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Ashe Build Guide by

A very serious guide to AP-Ashe support (+Video)

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Ashe Build Guide By Updated on

Guide Discussion More Ashe Guides

Runes: Lane Dominance; Opressive Poke

1 2 3

Sorcery

Arcane Comet

Manaflow Band

Transcendence

Scorch

Domination

Cheap Shot

Ultimate Hunter

Bonus:

+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+6 Armor

Spells:

1 2 3

Exhaust

Flash

Items

Starting Items

Early Items

Mandate Build

Classic Mandate Core

Synergy with this playstyle

Other AP Items

Non-AP Items

Moonstaff Build

Moonstaff Core

Mooonstaff-Synergy

Other AP/non-AP Items

Enchanter Items

Example Mandate Full Build

Example Moonstaff Full Build

Ability Order W-E-Q

Ashe Passive Ability

Threats & Synergies

Threats

Synergies

Extreme Major Even Minor Tiny

Show All

None Low Ok Strong Ideal

Extreme Threats

Ideal Synergies

Jhin

Ideal

Ashe and Jhin have excellent synergy. Jhin can connect his W off of a Volley and they can generally confirm their hard CC off of each other's. Ashe's slows help Jhin hit his skillshots and their kiting/rundown capabilities synergize and "stack" really well. One misstep against this lane will probably result in a catch and a kill for the Jhin.

Synergies

Ideal Strong Ok Low None

Jhin

Ideal

Champion Build Guide

Video: A very serious guide to AP-Ashe support

This is an in depth add on to this video-guide:

Introduction

Hi, my name is Sq,

I run a small Youtube-channel for fun on which I also upload short video guides on off-meta picks. This guide is an in-depth version of one of these video-guides to complement it and cover it's lack of in-depth information.

I am not very good at the game, so take all of this with a grain of salt, but I did put a lot of thought into this idea, so please give it a shot.

Why Ashe Support?

-support is a flex pick. Most people will expect her to be the adc if picked early. While the existance of -support is widely known and the pick has been played at all levels of play already, in a draft-scenario she can still go either adc or supp.

can create great catch-situations. Her (referred to as Arrow throughout the rest of the guide) can be the longest stun in the game and can be cast from anywhere on the map. Spotting enemies being mispositioned as will almost always result in a catch.

Ashe has a great gank setup. Her slows and arrow-catches make it really easy to gank an -lane. You can play strong side incredibly well and is really strong if your adc is ahead.

has incredible poke really early in the game and after completing . has very long range and is almost impossible to miss. Your AAs have 600AR as well.

Pros & Cons

Pros:
- Strong early poke
- Spikes during midgame
- Insane catch-/engage-potential
- Good kiting and rundown-potential.
- High range

Cons:
- Rather weak peel
- Barely any utility pre-6
- Struggles against gapclosers
- Arrows have a high cooldown

Playstyle

Laningphase:

In lane you mainly wanna poke the enemy laner and apply as much pressure as possible. Make them think twice about walking up to CS, threatening a lot of poke damage.

When planning to engage start off with a Volley followed by an Arrow or anther hard-CC ability from your adc. Keep running them down with your AAs and Volleys.
In case of a gank/counterengage/countergank, Volley as many targets as possible to try and kite away.

Mid-/Lategame:

What Ashe mainly wants to do during the mid- and lategame is create catches. Punish every single misstep enemies make. If you spot an enemy out of position using Stealth Wards or Hawkshots, and you have enough information to assume a free pick, immediately Arrow them and call it out. Having champions like Kai'Sa or Ornn, who can follow up from a distance are great with this strategy.
Spotting out an enemy close to you may not even require an Arrow to catch. Just Volley and run them down until your team can follow up.

