Boards›Gameplay

Ashe's design/balance problems, and suggestions to address them

A2ZOMG·9/21/2014, 7:32:16 PM·17 votes·3,234 views

Instead of beginning with why I think Ashe is a fun and awesome champion, I'll first explain why I believe she's a candidate for ability remakes.

Ashe by design has always been a team dependent champion. Her kit packs utility through slows and initiation, but in exchange she's a marksman that lacks steroids or escapes. In the first place, Ashe's balance hinges on situational usage, because not every team needs or wants a marksman with a utility centric kit. This by itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, because situational usage is able to promote diversity.

Now, getting into specifics, a permaslow has some very serious implications. Previous discussions about Skarner cite the Feast/Famine pattern where if Skarner was strong enough to fight you, his permaslow (and cooldown refresh on autoattack) made him snowball out of control, but if he wasn't strong enough to fight you, then he was more prone to being extremely weak. Now a permaslow on a ranged character is more problematic because in Ashe's case, it means when she gets ahead, she beats you extremely hard by being able to start a fight at a long range that you can't escape from, which is compounded by the fact Ashe has two abilities that extend beyond her autoattack range which let her start fights, not to mention Hawkshot makes it extremely difficult to ambush or countergank against Ashe when used correctly. Traditionally, the way to balance against this has been to deliberately keep Ashe weaker at laning to make it more difficult for her to snowball out of control. This is a very binary form of balance, obviously. To sum it up, Ashe is very prone to being a champion who is either way too strong or too weak due to the fact she prevents disengages.

One of the other issues with Ashe is comp dependence. Now again, I'm all for situational usage as a means to promote diversity. But current Ashe depends heavily on hard engages that lead to guaranteed kills. In terms of comp dependence to put this simply, Ashe effectively wants to be played on high damage teams against squishy teams, making her a lot less successful in metagames that aren't assassin metas. This is due to the nature of her ultimate. Ashe's ultimate is really just a long ranged stun (obvious, right?). Now compare to something like Varus ult. While Ashe ult is objectively a stronger ability overall, Varus's ult outside of its initiation/counterinitiation potential also serves as an ability that has some synergy with other parts of his kit, namely his W Blight procs. Ashe ult doesn't get this treatment for the most part. Ashe ult doesn't directly benefit Ashe herself that much, outside of making it easier for her to just simply get in range to hit you. The way it functions currently, you very highly depend on having other teammates to contribute damage to ensure that it is most powerful. Now, I love team based plays. But at the same time, it doesn't feel good to be strictly dependent on teammates performing correctly for your abilities to accomplish what they are supposed to. Let's also keep in mind that Ashe ultimate is countered by items lategame, such as QSS and BV on backline champions, which then prevents you and your team from following up on your ult on priority targets easily. Given the difficulty of landing Ashe ult especially on mobile champions, it feels awful that so much of its power is stacked on how teammates benefit from it, rather than Ashe herself.

Finally, the last thing I want to cite about Ashe is decision making. Let's ignore for a minute that Ashe is a lot less useful against tanky teams and wants assassin teammates before someone decides to pick her which already puts constraints on what she can do in-game. Ashe is another one of those champions with an archaic, Dota style mana pool. Her mana pool is extremely small, but she effectively only has one ability that primarily makes use of it (Volley). Fearless during the Sona rework has been talking a lot about "meaningful decisions". Ashe's current resource usage doesn't promote this. Volley doesn't cost a lot of mana, thus having a mostly trivial effect on Ashe's mana pool especially if you run a few mana regen runes and masteries. But Ashe's extremely small mana pool means midgame, her ability usage is extremely restricted when her ult wipes out most of her available mana.

With these things, I have three basic changes to Ashe in mind with the intention of making her more viable at all parts of the game, introducing better counterplay to her, and promoting meaningful decisions.

  1. Frost Shot should be a castable ability with a cooldown of 5 seconds. Preferably an autoattack reset with increased slow values and a mana cost of 30.
  2. Give Ashe a mana pool closer to Graves.
  3. Reduce the base damage on ult to about 200, 350, 500, add a .5 AD ratio, and refresh Ashe's focus stacks upon successfully landing an ultimate.

The idea behind the changes is understanding that Ashe's permaslow needs more windows to escape from (ESPECIALLY if Ashe is ahead), and to give Ashe more meaningful decisions about how to spend her mana for potentially increasing her damage output. Ashe's slow should feel impactful, but Ashe should spend a lot of mana to permaslow you (by casting Volley in between enhanced attacks). Also for Ashe to maximize her damage, she needs to find a way to position that allows her to take advantage of an autoattack reset. The changes to ult are there to make it less "free" damage, but at the same time transfers more of the reward of landing it to Ashe herself by guaranteeing her an extra crit.

69 Comments

Remlap12239/21/2014, 8:04:09 PM7 votes

Agreed with your logic OP. Bumping for justice. I think Ashe is just outdated TBH. She used to be the Queen of League, then more assassin type characters with leaps came in and she's now bottom-tier. Although I don't know how exactly to rework her, she needs to be brought to 2015 standards.

