Building Basics Episode 1: Shoes and Boots

Hello all and welcome to a new Smite education series I'm starting: Building Basics. Here we'll be going over building faux pas that I've seen on far too many guides, some examples including when/if to buy boots, when to stack/how many stacking items to buy, when to buy Tahuti, and more. I'll be covering just one of these topics at a time, so look for those mentioned above in future installments. Today's topic is about those items you wear on your feet, shoes and boots!
As most player's know, there are quite a few varieties of shoes and boots (the difference between the two being that magical gods can only buy the shoes variants while physical gods can only buy boots variants). These include Shoes of Focus, Shoes of the Magi, Reinforced Shoes and travelers shoes for guardians and mages, and Ninja Tabi, Warrior Tabi, Reinforced Greaves and Talaria Boots for hunters, assassins, and warriors. There's a unique restriction on these items that prevents any player from buying more than one of these branches unlike every other item in the game. So why is that? This is because these items are strong.


So what makes these items so essential? Well it's a blend of two factors primarily: the importance of movement speed and the ratio of price to value. Movement speed is essential very early on in the game for a variety of reasons. In every game mode but Arena and Assault, it allows you to rotate between lanes, get back to lane and move throughout the map quicker. This is a huge advantage since it allows you to more efficiently farm your lane and jungle camps, as well as capitalize on enemies' positioning when rotating for a gank. In Arena and Assault this is less important, however movement speed comes into play in a different way. In teamfights your positioning is essential in what the outcome will be. Being able to reposition quickly, as well as pursue and retreat can often make the difference between snagging a kill and being killed.


Aside from movement speed, boots and shoes items are also incredibly cost efficient for the stats they provide. Given their cheap roughly 1500g average price, they provide a wealth of essential stats with an option for all roles. Because they're so cost efficient you generally want to capitalize on being able to obtain such strong stats early on in the game, since doing so will give you an easy edge on your opponent.


In closing, should shoes and boots always be your first item? Not in every scenario, you generally want a starter item like Vampiric Shroud or Bumba's Mask first. Stacking items like Transcendence and Book of Thoth may want to be prioritized before movement speed as well to begin stacking as soon as possible. Depending on the meta some items may be prioritized over movement speed items such as Heavy Hammer used to be for invading enemy teams. However as a rule of thumb, you almost always want to buy these items as either your first or second item in your build due to the importance of movement speed and how much bang they give for your buck.