I've been playing joust a lot, and I don't really know when to engage, whenever I try to attack I end up dying, now I've been really(REALLY) passive and I have become a tower hugging god that's afraid to engage.
Joust is probably the game mode I know the least about.
Knowing when to be aggressive is really hard and it depends on a lot of different factors.
1: your skill as a player compared to your opponent.
2: the god matchup, you dont want to pick a fight vs Arachne at lvl 3.
3: cooldowns, you want to engage when you know the enemy has his main abilities on cooldown and rellics.
4: items you want to fight the enemy before he finishes that core item. And when you have item advantage.
You also need a reason to be aggressive, poke the enemy out of labe to take a buff/tower, force relics, to freeze the lane, to kill etc.
So as you can see this is not a easy question to answer..
What I always do is push forward gradually, staying roughly in line with the other two on my team. Stay with your teammates, stay with your minions. You want your team and your minions in their tower, but you don't want to be by yourself.
If you are support, wait until your team is ready, use VGS to let them know you're initiating, then initiate. Good supports for joust have abilities that lock the enemy in place or move them out of position to your team. These include Ymir, Sobek, Khepri, and Sylvanus.
If you are not support, wait for your support to initiate and initiate with them so that they are not left by themselves.
If you do not have a support, wait for the other team to initiate. Try to bait out their initiating abilities. For example, if their main initiator is a Nox, try to bait out her Shadow Lock. If they have a Sobek, try to bait out Charge Prey. If they fall for it, they will be out of position with an important ability on cooldown, and you can cc and kill them.
I wonder if I could get Bran to write an overarching joust guide.
I wonder if I could get Bran to write an overarching joust guide.
Not happy with you Tech, not happy...like I don't have enough to maintain already???
I've contemplated it...but it's sooooo much work creating these.
@Gobble, I know exactly how you feel. In lieu of a super-long Joust guide, I'll try to cover some of the main points I feel may help, in a shorter-but-still-too-long response.
Firstly, BestMinionEver and Technotoad64 both have very good points. Understand that gameplay, when dealing with a practically infinite amount of variables, makes it difficult to point to a specific strategy to immediately improve your game. Just to throw some variables out, here are some that come to mind...
variables, variables, variables
the god you choose (out of 85+ gods, each has strengths and weaknesses)
your understanding of situations, god abilities, etc. (if you aren't familiar with all of the gods, you may expose yourself too much when you don't realize they might have a freeze/stun etc.)
your builds and understanding of items, item choices, counterbuilding, etc.
your overall skill level (meaning, how well you use a god's abilities with proper timing depending on situation)
your awareness (do you think about when enemies are missing? where are they? Can they come around from behind for a gank attempt? Are they going for a buff/Bull Demon, etc.)
the gods your teammates choose
your teammates' skill levels
the gods your enemies choose
the enemy skill levels
overall synergy of god compositions
if/when you (or any other player in the match) dies, how do they react? Do you/they tilt? Maintaining composure whether you're high OR low means your level of play will be consistent and reliable.
Within all of these there is so much that will be different with every single match, that the best you can do is to hone your knowledge of the game, gods, awareness, items overall, giving yourself as much of a chance in each match as possible.
On to some specific topics.
Communication: Some of the best ways to give yourself success have to do with teamwork...knowing when your team is looking to engage, knowing you have support if you initiate, agreeing upon a specific enemy to target and burst down first...well, like Tech says, VGS can be very helpful...but they need to actually agree and listen, and if you're the one calling or initiating, you need to know when you can, and when you really should not.
Here's an example of a recent game I had. I went 16/2/7 as Freya...newbiemj/bad_juju40 was 3/2/12 as bruiser Serqet...time2medicate/GOTZ was 6/1/17 as bruiser Bacchus. We were completely demolishing the enemy team. By a certain point, they were hard-camping their Phoenix. I was cocky, and restless, and called a play (we were obviously demolishing them). My plan was to Banish Ah Puch, told GOTZ to initiate at the point he came back down with his Belly Flop + any other abilities that made sense (e.g. ult if multiple enemies were still around). That should have given us an immediate 3 on 2 advantage as AP would have basically been dead...we had enough tankiness and they wouldn't have enough burst to really threaten us. However, and yes I blame my ****py skill level with a PS4 controller, lol, I completely missed my Banish...but GOTZ went in anyway...we fully committed, and I died, and we ended up getting wiped. It was late enough in the match that our respawn took too long, and they killed our titan within 5 seconds of me respawning (got 1 more kill right before it went down but it was way too late at that point). That was entirely my fault...horrible call. But you can see how important that communication can be.
Initiating: So your initial post asked about engaging...and I think Tech has an overall good strategy.
You don't want to get too far ahead of your teammates (but you also don't want to bunch up and expose your whole team to possible large AOE skills from the enemy), as if you engage and they can't help, you could be toast.
That said, should YOU be initiating a fight? Are you the main tank, and do you have enough CC to disrupt the enemy team? Are you a Warrior or Guardian, and are you building proper protections & health to withstand some damage from the enemy team? Are your abilities (and teammate abilities) up and ready to go? Are ults on cooldown?
Do you attempt to bait out some of the more dangerous enemy abilities so that you can go in knowing their skills will be down for some time? This was mentioned with examples by Tech.
If we move from initiating to just overall how we handle a fight...being aggressive or conservative, etc., then it's also important to consider your team's comp. If you're all squishy, you may need to either quickly burst down the biggest threat on the enemy team, or play back near your tower, wait for someone to over-commit, and jump on them from there. And if you're a squishy assassin, for example, you should NOT be the one initiating. If your whole team is behind in levels because you've been outplayed to that point, you need to know that as a level 9, you really should NOT engage an enemy team that's mostly level 11-12 unless they've been too aggressive and you're confident you can secure a kill or win a teamfight at that point.
How would you rate your overall knowledge of the gods and builds? If you feel you're solid on that aspect, cool...if you're not sure, give us some examples of your builds and maybe we can critique and point out where your item choices might be making things harder for you. Are you a newer player?
Anyway, let's see where we can go from here to help you out further. Let us know your thoughts.
Here's an example of a recent game I had. I went 16/2/7 as Freya...newbiemj/bad_juju40 was 3/2/12 as bruiser Serqet...time2medicate/GOTZ was 6/1/17 as bruiser Bacchus.
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