As a direct descendant of Avarosa, one of the three legendary sisters who each claimed dominion over the scattered tribes dwelling in icy tundra known as Freljord, Ashe mirrors her ancestor’s unparalleled mastery with the bow. Ashe has come to the Institute of War in service to the Institute’s summoners, seeking enough influence and favor to finally bring peace to her realm – a realm that has endured civil strife since the Time of the Three Sisters. With enough victories under her belt, she hopes to have the means to finally claim the throne that had long eluded Avarosa.  Ashe is one of but a few hearty souls from Freljord who can claim the title of Frost Archer. Along with mastery of the bow, Ashe is renowned for her resourcefulness even in the most dire of environments. She has mastered the ability to channel the frigid climate of the tundra into her arrows, slowing her foes with but a single flick of her wrist. She can even deliver a vicious shot from hundreds of yards away that freezes even the strongest of foes in their tracks. As tenacious as she is beautiful, she has earned the respect of ally and foe alike in the Fields of Justice.

Part II: Skill Build

In this part of the build guide, I'll provide two skill builds and ways to customize them to your liking. The reason i'm providing two is you may need to change up your skill build depending on your lane. This portion is open to change and suggestions to include other skill builds as well, so feedback is appreciated.

Legend:

.....F = Frost Shot
.....V = Volley
.....PB = Plentiful Bounty
.....ECW = Enchanted Crystal Arrow

*Note* - I labeled the maximum level spells with (MAX) to show when the ability reaches its highest level.

For BUILD ONE, the idea is that you maximize your farming capabilities through your Plentiful Bounty passive, taking advantage of Volley on creep waves while still being able to kill people. You don't do much slowing so you'll still want to lean towards the continuous farming in this build, but hopefully you end up leveling quickly due to the creep -- and possibly tower -- killing.

The use of BUILD TWO is when you have a(n) fairly competitive lane opponent(s) who end up harassing you and interrupting your farming. You'll want to act quick and become active in harassing them back as well as potentially killing them. This build takes advantage of your slow and nuke, which easily allows for ganks and escapes.


Part III: Item Build

Ashe's item build can be customized in many ways, but is generalized around two strong subjects: Critical Strike and Attack Damage, give or take the stuff that amplifies damage done, such as armor penetration.

Have fun farming these, once you do you'll be knocking people over. If you have a decent team the game should be over before you reach either of the full item builds I listed. Here's the item builds that are found most effective:

For BUILD ONE, start with Regrowth Pendant. Afterwards, work towards Philosopher's Stone and Boots of Swiftness. Then, Work on getting The Black Cleaver, followed by Phantom Dancer. After this, get Infinity Edge. Next we'll replace the Philosopher's Stone with Guardian Angel, and then fill up the last slot with another Phantom Dancer or Atma's Impaler. You should use this build when the opposing team has a lot of ranged caster DPS.

For BUILD TWO, start with Vampiric Scepter and try to get Boots of Swiftness as soon as possible. After that, save up for B.F. Sword and get your Bloodthirster. By now if Dragon isn't already dead, kill some lane creeps to get Bloodthirster's 40 stacks and go solo Dragon. Save up to get your Banshee's Veil, followed by Black Cleaver. Then, get Zeal and Infinity Edge. Upgrade Zeal to Phantom Dancer and replace Banshee's Veil with Guardian Angel. You should use this build when the opposing team has a lot of melee champions and physical DPS.

The items portion is open to feedback, but the builds are tested to be most affective in all forms and difficulties of play. You probably won't complete one of these builds before the game ends. Also, i'll add item builds that people submit that are find to be decent.

Customizing Item Builds: For Ashe, a general strategy to follow when constructing item builds is stacking Critical Strike and Damage, while including survivability. A common phrase used to describe Ashe is a glass cannon. Just remember she hits hard but is fragile.

Part IV: Talent Tree

Most of Ashe's talents will revolve around the Offensive tree. One important thing to remember is that you want to build your talents around which summon spells you are going to use, but don't spec deep into the defense tree or the utility tree to reach them. Here's the talent *I* find best, and it accommodates to my use of Heal and Ghost:

While customizing your talents, try to centralize them around the build I provided if you don't already have one. You can customize it to get your own improved summoner spells, but just remember not to go deep into Defense or Utility unless you can replace the buffs you get out of Offense in another area, such as the Rune Book.

Part V: Rune Book

Ashe has a lot of open space when building your rune book. You can choose survivability by building into health and health regeneration, you can build into runes that grant you gold, and you can build into the offensive runes, such as Attack Damage and Critical Strike. I'm currently using Attack Damage, but it's been found more effective to stack Critical Strike Chance and Critical Strike Damage. (I don't change simply because i'm lazy with the current rune system.) Building the runes will take a lot of time to get it right, but once you have a full page exactly how you want it, you'll find the advantage can be worth it.


IV - Strategy

Ashe requires some clutch play, critical thinking, rambo maneuvers, and farming all in one to successfully carry a game with her. This next section, labeled strategy, will provide tips in all aspects of the game to help your Ashe performance.

