one shot, huh?

Ashe, along with Bob, was the twenty-ninth hero added to Overwatch following her announcement at Blizzcon 2018. As a DPS, Ashe is a weapons-based hitscan and a raw damage dealer, performing best at medium-long range with limited movement and a primary utility of a damage-over-time ability that can effect multiple targets at once, rounded out by a versatile ultimate that grants the team a temporary additional player for its duration.

As of late February 2025, character perks – slight adjustments to existing abilities that players can choose for themselves as a match progresses – were added to every hero in the game. I will not be covering these for Ashe at this time as I expect perks to be fine-tuned a lot in the next few months. I want some time to get used to playing with and against perks before I talk about them in greater detail.

The Viper
Semi-automatic rifle. Hold to zoom in, increasing damage and accuracy but slowing rate of fire.

The Viper is a modified family heirloom that Ashe stole from her parents' mantlepiece and has several distinct features compared to every other weapon in the game.

Ashe is the only character to not reload all of her bullets at once, and instead reloads them one at a time – however, she can disrupt the reload prematurely and keep whatever number of bullets she's already cycled. Running out of bullets during a fight means you are probably dead, so don't run out of bullets. Easier said than done. A lot of Ashe gameplay is managing your reload. The trade-off for it was a higher base damage per shot, although this has somewhat muddied due to nerfs over time. There's a rhythm to her reload as well as a sound cue so you don't have to continuously check the count once you get used to it, and whilst repositioning or readjusting your angle it's best to slip in a couple extra bullets whilst you're doing so.

The Viper also has a unique scope; Ashe is one of three characters with a scope, the other two being Ana and Widowmaker. Ashe's scoped mode does not leave visible trails behind when fired and her hip-fire is considerably higher than the other two to compensate. The hip-fire isn't great, because she simply doesn't have enough ammo to be overly reliant on it, but it's useful for large hitboxes with high health (so, tanks) and anything that is too close for her to snipe. Ashe also has a much higher freedom of unhindered movement and a wider field of vision whilst scoped in, and is able to jump whilst scoped. This last detail may seem minor but a lot of higher skill players do this into chokepoints whilst hunting for headshots. Ashe's scope also isn't a standard overlay; for lack of better term, it quite literally does zoom in to the weapon's sights with her crosshair in the middle, and some of Viper's variations are visually cluttered and more difficult to work with as the way the sights look are continuously changed between different skins. This has caused issues in the past and for the dev team to have to make alterations to skins after-the-fact multiple times. Arguably, now being able to try out skins in the practice range before buying them is most important on Ashe, as there is no other way to see what the scope looks like on the Viper model in first person other than equipping the skin and heading into game.

Ashe's primary job is to shoot, effectiveness dependant on her player's mechanical skill. She is a hitscan, meaning her shots register on an enemy target as soon as she fires based on what her player sees – this is different from projectiles, that have travel time. Viper damage can be boosted. Ashe is required to bypass or break shields before doing damage to an enemy player, and she is not adept at this due to the low number of bullets she has and her long reload. She has slight, barely noticeable recoil and a moment of downtime between shots, and it's on the player to continually track the movement of whatever they're shooting at.

She is able to headshot for double her standard damage in both scoped and hip-fire modes, and falloff is applied to her shots past a certain distance. This is not so great for her, and is something of a loss of identity, given she was designed to be an alternative sniper; she has a very narrow sweet spot of effectiveness and 1v1s with distant heroes won't go in her favour until she closes the gap.

At present, Ashe cannot one-shot any of the heroes in the game naturally.

Coach Gun
Blast enemies in front of you and knock yourself backwards.

Not a movement ability, but a glorified "get off me!" tool. The knockback is fine, the damage is negligible, and it can be used to boop people off the map. I personally find coach gun most useful when I'm holding a choke point and need to disengage or sidestep fast so I don't get sniped. Coach gun is most often used to traverse gaps or to reach high ground quickly – whichever direction Ashe is facing, the gun will project her the opposite way, including upwards. A lot of high grounds are slightly too far out of reach, so I always jump first whilst looking down to get the extra distance – it can easily cost you your life if you don't at worst, and at best, you'll be waiting another twelve seconds for it to come off cooldown again.

Less frequently I'll use coach gun to get out of a tank's melee range by going up in the middle of a fight - trust me, no one looks up in this game. Object permanence? First person? I don't know them. Seriously though, the extra time it takes an enemy player to relocate you can make all the difference. Very occasionally I will use coach gun as intended when I'm out of everything else and something needs to die – though if it's that close to you, you're better off just punching for the melee final blow, as that's flat damage.

Because Coach Gun isn't a movement ability, it isn't disabled by Cassidy's hindered effect. This is more just a tidbit but also rather funny as she's one of the very few heroes that can just immediately disengage from that scenario. (Bye.)

Dynamite
Throw an explosive that detonates after a short delay or immediately when shot.

Dynamite is designed so that it will always be in Ashe's crosshair as soon as the player is able to act for easy detonation… mostly. Uneven surfaces are a nightmare for breaking this. If left alone (or missed), the fuse counts down wherever it lands until the stick of dynamite explodes. If Ashe is in range of her own dynamite when it goes off, she will set herself on fire, although the self-inflicted damage is lower.

Once detonated, the dynamite will apply damage over time to anything on the enemy team in the explosion radius. A lot of Ashe gameplay revolves around the dynamite: its primary use is for softening targets or final blows from either the initial explosion or the burn, and requires the enemy team to expend resources and abilities in order to deal with it. Dynamite can be thrown around corners, can destroy constructible objects such as turrets or traps, and can burn shields. It can be useful for identifying where players are clustered out of sight and smoke out whatever has fled with low health with a telling final blow in the kill feed. Similarly I find dynamite very useful in an ongoing 1v1 when the enemy is low and is well aware that you know this, so begins to rapidly strafe or erratically move to avoid being hit… Genji's for instance do this a lot with their double jump or by using deflect. Deflect has a weird interaction time with dynamite, in that he has to deflect after it's thrown, so if he's already deflecting and Ashe aims a little to the side of him and tosses in a dynamite it's over.

