All About Ash... some help needed.

[(PSN)PadMar777]

Okay, so I'm about to become the proud Operator of a brand new, gleaming Ash Prime (RNGsus was with me last night as managed to land Systems on the first run). Never played him before but from what I've seen from other Tenno posts he's pretty tier 1 badbottom in the right hands - looking forward to seeing what he can do. So - any advice on Mods for faction builds would be greatly appreciated? ??

[Trichouette]

Hahahaha you're so far from reality.

Ash is so brokenly OP (his 4th ability actually, not the frame itself) devs can't even rework him without him being even more OP than he already is.

Build range & efficiency and press 4, GG WP

[(PSN)joshw1400]

What I did was build for duration and strength to focus on invis teleport with covert lethality and invis bs.

[Nazrethim]

Ash is a very versatile frame, good for teamplay or soloplay. He's also one of the most sucessful Melee frames.

His first ability, Shuriken, deals slash damage and inflicts a nasty Bleed (except on Ospreys). The Augment Seeking Shuriken strips enemy armor, while not reliable for horde armor stripping it comes really handy on Bosses, specially on Armor Sortie Boss. It's also a decent damage ability in Conclave, though the trackign is weaker and requires you to aim.

His second ability, Smoke Screen, provides a short stun in radius (affected by power range) and increases melee damage (as long as you don't bump into an enemy). The augment, Smoke Shadow, makes Smoke Screen cloak allies too (Duration affects how long it lasts and Range affects the radius). In Conclave it breaks if you attack, collect an orb or ammo or if you take enough damage (usually near lethal damage, but still), and lasts only 5s, but increases your mobility by 0.4 (and that is a LOT) so it's good for escaping or doing an ambush.

Teleport is very handy for closing the gap with your enemy and oneshoting key targets (unless they are under the influence of an ancient healer aura). You can also use it on Bleeding allies for a quick rescue by using teleport>smoke screen>revive your ally. The Augment Fatal Teleport makes the execution automatic and bypasses the Ancient Healer problem I mentioned while increasing Finisher damage by 200%, which makes it likely to kill anything while refunding 50% of the cost (good for builds that don't feature efficiency). It also works with Covert Lethality, so a dagger-wielding Ash can go around oneshoting everything.

Blade Storm is one of the best killing abilities while having cool animations (though the camera angle can be problematic if you have Berserker or Fury). The animation speed is affected by melee attack speed mods and Blade Storm contributes and is affected by the Combo Counter and Body Count/Drifting Contact. The Augment Rising Storm makes it even better by granting 100% Combo Counter duration (if you have both Body Count and Drifting Contact using an augmented Blade Storm gives you a whooping 50s combo counter). Don't use it when there are Ancient Disruptors, Oxium Ospreys or Napalms as they are near impervious to Blade Storm and will leave you locked in an attack loop until the ability runs out of attacks. Careful use or not use at all on Radiation Sorties.

In Conclave is a rather "meh" ability, mostly because it has short range and average damage (and because Conclave Finisher damage doesn't ignore shields) and the fact that it can be missed (if you are out of range or don't aim right you waste energy). Goodish to kill frames like Inaros or Valkyr tho.

 

Builds:

Well you have 4 options here:

Full Duration: to boost Smoke Screen at the cost of Range and Efficiency

BladeSpam: Full efficiency and low duration to maximise Blade Storm. I've seen people stacking PowStr with Blind Rage and Transient Fortitude for some f^cking reason even though a good melee with Body Count/Drifiting Contact and default duration are way better since you can cast Smoke Screen and BS already does a lot of damage from the melee coutner

Balanced: just add a bit of every positive mod and some stats.

My Build:

Steel Charge (aura), Handspring (Exilus)

(P) Continuity, Rage, Vitality, Steel Fiber/Redirection, Armored Agility/Enemy sense (depends if it's a run&kill mission or a stealth) Quick Thinking, (P) Flow, Misc (Augments, Sure Footed, Pain Threshold, Stretch, etcetera)

[TrickshotMcGee]

Ash's solely useful ability is Bladestorm, which is, in reality, just broken. Ash is not a baller, his ult is. Ash himself isn't all that good. Building for range and efficiency is honestly the only way you need to mod him. Duration is irrelevant for everything except Smoke Screen, but that's almost entirely useless anywyas, and as long as you don't have negative  power strength, you're fine. 

