I really think Ashe should be given either a bonus attack damage steroid or attack speed steroid to replace her Hawk shot. The vision is nice and it can secure kills but compared to every other marksman Ashe is probably the lowest damaging one by far. She could really use a buff to improve her sub par damage. Her W base damage is a complete joke and slap in the face at late game.
She's a utility marksman. She has lower damage because she has 2 slows and a stun. And she can still pump out sufficient damage late game to 100-0 opposing champions.
I honestly think you are underrating Ashe. She has great range, and the highest base AS tied with Vayne. While she may not have a steroid, she has consistently better damage output. And thus lower windows of vurnrability. She also has better range than most ADC's, allowing her to safely damage others. This actually lets her deal more damage over the course if a teamfight.
In addition, her W allows her to sige extremely well, which becomes more valuable due to the Athene's change nerfing Sige miss and the new Baron buff. And everyone knows her Q and ult are fucking godlike, so yeah.
Ashe is fine, if you buff her she would be overpowered.
Ashe is an intro champion designed to teach new players the basics of the game and playing the marksman role. A good player snowballs just as hard with ashe as with any other ADC due to her perma slow. She can actually make up for low damage with high attack speed because she can reduce the enemy's retreat to nill.
Hawkshot gives new players the ability to check bushes without a ward because they haven't learned to buy wards. For advanced players, this instant, long range vision can be a game-changer. The passive with it helps new players learn to cs by rewarding them for last-hitting. for advanced players, it helps them snowball into the items they need to make ashe strong late-game. Ashe is still the best pick for a level 1 jungle invade due to her guaranteed crit on the first attack which devastates at low levels and stays relevant the whole game.
That's just an exerpt on how she is good the way she is.
Step 1) Give Ashe a new Q. I have no idea what it would be.
Step 2) Make Focus build charge whenever Ashe is moving to help emphasize her kite-heavy play pattern
Step 3) Give W its own slow scaling 20/25/30/35/40% and increase the slow duration to 2.5 seconds
Step 4) For the love of pants give her a new E passive
Removing the perma-slow on Ashe's Q would open up a huge amount of kit power presently sunk into that ability. If Ashe still wanted to perma-slow folks she would have to invest in max CDR for her W while also being more heavily gated by mana.
Passive -- Blessing of Avarosa: Ashe's auto attacks slow the enemy by 10% for 2 seconds.
Q -- Frost Shot (Toggle):
Toggle ON: Ashe's Frost Shot is empowered by an additional 5%/10%/15%/20%/25% and deals X (+Y% AP) magic damage on hit.
Costs Z mana per auto attack.
This would shift Ashe's build as well as fix her issues. Instead of her standard build, she would now build Runaan's Hurricane and on-hits. She would spread her slow through Runaan's and build Manamune to abuse the on-hit on Muramana. Her full build might look like this:
She would get her damage from the combined on-hit might of Manamune, Statikk Shiv, BotRK and her new Q. The reason for Essence Reaver over Bloodthirster is because she'll burn through mana like crazy using the Muramana toggle and her new Q against 3 targets (Runaan's).
X, Y and Z can be adjusted as necessary. They're just numbers, they can be buffed and nerfed easily.
I think Ashe could use a tad bit of a buff. It's kind of funny because the first time I played her in ranked, it had been a while since I played ADC specifically and even longer since I played Ashe. I ended up doing really well and now I play her anytime I go ADC in ranked. I have a 5-1 win rate with her now.
The only thing Ashe needs is a new passive since it goes against her playstyle. Her permaslow, spam basic attacks ADC playstyle goes entirely against her passive. Otherwise, she is incredibly strong.
Honeslty I don't have an issue with hawkshot, and I like her kit the way it is, though I do feel she is underpowered, mostly in laning phase.
Her weakness in laning phase comes from a few factors:
Her W cooldown at early rankes is pretty insane, 16s to 4s from 1 to 5. That 16 second window without having a spell to trade is quite significant. Her Mana pool is TRASH. 173+35/lvl, worst in the game for ADC's with the exception of Jinx, who is mana gated since her spells are quite powerful, and she gets a lot of power from her manaless Q form.) Ashe starts with enough mana for 3 volleys and 3 frostshots. Basically her volley is both mana gated and cooldown gated. In most cases, ashe starts with around 60 less mana than a typical ADC. Using frostshots (8mana/shot) and a few volley's OOMs her in lane when she's trading. Not to mention making it to level 6 with 100 mana to ult.
I feel like a caitlyn comparison is needed to put this in perspective:
Mana Pools + Regen Ashe: 173+35/lvl mana (6.3+.04/lvl)mana/5s Cait: 255+35/vl mana (6.5 + .55/lvl)mana/5s
Spells
Piltover: COST: 50 / 60 / 70 / 80 / 90 MANA COOLDOWN: 10 / 9 / 8 / 7 / 6 PHYSICAL DAMAGE: 20 / 60 / 100 / 140 / 180 (+ 130% AD) MINIMUM DAMAGE: 10 / 30 / 50 / 70 / 90 (+ 65% AD)
Volley: COST: 60 MANA COOLDOWN: 16 / 13 / 10 / 7 / 4 PHYSICAL DAMAGE PER ARROW: 40 / 50 / 60 / 70 / 80 (+ 100% AD)
I doubt anyone will argue early game volley is as good as Piltover... It does less damage, it can be entirely blocked by minions, its mana cost is similar (from a smaller pool,) and it's worse for pushing.
Frostshots also mana gate ashe, when really the only thing ashe does asside from shoot giant ice arrows is apply frostshots and kite stuff.
Volley isn't really much of a damage spell, it rapidly decays into an autoattack interupt that applies frostshots, rather than a real damage ability.
Ashe is basically a DOTA champion that is in League of Legends from before the game fround its style.
My suggestion:
~Remove the mana cost from frostshots and make it a permenently applied passive, so Ashe doesn't go OOM from doing the only thing she does, kite stuff and doesn't have that annoying and unresponsive toggle.
~Reduce early cooldown of Volley to 10 to 12 seconds, rank 5 cooldown remains 4s. Consider scaling mana cost 40 to 70-80 mana
~Increase mana pool or reduce cost of Enchanted Crystal Arrow
~Consider allowing Volley to crit if late game power needs adjustment.
