Anti Carry Sobek - Tank Guide (Chronos Update)

This is my first guide ever, so don't be afraid to be harsh, I'll learn :) I'm level 30 with an elo usually hovering around 1600 (I don't play ranked that often so it doesn't mean much. I play Sobek fairly often and he's one of my favorite Gods to play as. Hope you enjoy :)

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Art by Jetcart

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Sobek is a Magical Tank. He can be build with damage in mind but it's generally not advised unless you have another designated tank (at that point though there are better magical bruisers to pick such as Ares or Guan Yu).

Starting Items

Mark of the Vanguard is an excellent starting item, it severely decreases (almost negates) minion damage and early game DoT's like Tornadoes and Grasping Hands. I prefer it over boots because you're mobile enough early game with your Charge Prey.

Reinforced Boots
Reinforced Boots, I prefer these over Celerity. They give you out of combat speed boost anyways, albeit slightly less. They also give you protections, HP5, and CC reduction, which are fantastic for a tank. Why CC reduction on a tank? Because if you're doing your job right, you'll be eating a lot of CC, so this'll get you back in 30 percent faster.

Consider buying Portal as an ability item to replace Hand of the Gods or Creeping Curse (I would recommend replacing Hand though). Portal allows your carry to run back to base and instantly back to lane every 180 seconds. That's INSANE SUSTAIN, and great for not losing any XP and Gold from the trip back. Remember to communicate and tell him about it though.

Early-Mid

Breastplate of Valor This gives great Physical Defense, great amounts of Mana, and CoolDown Reduction, which is very great on Sobek.


Bancroft's Talon This item gives you 100 Magical Power (That's a lot), Magical Lifesteal (more healing on your 3) and it gives you more magical power as your health decreases. You have a lot of health, so that will be coming in handy a lot. Since your magical power is increasing as you get lower, so too will your magical lifesteal.

Mid-Late

These next items can be purchased in any order depending on who's fed, and also can be substituted for situational items. When you fill out your build, sell Vanguard and buy another item.


Divine Ruin Why is this in the core build instead of Situational? That's because this is always good on Sobek. This item synergizes so well with Sobek's Sickening Strike, it's incredible. Together with this, Sickening Strike completely negates all forms of healing. Is that Hercules trying to use his 3 to heal all of your team's damage in one ability again? Is that Ra using his aoe heal to out tank your team's damage? Is that Guan Yu or Hel burst healing all over the place? Is that Anhur pumping out ridiculous amounts of lifesteal with his Soul Eater and Devourer's Gloves? All gone, with Sickening Strike and Divine Ruin. If that wasn't enough, it gives Magical Lifesteal, which further increases the amount healed by Sickening Strike. If that wasn't enough, if gives Magical Power, increasing the damage done as well. This gives EVERYTHING that your Sickening Strike has, turn that skill into a monster with this baby. Shut down healing, heal yourself, do damage.

Magi's Blessing
Magi's Blessing This gives you great amounts of Magical Protection, Health, Mana, and lets you soak up even more spells with the great passive.


Gem of Isolation This gives you more damage, more health and mana, and makes all of your abilities slow (great CC).

Situational: As Needed

You should always be buying Wards as needed. Vision is Crucial.

Hide of the Nemean Lion is great if the enemy has a fed physical Carry, with the recent buff to make the damage magical power it becomes even more potent since it's no longer countered by Voidblade. Sovereignty is great if they have both types of carries fed. Hide of the Leviathan is great if for some reason you got Celerity instead of Reinforced Boots. Stone of Gaia and Wall of Absolution are solid picks if you need more magical defense.

Now, a lot of people might be thinking, why is Void Stone not in your Core Items? That's because if an enemy magical carry is fed, your magical carries are going to be wanting (and needing) it more than you. The reason why you shouldn't also buy one is that the aura becomes wasted since it doesn't stack, and there are better items to buy instead. However if for some reason you need magical defense and your Magical Carries ARE NOT buying it, go ahead and take it. (They probably should've gotten it though :P)

Blink is a relatively new active ability that teleports you to a target location, it can go through walls but cannot be used "in combat" for 10 seconds after engaging in combat. "Combat" counts as taking or receiving damage, using abilities, auto attacks, or being CC'd. It's pretty much anything besides walking. That makes this ability only especially useful for initiating on unsuspecting enemies.

