Ashe's Hawkshot passive has got to go

Yousonerfed·Dec 8, 2013·8 votes·910 views

I have long hated the passive gold bonus on Ashe's Hawkshot. It's invisible power, has no real tangible effect unless you invest in it, and investing in it early is FAR too risky.

I've experimented with leveling Hawkshot early about 15 times now. All but one of those times, I got stomped on because my lane got pushed down and I couldn't fight back. The one time it worked, it was 5v4. Suffice it to say, leveling Hawkshot early doesn't work.

The big problem with it, however, is that it takes up Ashe's power budget in a VERY bad way. When you only put one point into it, you'll be lucky to get 100 gold out of it before laning ends. If you do invest in it, you might get 300-ish gold, something you could have gotten much more easily if you had just gotten a kill. Unfortunately, you invested in Hawkshot, which does NOTHING for you in a fight, so you now can't kill anyone!

I've got more arguments on the forums here: http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=4101641

Unfortunately, Riot seems not to want to say a damn thing about it.

19 Comments

Quantum WeebDec 8, 20132 votes

I remember that thread. Still a good argument so upvote, although personally I've found porting threads over doesn't have much success since there's more traffic on GD. Best of luck to you though, hopefully you have more success on the beta than I did.

FF1224Dec 8, 20132 votes

Ashe's E needs to be on par with Quinn's W.

MandaariDec 10, 20132 votes

Agreed with your other thread and I agree with this one.

Also keep in mind that you have to get to level 9 to get the full 5g out of her passive, so you're going to get a lot less than 300g in 10 minutes.

To be fair though, Hawkshot's active is pretty useful in fights. It gives you vision of an entire area for a few seconds. But she has so much utility in her kit that that she can't really carry without a full build. That's especially hard now that games end a lot faster than they used to.

I feel like Riot's also scared to give her more power because of her ult. I'd really hate to see her ult get changed. It's what she's known for. But at the same time I think if they changed the stun to a snare it would give her a lot of room elsewhere.

Aeolian MelodiesDec 11, 20131 votes

Games end faster than they used to??? Have we been playing the same game?

MandaariDec 11, 20131 votes

They end a lot faster than they used to. Back in seasons 1 and 2 it was the norm to get 40+ minute games. Now a 40m game is considered a long time.

Aeolian MelodiesDec 11, 20131 votes

??? My games are either 20 min stomps or 50+ minutes comebackfests. 30-40 minutes is the intended game length (on SR at least) but I rarely get them since the patch. Either one team stomps hard early or both team keep going back and forth due to "come backs" and limited vision.

MandaariDec 11, 20131 votes

You're talking about games since the patch. I'm talking about since the game's release. Over the last 3 seasons games have gotten shorter and shorter.

Aeolian MelodiesDec 12, 20131 votes

Oh, that, yes. Sure. Nevertheless they've gotten significantly longer since the last patch.

JackAquaDec 8, 20131 votes

I did a post on how they could switch the passive gold to passive vision, and then a sir came around and explained to me how Ashe's gold was relevent and useful. I didn't get it, I still think she should get more vision.

MandaariDec 10, 20131 votes

The gold is only relevant because Ashe is incredibly item dependent. Her AS/level scaling is among the best, but other than that her stats are all very lackluster. On top of that volley is her only damage ability. If she actually had a passive she wouldn't need Hawkshot's passive.

Crimson HatchetDec 8, 20131 votes

Yea, A cool passive for hawkshot would be that your on your screen (and your screen alone) you have additional sight range. So that you would have to work with your teammates to call out ganks early. She wouldn't need as many wards either. Good luck

RiseAgainst7Dec 8, 20131 votes

Honestly, I like the gold passive. If you invest in it, you play safe and farm rather than go for kills, and you'll always make more gold per/cs than anyone else in the game, especially if you rush avarice blade as is so popular nowadays (Everyone loves statikk shiv for some reason.) That's a minimum of 3 extra gold per cs to a maximum of 7 (+2 gold per kill w/ Avarice) Not to mention the gp/10 effect. You can make extremely gamechanging comebacks by virtue of extra gold income. Not to mention, leveling hawkshot early shouldn't cause you to lose unless you continually try to out trade your lane opponent even when you know you don't have the volley damage. Let your passive build up if necessary and shoot them with the 200 damage+ criticals as your harass. It doesn't take as long to build up as it once did.

