Why are some of the top gods right now at the top?

Update2 11/11/2014:  I made another meta post but never really made a full updated version to this one, so I'll just update the list here.

First pick supports: Geb, Athena
First pick junglers:  Mercury, Serqet, Freya
First pick adcs:  Apollo, Rama
First pick mids:  Janus, Nu Wa, Agni
First pick solos:  Chaac, Nu Wa, Hercules, Ra, Loki

Second pick supports:  Ymir, Bacchus, Sylvanus
Second pick junglers:  Thor, Loki, Nemesis, Arachne
Second pick adcs:  Artemis, Ullr, Neith
Second pick mids:  Poseidon, Scylla, Vulcan, Ra
Second pick solos:  Aphrodite, Chang'e, Zhong Kui, Vamana

There are plenty of other viable gods or counter-pick gods, but these are the gods seeing the most play and/or most success right now.  Have fun!

Update1 10/2/2014:  I was going to simply change the list and make adjustments to the descriptions, but I realized I had some new thoughts on how to present the list and some more extrapolations, so I wanted to do a new post which should be up shortly.

I was re-reading some of my earlier posts and realized that I really didn't explain why some gods are better than others.  I'm in the process of making the mage mid lane general build guide and really got distracted by this idea.  So first off we need to figure out how many and which are first pick, and which are second pick.  In league, you have the option to ban, so that's why you have first picks and second picks.  Just by the math of having 5 players per team, 5 roles, and 6 bans total, that leaves us with 2 first picks for each role, and potentially 3-4 second picks.  Potentially the two banners could ban out all six of the top gods for a given role but it is highly unlikely.

First pick supports: Geb, Athena
First pick junglers:  Mercury, Hun Batz
First pick adcs:  Apollo, Artemis
First pick mids:  Janus, Nu Wa, Agni, Ra
First pick solos:  Chaac, Nu Wa, Zhong Kui, Ra

Second pick supports:  Ymir, Bacchus, Khumbakarna
Second pick junglers:  Thor, Loki, Nemesis, Serqet
Second pick adcs:  Rama, Ullr, Neith
Second pick mids:  Poseidon, Scylla, Kukulkan, Nu Wa
Second pick solos:  Aphrodite, Chang'e, Hercules, Vamana, Osiris

There is are also a few gods that are viable and even preferable as counter picks.  If you know that your mid opponent is Poseidon, Scylla or Kukulkan, Isis becomes very viable because her first ability negates any root or slow.  Counter picks can be amazing if you know what they are and when to pick them.  Smitecamp has fairly up to date counter picks in their gods section but it doesn't appear that the site is actively maintained since July, but that's not to say that the counter pick section isn't highly useful.  Also you have situational gods like Freya that can work in multiple roles against certain team compositions.

So lets look at each of the first picks in turn to see what sets them apart.  I'd like to point out that none of these picks are auto-win, if you don't understand why they are the top pick in each of their roles, it will not help you to pick them over a god that is merely viable but that you know very well.

Athena:  Her passive is one of the strongest, after hitting three minions with her charge she becomes immune to the next 3 hits from an enemy god.  Any god with a high power initiate or attack power stimulant is nearly negated against her.  Her taunt is amazing with any high power ultimate to ensure that the ultimate hits, coordinating with your team when you are going to taunt will secure kills.  And lastly, her ability to move quickly from lane to lane every 90 seconds allows her to support the whole team in early and mid game, and then to recall home and come back to a fight with full health almost immediately in late game to ensure Gold Fury and Fire Giant kills.  Using Athena effectively requires excellent map awareness.  If you have poor map awareness, pick Geb.

Geb:  What's not to like here?  First and foremost, his shield is one of the best abilities in the game.  You could literally roam around the map with just this ability and be as effective as just about any other support in the game.  It is important to realize that the ability isn't just about mitigating damage, it also removes crowd control effects.  Using the shield at the right time, to mitigate the maximum amount of damage and to release an ally from CC is an art form.  Shockwave is weak, unless your team has high cc and then the other team all got magi's blessing.  The knock-up pops the bubble so that your team can be effective again.  Rollout gives much needed mobility as well as a great CC itself when maneuvered effectively to knock enemies into a wall.  And finally, Cataclysm, combine with blink for the best initiation in the game.

