How To Conquer Ashran
Ashran has changed several times since it started. Blizzard has changed where you get conquest points, and how many conquest points you get. It can understandably be a little confusing as to how Ashran works. I like Ashran. It’s not my favorite thing to do, but it’s better than battlegrounds to me. If you want to get your conquest cap through Ashran though, there’s an easy way to do it.
Finding Ashran Raids
Do not queue for Ashran first. Instead, go to your Group Finder first, and select the Player versus Player tab at the bottom. Next, hit the Ashran option near the end of the list, then click Find Group. The next part is a little tricky. You don’t want to join just any raid. There is a three pronged approach to selecting a good raid.
- Look for a raid with “Events” in the notes. These are the raids that will be getting the most conquest points.
- Find a raid close to full (40 players). Helping start a new raid is hit or miss.
- Make sure the raid has ~10 healers. 36 DPS and 4 healers is just begging to be wiped by an enemy raid.
Once you get invited into a raid, then you will need to go queue up for Ashran. Ashran queue times vary wildly. Generally 10-15 minutes has been my experience. Take this time to watch raid chat. If people are complaining about losing events, it’s time to bail and find another raid. If it’s quiet, people are calling out events, and/or people are having friendly chats, it’s a keeper and worth waiting for.
Where To Get Conquest in Ashran
Events are the biggest source of conquest points in Ashran at 100 conquest points per win. There are four events, one at each corner of the map. As of the latest patch, events are happening about 10-15 minutes apart. Events are completely random now. You could have the same event 9 times in a row theoretically. A horn will sound, along with a chat notification of where to go. I’ve outlined the areas in that there map.
Conquest Scraps
There are several mini-bosses with random spawns spread across Ashran as well that rewqard 25 conquest points per kill. You should be able to get all of these as well if your Ashran Events raid is dominating. Even if you are in a crappy raid, you should still be able to get (most of) these. It’ll take a long time, and probably not be efficient, but you’re still earning Artifact Fragments (Honor) and bones (more Honor, gold, gear). It’s kinda like gold farming, but while PvPing.
- Kronus & Fangral are summoned with Artifact Fragments, and travel the marked route straight down the road.
- The Alliance Mage and Horde Mage are where marked. Kill the one that isn’t yours.
- Warlocks are in both marked places. You can kill either for the points, but not both.
- Kor’Lok spawns two Ogres. Kill the one that’s hostile to you, and he’ll follow the road toward your enemy’s base.
Call for raid members to check all these locations between events. It’ll give ’em something to do.
Leading Successful Ashran Events Raids
Finally, a few tips for establishing aforementioned dominance with your events raid in Ashran. Do not auto-invite. This is crucial. You need to maintain 10-12 healers in your raid. I personally like to go more towards 12 in case someone isn’t being honest about their healer status, or AFK botting or whatever. Do not give everyone assist. People will spam accept invite requests. If people want to invite friends or alts, you should make that happen. Mention it occasionally in chat. Pass out assists to anyone that seems helpful and friendly. Between events, bring your raid to the crossroads. Marked by the big handy red X in the upper (events) map. You can also try and push the enemy base before the next event for that nice, purple-tasting strongbox goodness.
Going Above and Beyond
If you really want to go the extra mile, whisper people who request invites. When your raid hits 38/39 people, you’ll still be getting tons of requests. For any that stick around more than two sections, consider sending them a whisper. Let them know if they are next to get an invite, and when they can expect an invite. For example, when an upcoming Event is announced, i’ll whisper someone that we should have openings in ~4-5 minutes. (People generally depart after events.) If you do that, they’ll be more inclined to wait out that queue, giving you and your raid a better variety of player choices (healers if you need them!).
If you aren’t the raid leader, and you see any of the no-no’s above happening, whisper the raid leader and offer to manage the invites. Tell them to take off auto-accept, assists to all, and give you assist. They’ll probably be glad to be rid of the hassle.