I just had a TON of fun in Ashran.

[Deleted]

I've done Ashran a lot since it was introduced. Partially because farming Universal Translator parts was good money, partially because it's more relaxing than tryhard arenas, and partially because knowing all the buffs gives you an edge over the rest (which, I admit, is a lot of fun).

Knowing my way around it, I've often been raid leading Ashran as well. Back when Ashran instances weren't hard-balanced and group finder was still a thing, everything was faceroll and there wasn't much of a challenge (or you would queue up without using group finder, and get stomped to bits). Easy, but not challenging and not all that fun - the most fun was from the rewards of fighting (conquest points or nemesis kills).

Now, they've removed premade raids and hardbalanced the factions' player numbers; and even give a stacking buff to the losing team. To top it off, Ancient Artifact now has a respawn cooldown, making it harder to constantly keep it in your raid. Apart from the annoying increase in wait time, it has done wonders for Ashran.

Fights are actually balanced now. I was leading for a long while yesterday, and the whole group was super enthousiastic, even if we didn't win all of them - we won most of it and it was organised, which was better than what they're used to. We encountered situations in which 38 of us, all grouped up, charged into the horde defense and still got wiped out completely - despite all our tight grouping. There were situations where we swarmed an event in progress, killing off all horde, and snatching the win from them. There were MANY occasions where we either won or lost an event, but the score was actually really close.

Those things were just unthinkable before. Fights were always one-sided. One faction would go events, the other would go main-road. Everything was faceroll.

The only remaining problems with Ashran in its current state as I see them, are some small remaining imbalances, queue times, and (sometimes) role imbalances. Most imbalances that I am aware of, are in favor of the alliance.
- The first, just a very small imbalance, is both faction's prison locations. Paladins have the Ashran ability to send an enemy to prison (Jailer's Libram). The Alliance prison is in the basement of their main building, and running upstairs means running into all the faction leaders which one shot anyone coming out. The horde prison, on the other hand, has its exit on the back side of their main area, without any dangerous guards, and right next to the cliff side - you can simply run out and jump/run/glide off the cliff without any effort whatsoever. I'm just glad I'm Alliance in this respect, but it's not fair.
- The second is a side-effect from nerfing the two mainroad bosses' healthpools. They're now so easily zergable, that the alliance "backdoor" attack - running up the side of the mountain from Amphitheater, avoiding the heavily guarded front bridge entrance - can now easily be completed even without control of ANY of the main road flags, with gladiator guards still up. Just pop AOE stealth, run up to the boss, pop a 60% damage reduction scroll, spirit link totem and a healing cooldown, and if stacked properly NOBODY will have died during the boss kill. The imbalance is that the horde don't have such a "backdoor" attack option. Although, in all fairness, this imbalance is partially "fixed" by horde having a "free" ticket to main road. Alliance don't have to care about main road if they just do backdoor attacks, so generally, horde can now take it for free.
- This last bit (alliance doing backdoor attacks, horde going mainroad) does generate a new imbalance however. Alliance only have to do events, and a quick boss zerg every now and then. They only have to fight the horde during the events. They're mostly out of combat and do not have to spend time taking flags. This causes them to have lots of "free time" which, if used properly, can be used to kill rares. Rares give the whole raid class buffs, but more importantly, Arcane Imprisonment wands and Scrolls of Protection. Being able to abudantly use these scrolls and wands in event fights is a large advantage, and means that the Alliance should be able to win around 80% of them easily. In my experience, that has been the case. (Although most alliance raid leaders still send their raid to main road, removing these imbalances.)
- The final imbalance, which can work both ways, is the number of healers in each raid. In my experience the raid works best with 8-11 healers, but my healer count has often dropped to 5, 4, 3 or even 2 healers in a 40-man raid. The raid always steadily dies out during fights if that is the case, which is unfortunate. (And the other way around, if a raid has 13+ healers, you generally can't get a kill on them - even if they don't kill many of your group either.)