Mercury: Mercury plus high crit equals dead enemies.  His ultimate can CC large groups of people and get you into the fight from across the map.  He is not an easy god to learn or get used to using.  Just because this guy is almost always banned does not mean you should pre-pick him for your group until you know that someone can and wants to play him.  This god takes finesse and some people just don't got it.  He's a decent jungler, adc, or solo god in mid and early game, but where he shines is late game with full build.  Combine his stim and Made you Look, and it can crit for 800+ in late game, not many gods can take too many of those, and its an AoE.  Playing this god is all about catching people away from their group, punch punch, made you look, cc, punch, run away.  Rinse and repeat in 15 seconds.

Hun Batz:  Hun has good clear early, but he is all about getting max cdr and using ultimate to maximum effect.  With max cdr, you can gank every 54 seconds for a nearly guaranteed kill, and then late game you can turn the team fight almost every time.  It is important to note:  beads tier 3 is 90 seconds, your ultimate with max cdr is 54 seconds.  Make sure you are in position for a kill as soon as its up if they beadsed out the first time (yes, beadsed is a word!) Playing Batz you will want deathbringer right after max cdr and be sure to intersperse your auto-attacks in between your abilities to take advantage of your passive.

Apollo:  Its the ultimate, baby!  Apollo's claim to fame is his ability to finish a team fight, that and he's the best split pusher in the game due to being able to get out of deep enemy territory quickly.  His early and mid game are on par with the other hunters though he will get pushed back by Ullr and Artemis.  His ability to escape with his ultimate, or his dash, or his mez is what makes him strong.  You will need to be careful not to get baited into using your abilities offensively and leaving yourself defenseless, as this is a common tactic to use against fresh Apollo players.

Artemis:  Trap is too stronk!  Artemis ability to early poke with her volley and the ability to out box just about any other hunter due to boar into trap into fire faster (all officially sanctioned ability names) and teaming up with any other of your teams cc to get a trap on target for an easy kill.  If you discount trap as an amazing ability you are doing it wrong.  Like Geb's shield, you could roam with just this ability coupled with your auto-attacks (can you say "built-in crit" passive) and be more viable than half the gods in smite.

Janus:  Mobility, mobility, mobility.  (Fyi, fear the Bakasura ult and Poseidon whirlpool, portals will not work)  After going through a portal or over a breach your 2nd ability hits like a truck.  Early game, mid game, late game, it always hits hard.  Getting good at landing it without standing on top of your target, is the tough part.  Knowing where you can portal effectively both for escapes and for chasing down a target is key.  If you have the experience and knowledge, Janus is the best mid, but the conquest map is large and knowing all the portal lanes and judging your ultimate's range takes time and perseverance.  Roaming around inside the conquest practice map is highly, highly suggested.

Agni:  Its tough to say what makes Agni first pick, he's not flashy (though fiery,) but he has an all around good general kit.  The combo's with oil slick allow for short, long-ranged stuns, the dash is an effective escape, damage is average for a mage.  The only trick really is to not use your dash aggressively as it is your only escape.  Also, the ultimate doesn't use mana and is up pretty often.  This god requires particularly nimble fingers as you will want to target and hit 4 into 1 into 4 twice very quickly to get your full burst and stun off.  Landing this combo is really unique compared to other gods in the game and takes some getting used to.

Nu Wa:  The re-kit worked well!  Minion AI sucks though, well, its working as intended and prioritizing minions over gods but well it still sucks.  Nu Wa's claim to fame right now is in coupling red buff with girdle of might and her ultimate for pretty massive damage across all lanes.  The fog still has good clear, and the stun from minions with the explosive metal shard (when the minions behave) is painful.  All of that and she is just fun to play.  I liked the old Nu Wa, but I love the new Nu Wa.

Chaac:  Good sustain, and good clear for a melee god.  The axe combos, done well, are extremely effective and often very deceptive.  If you need to get away you can throw your ax in one direction and run in the other, if only being chased by one god you will get away one way or the other.  If chased by two, you will eliminate one or even both if they aren't smart.  Using axe into heal can slow enemies pre-gank if you play it right.  Always try to throw your ax before ulting though, for maximum damage.  All around good kit and great team fight.

