So, Ashran as Horde=impossible/no honor/cp?

[Gumboy]

I was getting bored of just doing pve lately, and a couple friends asked if I would come back to healing in arena. I said sure, but on my new character I don't even have a pvp trinket, so I moseyed on over to Ashran, got in instantly (which should have been my first clue of the horror within; at start of the expansion the queues were like 4+ hours)

I post in general looking for an event group, I get invited to one with six other people. I figure, this must be the small ancillary group, right?

Nope. We had six people (Seven with me) doing events. A /who of the zone? 14 people.

Went to the first event that popped up, saw a sea of red names, their was easily 40+ alliance in just that one event area, vs. our seven (+misc hangers on that weren't in the group, lets just call it ten)


Is this intended? Is their no population limit to keep things even? I asked if it was always like that, and they basically said "Yep, welcome to horde ashran"

Soo...is the zone just intended to gear alliance players only effortlessly?

[RH92]

Unfortunately yes, it simply is stupid.

Not even the looking for a group thing work anymore. You search there for an Ashran Event group and you get grouped with 5-15 people at max. A lot of people join the party, but they usually leave it after 10 minutes if not sooner.

I just gave up trying, all I wish now is Blizzard removing reputation requirement from Conquest items.

[Gumboy]

I mean they have to notice that it is insanely one sided, right?

Are their servers/groups where it isn't this way? Probably something like Illidan or something, but yeah..

[RH92]

Do they notice it? I think yes. Are they going to do something with it? Doesn't seem so likely to be honest.

There was a massive exodus of players from Horde to Alliance in WoD. Three months ago I still had instant queues for BGs on my Alliance character, now I wait 5-10 minutes while queues on my Horde characters went down from 7-12 minutes to 1-7 depending on a time of the day.

It is in a horrible place now...

How can they force players to switch back to Horde? Buff racials? Offer free Faction change for one character on unbalanced realms?

Can they add a player limit without causing massive queues for Alliance players?

[Knyx]

It's been hit or miss with me. Some days I'll go in and get a solid group that manages to go from event to event cleaning up, and sometimes it's like "LOL NOPE" *hearth*. There doesn't seem to be anything in place to actually ensure a balanced experience.

[Baracuda]

No, it's not like that and anyone who tries to tells you it is is talking out of their ass. It's win some lose some, try join a premade group.

[Gumboy]

No, it's not like that and anyone who tries to tells you it is is talking out of their ass. It's win some lose some, try join a premade group.

Well, on my server, the "Premade group" was seven people deep, counting me, and we were outnumbered at least 4-1 at every event I'd say, if not more

I know the faction disparity is a bit different on EU, perhaps Ashran is as well?

[Fuush]

I dont understand, on my server you can always find a grp with 38+ players, 5-6 being healers(Theres usually 3-7 grps looking). We always rock the events, winning everything for many hours in a row(Then I leave because I get bored).
I even once joined a grp in the morning, winning everything for 2hours, then 8-9 hours later I joined the same grp with a few of the same people, and we were still winning everything!
Draenor-EU that is

[darklogrus]

I see that as alliance all the time. 15 of us running to do an event and the whole server of the Horde are already there flooding every possible entrance.

Zero grp balance and the free for all approach makes this the worst Pvp zone to date.

[goblingirl]

Never ever zone into Ashran blind. Always use the group finder to join a pre-made group.

When you ran in there blind and joined your little group of 6, you met an organized Alliance raid that formed via the group finder. Horde runs plenty of them too. Join one.

[Thelxi]

Ashran used to be terrible but rewarding. Now it is just terrible.

[Nythiz]

It's hit and miss, mostly miss for me.

I play on EU-Defias Brotherhood. In the evenings and weekends there is practically no chance for horde to win anything. In the best case scenarios we have about 30-40 people at peak hours and alliance generally stroll around with 2 full raids.

In the offhours its a bit better, especially if you can find a premade consisting of 30+ people.

Back before they nerfed the Ashran Bosses, there was a balance of alliance zerging main road and Horde doing the events. I understand that went against the whole concept of the zone, but the current incarnation is just one team steamrolling over the other.
There seems to be a complete lack of balance mechanism (either enforce fair numbers or build in some kind of buff or whatever) in place to ensure that fights are at least somewhat even.

I was fortunate enough to complete most of the reputation grind before they nerfed the final bosses (back then horde won nearly all events so I could just soak conquest/honor/rep easily). But these days it's still an annoying grind to get the 200 conquest points per week from Ashran. I still don't understand why they put that in, as it feels obligatory to do Ashran now.

I still think Ashran has potential, but I think it needs a major redesign. A balance mechanism would be nice; maybe something pretty basic like "Home side advantage" for the events would be nice. So that Horde has a higher chance to hold ground at Brutes Rise and Amphitheater; and Alliance at Burial Grounds and Molten Quarry.
Or have a good look at the graveyards, so that reinforcements have to run a long way.

And preferably some kind of number gating. It's ridiculous that a horde group of 10-20 man is constantly facing a 40-60 numbered alliance side (or vice versa on other servers).