Teamfights:

In teamfights, you either want to be the one engaging them with a pick, or stuff out an engage or dive using your Arrow. Once the fight has been engaged, just stay in the backline, keep dishing out Volleys and procing Imperial Mandate/ Moonstone Renewer. In case of a dive onto your adc, you want to have held your Arrow to peel for them. AA targets, who want to move out of the fight (e.g. Fizz uses his E to engage onto his R, fails to oneshot your adc and uses Q close to them in an attempt to dash out) or stick to an ally champion, to slow their advance.

Strengths/Powerspikes

Before you are able to buy a full mythic, opt to buying and first to stack up to 30 Haste.

Unlike the MP5 from , the AP from isn't gonna do too much for you early. Build it only if you already have , and enough s.

Mandate has great synergy with 's . It applies it's damage everytime a hits and it's mythic-passive gives you AP to power up your Arrow. The MP5 helps you sustain through long drawn out sieges and put out constant poke.

How to hit Arrows

Your sole purpose as AP- Ashe support is hitting Arrows. You are gonna have it on roughly a 60 second cooldown pretty early, which makes it really tempting to just throw out an Arrow and hail-mary it towards toplane. However, since it's your only real disengage- and peel-tool, 60 seconds of downtime can be extremely dangerous for you and your team, so you want to make sure to get as much value as possible out of every single Arrow. Completely whiffing an Arrow obviously results in no value at all. So here are some tips to make your Arrows more consistent:

Easy targets are opponents whose pathing and movement is forced. If the enemy gets caught invading your jungle and has to run away, fire an arrow at his escape path. He will be forced to take the shortest route to safety making his pathing really easy to predict. Champions with no complicated mobility are generally always easy to catch out with Arrows in these scenarios. Likewise against champions like or , who can cross walls with their abilities and don't have to stick to predictable pathing, you have to either predict, how they use these abilities, or just wait until they used them up.

It's even easier to hit targets that are standing still. Champions may stand still when attacking a tower, clearing camps, recalling, or they might just not move much while farming or clearing a wave. Some abilies like 's or 's lock champions in place for extended periods of time. All of these actions make them really easy targets to hit and catch.

When trowing an Arrow inside a fight taking place further away, predict the outcome of it. Will they run away from or chase after yur teammates? Will the enemy turn, because he just got his up again? If you are unsure, wait until the outcome of the fight is decided or communicate the Arrow to your teammates for them to force an outcome. They can keep hitting, if they would have lost the fight, or run away although they would have won to bait or displace enemies inside your Arrow.

In general look around the map and identify habits: When does the enemy mid walk away from hitting the tower? Does someone stand still while pushing or hitting the tower? Where do they back? How much does the enemy jgl kite camps? All of these habits can give you small patterns to confirm Arrows off os or make previously established concepts more consistent.

When trowing an Arrow at fight, you can also just throw them at locations, where they are most likely to hit something:

I will sooner or later add a graphic here, showing arrow, angles. As a general rule of thumb, throw it along tight corridors, points where many pathways come together or just down mid lol.

Itemization

Quick explanation as to what is going on here. The different Items/Item-Groups are seperated by thin lines. The context of the thicker lines os a bit complicated. They seperate this section into 4 parts. The 1st one contains the starting items and components of your core-item, the 2nd and 3rd one contain the core item and items that only really work with that build for Mandate and Moonstaff respectively. The 4th part contains all items that work well in either build. Don't consider the order of the items when looking at their strength (e.g.: > ). For better visualisation just go to the top of the guide and look at the items there.

You want to buy , since you get rewarded for agressively poking. You mostly buy it for the poke in the really early stages of laning phase, where is useless, since only your Arrow scales with AP at all.

For your first back you wanna aim for . The 20 Haste are really valuable when poking early and reducing the Arrow-cooldown later. You don't want to buy AP, since you can't get any use out of it right away. Instead take the Haste from and mana-regen from and only finish when there's nothing else to buy.

increases your damage by a ton. Together with you get 40 Haste, which greatly decreases the cooldown of your Arrow. Your W procs 's passive, greatly increasing your poke-damage and damage in fights. The AP you gain from the mythic-passive just add even more damage to your Arrow.

