Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Ashe Guide Strategy/Lane Control

The next part I'd like to address when playing is how to lane that champion. In this section of the guide I will be focusing on 3 main skill points. Farming, Harassing, and Ganking assuming that he solos mid.



1. Addressing all 3 points. My first strategy is to get Lizard buff at level 1. Having Ashe get the lvl 1 lizard buff allows him to greatly improve his last hitting in lane. At the same time it also allows you to harass the champions on the other side to deny they exp and gold. Generally if you do not expect to have a 5 man forest gank or fight in the first 2 minutes of the game, getting frost arrow can secure you a high probability of getting first blood and total middle lane dominance.



2. Lane Control. For Ashe you generally want to keep the creeps closer to your side. This allows you to be protected by the tower to avoid ganks and if you decide to be the aggressor you have more space to chase before they eventually reach tower. Use your volley with discretion to farm and harass. When your lane is getting too close to your tower start hitting those volleys. The best volleys are hit when you can hit the creeps and champions at the same time. The important thing with volley is its pushing power. You generally do not want to volley so much that it expose yourself.



3. Last hitting. The biggest thing with last hitting is how the attack animation system works. Once your normal attacked is cooled down your next attack is pretty much instant, however your following attack will have the cool down of your attack speed. So the process of clicking around and waiting for creeps to lower then only do the last hits allows you a better chance for last hitting. Here are some pro-tips on how to last hit creeps at tower. For the ranged minion, they die to 1 Tower hit and 2 Ashe hits. So inorder to maximize all your last hit when creeps are at your tower. Focus on the ranged minions that your creeps are not hitting and hit it once in advance then wait for towers to hit it then hit it again. For the Melee Minions, they last 2 tower hits and 1 Ashe hits so just ignore them and let the tower hit them twice before you follow up.



4. Harassing. My favorite technique is to keep an eye on a creep that is about to die. Charge up my crit for like 5 secs as the other Ashe shoots for the last hit I run forward to volley and turn on frost arrow and chase for 1-3 hits. It significantly lowers their hit points and they had just a hit so their hit is now on cool down so he cant hit you back. This technique does not require volley, so in any case if you are active on controling your lane and harassing you should be able to last hit creeps and hit them when they go for their last hit. This technique will take a lot of practice because it is all about instant decision and timing.

5. Ganking. Ashe's best ability is his ultimate. As soon as he hits level 6 he should beable to kill someone. What I like to do when I hit lvl 6 is to burn all my mana and harass the champion I am playing against. I want to trick that that I have no mana to ult by burning it all then generally will pill close enough so they can see me do it but far enough so they cant disrupt it. From the well I would throw my arrow and wait about 4 seconds then teleport in as the arrow hits the hero. Bam, free kill. If my teleport is down I would generally audit top and bottom lanes to see which one is most gankable and roam there to try for a double kill. Even though you are missing out on mid farming and exp if you are able to get kills it makes up for it. Even if you decide that you don't want to leave the lane you can always throw your arrow globally.

Ashe Guide Supplemental 1.0

I've heard some feed back on the guide on how it is missing a lot of information. This supplemental is to address that. I'd also like to repeat myself that this guide is not finish and I will continue to add more information on Ashe game play.

One of the biggest question people ask is when and why do I go philostone vs lifesteal/doran. I generally will go philostone if I expect to lane against some beasty heros like liche of cryo. What philostone does for me is the ability to spam volley to farm and damage them while staying back. Because either of those 2 heros can out nuke as in a solo mid situation if played correctly. Then there is the Doran shield(+1 health pot)/lifestealer. I go doran shield when I expect to lane against a physical damaging hero. The doran shield extra health and physical damage reduction allow you to be extra aggressive. Even though you are not healing as much as a regrowth pendant the extra armor reduces physical damage by 7-10% which more than make up for it.

Life stealer on the other hand is very iffy. I would only recommend it if you have absolute control over your Ashe. IE: health control, mana control, range control. Because you have to be hitting to be healing, you have have to be extra cautious and capitalize on hits when you can and back when you cant.

