Ash Gameplay Guide

[Ash]'s kit is balanced between stealth and powerful Slash procs. His passive can make many appropriately modded Slash sources scale into endgame content. His base abilities provide reasonable damage but his ability augments give him great flexibility. His stealth isn't the strongest when compared to other frames but any form of stealth is a powerful survival tool.

📝 Build Overview 📝

This build is focused on countering Demolisher/Demolysts in level cap Disruption runs. These enemies have various resistances to abilities and damage types along with huge health pools. Ash is able to burst them down with meta Slash weapons and concentrated attacks over several seconds.

Demolisher/Demolysts have an aura that pulses every few seconds which can disable nearby active abilities. It's suggested to stay out of this aura when possible. This build elects to setup a few powerful attacks rather than trying to whittle down their health over an extended period of time due to these pulsing auras.

Most builds utilize tools that can be swapped out to serve the same purpose albeit in a different manner. The following suggestions are an outline and aren't exhaustive.

🔢 Helminth Options 🔢

Teleport is the weakest ability in this setup without the augment and the build has low Range. Shuriken is useless without the augment and Blade Storm could arguably be seen as a waste of energy without the augment as well. Replace the weakest unaugmented ability as you see fit.

Expedite Suffering significantly increases your damage and is the safest ability to use when confronting the ability-disabling aura that Demolisher/Demolysts emit. This setup may require you to be very close to the enemy when casting the ability.

Sickening Pulse can significantly increase your damage but it has varying results depending on your weapon choices. It also doesn't synergize with a high Duration build on multiple casts.

Roar boosts your Slash procs and this build relies entirely on Bleed damage to burst down the Demolisher/Demolyst. It's the most expensive of the buff choices.

[Xata]'s Whisper provides an additional instance of damage that scales reasonably well against most factions. The Void proc can also trap some projectiles inside a small damaging bubble that follows the enemy.

Fire Walker and Spellbind provide decent quality of life in all content. They also synergize with the ability stat spread.

Lull and Condemn stun some Demolishers/Demolysts but their inconsistency forces you to individually test them against your preferred mission.

Other abilities are decent but provide a lot of redundancy due to the existence of operator mode and the previously mentioned options.

📊 Modding Plan 📊

Duration is the most important stat on this build as Smoke Screen is your only base form of survivability. Other stats will be tailored to whichever ability you choose to subsume. Strength has some investment to increase the effectiveness of Expedite Suffering.

Helminth Invigorations, Arbitration Buffs, Ally Abilities, Arcanes, and other external stat boosts can save you multiple mod slots but may rely on specific team compositions, loadouts, or sheer luck. Plan around these situations and modify your loadout to hit desired ability stat breakpoints.

❤️ Survivability ❤️

Invisibility trivializes most threats as long as you pay attention to cooldowns, avoid enemies that disable nearby abilities, and utilize the parkour system to stay away from large area of effect attacks.

[Rolling Guard] or other forms of temporary invincibility may be necessary to deal with enemies that can counter your survival options or to cover minor mistakes.

⏲️ Duration ⏲️

Smoke Screen has one major downside in its inability to be recast while it's active. This forces you to limit all of your offensive interactions with enemies to whatever Duration the ability has left. Augur Message or Constitution can be swapped in to push more Duration over flex mods.

⛽ Efficiency ⛽

[Streamline] and [Primed Flow] give you a significant buffer to use your abilities in an emergency. Smoke Screen isn't expensive but other abilities you subsume may take a more significant cut into your energy economy. [Fleeting Expertise] hurts your Duration but it may be worth it to slot over one of the flex mod slots due to the nature of how Efficiency has multiplicative returns.

📏 Range 📏

Range isn't very useful on this build and it takes a backseat to other ability stats. Smoke Screen is the primary ability in this build variant and doesn't scale off of Range. [Narrow Minded] gives such a massive boost to Smoke Screen's Duration that it probably isn't worth replacing it to get your Range back unless your subsumed ability needs Range to function properly.

