Ashran "quick start" guide for casuals (8.2.5)

PVP Battlegrounds
1

Inspired by the following thread:

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/can-someone-write-a-bfa-ashran-guide/322763

So it looks like one of these “bg week” casuals has asked for help playing the BFA version of Ashran. I’ll take a stab at it I guess, since I’ve been playing a good share of Ashran games these last few weeks :smirk:

A. "What’s the difference between this and WoD-era Ashran?"

All the “side events” from WOD have been removed for the most part, and each team now has a fixed number of reinforcements.

Think of reinforcements like “lives”, so your team has X amount of “lives”. This is what you see up at the top-center of the screen. The first team to run out of “lives” (drop to 0 reinforcements) loses.

The current BFA version of Ashran is basically just a big team deathmatch with some PvE elements sprinkled throughout… think a larger version of Southshore vs Tarren Mill.

B. “What do we do in here?” / "I have no idea what’s going on"

There are only two win conditions in BFA Ashran:

  1. kill the enemy team’s boss (instant win)
  2. out-PvP the enemy team and get 150 kills

There is no time limit, and the match will go until a team satisfies one of these two win conditions.

C. "What about all these weird ‘Ashran’ items I keep looting?"

There are all kinds of PvE items (also referred to as “toys” in bg chat) that you will probably loot throughout the course of an Ashran match. These items show up in your bags/backpack and need to be manually clicked on in order to use.

Some of these PvE items like “Frost Wyrm Egg” and “Nesingwary’s Lost Horn”, can be QUITE busted/overpowered if used at the right time during a teamfight.

There are even class-specific items which can drop, such as a “book” that allows Druids to use their flight form within the bg.

All of the items tell you exactly what they do in their tooltip/description, so if you’re ever confused just take a quick moment to mouse over the item and read.

D. "Ok… what are some winning strats?"

Just a few off the top of my head, so by no means a complete list…

  1. "Basic mid push" strat
  • This strat involves nothing special… just a simple push down the main road, ideally out-DPSing/out-PvPing the enemy team and capping flags along the way. Most random casuals and PUGs seem to “default” to this strat from what I see. It is entirely possible to win this way and just brute-force your way to the enemy team’s base - it’s just not as efficient as the other strats.
  1. "Backdoor" strat
    (DISCLAIMER: high risk/high reward… use at your own risk!)
  • This strat involves the ENTIRE TEAM rushing to the backside of the enemy base right at the start (completely ignoring everything else), shrouding in under cover of Rogues, and zerging the enemy’s boss… blowing all cooldowns including lust/hero. If it works, your team can literally win in less than 5 minutes. If it fails or your team wipes? Your team will lose 35-40+ points, and people may start leaving in droves :grimacing:
  1. "Mage rush" strat
  • This strat involves your team rushing to the enemy’s tower mage mini-boss NPC early on in the match, in order to take a quick lead on reinforcements (a tower mage kill is worth 50 points).
  1. "Ogre push" strat
  • This strat involves defeating the ogre mini-boss (off to the right side of the map) in order to convince the ogre king to fight for your team, keeping him healed up, and pushing with him towards the enemy base. Ogre king is capable of dealing very high AOE damage (he absolutely wrecks unprepared PUGs), with proper ground troop support he can carry your team right to the enemy’s doorstep.
  1. "Toy spam" strat
  • This strat involves running around the map farming/collecting a bunch of “toys” from rares as they spawn, then using these “toys” in surprise/flank attacks or otherwise relying mainly on the “toys” when pushing. Many of the “toys” are busted/overpowered when used in conjunction with each other, so a clever raid leader can really exploit/maximize this strat. This strat is quite popular with premades :roll_eyes:

E. "I’m a melee and this bg just sucks for melee, any tips?"

First of all, try to stay alive! Please don’t “feed” kills to the enemy team!

