denial is not a river in egypt.
Iâve played in Alliance pugs where we won the first teamfight (in the Dark Woods), thus gaining access to the flowers. In other words, we had a good opener.
Spoiler: we still ended up losing despite âalsoâ having consumed the flowers 
Flowers do not = autowin
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The anecdotal evidence is useless. In that scenario you couldâve been fighting against 25 drooling monkeys (most horde pugs)and it wouldâve been the main reason you won.
The reality here is that an extremely powerful buff is placed right near the horde base for easy access. By the time the alliance gets there, any competent horde player will have the buff already on themselves giving them 15% stat boost.
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thatâs nice, but every single Ashran I have played the entire Horde team rushes there the second the game starts, this suggests the Horde know it is an advantage.
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you really are blowing the flower out of proportion. its not extremely powerful, its a meh buff that only a handful of players take in any given game.
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horde rushes to react to whatever the alliance does. we go dark woods to grab the rare and intercept ally, but its also a good spot to be able to rush to mage or backdoor to defend.
literally has nothing to do with flowers anymore. believe me, a minor stat increase isnât going to help a 460 player getting outplayed and outdpsâd by a 425 player. and it certainly wonât help a 425 go against a 475.
You are not understanding a word that is being written. This is the case of âyou can bring a horse to water but you canât make them drink.â If you fail to capitalize on a massive advantage for your faction then that is on you.
In the case of the map layout the map advantage puts more favor for the horde side than the alliance side. This has nothing to do with winrates but simple understanding of strategy.
If you want an even better example of this look at the 10+ years of alliance players ripping apart the horde in AV. The horde side had the majority of terrain advantages as any competent player knows, but never utilized it.
Even when they were getting destroyed, blizzard still should take the effort to minimize the imbalances of the map design.
AV, Ashran have these glaring issues.
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uh no dude, you need to consider your words for yourself. you think flower or the map or gear or dev favoritism is why ally loses, you are looking everywhere but yourself.
when horde loses a game, the post game goes like this: âwhere did we screw up and what could we do better next time?â not âthats not fair, ally favoritism, make azeroth great again!â
classic av sure, but modern? meh, you could argue tower differences, but the map is pretty sorted at this point. what was going on for years was plenty of horde who didnât want to be there. notice how once the 40 mans split off to their own queue, the years of win rates and known strategy for them went out the window. horde wins AV now because the horde in epics want to be there, they arenât afking waiting for the match to be over.
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the buffs are at the Horde base damn near, the Alliance are at the other side of map from the flower buffs, it is not rocket science to understand this is an advantage to some degree, I say just get rid of them myself.
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no you are not even on the same page, you apparently donât comprehend anything that is being said.
You think i am saying we lose because of the flower buff. I already stated alliance loses because of moronic pugs. I also said that it doesnât change the fact that a 15% right outside one factions doorstep is a huge imbalance
No, everyone who was competent disproved every single whine by the horde. You guys lost because you refused to captalize on the strategic values that the horde had.
and what i keep trying to say is that the flower is not as impactful as you are making it out to be.
- Not all horde get the flower, maybe 5 players get it.
- A minor stat increase isnât going go overcome the team gameplay issues ally have.
you could remove the flowers, remove the AA, remove the solar sphere and ally would still lose because they have no clue what to do with those buffs when they have them. hell, i have been in many games where ally had all that and horde still won. there is literally nothing the devs can do to help ally in epics beyond rigging the game (which they might actually be attempting to do with scaling)
and that is why alliance loses now. horde used to lose av because in any given game, 30/40 horde didnât want to be there, so there wasnât even a chance to take advantage of the map. now things are different. a lot of horde in epics run epics as their main content, a lot of ally do as well, but not as many as horde.
so now you have an ally pug who just want to drop into AV for some fun pvp facing the equivalent to a professional army. win rates have nothing to do with any map.
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You are trying to tell me right now that a 15% stat buff right outside one teams door is not powerful. Your only argument is your games against the alliance which of course, once again ignore what Iâve been saying.
Thatâs their fault then. If all players get the flower then itâs a 15% stat buff for one team over another. Itâs a massive deal, and you are trying to downplay the location and the buff by resorting to your experiences in the game, which again Ignores what Iâve been saying. That the location and the result of the buff place a massives advantage in favor of one team.
Thatâs why I never use them. I didnât say anywhere in my previous posts " alliance lose because of flowers or terrain advantages given to the horde" I said " The map is blatantly in favors one side, whether or not they use it doesnât deter from the fact that the map gives them the advantage."
Inemia, I enjoy your posts but I am quite surprised by the stance you are taking here.