[TrickshotMcGee]

8 minutes ago, Nazrethim said:

even though a good melee

IIRC the only melee mods BS uses are speed mods and Body Count, so if you have (P) Fury and Body Count on an otherwise useless dagger, you won't lose anything because of it. 

[Kalvorax]

12 minutes ago, Nazrethim said:

Ash is a very versatile frame, good for teamplay or soloplay. He's also one of the most sucessful Melee frames.

His first ability, Shuriken, deals slash damage and inflicts a nasty Bleed (except on Ospreys). The Augment Seeking Shuriken strips enemy armor, while not reliable for horde armor stripping it comes really handy on Bosses, specially on Armor Sortie Boss. It's also a decent damage ability in Conclave, though the trackign is weaker and requires you to aim.

His second ability, Smoke Screen, provides a short stun in radius (affected by power range) and increases melee damage (as long as you don't bump into an enemy). The augment, Smoke Shadow, makes Smoke Screen cloak allies too (Duration affects how long it lasts and Range affects the radius). In Conclave it breaks if you attack, collect an orb or ammo or if you take enough damage (usually near lethal damage, but still), and lasts only 5s, but increases your mobility by 0.4 (and that is a LOT) so it's good for escaping or doing an ambush.

Teleport is very handy for closing the gap with your enemy and oneshoting key targets (unless they are under the influence of an ancient healer aura). You can also use it on Bleeding allies for a quick rescue by using teleport>smoke screen>revive your ally. The Augment Fatal Teleport makes the execution automatic and bypasses the Ancient Healer problem I mentioned while increasing Finisher damage by 200%, which makes it likely to kill anything while refunding 50% of the cost (good for builds that don't feature efficiency). It also works with Covert Lethality, so a dagger-wielding Ash can go around oneshoting everything.

Blade Storm is one of the best killing abilities while having cool animations (though the camera angle can be problematic if you have Berserker or Fury). The animation speed is affected by melee attack speed mods and Blade Storm contributes and is affected by the Combo Counter and Body Count/Drifting Contact. The Augment Rising Storm makes it even better by granting 100% Combo Counter duration (if you have both Body Count and Drifting Contact using an augmented Blade Storm gives you a whooping 50s combo counter). Don't use it when there are Ancient Disruptors, Oxium Ospreys or Napalms as they are near impervious to Blade Storm and will leave you locked in an attack loop until the ability runs out of attacks. Careful use or not use at all on Radiation Sorties.

In Conclave is a rather "meh" ability, mostly because it has short range and average damage (and because Conclave Finisher damage doesn't ignore shields) and the fact that it can be missed (if you are out of range or don't aim right you waste energy). Goodish to kill frames like Inaros or Valkyr tho.

 

Builds:

Well you have 4 options here:

Full Duration: to boost Smoke Screen at the cost of Range and Efficiency

BladeSpam: Full efficiency and low duration to maximise Blade Storm. I've seen people stacking PowStr with Blind Rage and Transient Fortitude for some f^cking reason even though a good melee with Body Count/Drifiting Contact and default duration are way better since you can cast Smoke Screen and BS already does a lot of damage from the melee coutner

Balanced: just add a bit of every positive mod and some stats.

My Build:

Steel Charge (aura), Handspring (Exilus)

(P) Continuity, Rage, Vitality, Steel Fiber/Redirection, Armored Agility/Enemy sense (depends if it's a run&kill mission or a stealth) Quick Thinking, (P) Flow, Misc (Augments, Sure Footed, Pain Threshold, Stretch, etcetera)

wow this was very informative....havent played my ash prime in a few months as BS was sadly the only thing he was good at until he got his fatal Teleport augment, which as you said is great with a DC dagger...particularly a dark dagger with the syndicate augment.

Edited November 3, 2016 by xcynderx

[-Kryptyk-]

Ash's strongpoint is the bleed proc he causes from forced slash damage.  Bladestorm is broken in that it forces finisher damage on top of that slash, so your best bet will be a duration and strength build to prolong the procs, increase invisibility time, and up the bladestorm damage.  You don't want to necessarily build specifically for damage with no duration, since that will cause a decrease in the slash proc time, and therefore overall damage (which means faster dps falloff unless you're going to be spamming 4 the entire time). 

Despite what everyone says about him being "not good" with his first three abilities, they all have very practical uses.  His 1 is that forced slash proc that can help you against heavy units and obliterate the lighter units.  His 2, while not being as great as loki, is still fantastic as a support ability if you need to revive teammates or get out of sticky situations.  And his 3 is incredibly useful in that enemies that you teleport to can be opened up to finishers, and the augment will guarantee that - perfect for heavy unit takedowns.  More reasons to go for duration and strength - range doesn't affect gameplay much at the moment with him. 

