Re: Ashe changes

As a quick introduction explaining why I feel some personal stake in these changes, I played Ashe a fair amount in S3 (100+ games) and some in S4, very little this season. I like the champion a lot (as my S3 playrate should indicate), but she's just weak right now. Anyways...

I'm fairly concerned about these Ashe changes on principle. Firstly, a champ that always has CC on at no cost will either need that CC to be negligible most of the time to balance it (which, in this case, would murder Ashe's kiting) or the champion would simply end up overpowered. Secondly, giving Ashe a ramp-up time in fights means that her kit, which is inherently less DPS-oriented than every other carry, will make her do poor damage in the important initial stages of the fight; meanwhile, every other marksman is going to be critting and DPSing right out the gate. Unless her full stack q marks a dangerously significant increase in DPS, she just won't be able to compete with other marksmen for damage, which is -already- part of her issue. Thirdly, if Ashe can't crit and has low mobility, she has no ability to 1v1 another AD lategame unless she ults them, gets stacks, and then -they- don't crit (which seems fairly unlikely). Fourthly, not having the threat of crit in laning 2v2 post-IE is a painfully large liability. And fifthly, this does very little to address the issue of Ashe ult just being bad mid to late with Mikael's in the game and qss sitting pretty at 1250g. All of these worry me.

Finally -- and bear in mind that I'm still waiting to see numbers pop up somewhere so that I can further examine the kit -- I'm worried that the kit is just made in such a way that it's going to be too oppressive when good. Always on CC? Built in stun? Hawkshot gives global vision? These are all great, but I'm worried that new Ashe doesn't have anything but raw numbers and low mobility to counterbalance them. With this design, I'm just afraid Ashe is going to -have- to be bad when she's balanced, because the individual elements of her kit are so theoretically strong if she's also a DPS carry.

This all makes me feel like making Ashe ramp into damage faster (through interaction with her own kit) is just going to be important to keeping her viable and balance-able; after all, if she can ramp up very quickly, almost immediately, a lot of the reasons the kit is inherently difficult to balance are removed. Something like having ult give two q stacks on stun would go a long way (especially since, as written, ult gives -no stacks- for hitting the primary target, and Ashe ult is leagues more useful as a pick tool than a legitimate engage; hitting more than one or two additional targets with Ashe arrow is practically a fantasy). It'd also make Ashe more viable in skirmish situations (which her new q makes her look fairly bad in, since there are just fewer targets to stack it on).

Anyways, these are my initial thoughts. It's fairly hard to gauge the kit in full without the numbers, as I've said, but parts of the design honestly worry me. I really do like playing Ashe (Amethyst Ashe <3), and I'd like to have reasons to play her, but this rework doesn't seem to be addressing her issues much: She's still, from the looks of it, going to be an immobile AD without high DPS, and no amount of cool utility can fix that. (In some ways, this version of Ashe almost makes more sense as a support than AD, because she has a lot of CC for engage and disengage, good lane harass at no mana cost in a 600 range AA that slows, and a two-charge hawkshot to keep the AD from getting ganked -- and I find that evaluation of new Ashe fairly telling.) I hope we see some more iteration on this concept, and I do hope new Ashe can become viable while still filling her niche as a utility carry, though. After all, I'd love to be able to play her again. <3