So...What's the problem with Ashran?

[Zove161]

Hello everyone! i've just returned after a long break, i haven't played since the start of the expansion and at the time i didn't even try playing in ashran because i'm not a very pvp oriented player.

Anyway, yesterdey i started farming for the new pvp gear and i had to do it for the box, i joined a raid group and we did events + win for 3-4 hours and...it was fun! Really, i liked it but everywhere i turn there's someone blaming Blizzard for Ashran or for the pvp state in general.

The only problem i can see in ashran is the faction balance, what i mean is that you win in an easy way or you lose fast, there's not a "real" battle, there's not a balance, just like in battleground; you lose/win fast, it depends on the raid leader, numbers of healers and the quality of the player that joins the raid.

That's the only problem i see in Ashran but i haven't played for a year so, enlighten me please!

Thanks

[Philomene]

I quite enjoy Ashran but it has a couple of flaws in my opinion :

- Ancient Artifact emphasises too much one faction domination - basically, the faction who have it will likely win for the next 30 minutes, and it has no downside so it's quite a brainless item to have, not fun at all and leaving no place to counterplay ;
- No incentive to split : so you get 40v40 fights all time, events or main road, that's quite okay as healer or caster but I see some melee who get rapidly destroyed and not being able to connect the enemy line because of the snares and roots and ranged damage ;
- NPCs dominance : if your team is too quick to cap the flags you'll face a bunch of NPCs and it sucks. I hate being killed by those gladiators or NPCs dealing insane damage and having a larger HP-pool than the boss. Or Priest NPCs healing the enemy players.

[Smauldy]

I think it should have been built around the main road being the focus, with the events giving buffs/supplies/npcs to support the middle push, similar to how old Alterac Valley was. That way you could have people fighting over the middle, while a few can break off and try to control the side objectives. As things are now, the zone is just a disconnected mess.......yay we made our elephant run faster then the opposition! Or hey....we captured more ghosts then you! Also, it really bothers me that there is absolutely no incentive to defend your own base from being conquered. Holding out for the duration of the time limit of defending a siege should provide a decent reward.

The place had a ton of potential but Blizzard just didn't have a clue how to design this zone imo.

[ItachiZaku]

Yeah, that area with 5 disc priests sort of sucks.

[DeiVias]

- Ancient Artifact emphasises too much one faction domination

Alot of things are wrong with Ashran but yeah if you get a competent player, especially a Hunter, with the artifact it's gg for 30 minutes.

[Yoshimiko]

-Ancient Artifact makes one team just win until it goes away.
-Thanks to the way premade groups work, one group is usually heavily stacked while the other is just pugs or simply down 10-20 people.
-It takes about an hour - 1.5 hours to get 500 CQs. Honor gain is also bad unless you're horde(since bgs aren't really an option)
-You spend a majority of your time not fighting enemy players and either running around or fighting rares.
-While it was touted as the second coming of old school AV, it's actually just a zerg-fest. To explain that: In old school AV, you could do /anything/ and be working towards a victory. Wanna farm some mobs in a cave? turn in items you get for certain things to happen. Wanna fight on the roads? You're getting things to empower a super powered rare mob. Wanna go catching stuff? Wonder around a cave? Stealth cap things? These are all pushing towards victory.

But what do you get for Ashran objectives? Just more honor/gold. Nothing is given to the group as a whole and instead you're just wasting precious resources.

It was poorly made, overall and outside of your one win a week, the rewards are complete trash. 550 CQ an hour IF you win EVERYTHING, maybe 2k honor an hour if your group kills the rares...to put that in perspective, I get ~1500 CQ an hour on my fresh 100 with a rando pug who doesn't have honor gear winning 1/3 games(that's a new victory/loss screen every 2.5 minutes). If the honor gain was doubled or tripled or if the CQ reward was 1k for victory, I'd call it worth for people who don't want to lose a dozen or so games in arena to tank their rating.

[DeiVias]

The only plus side i see to Ashran is having a freshly dinged 100 with a gladiator's sanctum.

Go Ashran, get a few hundred bones, collect gear.

[PrairieChicken]

If you can't deal with AA then your raid sucks to begin with

On the topic : The entire zone is stupidly designed to the point that it requires broken mechanics to work

[DeiVias]

If you can't deal with AA then your raid sucks to begin with

There's no premades anymore, if you can get a raid of randoms to coordinate enough to kill a well played hunter with AA and healers backing him up you got extremely lucky.

It's not common.

[Deleted]

Because events are kind of stupid minigames and rest of game is zerg vs other players/npcs.

It's FUN for first 2 times, and zone is pretty, sure. After that you realise that ashran is dull experience and it gets boring. But you still HAVE to do it because it offers gear that you cant get anywhere else - thats where hate comes from.

Agree with the guy saying it is not and should be more like oldschool AV, but it still would feel like a chore if was mandatory.

[Deleted]

If you can't deal with AA then your raid sucks to begin with

Which is the majority of raids. You can't help who you are grouped with...

[Deleted]

it's just a pointless mindless zerg without any doubt and even zerging isn't fun because you don't get anything out of it

[Knolan]

My problem is that death is too punitive (if you die doing an event/boss and someone loots your body, you lost the reward EVEN if your team wins), which is stupid for large scale fights, it forces the melees to play extra defensive and this is not fun. The loss of ancient artifacts should be enough.

They also could have designed something for the tanks to do (i. e.: carrying buff banners or something like that).

[evogsr]

You can think of it like AV, but instead of defending/assaulting towers and bunkers - you go straight for the boss and then follow the mass to tag a mob or two in each little event that have no relation to fun or challenge.

You *may* encounter player resistance before you engage the boss, but even that's rare as there's any number of ways to cheese kill the boss and completely mitigate the defending force - all the while they just run away since the 3 artifacts they're still holding onto are likely of far too much importance to lose.

Still gets Blizzard's stamp of approval as both fun, everyone loves it, and it's been a complete success.