Generic Khepri | S3 Support Guide...?

Hello, Chat here with another Khepri guide. I main support and Khepri is my favorite god, though not much people knows it's full potential. I try to make my best to do in deeps review on his a bilities and items that boost hugbug the most.

Lets start with Pros / Cons shall we?


Why is Khepri good.


Rising Dawn provides good wave clrear.

Fortitude providers shield for a whole team, passively making team fights slightly easier

Rising Dawn provides even more survivability to your teammates while also shredding down enemy protections.

Can pull people out of position with Abduct and laugh spam while you pull them.

Long range 1.7 seconds root.

Ultimate that can easy turn tables of every fight.

Biggest model among guardians. Can bodyblock for days!



Now to Khepri weaknesses.

Lowest starting HP among all guardians. Even some mages and hunters have more HP than you.

No hard crowd control. Your pull will only affect one target and can be stopped by any form of enemy CC, and your root has rather small radius.

No front line pressure. Khepri shines at Defending, not Attacking.

Biggest model among guardians. Can't fit in tight places, and can accidentally block teammates.

Now to most important part - Khepri skills.


Khepri's pasive. It's pretty decent. Gives Khepri and his allies teporary shield of 2% of target's max HP.. Stacks up to 10%. This in not very effective on squishy targets, since 10% of their HP is not much. But it will absorb a hit or two.

Good thing about this passive that it helps Khepri himself. As a guardian, you gonna build tanky, and additional 2-10% is a big deal. Helps to compensate Khepris small HP pool.

In a fights shield charges twice slower (from 5 seconds to 10 seconds) so better stack it before you fight, just by sticking close to your allies.

Now this one is interesting and has very specific mechanic. Khepri's famous pull. Or hug if you prefer. Our fat beetle dashes forward and stops at first god hit, silencing them and starting to pull them backwards. Can be used both offensive (grabbing someone and hold them while your team doing damage to them) and defensive (to just dash away)

There are few important things you need to know about this skill

Spoiler: Click to view

1) While you grab someone, they still can attack you or anyone who is not blocked from their sight by your massive body. This means that if you grab someone who deals big damage with basic attacks, it's gonna hurt. Though, usualy people you grab will be confused and won't attack you.

2) It's easily interrupted. By any CC. Stuns, silences, knockups, cripples. All will stops it. Even roots are bad for you (they will not stop silence part, but will lock you in place, stopping your pull)

3) Using this aggressively will put you our of position. And you better believe other team will hit your squishy shell hard while you are pulling.

4) Because of all danger this skill puts on you there is one trick, that not many people know. Good Khepri knows when to let go. Khepri himself can stop the pull any moment by simply right clicking. If you see things are going bad, let your target go and run. Many people say that 'this ability silences you as well'. That would be wrong.

5) As addition to stopping your pull prematurely, you might consider doing this in various situations. Example: you grabbed someone and allied Nox landed Siphon Darkness on them. And you noticed that if you keep pulling, you will simply drag target out of Siphon Darkness range. So just let them go! Maybe even root them after you do.

6) You will always move backward while you are pulling. This however does not stop you from moving to the left or right. You can simply circle around with your hug-mate, making them dizzy. In addition, your pulling speed is move speed related. You get 40% move speed penalty for moving backwards (also known as Backpedal penalty) but Khepri with higher movespeed will drag his target way further. You might concider this.

Roll the sun! Rising Dawn is a great ability, and just as every ability in Khepris kit could be used both offensive and defensive. Using this ability, makes Khepri apply buff to allies and debuff to enemies in a line in front of him. In most cases you won't be able to do both, so you will have to chose.

Debuff itself is pretty strong. It deals damage over time while also reducing enemy protections by percent amount. Basically meaning you gonna amplify your team damage by 25% at max level of ability.

But Buff that applied on allies is insanely strong. It reduces incoming damage by 30%! Remember Shell? Well it only gives 15%. So this skill doubles that amount and also has pretty low cooldown.

