OverwatchOverwatch Ashe Guide and Overview

Earning respect throughout the wild west, the cowgirl leader of the Deadlock Gang takes out her targets from beyond the horizon. Ashe outranges nearly every hero in Overwatch with her trusty lever-action rifle, The Viper. Not only does she use her superior aim to click heads, but also to shoot Dynamite out of the air to set the whole enemy team on fire. When your team needs to keep the enemy team at a distance, Ashe’s kit does it better than anyone else's. Her combination of ranged, AoE, and burst damage helps to shut down the advances of the enemy. 

TLDR

Playing As

• Constantly change your position to maintain distance and catch the enemy by surprise.
• Use Dynamite to target enemies behind barriers, walls, and cover. They’ll think they're safely hidden until they're hit by the explosion. 
• Send B.O.B. onto the objective to gain progress for your team and stop the enemy's progress. Ashe should rarely, if ever, stand on the objective herself. 

Playing Against

• Close the distance. Ashe struggles in close-range fights. Find ways to approach her and shut her down.
• Keep track of Dynamite’s 12-second cooldown. If she just used it, you can move up. If she hasn’t thrown it for a while, try to stand outside of her throw range.
• Hide from B.O.B. He has a huge health pool, so if your team can’t burst him down quickly, it's best to get out of his LoS and wait until he leaves.

Strengths

Angle Control

Ashe is wildly good at holding angles. If she’s set up first, she can stay scoped in and fire as soon as the enemy comes around the corner. If they try to hide behind the corner, she can Dynamite and hit them with the explosion AoE.

Consistent damage sniper

Compared to other snipers like Widow and Hanzo, Ashe brings more consistent damage to her team. Her kit isn’t so feast or famine thanks to Dynamite and her higher rate of fire. B.O.B. can also be used to finish off enemies when her aim isn’t doing the job.

Point pressure

B.O.B. is arguably the best objective Ult in the game. He deals high damage, has a lot of HP, and is zero risk to Ashe and her team. These qualities make him great for contesting the objective. The AoE damage of Dynamite also makes it dangerous for the enemy to sit on point.

Weaknesses

Mechanically demanding

The unfortunate reality is that Ashe’s biggest weakness comes down to the mechanical skill of the individual player. If you are cracked and a head-clicking monster, it’s nearly impossible to do poorly on Ashe. On the other hand, if you are missing every other shot, it's going to be super hard to bring value to your team while playing her.

No one-shot

Because Ashe can’t one-shot, she is at a disadvantage against Widowmaker and Hanzo in sniper duels. Especially on long-range maps like Havana and Circuit Royal, Ashe has to be much safer with her positioning than the Widow or Hanzo.

Struggles in close-range engagements

Although she can hipfire and Coachgun, Ashe is at a major disadvantage in close-range fights. If she already had to use Coach Gun, she has no defense against dive heroes. Additionally, most high mobility heroes' movement abilities are on shorter cooldowns than Coachgun, so even if Ashe boops them away, they can reengage before she has another Coach Gun.

Primary Fire: The Viper

Tips for The Viper

• Don’t unload your whole clip
• • Always try to save at least a few bullets for ADS shots. It can be tempting to spray and pray from the hip in a panic-induced attempt to survive. Do your best to conserve ammo and find the opportunity to switch back to ADS shots.
  • Consider that to kill a full health 250HP enemy, Ashe would have to land 8 hipfire body shots in a row before they kill her! 
• Finish off low HP enemies
• • Hipfire is still hitscan, and the faster rate of fire makes it ideal for finishing off targets that barely survived your ADS shots.

Secondary Fire: The Viper (ADS)

Tips for The Viper (ADS)

• Spend most of your time ADS
• • ADS shots are your primary source of damage and the entire reason for playing Ashe. So, try to use this as much as possible.
  • The 25% movement-speed penalty doesn’t make Ashe much easier to track. In general, it's not worth unscoping just to try and dodge incoming fire.

[SHIFT]: Coach Gun

Tips for Coach Gun

• Get off me
• • The most valuable use of Coach Gun is to get divers off of you. Knocking a leaping Winston stops him from attacking you, and often forces him to waste Bubble and retreat. 
  • Time Coach Gun to hit after the enemy has committed their movement ability.
• Take the high ground
• • Coach Guns' self-knockback is great for setting up on high-ground positions. Ashe is strongest when she can overlook the battlefield, throw Dynamite over barriers, and use the floor of high ground to LoS from low ground enemies. 

[E]: Dynamite

Tips for Dynamite

• Don’t force dynamite
• • If you don’t have clear targets, save dynamite for when you do. The damage, ult charge, and overall value of Dynamite is too precious to waste.
• Control corners
• • Especially when matched against closer-range enemies that are constantly trying to approach you, use Dynamite to control corners. Do this by holding onto it until you see the enemy coming around cover, trying to approach you, and then explode one in their face. The damage pressures them to retreat, which keeps you safe.
• Use Dynamite as often as possible
• • More important than not wasting Dynamite is using it. Don’t hold it all game waiting for a 5-man explosion. If you have an opportunity, take it.
  • Without frequent Dynamite use, you’ll be building Ult painfully slowly. 

