Velious added Ally faction due to needing max-ish warmly (and that was hard to tell how far away you were to max, so they added Ally as a top-warmly tier) for Skyshrine and Kael quests. Ally (even though the faction may not be maxed) is the indication that you can run armor turn-ins, etc.
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~ Dermal, plate-ish armored corpse-run newbie - 20th level Shadow Knight
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