NOTICE: ALL MY GUIDES WILL NOT RECEIVE UPDATES UNTILL FURTHER NOTICE.

At time of writing (patch 11.6 release) the game is so horribly broken and unbalanced there is no point in writing (or reading) a guide, especially for an off-meta pick. Games are a coinflip right now (at least in silver/gold elo), skill does not matter as roughly 8 out of 10 games are decided by "who has the most broken champs". Of the remaining 2 games, at most 1 is decided by the best player in the match....and the other(s) are decided by the worst feeder. Maybe some sense will return to Rito and I'll get to update these sometime, untill then so long...

Hello There! I Won't Lead You Astray ;)

Welcome to the third installment of "quick and dirty off meta supports" (check out the rest of the series, including Nidalee support and Bard ADC here). Let me preface this by saying this guide is primarily intended for support mains that want to have some fun. For that reason, I'm going to assume that, as a support, you know the basics of warding, laning, etc. Honestly, in my opinion Ashe support isn't that weird. Back when champion descriptions still listed a primary and secondary role - Ashe's secondary was support. But I know I am alone in that opinion, and even then: she's still hopelessly out-of-meta. But that's the point of this series, so let's go for it. So what are we gonna talk about? We'll have a short discussion about the mindset behind this build and then we'll go through some Ashe specific gameplay. That's it, quick & dirty. GL;HF and see you on the Rift :) -DutchWolf PS. If you just want to know the build and start playing (or, you know, if you got auto-filled and panic picked), scroll back up. Got most of the items, abilities, etc. explained in the notes. Give that a read and you should be good to go. P.PS. Yes, all the chapter titles are based on Ashe's VO lines....sorry 'bout that.

Lead The Way
Before we go into anything about Ashe support, I want to give a quick background about how & why I play Ashe supp. First things first, I don't actually play Ashe on my main account. Actually I do, but...you know...as a marksman . The account I play her on, CHAOS Pyro NL, is my "smurf". Originally, I started this account to play with friends that had not reached level 30 yet (since a level 10 with a Gold V premade makes for pretty terrible matchmaking). Later on when all the noobies I knew had either quit or reached level 30, I used the account to practice the roles I rarely play (at the time I was ADC main with support as secondary, so I rarely got to play anything else).

Eventually I got bored with this and started to play weird off-meta stuff to see what I could get away with. Since I was an ADC main at the time this led to a few interesting (and very successful) games as Ahri, Lux and Bard ADC. Or Taric jungle. Or AP Pantheon mid. What can I say, Bronze V is a wonderful place. I think I switched to maining support in season 5. Because I enjoyed that very much (and fill at the time always meant you ended up sup) I also started "maining" it on my smurf. More fun ensued, in the form of a.o. Pantheon, Yasuo and Illaoi support. For me, the fun was not the winning, but taking...well any champ tbh...and trying to make them work as a support. That is to say, I tried come up with a "support-y" build, didn't ks, ward properly etc. With this mindset you end up with an off-tanky Yasuo that uses his Steel Tempest knock-up and Last Breath mainly for the CC and his Wind Wall to shield his carry. The basic philosophy was that, as a support, I intended to enable my team to make the plays by providing vision, peel and CC. This tomfoolery resulted in maining Ashe support for quite a while, until I switched to LeBlanc and later Nidalee. I still enjoy playing Ashe support every now and then. After all, Ashe was my first main way back when (as ADC that is)...and we all have a special place for our first main, right? :)


This is probably as good a place as any for a shout-out, the first guide I read for my first main was jhoijhoi's Ashes to Ashes, which was and still is quite excellent.

Lead The Target
So, like I said, we're gonna skip all the where to ward, how to trade, etc. stuff and just focus on what makes Ashey work as a support. To that end I'll briefly go over the item choices and supply some tips on gameplay. As a support main you should really know the rest already.

Itemization
Most of the items on the cheat sheet should be familiar to you as they are the generic support / tank items, all of which have a specific application. There are some that may appear odd on Ashe so let's go through it.






Let me repeat that for clarity's sake: SLOW. DO. NOT. STACK. This used to be the case, you could get Frozen Mallet for example and it's effect would amplify Frost Shot's slow (or any other slowing ability). And back then this would thus a very good thing to build on Ashe, as you could get your slows (which used to be the the Q ability) up to about 90%....which is insane. However this was changed in season 5 and now only the strongest slow is applied. So any build that is telling you to get Glacial Augment because it will amplify your slows is WRONG. There is only one way to amplify Frost Shot's slows : crit chance. Ashe does not crit, instead her crits amplify the slow based on level. This is why Runaan's Hurricane is such a good item, since you won't just be slowing 3 targets instead of one, but you'll also be slowing them more 30% of the time. What's not to like?