Ultimate: B.O.B.

Tips for B.O.B.

• Aim carefully
• • The worst thing you can do with B.O.B. is mess up his positioning. The saddest thing every Ashe player has experienced is when B.O.B. goes running past where you intended him to stop, and ends up in nowhere land, shooting no one. 
  • Take the time to carefully line up his running path and plan for structures and enemies in his path. Check for what he might get stuck on, and what you want him to get stopped by. 
• Contest the objective
• • B.O.B. is an incredible objective contesting tool. He runs fast, so he gets the point quickly. He sacrifices himself so Ashe and her allies don’t risk their lives on the objective. 
  • Make sure the wall you send B.O.B. to actually puts him within the objective area. Sometimes he’ll stop just outside the area.
• Create crossfire
• • Always try to get B.O.B. to attack from a different angle than yourself. If you and B.O.B. are both firing from in front of the enemy, they will easily avoid both sources of damage. On the other hand, if B.O.B. is behind the enemy and you are in front, they can’t shield from both angles simultaneously and have to expose themselves to one to avoid the other.

Minor Perks

Remote Detonator

• Useful for exploding Dynamite over walls and around corners where you can’t shoot it.
• Also, safer than standing in the open to shoot the Dynamite.

Double-Barreled

• Best against dive comps. You can create space between yourself and the enemy with the first shot, then you have another shot to reposition even better.

Major Perks

Viper's Sting

• Best poke Perk
• • The extra damage is very powerful on maps with long sight lines. The bonus damage is also not affected by falloff, so the extra 25 damage keeps its effectiveness at all ranges.
  • Also useful for pressure Tanks as landing two shots in a row is very easy on their large bodies.
• Bonus damage reset
• • The “consecutive scoped shots” reset after every hit, 2 scoped shots, when missing a scoped shot, or after 3 seconds of no shots.
  • Hip fire shots do not affect Viper’s Sting’s counter.

Airburst

• Best anti-brawl Perk
• • When the enemy team plays as a deathball, the larger AoE will help you burn more targets with each use. 
• Increase The Viper uptime
• • Even if you don’t hit any targets with Dynamite, every time Ashe shoots it out of the air, she reloads 3 ammo. This helps her reduce reload time and increases the time she spends firing.
• Don’t pick against a Kiriko
• • The increased AoE is negated by Suzu's cleanse. Also, remember Suzu heals extra when cleansing effects like Burning, so you’ll be feeding her a lot of Ult charge.

Best Maps

The best maps for Ashe have open sight lines where she can take advantage of her superior range. She also benefits from high ground she can Coach Gun up to, then use for attack angles and protection. Maps with enclosed objective areas are difficult for Ashe because she’s forced to play in suboptimal close ranges. Furthermore, if the map has a lot of side routes for flankers, Ashe struggles to keep an eye on so many angles, so she can’t properly defend herself.  

• Rialto
• Colosseo
• Eichenwalde

Worst Maps

• Throne of Anubis
• Oasis
• Antarctic Peninsula

Team comps built around Ashe enable her sniper playstyle by creating space for her keep the enemy in her LoS. Tanks with barriers can deploy them in front of her, allowing her to snipe her targets safely. Other DPS and Supports assist Ashe by keeping the enemy at a distance through CC or damage pressure. Dynamite and B.O.B. are equally important components of Ashe’s kit. Allies who help her stay in Dynamite range enable Ashe to farm B.O.B. significantly faster and apply more pressure to the enemy backline. When Ashe is free to hold angles, she takes over sight lines and destroys the enemy team.

Example of a team comp built around Ashe

• Tank: Reinhardt
• DPS: Ashe, Sombra
• Supports: Mercy, Baptiste

Individual Hero Synergies

Reinhardt

• Rein’s Barrier Field is the perfect huge shield for Ashe to position behind and snipe the enemy. When facing off against other long-range heroes, the one who has a shield Tank in front of them has a major advantage in the match-up. Additionally, a Rein pushing into a team demands their full attention, which frees up Ashe to position in the open where she can acquire easier targets. 

Sombra

• The main way Sombra and Ashe play off of each other is by filling opposite roles simultaneously. While Ashe is sitting back and sniping, Sombra splits the attention on the flank. Anytime these two heroes are attacking at the same time, turning to focus on one completely exposes you to the other. Moreover, when the enemy runs dive to counter Ashe, Sombra can stay back and hack the attackers anytime they come in. 

Mercy

• Ashe with a Mercy pocket is one of the deadliest duos in all of Overwatch 2. The damage boost changes the break points of Ashe’s ADS shots, and a damage boosted Dynamite deals almost 200 damage on its own. With Mercy, Ashe can take more aggressive off angles and become a greater threat to the enemy team. 

Coming Soon!