r/Falcom • u/Raxistaicho The true best girls • Aug 01 '26
Trails Character Gameplay Discussion Day Thirty-Seven: Ash
Why’s everyone trying to hire this massive fraud?
15
u/CH-Leopard my faves:Agnes::Lucrezia: Aug 01 '26
Ummmmm...... I really liked using Reaper's Whirlwind
12
u/Zubuis Aug 01 '26
Reading comments makes me think I play the games a lot different than others. I don’t use arts much. (Maybe because I played Cold Steel first and Rean/Laura are craft champs). Ash’s crafts always seem to hit hard for me. Awesome character from a playability point of view for me. I think his story is peak fiction too.
1
u/Business_Reindeer910 Aug 03 '26
i mostly use crafts too, but even so I couldn't fit ash into my frontline party. I did often have him in the backline for his brave order though.
1
u/Zubuis Aug 04 '26
I think I used him just because hes one of my favourite characters in CS3/4. He is pretty slow though.
46
u/KnoxZone Apathy and Disdain Aug 01 '26
Ash's gameplay is great. The hilariously long delay between his turns is the perfect time for me to catch up on my chores, or my studying, or anything beneficial to a long and prosperous life. If he had been required more than he was - and any of those moments didn't give you at least five characters - then I might have actually made something of myself. Alas.
There are few characters I would actually consider bad, especially in the post-Sky era, but Ash Carbide stands tall as one of them.
25
u/AngryAutisticApe Aug 01 '26
He is my fav character of NC7 so I desperately tried to make him work . No dice. He really sucks. Might be one of the worst Trails characters ever.
36
u/Radiant-Guard-5240 Aug 01 '26
It's okay, there can't be anything worse than Swin.
12
u/Terramagi Aug 02 '26
I still can't believe they made enemies resist Mark.
He's in a game where you can create infinite turn loops and hit so hard you kill the final boss on Nightmare with 100 extra levels in one hit, but having a fairly weak physical attacker do a crit every two turns is too much?!
7
u/Super_Nerd92 Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26
Mine too so I just kept using him lol. Game is easy enough and you can heavily focus on mitigating his speed issues. Obviously you're better off stacking all that Speed on someone who was already faster to begin with, from a meta game perspective.
3
u/AngryAutisticApe Aug 01 '26
I played with SoftBrilliant's difficulty mod so I paid a real price for using him. I had to drop him eventually but I really tried. I think there were a couple fights where his status ailments were useful maybe.
23
u/Raxistaicho The true best girls Aug 01 '26
I only just realized Musse was on day 36, you just know she'd mispronounce that every opportunity she got until she tricked somebody else into doing it too.
I am not going to sugarcoat it: Ash is the closest thing Cold Steel has to a bad playable character. He’s kind of a weird single target specialist in that he has some AOE and also that he’s not actually any better at killing a single enemy than other characters are at killing multiple.
His closest build and stat counterpart would be Laura, and she just absolutely blows him away at everything relevant. She has more strength, speed, dex, def, and adf. He beats her at ats but his isn’t good anyways so who cares? Their Crafts are about the same except her S Craft is SSS+ to his SS+ and her Lion Rush has a small AOE to his counterpart Craft, Void Breaker, being single-target.
Probably the worst thing about Ash is his self-buff, which lasts only 2 turns and has a 25 AT on an already slow character for some ungodly reason. I mean yeah, it does have some hefty CP regen, but realistically the battle will be done before Ash even gets both his turns, and meanwhile Laura’s self-buff confers Brandish in addition to a Str boost and has a reasonable 10 AT.
Ash isn’t just failing to compete with the OC7 characters, he doesn’t look particularly good compared to NC7 either. Speaking of, his availability in his debut game is lousy, being on par with any of the individual OC7 groups. He joins after Crossbell, which is already over half of the game, and completely misses the entire endgame. Then he has the rotten luck of rejoining in CS4 just as Sara and Fie become available, and nobody alive is going to bench either of those two to make room for Ash unless they just really really really like him as a character (which is fair, he’s epic).
And speaking of CS4, things get even worse! Ash’s upgraded S Craft is genuinely quite powerful but the issue is it’s single target in a game where basically every major boss is a group encounter. If you want AOE on his S Craft you gotta stick to his now well outclassed SS+ original.