The -buildpath is rather damage-focused, so you get to buy damage-focused AP-Items. has synergy with 's mythic-passive and just increases your damage. It is VERY expensive though. increases the damage on your Arrows and -procs. It is also rather cheap, making it ok to buy as supp. is a bad item, but your only grevious wounds option.

Since you're damage-focused, you also get to buy either for damage and synergy with your or , since that's still the single best vision-control-item in the game. You can also buy or to apply your to multiple targets or from a longer range.

Moonstaff, is one of the strongest item-combinations in the game as of now and has decent synerg with this build as well ... for some reason. You gain even more Haste from 's mythic-passive, than you would get from , and you get to consistently proc it from a safe distance using . You can permanently gain movement-speed, which helps you kite and run down enemy champions and your Arrow still does a reasonable amount of damage.

Building opens up your build-path to build enchanter-items like and . is just bad, but is really busted, considering you get to grant all of your teammates 60% antiheal, while still gaining AP and 40% antiheal yourself for 2300g. has great synergy with most adcs and sill gives you AP.

and don't give you any AP, but they give you a whole 20% increase on your -heal, which isn't as valuable by itself, but considering the raw utility of these two items, I can see them be built on Moonstaff-. is a great for following up on your Arrows and can act as kind of a pseudo-, to connect Arrows. 's cleanse and MR make it a great tool to keep your ADC safe from catches.

gives you 40 Haste and movement-speed to roam and rapid-fire Arrows. By jist buying amd , you don't quite get to 160 AP, but if you buy another , you get to 90 Haste, resulting in about 47% CDR. Similar story with , but you will have to buy just a bit more AP, to proc .

can consistently be proced by , since it has incredible range. The vision helps you facecheck and get vision through walls and brushes, without needing to mid-fight. It also greatly increases your Arrow-damage, since it also procs .

Defensive AP-Items are always great options for any AP-champion. is a great item with great stats and great components. protects you from poke damage and catch-abilities. Both are good items and an excuse to build AP.

and help you apply your to multiple targets of from further away. They don't give you valuable AP or Haste, but since the items are very cheap, you can build them just for the passives. The crit-chance also increases your -slow, which makes the AS you get from those items carry value, since they help you stack your Q faster. Q-AAs are almost guaranteed to apply a crit-slow.

Runes

Primary Runes/Keystones:

When deciding wether to pick or , you just decide to go with . is only good into a few matchups, that you can constantly keep AAing. just does way more damage, is guaranteed to connect off of 's slow, but doesn't get proced by AAs. You mainly pick , but if most of your damage will come from constantly AAing, you may also take .

has a really limited mana-pool, which picking aims to work around by rewarding poke with eventual mana-regenertaion. Once it is stacked, you will most probably never run oom after.

Since AP- greatly benefits from stacking Haste to reduce to CD of her Arrow, is a good rune for her. The CD-refund doesn't do much for her, but neither do or , so you just take the Haste and leave.

-support relies on early poke damage with s and increases your early poke better than any other rune could. You may also pick for the flat AP to increase your Arrow-damage, but it takes some time to become really valuable, where as plays into 's strenghts in the earlygame.

Secondary Runes:

All of 's attacks alow and therefore can proc , which makes this rune really easy to proc and convenient to use. Any combo of two consecutive moves will deal bonus true-damage increasing 's poke-damage even more.

is probably the most important rune for AP--support, since it decreases your Arrow-cooldown even more. Even if you are theorycrafting your onw pages, always pick .

Main Setup:

This is AP--support's main rune-setup. It gives you Haste/CDR from and and early poke-damage from runes like , all complementing this pick's playstyle. You get to spam Arrows and poke a lot with and AAs, while not having to worry about mana-issues, because of .

Conclusion