SMITEFire Season 6 Guide Contest Winners

Hey Kriega can we chill out here. No need to be name calling or insulting.

I just stated what is fact, they were whining. No need to come in and be the White Knight.

So... Next Saturday™?

Kriega, this isn't giving in...this is just explaining. Giving in would be acceding to the demand for an honorable mention. Explaining at least gives people a better understanding, and I see absolutely no problem with that.

@DarkAngel and everyone else, I believe every judge used my scoring sheet. It's one I originally made 3 or so years ago, and fine-tuned for more recent contests. To give an overview, it looks like this:


Now, in the Season 6 Guide Contest post, it provided topics on which to present ideas. Some specific quotes:

• In the "Mage" category: "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."
  
  
• 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!

Now, I didn't really judge your guide, because Merlin was one in the Mage category, and I covered hunters. That said, I'll offer some points about your guide to give you an understanding of my points:

• Build & items: overall, I don't have any major issues with it at this point. I will say, if I were to consider lifesteal, it would have to be a bit after the core items...at least after Chronos and Magus. You don't give any explanation, however, about WHY you choose the specific items, or explain about the concept behind your build examples...and that's a HUGE part of the guide. Note all the winners, or the honorable mentions, or one of my guides, or Tlaloc's guides, and you'll see that's a pretty big oversight on your part. That drops your point potential significantly.
  
  
• Matchups (and indirectly, accuracy): You have 2 matchups written. Some others don't at all, and note that matchups are only a small scoring portion. However, if / when you DO talk about matchups...you need to be ACCURATE. With Ymir, you said his wall can prevent you from flickering back to safety. You can use Flicker THROUGH Ymir's wall, so I'm not sure why you said this, but it's not accurate at all here, and instead misinforms newer players.
  
  
• Combos: I also broke down in my most recent comment on your guide about considering the larger picture of comboing abilities. You only talked about comboing the 2 abilities in each stance, rather than how you might chain up to 5 or 6 abilities by stance switching, which is a very big part of his kit.
  
  
• Warding: No offense on this one, but this is a bit of an insult. You grabbed a picture you found online, but didn't bother even checking if it was accurate or that it applied to your situation. Not only is it a map from 2 seasons ago, but the warding dots don't correspond to where you're saying to ward (outside of the orange ones). This is bad.
  
  
• Other missing topics: You don't talk about gameplay at all, whether in Conquest or Arena (as your guide title states the builds are for). You don't talk about the nuances of the early/mid/late game, where to be and how to play in a teamfight, controlling / protecting objectives.
  
  
• Coding & Presentation: I'm never one to score harshly on bbcoding. People newer to guide creation on SF shouldn't be docked for having to learn coding along with writing their first guides. That said, you also wouldn't get any bonuses.

Basically, your first guide effort is a good one, but it just didn't cover enough things for us to consider it for winning or being an honorable mention. There's a significant dropoff between those and what you've presented. It's again, no offense to you, but it's still a contest, and you and a bunch of others just didn't win this time. Hope these explanations give you a better understanding.

Also, Axel1001 and thesecondmistake's Merlin guides have some of the same issues your guide has...lack of enough information.

I understand thanks for the explanation bran and I’m sorry I got tilted but I’ll try again next year I’ll try harder and hopefully win.

Hi Dark, thanks for your understanding. Can understand getting tilted when you didn't have any explanation, and I look forward to future content from you.

If you need examples, look at both of the winners in the Warrior category as well as the honorable mention because all 3 have what I consider the requirements for a prize winning guide. I judged a bit stringently because 2,500 gems and a free skin are worth quite a bit of money and I wanted the entries I put forth as winners to reflect what I felt was an effort worthy of those prizes. Everybody who won and those that received an honorable mention where those who put in that effort.

Congratulations to the winners and good luck to everybody who's entering next year.

There's no honorable mention for the warrior category?

I mean if you check the Ymir guide on my profile, thats almost Identical to the way it looked at the end of the Ymir contest. I only got a runner up on that contest. While I personally did not agree with it I certainly did not ask them to reconsider and at most I asked why they made their decision.

Asking the judges to make you an honorable mention after the fact simply because you "worked hard" shows that you do not respect their decisions. Are any of the guides on this site perfect? No they are not. However after looking at your guide it genuinely looks like something I could have slapped together in 30 minutes. It is essentially a wall of text with some weak BBCoding and a few text images. Its hard to sort through and read to get the information I want.

None of this is an insult to you personally, but I can see why the judges made their decision. I dont know why you don't want to accept that. Last time I checked the world hasn't normalized participation awards.

They could have put my Tyr guide :v