Also, make sure you have a fully modded melee - he scales based off that.

Every time I play ash, all 4 of those abilities get used for sure, and I try to limit using his 4 to clear out mobs instead of spamming it.  No sense in wasting that kind of energy.

Edited November 3, 2016 by Firefly0037

[Nazrethim]

3 minutes ago, TrickshotMcGee said:

IIRC the only melee mods BS uses are speed mods and Body Count, so if you have (P) Fury and Body Count on an otherwise useless dagger, you won't lose anything because of it. 

Well yeah, but then, if BS works off the combo counter, why using Transient Fortitude and Blind Rage? Enemies resistant to blade storm are still going to shrug off the attacks and lock you in animation while also murdering the usefulness of Smoke Screen (which as I mentioned, can be used to save a teammate or to activate a survival capsule). I simply cannot understand the minds of the press42win crowd (which aren't fans of Ash actually, as they will likely dump him once BS receives the tweak-that-doesnt-solve-anything)

5 minutes ago, xcynderx said:

wow this was very informative....havent played my ash prime in a few months as BS was sadly the only thing he was good at until he got his fatal Teleport augment, which as you said is great with a DC dagger...particularly a dark dagger with the syndicate augment.

Ash was always a good and solid frame, people using and abusing Corrupted Mods to make the most mindless and spammy builds possible are the only problem. I've been berated in publics for being a an Ashole spammer, then berated for not spamming bladestorm (as my build didn't allow it) but then receiving praise for having useful Smoke Shadow and saving the team several times. All of that on the same mission.

[FAZZWARFRAME]

Ash's bladestorm is very powerful and makes you feel like a badbottom, problem is that it makes the game not fun for your teammates.  Be a considerate player and keep in mind that when you spam bladestorm it is at the expense of other people's enjoyment.

[rudman88]

2 choice

path of spamming -> efficiency + range + str ( screw duration)

Or

Balance built for solo and survival

 

whats good about ash

ash prime is tanky

it is very versatile

can be everything

 

and the animation is still the coolest ( 2 years and i still love to watch it)

Edited November 3, 2016 by rudman88
typo

[TrickshotMcGee]

1 minute ago, Nazrethim said:

Well yeah, but then, if BS works off the combo counter, why using Transient Fortitude and Blind Rage? Enemies resistant to blade storm are still going to shrug off the attacks and lock you in animation while also murdering the usefulness of Smoke Screen (which as I mentioned, can be used to save a teammate or to activate a survival capsule). I simply cannot understand the minds of the press42win crowd (which aren't fans of Ash actually, as they will likely dump him once BS receives the tweak-that-doesnt-solve-anything)

Ultimately, there's about 5 enemies that are resistant to BS in the whole game. Dumping more damage into it ensures that everything else just dies as fast as possible while the annoying enemies are quickly mopped up by their Synoid Spamulor.

I dislike Ash. I don't enjoy his powers, despite legitimately trying to, and there's no way to make a build that scales as well as a BS build does, solely because it's broken beyond belief and 2 of his 3 remaining abilities are rendered near useless for the fact that they're not designed to scale.

Sure, Shurikens can do bleed damage, but without a strength build they won't kill a damn thing. Hell, WITH a strength build they don't kill a damn thing after a certain level. 

You have to specifically mod for Smoke Screen, which actually shoots itself in the foot because it kills range in doing so, and that screws over his 3rd and 4th abilities by either reducing their range stupidly (which is also bad for Smoke Screen), or kills his 4th by requiring you to use Overextended to make up for the range loss, which again requires a strength mod that kills another stat. If the ability had more than a couple seconds of duration, I'd consider actually using a build that includes it because I quite like radial stuns, but it's honestly pretty garbage. A normal invis would be more useful, as would nearly every other stun in the game because it has such a low base duration. 

 

Ash is not designed well, and it shows when trying to build for him. 2 of his abilities don't scale, and modding for one thing screws you over for another. 

[Nazrethim]

4 minutes ago, TrickshotMcGee said:

Ash is not designed well, and it shows when trying to build for him. 2 of his abilities don't scale

Considering his 1 2 and 3 haven't received ANY change whatsoever (and won't be, because DE decided to lazily tweak BS instead of giving Ash a full rework as actual Ash fans wanted) so they are outdated.

