Why Use This Build?

• Blade Storm can easily kill Steel Path Acolytes, Thrax, Sentients, and other tough enemies such as Nox, Bombards, and Heavy Gunners all without Viral procs.
• It is easy to stay alive due to the one-handed casting of Smoke Screen and the inclusion of Rolling Guard.
• It is easy to reach and maintain 12x Combo without needing any combo duration on melee weapons.
• This build is very good at solo Steel Path Void Cascade.

How to Use This Build

• Blade Storm can target enemies in a small circle around the crosshair (similar to Mesa's Peacemakers) and can punch through enemies; you can easily mark most of a room in less than a second.
• Rolling Guard can clear status effects and is great against Nullifiers.
• Use Blade Storm to build and maintain Melee Combo. Blade Storm resets the Melee Combo timer so you don't need to use melee to maintain 12x Combo. If your melee one-shots enemies it is faster to build Melee Combo using Blade Storm because you get +4 Combo per kill instead of +1 with melee.
• Blade Storm is buffed by Steel Charge, Roar, Arcane Fury, Combo Multiplier, and Attack Speed (up to +50% attack speed).
• The mission start looks something like this. Use Zenurik to get some Energy, cast Smoke Screen once you see enemies, and use Blade Storm and melee to build Melee Combo. Once you are into a flow the loop is between Smoke Screen/Blade Storm and a weapon with a few melee kills to keep Arcane Dexterity up.

Abilities

• Passive - Bleeds do +25% damage and last 50% longer.
• Roar - Some people like using [Seeking Shuriken] or Silence. [Seeking Shuriken] uses too much energy and Roar is better than Silence for most applications (See data in Appendix). Ash excels at using Slash anyway so armor stripping isn't that great with him.
• Smoke Screen - This is Ash's main source of survivability.
• Teleport - Sometimes this is worth using to quickly get to someone to revive them or to give brief invulnerability. I generally avoid using this to join Blade Storm.
• Blade Storm - This is [Ash]'s main source of DPS. I have found this very nice to use in conjunction with melee because it makes up for melee's lack of range. The energy cost of Blade Storm marks is only reduced if you are invisible when the mark is applied. If you are invisible, mark enemies, then invisibility ends, the cost reduction still applies when Blade Storm is activated. Any source of invisibility works.

Mods

• Steel Charge - More mod capacity than normal auras and benefits Blade Storm and melee
• Primed Sure Footed - This is isn't mandatory but you will probably die if you get knocked down and invisibility runs out. It is also nice to have for some AoE weapons.
• Primed Continuity - Duration for Smoke Screen and Roar
• Primed Flow - This provides a larger Energy Pool to take advantage of Arcane Energize and to be able to use abilities without worrying about Energy for Smoke Screen.
• Umbral Intensify - Strength for Blade Storm and Roar
• Stretch - Too much negative Range makes Blade Storm harder to use. Stretch also helps give Roar to teammates and makes Teleport worth using sometimes.
• Narrow Minded - Duration for Smoke Screen and Roar
• Transient Fortitude - Strength for Blade Storm and Roar
• Rolling Guard - This removes Status Effects and is nice in a pinch. I often roll into a Nullifier to kill it with melee, then recast Smoke Screen.
• Rising Storm - [Streamline] or [Seeking Shuriken] can be used instead. I prefer to use this so that I can use the [Praedos] with heavy attacks without needing any heavy attack efficiency. The added combo duration along with Dexterity Arcanes is enough that combo duration is never an issue.

Arcanes

• Arcane Energize - This provides enough Energy to constantly use Blade Storm.
• Arcane Fury - This increases melee damage and Blade Storm damage but has to be activated with a weapon. Molt Augmented does not provide as much damage as Arcane Fury does.
• Magus Lockdown - Good survivability and can hold targets in place

Archon Shards

• I Recommend 1 Parkour Velocity and 4 Strength Shards. Melee Critical Damage Shards do not provide as much damage as Strength Shards for Blade Storm. It may be useful to use Energy Orb Effectiveness or Energy Max instead of Strength Shards and swap [Primed Flow] for [Streamline] or [Fleeting Expertise] so you can go without Zenurik more easily. Additionally, you may want 2 total Parkour Velocity Shards if you aren't using Praedos.

Focus Schools

• Disruption/General: Zenurik for extra Energy (Wellspring, Energy Pulse, and Inner Might), 80% slow (Temporal Drag), and 100% headshot damage (Temporal Shot).
• Void Cascade: Madurai for 100% Amp Critical Damage (Power Transfer), 50% damage vulnerability (Contamination Wave), and 1000% damage (Void Strike).

Weapons

• I use [Torid] Incarnon, Epitaph, and [Hate] Incarnon with this build. [Torid] Incarnon is great for killing crowds of enemies, [Epitaph] is for Viral and other status effects, and Hate Incarnon is very good against single targets, especially high level Steel Path Thrax.
• Other good options to use with this build include Phenmor, Praedos, and Nikana Prime.
• Weapons with infinite Combo Duration such as Xoris or Tenet weapons will have their Combo reset with Blade Storm so they are very bad to use with Ash.

Companions

• I use Panzer Vulpaphyla for utility and death saves.

Appendix

• The animation speed of Blade Storm is increased if you are sliding when you activate Blade Storm after marking enemies. It does not matter if you slide when marking enemies.
• With Roar, Arcane [Fury], and 12x combo, Blade Storm will do 2.1 million total True Damage over the course of 9 seconds with 71k damage per Slash tick and 81k on hit. This is enough to kill a level cap Steel Path Acolyte with one activation of Blade Storm without any Viral stacks. With one Slash tick you can kill Steel Path Heavy Gunners and Bombards up to level 200ish and up to level cap with 10 Viral Stacks or waiting for the slash to tick down. For example, 2 Slash ticks will kill up to about level 400, 3 will kill up to level 700, etc.
• Natural Talent and Berserker Fury do nothing for Blade Storm. Primed Fury is enough and saves about 0.25 seconds per enemy marked.
• I use Primary and Secondary Dexterity on weapons to get extra combo duration and Amalgam Serration and Amalgam Barrel Diffusion for the utility since I am often using melee with this build.

Savage Silence Build

• [Savage Silence] greatly increases initial damage but doesn't increase Slash tick damage. This causes the build to be slightly better at wave clear to a point but requires more marks to be used or Viral to remain effective. Most Savage Silence builds will only one-shot Gunners and Bombards up to level 400 or 500 on Steel Path and will take all 3 marks to kill up to level 4000ish and require Viral or significantly more strength to go to level cap.
• I do not suggest using a [Savage Silence] build if you plan to go past level 400 on Steel Path since you would be spending too much time applying Viral or using too much energy on marks to keep killing enemies. Also, Arcane Trickery would become harder and harder to keep activated since it will take longer to get kills. It would be better just to use a weapon buffing ability or frame or a Slash weapon to kill at that point.