Ash has some very useful abilities:His Smoke Screen is both a stun (crowd-control) + stealth ability. Ash is not able to remain cloaked for as long duration as Loki or Ivara but with the Smoke Shadow augment Ash is able to also cloak nearby allies, which can be very useful.

What I like most about Ash is his Teleport ability, that allows him to teleport behind an enemy and open them for finishers - with the Fatal Teleport Ash is able to teleport and insta-kill the enemy with a strong finisher attack, which is great fun.

Hint: If you get one of those challenges, where you need to kill a number of enemies with a finisher, then Ash with the Fatal Teleport will make this challenge very easy!

Ash is also very useful in end-game against armored high-level enemies: When Ash is modded with at least 143% Ability Strength and the Seeking Shuriken augment, you can strip all armor with a single Shuriken throw.

The main blueprint can be bought at the Market for 35.000 credits. The component blueprints drops from Maniacs, which only spawn under certain conditions - see the Wiki for details. However, the drop chance is about ~23-39% (with the Systems blueprint being more rare) so it shouldn't take too many Maniacs kills to get all the component blueprints.

Maniacs are very quick and able to cloak so they can be a tough fight; however Warframes with AoE damage can make the fight easier like Saryn's Spore and Miasma, Ember's World on Fire and Mesa's Peacemaker abilities

The relics that drops blueprints for Ash Prime are currently removed from the drop tables and have been moved to the "Prime Vault". They will likely be unvaulted again at a later date - pay attention to news on the official Warframe site for information of which warframes gets unvaulted next time. You can however still acquire those blueprints by trading with other players (for Platinum) who already possess those blueprints.

1: Shuriken throws a shuriken, that seeks enemies and deals Slash damage with 100% Status chance. The bleed DoT from Slash procs ignores armor and shield and stacks if you throw multiple Shuriken's.

With the Seeking Shuriken augment this ability can be used to strip armor from enemies; with 143% Ability Strength or more you can completely remove all armor with a single Shuriken throw.

Mods:

• Damage scales with Ability Strength.
• Augment: Seeking Shuriken will reduce the enemy armor by 70% for 8 seconds.

2: Smoke Screen will temporarily stagger nearby enemies (crowd-control) and also cloak Ash + any equipped companion/sentinel for 8 seconds. With the Smoke Shadow augment you can even cloak nearby allies. This ability is great for escaping when surrounded but not as effective for stealth gameplay as Loki's Invisibility or Ivara's Prowl and Cloak arrow abilities, as they are able to remain cloaked for longer time.

Mods:

• The duration scales with Ability Duration.
• The Stagger radius scales with Ability Range.
• Augment: Smoke Shadow also cloaks nearby allies (15 m radius) for 8 seconds.

3: The Teleport ability cause Ash to teleport to the location of the target; if the target is an enemy, the target is staggered and open to melee finisher attacks.

With the Fatal Teleport augment Ash is able to teleport and perform a melee finisher. If you combine this augment with a dagger equipped with the Covert Lethality mod, you are able to teleport to and instantly kill the enemy.

If the target is killed, the Fatal Teleport augment will restore 50% of the energy used, which allow you to spam Teleport. This combination makes Ash very fun to play and also very efficient as you are able to move fast through the map by teleporting to and killing enemies very fast.

Synergy: You can cast the Teleport ability for free on enemy targets marked by the Blade Storm ability; Ash will then teleport to the marked target and quickly attack all marked targets too.

Mods:

• The targeting range scales with Ability Range.
• The Teleport ability can trigger the Covert Lethality mod and instantly kill the target.
• Augment: Fatal Teleport cause Ash to immediately perform a melee finisher attack with 200% extra damage + restore 50% energy if the target is killed.

4: Blade Storm allow you to mark nearby enemies; marking an enemy cost 12 energy but is reduced to 6 energy if Ash is cloaked. You can activate Blade Storm while zooming with a ranged weapon to make it easier to mark a specific target.

Activating this ability again will spawn two shadow copies of Ash that teleports to and attacks the marked enemies. You can also use the Teleport to join the shadow copies in the fight. All strikes (both from Ash and shadow copies) add to the melee combo counter and also have 100% Bleed status chance.

Hint:

• Ash is invulnerable while he marks targets; so use it when you are surrounded by enemies and you shields are gone to get a break and charge your shields.
• Blade Storm deals True damage, which is very useful against Sentinels on Lua.

Synergy:

• If Ash is cloaked by e.g. Smoke Screen during the targeting phase, the energy cost of marking a target is reduced to 6 energy.
• Use the Teleport ability will cause Ash to teleport to the target (without any energy cost) and then join the two shadow copies in killing all the marked enemies.

Mods:

• Damage is affected by Ability Strength and also by the Steel Charge Aura mod.
• Damage is also affected by melee combo counter; consider using Blade Storm e.g. Body Count, Drifting Contact or Gladiator Rush to increase melee combo counter duration.
• Energy cost per mark is affected by Ability Efficiency.
• Target range is affected by Ability Range.
• Augment: Rising Storm cause attacks by the shadow clones to increase the Melee Counter by 4 and also increase the duration of the Melee Combo Counter.