Zhong Kui:  Good sustain, and good clear for early and mid.  Really shines in team fight in late games, I wish I could say more but this isn't a god I have a lot of experience playing myself.  He's been big in the SPL and tournament play though, and he will turn team fights around single handedly if built and played well.

Ra:  When I first posted this, Ra was conspicuously absent from the list (thanks to mrvlrdr101 for pointing this out).  Amazing lane clear, and long range snipes and late game sustain make him a great 2nd pick.  Nothing particularly special but an all around safe choice.

So those are all of the first picks, I'll follow up later with the gods you will actually get to play, as they won't be banned out.  These are the gods that you should absolutely have in your arsenal walking into league.  Not necessarily so that you will play them, but so that, on the off chance that you are top elo, and you have the first pick, and someone else asks you to grab them Mercury or Nu Wa, you can do that and swap them for your chosen character.  Any of these first pick gods can carry games in the right hands, make sure you have them ready.

Thanks for reading!  Remember, don't feed the enemy!

Come say hi on twitch.tv/jaesunv and i'll be happy to answer any questions!

Also, jungle Ymir carried in TSM invitational?  WTF!  I like Ymir, but....carried....in jungle...the whole reason he's not a first pick in support is because he has no mobility...and yet Frostiak (sp?) jungled with him effectively?  What is this?!  I don't even....

How to build an Assassin for the Jungle

(*This is pre-Odin/Arachne Patch, I'll update once we start seeing ranked play with these re-worked gods.*)

Alright, so my first two guides were the low hanging fruit. The builds for both ADC and even Support don’t change a whole lot from god to god, they only change in respect to what your team composition is and the opponent team’s composition and behavior. Now that we are looking at Assassins for the Jungle role, all of that uniformity goes right out the window. On one hand, it is great that you have so much choice in what items are going to best suit your playstyle. On the other hand, it is very daunting to try to figure out what your play style is while not inadvertently nerfing yourself by bad item selection. So let’s start with a list of League viable assassins that get played in the jungle, in order of most to least played: Mercury, Hun Batz, Thor, Serqet, Loki, Nemesis and Bakasura. Ne Zha, Thanatos, Bastet, Fenrir, Kali, and Arachne (pre re-kit) are also assassins that fill the role but are all currently relegated to 2nd tier in the current meta. You would not want to play a 2nd tier god in league unless you are exceptionally good with them.

Alright, so we have a short list of 7 gods. We can put these gods into two categories, ones with escapes that you can go full glass cannon (Loki, Nemesis, Bakasura), ones that need a little defense (Thor, Serqet) and ones that need to rush Critical Damage (Mercury, Hun Batz). Our glass build will look like:

• Bumba’s, CDR Boots, Heartseeker, Rage, Deathbringer, Bloodforge, Titan’s Bane

Our slightly defensive build:

• Bumba’s, CDR Boots, Jotunn’s Wrath, Shifter’s Shield, Rage, Deathbringer, Titan’s Bane

Our crit damage rush build:

• Bumba’s, Pen Boots, Heartseeker, Deathbringer, Rage, Titan’s Bane, Bloodforge

Strong arguments can be made for Hydra's Lament instead of Rage or Heartseeker and getting Malice instead of Rage.  Lesser arguments can be made for Qin’s Sais, Devo Gloves, Transcendence, Golden Bow, Executioner, Magi's Blessing and Hastened Fatalis, but these are mostly situational and really should only be used once you are comfortable in the jungle in ranked. It is also important to note that each of these situational items will vastly change things like: when you can safely gank, when you can invade their jungle, when you can split push, and at what point in a fight you need to disengage.

Actives are fairly easy. Fist of the Gods and Beads/Aegis.  I prefer fist over HoG 3 as it has saved me/gotten the kill too many times, and if your solo is ranged they should be backing up the support with HoG 3.  On Loki and Hun Batz, Girdle of Inner Power will allow you to burst down (often called “one shot” even though its 3 or 4 hits in the span of about 2 seconds) in late game anyone but a tank. Consumables are health pots early, wards for mid harpies and possibly sentries for gold fury/fire giant and finally damage pots. The wards should be used sparingly and only if your team just doesn’t seem to ward well. Warding generally shouldn’t need to be done by jungle or adc as your team should want your hyper-carries devoting their gold entirely to their damage/build.