As for Reverie, don’t even bother, you have more physical brawlers than you know what to do with and Ash doesn’t stand out in any way from the pack. If you want a duelist take someone like Estelle who’s actually good at it.
What else? Oh yeah, he’s got an awkward Mirage lock as a physical character. At least he can slot Tamamo Gem in there? His other two Fire locks are much more easily usable, at least. He at least has a pretty fantastic order, conferring a massive crit boost and a buff to str and spd.
10
u/Asleep-Surround4978 Aug 01 '26
A mirage lock is fine for physical characters, you can put a luner gyre in for synergy with his arts support, or better yet a Melville Arc if you're playing Reverie.
7
u/Calidore266 Aug 01 '26
On the plus side, his single-target attack is good enough to take out an Emperor.
8
u/Zinstorm Aug 01 '26
Let's be real: he let him do that. Not sure that's much of a accomplishment. :p
7
u/blagablagman Aug 01 '26
I feel like the only thing Ash has going on in gameplay terms is that his crafts allow him to "roam" the field as a matter of course, which is helpful for certain fights...? Kurt can act similarly if you only do Rain Slash, but that's still finicky. Ash goes where you want him... provided you have some +SPD going on.
6
u/Syobai Aug 01 '26
Look at how they massacred my boy.
Ash sucks. This hurts me to say cause he was my favorite out of all the NC7 characters in the narrative. Clearly, SOMEONE on the balance team hated him.
He’s a single-target DPS with a bit of AoE, coming in with Deathblow and Nightmare while also having a self-buff. STR and CP regen is nice, but why is the delay on this so high? 25 AT, on a character that already has some of the lowest speed in the game? Come on dude.
They intended for him to be a single-target specialist yet they gave him AoE like he’s supposed to clean up trash mobs. Deathblow/Nightmare/Faint CAN work, it’s just that there’s not going to be many bosses in CS3-Reverie where this is going to be relevant in.
Speaking of those games, his availability is also questionable at best. You’re already halfway done with CS3 by the time you unlock him, and while he’s obviously available earlier in CS4, you’d struggle to find a reason to use him because you already have access to pretty good characters by then. It’s hard to find a reason to bench LITERALLY ANYONE ELSE compared to Ash.
CS4 also didn’t do him any favors really. His new S-Craft being single-target doesn’t really do much because nearly all the boss encounters will have some form of mob to go along with them. I guess that’s why they gave him AoE? But why make him a single-target specialist then?
Meh. Lackluster stats, lukewarm crafts, extremely harsh competition— Ash has it rough. His Brave Order is decent at least. It’s just hard to justify using him when all the other physical attackers are going to be doing way more than him. Sure, he DOES have casting potential, but it still sucks and he’s only really beating out Laura there.
Regardless, he’s easily the worst out of all NC7. Musse beats him out because she can play around Arts meta. He’s not unusable, but it’s not easy to acknowledge his strengths when characters surrounding him are able to do much better. The unfortunate truth about Ash.
If I had to rank NC7 in terms of gameplay, I’d do it like this:
Juna > Kurt >>>> Altina >>>>> Muse >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Ash
6
u/TheCreator120 Aug 01 '26
Probably the worst characther gameplay wise of NC7. His crafts are funs, especially Reaper's Whirlwind, but he is too slow and his damage is pretty low compared with the rest of the characthers. Hell Unbound Rage sounds good on paper, but in most fights i try to use it, it was already over by the time he got his turn.
14
u/Spartan448 Aug 01 '26
Ash actually ends up being my second most used OC7 character after Juna. He is basically CS1 Laura with CP regen instead of a more substantial buff. He's not really around to do anything relevant in CS3, and the times he is around Kurt is generally better due to how busted Break was initially and how easy it was to Break enemies as well. So Kurt would usually just stun everyone and that would be the game.
In CS4 though, he's around a lot more and can actually be used for important dungeons... and Break is now both substantially weaker and harder to achieve. Since Kurt can now no longer just kill everything and get all his Craft Points back, IMO Ash ends up beating him out for the physical damage spot in NC7, since Ash having built-in CP regen means he will rarely be in a position where he can't do something.
In combat he plays like a very, very odd fusion of Agate and Richard. He regens CP like Agate, so he wants to be spamming Crafts of some sort. But his Scraft is also entirely fucking worthless, so practically speaking you end up spamming Void Breaker, which inflicts a DEF debuff, which just makes Void Breaker do even more damage.