Charge Prey is taken first because of the incredible utility. This item is go to for mobility and displacement. Use it to set up kills, use it to fling enemies away to save team mates. If you're laning with an Ao Kuang, fling enemies back into his tornadoes for even more pain. Make sure you're aware of where everybody is when you use this, you don't want to help the enemy out by flinging them into a low health team mate for a free kill.


Tail Whip is leveled up 2nd because of it's great damage. This skill is used to keep an enemy back even longer after you fling them. It's also used to keep enemies away and to deal a decent amount of damage. The same philosophy of when and how to use it applies as with Charge Prey, it's just a different kind of knockback.


Sickening Strike is leveled up first because of it's decent damage, it's good heal, and it's fantastic ability to shut down healing. Spam this ****, all day every day. With CDR, there are rare instances where you have to time when to use this. When Hercules uses his heal is one of these moments, make sure to use it when the healing actually starts as opposed to when he absorbing damage for the heal.


Lurking In The Waters is your ultimate and a great one at that. This puppy gives you CC immunity, Mana Regen, and a huge burst of damage at the end. This is a great finishing tool and also a tool to use in the laning phase to regen mana. Don't be afraid to use this for the sole purpose of regenerating mana, just make sure you nab someone with it for some nice damage in the process. I wouldn't use it to initiate though, it has no CC and takes time to Charge up. Never use this to initiate a fight, your other abilities are better for that.

The red circled places are suggested warding spots. These provide optimal vision in high travel locations.

First priority is Fire Giant and Gold Fury. After that ward the two red spots in your jungle. After that if you're pushed up and you still have more wards, ward the same two spots in the enemies jungle.

The side lane wards are mostly for the laning phase in order to see incoming ganks.

Pros:

Great Tankiness
Great CC
Decent Damage
Great Sustain
Good Mobility
People Are Afraid of You

Cons:

Passive is just a pinned on protections boost, nothing fancy :(
Not as much damage as some tanks ( Vamana, Ares, Odin, etc.)
People are afraid of you

You shouldn't be worrying to much about Creeping and Jungling, especially if there's a carry with a stacking item like Heartseeker or Doom Orb.

Remember to use your Sickening Strike to heal up off minions though.

And always remember to grab either the XP camp or a buff before the game starts.

If you bought hand of the Gods, make sure to use it to finish off Fire Giant and Gold Fury when your team is taking it. It now kills them when they're below 10% health, since last hits don't matter with FG and GF, that means HoG is an effective Counter-Stealing tool now, so don't be afraid to use it on them.

Remember to aid pushes, your contribution to creep pushing and tower damage can help finish off a push. Towers are key priorities, worth a lot of gold and experience for your team.

Pretty much any carry works well with you. I recommend physical carries like Artemis, Anhur, Cupid or Neith.

So What's Sobek's Job as a Tank?

Sobek's job has 3 important Facets:

Protect Your Carry
Disrupt the Enemy Carry
Make and Prevent Fights from Happening

Your main job is to protect your carry, however Offense is often the best defense so don't think that you should never be fighting and just be sitting around your carry all day. What I mean by "protecting your carry" is that you need to be tanking. Meaning you need to be drawing attention to yourself and making the enemy team waste their skills and CC on you.

Disrupting the Enemy carry is where the fun part comes in. It's your job to fling, knock around, harass, and get up in the face of the enemy damage dealers. Does that Anubis think he's about to come up here and burst down your AD carry? Knock around with Tail Whip, fling him back into your own carry's burst with Charge Prey. Mess with him, harass him, move around so his positioning is bad and his combo's are disrupted.

Your Job as a Tank is also to Initiate and Counter-Initiate. Meaning you make sure fights happen on your terms. This mostly involves using Charge Prey to fling the enemy carries back into your team. However if you don't want a fight to happen, your fling can also be used from behind the enemy carry to fling them away from your team.

