Chang'e - Hold me closer tanky dancer

Chang'e is one of Smite's only pure support gods and I believe she should be played as such. She has amazing physical defense capabilities because of her Crescent Moon Dance, can escape damage and certain forms of crowd control like slow and cripple, and she can dodge major ults such as Hades and Ares with her Moonlit Waltz. Going into a fight to draw enemy damage and crowd control only to dodge it with Moonlit Waltz Is one of her best features, and building defense further improves her ability to do so.

Pros
High defense
High sustain
Low cooldowns
High team defense

Cons
Lower damage and healing than building full spellpower

Jade Rabbit
This is your passive. You have the ability to buy items in lane, meaning you do not have to go back to base as often. Starting with Chronos Pendant gives you the mana sustain you need to be able to use this passive effectively. You also gain 25% movement speed and no backwards movement penalty when using a dance. This passive allows you to move in and out of a fight with Moonlit Waltz by absorbing enemy damage and crowd control and backpedaling to safety.

Crescent Moon Dance
This ability is your only source of damage, your lane clear, and it gives you passive physical defense. In order to give your team the physical defense, you must hit your teammates with the ability. The low cooldown of this ability synergizes very well with Polynomicon if you are building more damage, and the lifesteal of this item compliments your survivability. I always max this ability first.

Moonlit Waltz
This ability is your evade. The cornerstone of why this build works so well. A perfectly timed Waltz can leave you free of damage when the enemy tries to engage you. You can escape slows and cripples, you can dodge ultimates, and you can attempt to force the enemy team to focus you and blow all of their cooldowns on you in order to give your team an easier engage. Chronos Pendant reduces the cooldown from 16 seconds to 12 at level 1. I max this ability last because the improvement per level of Moonflower Dance is greater than the improvement per level of Moonlit Waltz

Moonflower Dance
This ability is your team heal. With more teammates around you, the intensity of the healing on yourself increases. It also reduces enemy healing by 50% for 4 seconds which can stack with items like Divine Ruin and Creeping Curse. I max this ability second.


Waxing Moon
This ability is your ultimate. The speed at which it fires is almost instant, which makes hitting the ability a breeze. The hard part of using this ability is angling the line to hit as many gods as possible in a teamfight. This ultimate synergizes with many team control ults such as those of Hades, Ares, Odin, and Hun Batz. Using Blink or Combat Blink Can put you in the position you need to get as many hits as possible. The intensity of the stun increases with every god you hit, making you want to save for teamfights, but the high base damage and 100% magical scaling make this ult an amazing finisher on a fleeing god or even securing the kill on that one player who is just way to fed to let go. I level this ability whenever I can.

Chronos Pendant Chronos Pendant
I start with level 2 Chronos Pendant and 2 mana potions at the beginning of every game. The amount of mana sustain this item gives you is enough to where you will never have to back unless you are almost dead.

Reinforced Boots Reinforced Boots
My second item after Pendant. The passive is what makes me buy this item. Moonlit Waltz can dodge a lot, but you're bound to be caught eventually. The crown control reduction ensures quick getaways.

Sovereignty
This is by far my favorite item in this build. The 30 physical defense of Crescent Moon Dance combined with the 65 of Sovereignty on yourself and the passive aura of 20 physical and magical defense for yourself and teammates will give you a whopping 115 physical defense and your team can gain up to 50 physical defense almost 100% of the time. Combine this with Shell of Absorption and you can give your teammates 95 physical defense and 65 magical defense plus the 15% damage reduction when they really need it.

Void Stone
I like getting this item when the enemy team has high magical damage and I have teammates with high magical damage. If your team has no mage that can benefit from the aura, but the enemy team still has high magical damage, I substitute this for Focused Void Stone. You can get rid of Void Stone entirely if the enemy team has no high magic damage, but this rarely happens.

Ethereal Staff
The health of this item combined with that of Sovereignty will give you an extra 1050 health. At level 20, these two items combined will give you 87 spellpower. Rod of Tahuti Will further increase that number.

Shoes of Focus
If the enemy team is low on the crowd control, this item can put you at cooldown reduction cap and give you some extra damage and healing.

Polynomicon
As mentioned in the skills section, this item combined with the low cooldown of Crescent Moon Dance can give you a major boost in damage and some magical lifesteal for survivability.

Pythagorem's Piece
If you have teammates with heavy magical damage, this is a great support item to boost their damage and survivability as well as your own.

Divine Ruin
This item combined with the 50% reduction in healing from Moonflower Dance can severely hurt the enemy team's healing power. I'd grab this if I saw a Hel or an Aphrodite.

Creeping Curse
Functions the same as Divine Ruin. You could effectively reduce enemy healing to nothing when you combine this with Moonflower Dance. It's also a very heavy AoE slow.

Purification Beads
This is an amazing active for this build. When you fight against a Chang'e, you are expecting her to use Moonlit Waltz, so you wait for her to use it and then go in for the kill. Beads can save your life when they know how to counter you.

Shell of Absorption
An amazing active to complement the already high survivability of this build. The exact protections stacked can be found in the Sovereignty section.

Blink Blink / Combat Blink
These actives can set up your ultimate very nicely, or can be used for an escape if necessary.

Girdle of Might
This is just another team support active. As a support god you want to help your team as much as possible. I don't usually get this, but it is a nice option.

This build is overall a very survivable build with great early sustain. Chang'e is a great healer with high mobility and amazing escape potential. Her ult can change the course of a teamfight and I'm looking forward to seeing how other people play her in the future. Thanks for reading.