Because this is a reinforcements-based bg, your individual deaths can really start to matter/add up in the late-game… ESPECIALLY if it turns into a close “neck-and-neck” game. 5 melee that rack up 10+ deaths each can literally cause your team to lose if the score is close. Then there is also the ever-present threat of enemy Death Knights and deathgrip (hint: melee are low-hanging fruit for DK’s).

Yes, Ashran is not a melee-friendly place. Just be careful, because like I mentioned earlier each team only has a finite amount of “lives”.

Personally what I do when I play melee in this bg? I mainly focus on trying to gank the enemy players that get too close. And when I do make an attack run into the enemy’s deathball, I always make sure I have a defensive cooldown ready beforehand. Charging into the enemy’s deathball without either a defensive cooldown ready or a mobility/escape cooldown ready is just asking to get deleted.

F. "Good info, but I was also wondering about __________"

I probably missed some stuff, so feel free to ask below :stuck_out_tongue:

11 Likes
2

Good stuff. Ideally we should have one thread for each bg as a guide and stickied. Blizzard doesn’t use the forums enough as a resource (for pvp at least).

3

not really, strategies are dynamic and change throughout expacs and seasons. if you have a guide on what to do, people will take it as the word of god and not adapt to new circumstances.

1 Like
4

Something brief in the dungeon journal would be sufficient. Every cooking brawl I get into only one or two people even know what to do.

5

Any other questions about this topic?

I’ll answer as best as I can.

6

Only seen this work once and that was many weeks ago. Someone pushes for backdoor which then fails and by the time alliance meets the horde on the road we are 20 to 40 down and horde have Ogre. Then it goes down hill from there.

7

I saw it work a surprising amount of times this past week during bg week, I won a good 5-6 times using the strat. Nothing quite like zoning into a bg and winning 2-3 minutes later :rofl: :rofl:

Of course, anything that gets over-used/spammed too much quickly gets adapted to by the meta. So far this week I haven’t seen backdoor strat win even once, so it seems Alliance casuals’ addiction to spamming the backdoor boss rush strat almost every game is starting to backfire on them.

So far this week of the 3 backdoor attempts I’ve seen tried by Alliance PUGs, all 3 have failed/gotten wiped by Horde coming back to defend the boss :thinking:

The main weakness of the strat is that if even 1 or 2 Horde spots the Alliance raid out of the corner of their eye AND they call it out in bg chat, it’s all over. The strat relies almost entirely on the element of surprise :grimacing:

8

The 2 backdoor I saw this week both failed. First was a horde fighting a couple of alliance a bit over 1/2 way there. If that person had any brains they would have warned everyone else and by the number of people waiting they did. Second time was also a massacre with the horde waiting.

Last couple of Ashran I have been in there was complaining about healers trying to heal and commenting we should stop healing while they deliberately feed the horde free kills. At times I think people are their own worst enemy.

Great, just realised I have wasted a late smoko complaining about people complaining in a video game.

ps. Apart from my complaining about all the complaining thanks for the notes :smiley: Also what are the thoughts on alliance ignoring everything else and rushing to try grabbing some song flower?

9

I think backdoor is my favorite strat, just because of the hilarious LUL-factor when it does work :rofl:

As for the song flower thing, I’m not sure… rushing the forest as a team to grab song flowers is probably best done right at the start (since Horde doesn’t even go to the forest right away). After the start/opener, it becomes more risky.

10

Alliance can win Ashran very easily. I’ve been trying to teach groups to always hit a certain place first while the Horde wastes their time at Brute’s Rise for the singular rare and some flowers that can be mass dispelled (or used to be, at least). Lead a game just now where we got out not just one, but TWO Fangraal spawns.

Of course, fighting over this area is what premades/coordinated groups always did in Legion, so if it starts to catch on, it’ll be an absolute bloodbath for both teams all game.