Everything is situational, I'll discuss the best ways to use your skills in the Skills section for more in depth discussion. Just remember those 3 basic jobs.

Communicating is key in SMITE. Especially as Sobek, it is absolutely vital.

When to Communicate

As Sobek, you should be communicating... ALWAYS. :P

But more specifically, you should be communicating,

When initiating
When not initiating
When helping your ally get a buff
When warding
When updating your team on an enemy's position
When offering a suggested action

When initiating

When you're about to initiate, most likely using your Charge Prey, always give a signal such as [VAA] Attack!, or [VGG] Gank!. These voice commands can let your teammates know beforehand when you're about to go in for a fight.

When not initiating

When playing Sobek, people are going to expect you to initiate. However, sometimes you might have different ideals. If the current situation is not ideal for initiating, if you're low on mana or health, if you have bad position, if you're overextending, don't be afraid to say [VVN] No! or [VRR] Retreat!.

When helping your ally get a buff

If you're about to help an ally get a buff, be sure to communicate it to them so you don't stand there looking like an idiot waiting for them. I like to use pings most often, or plain chat, usually something along the lines of, "Hey buddy, wanna come over here and grab blue ;D", of course I'm a pretty fast typer so you might abbreviate that a little :P

When warding

When you're about to go ward up the jungle, make sure to give a shoutout on chat, "Warding, brb" or something like that.

When updating your team on the enemy's position

This one's pretty important, MIA's, MIA's, MIA's and more MIA's. I know, I know, your teammates should have map awareness and you can't be in your lane 24/7, but this is a team game, when you can, help out :)

Also, make sure to call out when they return as well, so that your teammates will know their limits.

Be sure to call out when you see enemies heading towards other lanes or attacking Gold Fury and Fire Giant as well, very important.

When offering a suggested action

This one's pretty situational, it's pretty much general communication.

Do you see your allies overextending? Thinking about attacking Fire Giant when it's a stupid idea? Chasing after hopeless kills? [VRR] Retreat!

Vice versa can apply too, don't be afraid to suggest taking affirmative action. Take the initiative, you are Sobek after all.

How to Communicate

Often times, using the Voice Macros is the best ideal for communication. It contains almost everything you need, MIA's, returns, incomings, commands, updates on what you're going to do, even the almighty [VVGL] Good Luck! and my personal favorite [VER] You Rock!

Voice Chat is great if you have it, instant and gratuitous communication in the most natural way.

Text Chatting is vital and has its place as well. When the Voice Macros don't have what you need, don't be shy!

One very important thing to keep in mind, DON'T RAGE. Raging does nothing, it makes people hate you and it achieves absolutely nothing. It will not make your teammates play better, it will not make you play better, it is a useless time waster that destroys teams and makes the community hated.

DON'T RAGE, DON'T FLAME, AND DON'T ABUSE. It's that freaking simple. Be polite, offer suggestions, be a little critical and affirmative if you need to, but Don't be a ****.

Agni

Agni can be really annoying, especially in the laning phase. Not only does he have a dash to escape your pull, but his dash also damages you, and your ally if he's not careful. On top of this, his poke can quickly turn an opportune situation into a retreat.

The best counter to a good Agni is to pull, then immediately use your Tail Whip, if you do it quick enough, the Agni won't have time to dash forward before the tail whip lands. This won't prevent him from dashing immediately afterwards, but it will allow you and your partner some more time to put on the hurt, and also he'll be farther back so his dash won't bring him as far. Maybe the minions 'll finish 'em off.

Thor

Escapes and lots of damage, what more could you not ask for? He'll wall your friend, teleport away, or he might just SPIN2WIN a little bit on you and your buddy. Either way, not a lot you can do other than catch him off his cooldowns. Wait for him to throw his hammer and then pull him right afterwards if you can.

If he's off his hammer and wall, chances are he'll ult. Hit him, hit him, hit him, hope he dies.

Hel

The thing about Hel is, she's a sustain monster. So if you notice that after her healing comes through, you and your ally are coming out worse than they are after engagements, just stop pulling her, unless she's in a really terrible position.

