How come Smite fire builds have cheaper items but people seem to build for high cost/damage items?

Tldr: Why do Smite fire mage builds use cheaper/weaker items, when pure damage mage builds seem to work better?


I'm pretty sure this is a basic question. But I've been wondering why people on Smite Fire that lists builds for like Change and Merlin, don't build for crazy damage and instead rely on like smaller items. I've been playing regular joust matches, and people are building some max damage build, and it seems to work. I mean my health is getting deleted xDD.

Like for Change' I see:
Lotus Crown, Boots, Chronos Pendant, Spear, Rod of Ascepelius, Void stone, Ethereal Staff.
Or Merlin:
Magus Spear, Boots, Chronos, Gem of Iso, Soul Gem, Shaman Ring.

And I feel like I see things like:
Book of Thoth, Boots, Rod of Tahuti, Bancroft Talon, Soul Reaver, Obsidian.
And I mean something like this on both gods. So I always wonder, is it just cause in Joust you get a lot more money, and these builds are viable, or is it that I'm just playing my gods poorly and actually the cheaper builds make more sense than this build that puts gods on steroids.

It's not only gold, but also item effects.

the Chang'e build you viewed is considered for solo lane and going pure damage won't do you much good there. Therefore people will build more utility items to amplify her healing.

lotus crown gives allies extra protections after you healed them.
Chronos' Pendant provides you with cooldown reduction allowing you to use your spells faster.
rod od ascepelius to amplify the healing and counter antihealing.
Void Stone for the magic protection reduction aura and some tankyness in the form of magic protections for yourself ( all magical damage from your team will be amplified as it removes protections)
Ethereal Staff for the health steal

the Merlin build is pretty much a glass canon build. It utilises Spear of the Magus for the early pen, which will hurt a lot as natural protections of gods are below 50 so they will easily melt.
chronos again for the cdr so your spells are up quicker.
Gem of Isolation the only utility item that allows you to keep people in Blizzard and other Damage over time spells.
soul gem for the healing it provides and the burst every 5th cast.
Shaman's Ring for the damage amplification.

the build your suggesting is something you will see and it's not terrible (I would move tahuti to the end and move obsidian after talon, however it provides almost no utility or for some gods some items don;t synergize as well.
Another thing the build does is that you have to stack an item, which is not really a problem for a mage in joust, however if you're getting stomped the delayed power you get from the stacks will never really get there.

I hope this gave some clearity

Another point is that some of the builds you see here may be for Conquest. Take Chang'e, for example. Her typical role there is not your standard nuking mage as you might expect, but rather as a solo-laner, due to her ability to sustain (self-healing) and stay in lane (passive item purchasing). In that role, you typically counter-build the enemy, so items like Lotus (phys prots) or Void (mag prots) are more common.

I'd absolutely build her differently if I was playing her in Joust vs. Conquest.

Building lots of power can make any god hit like a truck, at least in concept. But the question then ends up being, why don't you just build ALL gods with high power (aka basically all a cookie cutter power build)? And it's because all gods have different strengths and weaknesses. You take their ranges, their ability to escape dangerous situations, the amount of reliance on spamming skills in conjunction with what their ability cooldowns are, other kit features (some have built-in penetration, or their skills do tick or DoT damage). Also...scaling. Some gods have great scaling and get even more out of power than some other gods.

All of these together should go into determining a build, but you also do that uniquely in each game, because matchups are always different. Build Divine Ruin sometimes when there are more enemy healers. Build Ob Shard against tankier comps.

That's not how it necessarily works... Also you're going to have to be specific. Spear of the Magus for example is not weak at all on the mages that use it well, e.g. Merlin.

Also cheaper builds let you come online sooner than someone using an expensive build, which gives you an advantage for a period of the match. But that doesen't always mean you should use "cheap" items and not use "expensive" items, because some items, cheap or expensive, can be in a bad current state and not be cost efficient and/or "meta".



1. These so called "smaller items" can give burst, but im not 100% sure what you mean by "smaller items".
2. The Chang'e build is more bruiser, not meant to 100-0 an enemy but to be relatively tanky while still outputting some damage, though the build has a few issues?
3. Smitefire builds on average tend to be mediocre to bad. This is nothing new.



