FOTM Report: Blade of the Ruined King + Black Cleaver Ashe

Blade of the Ruined King + Black Cleaver Ashe preview image

Traditionally played with Essence Reaver, Ashe in her current form is sporting the new and improved Blade of the Ruined King courtesy of the Korean meta. Although it doesn't proc five times on her Ranger's Focus [Q], it does synergize well with Hurricane and Black Cleaver to provide an extremely difficult to kill marksman.

Marksmen in 2017? Bruiser-style. Check out the details below!

Archive post, March 2017. The section below weighs one build against another in percentage cooldown reduction, treating 20% as what you keep and 10% as what you give up. Riot retired that stat in the 2021 preseason and replaced it with ability haste, which stacks differently and doesn't convert one for one, so neither figure prices anything you can buy now. The trade the post describes, survivability against uptime, is still the real question.

FOTM Report

Blade of the Ruined King + Black Cleaver Ashe

March 2017

Introduction

How to Play

Runes: Attack Speed Quints, Attack Damage Reds, Flat Armor Yellows, Flat Magic Resist Blues
Masteries: 18-12-0, Fervor of Battle Masteries
Abilities: W, Q, W, E then prioritize R > W > Q > E
Summoner Spells: Flash + Heal
Starting Items: Doran's Blade + Potion
Core Items: Blade of the Ruined King, Black Cleaver, Ruanaan's Hurricane, Berserker's Greaves, Infinity, Phantom Dancer

Why It Works

Black Cleaver + Hurricane + Ranger's Focus [Q] Synergy

Ashe's Ranger's Focus [Q] places max Black Cleaver stacks on her target in two hits, which also works with Ruanaan's Hurricane to place Cleaver stacks on three targets simultaneously. This allows Ashe to quickly shred teams with ease as a hypercarry.

Powerful Sustained Teamfight Damage
Ashe's ability to kite enemy teams is extremely good, but is limited by her survivability. By combining Blade of the Ruined King with Black Cleaver, Ashe becomes tanky marksman that can eat a good amount of damage and still keeps on ticking.

Decent Early Cooldown Reduction
Although this build doesn't match up with Essence Reaver in terms of sheer cooldown, building Black Cleaver early does allow Ashe to retain 20% cooldown reduction. This allows her to spam more of her arrows to maximize her utility.

See below for proof of the cleaver interaction:

Potential Pitfalls

Lower Late Game Damage VS Tanks
Although Black Cleaver is a decent armor shredding item, Last Whisper and its upgrades tend to do more damage against tanks late game. This means that against heavy tank teams, this build does not work quite as well as the standard build.

10% Cooldown Loss
This build only gets up to 20% cooldown reduction. This results in slightly fewer arrows during the course of the game and slightly fewer volleys. Although the survivability more than makes up for it, this is still a concern.

Conclusions

This Ashe build is getting a lot of attention in the competitive scene as a result of the high utility it provides and the excellent poke damage. In solo queue it's not quite as effective simply because this a team fighting build rather than a solo carry build, but it still does quite well.

Suggested Rating: Tier 1