The flowers are not the only imbalance and I reject the notion that 15% permanent stats (which increases health, healing and damage) is an âirrelevant buff that no one even cares aboutâ. I was in Ashran yesterday where I counted how many players had the buff in the final 10 reinforcements and 82% of the Horde team had a flower. 20 people out of 25 all with increased stats. I posted about it here: Alterac Valley - #4 by Bynir-dragonblight
You may not tell people explicitly to pick them up and may not pick them up yourself but have you considered that they donât need to be told to take a free buff given the way all games go?
The flow of Ashran is much simpler for Horde players. Gate opens > rush flowers, loot one > kill rare for powerful toys / class abilities / scrolls / wands > react to whatever Alliance does > get ogre while they are rezzing > kill Rylai (whose only purpose is to give Alliance healers mage food) > kill remaining players at bridge.
Alliance has bad people just like Horde has bad people. You put bad people in an arena together and the ones with the guns are going to win over the ones with butter knives.
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thats correct. the flower is a red herring.
no, they have figured out they donât need it. but also, put your thinking cap on, there are only a so many flowers spawned in the dark woods at any given time and they are spread out. we know ally is likely inc and there is the rare to deal with. idk where you have this idea that the horde stops to smell and pick the roses.
but it doesnât matter, because even if the map favored the other side the outcome wouldnât change.
IMO the best thing would not be to remove flowers or AA or buffs or change the map anymore but to remove ahran from epics entirely. blizz has already shaved too many corners off this square peg to force it into the round hole that is epics. Holinka needs to accept the fact that ashran just doesnât make for a good map as an epic bg.
Iâm not saying it would, I am saying that the map is in favor of the horde. I established this in the first post, that the main reason they lose is because alliance pugs play horribly.
I am arguing, because you keep denying the potential impact that a 15% buff located outside a teams base has in a game.
Primary momentum for ashran is set in the initial ally/horde encounter. this momentum is what determines the winner of ashran, nothing else. if you have ever been in a game with me yelling at everyone about not standing around to cap and pushing the map, its because im trying to maintain that momentum.
during that initial encounter not as many horde will have the flower, there is usually 1 right at the bottom of the hill and about 5-8 within 100 yards or so. after 20 minutes most players probably have them, but for that initial fight not so much. (this is why its important for ally to rush head first into horde at the start)
you can completely cut out the flowers, rare, and toys part and skip to react to ally. lately iâve been trying to simplify the winning strats for both factions and for ashran none of the in game items, buffs, or toys make a difference on the whole. for clutch plays in hard turtles, sure, they make huge differences in the hands of capable players, but the average ashran is a snoozefest of one team wiping out the other.
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im denying it because iâve stopped bothering with it and it hasnât changed my ashran games one bit: i still win, and itâs still boring.
Iâm sorry, but that makes no senseâŚ
You are denying the value of it because you donât care about it. Gotta agree with Bynir here
because i figured out that the flower is just dumboâs feather.
Right, and I donât disagree with that. The problem is the strat for Horde is linear (because of the imbalances) whereas the Allianceâs is not. There is a large difference between a skilled leader like yourself doing this in pugs:
/rw ALL GO TO WOODS, KILL RARE, GET READY TO KILL ANY ALLIANCE THAT SHOW UP - POP HERO WHEN WE ENGAGE
vs
/rw OK GUYS, THIS GAME WE ARE GOING TO rush mage / backdoor boss / go to RoC / go to woods / wait in mid / farm fragments (change as you see fit)
The difference in the above is the Hordeâs strategy is seen as a âwinning strategyâ so the herd goes along. You may get one person that stays behind to watch for a backdoor, and another person that goes to the mage tower.
The Alliance does not have the same proven strategy, so you get people who go off and do their own version of what they think will win or argue which then puts doubts in others minds.
I disagree with this. I have done at least 50 Ashran games since the reduction in reinforcements and I have yet to see a game where the Horde deviates from this strategy, and Iâve been in games with you. The only changing strategy has been from Alliance trying to adapt.
At any rate, you are entitled to not pick up the flower but even using your figures of 5 people getting them (and itâs definitely more than that in my experience), that is still 20% of a team with more health/healing/damage, stacking with all the other buffs in Ashran, that the other team does not have immediate access to.
We havenât even mentioned player morale - which shouldnât be a factor but unfortunately it is - that because of the above issues, Alliance players see the loading screen and are instantly demoralized. The snowball effect here is teams rarely start full because of people leaving on entry or people leaving/giving up after the first fight (whatever it is) fails making it even harder (again see the post I linked above, we were outkilling Horde players but the snowball had gained too much momentum to stop).
No one here that I can see is asking for ridiculous changes to give Alliance the upperhand. We all benefit from balanced maps. I know you say Blizzard canât fix Alliance players - and youâre right - but they can (and should) absolutely fix the free 15% stat boost Horde players get just like they can (and should) fix the Horde NPCs doing significantly more damage than the Alliance ones.
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