For a while, Ashe was the main symbol of League of Legends. She was the champion who you accompanied during the tutorial. Your first steps in Summoner’s Rift were with himand being cheap to unlock, it has long been part of champions that all players unlocked quickly. In addition, she was very reminiscent of Warcraft 3 and DotA heroineswhether with his owl inspired by an ability of Night Elf hunters, her critical hit passive reminiscent of the Moon Priestess aura (before the Ashe redesign), the frost arrows that referred to another ability of this priestess (well, they were fire arrows, but I don’t think there’s any need to draw a picture for you), in short, she made a bit of a connection between two universes, as if to say: if you like DotA*, come to LoL, you won’t be lost and it’s even better than this mod.
*Note that here we are talking about the War III mod and not DotA 2 which is a separate game.
From one symbol to another
The champions who have symbolized LoL have evolved very quicklyand it is complicated to say which champion is really the standard bearer of the game. It will depend a lot when the person started gambling, and also of his position. However, for a very long time Ashe remained the symbol of turret ADCs, those AD carries that have little mobility, but good range and some tools to control space. You should know that at the time an ADC with mobility was quite rare, Tristana being more the exception than the rule. If we look among the game’s first ADCsapart from the Yordle, Ezreal and Vayne (which already occupied a particular niche and which was released 2 years after Ashe), no ADC didn’t really have a viable/powerful mobility spell. Corki’s dash was too short and with too long a CD to be a real mobility spell (even if it was still appreciable), same for Caitlyn’s net (which anyway came out a year and a half after Ashe).
But today it is over. Ashe is now more often played in the support position than in the ADC positionno longer really having the weapons to be a carry in a safe way, largely because of the very (too?) many dashes present in the game. no real tool to prevent an opponent from jumping on him. Just a laning Leona can put pressure on her and prevent her from picking up minions, and therefore falling a little behind, which she won’t be able to catch up too much later. Sure his ultimate can still return partsand his owl remains the best way to scout in Summoner’s Rift. This is why it remains playable in support, where in the end it is asked to be useful and not to die too much. A game must evolve in order not to die, and today we don’t really know what to think of this evolution. On the one hand it’s cool to think that Ashe is still played, and that she has her place in the meta even 12 years after her release, but on the other hand, it’s not necessarily the future that we would have dreamed of for her.
Ashe’s Legacy
Of course the Ashe’s iconic move will always remain this arrow in the finals of the Worlds of Season 1, by the AD carry of Against All Authority: YellOwStaR. This is also one of the few moves made by the team that lost the final that remained in the memory, more than an action of the winning team. Afterwards, Ashe will not only leave epic memories. From the start of the game, her low mobility could make her a prime target, if players coordinated against her. Welcome to Hungry Ashe Games.
On League of Legends as on TFT, there is something even more frustrating than toxic players: bugs. Riot Games tries to limit errors, but a cloning bug has thwarted the vigilance of the developers. Rather than fix the concern, the threat was preferred!