Follow the Spiders - An Arachne Jungle/Joust Guide

I'm Gugus294, a casual SMITE player. This is my first guide, for my favorite assassin Arachne. It's a bit different from most of the ones I've seen, but I've seen generally good results with it. Constructive criticism is appreciated!

Pros:

Great jungler
Strong in 1v1s and ganks
Very good damage over time that also heals you
Good basic attack speed and damage
Good trap/pet spawn
Decent stun
Good ultimate for chasing and finishing

Her ultimate is her only real escape, pretty much needs Sprint
Very short range
Not much CC
Susceptible to CC
Squishy
Not all that useful in teamfights

Venomous Bite (1) - This ability is quite powerful and often underestimated. It applies a pretty strong damage-over-time on your next basic attack, which also heals you while damaging the enemy. This ability gives Arachne some good survivability, and is helpful for a last hit while an enemy is running at low health, to initiate, and even to use on minions to regain health quickly. In a jungle camp, you can place your spiders and then use this on the camp's boss, then fight the smaller minions while getting healed by and killing the main monster with your venom. As with all DoT abilities, it's also good for poking and pressuring. Level this first usually.

Cocoon (2): This ability makes your next 3 basic attacks have increased attack speed, and if they all hit they will stun the enemy. It is a pretty decent stun and the attack speed is good for damage, but it is a bit difficult to land sometimes. It is good for stopping a retreating enemy, or securing a quick kill if you combo it into Venomous Bite. I usually level this one last, as it doesn't get a whole lot of benefit from leveling.

Web (3): This ability places a spider web, which will stick to an enemy if they walk through it, revealing and slowing them and making them trail spider webs which increase your movement speed while on them and also spawning a few spiderlings to attack them for a bit of free damage. You can place up to 2 spiderwebs, and they'll stay for a pretty long time if nobody walks through them. This ability is pretty versatile; you can put it at the jungle entrances to act as impromptu wards, put it across a jungle camp to take aggro and kill it faster, put it in front of a retreating enemy to slow them, get spiders on them, and speed yourself up if you stay on the trail, harass enemies with the spiders that spawn, and sometimes help with your escape if you place it right under you while running. I usually level this one second.

Night Crawler (4): This ability has Arachne flip upside down and crawl across her magical sky web for a few seconds, making her immune to damage and increasing her movement speed while she's up there. At any time during the ability, she can jump down at her target area to do some decent damage in a small AoE. This ability is good for escaping, initiating, and chasing and should be leveled when possible.

Arachne, as an assassin, benefits from movement speed, attack speed, power, penetration, and life steal. I generally build Warrior Tabi first for the speed and attack and then Jotunn's Wrath for the power, penetration, and CDR. Next, I like to build the Stone Cutting Sword for the physical protection debuff and power. After that, there are a variety of things one could build. I find that the Hastened Fatalis works very well with Arachne, as her damage is largely basic attack based and being able to move faster and attack while running helps out a lot, especially when trying to land her stun and her DoT. The Gauntlet of Thebes, something I rarely see built on Arachne, is very good too as it makes the healing from her Venom even stronger, allowing you to easily solo the Bull Demon King at pretty low levels or even the Gold Fury at higher levels without taking much damage. Usually I'll build Titan's Bane last for the extra penetration and power. If life steal is not entirely necessary, you can switch the Gauntlet for some other item, such as Hydra's Lament.
For Relics, I find that having either Sprint or Purification is very much necessary as Arachne can often be caught in CC or in teamfights without a way to escape other than nuking her ultimate. For the second relic, Teleport is good in Conquest as it allows you to assist your teammates quickly from across the map, while Curse is good in both Conquest and Joust as it slows people down so you can more easily apply your poison, spiders, and stun on them.

Arachne is a very fun assassin to play, and can melt people pretty fast once she's built up. Her venom is a very solid DoT and HoT and her kit is good for trolling and finishing off weakened enemies. While her escape and teamfight presence are lacking, she makes up for it with her strong jungling and sustained damage output. I hope my first guide has helped in some way. See you on the battlefield!

"Why couldn't it be 'follow the butterflies?'"
- Ron Weasley