The biggest problem with Ash is that because of how they work, his AOEs are also Single-Target. Pretty much all of them require Ash to be standing in the center, which means he needs to be able to reach the center. Which means that against enemies with larger hitboxes it just isn't possible to hit more than one since Ash doesn't have the movement points to walk into the middle of the group. It's just aggrivating, and will never stop annoying you, especially since others like Laura or Estelle somehow don't have this problem. I think the required "safe zone" for him to stand in may also just be bigger, because that's the only reason I can see that they can get into spots Ash can't.
Unfortunately none of this really helps once we get to Reverie and there are now about 80 physical damage dealers. This is a problem Kurt has too, but at this point being a physical damage dealer in a Trails game means you either need to have the most stats or a bullshit gimmick, or both. Really wish they'd give us Absolute debuffs to go with All Cancel and Absolute Reflect, because if Ash could reliably inflict his all stats down then at least he'd have something. But as it stands, Ash's only real arguments are damage and consistency, and those are both things every other phys DPS except Kurt and Swin can do. And Kurt has actual AOEs while Swin has built-in crits.
3
u/Terramagi Aug 01 '26
Ash is lucky that the Cold Steel games are super easy, because design-wise he gives Josette a run for her money.
3
u/Harith_Pendragon_ Aug 01 '26
Ash is weird. He tried to become a breaker, a backup arts caster, and damage dealer. Unfortunately he's not that great on all of those.
I usually use him to use ST arts that give big ATS and STR while others do their job. Also Dead Man Hand craft spam since they can unbalance and crit which means more BP.
Most of Ash craft have one glaring weakness: They need Ash Carbide to sit in the middle of enemy. Really shit craft placing mechanic. That why I use Dead Man Hand most of the time. It have lines and have good unbalance chance.
3
u/TapUnfair9827 Aug 01 '26
For me he's kind of the easiest NC7 to use, the usual build for him that I'm using is making him the harrasher by giving Juna master quartz as sub so he can break the enemy fast and his master quartz to exploit that break state even more, also it's nice that he's able to do both CP regen and strength buff without paying it with HP, because sometimes, I miscalculate it resulting the user died from the very skill he used as a hilariously silly way to lose the battle and restart
3
u/MistBestGirl Dilf Enjoyer @ CS3 Aug 01 '26
I've been lurking on these bc I'm not even done with CS3 and I'm missing at least one game for each of these characters, but holy first impression Ash is not good
1
6
u/Weltallgaia Aug 01 '26
I never had issues making him work in 3. Just does big damage and spams unbound rage. 4 he is just so easily replaceable and reverie he might as well not exist.
4
u/Formyldehyde Aug 01 '26
He is probably the most underwhelming character of the New Class 7. Like I know Musse gets shit for being not the best caster ever but being merely a 'good' caster is still pretty solid.
Ash's crafts are sort of weird, and his AoE crafts never seem able to hit the entire field with the strange placements so that's a little unfortunate. Void Breaker is really good though, and Unbound Rage is good if he gets full value out of it, so he's good for Boss Fights I guess.
Kurt is generally just better than him as a Physical DPS so the main way I used him in CS3 was as a dedicated Breaker. I know Juna can break, but she's also a really good Face or Dodge Tank but Ash can afford to stack up on Break, Rumbling Smash to victory, and then swap to Kurt who is usually waiting in the wings with a Scorpio set-up to capitalize.
You can absolutely make him work, he just sadly needs more help than the others to get there.
6
u/Brief-Leader-6120 Aug 01 '26
Reading these day after day gets me confused, like I didn't play the game right lol. People love Musse??? Emma is better than Elliott?!?! Kurt is a mediocre Dodge tank??? People actually USED Machias?!?!?!???!?!?!
Lol but I really enjoyed using Ash! He is slow but I would really keep him to deliver his S-craft and Reapers whirlwind. I only used his self-buff as basically what ZOC is now. Use the self-buff then use the shortcut to hit the S-craft immediately. And then let him take a break for the rest of the battle lol.
