Hawkshot

There are few skills in League of Legends that are a purely "One and done" skill, so much as Ashe's E, Hawkshot. I personally enjoy taking champions and exploring the less optimal options to figure out what all they can do. With most champions, there are skills that are typically prioritized because, they have a longer cool down, they don't provide as much utility, but mostly because they don't have as strong of a scaling statistic. Adding additional points into Hawkshot does nothing other than decrease it's cool down timer from 90 seconds, to a minimum of 50 seconds with 0% CDR stats. Even with 45% CDR that's, at best, 22.5 seconds. Even spacing your two charges perfectly means you can fire one hawk every 12.25 seconds ... BUT WHY? Sure, it's a global ability. You could potentially place a 5 second ward anywhere on the map. And it grants very brief vision of the entire path, which isn't that useful. ... So you're a global vision turret, maybe useful as a support. The other main use for this ability is to set up a snipe, but if the enemy team gets the hint, seeing that hawk fly by will warn them that an Enchanted Crystal Arrow is coming.

So I think you understand my complaint by now. What can be done about it? I think one option would be to just go all in on the cool down. Ultimately I still think it would be a pointless ability, but I think it would be fun to increase the stack cap or to more significantly decrease the cool down to a point where you can cast one hawk almost as soon as each stack becomes available. You would have virtually zero concerns about vision.

Another idea, what if the additional ranks make the lingering vision last longer, or maybe have the duration increase by 0.X seconds per XX AP or some other significant stat that increases per rank.

Personally, I believe it should have an additional utility added to it. Ashe is a ranger. Currently Ashe has a good amount of damage from her passive, Q, and W that all works well with a combination of AD and critical strike chance. To me this makes her into more of an arrow slinging machine gun, which can certainly be what a 'ranger' is all about. However, when I hear the term 'ranger' I also think of mobility. I would really like to see Hawkshot grant Ashe a mobility boost for a duration after casting. I think additional ranks should decrease the overall cool down more than currently, down to something closer to 25-30 seconds at max rank before CDR. 45% CDR puts that at 11.5 -13.5 seconds with 2 stacks. I also believe that the mobility boost should have a very low base statistic and a high AP scaling. I think this would be important so as not to buff AD Ashe and significantly buff AP Ashe. As I mentioned before, AD/Crit Ashe is all about putting out the damage. To me, the current version of AP Ashe is, besides generally weak, all about buying time for her ultimate to be available, positioning, and either catching someone out on the engage for a team fight, or picking someone off as they try to escape from a fight. You really aren't very useful in the actual fight without constantly relying on Lich Bane procs or the passive from Nashor's Tooth, and even then you need to be fed to contend. Without AD, she does not do enough damage to discourage someone from engaging on her, and with no mobility boost she is not able to stay as safe as I feel she really needs. With this mobility boost, it will also help her to gain the needed vision and position herself to send out her Ultimate.

Please take the poll and leave me comments.