Now to tricks and tips

Spoiler: Click to view

1) Despite how good Buff part of this kills is, it doesn't affect Khepri himself. Even if you dash in front of skill projectile.

2) However, this skill affects minions, sidge creeps and even titan! Buffing your own minions is a good way to push! The trick is to use this skill from position that will grant both buff to your minions and debuff to enemy minions.

3) Use it to save people. If you see someone low and they are about to die from DOT / Zeus Detonate Charge / Nu Wa Fire Shards / etc, and you are near, throw shiny ball at them. 30% might be enough to save you allies.

4) Use it on people revived by your ultimate. Most of the time, after you revive someone, enemies would want to finish them off anyway. Make it harder for them.

It's a basic root. Using it roots all targets in a circle after a slight delay.
The radius of it is not very big, but its compensated by casting range. Its big. Not huge, but big. You will have no problems rooting people over the walls.

Skill features

Spoiler: Click to view

1) Its a good skill to use in combination with Abduct. Root enemies first to make sure your pull won't miss. Or vise versa. Use Abduct dash to get in range of fleeing enemy and root them.

2) Since this skill has a slight delay before it roots, it can be used in defensive way. If you find yourself chased down, you can simply throw it under your feet while keep running. It usualy roots everyone behind you.

And here we are. The main reason why would you want to play Khepri. The one and only. Resurrect! You place a buff on allied god and for 5 seconds if buffed god dies, they will be teleported to you with portion of their HP restored. On top of that, placing this buff on ally will remove all crowd control effects from them and will give them move speed boost for 5 seconds.

Now to the things you can do with it

Spoiler: Click to view

1) First thing you need to know, this skill is hard to use! Use it early, and your enemies might figure out to wait till buff ends before killing your ally. Hold it too long, and you will miss opportunity to use it, since your ally will be already dead. It takes practice to feel the right moment.

2) You can use this skill on yourself. It's a great baiting tool. You can lure someone to tower dive you, while having no risk to die. Works with allies too, if you have some good coordination.

3) This skill cleanses. Meaning it removes all CC effect such as slows, roots, stuns, fears, taunts. You might use it just to remove stun from your carry and let them do their clean up. But oly do so if you sure you not gonna need it for revive. Same goes for using it for moove speed buff. At max rank it gives 40% movement speed and can be used as single traget sprint.

4) If you see that your ally dies and will be teleported to you shortly, use your Abduct dash to move somewhere safe.

5) Important thing to know that while this skill revives your target, it however does NOT remove debuffs from it. This can cause additional troubles. Examples:

Spoiler: Click to view

- Your target dies under effect of Heart Bomb. After your target revives Heart Bomb detonates and kills them again.

-Your target dies and is affected by Zeus Overcharge. Zeus can simply wait till they are revived and then detonate his stacks to confirm a kill.

-Your target dies under effect of Ares No Escape. After they are revived, Ares will pull and stun them.

6) If Khepri ult someone and then dies, resurrected target will be teleported to the Khepri's dead body.

7) This spell works very well with meditation. Even if enemies decide not to kill blessed target, giving them 5 seconds of extra life, you still can meditate your ally to keep them alive. Or you can meditate them after they revive, to boost their health even further.

8) This skill has a big range and can be casted over walls. You can save allies while not showing your presence.

9) Note that skill has little delay/cast time/animation time when Khepri rises his claws. Sometime this little time can cost your ally a life.

Now let's talks about items.

Boots is the standard staring item as they give you a movement speed boost. Movement seeps is a good stat when you don't know what to expect of enemy team.

The 'must have' item for every support. Gives you massive regeneration, bonus gold and a chunk of health. You usualy want to have this item over any other, but there are sittuations when Mark of the Vanguard might be more usefull for you.

This item helps alot against tick/DOT damage. I don't pick it too often, but if I see team that contains Ares/ Anubis/ Kukulkan/ Guan Yu I pick it up. It's a great counter for damage over time based abilities.