Lord Graves III9/22/2014, 3:01:28 AM4 votes

No.

I like the idea of her ult refreshing her passive, but the rest of these feel un-needed. You reasoning behind why she should be changed seems to boil down to, "I don't like her".

She requires her teammates to bring damage, but yeah, this is kinda neat. Its part of her niche. The way to beat Ashe when she is ahead is to hard engage on her. She will virtually never be fed enough to win a straight fight alone, and if she is that fed then you deserve to lose.

Her resource management isn't the most interesting but that hardly is enough to necessitate a rework in my opinion.

But worst of all, turning Frost Shots into a castable ability is unforgivable. The permaslow is critical to her identity. Its not like removing skarner's slow, it would be more like removing skarner's drag ult.

You haven't made sufficient case for ashe needing a rework. Her abilities seem fine if unlike other marksman (which is a good thing).

I might be misunderstanding your argument. It sorta rambled. Can you add a summary to make sure I got you right though?

Mandaari9/21/2014, 9:44:47 PM4 votes

I agree with a lot of this, though I think there's a lot more to address.

For one, be careful messing with her permaslow. I get that permaslows are really hard to balance, but that's a pretty core part of her identity. A lot of champions have slows, so making her slow less unique is a pretty big blow. Sure, maybe getting rid of her permaslow will be necessary, but its replacement should be just as iconic.

I know this is pretty much beating a horse that's already been made into glue, but her passive needs to be addressed properly.

The last part that gets overlooked that you touched on a bit yourself is her stats. I wrote a thread about it earlier this year that I think does a good job of pointing out her stat related problems.

One thing you mentioned is that she works best alongside high damage champions (like assassins) that can take advantage of her utility, which is dead on. But at the same time it's what she weakest against because of her serious lack of mobility and inability to deal with gap closers. Her strongest metas end up simultaneously being one of her worst metas.

RagnarokChu9/25/2014, 2:28:24 PM3 votes

Honestly before anything she needs a new passive and way more interesting hawkshot which currently makes her passive gameplay even more passive.

Cloud Potato9/22/2014, 6:19:31 AM2 votes

I know that this will be an unpopular opinion, but I don't think buffing Ashe's damage output is the right thing to do. I think that instead her utility should be focused on, and that she should not be intended to be an ADC. I know that every physical ranged damage dealer is expected to be one, but it's a restriction that I don't think we need to have. I don't expect the community to rally up and demand "Marksmen" be viable in other positions, but it's still something I would like to see.

If we are going to push her as an ADC though, I don't have a problem with changes #1 or #2. However it is part of a larger game problem where slows are more punishing against non-mobile champions than mobile ones, but that's out of scope for just Ashe changes. #3 has a big problem though, and that's the Focus stacks will go to no use most of the time. R is used as an initiation, when you will probably have max stacks anyway, and it also encourages you to use R in the middle of a fight, which isn't a good thing to do. I do agree that a successful R should benefit Ashe more, but I think scaling from AD will be enough for that purpose.

Wingling9/23/2014, 6:27:42 AM2 votes

Alright, I'm a little late to the party but I've been playing a lot of Ashe recently, and you are wrong on a lot of these points. But, to keep the discussion more friendly I'm gonna start with what I can agree with. For one, her ult is countered too well with a Mikhael's. That is a problem that I think needs to be addressed eventually, but giving Ashe that much burst (2 guaranteed crits plus volley/ult) is risky and would require nerfs elsewhere in her kit, and still doesn't change anything about Mikhael's. Giving it an AD ratio might work to let you chunk someone but again, huge burst is not Ashe's thing and would require other nerfs.

Now, I pretty much disagree with everything else. For one, you're subscribing to the common misconception that Ashe can't keep up with other carries damage-wise. Yes, she has no steroid and that is a weakness of hers, but she's actually always been a hyper-carry; while she can't match Trist in Baron DPS she can end up doing more damage in a fight because she can get a lot more auto-attacks off with the slow. If you don't trust me and that sounds wrong, know that I am paraphrasing Doublelift here (or some other competitive player, it was a while ago that I heard this).

Secondly, Ashe and old Skarner are not comparable. Skarner's slow was feast or famine because he had to be in melee range and couldn't exactly perma-slow someone to run away (and he really only had a 15s-CD shield/speed for that), whereas with Ashe it's incredibly useful if you're behind; it's got plenty of defensive use in her amazing kite potential. Saying that perma-slow is more problematic on a ranged character is the opposite of the truth: you say it makes her too snow-bally but that is exactly why she has no steroid. Unless she's really ahead you can usually win the 1v1 if you manage to get in close. Unless she's like 3 kills up on you you win the DPS battle and Ashe has to play the poke game first, which is a totally healthy play pattern: clear goals and clear windows of higher relative strength for both Ashe and enemy.