This post is a little shorter than the others so I’ll go a little bit into Jungle strategy. I also want to go into it because it seems to be the least understood, at least in the lower level leagues like Bronze and Silver. Your job is to farm and drop buffs for your team. Speed is your buff, Red is for Mid and Blue is for ADC and Solo. You need to be aware and ready for Mid harpies as soon as they come up. The timer on Mid Harpies is 3 minutes and you have ~48 seconds to get there when the circle timer is at the 9 o’clock position. For reference it takes about 30 seconds to get from the Well to mid harpies with with no leap/boots, and it can get down to 15 seconds with 18% + leaps. Support or Mid should be there to help, but if not, it is their XP loss. Those are your primary responsibilities. If you can secure all of your camps and both mid harpies each time they are up, you will get to end game well fed. So that sounds pretty easy right? And it is, if your teammates are winning each of their respective lanes, or at least not feeding their lanes. Once you’ve gotten all of your farm, meaning you’ve done mid harpies, all the buffs and maybe even back harpies, you have a choice. You can gank or you can invade your opponents buffs, putting their jungle behind. You really only want to gank if your teammates have been pushed back to their tower. If they are all fighting at mid map or at the enemy’s towers, it is probably best to simply steal buffs from the opponents territory, just be sure to have an escape ready and it is best that you have hog available to make it quick.

Jungle is very much about map awareness and timing. Too often you see junglers fall behind in farm because they get caught up ganking or just end up staying in a failing lane at which point they are sucking up xp that that laner needs to get ahead. As the jungler you need to realize when there is a ganking opportunity and when you are leaching unnecessarily.


That’s all for now, happy jungling!!

How to build out a Guardian for Support Role in Duo Lane

Update1 11/11/2014:  Since posting this, Cabraken and Sylvanus have been added to the guardian pool.  Cabraken does not have tools that many of the other guardians do to support well, but if you use him Gem of Isolation after Sovereignty works well.  Sylvanus is very strong even after 3 rounds of nerfs, but you'll want to look at Rod of Ascelepus after Sov and your magic protection item. /update1

So you want to play support? Good luck!

That being said, let’s delve deep into the heart of the items you’ll need. The most common mistake in ranked play is for a support to forgo Watcher’s Gift and Midas Boots. These items are necessary in any competitive play. If you play in casual, you can certainly opt for tankier items or higher damage items. Watcher’s Gift and Midas Boots will always be better in mid to late game play by a support however. When using Watcher’s Gift, it is vitally important that you let your adc or other teammates get the final hit on all minions. When getting Midas Boots it is important to realise that you are not particularly tanky yet. Early support play is more about juking and threatening your opponents with CC until they provide you the opening to attack. I’ll go more into support strategy in another post, but some mention of it here was necessary to point out why you want Watcher’s Gift and Midas Boots.

I want to note, that as support, your damage isn’t really important, your ability to CC, zone, bodyblock and bodyshield are what make for a good support. That being said your leveling and items are far less important than supporting your team. One of the easiest way to support is to ward. You should start the game with two wards, always. Some supports like to go put out the two wards initially to cover their lane and immediately port home to grab two more or go back and grab health and mana pots. I am more in favor of grabbing the two wards and 4 multi potions and starting the game with one ward at the enemy’s blue camp in your lane so that you can watch for a possible offensive invade. Take every advantage you can, if you can prevent them getting their initial blue, you will have a huge early game advantage. After your initial pots run out grab two wards and a sentry on every back. Sentry Gold Fury, Sentry Fire Giant (after enemy team is around level 12) and ward duo and mid lane every chance you get (if mid and jungle aren’t.)

Two paragraphs in and we’ve barely made it to item 3, who knew supporting was so difficult! Third item will be a physical protection item, as you're laning against an ADC doing damage to you, and minions and towers do physical damage. Most often this is Sovereignty or Breastplate of Valor. Fourth item could be Breastplate or a magical protection item or a CC reduction item. Here it is really dependent on how much CC the enemy team has, whether or not there is already a lot of team fighting going on, and whether you are being focused my some magic damage gods. Stone of Gaia is the default for magic protection, but Bulwark of Hope is good if you’ve fallen massively behind in levels, and pestilence is okay if the enemy team has some sustain gods.