2 Likes
11

Very nice guide for an Ashnoob like me who never played it before 8.2. IF I happen to stay in one when it pops, I’ll still rely on the people who supposedly know how to play it to call out strats because the map just bores me. I figure B2 is the way I’ll look at it, along with E which I employ in any PvP because I like denying kills if at all possible…

1 Like
12

Just wondering, are you a returning player or something? I’ve been playing Ashran fairly regularly, but have only seen you pop up very very recently (since the patch basically) :thinking:

I backfilled in about 3/4 of the way thru into one of your games (alliance was getting farmed at the bridge when I zoned in), I remember you were complaining in the chat about “people don’t listen” or something like that. You seem to spam in the chat a lot, my goodness… you also said something about “I want to go watch a movie”… as if anyone cares :stuck_out_tongue:

In a different game, someone in the chat was saying something like “report Karie afk she makes us lose”. I know 2 losing games is a small sample size, but I just thought it was… interesting to say the least :joy:

There’s a Dwarf Pally that gets a similar number of “he makes us lose”-type comments, but I haven’t seen him in a while.

13

Karie is the best all the time I queued with you it was a win matter of fact I posted a screenshot of the win on this forum

Impressive leadership and fun leading always making jokes doesn’t seem a know it all

14

I’m not a returning player, no. I’ve been playing Ashran since it released, but the majority of my leading came from Legion Ashran, where it became lead vs. lead more or less. Accurate description of Legion Ashran is a complete disregard for mainroad, maximizing honor and conquest gains via ROC and Events, perpetual backdooring of both bosses, and generally fighting 40v40 anywhere on the map to use the toys gained from ROC. Fun stuff, miss it a lot. Not alone in that outlook either; 10 hour sessions were great.

A lot of the people in the BG Ashran nowadays aren’t from Legion, or are from very early WoD, where strats weren’t as important or set in stone. I’ve recently begun queueing again since they removed the ancient spam (with the 3k frag requirement) and added in the solar sphere as a buff to maintain control of, because it’s less spammy and allows my strategies to actually shine again.

The people that want to say that I cause losses usually don’t understand what’s going on and think Ashran is a mindless zerg, or completely disregard my explanations for the maneuvers I’m asking the group to do. You know, typical bad apple stuff. I try not to let it spoil the experience, though. I try to be descriptive as possible with explaining things so that people can come away from the BG with a bit more knowledge of what to do, so indeed, it might come off as a bit spammy, but I mean well in the end.

1 Like
15

Maybe add which building to enter for backdoor.

Still laughing at alliances expense. Enter the bg and a backdoor is already in progress. Aliiance went to the wrong building where they got wiped.

1 Like
16

I don’t know how it’s even possible to not know what building to go into for backdoor :rofl: , it’s literally the biggest hut in the base (with spikes and all) so you would think it would be obvious :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Maybe it was just a bad leader leading the backdoor, because in my experience most Alliance casuals have at least a vague idea of how backdoor works/where to go :thinking:

One time the raid leader (some random Rogue) tried to go “backdoor” right thru the front gate/bridge, even though there’s literally 2 gladiators standing right there :roll_eyes: Of course, it quickly turned into a disaster/wipefest even before Horde returned to the base.

But other than that, most backdoor games I’ve been in Alliance went where they are supposed to go (hugging the rocks/coastline to the left of the base). I would say backdoor strat is pretty much common knowledge by now, most Alliance casuals seem to be aware of it.

17

The table of all the loot (“toys”) and buffs available would be helpful, as well. Some of them are at least fun for a change of pace if not all that useful, such as the jumpy buff. Others can be game changers.

18

Trying to tell people strategy in this game is like trying to throw a piece of ham at a Tank. Absolutely ineffective and a complete waste of time and resources.

The only way to win ashran is to pray you have more ranged and healers than the enemy team.

19

I’m trying to find a source mentioning the starting reinforcements for Ashran, but I can’t find a single one. All of them just say, “when you bring the enemy reinforcements to ‘0’” and never mention from what number.

20

150 reinforcements.