Swiggity Swagni Swaggin' It Up In The Arena (Updated to January 2014)

I would like to apologize if the title of this guide gave you cancer. Here's an image to finish the job and put you out of your misery:

I'd also like to apologize for not playing Conquest, as this guide is apparently useless because "Arena doesn't matter," or something like that. I'm sure this guide can be helpful regardless of the game mode you enjoy most, but make sure to take the information with a grain of salt. That is, unless you do play Arena, in which case you should adhere to every single statement I make in this guide, without question!

Although Agni is one of the few original gods, which means that he was designed during Hi-Rez's early development stages, he is still one of the most versatile magi in the game - every single one of his skills can be used for at least two different goals, and they can also combo off each other in multiple different orders. He's the only mage with a dash (which just so happens to also cause damage and provide CC immunity); he has an ultimate that can be used at regular intervals, or saved over time for immense burst damage; and he also has excellent zoning utilities, as well as hard CC (which can be triggered by three different methods) with the potential to affect the entire enemy team.

The fact that he's still so damn lean even after all the bloating in his kit is what earns him the title "Swagni."

+Highly versatile. +Only mage with a dash. +AoE hard crowd control. +Ultimate can be used often, albeit for a reduced effect.

-CC requires a two-skill combo; must plan ahead. -Ultimate has a delay between successive firings, making it difficult to land three in a row.

RECOMMENDED SKILLSEQUENCE
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20

This passive is a pretty standard damage-increase. It can be useful to gain all four stacks before a fight for just that little bit of extra burst damage, but be aware that it does not apply on-hit effects such as the passives from Gem of Isolation.

Video proof: here.

Stacks can easily be gained when teams are playing passively in the middle, farming minions. If you're going to clear a wave, try to use your spell before you have Combustion so as to not waste it.




Funnily enough, sometimes I feel like Noxious Fumes, arguably Agni's most important skill, shouldn't even be leveled past rank one - its damage is negligible, so it's essentially just an increase in mana cost. Regardless, this spell is an excellent tool to both zone and disrupt enemies. All three of Agni's other spells can combo off it, and it also applies on-hit effects such as the penetration from Spear of the Magus.

Because, depending on your choosing, it can have anywhere between less than one second to a full ten second lifespan, there are three general categories that this spell can be used for:


"Preemptive fuming" is vital because it takes two skills to detonate it, rather than the typical "press X to apply Y" skills that most gods have, such as Ymir's Frost Breath.

Oh, and before I forget: this is not to be used for damage. Its damage only exists so that it can proc on-hit effects - if you think fifty damage per second at level twenty is anything other than absolutely, horrendously pathetic, then please find a corner and remain there until you can perform basic subtraction.





This is Agni's relatively safe, primary damage skill. It's an easy-to-hit, medium-ranged, forward casted AoE that can also apply Combustion, as well as detonate Noxious Fumes. Quite often, I see Agnis try to only use this spell to detonate Noxious Fumes. However, while it can be useful for comboing into a stun, you shouldn't hesitate to use it to inflict damage for the sake of inflicting damage, especially considering how easy it is for the enemy to avoid a Noxious Fumes into Flame Wave initiation.

This skill has the primary ranking priority (besides his ultimate) because it is his bread-and-butter damaging spell, and it is also the only spell which has a reduced cooldown the higher it is ranked.




A dash on a mage? Wow, that's uncommon! What? It can also inflict damage? Cool! ...what? It can also be used as an effective zoning tool? That's nifty! ...what?! It can also be used in conjunction with Noxious Fumes to apply a stun to any enemies within its vicinity?! ...¡¿qué?! It also provides CC immunity?! And people say Chronos's skills are bloated!

After seeing all that it can do, you may be curious as to why this spell doesn't have a higher priority than Flame Wave. Well, increasing its rank improves its damage, but not its speed, distance, cooldown, or duration. Since Flame Wave will almost always be used for its damage, and Path of Flames's utility is essentially the same from ranks one to five, it's really a no-brainer to level up Flame Wave first.

Redundancy for the sake of clarity isn't a bad thing, so let's repeat the above in list format. Path of Flame can be used for:


It's possible to utilize several aspects at once, such as damage and zoning by charging through enemies while simultaneously cutting off an escape route.