💪 Strength 💪

Strength isn't used on any of the base abilities but Expedite Suffering requires some investment to increase your damage. Transient Fortitude is the easiest mod to slot in but Blind Rage is a greedier option.

🔧 Quality of Life / Augments 🔧

[Empowered Blades] significantly increases the damage from your Heavy Attacks and synergizes with Expedite Suffering. It's far more useful when stacked with other players using the same mod so it can be replaced if you're doing a solo run.

[Primed Sure Footed] is a powerful survival tool that completely negates many forms of hostile crowd control. It also allows weapons with a large area of effect to be fired with impunity. It's an expensive login reward so replace it if you have other forms of status effect immunity.

Demolishers/Demolysts nullify abilities when you're close to them so your only form of survival will be [Rolling Guard]. Augur Set mods can be added to grant an additional buffer.

[Rising Storm] is a flex augment that can be replaced with [Seeking Shuriken] against status immune enemies or any other mod that fits into the polarity plan. It's intentionally kept at Rank 0 to fit into the polarity plan.

⚙️ Arcanes ⚙️

Arcane Energize pairs well with [Primed Flow] and allows you to be extremely greedy with your ability casts. It can be replaced if you're confident with your energy economy or you're playing with an ally Warframe that provides energy. Offensive arcanes like Arcane [Fury] or defensive arcanes like Arcane Resistance are usually the call on most content.

Arcane Strike synergizes with the melee oriented playstyle of most [Ash] builds. It can be replaced if you're focusing on your abilities or guns. Tertiary offensive arcanes like Arcane Avenger or defensive arcanes like Arcane Aegis are usually the call on most content.

📋 Final Notes 📋

[Ash]'s passive has been slightly changed to be independent of most other damage sources. This means the double dipping with status damage mods has been taken away but it's still a reasonable increase in final damage so pair it with other sources of final damage that it can multiply with like Faction mods.

🔄 Linked Builds 🔄

Frames

• General Use Shared Polarities
• Blade Storm Shared Polarities
• Damage Buffs Shared Polarities
• Crowd Control Shared Polarities
• Slash Nuke Shared Polarities
• Disruption Shared Polarities

Weapons

• Epitaph: Condition Overload Primer Shared Loadout

• Kronen Prime: General Use Shared Loadout

• Kronen Prime: Naramon Alternate Loadout

• Glaive Prime: Thrown Ranged Melee Loadout

• Venka Prime: Bladestorm Blade Storm Loadout

Other Necessary Tools

• Smeeta Kavat: General Use Shared Loadout
• Panzer Vulpaphyla: General Use Alternate Loadout

📧 Contact Information 📧

Remnants of the Void / Phantom Vanguard Discord Server
If you have any questions or concerns please contact us through the Discord server. We appreciate all forms of support and welcome any criticism designed to help us improve. If you enjoyed this guide you can also support us by giving it a 👍 and sharing it with your friends!

This build is part of a collection that you can either find on the builder's profile or through a special bot we have in the Discord server. We have builds for every item in the game and we're adding new ones frequently. Come check it out!

🏆 Credits 🏆

• NICHE - Developed tools that made generating builds far easier.
• Dragazer - Fact checking and testing across many builds.
• Dystopia - Several level cap endurance videos that prove concepts.
• Marr - Proofread original build format.
• Faras - Created videos for several hundred weapons.
• Angst - Event and Operation testing in competitive environments.
• Voltage - Guide and resource aggregation during Events.
• Taiepii - Strategy, research, and team composition management.

🛑 Disclaimers 🛑

This build may make certain assumptions about mechanics that can change after a patch. Multiple unnecessary forma may be used to facilitate more options across multiple builds with one polarity plan. Certain sub-optimal mods may be run to fit them into the forma polarity plan. We do not make builds that purposely attempt to abuse mechanics that aren't intended by the developers. None of these previous statements are excuses for a fundamentally incorrect build and we ask that you please contact us when we're wrong. We do not consent to anyone other than the original author of this guide posting it without permission.