YousonerfedDec 8, 20132 votes

That does not feel fun at all, and if we were to do a comparison, Draven gets a lot more gold from killing you AND from farming up Adoration.

Plus if you are farming that hard, your opponents are going to realize what you're doing and just overpush you, and you can't fight back because you didn't invest in Volley or Frost Shot. They will simply crush you and laugh at your futile attempt to defend yourself.

Like I said, I've tried maxing out Hawkshot first on several occasions, all of which have failed and resulted in a loss. What makes you think my opponents would ever let me free-farm?

AmakDec 9, 20131 votes

Volley isn't mana efficient and it has a long cooldown until the much higher levels. Frost Shot is not a particularly defensive ability, either. To me, it makes the most sense to level up Hawk Shot and play passively. So what if they push? A good ADC can still farm quite nicely while hiding under the turret. Once you're getting 5 extra gold per CS it starts rolling in. I commonly outfarm the enemy ADC whether they're aggressive or not.

My win rate with Ashe is pretty high, and I always level Hawk Shot first. Ashe isn't an aggressive ADC, so she should never be played like one. She relies on good ganks and a strong support who can zone really well to get kills in the lane. She also shouldn't be picked against certain ADCs. I'd never play Ashe against Draven, for example.

RiseAgainst7Dec 11, 20131 votes

I completely agree! That's the way I play Ashe, and fun isn't really the most important thing in a competitive game. If you play to win, you may have to sacrifice fun during the lanephase and hold down the fort till teamfights. I think Ashe's passive effect may need tweaking, but I like the gold per kill part.

OpasonofpopaDec 13, 20131 votes

I don't know what your level of play is but seriously if you try to do that in gold or maybe even silver the opponents will just dive you and farm you instead of the creeps till your score is like 0-20-0 at which point you are worth about as much as the creeps. And yes they can EASILY do that after lvl 6 or in some cases 5 if you don't max volley. Also you will lose cs quite a bit because you really can't even get close to the creeps if they are not close to your turret, nullifying the extra gold you get.

In short always max volley if you don't want to get utterly crushed by decent opponents.

RiseAgainst7Dec 15, 20131 votes

Not necessarily. They can't dive shit 2v2 under a turret man. Even if you don't have volley, if they dived you 2v2 under your turret you will get a double kill hands down. There is no middle ground. You'd be level 6 too, and you're Ashe. Permaslow and stun them under turret. I'd really like to see you dive me while I was playing Ashe. It just doesn't work, especially if your support also has a stun. Unless of course the enemy bot lane is ALREADY fed in which case diving is easily done.

RollThatJayDec 9, 20131 votes

I dont see why you are complaining about gold, if you cannot cs your lane then dont adc. It isnt an impossible task to last hit minions so personally I dont see why you care, hawkshot is meant to reveal an area. NOT HELP YOU IN A TEAM FIGHT.

Rgamer684Dec 10, 20131 votes

I've got to say, I've always found Hawkshot best as a bush check to keep from getting ganked and/or face smashed by a bruiser like Jax, etc. That said, I also think Ashe pairs best with a extremely aggressive support like Thresh or Blitz, who has burst damage + disables early on to compensate for Ashe's lack thereof. She's definitely weaker early game than most other ADCs, but so what? She's even late game (at worst), and has a mechanic to let her get there faster than most other carries, especially as far as gold is concerned. My take: Take hawkshot at level 2 or 3 at the latest, get a level in everything (Volley and frost arrow to help you stay out of fights, or prevent escapes when your jungler ganks), and max it as aggressively as you are comfortable with. It requires a lot of early game patience, and very passive play, but the reward is great. By the time the teamfight phase shows up, you're a few hundred gold ahead of their carry, even if your jungler didn't gank at all. If your jungler did gank, you should be anywhere from 500 to a thousand gold ahead, which gets you closer to any core item you like. This means your team can push that few hundred gold to a thousand gold earlier, which is no small deal.

Meanwhile, if I'm supporting as Thresh, my favorite, I can keep them off you, or if we're fighting by tower, drag them under tower, where they're easy meat. Sona is a bit harder, but doable, and Blitz is just OP.