Here’s a couple of example builds leaving off the last two items. The first is the “I don’t want to think about it” build:

• Watcher’s Gift, Midas Boots, Sovereignty, Stone of Gaia, Magis Blessing or Hide of the Urchin.

This is a build that gets you cdr for your CC early:

• Watcher’s Gift, Midas Boots, Breastplate of Valor, Stone of Gaia, Magis Blessing or Hide of the Urchin.

This is for a sustain heavy opponent:

• Watcher’s Gift, Midas Boots, Sovereignty, Pestilence, Magis Blessing or Hide of the Urchin.

So let’s talk about those last two items. These are the ones that are situational depending on your enemy’s composition and where your team might be weak. Pestilence can go here if you haven’t gotten it already, Witchblade, Voidstone, Mystical Mail, Midgardian Mail, Ethereal Staff, Gem of Isolation, Divine Ruin, Soul Reaver, Bancroft’s Talon, Polynomicon, Pythagorem’s Piece.

What are these situations that make some of these items better than others? Your team doesn’t seem to be putting out a lot of damage, you aren’t being focused even in team fights, and the enemy team doesn’t have much for sustain:

• Polynomicon, Soul Reaver
• Witchblade, Soul Reaver
• Bancroft’s Talon, Polynomicon

Enemy team has two assassins and a hunter:

• Witchblade, Gem of Isolation (if you are always defending your squishies)
• Witchblade, Midgardian Mail (if they are dumb enough to focus on you)

Enemy team has high sustain:

• Pestilence, Divine Ruin
• Pestilence, Mystical Mail

If the enemy team seems to be really good at focusing targets or you’ve been focused down a few times:

• Bulwark of Hope, Gem of Isolation
• Bulwark of Hope, Midgardian Mail

Ok, so support has a lot of options. If you are new, and you just want an all around build that won’t get you laughed at:

• Watcher’s Gift, Midas Boots, Sovereignty, Stone of Gaia, Breastplate of Valor, Magis Blessing/Hide of the Urchin (depending on enemy CC), Bulwark of Hope and finally replace Midas Boots with Reinforced Greaves or CDR boots.

This is about as tanky as you get, you will be nigh indestructable; you also will do next to no damage. This is fine as long as you use your cc at the right time (not just on cooldown) and keep wards up at all the right places.

Actives! Hand of the Gods 3! (AKA Wrath of the Gods) No choice! Get it next after Midas Boots! No Choice! No arguments! Period! End of discussion! That being said you do get to choose your second item. Ymir, Ares, and Khumba usually get Blink 3, with some folks liking Combat Blink. The low cooldown on Blink 3 makes this a no brainer for initiating a fight, but it won’t get you out of trouble most of the time, hence some folks like combat blink. Most of the rest of the Guardians will get Enfeebling/Weakening Curse or Spiked Shell/Shell of Absorbion with a very few getting Girdle of Support. Your mileage may vary on any of these, and it really comes down to team comp and personal play style.

Consumable are easy. Multi-pots, then wards, then wards again, then sentries and wards, then more sentries and wards, etc.

Now why did I start this little guide/blog with “Good Luck!” Well, when you play the support role you have to rely on your team more than in any other role. You will have teams that are just thirsty and neglect their farm. You will have teams that feed their opponents whenever you are not there. You will have adc’s yelling at you for leaving lane when you are legitimately helping with mid harpies. You will have adc’s that don’t help you get their blue buff so it takes you a minute to kill the camp and then you have to back because your health is so low. Not doing damage means you need to be where the damage dealers are. You aren’t a jungler, you don’t roam the map solo. Your job is to support the damage dealers. Any time you are doing a camp or harpies by yourself you are in the wrong place and taking someone else’s farm. All that being said if you can learn how your teammates play early and support them in what they want to do, you will have a better time of it. Also, you need to gain the trust of your teammates. They need to know that if you initiate it is safe for them to follow up. They need to know that you will have their back when the enemy turns on them.

As I said before, “Good luck,” and don’t feed!

How to build out for an ADC (Attack Damage Carry) hunter in Duo (long) lane.

This guide is meant to be an all around guide for advanced or novice hunters. I’ll discuss the builds the pro’s are currently using and then move on to builds that have some more defense for those that might be starting out and need a little more time to react.

