Weird Picks #4: Support Ashe

This week's weird pick brings the spotlight back on an oldie but a goodie, support Ashe! With her world famous initiation technique on her ultimate, she's definitely an interesting selection as a support, if not fully accepted.

Introduction

As a whole, Ashe is a champion with undeniably amazing utility. However, without escapes, she can be too squishy to be effective in a world full of assassins. As a support, teams can take advantage of her utility while building her to be quite tanky, eliminating her weaknesses while still taking strong advantage of her skillset.

How It Works

Ashe's skillset as a whole lends itself to support in a manner very similar to Annie, but with more poke, more spell range, and less burst. She provides specifically the following:

• 100% crit chance every 25 seconds at level 1, or 50%+ every 12.5 seconds via her passive;
• 15%~35% slow on hit in AOE or single target form every 4 to 2.4 seconds at max level;(depending on cooldown reduction);
• Free scrying orb via hawkshot; and
• The ever useful full map stun once every 48 seconds at max CDR.

Items to Pick Up

As a support, I think that both blue trinket and yellow support items are viable choices on her depending on your playstyle. Although she won't be able to fully utilize the blue trinket's AP until later on in the game (100% AP ratio on her ultimate), her poking ability allows her to use its gold generation property very well.

Key items include Sightstone, Frozen Heart, Locket, and possibly Zeke's Herald. If you want to take on more of a damage role, Blade of the Ruined King is a good choice.

I wouldn't recommend getting Morello on her, as it only procs under 40% via magic damage, which is only available to her using her ultimate.

Effectiveness

All in all, I'd say that support Ashe is likely much more viable than it sounds, especially in a world of tank junglers coming back into play. With her kiting abilities, a late blade of the ruined king would also work wonders as a peeling method to keep your ADCs alive. Her enchanted arrow can also be used as an amazing initiation or follow-up tool that chains very well with pretty much anybody.

Although lacking hard CC early on, she definitely makes up for it after level 6.

Thoughts? Comment below!