I thought Ashley was in a good position prior to E3. Before E3 I would have given Ashley 60-70% chance. Now I'm thinking she's sitting around 75-85%.
The Mii outfit is what I found most convincing. Ashley, Isabelle, and Takamaru are the three assist trophy characters with Mii
Outfits. Among them I've always thought Ashley was the most likely. Takamaru's been deconfirmed but, Ashley and Isabelle are still on the table.
The assist trophies don't bother me. We've seen 30 and we know there will be over 50. Sakurai added a lot of new trophies: Krystal, Bomberman, Badge arcade Bunny. The addition of Badge arcade Bunny really looks good for Ashley!
What bothers me is the number of English speaking Youtubers that don't put Ashley in their top tens. Granted, a lot of them don't know much about speculation and throw together a video without much effort to get views because top tens for Smash generate a lot of views.
"If IGN says Solaire of Astora is likely because he has an Amiibo it must be true!"
That's the kind of stuff they say. The media has greatly warped what the public's view of who they think is likely. Not many English speaking Youtubers are knowlegeble enough to be able to make a discerment.
That being said, I've been using google tranlate to view what Japanese Youtubers are saying. Japanese Youtubers seem to include Ashley on their lists almost as if including Ashley is a standard for top ten lists.
I do think Ashley performed notably well on the ballot especially on Japan's side. Heck, we even got Ashley's outfit after the ballot!
Even though it appears the Smash Ballot has a major influence on the roster this time around, Ashley is a character that I feel is exempt from her performance on the ballot regardless of whether she did well or not.
The reason why I think this way is because Ashley is still a relevant character from a franchise that still hasn't gotten a second character. Sure We've gotten stages and assist trophies for WarioWare but, a character that originated from the series feels needed.
Wario did not originate from WarioWare. Most people still think He's a Mario character which is true but, having Wario in Smash doesn't bring enough attention to the series for that reason. People become emotionally attached to playable characters, not stages or assist trophies.
On top of everything I've said, Ashley is a magic user. There is almost an infinite amount of possibilities you can come up with for a moveset when a character can use Magic. Smash is lacking magic users and Ashley's cute adorable design bring many things to the table not many other Nintendo characters offer to Smash.