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 attempts to use several of [Ash]'s abilities while giving you reasonable options to transition into more specialized setups. [Seeking Shuriken] grants you one of the simplest and most effective armor stripping abilities in the game. Smoke Screen provides enough survivability to get yourself out of sticky situations. Along with your Slash procs, [Ash] can take on almost any mission.
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.
Sickening Pulse scales with Duration more than Strength and can massively increase overall damage from status effects with each cast. It has negative synergy with high Duration because the speed to distance ratio of the pulse doesn't scale together.
Dispensary can be used on more defensive setups to stall out enemies in small rooms or hallways without needing to worry about health, energy, or ammo upkeep.
Fire Walker, Spellbind, and other abilities with status immunity can stop status effects that may crop up even through invisibility.
Roar, Eclipse, and other damage buffs shouldn't need large much investment and can deal with higher level enemies.
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.
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 stat breakpoints that fit your playstyle.
❤️ 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] can be swapped for different mods but lowering your Duration too heavily has serious effects on your survivability.
⛽ Efficiency ⛽ [Streamline] and [Primed Flow] give you a significant buffer to use your abilities in an emergency. Smoke Screen and Shuriken 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 📏 Range isn't very useful on this build and it takes a backseat to other ability stats. Shuriken and Smoke Screen are the two primary abilities in this build variant and neither 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 💪 [Seeking Shuriken] needs 143% Strength to fully strip armor and luckily we can achieve this solely through [Umbral Intensify]. Most players focus on Slash procs and damage from outside your ability kit so Strength has no other purpose on this build. It can be dropped entirely for flex mods if you decide to replace Seeking Shuriken and focus entirely on Slash procs.
🔧 Quality of Life / Augments 🔧 [Swift Momentum] provides additional combo counter leniency for melee builds. It can be replaced with any other aura mod if you choose to run other forms of combo counter management either through your melee mods or the [Rising Storm] augment.
[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.
[Firewalker] is a flex mod that increases your general movement speed as long as you're primarily using Bullet Jumps. Replace it if you're using a stationary strategy or using an alternate form of movement.
[Seeking Shuriken] is the suggested augment as it completely cripples enemy armor and increases your DPS but any of the other augments are good options. [Rising Storm] is one of the more popular ones as it gives you a large combo counter duration increase without sacrificing a melee mod or your Aura mod.
⚙️ 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 🔄 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
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🏆 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.