4 minutes ago, TrickshotMcGee said:

 modding for one thing screws you over for another. 

Well, that's the point of Corrupted mods. You can always equip all positive mods and have little in specific aspects but being overall better.

Actually, now that I think about it, it would have been cool if, instead of a sh*tty targeting tweak, DE changed BladeStorm's number of attacks scale off Duration, so a 'no duration' build would only have like 3 attacks at best.

Edited November 3, 2016 by Nazrethim

[TrickshotMcGee]

12 minutes ago, Nazrethim said:

Considering his 1 2 and 3 haven't received ANY change whatsoever (and won't be, because DE decided to lazily tweak BS instead of giving Ash a full rework as actual Ash fans wanted) so they are outdated.

True, but there are other frames who have mostly unchanged 1st and 2nd abilities that aren't actually all that bad. Excalibur, for example, has only actually gotten functional nerfs to his 1 & 2, yet they scale a ton better than Ash's and remain useful (mostly) into high levels. Take note that one of them is a blind (Radial Blind, to be precise), just like Smoke Screen, but it's 10x better even though it got nerfed. Lasts longer, takes less time to cast, and doesn't have a pointless invis that gets screwed when you try to mod him for anything worth a damn. 

 

And I get that corrupted mods are supposed to make you pick, but most other frames aren't as black and white as Ash is. It's either modded for duration, strength, or "balanced", which is harder to maintain when you don't have some form of energy regen and/or healing. 

(this last bit didn't come out as well as I had hoped. a "balanced" build on Ash isn't all that good because none of his abilities are overly useful without bonus range. Adding significant range forces you to pick from Duration or Strength, as the only other option is a balanced build that scales poorly compared to a strength build)

Edited November 3, 2016 by TrickshotMcGee

[Nazrethim]

1 hour ago, TrickshotMcGee said:

True, but there are other frames who have mostly unchanged 1st and 2nd abilities that aren't actually all that bad. Excalibur, for example, has only actually gotten functional nerfs to his 1 & 2, yet they scale a ton better than Ash's and remain useful (mostly) into high levels. Take note that one of them is a blind (Radial Blind, to be precise), just like Smoke Screen, but it's 10x better even though it got nerfed. Lasts longer, takes less time to cast, and doesn't have a pointless invis that gets screwed when you try to mod him for anything worth a damn. 

Invisibility is always good (unless nullifiers, but f*ck those anyway) and Teleport scales well. The only non-scaling ability is Shuriken, which DE could easily adress by making it scale off the combo counter. I did suggest Smoke Screen stagger should open enemies to Finishers, which would make it very powerful.

1 hour ago, TrickshotMcGee said:

And I get that corrupted mods are supposed to make you pick, but most other frames aren't as black and white as Ash is. It's either modded for duration, strength, or "balanced", which is harder to maintain when you don't have some form of energy regen and/or healing. 

Balanced build that works up until lvl 120:

Steel Charge (or CP if you go in a pre-made group), Handspring.

Intensify, Streamline, Stretch, Continuity, Flow, Rage, Vitality and Quick Thinking

A good melee weapon with Maxed Life Strike.

1 hour ago, TrickshotMcGee said:

(this last bit didn't come out as well as I had hoped. a "balanced" build on Ash isn't all that good because none of his abilities are overly useful without bonus range. Adding significant range forces you to pick from Duration or Strength, as the only other option is a balanced build that scales poorly compared to a strength build)

Because you are thinking in Corrupted mods, a balanced build doesn't include them, that's why it's called "balanced".

[(XBOX)BigQuadTodd]

as an ash player DO NOT build for his fourth, yes it may be good with like level 80-90 enemies but in high levels, BS is either not going to do much or its just going to take away a fraction of their health. build for duration and range and put on a fatal teleport, thats his best combo because being invisible for like 14 seconds is actually way more useful than many other people think. Also a dagger might come in handy too

[kyori]

Secret:

 

 

You don't need a dagger or melee weapon to use bladestorm.

To even more cheese out stuffs... I use Ash on sorties with condition that requires a weapon that I am not good in(eg. I don't have a powerful bow), just use Ash and his bladestorm. There is absolutely no need to use the required weapon at all.

 

*People hate Ash because there are lame players out there only spamming power 4 and insult others being useless.

[(PSN)PadMar777]

Thanks, guys - exactly the sort of hints and advice I needed. See you all out there sometime! ?