Unlike some abilities that activate or happen out of a player's range of vision, there is no HUD visual other than Ashe's crosshair flashing for a successful dynamite; the sound design in Overwatch is critical and incredibly good, and dynamite is totally reliant on sound, specifically the tic noise for when the fuse is counting down and if it's successfully caught a player on fire. The only way to roughly tell how many players have been hit by the dynamite when you can't see them is to keep track of Ashe's ult charge and how fast its increments increase whilst the burn is in effect.

The enemy team also hears the fuse tic whilst counting down to the explosion, being louder when they are on top of it and quieter as they move farther away. Given how strong of an ability it can be, Ashe always vocally indicates when she has thrown a dynamite. She is at her most vulnerable immediately after launching if looking to detonate it herself, due to the predictive movement: being, she can't move otherwise she'll miss the detonation window when she's able to act. Sometime it's best to throw and go. The enemy team could stand in that choke point… but they'll burn if they do.

The damage over time for dynamite was significantly lowered on Overwatch 2's launch to account for there being one less tank and far fewer shields to block it. Still: this ability is often the reason why an Ashe's damage numbers can be ridiculously high. The boost window was also changed on Mercy so that she has to apply boost before dynamite is thrown, rather than just being able to swap onto it freely once it detonates. Whilst a high impact ability, I've always found Ashe's dynamite to be fair. It relies on game sense and awareness heavily and is not an instant ticket back to respawn queue as there is time for it to be dealt with so long as people are paying attention.

Dynamite can bounce off objects, including map walls and props, but I find this more of a hindrance than useful. It is possible to cleanse the burn yourself without relying on a support to heal you through it: picking up any health pack dotted across the map will instantly remove the burn.

B.O.B
Deploy Bob. He charges forward and knocks enemies into the air,
then attacks with his arm cannons.

When Ashe was in development, the team knew they wanted Bob to be her ultimate; the restraints on the game's memory at having to load a-then thirteenth or fourteenth "player" model into the lobby almost led to Ashe having to be scrapped. Fortunately, she wasn't.

In gameplay terms, Bob can be described as a turret with a large health pool that will continually fire upon the nearest thing he can see after he stops moving until his timer runs out. Whilst enroute, Bob's run can be halted early by enemy heroes using charge abilities: a charge interaction will result in both players falling to the floor for a moment, although it's more of a risk for the enemy player in this instance as the Ashe's team will not be one player down. Bob will prefer to shoot whatever Ashe does – leading him can be very useful if he doesn't pick the target the Ashe wants him to prioritise, or he's been corralled by the enemy team into pointlessly shooting a tank using a defensive ability. Bob will spawn in wherever Ashe's crosshair is pointing, sort of. He spawns to the left or right of the crosshair and this is totally random, unpredictable, and sometimes, he will not run where you pointed him or collide with an object's hitbox oddly and slide along it instead of stopping. And sometimes he will run off the map. Or impossibly find his way into a doorway and be halfway down a distant corridor and you're not entirely sure how he managed it. Add in the possibility he's booped or knocked away along his initial trajectory… yeah. It's okay. Not all Bob's are winners (yes they are. We love Bob in this house).

Bob is unique in that he counts as an extra player on the team, and will remain on the battlefield even if Ashe dies. Sometimes it can be beneficial to throw him out if she's about to go down because the ultimate cannot be cancelled, so he can continue to fight with the rest of the team in her stead. Damage Bob does counts as Ashe's damage, and all other numbers such as healing given to him or damage done to him are applied accordingly. To compensate for his high health bar and him potentially "feeding" the enemy team ult charge Bob provides ult charge to no one, the sole exception being Mercy damage boost. Ashe herself gains no ult charge for the full duration Bob is out – or until he is prematurely destroyed – which is roughly ten seconds after he stops running. Bob is able to capture and contest objectives by himself, can be healed and boosted by his teammates, and can be further moved and displaced before he leaves – a popular thing I like to do when I'm playing as Lifeweaver is to lift him up on the petal or pull him to somewhere more advantageous and unexpected where he would not usually be able to stop if the enemy team is respawning or attempting to retreat.

Bob is further special in that he has two role passives applied to him. Hitting an enemy as a DPS lowers the healing that hero in turn receives, but Bob also has the tank passive, which reduces the knockback done to him, the duration he is susceptible to abilities like sleep, and the damage he receives from headshots, making him much more bulkier than he used to be. If Bob does not have line of sight he can be ignored… but if he's occupying or blocking an objective or chokepoint, he has to be dealt with. Really, Bob is very versatile. Fights can be initiated with him, ended with him, prolonged and contested with him, you can use him to help you backcap, to provide cover if thrown immediately beside you, to shoot the enemy Reinhardt from multiple angles whilst watching him get progressively stressed as he has to make a choice about whose damage he wants to block… there are lots of Bob uses.

It is possible to shoot stunned enemies whilst they are knocked up into the air and one of Ashe's achievements is landing a final blow on an enemy whilst Bob does this. It's pretty damn cool when you manage it, honestly.

Ashe has unique voicelines for Bob when he despawns depending on his level of success. As of writing, no hero has commentary for eliminations Bob gets. And personally I think there should be some. Put some respect on my boy and the hard work he does.

Lastly, if you wave to Bob as Ashe when he is not shooting anything, he waves back!! This is very important.

This is a set. Do not separate.

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