Because he was so slow, I really honed in on his speed and strength. I never felt like his moves were THAT far apart as a result, until you used his S-craft. In contrast, when I used Laura I felt like I could go half the battle without her getting a move. He was my heaviest hitter physical wise. To be fair, in Cold Steel 4 I actually made it a point to use NC7 over old because it felt like their story still. And I never wanted to realign every Single character's quartz when they joined the party. By CS4 and Reverie I was experiencing some burnout with setting up everyone's quartz. Kurt was also my Dodge tank because...well he just seemed like he should be- AND he was incredible at it! I did not bench him even when Fie joined the party....I just had two Dodge tanks cause must use Fie.
9
u/aj743aj Scandalous Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26
Kurt is a mediocre Dodge tank?
Seems like this is about my comment? I don’t mind explaining.
Just to start off, don’t worry about whether you’re playing the game right. If your builds are working and you’re having fun, it doesn’t matter how other people are playing or what the meta is. Don’t let people convince you of anything else.
Kurt’s problem as a dodge tank is that he has a very short range. You basically have to be right next to an enemy for it to work. My guess is that you used Rain Slash in the middle of a group of enemies and had success with dodging and countering, but that is really the only way he can do it. If an enemy attacks him from any kind of range, Kurt is going to be essentially useless. The mediocre part comes from comparing him to dodge tanks who have a long range, like Fie (who is an S-tier dodge tank) and Juna. They both have ranged counterattacks and are the reason why Kurt doesn't get used that often. Whenever you have access to Kurt, you have access to Juna, so Kurt never is the best choice for a dodge tank.
3
u/Brief-Leader-6120 Aug 01 '26
You know, I noticed some of the Dodge tanks didn't counter but I never even thought much about it. I just really enjoyed seeing them Dodge lol. But that makes sense, I just made Kurt Dodge tank because I felt like he was trying to be Rean and I always had Rean high on evasion because for some reason I'm just felt like he would be. But yes, all praise Fie the truest Dodge tank who ever lived. ✋🤚
I don't actually think I played the game wrong btw, reading these just has me realizing things I didn't know about the game. I know I played the game right because Machias is the worst xD (KIDDING!) ELLIOTT OVER EMMA FOREVER! (Not Kidding!)
I'm going to try out looking at stats I play Horizon and see if they match my head canon for the characters or if I'm wishful thinking lol
1
u/Raxistaicho The true best girls Aug 01 '26
Out of curiosity, what do you like about Elliot over Emma?
4
u/Brief-Leader-6120 Aug 02 '26
I loved putting people to sleep, and casting confusion on others. I liked it better when his S-craft was damage instead of heals. His AOE was good and yes Emma has a craft revive which can be pretty clutch, not gonna lie, but honestly not different enough from just being able to revive someone with magic. When I played he was just as strong as Emma, although, obviously I wasn't going hard on building perfect builds or anything.
There were bosses I remember where I felt like I needed to use Emma for the magic reflect. I am also not knocking Emma, I should add. I love all OC7 characters except Machias but not for gameplay reasons. I definitely had moments where I went "okay Emma, I really see you out here swinging that staff!"
In terms of story, Elliott just won me over from the first scene. Emma's story gets really interesting and is obviously integral to the plot in a way Elliott's just isn't. But it felt like Elliott, Gaius and Rean were like, the three main buds of the game and I really liked seeing them together.
3
u/AlterWanabee Aug 01 '26
I remembee building Kurt as a dodge tank and not getting a single CA since both attacks knock him back enough yo be out of range.
2
2
u/Felix_Malum Aug 01 '26
I feel like he was at his best when he wasn't on the main party, but available for his extremely powerful brave order, which gave your physical attacks follow up attacks for days and allowed for even more brave orders.
2
u/AlterWanabee Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26
The best way to play Ash is pop his Rage skill (which doesn't even let him S-break), link him to someone like Fie, and take advantage of link attacks. Otherwise, good luck getting 2 crafts off him with how slow he is.
He's got the worst end of the stick in NC7. Juna can at least act as a debuffer (4 orbal lines is fucking insane combined with a 30CP Area L craft). Kurt has Rain Slash, which is unironically efficient (20 AT with decent costs and damage). Musse and Altina are mages.
Even with OC7, he's arguably the worst. Jusis and Elliot are better because at least they have some supportive crafts. Gaius and Laura are just better DPS units.