Please, be very wary of using this spell offensively. Dashing back into your team, catching enemies in its path along the way: good. Charging head-on into a group of enemies for "l33t dmg lel!11": beyond bad, and worthy of epic facepalms.




This is a pretty unique ultimate - rather than a standard cooldown of 90 seconds, Agni gains a "Halo" every thirty seconds, which visibly circles around his head, and stacking up to three times. This means that he can cast one meteor regularly or save them for higher burst or zoning potential. Because of the delay both between successive casts as well as casting and impact, it is not a good idea to attempt to hit an enemy with all three meteors unless they are under hard crowd control.

It's also often used to detonate Noxious Fumes, especially preceding it. That is, using the delay between firing it and its impact to also place down Fumes, resulting in a quick stun (explained further in the playstyle section).

Your build should be flexible, meaning that it should change depending on the enemy team's composition. However, there are certain stats that are necessary to build towards every game, and they're obviously listed below - that's kind of the point of this chapter.

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Why is MP so important? Well, without it, you'll hit like a wet noodle, and considering your primary role as a mage is to inflict damage to the enemy team, it's kind of a big deal: More MP = more damage = more kills = bigger Internet ***** = higher self-esteem = land an awesome job = get rich = get that girl = Snoo Snoo and sammiches. Need I say more?



Penetration is standard to any damage dealer, as it allows one to burn through protections. If you don't build penetration, your MP will be ineffective and therefore no Snoo Snoo for you. Is the importance of penetration hard to remember? Just replace it with the word coitus - boom, you're done. Well, hopefully not this early in the guide.

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The more often you cast your spells, the more utility you have - not only will you have increased sustained damage, but you will also be able to zone, dash, and stun more foten.



A simple Magi's Blessing can cap out CCR, and it can be useful to build towards if your teammates are not providing enough peels. What's better? Building full damage and dying instantly, or building high damage and...not dying instantly? No, that's not rhetorical - the latter is the best option.



Essentially the same that goes for above - if you need some defense, don't hesitate to build some. You bring more to the table than simply damage as Agni, so you won't become useless just because your Flame Waves hit for a hundred less damage.

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Hey, everyone loves mana. Nobody likes the guy with infinite sustain that hits like a wet noodle, though. Considering your ultimate costs no mana whatsoever, and how often you'll return to the base in arena, you should not be having any mana trouble.



There are other stats, such as movement speed and health that are beneficial, but I don't feel like covering them as they come with items that carry the primary stats you will build towards. If it's not listed above, it can still be useful as long as you don't go out of your way to purchase it.

What's better to follow a section explaining the stats to gear towards than one that provides a list of items with said stats? Bacon, of course! Unfortunately for you, you cannot have any of my bacon, because it's, well, mine. In lieu of bacon, I shall provide you with the next best thing: what items to build, and why to build them!

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Honestly, don't stray from Purification Beads and Aegis Amulet or Aegis Pendant, except in the cases of building Weakening Curse against heavy-healing teams or Heavenly Agility to assist healers on your own team, or blink if you're scurred of Odin's ultimate.

I typically try to explain this section better, but I don't think it's necessary with Agni.

First and foremost, let's talk about minions - as boring as it is murdering mindless waves of artificial "intelligence" that follow a set path as they traverse the map, they're an essential part of arena. Because you have two methods of safe, instantaneous waveclear, do yourself and your teammates a favor and be the minion *****. A simple Flame Wave or Rain Fire will suffice, and if you manage to hit both minions and enemy gods with it as well, good for you. You can also use minions to build your passive, especially early on in the game when single spells don't incinerate them (well, completely).

Now for the actual fun part! What is your combo and how do you use it? Well, as I mentioned previously, Agni is extremely versatile, meaning he doesn't have just one, simple combo like some of the other, no-skill-floor-low-skill-ceiling magi *coughAnubiscough*.

How to use each spell was mentioned previously, but I'll mention a few common combos again.

1. Casting Flame Wave > Path of Flame > Noxious Fumes > Rain Fire is a quick way to inflict a lot of damage, but comes at the cost of using both your escape and stun. The reason it's casted in this order is because it makes it easier to properly land both Path of Flame (because you're not worried about both the enemy's position and Noxious Fumes's location) and Rain Fire (because they will be stunned).

