Ash: Savage storm of endgame
Introduction
Ash ability focused dealing high damage, don’t face tank damage but use a short invisible to avoid damage. What can’t see you can’t hurt you. You may be invisible, but your teammates may not be, so avoid standing too close. Smoke bomb short duration invisible is your main tool to staying alive. Core strength is high damage single target focused frame. Core weakness, single target focused crowd control, not much of it mixed with poor tank stats. Any survivability does not come from armour and health, modding into it is possible, but you’re a pseudo tank. I prefer blade storm path, within that I have focused on his core strengths over fixing any weakness.
Counters
Hard counter of untargetable enemies, some bosses can’t be hit. Therefore, nullifiers can give whole groups immunity and shutdown your abilities. Latter can be addressed with weapons in loadouts example being Miter using Neutralizing Justice.
Build paths
Shuriken Path:
- Seeking Shuriken Augment: This augment allows shurikens to strip armour, enhancing their utility. It can be combined with other paths for added versatility. 143% strength or 118% with corrosive projection for full armour strip.
Teleport Path:
- Fatal Teleport Augment: Amplifies the damage to finisher attacks, making it lethal in single-target elimination.
- Marked for Death: Spreads the damage from finisher attacks to nearby enemies, effectively turning single-target damage into AoE.
- Weapon Synergy: Certain melee weapons benefit from increased finisher damage, which can be researched further on the Warframe wiki.
Honestly, takes so much setup and time to pull off.
Blade Storm Path:
- Pseudo-Exalted Weapon: Blade Storm benefits from melee weapon stats, but not damage. Attack speed increases, clone’s attack speed capped at 50%. Most of the benefits are QoL, giving you a choice of going hybrid or focusing purely QoL. Do you still want to be able to kill stuff with your melee or not? My answer QoL, with so much damage, don’t need to worry about it.
- Augment Options: While Rising Storm is not necessary, using Banshee’s Silence with Savage Silence augment can significantly increase finisher damage. Blade storm does that attack type.
- Arcane Trickery Activation: Enemies killed by direct hits from Blade Storm can trigger this arcane, providing additional utility.
Build for blade storm
I prefer this path for various reasons, multi target and no augment dependency. This path aligns with Ash’s core strength as a damage-focused Warframe, offering a play style that is both flexible and potent. Where you can seamlessly switch between casting abilities and using weapons while remaining elusive.
By subsuming Silence and utilizing the Savage Silence augment, you not only boost Ash’s finisher damage against silenced enemies but also gain an additional crowd control element. This not only enhances Ash’s lethality but also adds a layer of safety, making it a well-rounded choice for both offence and defence. Don’t need to do this, but you can. You have options what to replace for silence, shuriken or teleport. I ended up replacing teleport due to wanting to use seeking shuriken with silence in another build.
Things to note, power strength to increase Savage Silence bonus and Arcane trickery for survivability.
Core mods
- Prime continuity
- Prime flow
- Stretch
Duration, energy, and range
Quality of life
- Fleeting expertise
- Streamline
Going to spam so anything that improves energy economy is useful, blind rage.
Flex slots
- Blind rage
- Umbral intensify
- Savage silence
Power strength is being used to increase the bonus from savage silence. Very little benefit to blade storm here outside of increasing slash damage.
Alternatives
Seeking shuriken can replace blind rage. Blind rage can be swapped out for rolling guard, extra safety and survivability tool.
Primed sure-footed stops you getting knocked down, which is a big QoL.
Adding the umbra mods will boost your survivability, can use 2 or all three. That changes the shape of the overall build, becoming a pseudo tank. Arcane Ultimatum becomes more useful.
Synergies
Arcane: Direct hits only will proc any arcane. Trickery, longer invisible, strike increases ash own animation speed for blade storm. Crescendo adds initial combo, something stat sticks can provide. Ultimatum adds armour, can be helpful for survivability with a more pseudo tank build.
Exodia might for Zaws provides life steal, that can be helpful for survivability. Exodia triumph gain additional Combo Count from melee attacks.
Energize helps the energy economy.
Melee weapons to consider as stat sticks – Zaw dagger, Ceramic dagger, Venka prime
Archcon shards
Archon shards: You don’t need to reach thresholds so you can be focusing on increasing your damage, quality of life improvement or survivability. Build path impacts what you should consider.
Conclusion
Ash is easy to pick up but challenging to master. His core mod setup is affordable and deceptively powerful, making him accessible for new players while offering depth for veterans. As you unlock quality-of-life tools and refine your playstyle, his potential becomes increasingly evident. Hence, why I included endgame into the title. However, Ash is a quintessential glass cannon—capable of dishing out immense damage but vulnerable to being quickly overwhelmed. Understanding his strengths and weaknesses is key; once you do, his gameplay becomes smooth and rewarding, letting you fully unleash his lethal precision.