Freya Arena guide

Freya is pretty easy to play in arena and very effective, but I couldn't see a decent build so I thought I would add mine which works well. As you probably know she is essentially a magic based hunter. She uses basic ranged attacks to do most of her damage, but supplemented by her abilities which increase the damage.

It doesn't go for huge magic power numbers as Freya doesn't scale particularly well with power. Instead we focus on pen to make the most of the very high damage abilities we've got. We go for huge life-steal to make us very hard to box down, and even more slow to lock our enemies down so we can kill them.

This build is primarily for arena but works fine in other modes too.
This build has been tweaked for season 3.

Passive Brisingamen's Blessing
A free 15% life steal, which means we don't need an early life steal item like most hunters.

1. Irradiate
Adds lots of damage to her basic attacks but doesn't make them ranged. Use with Pulse to get the benefit ranged, but if you do you loose Pulse's area of effect and slow. Hence the combo isn't as helpful at first, until we get Gem of Isolation, then you can use both to burst someone down fast and they still can't get away.

2. Pulse
The bread n' butter ability that you'll use continuously. Turns Freya's basic attack into a ranged one and adds a bit of damage. It is area effect so you can hit multiple minions, or everyone in that Ares ultimate. It has a slow so you can stop people escaping or chasing your team mates down. Fortunately the cool down is low and it lasts for 5 seconds so you can use it a lot.

3. Banish
Puts someone out of the battle for a second or two by lifting them into the air. It also makes them invulnerable so don't use this on the god everyone is trying to hit. Best for giving a player a chance to escape, or allowing you a to catch up with a god who is running away. It can also be used to take the god people aren't attacking (e.g. their tank) out the game for a couple of seconds so your team can work in peace.

4. Valkyrie's Discretion
This is an amazing ability, it gives you 4 ranged shots with a pretty big radius, decent range and damage. It also pulls you up in the air breaking cripples like Ares chains (including his ultimate) and allows you to fly around (e.g. out of Odin's Ring of Spears) while making you invulnerable. So we get a finish and and escape all in one easy to use package.

1. Shoes of Focus
Essentially Freya is nothing without her Pulse. That lasts 5 seconds but has an 11 second cool down. While we don't really need the full 40% cooldown, dropping down the time between Pulses is important so Shoes of Focus is an obvious first choice. Note: I will generally start with lvl 2 boots, and get lvl 2 beads at the start of an arena match. No point dying to that first Ares ultimate.

2. Hastened Fatalis
This gives us a number of important things.
(a) 30% attack speed. Freya's abilities do damage with your basic attack, increase the speed of that and you effectively increase the damage they do.

(b) 10% movement speed, Freya is squishy we need to be fast enough to run away, equally that extra speed makes it easier for you to chase something down.

(c) No speed debuff if you hit something. This is very important as it gives her the tactical edge. Remember most stuff stuff you are fighting has been slowed by your Pulse, so with this we can either chase someone down or run away as we hit them with our ranged attacks.

3. Gem of Isolation
Yet more slow. Now we have a double slow when using Pulse, and can use our
Irradiate and still have some slow. It also gives us some power health and mana. While some could argue you'd do more damage with something that gives more power, actually the slow from this makes it so hard for gods to get away that you do more damage with the Gem of Isolation. In a CC meta being able to half someone's movement speed so often while doing damage is much more powerful then slightly higher theoretical damage.

4. Demonic Grip
Yet more attack speed, some power and penetration. When we are using Pulse it still counts as a basic attack so we get the stacks. This adds quite a bit of damage.

5. Pythagorem's Piece
Quite a few Freya's use Polynomicon but this is better. Remember the aura's apply to you too so we get 90 magic power, 25% life steal (for a total of 40% with passive) and 10% cooldown (so with shoes we now have 25%) all in one item. In addition you give your team 10% life steal and 20 magic power.

6. Spear of the Magus
We were able to make full use of Demonic Grip because our Pulse counts as a basic attack, well it's also a damaging ability. So now we can stack both sets of protection debuff's. Even better is both it and Demonic Grip take protections off the enemy player so the rest of the team get the benefit of us shredding their magical protections. Also as Pulse has an area of effect so we can shred multiple players protections at once if they are all gathered together.

These are really ways to escape certain death. You get one for free (your ultimate) but we don't want to waste that running unless we have no choice.

Purification
Pretty essential to allow you to escape all manner of abilities. With this and your ultimate you then have two get out of jail free cards which for a ranged god with a slow will mostly be enough.

Sanctuary
A chance to survive burst damage and various ult's, not as helpful as you might think as you can't pop it when stunned/frozen/whatever but still nice.

Sprint
Always useful in arena. We are pretty quick with Hastened Fatalis so pop this and we can outrun most things. As it's team based you can also use it to save a team mate who's running on low health.