God roles?

I am new to smite and Moba games in general, i come from a FPS and MMO background so this is all new to me.

Do the Gods determine their role or do their builds determine their role? I've been seeing Guardian tanks used as damage dealers and warriors built for tanking, and mages jungling, assassins laning, not saying they weren't effective at them but for someone who is new it gets confusing when trying to build a good team composition. Are roles predetermined by skills or made by build?

Also are there roles? I do see different builds of mixed stats covering various roles. Is it good to stick to a role or spread a bit?

And lastly a situation thing that i keep seeing. I've been playing Athena pure tank recently, i see a teammate in danger so i go pull agro so they may escape, now the teammate decides not to tp out instead sort of look on from a distance, inevitably they are in danger again. What do i do? Do i try save them again which may or may not cost us both our lives? Or do i just get out and leave him to definitely die?

Bit of a long post XD

Welcome to SmiteFire.

Generally there's always more then 1 way to build a good unless you are a Ranged Physical Power god in which case most of builds will be same with 1-2 items differing depending on a situation.

As for Assassins laning with Mages jungling well honest answer is anything goes in low levels and non ranked games,but you should try to stick to positions that your god is best suited for.

Roles are predetermined pretty much by the skill set that your God has,because even if you build your Anhur as pure tank he will never be better tank then lets say Ymir.

Roles are as fallows:
Ranged Physical Damage dealer or more commonly referred to as ADC.
Mage - pretty self explanatory you build Magic Damage items you go to middle lane most of the time.
Bruiser-A melee Physical damage dealer that builds 1-3 offensive and 3-4 defensive items.Also some tanks like Athena can be build like a bruiser I believe.
Tanks and supports-They get wards they go into the side lane with a the ADC.
Assassins-They are melee Physical damage gods that build almost pure damage.

Examples for each role:
ADC- Anhur Apollo Ah Muzen Cab
Mage- Ra Agni Poseidon
Bruiser Odin Thor Guan Yu
Tanks/supports Ymir Sobek Aphrodite Chang'e
Assassins Loki Mercury Bastet

Normally if you are a tank or a support it's always okey to sacrifice your life for the life of your Carry (Mage,Assassin,ADC),but if they insist on doing stupid things there is no reason why you should throw your life away and start feeding.



Hope this helps and if I missed something tell me and I will address it too.

Ah ok it makes sense, i am only level 15, i have noticed now people are trying to build complementary team rather than locking in their fav god.

Your reply was very informative, thanks. Up to now i have chosen 2-4 Gods of each type trying to keep them pure class so i can fill a role per team. I guess in time i'll learn when to sacrifice and not.

You are welcome.Also I strongly advise you to pick 1 role that you enjoy the most as your main role,because while being jack of all trades is nice it might hinder your progress if you ever decide to dive into ranked. (Having a main role doesn't mean not playing others just prioritizing it).

I mostly play a support in all games, and i've had most success playing support mage and tank in smite, so i will probably main a support role, my damage dealing classes are a bit hit and miss and i haven't got around to jungling.

I agree. You kinda have to specialize in one of the following roles:

Midlaner: the midlaner chooses full damage mages and fights in the middle lane. Midlaners focus on farming gold and experience. Due to the lane being the smallest, the midlaner usually doesn't kill the opposing midlaner. The midlane is the most-ganked lane, so they have to be careful about their positioning. Sometimes takes mid harpies in between clearing waves. When their opposing midlaner dies or backs, the midlaner rotates to a lane if they're pushed up to your side of the map. If their opposing midlaner leaves the lane, they follow them.
Common midlaner gods: Agni, Poseidon, Ao Kuang, He Bo, Ra.

Carry: the Carry chooses Hunters and builds full damage, with at least some lifesteal, and lanes in the Gold Fury lane. Carries focus on getting as many kills as possible, period. There's not much left to say here... oh yeah, you usually deal the most damage, and you deal most of it by basic attacks.
Common Carry gods: Neith (please don't), Apollo, Anhur.

Support: the Support usually chooses Gaurdians and builds full tank, and lanes with the Carry in the Gold Fury lane. The Support is supposed to set up kills for the Carry, and to try to take all the damage directed towards his team. The support is not supposed to deal damage, just the occasional poke. The support is always ready to sacrifice their life to save someone else's.
Common Support gods: Sobek, Athena, Bacchus, Ymir.

Solo Laner: the Solo lane is by far the most versatile. I cannot pin down one thing that is constant for the solo lane. Actually, there is one: they always have some way to mitigate damage, be it a heal, passive protections, high HP5, or a way to keep away from the action.
Common Solo gods: Ra, Hercules, Hel, Odin... too many to list here.

Jungler: The jungler chooses Assassins, both magical and physical. They build pure - PURE - damage. They go around in the jungle, getting gold and experience from the mob camps. When a lane is pushed to your side, the jungler ganks - comes up in the pushed lane behind the opposing player and proceeds to kill them in the most brutal way possible. Junglers usually get the most kills, but fall off late game.
Common Jungling gods: Thor, Ne Zha, Fenrir, Freya, He Bo, Odin.

This game (as are all MOBAs) is not about "roles", per se. It's not like an MMO. You don't pick a class and then that class has certain skills suited to that role. In an MMO, you might make a character, choose their class as say Guardian, and they have an entire skillset devoted to drawing aggro, staying alive, and have almost no damaging ability. The "roles" assigned to gods in Smite are merely to organize them in a way that it's easier for players to know where that god's strengths may lay, not what it's purely capable of.

For instance, on the subject of tanks, particularly Ymir, Hades, Sobek, and Athena can all be built for damage and perform somewhat well at it, while still maintaining a strong defense. Ymir is fantastic for damage building because of his abilities to hinder enemies and reduce the amount of damage he takes.

Athena is even capable of being a jungler, an incredibly annoying and dangerous one, at that. Her tank abilities and ult make her perfect for ganking and she has great abilities to catch enemies that are trying to run away to secure kills ( Confound is the bane of everyone's existence).

Really it's up to you to choose a god that you like, find our what role they perform best, perfect their main role, and then experiment with what else they can do. Every god has multiple talents.

To specifically answer your question, the build determines the role of the god. There are no gods that are purely "tanks" or purely "support" ( Chang'e is capable of some incredibly heavy damage and CC, despite supposedly being nearly "all support", i.e.).

Thanks for all the feedback. As people have suggested i am now focusing on Tank support, i have been playing all the guardians, i do come from an mmo background so i was expecting the roles to define a god, now i see the versatility.

I am now experimenting and playing around looking at some of the warriors for tank builds, the ones with skill sets that interest me are Sun Wukong, Hercules, Odin and Tyr.

I have seen Athena in the jungle more than as a tank recently and she is scary.

All the gods you mention, Sun Wukong, Hercules, Odin, and Tyr are bruisers, not tanks. You should build them for damage with a little defence. I'd say, at most two purely defense items. Bruisers are usually good for initiating fights, so you can expect to take some damage, but they're also very good at sustain and chewing up squishies. You'll probably be in solo mostly, or possibly in duo with the ADC. Tyr and Sun Wukong are particularly good for beginner bruisers because they have both strong defensive/healing abilities and also good damage and initiation skills. Hercules and Odin will require a little practice, mostly since Hercules relies on his 1 + 2 combo in order to maximize his skill set.

And I'm not saying they can't tank, I'm saying they don't need to stack a lot of defensive items to do their job and benefit more from being able to do damage.

Hercules, Sun Wukong and Tyr actually works really well as tanks (max cdr on Tyr). They all got good cc and are able to peal for your team. Odin is kind of meh as support/tank :P