Her weak early-game is not because of snowballing, it's because she's a late game hyper-carry (see above).

It's true that Ashe does well on teams with good pick potential she's also good with team that can peel for her and extend a fight. She is unusually weak to certain assassins, depending on her allies' peel, but that doesn't make her bad.

Not every ult needs to interact with your other spells. Just because Varus' ult procs blight doesn't mean it's a better ult, and cross-map ults generally shouldn't have spell interaction without a specific reason (Lux needs to be able to ult immediately after snare without having to take time to auto). Ashe benefits plenty from it because it's a giant stun/slow/nuke that helps both kiting and chasing whether or not she has teammates. Again, it is countered too well by Mikhael's but slapping a crit on it just because you think every champion needs spells that effect other spells is not the answer.

On the subject of mana pools, you have to understand how your ideas about Ashe are affected by Athene's. See, Athene's effectively trivialized mana costs for a very large number of champions, with Riot has admitted was a mistake (and this is a large part of why immobile mages have been underpowered recently, but that's a different discussion). Proper mana management is a skill that a large number of people have forgotten because Athene's has been out for so long, and Ashe having mana as an actual meaningful resource is not a problem at all.

Making frostshot a cooldown-gated slow is a horrible idea: it completely shatters Ashe's orb-walk kiting playstyle and again pushes her towards bursty. I don't think you fully understand the consequences of the changes you suggest. Let's say hypothetically Riot does everything you say without any nerfs to go with it. Her burst is now ridiculous. With an IE you have crit -> immediate auto -> ult -> volley -> crit (750% AD plus base). It solves nothing and isn't going to happen.

Sire Hippington9/23/2014, 8:34:18 PM2 votes

While i agree on her permaslow beeing problematic, i disagree on some other points.

Most of all, u totally ignory ashes funktion in a poke and kite combo, where she shines even more than in a hard-engage. With max-cdr, her W goes down to 2.4sec cd while applying a 2.5sec slow, so she can apply her permaslow on huge aoe from an insane range, while having her hawk to check for ambushes or flanks and her ult to either prevent an engage or for starting a fight once the enemys are poked low enough.

On a sidenote, i think she deserves upgraded VFX. Both of the other clanleaders also revolve around frost and have a pretty impressive visual effeckt on their ult cc, Seju also got special effeckt for her slow, while Ashes ult has a normal stun/slow effeckt...freezing an enemy into a ice-statue for 3.5sec would be way more impressive than the stun. If u don'T have a good hardengage vs a ashe poke-comp, ur only chance is early snowballing aghainst her.

I also don't think her ult needs changes, besides evt 25% less cd if it totally misses to encurage more crossmap snipes. More lategame burst on her ult would grant her sick lategame duelling, as it already is massive. U can kill most squishys with ur crit+W+ult+1.5sec free AAs thanks to the stun.

I think changeing her Q into a slowing AA reset is a good idea, but her W would need some buff without the slow(which was situationally broken on it), and i'd really like to see a new passive that is more....usefull.

Electro5229/22/2014, 1:34:43 AM2 votes

I think Ashe isn't in need of much of a rework, but just in desperate need of some tweaks, with her passive and base stats being the primary focus.

Her passive is good, but with how ADC's are being built, with Attack Speed being one of the primary stats to focus on, it keeps her from using her passive at all, or, forces her to play so passively, that she is constantly being pushed into her tower, where she can lose valuable CS, and fall just way too far behind.

I believe a good tweak to it would be that at however many stacks of Focus she has, once the stacks stop stacking, whatever number she ends up on becomes her bonus Crit Chance. For example, if Ashe has 60 stacks of focus, she will have a bonus 60% crit chance. If she reaches 100 stacks, her next auto attack will consume the stacks, but deal not 200% damage, but 250% (like Infinity Edge). Now, I understand how powerful this can be, which is why you would reduce the cooldown of her passive from 4 seconds, to either 1 or 2 seconds. Not only that, you would increase the speed of the stacks. This keeps people from keeping her passive at around 90 stacks, and just wrecking everyone, without constantly attacking something, which can have both positive and negative effects. Also, her passive currently works in that whatever her crit chance is, that is where her stacks will start from (50% crit chance starts the passive stacking at 50 stacks after stacks are consumed). This would be removed. If you consume the stacks, you would start at 0 every time.

This would make her the only ADC that doesn't need to build crit chance, going for more raw damage and attack speed. Couple this with her perma slow, and you have an ADC that will lock you down, and blow you up quickly afterwards IF you can control the stacks of her passive. Too low of stacks, and your damage drops through the floor. Too high, and you risk consuming all of your stacks, again, killing your damage potential.

Then, there are her base stats. Ashe is poisoned by the fact that her base damages are just way too damn low. Give her a little more base damage, a little more mana, just a tad more speed, and, as stated eariler in this thread, make her ult scale off of Attack Damage (I'd say maybe around .7 or .8).

What do you guys think?