Aphrodite Support: Blow me kisses (Vids/inc.)

Hi everyone, I'm Underneath, and this is my support Aphrodite guide.
I focus almost all of my time to support conquest with her and would love any and all feedback and input because this is my first guide.
Aphrodite is an awesome goddess, and she is by far the best babysitter in my opinion because she helps your team sustain longer, escape possible deaths like Thanatos' Hovering Death or again Scylla's
I'm a Monster with her Undying Love and Love Birds if well placed.

There are too few words to describe the radiance, the magnificence, the inequitable glory of Aphrodite, Goddess of Beauty. So wondrous is she to behold that one look can inspire tears, desire, jealousy, and love. Yet, beneath her flawless exterior resides a heart burdened with insecurity.

Inattentive and hideous to look upon, her husband, Hephaestus, unknowingly leaves Aphrodite feeling lonely and worthless. She finds consolation in the arms of other men such as Ares, or validation by competing in any contest of beauty she encounters.

At a wedding attended by all the Gods, a golden apple appeared, inscribed with the words "to the fairest." Immediately Aphrodite, her mother Hera, and sister Athena quarreled over it. Zeus elected Paris, Prince of Troy, to choose a victor. In exchange for being named the fairest, Aphrodite offered any woman in the world as his wife, so Paris agreed. However, he chose Helen as his wife, and their love began the catastrophic Trojan War.

Now, a new war brews, but this one between Gods, not men. While the battlefield is no place for the fairest of all, Aphrodite recalls the destruction between the Greeks and Trojans. Perhaps, this time, her beauty can be used to stop a war instead of start one. Perhaps, this time, she will discover the beauty within.

The folowing items can be changed depending on your play style, this is just my own one, you can build it more offensive.

STARTER ITEMS

Watcher's Gift is the best Support item to start with because each time your adc kills a minion, you obtain the same amount of gold. Furthermore, you gain another piece of gold every five seconds.

So if you buy Watcher's Gift, you should buy Midas Boots (M) after it.

Why ?
The reason is with Midas Boots (M) you can easily upgrade your Heavenly Agility or Eye of Providence (or buy wards) and Hand of the Gods earlier as the enemy support... if he didnt build the same way.


Why Heavenly Agility instead of Eye of Providence
Well on my opinion Eye of Providence isn't that usefull, I mean, you better buy wards everytime you back to base and take Heavenly Agility which gives you a good way to escape you and your adc from some hard situations.


Why buy three Mana Potion
You shall buy three Mana Potion because you should let the mana buff to your adc so he will be able to spam his spell and deals more damages (and also you will be able to heal him and deal some damage more often if you take some mana potions)


FIRST ITEM

So as i said it before, (scroll up) Midas Boots (M) gives you much more gold, I mean you really should buy it if you are familiar with it, it is like 5more gold every 5 seconds. Buy Midas Boots (M) if you started with Watcher's Gift, with that item you gonna be able to upgrade your Eye of Providence and Hand of the Gods much faster than the enemy support.

You also gonna be able to buy Rod of Asclepius and other items faster. Late game you gonna have normally the same amount of gold as the solo laner or maybe more or less. (situational)

Buy Shoes of Focus if you are a little bit fed, with that I mean your lane partner or you already got some kills, with Shoes of Focus you can be much more aggresive, and maybe get even some more kills due to the cd reduction and the magical power.


SECOND ITEM

As a second item I do always rush the Rod of Asclepius for the movement speed to be able to follow your adc (for example an Ah Muzen Cab ) who have a high movement speed.


THIRD ITEM

Breastplate of Valor or Mail of Renewal
You should buy Breastplate of Valor if you need some great amount of ability cooldown, for using more often your ultimate and your heal.

About Mail of Renewal, I dont really often buy this item, however it is still viable and often underrated. Just buy it if you dont feel comfortable with Breastplate of Valor but you still need some Cooldown Reduction.
This item is pretty good because it give you 300 health+ 40 Physical Protection and a semi good passiv (just good in big teamfights) +10% CD Reduction.


FOURTH ITEM

Witchblade, Magi's Blessing or Pestilence

If the enemy have a annoying healer like another Aphrodite, Hel or Ra,buy Pestilence, it gonna make their heal less viable. For a Chang'e you wont need it, her heal isnt that strong.

Magi's Blessing is not really usefull with aphrodite in my opinion. You can buy it if there's a Ares, Hades or whatever and you don't wanna waste your Undying Love for it, but tbh it is nor really worth it.

Another reason to buy this item is that you can easly HoG the Firegiant or Goldfury without any interruption.


At which moment should I buy Witchblade?

You should buy this item if there are more than 3 hard hitting auto attack gods (like Chronos, Freya, any ADC, Mercury, Bakasura and so on.
I also buy it sometimes just for the awesome movement speed :D


FIFTH ITEM

Sovereignty, Hide of the Urchin or Bulwark of Hope

Sovereignty is simply the best supporter item, it gives you some good physical protection and also pretty much health, furthermore it have a passiv where all your allys gain 20 physical protection and 20 magical protection in a radius of 70 feet. It gives you the ability to towerdive for a longer duration and tank the damage of the adc.
Towers dealing phyical damage.