Ashran is still fun to me because it is rewarding if you put more (leading) effort into it. I'm not quite as OP as I was before, now that Ancient Artifact has a long respawn cooldown; I used to almost constantly have the Artifact (because I knew when it would spawn, and others wouldn't know that if they didn't see me the last few minutes). But yesterday was exceptionally fun, just from the Ashran fights. Even though we lost a couple, we were well-organised and the fights were fun and challenging.
I wonder what people still dislike about it in its current state, apart from perhaps occasional fps drops and "not liking large-group pvp" to begin with.

Thoughts?

[Ermelloth]

I agree, after all the recent changes Ashran isn't that bad at all. However, it took nearly entire WoD expansion to finally fix it and make it playable, which already alienated many players from it.

[PrairieChicken]

It is tolerable now because the buff makes sure that one faction isn't crushing everything 24/7.

On the main topic the primary problem was "forcing people to go there" and since it is largely gone now people stopped complaining about it.

[Jmills]

Ashran is fun if your on a team that actually communicates and works together, just like most aspects of this game.

[Deleted]

It is tolerable now because the buff makes sure that one faction isn't crushing everything 24/7.

On the main topic the primary problem was "forcing people to go there" and since it is largely gone now people stopped complaining about it.

oh did they actually fix balance issues in it?

i have not played for a long time, last i played alliance side won 100% of games on my server, i had never seen the horde even get close to the alliance base. every game was like 100alliance vs 5 horde, and horde had a 6hour queue time, was fucked up.

[Avlivar]

The damage has already been done on my end. I got off the ship as it was filling with water. To convince me the hole is fixed and that all the water has been scooped out is a tall order. I will resub and give it a try if more people shed some light for me.

[Knolan]

In my internet MD opinion, this is your condition:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

OT:

The main problem I have with ashran is that dying is far too punitive specially in the objectives (killing the faction boss or doing an event), this basically makes melee / tank players to avoid the fight and fucks up the balance.

[Osmeric]

The imbalance is that the horde don't have such a "backdoor" attack option.

If you jump off the mountain outside MQ with a goblin glider you can land on the partial ramp going up to the side entrance of the Alliance fort. I use this to get alliance characters back into the base quickly when there are horde in the way.

I agree about the healers. If I queue for Ashran on a heal-capable character it will be in healing spec (unless I'm just trying to solo some artifact fragments/honor).

[Raugnaut]

oh did they actually fix balance issues in it?

i have not played for a long time, last i played alliance side won 100% of games on my server, i had never seen the horde even get close to the alliance base. every game was like 100alliance vs 5 horde, and horde had a 6hour queue time, was fucked up.

They did fix number balancing, as you will always have a close-to-equal numbers group. At most, you'll have 5 less people then the other side, and never for long.

Co-ordinated groups will still stomp non-co-ordinated groups.

[Eazy]

No, Ashran is stupid and worse than Tol Barad or Wintergrasp, is just a big grind-fest where range DPS have HUGE advantage compared to melee.

[Christhammer]

Ashran is still boring in my opinion, BUT it's way more balanced which is great.
I play Alliance, and i often join groups where we are getting destroyed (almost every time actually), but it switches so fast now. They win 3 in a row, then we win 3 in a row. Sometimes you do have to run out and find a new group though, but most of the time you can just wait it out and it gets better.

[PrairieChicken]

If you jump off the mountain outside MQ with a goblin glider you can land on the partial ramp going up to the side entrance of the Alliance fort. I use this to get alliance characters back into the base quickly when there are horde in the way.

I agree about the healers. If I queue for Ashran on a heal-capable character it will be in healing spec (unless I'm just trying to solo some artifact fragments/honor).

You don't need glider, you can just climb up the ramp under the bridge.

- - - Updated - - -

oh did they actually fix balance issues in it?

i have not played for a long time, last i played alliance side won 100% of games on my server, i had never seen the horde even get close to the alliance base. every game was like 100alliance vs 5 horde, and horde had a 6hour queue time, was fucked up.

Well before 6.2 the game was basically a lottery, you go into winning instance or losing one. After that buff I never had that problem.