Mark of the Vanguard

Watcher's Gift

Healing Potion

Mana Potion

Healing Potion

Multi Potion

Healing Potion

Multi Potion

Actives

There are lot of supportive activities nowadays, and which to pick is usually depends on enemy team comp.

shell

shell is by far is the most strongest active. But I really hate it for how obvious it is. It does give a MASSIVE protection for you team that also stacks with your own buff. Problem is, shell must be used at the begining of a team fight. And usually when enemies see you used shell, they just back off and wait till effect of it ends. Plus, it's not hard to calculate how much damage you do against protected target, and what it gonna take to finish them off. Another thing that stops me using it is that shell is less effective the less HP your target has. If someone is low health, and you shell them, they will still most likely to die.

On top of all that, Khepri has build in shell as one of his abilities ( Rising Dawn)


sprint

sprint is second strongest active in the game. I'd say it has no flaws. Enemies has slows? Pick sprint. Enemies used curse and now your ADC has to use purification to run away? Nope, time to sprint. Need to chase someone down? What a good oportunity to use Heavenly Agility. I mean sprint. There are lot of situations when you want to use it and it's really good.



meditation

Sit along and meditate while master baiting with this active. This is my favorite active and I pick it in almost every game. You could say it works like shell. While one gives you 15% damage reductions (meaning that you basicaly have 15% bonus health), the other one heals you (and everyone around) for 15% of your max health. Now this is important. Since you are guardian you gonna have bigger health pull than your squishies and 15% of your health will be about 20-30% of your squishies HP.

Another big deal about this active, is that it's a unexpected burst heal. You think you killed your target? Nope, they just got 15% HP back. Thanks Khepri! Thanatos/ Ao Kuang want to execute you? Nope. meditation (Note that those two gods, can kill people through your ult, so it's a good idea to have meditation when playing against them) You revived your target, but they are still low? meditation them for almost full health. Enemies decided to not kill target you just used Scarab's Blessing on? meditation them at the end of the 5 second buff, to still heal them for 15% of your max health.

Oh, did I mention? It also replenish mana! For those times when you don't have enough mana to ult, or your allies are out of mana but still want to fight.

The big con of this active is the amount of antihealing items in game. meditation heal itself is not THAT big, its more unexpected. But things like curse will nuliffy it's effect, especialy early game.


curse

The party pooper. It slows, it reduces healing, it grants kills. I usually pick this active if there are lot of healers against me (Good example is Guan Yu+ Sol lane). It helps to kill early on, burns eneies actives like purification and sprint. It's a good tool, but very situational.

Besides countering healers, you might want to pick it up if you are laning with aggresive ADC (in conquest)/ you have agressive team. (in every other mod but assault) and you feel you can go for early pull-root-curse-kill them all action. It's risky, because if you screw it up, you not gonna have anything to save yourself.

That's what you get in your first active slot. Now let's see what can you get in a second.

Despite a big choice of actives, supports don't really have a big choice. Usually you might want to pick up shell in a second slot, if you didn't pick it up in a first slot. If your team needs antiheal (because no one bothers to build either Divine Ruin/brawler's beatstick and you loosing fights because of it) it's will be good to pick curse in your second slot.

Phantom

Very situational active that helps your team against The Walls. It recently been changed and also affects all allies within 35 units, while having big *** cooldown of 180 seconds. So if you TRULLY think that your team dies because of The Walls, and not because they are just bad at positioning, pick it up in second slot. Otherwise don't even bother.

purification

Another situational item. As a Khepri player, you might find that enemies would want to CC you a lot during team fight. Smart enemy support will try to keep you distracted in crucial moments so you would not save anyone. It also might help you to survive once or twice, but there are items that will give you the same effect - such as magi's blessing and Mantle of Discord. So pick this active up against CC heavy teams if you feel affected by their CC.

sanctuary

This might look odd to you, but this one is my personal choice. Most of the time I pick it up for several reason. First and main one: Dead Khepri saves no one. As it was said before, you might find that enemy team want you dead before anyone. And I must remind you that because of his stats, even full build Khepri is not that tanky. Assasins can eaily end his life. So as burst mages. Even if they don't kill you, they still will force you to use your Scarab's Blessing on yourself. sanctuary fixes this problem for you most of the time, making even most dangerous rescue missions relatively safe for you.

