How to use Ash's clunky 4th ability (Bladestrom)?

[Nailclipper]

My Ash is fairly new so I don't have much experience with him. From my time playing with Ash, I find that his 4 is too clunky too use: you first press 4, wiggle your crosshair around a group of enemies to mark them, then press 4 again to activate the ability. With practice this could be done faster perhaps, but I still don't like that you need to wiggle your mouse which shakes your screen and makes your aim goes all over the place, not to mention the 3 steps required just to activate an ability.

Any tips how to make Bladestorming smoother?

[McCIoud]

There's no real way of making it better, having to look at all the targets(sometimes more than once) hope they stay in range then reactivating the ability is sadly how it works.

I still wish DE would change bladestorm back

[Enjin3]

It's a terrible ability (by implementation). By the time you've messed around enough to make it work you could otherwise have cleared the entire room by other means.

[Pie_mastyr]

Contrary to popular belief, bladestorm isn't actually bad. They key is to use it in small bursts. Mark two or  four enemies at a time and pick ones that you dont have easy access to. Wiping your cursor over swaths of enemies takes too long to do and takes too long for your clones to kill. Basically mark when you yourself cant attack, and attack when you can't mark ( basically when the clones are out. ) 

Playing ash like this is definitely not as simple as other frames, but once you get the rhythm its super fun and rewarding. Modern day bladestorm builds ( helminthing in savage silence) can put out some serious damage. 

[Tesseract7777]

3 hours ago, Nailclipper said:

My Ash is fairly new so I don't have much experience with him. From my time playing with Ash, I find that his 4 is too clunky too use: you first press 4, wiggle your crosshair around a group of enemies to mark them, then press 4 again to activate the ability. With practice this could be done faster perhaps, but I still don't like that you need to wiggle your mouse which shakes your screen and makes your aim goes all over the place, not to mention the 3 steps required just to activate an ability.

Any tips how to make Bladestorming smoother?

I would love to see them change it to like, idk, hold to charge to create an area of effect in your energy color and then release to do BS, maybe if you are invisible you can see through walls, and instead of costing per enemy it cost per how big you made it up to your power strength/range etc. 

But yeah, stop dreaming Tess... this is PhP. 

That said, it really is clunky and there really isn't any good or quick way to fix or deal with this issue, we need the devs help. If nothing else I would love to see something change because some people like me are actually prone to motion sickness and it can make us feel bad. 

My suggestion is use arcane trick or plenty of invis duration or both, so you have time to take your time marking the targets, it won't make it faster, but it will make it smoother, and make it less likely to bother you visually. Even if you aren't prone to get sick from that kind of thing, that screen shake/blur isn't fun for anyone. 

The post above me is good advice though, it does mean not using it to clear hordes, just a few enemies at a time, but BS is slow at horde clearing anyways, and it will likely save you a lot of physical discomfort even if you are of sound constitution. 

[Godmode_Ash]

Blade Strom is not very good for low level mission, most other frame could kill targets before you can mark them. But if you go high level mission like Steel Path, all of Ash's abilities become godlike.

This is why Ash isn't that popular compare to saryn/volt/equinx, but at same time noone really think Ash is weak that he needs a buff. Ash is REALLY strong, but in low level missions things die too quick to matter.

[Tesseract7777]

37 minutes ago, Invoky said:

Blade Strom is not very good for low level mission, most other frame could kill targets before you can mark them. But if you go high level mission like Steel Path, all of Ash's abilities become godlike.

This is why Ash isn't that popular compare to saryn/volt/equinx, but at same time noone really think Ash is weak that he needs a buff. Ash is REALLY strong, but in low level missions things die too quick to matter.

This is pretty much the thing with Ash. 

His damage is great and scales better than most frames, even more so with stuff like savage silence and radiant finish Ash. 

But his damage per second is rather low which makes him like you said, not shine so much on low level where anyone with a gun that can kill a few enemies at a time makes him look silly. Hell even if they brought back the old Bladestorm, it wouldn't change the fact enemies are often killed by other Tenno abilities and weapons before BS can get to them. 

The only thing I really want changed on Ash is a way to mark enemies that doesn't feel quite as clunky and make me feel sick, but I know not everyone has physical symptoms from prolonged use of BS spin-marking.

[Nailclipper]

Thanks for reply guys.

One funny thing I noticed is that I found myself sometimes busy marking the enemies and stopped hitting them which is kind of what @Enjin3 said. I need to get better at multitasking (and using Ash).

[Crabopoulos-Michael]

hace 3 horas, Pie_mastyr dijo:

Contrary to popular belief, bladestorm isn't actually bad. They key is to use it in small bursts. Mark two or  four enemies at a time and pick ones that you dont have easy access to. Wiping your cursor over swaths of enemies takes too long to do and takes too long for your clones to kill. Basically mark when you yourself cant attack, and attack when you can't mark ( basically when the clones are out. ) 

Playing ash like this is definitely not as simple as other frames, but once you get the rhythm its super fun and rewarding. Modern day bladestorm builds ( helminthing in savage silence) can put out some serious damage. 

I use it kinda like this man too. Even with small range it helps me speed things up. I send the clones to fight small groups while I keep figthing other guys, I don't try to mark the whole room.

You can also build for Bladestorm + Arcane trickery and give that a shot. It can be fun for solo survivals, exterminations and such but it's much less versatile and needs very specific mods and arcanes.

Also, arcane strike and/or primed fury speed up the animation of the clones, for me these are a must.

Hope it helps.

[(PSN)Vexx757]

How I see it no matter how you use his bladestorm, it will never compare to the way old bs was. At least with the old bs`s issues they could b avoided by just looking first before you activate the ability however, the with the current bs you can`t avoid the probs it has.