With that out of the way, let's quickly go through the core-ish items. There are a lot of options right now, and what you pick for your runes and mythic really affects your further build path. You'll want to have a general idea of which path you're gonna take in champ select so you can adjust runes accordingly.

So, basically there's two routes to go with building our Ashe, epitomized by the items displayed to the right. We can go tanky or utility. This should be done based on the particular circumstance of the match: no tank in your team? Probably a good idea to build tank. We have a Dr. Mundo top and Sejuani jungle? They've got "tank" covered, probably best to maximize utility. OPFOR is full AD? Let's skip Redemption and see what they make of an unkillably armored "squishy" Ashe. Keep in mind that nobody expects you to be tanky.

There's a third path however: Ardent Censer. I'll briefly explain the mechanics behind building Censer as this might not be obvious to some. Censer isn't as strong as it used to be, but it is still a pretty viable item on Ashe. This is how it works: Ardent Censer procs on heals. Font of Life and/or Moonstone Renewer heals an ally when they hit someone you've recently slowed, stunned, rooted, etc. Frost Shot, Volley and Enchanted Crystal Arrow allow you slow people 90% of the time (99% with Runaan's Hurricane). Let's do some math here....carry the one....yes, that means we will probably proc Ardent's passive multiple times on most of our teammates during a teamfight. That's a pretty good deal.

Gameplay
I could probably write a short book about this, but that wouldn't be quick (I'd probably make it dirty tho). So for this mini-guide we'll focus on three aspects of Ashe support gameplay: the ult, scaling and vision control.

All about dat Arrow I mentioned this in passing, but Ashe support is build around utilizing Enchanted Crystal Arrow effectively. A global stun is a very powerful, make-or-break-a-game, thing. You can use this to:

1) Initiate a fight
2) Turn a fight
3) Disengage a fight

All from halfway across the map if needed. Actually, the further away the better as the stun increases with distance traveled (maxing out at about 4x your AA range). A favorite of mine is to "gank" our midlaner by recalling an putting an arrow straight down his lane. If it misses, we lose some pressure for the next minute or so. If it hits, free kill on our mid. Line up your shots, but use your ult liberally. With all the CDr we build as a support, our ult CD is relatively short. Practice makes perfect. There is one use of the ult that I didn't list...because I really don't want to....but I feel I need to mention it, else there be comments: sniping/securing kills. You CAN use the Arrow to secure a kill on a low HP enemy that got away, but ECA's damage is relatively low so the have to be REALLY low. This is the least useful use of the ult so only do it when you are confident you'll actually get the kill AND there is no other way to get to them.


Always take the high ground
Understanding when you are strong and where you should be is vital to playing Ashe support. At level one we start of decently, thanks to our marksman 's base stats. We can, and should, be trading aggressively from the get-go. However, level 2-5 is a bit of a low in our game. We are squishy, immobile, don't have any items nor our ult. So be careful. A single good engage or gank can ruin our lane. From level 6 and upwards the sun slowly starts to shine again. Once we have our ult, we can start looking for engages (or disengages). Ashe support really is a late game support. When our ult CD comes down, when our items start to rack up, that's when we start to becoming increasingly useful. Positioning remains an important issue due to our lack in mobility and inherent squishyness. Aim to posture as aggressively as you can safely get away with. When a teamfight does break out, you want to be where you can do the most good. Think like a support , not like a marksman . Most of the time you’ll either be out in front helping Master Yi chase down the enemy AD Carry…or you are next to your Jinx, trying to keep their Tryndamere from bashing her brains in (which is incidentally also why Exhaust is far superior to Ignite).

Reveal what is hidden.
Vision wins games. As a support main you should be well aware of that fact, but I recon it bears repeating anyway. When played as an ADC, Ashe's Hawkshot is not optimal for vision control since it has a pretty hefty cooldown. But, now that we max it second and build massive CDr, it suddenly becomes a great tool for tracking the enemy jungler, scanning blindspots, etc. At the later levels it holds two charges, but I prefer to always have one in reserve and one recharging...maximize vision and keeping a back up in case you need vision ASAP.

We're on the right path, but here our paths diverge
If you are reading this: thanks for going all the way through, please leave a like if you liked or a comment if you have any suggestions. I hope it has been obvious that I'm being half-serious in this guide. Honestly, as much as I love playing it.... Ashe-support is not the strongest pick in this (or probably any) meta. Don't let that stop you from having fun tho, in lower-ELO it is perfectly viable...hell, I do recall playing my promo's to Gold as Ashe support...because I was drunk and was under the impression that I was on my smurf, we won that match tho.

So don't let the meta stop you, it's time to head out to the Rift and have fun,
Thanks for reading,
-DutchWolf

PS. If you are looking for more off-meta stuff check out my other guides here.