There's a variety of factors that could come into play, the god you're playing, the god the enemy is playing (and their builds, e.g. tank building high magical defense or not), your team composition, their team composition, the level difference between you and the enemy etc...



Yeah that's not meant to be a burst build, it's obviously catered towards sustain/hybrid function. Void Stone/E-Staff are bruiser items. Chronos' Pendant is a luxury item that gives CDR, but isn't in a great spot currently as an item - there is a variety of mage items one can get for CDR and Chronos' isn't really strong at all, I mean you can easily get 20% CDR from Spear of Desolation and Shoes of Focus. Also what do you mean by Spear in this case - Deos or Magus? Because Magus isn't very good on Chang'e.



First thing I noticed is the build has 40% CDR which in 90% of cases is a big no-no.

Build order isn't ideal, you typically want boots first unless you're rushing bancrofts/thoth.

Magus is great on Merlin, the pen is great for squishy base protections as well. Chronos' is pretty weak on him right now. Gem of Iso is good situationally, but can be swapped out for Ethereal Staff. Soul Gem is ok but I wouldn't prioritise over something like Soul Reaver. Shaman's is fine on him. Though yeah this build is a bit lacking on power and could do with a Tahuti if going the Chronos' route.

Example of what I would build on Merlin: CDR boots > Doom Orb > Spear of Magus > Ethereal Staff > Soul Reaver > Obsidian Shard. Sell boots for speed elixir and shaman's or alternative.

Or, CDR Boots > Spear of Magus > Shaman's Ring > Ethereal Staff > Soul Reaver > Obsidian Shard. Sell boots for speed elixir and soul gem or tahuti or alternative.



That's a pretty bad build on Merlin if it's in that order. Thoth can work on Merlin but I think it's more of an option for him in Conquest than Joust. Tahuti third item is really bad and not very gold-efficient, Bancroft's third item on Merlin is pointless especially when stacking thoth - the main reason you build bancrofts is to build it early for the power spike you get, especially when boxing with it's passive.

Soul Reaver is fine, great against tanks/high hp targets. Obsidian of course is generally needed but last item is pretty late in a build.

If someone can get away with a build like that it seems they're being allowed to without pressure being applied to them.

Also on Chang'e the build is even worse because I can't imagine building Bancroft's on her really.

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As for Joust mage builds there was someone I spoke to on reddit who said they're Master's Joust and this is what they had to say:

I cannot say that mage adcs are all that strong in joust, although if you do go one the build is pretty cut-and-paste. Usually bancrofts followed by the three rings that are relevant. You can tech in items like divine ruin for healing or a helmet if they have some heavy phys damage, but otherwise mage adcs build the same.

For normal mages, the start is often tier 2 bancrofts (talon trinket). This can vary, some mages like warriors blessing (like zhong) and others like mages blessing. But on mages that are good in joust, like Isis, Poseidon, Vulcan, etc, the extra 60 power at the very beginning is critical for early fighting, which there is a lot of in joust.

After that start, cooldown boots are usually the ones you want. After that it's very character specific, like on poseidon I usually get spear of the magus and then gem of isolation, but that isn't a meta build, it's poseidon-specific. I will say however that you finish bancrofts, and then if they have meditations and healing, divine ruin is after boots. Beyond that, E-staff is good against double frontline (or if they have burst damage and CC that you want to survive).

Sorry I can't be more helpful and concrete but mage builds are often very reactive to what the enemy gods are, what you're playing, and what they're building. If the enemy frontline only has one magical defense item because you're running warrior/assassin, then ob-shard isn't useful and you would want spear of deso for your pen, for example.

A cookie-cutter build against a double-frontline comp for example, would be bancrofts-cooldown shoes- e-staff - ob-shard - soul reaver - luxury item (doom orb, shaman's ring, or other utility). But being adaptive to what you need at any given moment is how you go from diamond-level to masters. So attempt to never cookie-cutter if you can.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Smite/comments/e4wc6j/mages_god_class_discussion_megathread_week_of/fa8yiqa/