Biggest flaw with Ashran.

[Rorke]

Is the fact that events are still winner take all. If the losing side at least scored some points, they should get like 1/4 the credit of a full win. This would encourage people to at least stay in Ashran instead of leaving to find a new group.

I'm tired of playing with good groups, only to have them become a revolving door once the other team gets the edge from buffs. Once your group is in this state, there's no reason to even play anymore because you'll get crushed where ever you go.

The buff Tenacity system did more harm than good. A good group, no matter how good it is (unless your group is premade), will eventually lose control and fall apart where the other team just wins by default. It's like Blizzard handing teams the win instead of actually earning them.

They should've never added the buff thing from losing events/faction leader and instead given the losing team an opportunity to get some credit towards the quest if they scored a certain number of points during an event.

[Fortydragon]

You make a really good point. Isn't this how battlegrounds work? I feel like pvp is really fun in this game when people have incentive to work together.

[Thunderleg]

Having resubbed for just a month, all I have been doing is Ashran on my alts with a healing spec. I agree with the OP's observations. As an aside, I would also add that as a healer keeping people alive, getting a green chest every damn time we win AoA or MQ is not encouraging anyone to heal.

[Deleted]

Is the fact that events are still winner take all. If the losing side at least scored some points, they should get like 1/4 the credit of a full win. This would encourage people to at least stay in Ashran instead of leaving to find a new group.

I'm tired of playing with good groups, only to have them become a revolving door once the other team gets the edge from buffs. Once your group is in this state, there's no reason to even play anymore because you'll get crushed where ever you go.

The buff Tenacity system did more harm than good. A good group, no matter how good it is (unless your group is premade), will eventually lose control and fall apart where the other team just wins by default. It's like Blizzard handing teams the win instead of actually earning them.

They should've never added the buff thing from losing events/faction leader and instead given the losing team an opportunity to get some credit towards the quest if they scored a certain number of points during an event.

It was a flawed concept from the beginning really (and this is not counting the AWFUL way they handled the human racial encouraging mass faction migration). They should of added a bigger wpvp zone with scattered quests and objectives that encouraged smaller skirmishes but instead they went the route of forcing players into one sided, unbalanced 50+ player zergs that reward little to no skill.

[Deleted]

Biggest flaw with Ashran is that it exists.

[callipygoustp]

Having resubbed for just a month, all I have been doing is Ashran on my alts with a healing spec. I agree with the OP's observations. As an aside, I would also add that as a healer keeping people alive, getting a green chest every damn time we win AoA or MQ is not encouraging anyone to heal.

Yeah, rewards for healing in non-rated pvp have always been subpar. Used to drive me crazy on my resto druid during BC and Wrath. I could contribute meaningfully to winning, like solo defending the flag in WSG or healing my flag capture team to victory, but I would end up at the bottom of the rewards ladder. If I didn't stick where the killing was the thickest I was almost always at the bottom for rewards, even if I was the top healer(and often the top healer by a ridiculously huge margin). Compare that with my lock, who I could go in with and just mindlessly DoT the hell out of everything and be at the top or close to the top of the rewards list. Drove me nuts.

[Auxora]

No that's not the biggest flaw in Ashran, and there are many. The biggest flaw is that the whole design of it is built for mindless farming rather than actual pvp. You can get better than raid gear just from literally following around a group of people, with zero effort or skill and never really doing anything beyond tagging an event mob. Then rack up the chests, honor, bones, etc. So there is very little incentive for the factions to fight each other, which should be the primary function of a battleground. In fact there's more incentive for the factions to avoid each other and just keep churning through events.

Ashran is so detached from good battleground pvp...AV in it's prime, most AB/WSG matches, Wintergrasp in it's prime, all play like a different game. Heck even Tol Barad was 100x better. They just took the mindless grind for free gear approach and applied it to Ashran, same as TJ and to a slightly lesser degree Timeless Isle.

[evogsr]

You can get better than raid gear just from literally following around a group of people, with zero effort or skill and never really doing anything beyond tagging an event mob.

If by better gear you mean than normal difficulty, yes. No one reasonably believes LFR is raiding. Guess what though? You can get better than normal raid difficulty gear farming Tanaan jungle too.

Not defending Ashran by any means. It's junk, but your post is just dishonest with respects to what I called out.

[Serissa]

Biggest flaw with Ashran is (don don don 10 sec dramatic pause) Ashran itself.

[Deleted]

Ashran as a concept is great imo, and I do enjoy being in it when I win AND when it is a fair/ equal battle where both teams wins and loses. To bad that its almost never happens.
If the opposite team got AA people throw in the towel and leaves (most of the time) and it annoyed me. Or.... They just stay afk untill their team starts to win.
AA is way to important, and should get removed or nerfes + people should removed from ashran automatically after 5mins of afk. Should fix some of the problems.

[Kahmal]

They dropped the ball big time on Ashran for a number of reasons. They wanted it to be reminiscent of old school AV. A BG people would queue up for and be so glad when it finally popped. Why?

AV rewarded you no matter what. Winning AV back then was more of a matter of pride in your faction, but the amount of honor kills and reputation you got just from being there exceeded anything you could gain in other forms of PvP. And that was great because it's hard enough to coordinate 10 people in WSG to get you to win your points, never mind 40.

Ashran only rewards you if you win. If your losing it's literally a waste of time.

[Knolan]

Main flaw with ashran is that death is too punitive.

If you die and your team wins an event, you still lose the rewards for winning (not to mention that you will spawn ridiculously far from the action, meaning you will be out of combat a few minutes). This is pretty much the only time this has happened in any PVP type of the game and creates a huge problem with meles not wanting to go to the front of the battle because they will be obliterated. Also, there are no useful roles for tanks other than being a harder target dummy.

