Season 5 Guide Contest - Write, Vote, or Comment to Win!

We're kicking off SMITE Season 5 with a guide contest! You can win awesome prizes by writing a guide for one of the classes, or by commenting or voting on one!

Ultimate God Pack Giveaway (5 Winners) What better way is there to start a new season than to gain access to all current and future SMITE gods?! Before we talk about the prizes you can earn by participating in the guide contest, we are giving away five Ultimate God Packs! In order to have a chance of winning one of them, simply click on the button below and comment in the thread it links to. In your post, tell us about which change made by Hi-Rez you're most excited about moving into Season 5. At the end of the contest, we will pick 5 winners from all submissions. Click Here To Comment!

Guide Contest (10 Winners)The guide contest consists of 5 different categories based on the classes in game. Contestants will have 3 weeks to enter. How do you enter? Simply create or update a guide during the contest dates (January 31st - February 20th) and boom, you're automatically entered! To qualify for the guide contest, your guide must have at least 2500 characters (characters, not words, includes BBCode) and a properly filled out build - skill sequence, talents, and at least core items in the item purchase order. Guides and item builds must be competitive in the current meta. If you want feedback for your guide, don't forget to make use of the forums! The SMITEFire community will be happy to help by giving your guide feedback. :) What can you win? A sweet god skin (courtesy of Hi-Rez Studios) that fits the role you wrote a guide for! Gems! 2,500 for our guide winners S5 Badge + Forum Title And a chance of winning a bonus prize for participating in any form (click on the image to learn more) So what are you waiting for?! Craft Your Guide Now!

Contest Categories (2 Winners per Class) Much like last year, the Season 5 Guide Contest is split into 5 categories, based on the classes in SMITE: Assassin, Hunter, Mage, Warrior, and Guardian. Each category will have 2 winners. Below is a description of what we expect authors in each category to focus on if they decide to participate. Assassin Assassins are often melee gods who can commonly be found in the jungle area of the map. With their mobility and ability to deal huge amounts of damage in a short period of time, their main purpose is to reach key targets in the back line of the enemy team before assassinating them. Authors who write a guide in this category should make sure they do their best to explain how to do this without being stopped by the enemy Guardian or dying to damage dealt by the enemy team. The winners will receive the Rocket Punch skin for Mercury, 2,500 Gems, a Season 5 gold Assassin badge, and the "Slayer" forum title. Guardian Guardians are usually gods who provide a large amount of crowd control and can soak some damage for their team. Their main job is protect their carries from dying to sneaky enemy Assassins and to disrupt the enemy team as much as possible. Authors who write a guide in this category should focus on explaining how to quickly locate and eliminate the main source(s) of danger on the enemy team while keeping their own carries safe. The winners will receive the Tremor Tech skin for Cabrakan, 2,500 Gems, a Season 5 gold Guardian badge, and the "Bodyguard" forum title. Hunter Hunters are gods who primarily use their basic attacks to deal damage from a distance. Due to their heavy dependence on items, one of their main priorities throughout the game is to secure kills and make sure they are farming a lot of minions & monsters. Authors who write a guide in this category should focus on explaining how to itemize once they've acquired a lot of gold by doing so and talk about how best to position in teamfights. The winners will receive the Moonlit Ranger skin for Artemis, 2,500 Gems, a Season 5 gold Hunter badge, and the "Sharpshooter" forum title. Mage Mages are commonly found in the middle lane and can deal a large amount of magical damage from afar by chaining their abilities. In teamfights, they're usually looking to unleash their deadly combo on prime enemy targets. Authors who write a guide in this category should focus on explaining how their abilities should be chained to get the most damage out of them and talk about how to best position themselves in order to do this without being at risk of getting caught. The winners will receive the Empress skin for Nu Wa, 2,500 Gems, a Season 5 gold Mage badge, and the "Sorcerer" forum title. Warrior Warriors are melee fighters who can take a bit of a beating but dish out damage as well. In teamfights, Warriors should generally be found on the front lines and focus on disrupting and damaging the enemy team's damage dealers. Authors who write a guide in this category should focus on explaining how to best itemize to achieve this goal and on how to determine which enemy god should be their main priority. The winners will receive the Harbinger skin for Nike, 2,500 Gems, a Season 5 gold Warrior badge, and the "Fighter" forum title. Craft Your Guide Now!