Hercules

He's got a pull, he's got a great heal to survive your pull, and he's gotta dash with knockback to boot. Add on high physical damage and a sweet ulti and he's not to be messed with.

This is a Thor kinda situation, wait for his cooldowns to go off, especially his heal. If you see him about to pull your partner, step in there and come with him so you can tank him right in the face.

Do remember that your Sickening Strike is a great counter to his heal. Time it right to get the full effect, you wanna hit him as soon as the healing starts, not during the charge up time.

Odin and Zeus

Oh God, whatever you do, don't pull Odin. NEVER. He will use that momentum to cage your team mate and let zeus get his ulti on.

Pulling zeus can be good, in the right situation. Make sure Odin's not in range of leap/cage on YOUR carry.

Aphrodite

Invulnerability, stun, damage, heal. What can I say? If she's got a nice carry with her, you can't do much besides try and out poke them.

Cooldowns are the key, remember that. If her ult's off CD, feed on her. Just remember to tank the stun if you think it's coming, and also to try and pull when she's not close to her partner, try and do vice versa if you're pulling her partner.

This build focuses more on magical power, while still building health and defense.

There's one main reason I would choose this build over the tanky build:
Playing with a carry that has less than average early game damage. For instance Neith is generally considered to have weaker damage than other ranged carries, Hel might be one to consider this with as well, if Hercules is acting as a carry I could see it with him.

The idea is to use your increased damage, CDR, and movement speed to be a "hit and run" machine. Ganking and roaming for kills. You should usually let your carries get the kills though, but don't be afraid to finish off an opponent if your carry's not in a position to.

When playing the Support Damage role your job is not only to disrupt and CC but also to put out a LOT of damage.

You should be playing more like a carry, cautious, but aggressive when an opportunity arises.

Sobek is a great tank with lots of CC, survival, and damage. He's tons of fun to play and has a decent skill cap too.

Make sure to protect your carries, disrupt the enemy carries, and start and prevent fights on a situational basis.

Also, BUY WARDS.

Thanks for reading and please leave a comment, suggestion, and rating :)

March 3rd, 2013:

Updated for the Poseidon update. Tanks got a base damage nerf but it hasn't affected Sobek much.

Hand of the Gods got an update so I noted a new strategy in the "Creeping/Jungling" section.

I also added a "warding" section, with suggested spots on where to ward and when.

March 9th, 2013:

I changed the starting items to Mark of the Vanguard, two Healing Potions, three Mana Potions, Creeping Curse, and Hand of the Gods. I find that this works much better than 3 of each pot and Aegis.

I re-wrote parts of the "Support Damage Build" to reflect the above change.

I added a note about the importance of tower pushing in "Creeping/Jungling" due to the new tower changes making them much more valuable in terms of Gold and XP.

Base damage and attack speed has been decreased for tanks but this has not affected Sobek much due to his abilities being his main source of damage and also his role mainly as a disruptor rather than a damage dealer.

March 17th, 2013:

I added a "notable" opposition section for more in depth lane info.

March 29, 2013:

Added some information about the recent item buffs, Apollo's not cool enough to make the Notable Opposition list :P

Planning on doing an entire section on communication soon, look forward to it :D

March 31, 2013:

Added a "Communication" section, explaining how and when to communicate.

April 19, 2013:

Added Blink to the situational items. And trust me, it is VERY situational :P Not a whole lot of changes that impact Sobek this patch, if you have any suggestions for the guide make sure to leave a comment! I also added a skill sequence for the "support damage" build, which focuses on cooldown, damage, and speed.

May 19, 2013:

Blink is a lot more viable now, and hand is definitely a must as it has a 1 second AOE stun attached to it at rank 3 now. Other than that there's not been a lot of gamechanging alterations for Sobek, keep pullin' friends :D

June 12, 2013:

Switched around Breastplate of Valor and Divine Ruin because I find Breastplate more useful early game for the mana.

July 20, 2013:

Lots of interesting items and item changes, none of them particularly pertain to Sobek. Just remember when to use Teleport Scrolls ;)