So where do we start, well, let’s start with your first 1500 gold. Pick up Death's Toll and either 1st tier Devourer’s Gauntlet or 1st tier Heartseeker. That last 50 gold can be used for a green pot (common), a blue pot (common on Ullr) or a ward (if you see that your support hasn't picked any up). “Choices so soon?” you say, “Just tell me what to build!” you say. If you are new, just go Devo Gloves 1 and a green pot. Devo gloves will give you better sustain due to the lifesteal and it won’t put a target on your back. Heartseeker will give you 8% extra movement speed when it is finished but stacks will reset on death, so it tends to put a target on your back, and you will get to know your enemy jungler pretty well.

So a beginner build with no defensive items looks like:

• Death's Toll, Devo Gloves, Boots (Pen or cdr, depending on which hunter) Executioner, Rage, Deathbringer (DB before Rage on Artemis), Titan’s Bane (replacing Death's Toll)

A more veteran build will look like:

• Death's Toll, Devo Gloves, Boots (Penetration) Heartseeker, Rage, Deathbringer, Titan’s Bane (again replacing Death's Toll)

A living on the edge build will be along the lines of:

• Death's Toll, Heartseeker, Boots (Pen or cdr, depending on which hunter) Executioner, Rage, Deathbringer, Titan’s Bane (again replacing Death's Toll) If you make is this far and end up with enough gold or simply end up losing most of your stacks you can swap in Bloodforge for Heartseeker.

So those are the primary builds you will see most of the pros playing, the first is pretty universal, the 2nd is popular in EU and the last one is an NA build that used to be popular until the cost of Devo Gloves was reduced a few patches ago. I want to point out that just because these are the builds that the pros build does not mean that they are the best for you if you are just playing casual or beginning league. Sometimes just having a little more time to react can greatly improve your chances when you are still new to the game or new to the god you are playing. When you are playing for practice and experience, more survivablity can be a god’s send. Along that vein lets look at some viable defensive items.

There are a couple items that you can replace your third item with if you find yourself dying often (feeding! omg noob! quit smite! blah blah blah...) Those items are Shifter’s Shield (common), Magi’s Blessing (against high CC teams), Spirit Robe (against moderate CC with at least 3 magical gods), Hide of the Urchin (less common), Hide of the Nemean Lion (against teams with high autoattack damage ie hunters, assassins, chronos) Midgardian Mail (against a double assassin team or assassin/bruiser team.)

The important thing to remember when you pick up a defensive item is that you will still need some amount of penetration once the enemy gets to level 20. Whether that is executioner or Titan’s Bane is up to you. Even Brawler’s Beat Stick is good, if you are facing a Hel, Aphro, or Chang’e . So the question is, if you opt for a defensive item, which item should it replace? In build 1 and 3 above get your defensive item instead of executioner. You will be weak offensively in the mid-game, but if the alternative is feeding…. In build 2, you’ll want to get your def item instead of heartseeker. If you’ve already gotten either executioner or heartseeker and then find you want defense just go back and replace them when you’ve run out of slots. You never want to replace either crit items, boots or devo gloves.

So, let’s talk about consumables. Health pots are a waste of slot and gold once you reach about level 7. Your health scales up with level but the health pots regen the same amount of health. Blue pots are good up until about level 18 because sometime you just need enough mana for one more ability to get the kill. Wards are good. Many of the pros will just run around with a single ward as a “just in case I need vision” ward, but i find grabbing two wards on every back and placing them in good locations will win games, and is the enemy jungle’s worst nightmare. Enemy rotations are completely useless if you see them coming. All that being said about wards, if others are faithfully warding, its not hurting you having wards in your inventory.

Actives! The trick with actives is to wait as long as you can to get them, so you can pump out the most damage possible with items. At 900 gold for a tier 3 active you are delaying an item by 2-3 minutes. That being said Boots 3 and Aegis/Beads are pretty standard. You do Aegis 3 when the other team has some major burst potential (never moving Aegis) and beads if they have a lot of CC. Boots 3 is too versatile to not get. Boots will get you out of a jam if you overextend or allow you to take the other adc in a “boxing” match.

So that’s the current “meta” builds. Beyond that, juke often and don’t feed. May the gods be with you!