[Huntermyth]

today's ashran is miles better than tol barad and wintergrasp in my opinion.

fights are better, each faction has a chance to win and aa has a longer cd. we all can complain about them not implementing these recent changes at the get go but this is for another topic.

ashran is fun as what it is now.

[Cobaltius]

It is not even remotely balanced, on Alliance I have to que on average 5-7 times just to get in a group that has a remote chance of winning anything.

As discussed in another thread the Horde can still do premades all ride to Ashran at the same time to que at the same time and usually most get in the same one, does not appear possible for Alliance, at least I have not seen a group forming since before 6.2.

The Horde use the AA Alliance more often than not have to hide in in their base because the Horde can take it away so easy that is more tactically sound to keep them from it as long as possible. Easly 80% of the event and Vol kills I get are when the Horde is busy doing the other else they seem to be able to run over Alliance like they were unarmed and naked.

I have seen on several occasions where the Horde moving in a single group phase in and out it what appears to be well above the 40 player number, no doubt phasing because the server can't handle more than what is supposed to be there suggesting they can/do outnumber Alliance probably more often than not.

What I would like to see is a 3rd party addon that shows constant player count on both sides and would like to see Horde event and Vol wins vs Alliance from what I experience I would bet there is a 70-30 ratio in favor of the Horde. However there is a reason the player base is not privy to that data.

[Deleted]

today's ashran is miles better than tol barad and wintergrasp in my opinion.

ashran is fun as what it is now.

Yep, I've gotten my last couple conquest caps purely with Ashran over the last month, about 30hours total.

Blowing up the enemy raid with fire nova or the pvp 4set+archimonde trinket and ascendance. Good fun

The balance is nearly equal where only the best communicating team wins. Almost feels like vanilla AV.

[Osmeric]

It is not even remotely balanced, on Alliance I have to que on average 5-7 times just to get in a group that has a remote chance of winning anything.

I think that's actually true of both sides.

On the horde side, there's a trick. When you go in and it asks you if you want to accept the instance, look at the "score" at the top. If it's heavily weighted for the alliance (or if the alliance has most of the flags) decline. You'll be immediately kicked out and can try again. It will be interesting to see if this gives you a deserter debuff after the next patch (since you don't actually join the raid).

[Bats]

I enjoy it very much in it's current state too and I used to hate every aspect of it. It's a shame they've finally managed to fix it and the expansion is almost over tho. Increasing the artifact timer to about ~30 mins as far as I know was the final step towards a perfect design. Just a few bugs here and there (middle GY bug, ghost wolf tablet not working, getting stuck in combat, random being put out of stealth) and a few completely shit class books (warlock's and monk's come to mind).

I only wish it was like this when they released it in the first place, it took the WAAAAAAY to long to get it to be playable. As much as I enjoy it right now, it is still one of the biggest let downs in WoD.

[Deleted]

It is not even remotely balanced, on Alliance I have to que on average 5-7 times just to get in a group that has a remote chance of winning anything.

That's because people don't like to leave a group that is (finally) going well. So people leave bad groups, and more spots come free in bad groups that also have to be filled up for balance.

But I've turned around many Ashran instances, just by putting some energy into leading the raid and surviving the initial storm of whining. Just keep at it.
Though if you have 5 healers or less, you probably won't be able to do much until that number increases.

Almost every Ashran group I enter is going 'bad', maybe 15% was already doing well. I'm able to turn 90% of the raids I enter around by putting energy into it. It's balanced, good leading is all it takes.

[PrairieChicken]

It is much enjoyable now as there are no people who are begrudgingly capping their conquest there. Being optional means a lot

And with the buff you can lead the bad groups and turn the tides, in the past it was almost impossible.

[Huntaer]

It is tolerable now because the buff makes sure that one faction isn't crushing everything 24/7.

On the main topic the primary problem was "forcing people to go there" and since it is largely gone now people stopped complaining about it.

Let us hope they learned from it so that in Legion it will be better.