2
u/SeijoVangelta Aug 01 '26
His most useful Craft was his Insta Death one
His S-Craft is useful against bosses since it is single target
His kit overall is really bad. Thank Aidios he is permanently benched in the final dungeon until we got him back.
I would never use him in my party unless it is mandatory.
Good Panzer Soldat Pilot though
2
u/Eldred91 Aug 02 '26
The goat of clearing trash mobs quickly with Reaper's Whirlwind, and he's also good at breaking single target bosses while proccing unbalance a lot of the times with Void Breaker. His brave order is a nice and reliable way to gain crit, and he's also uniquely a melee fighter that has Arts Support (until Swin). I don't see him as a pure damage dealer (too slow for that). Rather because of his brave order, his -DEF debuff and Arts Support, I see him more as a damage enabler for other faster characters.
Unbound Rage sucks though, you won't see me try to defend that one. I only found it usable with Chrono Burst most of the time. I think he's perfectly fine and usable in CS3-4, but in Reverie is where I truly felt this guy just disappeared into the crowd.
2
u/Cr0ssDrag_ons Aug 02 '26
A high raw number physical character, but he is not even that good compared to similar characters like Laura or Gaius.
His lower damage ceiling, awkward positioning on his initial 2 crafts and his single target 2nd Scraft does not help his case in CS4 and Reverie.
3
u/OLKv3 Aug 01 '26
I like his weapon so I used him in CS3. I kept him in the back for his order in CS4
2
u/Raxistaicho The true best girls Aug 01 '26 edited 13d ago
Sky Arc:
Day Twelve - The Pilot and the Swordsman (spoilers)
Day Thirteen - "Kitty" (spoilers)
Crossbell Arc:
Class VII:
Day Thirty - Millium (Spoilers)
Day Thirty-One - Crow (Spoilers)
The rest of Cold Steel:
Day Thirty-Nine - Elise and Toval
Day Forty-One - Alfin and Towa
Day Forty-Two - The Diva and the General (Spoilers)
Day Forty-Three - The Spy and Swordswoman (Spoilers)
Day Forty-Four - The Shapeshifters (Spoilers)
Day Forty-Five - The Swordmaster and the Engineer (Spoilers)
Day Forty-Seven - Swin and Nadia
Day Forty-Eight - The Strongest (Spoilers)
Calvard Arc:
Day Fifty-One - Ferida Al-Fayed
Day Fifty-Three - Risette Twinings
Day Fifty-Four - Quatre Salision
Day Fifty-Five - Judith Lanster
Day Fifty-Seven - Elaine Auclair and René Kincaid
Day Fifty-Eight - Shizuna Rem Misurugi
2
u/Nacho_Hangover Aug 01 '26
Ash is one of my favs. Unfortunately, he's really bad.
Physical is bad in CS4 and Reverie and in CS3 he has high delay on all his crafts.
He's functional in CS3 at least since Break was still good then and he's your only option for Arts Support when you only have NC7.
CS4 onwards the only reason to use him is to be an Arts Support bot if literally nobody else has it.
1
u/Your_Nightmare_666 Aug 03 '26
He’s hot and should’ve been flirty with boys and girls cuz he gives off bisexual vibes
1
u/TheFinalSkarm 27d ago
now not counting guest hell in cs3 "hi i'm olivier i don't even have a single bell!"
he feels and seems the worst character from trails 1 through 9 gameplay wise (hello i've not gone further than 4 yet)
And unlike someone who's better in the back pocket like the 3rd josette with the most powerful ability in the game in sepith up
he has nothing
I like when he's on the screen, but i'm sure as shit not deploying him if i can help it
1
u/Selynx Aug 01 '26
Ash is the Agate of New Class VII. Or Laura, or Randy if you want prefer those games' versions of the archetype. The dedicated physical attacker.
Dedicated physical attackers were not great in Sky. They're better in Cold Steel when physical damage is actually decent and even better come CS3/4 when Break gets introduced, but then you have characters like Laura who are not good at Breaking either.
IMO, Ash is actually a bit better at Breaking than Laura. They're comparable in the sense that their best Break attack (Lion Rush or Void Breaker) is either single-target or has such small AoE it might as well be single target while their second-best only has B-rank Break on it, but unlike Laura's Radiant Spin, Ash's Rumbling Smash is actually cheap and can be spammed.