Part I: Farming & Early Game

Early game is a critical time window for Ashe. Between levels 1-9 you should primarily focus on farming up gold. From levels 1-5, try to harass your lane opponents as often as possible yet not enough to where you get harassed back and possibly have to return to base. You want to try to maximize your experience gain by staying in the lane as long as you can, so reduce the damage you take in any way early on. Remember, you can always ask your teammates to gank your lane. Keeping them moderately around 40-50% would be fine, but much better if you could keep them lower. Once you hit level 6, you're going to kill one. Depending on the lane your facing, this may or may not be an easy task. If you're against two tanks or a healer, don't even worry about harassing; just farm and try to push the lane up a bit. Remember to take advantage of your passive Focus ability. If you're finding it hard to attack the lane creeps, simply save up your critical strike chance and last hit with that. A good way to kill them is to try to bait them into your tower's range. If this happens, you can shoot them with an arrow in tower range so the tower hits them, too. It's not bad to sacrifice some health to draw them into the tower. Simply hit them with your ultimate, volley, and attack. Stay close to them so that when they run you have leeway in getting your attacks off without the chance of them running out of range. Remember you can have some fun with your ultimate, too. Try helping other lanes from a distance while maintaining your farm in your own by shooting your Enchanted Crystal Arrow at them. If you hit, it initiates the possibility of a kill while you're on the other side of the map.

Part II: Carrying

Woot. Ashe's main role, right here. Being me, I get carried away repeating stuff. But for the sake of my personal tradition, i'll say it again: Ashe is one of the most devastating carry heroes in the League of Legends. Once you get farmed up through your early levels, you want to focus on pushing towers. For Ashe, pushing towers helps in many ways, but the main was in experience for the team to enable greater chances of winning team fights.. And Ashe is good at pushing because she hits so hard. Also, it opens up a larger playing field for ganking and chasing enemy champions. You want to try to gank as much as possible at this point. Work hard on establishing control of the map so that your team can push the base. In team fights, you should try to stick back a bit, placing your team in between you and the enemy, because they will focus fire you. Your judgment is very important in team fights, if things are looking bad and you're probably going to lose the team fight, get out. Ashe dieing opens up the opportunity to push as a team, and this will cause you to lose. Saving yourself in most situations is more important than saving your teammate if it will result in you dieing. When you're inside your opponents' base, always have an escape route. Don't get caught along the walls unless you have flash, etc. Remember to use your Volley behind you when running because (As of patch 0.21.52) it slows what it hits by 50%. Remember not to chase people too far into the depths of their base. Focus on killing the buildings there whenever you can, because killing buildings wins games.

Part III: Synergy

In some games you won't end up soloing as Ashe. While not always your teams' best choice, it does happen. Here are somelanes that Ashe happens to do very well with:

ASHE + SORAKA
Reasoning behind this is that Ashe is able to become more aggressive and able to spam Volley and Frost Shot with mana regeneration and health regeneration.

ASHE + NUNU
Since the mechanics in this game allow for separate slows to stack, Ashe's and Nunu's slows stack on eachother! Enjoy having your enemy basically stuck in place.

ASHE + ALISTAR
Having an active healer, stun, and someone able to toss enemies back to Ashe's range is absolutely amazing when killing enemy champions and pushing towers.

ASHE + ANIVIA
Once again, the dual slows and stuns work great together. Anivia's ultimate combined with Ashe's ultimate and slows locks the enemy in place.

ASHE + EVELYNN
The idea here is that Evelynn stacks ability power for her stun and damaging spell while Ashe keeps the target slowed so it's easy for Evelynn to max damage.

There are many more. In fact, depending on the play style of your lane mate, probably 75% of the champions available would decently work with Ashe.

Part III: "Oh, No!"'s

There are a few champions that Ashe should be careful of throughout the game. These champions either pose a threat to her or tank her damage so well that it's not even worth attacking them.

• Rammus - Tank/Stun
• Alistar - Tank/Stun/Throwback
• Sion - Tank/Stun
• Singed - Tank/Slow/Throwback
• Nunu - Tank/Slow
• Lich - Nuke
• Ryze - Nuke/Stun
• Morgana - Nuke/Stun
• Tristana - Heavy DPS
• Ashe - Slow/Stun/Heavy DPS [FONT="System"](Yes, enemy Ashe's pose a threat)[/FONT]
• Evelynn - Stun/Nuke
• Twitch - Slow/Heavy DPS

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V - Last Words

I've played Ashe a lot.. Probably too much, but arguably the most or at least within the top three most frequent Ashe players in the beta. The builds and strategies I covered may not go into detail on every last move or decision, but they have been tested in all forms of play relative to the beta's standards. (Competitive, Casual, etc). The most important thing you can do when playing Ashe, even if you're not too confident and used this guide as a basis, is to include your own judgment, customizations, and strategy. Thanks for reading my guide, I hope it helped on a few things.