What Will the Guides be Judged On? Build Quality - a good guide needs a good build What would a good guide be without a good build? If you don't buy any items you probably aren't going to do very well! So first things first, tell us what to buy (under the Items tab) of your guide! Guide purchase orders exist to tell your readers what to buy as well as the order in which they should buy their items, so make sure to make good use of them. Depth of Information - now tell us how to play! What order do you level your skills in? Do you wait for a certain moment to use a skill? How do you play against this god or that god? All these little details should not only teach beginners the basics, but teach experienced players little tips and tricks they may not have known before. We've jotted down a list of common topics to touch on in a guide below. Skill order How to use your skills effectively First purchase Build order and how to counterbuild Tips and tricks Matchups and synergy Other game concepts such as team fighting, jungling, pushing, map objectives, etc. Formatting and Readability - add some polish If your guide has typos everywhere and all the text is in bright blue it might be a little hard to read. We're not saying that a single typo will disqualify your guide, but take some time to proofread and add some formatting to your guide to help readers quickly find important information. Below are a few resources to help set you on your way; if you want any more help, feel free to ask for it on the forums! Coding Help & FAQ Templates for Guides Craft Your Guide Now!

What Are The Rules? (For Guide Authors) You must create or update your guide by the end of February 20th, 2018 Your guide must fulfill these material requirements: At least 2500 characters At least one build with a filled out skill order and items You're allowed to make changes to your guide at any time. Plagiarism is strictly prohibited and will automatically disqualify your guide. NOTE: God builds and BBCode do not belong to any one writer and do not fall under plagiarism rules

Participation Winners (15 Total)We understand that guide creation may not be for everyone so by interacting with guides on the site in any form you'll also gain entries for a chance to win 1 of 15 codes for the Grim Reaper skin for Thanatos! Here's how you can gain entries: 1 entry - Vote on a guide (you earn 1 for each guide you vote on) 2 entries - Constructive comment on a guide (you earn 2 for each guide you comment on) 5 entries - Create or update your own build (limit 1 per person) 10 entries - Create or update your own guide (limit 3 per person, you earn 10 for each guide with 2500 or more characters you write) Participation winners will get the Grim Reaper skin for Thanatos

Fine Print (For Clarity's Sake) Guides must be crafted to reflect the current state of the game. Users can not win more than one contest category. Open to registered SMITEFire members only. Not a member? Register now and craft your guide! Contest is worldwide. Contest will be closed 3 weeks from the start. After contest is closed there will be a 1 week judging period. Winners will be notified by email after the judging period and will have 7 days to claim their prize.

Awwww yeah boys now I’m ready to get my guide making on. Let’s gooooooooooo.

A few quick clarifying questions:

1) Is the guide for a single god or the whole catagory? (like the overarching conquest guide) I assume single god, but there is a lot of talk about catagories

2) Would gods like Cabrakan/Freya/Kuang that are usually played in a different role be judged according to their normal role, or their class category requirements?

3) Why is the Warrior Skin a tier 2 while all the others are a tier 4?

Good thing I have a WIP guide in the wings. Just gotta update it and add the info. And to cyberhawk,1.) IT's for a single god.
2.) They're going to be judged not by role but by class (Warrior, Assassin, Mage, so on.) That doesn't stop you from writing a guide on Solo or Jungle Cabrakan or ADC Freya, but they will be judged as part of the Guardian and Mage categories respectively.
3.) I think they're just using the latest skins that aren't tied to an event and are available to the entire playerbase. The last non-event Warrior skin we got was Harbinger Nike since Fallen Angel Nike was part of the rewards from Odyssey. And technically Empress Nu Wa is classified as a T2 but has more work put into it than most T2's so it's more like I think a T2.5. At least that's how I see it.

Hey Cyberhawk,

Some answers (oh hey, Shini already responded on these, thanks!):

1) Is the guide for a single god or the whole catagory? (like the overarching conquest guide) I assume single god, but there is a lot of talk about catagories

Guides evaluated will be for single gods, not for general categories. Also, I'm disqualifying my guides from participating (I'll be helping judge as usual).

2) Would gods like Cabrakan/Freya/Kuang that are usually played in a different role be judged according to their normal role, or their class category requirements?

They will be judged according to their actual class. Don't feel that this limits you in how you can present your god of choice...in a past Ymir-specific contest, one of the standouts that won was a guide for playing him in the Jungle (where he's arguably less used compared to Support / Solo).

3) Why is the Warrior Skin a tier 2 while all the others are a tier 4?

Uhhh...Wayne?

thanks for the quick response! I was meaning to update my guides soon anyway :)

Regarding question 3, the codes for the skins are provided by Hi-Rez, we didn't pick each of these by hand. I assume their aim was to make sure all skins they provided were recently released, but I wasn't aware of the tier difference between the skins, sorry about that.

Maybe my streak of never finishing a contest guide can end.

Pappsi, i missed you ;-;