Here are the issues Ash`s bs has;

Spoiler

·       The two stages of the killing process make bs slow, because of this, other players can take his kills before you get a chance to kill them which makes him not helpful in the team, not fun to play and in a fast-pasted game this is bad.

 

·       Marking enemies for some players is sickening because of the motion of moving the cursor onto enemies, even though it`s easier (but still a problem) to do this using a mouse, doing this on a controller is not as easy, an ability should be able to be easy to use no matter what you use.

 

·       Because enemies are highlighted by your chosen energy colour, it will make enemies more visible to other players to go and kill them which in their minds is a top priority.

 

·       If you want the full damage of bs, you have to mark the enemies three times which will slow you down or  makes you stationary (if you want to do it quickly) to mark enemies with three marks. In low-level missions, your energy will be refunded back to you if you over mark and in high levels you obviously going to want the full damage of it so there is absolutely no point in having to choose the amount of damage you want to dish out. With the old bs, you had the full damage regardless.

 

·       Bodies disappearing makes it to where you can`t bring him in a desecrating team with a nekros. While bodies disappearing makes sense on paper for him being a ninja and I like the idea, unfortunately, this just makes him a problem in that team.

 

·       The indicator shows how many marks instead of how many enemies affected by bs. Because of this, you have no idea how many enemies are going to be killed. If it showed how many enemies affected by bs, it will let the play know when to use bs again.

 

·       Using your 2nd ability to use less energy is not synergy. Synergy is meant to be a choice that makes a difference in missions however, this so-called synergy is a must to use it consistently which makes it a bad gimmick.

 

·       Because of the synergy between his 2nd & 4th ability, you are forced to mod for duration to benefit from using less energy for bs since most people are not going to use bs while it`s taking more energy.

 

·       Using the 3rd ability to join the animation costs no energy but you need energy to be able to use it which makes no sense plus, in low-level missions, sometimes you`re not even going to get a chance use your 3rd ability because the apparitions have killed the enemies already. (depending on how many enemies you mark)

 

·       Apparitions (clones) appearance is not consistent. The visuals go from looking like you custom coloured Ash to a hologram version, to the original ash look with default colours. Also, this is a bug that the old bs had which means it has not been fixed.

 

·       When marking, you can`t mark enemies that are behind walls or objects which make you have to run around searching for enemies to kill and if you in a team, your marked enemies will be killed off by your teammates.

 

·       Even if Ash`s damage has increased to 2,000, (his damage now is still great) the damage is not as good compared to the old bs. The apparitions of the old bs was like Saryn`s 1st ability damage but slightly better, (and the terminator) the apparitions would not stop killing until the enemies were dead and even though attack speed mods can increase their killing speed, with the current bs, the apparitions only attack three times however the bleeding damage speed cannot.

 

·       Because of the way it works, it makes shuriken not favoured in use due to the amount of energy bs costs when modding and how much damage it does and how quick enemies will be killed when activated. This make some people use bs over shuriken.

 

·       The marking mechanic makes the ability ineffective in close-quarter, tight spaces which is what  the majority of the tilesets are, this makes the ability less effective and mostly useless even more so it a team.

 

·       You can`t pick and choose what enemies you want to kill; (which people claim you can do) on paper it makes sense however in practise the idea is not useful. For example, if you wanted to mark an energy eximus in-between two other enemies and you only have enough energy to mark one enemy, you are not able to.

 

Reasons;

· Enemies are running around to where you will either run out of energy or you simply can`t mark the eximus.

· You will have to stand there trying to mark that one enemy.

· You have a chance to get hit by a stray bullet or by an explosion whether you use your 2nd ability or not.

· If you’re playing in a team, someone WILL take the kill from you.

· Teleport can do it better and is faster at it. (this alone destroys the purpose of using it that way)

 

If you want to experience one of bs`s issues right now, just go to Earth defence with a team on normal mode and you will see what will happen to you.

[Canach]

I used to use Ash quite a lot (see the glyph), and I still like the current Bladestorm better than the previous - it is a little non-intuative if you're new to the frame, but it can be a very strong ability.

Some comments:

• Ash is not a Nuke-Level of Point-Defense frame, but Bladestorm gives him a very strong group-kill ability, which goes well with his theme
• Bladestorm is an ability that gets more useful as you get used to using it
• Bladestorm scales very well, as aforementioned, it is comparatively more valuable at higher levels
• Ash is all about being fairly tough + stealth + fatal teleport, whereas bladestorm is more of a less-used utility.

The only Ash ability I really rarely use is his #1 shruriken, which can be very good, especially for a #1 ability, but it doesnt really compete with his weapons he's carrying (IMHO).

G'Luck! 

[isthatTAY]

I wish it worked like Nekros desecrate

1. Activate 4
2. Aim at enemies to mark
3. After a delay (if they are still alive) a clone will attack exactly the same as they do today
4. Energy is spent as clones attack
5. Deactivate 4 

 

This would allow you to play ash in a much more fluid and faster fashion. Could try to inflict as much damage on groups as you could with weapons and could mark targets on your way to aim to a different target and clones would take care of any marked targets that you did not kill with weapons.

 

[(PSN)Vexx757]

Besides Bladestorm Ash has so many issues. I have put up two post about Ash, one is talking about why Ash needs a revisit based on his issues, stats and ppls actions and the other is my version of a revisit for Ash, take a look and tell me what you think on the post, both are very informative.

 

[vegetosayajin]

It's pretty anime moment, but I found that in most cases I forget about it completely and use the first 3 abilities only(with the augments for the 1 and the 3).