by F1ameBlade — last updated 2 years ago
Distraction and subterfuge become lethal weapons with Ash Prime. Featuring altered mod polarities for greater customization.
ITEM RANK
3060 / 60
APPLY CONDITIONALS
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 focuses on Blade Storm and its interactions with abilities or mods that increase Finisher damage. Not every source of additional Finisher damage affects Blade Storm but decent ability Strength, Silence/Radial Blind, and high enough combo counter stacks will carry you through the endgame.
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 🔢 Shuriken is useless without the augment so it's usually the replaced ability. Teleport may seem redundant but it allows you to get within range of your enemies quickly. Blade Storm and Smoke Screen are fundamental parts of the build and should never be replaced in this variant.
Silence and Radial Blind are the two strongest options for this build. Both have augments that grant additional Finisher damage which synergizes with Blade Storm.
Roar and other damage boosting abilities provide the same benefit but to a lesser extent due to how Blade Storm calculates its damage.
Other abilities are decent but provide a lot of redundancy due to the existence of operator mode and the previously mentioned options.
📊 Modding Plan 📊 Ability stats are spread evenly due to the necessity of combining several different abilities. Strength is the primary focus but it shouldn't be significantly impacting other stats.
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 and crowd control trivialize 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 ⏲️ Blade Storm grants you temporary invincibility so you can [Sacrifice] a bit of Duration to pump up other stats. Smoke Screen has one major downside in its inability to be recast while it's active so it isn't suggested to run much lower than 155%. [Transient Fortitude] can be dropped to get a bit of Duration back when running easier missions. [Constitution] is a bit stronger than Augur Message but doesn't provide the small shield gate so Augur Message is most likely the call in most build variants.
⛽ Efficiency ⛽ [Streamline] and [Primed Flow] give you a significant buffer to use your abilities in an emergency. Smoke Screen and stealth Blade Storms aren'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 📏 [Stretch] is a flex mod that gives Silence a greater buffer in larger rooms. Without it enemies may be slightly out of the range of the massive Finisher damage increase and will most likely survive the Blade Storm casts which wastes time. On smaller tilesets you should focus on additional Duration, Strength, or Survivability. [Augur Reach] is a bit weaker than Stretch but provides an emergency shield gate so it can be slotted in for more Survivability.
💪 Strength 💪 Blade Storm and the Finisher boosting augments benefit from high Strength. Unfortunately we can't run too many of the mods because they significantly impact other stats or have weird conditions to activate. That only leaves us with [Augur Secrets] and Power Drift. Transient Fortitude can be swapped with Augur Secrets if you don't want to deal with the Duration loss.
🔧 Quality of Life / Augments 🔧 [Steel Charge] provides more damage than [Growing Power] due to how the damage is calculated. If you're using an outside source of additional melee damage like Arcane [Fury] or Arcane Primary Charger it becomes far weaker than [Growing Power].
[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.
[Savage Silence] is necessary for Silence to increase Blade Storm's damage. [Radiant Finish] is the other augment if you choose Radial Blind. If you're adamant on not using these abilities then this becomes another flex mod slot.
⚙️ 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 Trickery synergizes with Blade Storm to give you more invisibility to pair with Smoke Screen. There's a large randomness factor associated with the arcane so it can be replaced for consistency. 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.
Blade Storm's Slash procs do not benefit from increases in Finisher damage. This limits your damage potential but the ability itself is considered True damage so it shouldn't be too much of an issue outside of level cap content.
🔄 Linked Builds 🔄 Kronen Prime: General Use Shared Loadout
Kronen Prime: Naramon Alternate Loadout
Glaive Prime: Thrown Ranged Melee Loadout
Venka Prime: Bladestorm Blade Storm 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 🏆 🛑 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.