[Liandryl]

It's all about being in the right Battle group. The one I am on is horde all day winning event but if I join others, I can easily crush horde with a premade like I did all day.

[Rennegadelawlz]

It's all about being in the right Battle group. The one I am on is horde all day winning event but if I join others, I can easily crush horde with a premade like I did all day.

Wrong battle groups do not matter anymore you are just getting into 40mans that actually try.

Most of the people complaining here get into 10-20man groups and get face raped. Before the ashran nerf horde got free cp from doing the events because ally would just storm volrath and then once they took cp from killing him alliance started playing events so all you guys are complaining about is you were in a shitty group blaming it on a faction where really it's user competition. I have been in plenty 40man ally groups that are just awful and fail at ashran. It's not just horde

[therealbowser]

I could be an ass and say "It's nice for Alliance to be winning something for once", but I'm not an ass. It's pretty damned broken. Horde has it rough but sadly there's not a whole lot you can do about it. That said, if you use group finder you might find better results with events. Also, /who in Ashran means little when it's cross-realm.

I really don't know what to tell you. However, Ashran is pretty shitty in general, so unless you're going for broken bones or nemesis quests or something it's better just to do other forms of PvP if you can.

[Liandryl]

Wrong battle groups do not matter anymore you are just getting into 40mans that actually try.

Most of the people complaining here get into 10-20man groups and get face raped. Before the ashran nerf horde got free cp from doing the events because ally would just storm volrath and then once they took cp from killing him alliance started playing events so all you guys are complaining about is you were in a shitty group blaming it on a faction where really it's user competition. I have been in plenty 40man ally groups that are just awful and fail at ashran. It's not just horde

True that as long as the RL is not a dumbass and the raid follow to every call made, it will go well but if they start splitting when a call is made or the RL does not call anything, it may go wrong.
It also depends on the opposite faction's coordination.

If they don't have a real 40 man raid as you do, you may have it easy even without being in a perfect raid yourself.
Today I have been RL for couple of hours and won every single event simply because I always made the call to focus event as soon as they came up to make sure that we would be there as soon as possible to crush the other faction.

Since there is no more addon timer that work, you gotta react as 1 whole raid and you will win that way. Do not let player go do some rare or whatever while an event is up. If they don't follow, kick them and get people here for event since that's what most of the raid is there for.

[sync]

There was a massive exodus of players from Horde to Alliance in WoD.

Why was that?

[r1dik]

I don't feel like making another reply on Ashran, since there are plenty available if you search. Here's what I told the other hordies in another thread.

Step 1 Hit H
Step 2 hit premade group finder
Step 3 join a horde group dominating events

That's how ashran is now. People avoid the losing ashran servers and join the ones winning events. Trust me, there are just as many horde instances as there are aliance. I got geared on a horde and alliance toon in about 5 hours each. While waiting for events make sure you get your raid to kill rares and the warlocks and Mages the other team spawns in. You get way more honor from artifact fragments than you do from events while in ashran. They have treasures that respawn pretty fast as well in ashran that give 100-200 fragments each, they glow purple, keep an eye out for them.

[Alienshroom]

So glad im exalted with the rep, never going back to the place.

[Nythiz]

Wrong battle groups do not matter anymore you are just getting into 40mans that actually try.

Most of the people complaining here get into 10-20man groups and get face raped. Before the ashran nerf horde got free cp from doing the events because ally would just storm volrath and then once they took cp from killing him alliance started playing events so all you guys are complaining about is you were in a shitty group blaming it on a faction where really it's user competition. I have been in plenty 40man ally groups that are just awful and fail at ashran. It's not just horde

Who's winning isn't the matter. The problem is, bad group or not, there is no way to prevent the other team from snowballing on.

Either caused by having a better group, or by simply having superior numbers (because the number balance in Ashran is awful, especially when its < 50 players); there is just little way to hold ground. And that demotivates players, which in turn causes them to leave looking for other Ashran servers. New players joining that Ashran face 4:1 odds against them simply by numbers and, in turn, leave as well.
It's a giant vicious circle that just ruins the whole concept. There simply is no balance mechanism in place.

Joining premade groups tend to work better. But that goes against the whole concept (which blizzard does or does not recognize, I don't know). Because that just means you're cherry-picking the server with the best odds. And it's no different than alliance running main road and horde running events to avoid eachother. Only this time, it's different servers instead of a different part of the map.

Why was that?

Alliance have better PvP racials. Not sure if it's still the case, but early WoD the Top 500 players were practically all alliance (mostly human due to racial).
Blizzard was told when they rebalanced racials at the early stages of alpha WoD; but they were kinda stubborn on EMfH and remain to be so.

Horde used to have (and to some part still have) the better PvE racials, which is why a lot of top guilds are horde. They did rebalanced that quite a lot, but there is no reason for PvE players to swap sides really.
Nearly every serious PvP'er is Alliance though, and that also has an influence on PvP things like Ashran. But it's very realm dependent. I used to play alliance on a realm that nearly always lost BGs / world PvP (and likely Ashran). But that was purely because they were in a pool with a lot of horde dominated PvP realms and big horde PvE realms.