[Sliske]

Why is Ashran shit TL;DR version?

Blizzard makes the mistake of pretending melee are useful in Zergs.

Want to use your stealth? ha, fuckin retard. Your only use here is to cast smokebomb once every 3 minutes to get a single kill on a gripped healer.

Ask yourself this question:

"In a 60 v 60 scenario, you have a slot available to be filled. Your choices are

A. A windwalker monk
B. Your 19th fire mage
C. Your 22nd affliction warlock"

And your answer will tell you exactly how useful we melee feel when entering Ashran, AV zergs, IoC zergs, Tol Barad zergs, Southshore v Tarren Mill zergs or Wintergrasp zergs

Don't worry though, Blizzard will learn from their mistakes, right? I mean they've only made the same one 6 times. Surely they'll learn, right?

[Deleted]

Tol Barad was better. Yes, I said it.

[Deleted]

Biggest flaw? Well that's a tough one.

Let's see:
1. The AA offers a huge advantage to a team is on their toes and gives it to the right class/spec.
2. Not having a leader on your team = epic fail, so epic that you can't get anything done for hours.
3. Zergfest that is absolutely stupid if you play a melee class. As soon as you're in the front lines, you get like 10-20 people instantly focusing on you, and you can't take that much damage for more than 3 seconds unless you pop bubble or something. J/k, instant mass dispel too.
4. You can't leave it. You enter it in order to queue up, and you see the fail in the form of the other faction having like 1000 kills in the upper side of the screen, and yours having 200, which means the other faction is kicking your asses so hard, it should be illegal. So naturally, you don't accept the call when it comes, what's the purpose? J/k, 10 min deserter debuff even though you didn't even enter Ashran. So you have to take it up the ass, at least for the next 5 min, which I usually spend mounted up in base gy and making fun of my team's failure until I can leave without getting deserter. Hey, don't hate me, hate Holinka, he made this shit possible.
5. Tons of buffs and toys that make pvp absolutely stupid. You get shamans running at the speed of light and being uncatchable, you got priests that just fly away, you got druids in flight form in Ashran (because why the fuck not?!), you got hunters with 10 sec cd on disengage, you got some super damage absorbtion buff that gives you the health of a raidboss. It's all just fucking stupid.

- - - Updated - - -

Tol Barad was better. Yes, I said it.

I very much agree.

Wintergrasp > Tol'Barad >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Trashran

[Garkanh]

people wanted old school alterac valley. Blizzard gave an exact copy of that, with better rewards, and everyone hate it. I guess the biggest problem with ashran is it giving rewards.

[Deleted]

people wanted old school alterac valley. Blizzard gave an exact copy of that, with better rewards, and everyone hate it. I guess the biggest problem with ashran is it giving rewards.

It's not old school AV. Just because it's zergfest, doesn't mean it's old school AV, it's a zergfest done WRONG.

Hell, take out AV from the bg queue and make it the new Ashran, I swear I'll play it and I will not complain about it.

[Sliske]

people wanted old school alterac valley. Blizzard gave an exact copy of that, with better rewards, and everyone hate it. I guess the biggest problem with ashran is it giving rewards.

Holy shit. I just watched a guy say Ashran is an exact copy of Alterac Valley. Like holy fuck.

Alterac Valley was more like a zone, than a BG. You moved in groups of 3-6 at max, occasionally there would be a choke point were a large group of people would fight (10v10, 20v20) but every else in your team was off doing other things like clearing mines, capturing graveyards, turning in currencies.

The similarities between AV and Ashran begin and end at 'pvp happens here'.

Alterac Valley while flawed, was the only example we've had so far of what a pvp zone SHOULD be. Guerilla style combat behind enemy lines, a decent sized 'front' near a choke and then people 5 minutes away in base, organizing what resources should be spent where to send to the front.

Now lets compare this to Ashran

There is literally zero benefit to being away from the Zerg. As a zerg you will: Do events, do bosses, occasionally kill rares. It is actually a huge benefit to NEVER see an enemy player in Ashran as the incentives for killing them are totally pointless (woo, you can get a giant tree that dies in 30 seconds)

Not only that, but it also incentivises you not to explore in other ways too - all of the mobs either have annoying CC abilities or are elites that 1-2 shot you. You are a moron if you are solo in Ashran. The single solitary reason to be solo in Ashran is if you know the Artifact will spawn soon. And while you're doing that, you're putting yourself at a huge resource disadvantage. You lose event rewards, you won't get boss kill rewards, you will get rewards for your team killing portal masters, kronus / treebeard and the ogre king. If you go off the beaten path in Ashran, you may as well take your efficiency meter and throw it in the trash.

Compare this to AV, where going off the beaten path can lead you to capturing graveyards, ganking healers returning to the front, capturing mines that give insane resource advantages, heading home to turn in currency for actual useful rewards. The wyvern fliers are 10,000x more effective than any of the reinforcements in Ashran.

AV had its problems don't get me wrong ,but to say Ashran is 1:1 to Old AV is like saying Tanaan Jungle Rares are 1:1 comparison to Sunwell.

Its so fucking different its mind blowing.

I hate this creed of snivelling morons who for some reason want everyone else to believe they played Vanilla. As if playing a game that had probably 10,000,000 accounts created in the 2 years of vanilla is some how 'exclusive'. No one here believes you tried old school alterac valley, for even half a fucking nanosecond. Wipe your nose and go sit in the corner.

[QuiksLE]

Is the fact that events are still winner take all.

In my opinion everything should be winner takes all. Participation rewards are ruining the game and the even world.

[Smauldy]

Ashran's biggest problem to me is the focus on events being the main part of the zone. The events should have been smaller side quests that supported the main road battle. That way smaller groups could break off and go fight for the events, while the main battle stayed constant in the middle.