Besides this is a great baiting tool. They think they can kill you? sanctuary. They still chasing you? meditation. Ohnoes! They decided to chase you even more and phoenix dive you? Scarab's Blessing. Avoid death 3 times, distracting enemies. I think it's worth.

Now let's talk about what you want to build during the game

Travelers Shoes/

If you are not playing conquest - skip this.
First thing first, if you are playing conquest, your first buy after starting items should be Travelers Shoes There is optional route of going Adventurer's Blade that for the same price will give about the same movement speed and 150 bonus health.

I find Travelers Shoes more effective, because of the passive movement speed that alows you to rotate faster, bonus 2000+ gold that passive gives you and HP regen out of combat. After all, nothing stops you selling this boots for a Winged Blade at the end, and have a gold profit.

The second important item to have would be your protection item. Here you might want to check who you fighting against. Do they have three physical damage dealers? Three magical? Four?
Depending on what you think is a biggest threat you should build either physical protection or magical.

/
Pick one of those for big protection boost and sweet cooldown reduction. Remeber! You want to have your ultimate ready as much as possible! Both of those items give about the same cooldown reduction, so don't be afraid to lose some when getting Genji's Guard. Because of its passive if feels like you have all 20%.

But why not Hide of the Urchin???
If you want to know why I skip such a god tire item, read below. If not, move to the next item!

Spoiler: Click to view

I fooled you. You will never know >.>

Here goes the tricky part. Depending on what protection you build first you want to balance it with opposite protection. You got Breastplate of Valor? Good, time to build some magical protection. Got Genji's Guard - build some physical.

The only question is, how much you protection you need.

With Breastplate of Valor route pick one of the following.

Spoiler: Click to view

When to get:
-I got physical armor, but now their mages are blowing me up!
-Both physical and magic damage dealers do moderate damage and I need big chunk of health.

Good item. Gives you over 400 HP and decent magic protection.


When to get:
-I'm very rich.
-I'm constantly geting CC chained to death, and can't even ult myself because of it.
This one is no joke. If you find that enemies constantly jumping on you using all their stuns/silences/etc to hold you in place and kill you, you need to save money for this. After you get it, life will be much easier.
-Their mages deal decent damage, but they don't frighten me as much as their physicals.

Great item that gives lot of both protections and nice cooldown reduction, passive that stuns and makes you CC imune.


When to get:
-I too poor and already died several times while waiting for money to get Mantle of Discord
-Both of their mages and physicals don't deal that much damage to me, but they have lot of CC that helps them get kills.

Cheap version of Mantle of Discord. Great passive that will help you to survive even if you are a bit behind.


When to get:
-Their healing is not big, but I want to screrw it even more.
-I don't feel like I need any of previous listed items.

Good item to have when you are slightly ahead. It gives the most magical protection and nice antiheal aura.

With Genji's Guard route you have to roll with this.

Spoiler: Click to view

When to get:
-I feel like I'm getting shreaded by their physicals.
-My teammates dies so fast, my ultimate can't recharge.

Basicaly I pick this up when both physical and magical damage is very high.

/
When to get:
-I want to protect my team from physical damage.
(Note that while both items serve the same purpose Sovereignty is better for protection against physical abilities. While Witchblade protects against physical auto attacks. You can get both of them to give your team full physical protection.)

/
Read above.

At some point you will want to sell your boots for Winged Blade. Do that at any point when you feel like you need movement speed, or you just feeling slow compared to your team. This is for you to decide.

And here is one situational item you might want to fit in your build sometimes.

magi's blessing
Only pick this up when enemy team has LOW AMOUNT OF CC. Yes. You read it right. It's only good when they have only one stun, only one cripple, onlt one taunt, etc. Two-tree is fine too. But if it's more, the long cooldown of it's passive won't be able to recharge, and attractive bubble will lure enemies to pop it every time.