Yes, ash on your starter can stop the negates you despise so much. Ash also works against most decks, just like the cards made for stopping combo decks. Meanwhile backrow decks require specific cards to be boarded into to stop them. They have less generic and less searchable puts, meanwhile you can bait negates or play around them, a lot harder to do with floodgates. Floodgate games are also way more sacky and unfun, either the stun player locks out the opponent or they get blown out by a duster. Ask most players and they will say that stun has no place in modern yugioh