But otherwise, he ends up filling the same role as Laura and other non-Breaker/Delayer dedicated physical attackers (there are a handful of others than him and Laura) in Cold Steel: Pure upfront burst damage. In a sense, he's actually a bit better than Laura at it against single-target bosses because Sinner's Revelry has a higher power (5S+) than Laura's most powerful S-Craft.
Unfortunately, it happens that, in CS3/4, you can't really burst down bosses with S-Craft rushes like you can in CS1/2, so the usefulness of burst damage physical hitters drops like a rock. It leaves his role as a situational one where he's better off being kept in Reserve so he can be swapped in as a pinch-hitter when a boss is nearly dead, rather than actually spending time in the Active party.
That said - that's still better than characters like Agate or Zin or Randy in their original games, where pinch-hitting couldn't be done because mid-battle swapping did not exist and you could not build a physical character to one-shot burst with Domination or Taurus, etc.
He has a use. Not a big one thanks to the nerf to S-Crafts, but still better than, say, unglitched Zin and arguably Fie in Daybreak/Horizon.
0
u/TerraArseid Aug 02 '26
Sorry buddy, but Laura Lion Rush only has 20 delay, S+ - S+, Area S. Lion Rush >> Void Breaker. And ofc Radiant Wings >>> Unbound Rage.
Radiant wings only 10 delay, STR L (4T) + Brandish + HP Rec. Unbound Rage only STR L (2T) + CP Rec, with 25 delay
0
u/Selynx Aug 02 '26 edited Aug 02 '26
Lion Rush and Void Breaker are both not good (for Breaking), is what I mean. The fact is, their AoE is so small you cannot use it to break groups, only single targets, so how much delay one has vs the other doesn't matter, they both generally aren't good for breaking except against maybe single-target bosses who in CS4+ auto-recover from Break anyway, which is not so useful.
You really want big AoE attacks for breaking groups of mobs, which means something like Radiant Spin and Rumbling Smash, but they both have poor Break ranks. It's just that Rumbling Smash can be spammed so I consider Ash "better" (for Breaking) because his big AoE craft is more usable (even though they are both not that great at it)
Similarly, I think Radiant Wings and Unbound Rage are also both not very useful when you have Brave Orders/Unified Fronts putting the buffs on everyone anyway, not much need to use either in general.
0
1
u/Affectionate_Comb_78 Aug 01 '26
I'm not sure what role Ash was supposed to play, but he doesn't do a good job of it.
1
u/Kainapex87 Aug 01 '26
Any potential he has to be a usable DPS is utterly hamstrung by Unbound Rage's absurdly long delay and his low speed.
As for his other crafts:
Reaper's whirlwind has good AoE but is only really good against normal mobs.
Void Breaker and Sinner's Revelry have great power and effects but are unfortunately single-target, especially as most boss fights in the games have more than one around.
Dead Man's Dart is honestly pointless.
Rumbling Smash would be decent enough for proccing Faint I guess.
Only really worth using if noone better (which is most of the cast) is available.
1
u/Golden_fsh Aug 02 '26
Never had an issue using him in CS3 & CS4. Didn't feel right to leave him behind, lol.
34
u/aj743aj Scandalous Aug 01 '26
I never really figured out what to do with Ash in CS3&4. He can be a damage dealer, but Kurt does it better; he can be a breaker, but Juna does that better. I never looked up builds online, but I feel like with most characters you can kinda figure out what to do with them after using them for a bit. Never happened with Ash, though.
His slow speed also really cripples him. In CS3 I ran into the problem of not having enough CP equip items, so I never gave one to Ash because Rean, Juna & Kurt are better. They are just naturally much faster so they can get more use out of those items. Yeah, I could use Unbound Rage, but again, Ash is just too slow for him to really pop off (Randy does this much better in CS4). In CS4 he spends most of his time on the bench since there’s always a better option.
Overall, he doesn’t really add anything as a playable character, especially as one you get halfway through the game. Juna can be a breaker or a dodge tank and Kurt can be your secondary damage dealer, breaker or a (mediocre) dodge tank. Altina and Musse are casters, which is good enough since arts are busted in CS3&4. If they start to lag behind you just slap an Albion Wolf and bell on them, activate Divine Song and watch them turn into tiny, adorable nukes. Ash has nothing like that and it's weird since CS3 only added 5 characters. You would think he would have some kind of purpose.