In next week’s Public Test Realm update, we’ll be making several adjustments to the Ashran, Isle of Conquest, and Wintergrasp epic battlegrounds.
Ashran
We’ve increased the player count again to make the battleground feel more epic. We also wanted to even out the Horde and Alliance sides of the map, especially at the start. The Tower Mages have had their difficulty lowered as they were a bit too impactful to the battleground. Additionally, we’ve reduced the cost to summon Fangraal and Kronus to help teams push the mid-lane more often.
Maximum player count per faction is now 35 (was 30).
Starting reinforcements are now 175 (was 150).
To allow both factions to have easier access to Star Root Tubers and Song Flowers, both these tasty treats will now spawn alongside each other in the Dark Woods and Root Den.
Artifact Fragment cost to summon Kronus and Fangraal reduced to 1500 (was 3000).
Horde and Alliance tower mages are now worth 30 Reinforcements when slain (was 50).
Horde and Alliance tower mages have had their spells adjusted:
Rylai Crestfall – Alliance Tower Mage
Northrend Winds now deals 15% of the target’s maximum health in Frost damage.
Frostbolt now deals 8% of the target’s maximum health in Frost damage.
Frostbolt Volley now deals 15% of the target’s maximum health in Frost damage.
No longer casts Mass Polymorph.
Jeron Emberfall – Horde Tower Mage
Fireball now deals 8% of the target’s maximum health in Fire damage.
Combustion Nova now deals 15% of the target’s maximum health in Fire damage.
Ignite now deals 1% of the target’s maximum health in Fire damage.
Living Bomb initial spell now deals 5% of the target’s maximum health in Fire damage.
Living Bomb explosion now deals 15% of the target’s maximum health in Fire damage.
Magma Blast cast by Jeron’s summoned Lava Fury now deals 5% of the target’s maximum health in Fire damage.
Isle of Conquest
These changes are intended to discourage base-rushing and have all control points be important, not just Hangar.
Glaive Thrower health has been increased by 40%.
Alliance and Horde Commander health increased by 50%.
Demolisher health increased by 25%.
Catapult health increased by 100%.
The amount of siege damage required to break down keep walls has been increased by 20%.
Wintergrasp
Wintergrasp has been very defense-favored, so we’ve made the following adjustments to even out both sides of the playing field.
Broken Temple and Sunken Ring Workshops are now controlled by the attacking team when the battle starts.
Wintergrasp Wall, Wintergrasp Fortress Wall, and Wintergrasp Fortress Gate health has been reduced by 20%.
Destroying Towers reduces match time by 8 minutes (was 5 minutes).
Siege Engine’s Steam Rush ability deals 20-35% of a player’s health (was 30-45%).
Demolisher’s Hurl Boulder ability deals 20-25% of a player’s health (was 36%).
After 5 minutes, all players in the battleground who do not have a rank (including players who join late) will now be granted the rank of Corporal.
Thank you for your feedback! If you get a chance to check out the changes on the PTR, please let us know what you think in the PTR General Discussion forum.
My my my… well this is a surprise, blues finally breaking their ~2 year silence on Wintergrasp
Nice change with adding more players to Ashran, although I wish you would just make it 40v40 again. Felt more “epic” back then.
Mr (new?) blue person, can we please have the “Feedback: Epic Battlegrounds” thread permanently stickied? The EU thread is stickied, while ours is not.
Can you patch whatever in the code says I will never get to play defense first so I can at least feel what it’s like to be on the overwhelmingly favored team? I just want to play defense ONE TIME before it gets fixed. I’ve gotten attack 26 times this expansion and have never defended once. 1-25 BTW so, ya, attackers need all this help.
That Ashran change is massive. It allows a lot more usage of the map aside from just the road zerg that Horde seems to dominate. Perhaps Ring of Conquest will finally see more use due to it, since it’s the best source of artifact fragments (and toys).
Wintergrasp changes are stellar. Maybe now attacker groups won’t just mass-quit before the game even starts. Vehicle changes are great since now they won’t be -as- overbearing.
Isle of Conquest change is decent since Glaives used to just fall over if they were sneezed on. Maybe now it’ll be slightly easier to defend them.
The Ashran fixes are spot on the only thing missing is that the fire mage can knockback entire raids but the frost mage cant which is a huge flaw imo
The isle of conq fixes makes no sense based on how the game acctualy plays
In Wintergrasp Siege engines are bugged in a way that they take % based damage from everything which means even tho they have the most health they get destroyed faster than a demolisher who doesnt take % based damage
I think this might be bugged in Isle of Conq aswell
It’s interesting that there’s no mention of whether or not the Wintergrasp demolisher/siege cannon shots were fixed to actually damage the walls again (…like they would pre-Shadowlands).
The demolisher/siege cannonballs not doing damage to walls seems like a pretty serious bug to me. You would think they would have done something about that by now.
It does hurt offense side because they are unable to damage walls from long-range. Defense side really isn’t affected by the bug since they are aiming all of their cannon shots at enemy players or enemy vehicles anyways.
Max % health damage should be removed from this BG. With it a catapult can kill a siege engine in the same amount of time as a demolisher. Siege engines should feel tanky otherwise what’s the point of building them over a demolisher?
These WG changes mean nothing at all if they don’t fix the Demolisher/Siege Engine Turret bug.
For those that don’t know, the Demolisher boulder throw and the Siege Engine Turret shot aren’t doing damage to walls most of the time; it requires a very specific range and angle for them to actually hit the wall (I’ve heard shooting on the ground next to the wall also works) so most of the time you have a ton of demos attacking a wall but none actually doing any damage with their main ability.
This is the primary reason it’s so hard to win as offense; demos with their ability to do siege damage at range if the walls were heavily guarded were a key backup strategy for offense and that no longer works. The bug has existed since the 9.0 prepatch in October 2020. Before then it was actually decently common for offense to win Wintergrasp (although it was still harder for offense to win, which is why the 9.0.5 changes are still good).
P.S. Ashran also has significant performance issues since 9.0 which don’t seem to be tied to how much fighting is going on. Like many of the Shadowlands world zones, it just has a lot of random lag and delays.
False. Hangar is a lot better than Docks because Docks can easily be neutralised by killing Glaives. This is why Horde always gets Hangar and usually wins the BG.