2. Sometimes considered to be properly categorized under "tips and tricks," casting Rain Fire immediately followed by Noxious Fumes is a standard combo used in higher-tier play, often christened the "insta-stun ragequit combo" for its ability to make all affected players immediately punch a wall and toss their computers out of the nearest window. The goal is to use the delay between firing Rain Fire and its impact to your advantage; you will have just enough time to place Noxious Fumes under it, providing a "surprise," unavoidable ignite-stun.

3. Coming from behind enemy lines and casting Path of Flame to return to your teammate's side, followed by a Noxious Fumes to stun your enemies is an effective way to help your team initiate on them.

4. Rain Fire spam! This can either be used to inflict high-damage to CC'd targets, or as a zoning tool to help your teammates either escape or eliminate remaining enemies.



You can inflict a lot of damage as Agni, but you also bring heaps of utility - effective use of Agni's skills depending on the situation, whether it's zoning, CC, or even simply damage itself, will result in many victories.

As a game with over forty different gods, think of Smite as a convoluted Rock-Paper-Scissors. There are many variables that contribute to how effectively a god counters another god, transcending abilities to include unexpected factors such as the environment (closeness of walls or quantity of pathways) and overall composition, such as one god having a dangerous spell on a long cooldown, forcing you to counter it, thereby increasing the potential danger of another spell considered to be less dangerous. However, it is possible to generalize counters, turning this convoluted mess into something slightly more manageable, like Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock.

For example, stuns are bad, mkay? They make it easy for enemies to violate Agni's hiney, and the gods who have stuns with excessive durations, such as Ymir, could be considered, at the very least, a potential counter to Agni. Stuns with shorter durations, or stuns at are more easily avoidable (e.x.: Isis's Spirit Ball thanks to Path of Flame), are less of a counter and more of a nuisance.

"Cut to the chase, Dr. TT; who are his counters?"

Well, since you asked so nicely, I'd be happy to tell you! But first, I'd like to mention that you're certainly not getting any bacon with that attitude.

Anyhow, let's list the top offenders of violating Agni:

Yim Yims How Much Does it Hurt? Let's put it this way: you won't be able to sit down for weeks. <Stun, Wall, Info>

Serberk Fling, Smack, Dead That pretty much sums up a Sobek initiation. If his team is coordinated, if you get flung, you'll be smacked and then die. <Fling, Smack, Info>

The All Father Man***** It's that damn ultimate, man. A dash is nice and all, but it's still not going to get you out of Odin's Ring of Spears. Combat Blink has over double the cooldown of Odin's ultimate before cooldown reductions. A lot can happen in that ring, but this pretty much sums up the typical outcome. <More on countering later>

Hey, it says Work-In-Progress, man!

Noxious Fumes can be cast immediately after (and in the same spot as) Rain Fire in order to apply a surprise stun.

Path of Flame provides CC immunity, meaning it can be used to avoid spells like Ares's No Escape.

Not only can Path of Flame detonate Noxious Fumes by passing over it, but Noxious Fumes can be cast over an existing Path of Flame to be immediately detonated, and an enemy doesn't even need to be standing on the flames to be within ranged of the stun.

Casting a Flame Wave immediately after a Loki enters stealth will allow you to trace his movements for three seconds if Combustion is active. If both Noxious Fumes and Path of Flame are off cooldown, you can use Path of Flames in his direction and then detonate Noxious Fumes over him to break his stealth.

Ain't nothing done been changed, yet.

Any updates with no mention in the changelog are simply grammatical/spelling fixes.

In the works (not really): completion of the countering section.

Suggestions welcomed.

Lebly (and Pieface) helped me test Combustion, which is pretty damn important. Huge props to them.

Raventhor has provided valuable input in improving the build, and he also has excellent guides of his own (that I feel receive far too little attention and updates). Check him out.

Sanguis has given me a beautiful template that integrates MOBAfire's skillsequence coding into Smitefire, which he put to great use in his top-notch Ymir Guide, and Greenevers has improved upon it.

Subzero008 has, as always, provided a helpful review. He's awesome, even if he has a ******* for Anubis Artemis. Check out his excellent guides and give them their well-deserved upvotes for me.



And most importantly, I'd like to thank the creators and producers of the Avatar series because it's totally relevant to the publishing of this guide.