but this is more of an issue than the flowers. its part of what i mean by the issue with ally pvp isn’t maps or favoritism. when im on my horde toons, i know i can run into a group of oncoming ally and horde will come with me. when im on my ally toon, they just stand and watch me die.
now if you get a group of actual pvp oriented ally, then its probably gg from the start as many horde at this point really don’t know what to do when they aren’t already winning.
while horde and ally have different strats its important to understand that ally make the first move, horde reacts to what they do, horde doesn’t start out with a plan beyond “go woods, see what ally does”
i have a greater than 99% win rate and I also get demoralized when i see that loading screen, Ashran in its current form isn’t fun, and i honestly say that as someone who can top DPS and kill charts.
messing around on a test dummy for 20 minutes provides a more fun and engaging experience than ashran.
Dont forget original AV with the bridge.
You mean the bridge that signals that the Horde controls the entire map, including SP GY?
The bridge that can be completely bypassed through the back door into DB?
Easiest counter is to summon the ice lord.
this is always the default comeback to the bridge, yet its hardly ever done, and when an enterprising lock finally does decided to put up a gate at the backdoor, its often in games where horde is mowing across the bridge with chainsaws anyway and not really needed.
You don’t need a Warlock.
But yes, the game is pretty much over unless facing a premade turtling on purpose.
you do now, they put an invis wall where you used to be able to walk
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He probably hasn’t played in a while, “backdoor” was fixed all the way back in December 2018…
If you don’t have a Warlock for gateway, you’ll need to use the frontdoor/bridge.
I haven’t played played much of BFA and i blacklisted AV and IOC years ago.
But from the last I recall, in AV the alliance can just bypass all the horde main base and cap towers and GY with ease. I recall many AV games back in Vanilla scratching my head as to why the alliance can just cap everything without killing anything in the horde main base.
Then come BC, I re rolled alliance with some friends and when we got into AV, we just ran down and hoped over the fence and got to graveyard and towers while still mounted and didn’t pull a single mob.
The cherry on top is that horde archers are out of LOS from the person capping flag in tower. All you need is to cap and drop combat and poof, guards gone. Much harder to do in ally bunkers as I ninja them countless times by having to kill at least 1 archer then cap then kill rest and had to drink and wait for ally to port back and hold out as long as i could.
And to get to alliance bunkers, horde has to run through numerous NPC’s and get aggro and have to take a long time to kill them while holding caps. Keeping healers in combat so cant drink for ages.
I’m sorry, but in regards to AV, Alliance have the advantage imo. From the perspective of playing it on both sides and seeing how laughable easy it is for Alliance to bypass so many things is laughable lol.
Unless many of that has changed since.
i can assure you, it has.
I played AV last month. But the way Alliance have played Epics over this last year the backdoor wasn’t required.
That is exactly the point I was making. There is no equal strategy for Alliance players. “All go farm root tubers and kill the rare (that may or may not have spawned) and wait to see what Horde do” doesn’t work because you are already on the back foot.
If the game was 25 players of equal skill and gear, the Horde team would win each time because of the differences - that while isolated seem small - all add up. For Alliance to win in current Ashran, they have to either do something gimmicky or vastly outplay Horde teams.
I was in a winning one last night where a warrior managed to get behind Alliance front lines and took Rylai down to 43% solo. Fortunately a couple of rezzers saw what was going on and dealt with him and healed her back up, but I’ve not once in all my games seen anyone successfully take on Jeron solo to that success.
Fair and I respect your opinion, but it is just that; your personal thoughts. The typical pug player will see it as a “free win” which is a much better attitude than “oh there is a mountain to climb to even be on equal ground”.
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horde: rush woods, kill ally, kill ogre, kill mage, kill ally till you get to 0.
ally: rush woods, kill horde, kill mage, kill ogre, kill horde till you get to 0.
nope, they just have to play well, i lost an ashran today as alliance, not because of the flower or horde being more geared, no we lost because the ally players didn’t understand the map or pvp concepts. they made mutliple major fumbles and lost should have been an easy win (6v1 to 3v0 healers)
but then in another game ally listened and rushed woods with me, wiped them, followed pretty much the plan i laid out other than i don’t think we bothered with ogre.
a smooth ashran alliance win is nearly identical to a smooth horde win, which is why the map, the flowers, AA and anything besides the solar sphere doesn’t matter.
i killed him solo during bg week, IMO for a dk he’s easier to kill than the ally mage.
it most certainly is not, free win pugs are the worst, they are a waste of a slot, i’d much rather have someone in who expects to have to play to win than someone who expects a carry.
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I’m not going to convince you otherwise. I suppose the only question left asking is why do you think the woods is the most desired location on the map for two factions to be fighting there at the beginning of any game?
edit: also as for the Horde mage being easier than the Alliance mage, I consider you to be a very skilled player but the fact of the matter is he does more raw damage than the Alliance mage, can summon multiple ads and has an insanely powerful knockback (and Gdtroll please don’t quote this and suggest people Google to learn about his abilities) whereas the only good thing Rylai does is give mage food.
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i don’t, only reason we went there was to get flowers and the rare at the same time. now that i see we really don’t need either, we are still going there because change is slow, i would actually rather have horde parked in the small pass to the woods by the hill up to the mage tower. this way horde can easily be ready to go left or right for ally depending on if they go woods or mage.
it really seems every epic except AV is now turning into the first major team fight being the game. 
he has a slow cast time with LoS right there, just pew pew, wait till he’s about finished with his cast and move slightly out of LoS, it will reset his cast. i let my pets and dots to the killing while i just keep going in a circle around the LoS column. knockback is countered with a glider and death’s advance, but provided you are sneakily killing him, you can just run back up the tower.
Lol at someone saying a !5% damage and stam increase is “meh”. There is a reason Horde rush there, and it’s not to meet the Alliance.
when ashran first came out as an epic bg, players were taking what they knew from the original zone and applying it to the epics. however the epic map is not the zone, and it doesn’t play the same.
horde was going to brickhouse to get books and fragments, we started going to dark woods because we could get all that from the rare and get flowers.
ally started rushing dark woods because they realized horde won’t let them backdoor or mage rush.
now, we have had several changes to the map since, and the number of players has been cut down. because the game has gone from a long push turtle to a quick team deathmatch, the books have mostly lost their value as you really don’t have time to capitalize on them.
flowers are not worth it anymore because once the fight in dark woods is done, you won’t be returning. if both teams were of equal skill and gear, then sure, flowers would make a difference, however teams are not equal skill and gear, at all, ever, so that argument is pointless. additionally, 99% of players do not bring out the full potential of their spec and ilvl, so an extra 15% isn’t going to make a difference.
the one buff that still matters is the solar sphere, you can literally watch teams move back and forth across the map depending on how the fight over the SS is going.
I never thought I’d see someone claim a 15% buff to all stats is worthless.
bg forums never cease to amaze I suppose.
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it’s worthless in the context of it won’t change the outcome of an ashran game. if you want to pad your numbers on the chart, by all means grab one.
What does that matter when the buff is personal and it follows you throughout the entire zone and persists through death so you don’t need to come back to get any more?
Is 20% the magic number? If the flowers were 20% all stats (as opposed to just 20% haste from the Solar Sphere), would they then be “a buff the still matters”?
Also - I disagree about the toys. Sure, some of them are completely worthless in shorter games, but Death Knights getting another death grip, half the cooldown on disengage, blink and a vanish reset all seem pretty useful to me. And then we’re not factoring in the scrolls and wands; 60% damage reduction / a targetable smoke bomb all continue to be useful.