have teams of 6 people.
Each team would be randomly grouped with one of two "sides" (so that its 3 teams allies to each other, then the other 3 to each other, making it two groups of 18, the mission enter would be similar to the two missions in Factions).
The Bosses would be random spawn in respect to their level (so you have 1/6 chance to fight each lvl 25 boss and 1/3 chance to fight each lvl 30 boss).
The final boss would be fought by which ever teams make it there first (a good strategy would be to wait for everyone else who is alive to make it before engaging)
The "Blocked Passages" will go away once the boss before those walls is killed, to prevent just running past/around.
And of course, the enemy teams can choose to fight or help each other (helping each other will prove helpful in fighting the last boss, but makes it tougher because you have to watch your targeting and you cannot support the other team).
I figured a good boss to have at the end would be Dhuum or Menzies, since GW1 is all about the "Fallen God Alliance" (as I call it), the other bosses would be simply the minions. Even the final boss can be a random spawn between the two, adding more variety and complication for team set up, making it more worthy of a Favor System.
This of course, will be PvE based and use PvE skills (and to prevent full Ursan teams, there will be energy denial and anti-knockdowns along with other counters to common build set ups).
If the final boss is randomly picked between Dhuum and Menzies, then there can be double the arrangement for the other bosses (9 different bosses per God), and each boss would have their own individual build (all bosses would either use monster skills or have multiple professions).
Amount of Favor gained can be based on time just like Morale for beating the NPCs in HA. The amount of Favor would be doubled for Hard Mode runs. I won't give any "time=favor" charts as it would need to be tested with what builds are used on the bosses and possible builds on the players before setting that up. But of course, the faster done, the more Favor earned.
Last note: The levels of the bosses in the sketch of mine are for Normal Mode. And how often the mission/tournament starts will have intervals to prevent a bunch of teams going in at once, all succeeding, and getting 5k minutes of favor in an hour. The levels for Hard Mode should just add 5 levels to the ones up on the sketch (NM:25, 30, 35; HM:30, 35, 40)
And, of course, that is just a basic layout, so it can be bigger if wanted
.