What Kind Of Player Are You?

Had a discussion with Salad last night in-between Conquest games. As Salad used to be a coach for higher level SMITE play, he talked about a simple table he developed to help evaluate the type of player you are, what tendencies you likely have, and what role and god picks best fit your natural playstyle.

3 main, simple questions on playstyle, and an optional preference on being tanky or glass cannon:

1. Are you proactive or reactive?
   
   
2. Are you aggressive or defensive?
   
   
3. Are you a shot-caller or a follower/team player?
   
   
4. Secondary: Do you prefer to be tanky (damage sponge) or glass cannon?

Keep in mind, this doesn't mean you ALWAYS play this way. Depending on the situation and the god, you may naturally find yourself initiating more often, or finding that every time you play aggressively, you're getting blown up. You may find that the rest of your team is silent and essentially headless, and you end up directing your team.

Now, you have to be honest with yourself. It's not necessarily so much what you WANT to be, but what your natural tendency is.

Me? I'm Reactive / Defensive / Follower (and damage sponge). Salad says the best role for me is Support or Solo. Makes sense...I tend to have the most success when I'm a Support (Conquest) or tank in general. But I'm also comfortable enough in that role that if I know and trust my teammate(s), I'll do more of the initiating, especially when playing a god like Bacchus. This is where god choice also matters in determining your playstyle.

I do really like Carry, and I like playing more aggressively, but often that means I have to be at a stage where I'm confident I'm better than the opposition. And here's where it's a mental game. Being reactive, it's not just in general playstyle, but also in determining my confidence. If there's an engagement and I'm happy with how I handled it, and/or outplayed the enemy, my style might shift. I might start looking to steal camps and get to places before the enemy can, and I might start diving the enemy even when I don't have a clear advantage. On the flipside, I'm already psyching myself out before the game, anytime I'm playing with Taco or Salad. Usually immediately puts me on the defensive side, and it opens up the enemy to take advantage and start dictating play.

And that's where Salad says it's best to learn your style, and try to stick within your strengths, at least if you're looking to hone your gameplay. It's fine stepping outside your comfort zone, but you want to sort of try to keep up that style, even if things aren't going your way.

Anyway, what's your style? Thoughts on this?

Proactive / Aggressive / Follower sounds about right for me but I bet someone else would beg to differ, Bran.

Reactive / Defensive / Follower though I sometimes go proactive depending upon the mode and god.

Usually Proactive / Aggressive / Shot-Caller. I like to fight, farm, attack and spam VGS >:)

Reactive / Defensive / Follower, for sure.

I think it all boils down to comfort, familiarity, and experience.

I can't really do this because it depends on what god/role im playing. I do know I prefer Mages, compared to tanks generally, but I still enjoy playing some tanks. I do tend to be more reactive than proactive but that's usually because in some matches I value myself as the MVP that will carry the match (and im also playing a squishy god, and sometimes I can't rely for peel), but this isn't always the case so some matches I will rather peel for someone else on the team that may be the MVP than prioritise myself if that makes sense, this mainly applies to higher ranked though (or at least did, I last played ranked in season 5).

Aggressive/Defensive depends on picks. Early game gods like Ullr offer different advantages compared to late game ones like Thoth. Im not going to be the same in solo lane with Achilles/Osiris the same way im going to be with Baron/Hel/Chronos.

Im a mix between Shot-Caller and Follower. I tend to focus structures sometimes, though others I may be more of a follower in regards to objectives (more so for Fire Giant than Gold/Pyro, as I don't like to risk Fire being stolen, so im more hesitant to call FG).

I could link my smiteguru for my god followers to demonstrate play time/god preference, though I know some of them (Anubis/Thanatos/Nox) I haven't played in ages. I could make like a tier list of gods I would most likely play this season, as of current patch.

I don't know if this helps but I would say my role preference: Mid > Solo > ADC > Support > Jungle (from most to least preferable).

I think if you choose one of these options, it's what you feel as a personality you're most in line with, if that makes sense.

Absolutely god pick and role does change how your style is going to be. Based on what you said, Kriega, I'd say you got it right with Reactive, and your preference is gods/roles that are more reactive anyway, so it matches up.

When I'm ADC my first priority is always structures/objectives...but I wouldn't say that's shot-caller/follower category, unless you're actually directing the team in some way.

In the end, if you were to sit back and choose the single most comfortable situation, what god/role would it be?

For ranked? I haven't played it this season. Last season I priortised Mid, and mainly Thoth/Chronos.

But this season since Thoth's nerfs I would probably have to say Chronos. Especially since I like him as a flex pick for 3 different roles. But this is only from playing casual conquest so far this season, even though i've seen some diamond/masters/gm in my casuals this season I couldn't say for sure what my opinion for ranked would be especially considering the new ranked stucture. I did enjoy Merlin on his release patch, but I know he's constantly banned in ranked and I don't know his future balance changes so I couldn't say for sure. Maybe due to Thoth's nerfs I would main Agni in Mid.

I think it would be easier to tell what category I would "fit into" if there were more questions, that used a scale for answering, and an average was taken.

Also in regards to shot-caller I do tend to call out teammates on bad positioning, especially asking teammates to retreat in certain lanes when keeping aware of where the enemies on the other team may be (especially the jungler and my lane opponent), though I have on the rare occasion been punished for this myself (more in the past than recently), e.g. pushing waves by myself.

Not directly ranked, just in general. Like, I can straight up tell you I feel most comfortable and that I'll have the greatest success playing a balanced guardian as Support...balanced meaning some potential for initiation, some for peel. Best examples of this would be Khepri, Ganesha, and Athena, the latter two of which being my favorite guardians outside of Bacchus.

And if I just think on a high level about my playstyle, it's again something I can generalize. I love playing more aggressive, but when things are intense, I prefer reacting and waiting a bit over initiating. And again, in preference, I'd prefer a better shot-caller to direct us rather than have me do so.