Then for the Infinity Edge. The are several reasons for infinity edge. I'll start off with the smaller points then work my way up. As creeps get stronger it will be increasingly hard to last hit especially when towers are knock downed and waves gets larger than 6. What this does for you is allow you to last hit well with out having to spam volley to freeze lanes by the towers so you would not be exposed to ganks.

Then next reason is the multiplying effect you get with your Furor/Armor Pen rune book. The effects of getting the Infinity Edge is multiplicative where most other items are additive. I'll do some calculations then I will edit this post later on more specific effects.

Ashe Guide V1.0

This is my first guide that I am posting. Since I first started playing the game I observed that there are a lot of players that plays Ashe so I thought it would be a good idea to give my input on how I play my Ashe. Initially I will only start with Summoners spells, Runes, Masteries, Skill, and Item Tree. Afterwards (not immediately in this guide) I will Include strategies and play style. I'm going to create some fraps for laning techniques for pre, mid, and end game.

First off there are a few critical things I think of when I play Ashe. How can I best support my team in a team fight and last as long as possible. This is my approach the first part. Coupling ashe with near infinite and instant slow snares (his frost arrows, volley, and global stun/slow skill shot that can slow 1-5 players) with impressive farming capability, in a team fight she can dish out some major damage.

To start I think it is important to think summoner spells, runes, and masteries. My favorite build is 21 Offense and 9 Utility with a Furor and Armor Penetration book.

Specifically:
Flash - 2 Main purposes: I use it to blink at people and do finishing blows or in a large team fight, when and if I get targeted, I swift direct a blink just out of the range of my focuser and continue to fight. Ashe has massive damage capability if she can survive to do it.

Teleport - One of the best support spell in the game. You see someone chase too far or want to save a tower. You can do that in 3 seconds.

3 Deadliness, 1 Archmage Savvy
1 Sorcery, 4 Alacrity
3 Sunder, 2 Offensive Mastery
3 Bruteforce
3 Brutality
1 Havoc

1 Teleport, 3 Perseverance
4 Awareness
1 Expanded Mind

Runes:
9 Mark of Penetration
9 Seal of Furor
9 Glyph of Furor
3 Quintessence of Furor


Next is how to choose your skills.
The first skill I either choose is frost arrow or volley but never extra gold spell. Volley is good for those initial forest fights higher end players do. Frost arrow is for lvl 1 lane ganking. In either case you want to up lvl 1 volley and lvl 1 frost arrow by level 2.

Next from there on you want to keep on pumping and maxing your frost arrow. Volley or the gold skill is by preference next. If you are a philostone ashe then maxing volley first and getting lvl 2 frost arrow is an option. So here is my skill lvl build.

Skill Tree
No Philo (doran shield/lifestealer) VS Philostone
1. Volley - Volley
2. Frost - Frost
3. Frost - Volley
4. Gold - Frost
5. Frost - Volley
6. Ult - Ult
7. Frost - Volley
8. Gold - Frost
9. Frost - Volley
10. Gold - Frost
11. Ult - Ult
12. Gold - Frost
13. Gold - Gold
14. Volley - Gold
15. Volley -Gold
16. Ult - Ult
17. Volley - Gold
18. Volley - Gold

Item Tree - No Philo vs Philo
1. Doran shield/Lifestealer - Regrowth
2. Greaves -Combine for Philo
3. Pickaxe - Greaves
4. BF sword- Pick Axe
5. Infinities Edge - BF sword
6. Last whisper - Infinities
(double pot - agi - fort for nashor/rapeness)
7. Starks/Bloodthirster - Last whisper
8. User's Discretion

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Introduction

Hi,

My name is Dan Dinh. That is also my ingame name for League of Legends. The purpose for creating this blog is to post strategies and give cookie cutter builds for the champions in League of Legends. What I hope to do is to exchange Ideas to create a guide for new players to use to improve their game play. What I will be doing frequently is post skill/item build on this blog. I will appreciate if other people would challenge my ideas and offer a new perspective.