Champion Update: Ashe takes aim at PBE

Another old timer within League’s ever-deepening champion pool, Ashe has seen almost six years shoot by with her launch kit largely intact. Until now! We’re not rebuilding her from the ground up, but we have made some pretty meaningful changes to her abilities all intended to solidify Ashe as League’s premier utility carry. Finally, we’re also sliding in a couple of small tweaks to give her opponents more ways to play against her. Here’s a rundown of her new moves!

Check out the abilities above and you’ll see that most of our changes focus on taking out the less exciting aspects of her kit. Frost Shot, for instance, was a pretty dull ability: you either had the ability on and slowed your targets while slowly losing mana, or you didn’t. At the same time, we really liked the idea of Ashe as a kind of utility marksman, someone who brings unrivalled crowd control and vision to games compared to other champs in her class. So we moved Frost Shot to her passive, simultaneously kicking her old toggle to the side while opening up her Q for something new. Ranger’s Focus fills the gap, providing Ashe with incentives for staying in combat (versus her old passive, which literally rewarded you for not attacking), and giving her a decent spike in damage when she handles her Focus stacks effectively.

As for the other part of her passive, removing crit strikes from a marksman might feel unintuitive - they’re pretty central to a bunch of basic attack damage dealers - but Frost Shot still rewards Ashe for building crit. Thing is, instead of hoping to get the occasional nuke, Ashe players will consistently deal extra damage as they build crit, and even more damage when they build that old staple of hers: Infinity Edge.

The changes to Ashe’s passive and Q enhances her basic attack-focused gameplay during all stages of a game. She shoots things, builds up Focus, then uses Ranger’s Focus to deal extra damage alongside her basic attacks. That left Volley too strong, so we tweaked it. We gave Ashe more rounds in her Volley, so if she’s able to cast it from distance, she can theoretically hit more targets and instantly fully stack her Focus. However, to compensate, we retooled the ability so that enemies and neutral targets are now much more likely to absorb multiple arrows. Old Ashe could fairly reliably hit enemy targets through their minion wave, something that’ll be much harder to pull off with the updated ability. This means enemy frontliners can get up in Ashe’s face now and reliably tank every Volley round for their backline squishies. These changes should emphasize Volley as a tool for Focus development and crowd control rather than raw power and poke, and although it’ll be less of a threat during laning, the ability will have a bigger presence in teamfights, particularly when Ashe positions herself correctly.

Finally, we took out the old Hawkshot passive because it basically gave Ashe a bunch of invisible power. Instead, we gave her tangible power by significantly improving her E active! Turning Hawkshot into a global ability - and allowing her to store multiple charges - gives Ashe and her team an immediate and immense vision bump, particularly when the enemy team’s effectively killing your network of wards. By firing out multiple Hawkshots, Ashe can use their vision to scout out Baron and the surrounding brush for signs of impending Fnatic-style brush baits. You now have no excuse for facechecking!

---

Ashe heads out onto PBE today. Take her for a spin and let us know your thoughts on the Frost Archer’s new kit! For more champion update team news, head over to the gameplay and balance subcommunity!