Hide of the Urchin is gonna give you stacks up to 10, what it does pretty fast because you gonna get for each ***is or kill one stack. However if stacked to max you gonna have +65 phyical and +65 magical defense plus health and mana. Ready to roll, you gonna be more difficult to kill.
Just buy this if you are leading, if the whole team is loosing atm, you shouldnt buy it, it would be to difficult to stack, and would cost to much time.

Bulwark of Hope if you are loosing the game, and you dont see a chance to get some assists in mid game. In that situation Bulwark give you still some great amount of magical defense and Health, it gonna protect you against pretty much any situation in early-mid game, still dont make you unkillable tho'.
Don't forgeth that sometimes the passive can save your ***.


LAST ITEM

Don't forgeth to sell your Watcher's Gift to buy a last item if you didn't have done it already!

Buy Stone of Gaia if enemy team have more magicals than physicals.

Buy Void Stone for more damage and magical defense, and just if nobody else in your team have the aura one.

Buy Ethereal Staff if you have a Bakasura or Thanatos in the enemy team.
Health is the only counter against Bakasura, because he makes true hard damage.

Buy Gem of Isolation if you want to slow your enemies.

Loving Embrace Passive: Loving Embrace: Gaining Aphrodite's favor is a blessing in that 30% of all mana gained by Aphrodite is granted to her soul mate.

This passive is really usefull for the mana hunger adc's like Anhur, everytime you'll be linked to someone by using your Kiss, your ally will gain 30% of the mana you earn.

Kiss: Aphrodite blows a kiss to an allied god, making them her soul mate and giving them both 4/8/12/16/20% increased movement speed. If it hits an ally, it has no cooldown. If the kiss hits an enemy god, they are stunned for 1s and Aphrodite's soul mate gets jealous, increasing their damage by 4/8/12/16/20% for 8s.

Cost: 50/55/60/65/70 mana.
Cooldown: 16/15/14/13/12 seconds.

This is your most important spell. Both you and your target get increased movement speed and your heal from Love Birds, shield from Undying Love, and slow with Back Off! affect your linked ally. Use this to help an ally escape when they are being chased, give your tank some extra closing speed, or give your squishier allies some extra speed to keep their distance. If you can, try to be linked to someone at all times. Offensively you can use Kiss to stun enemies so your teammates can try to hit them, interrupt casts, or stun enemies chasing your teammates. When you stun an enemy your linked ally gets a damage buff. Also Kiss is the point of your lane poking that I'll explain in the combos.


The cooldown of this ability is dependent upon IF you hit someone and if so, who it was. It will NOT activate it's cooldown if you hit an ally god with it. It WILL activate it's cooldown if you miss hitting anyone OR hit an enemy god. This means you should try at all times to hit an ally BEFORE hitting an enemy. This way you will stay linked to your ally as well as get the stun on the enemy. Should you miss your target or hit the enemy without being linked, you now are running around without your speed boost as well as not being able to heal an ally.





Back Off!: Agitated by all the attention, Aphrodite commands enemies to get away from her, doing damage around her and knocking them back.

Cost: 70/75/80/85/90 mana.
Cooldown: 12 seconds.

Back Off! is an ability that you can use for knockback enemies or for slow them if they're close to your ally target, so you can save some ally being chased or slow enemy chased by your ally target. It will grants you assists, so gold for upgrade your items.
You can also use it for bump an enemy under your tower range if you are behind him.




Love Birds: Aphrodite calls forth a flock of beautiful doves that fly forward in the area in front of her. The doves circle around all enemies in the path, damaging enemies every .5s for 3s. Aphrodite and her soul mate are healed for the same amount.

Cost: 70/75/80/85/90 mana.
Cooldown: 16/15/14/13/12 seconds.

This is most-likely the reason you play Aphrodite. Whenever you cast Love Birds you heal both yourself and the ally you are linked to. The range is pretty good offensively but the nature of the spell makes it relatively hard to accurately hit targets the further away they are. The easy part is clearing the lanes of minions since they line up nice and easy for you. At first this can be mana-hungry so try to use ur mana potions in early if you can and use it relatively sparingly at first depending on the situation. It has a long cooldown until you build your CDR (Cooldown reduction) items but late game, this is a great harasser as well as healing.





Undying Love: Aphrodite pledges undying love to herself and her Soul Mate. While this is active, her and her Soul Mate are invulnerable to all damage for a short duration. All crowd control effects are also removed when activated.

Cost: 100 mana.
Cooldown: 90/85/80/75/70 seconds.

Not much upsets enemies more than using their ultimate to secure a kill only to have their target get wrapped in a pretty pink shield right before it hits. Each time you activate Undying Love both you and your linked ally are shielded. This is especially useful for incoming group AoE damage or CC.


With this ultimate, you can escape your target and you from Ares, Fenrir, Thanatos or Hades ult, but be carefull to the moment you use it because the time it's staying is really really low!
Also don't use this as a sole replacement for Greater Purification as you may need to use beads to break a cc as well as shield someone else, or yourself, shortly after.

Pros:

• Excellent support and ability to help teammates sustain longer
• Low cooldowns after max CDR
• Quickly cleaning lanes
• Good team support
• Good to help getting secure kills

Cons:

• Squishy and mana-hungry in early
• Long cooldowns before getting cdr
• The cooldown of the Kiss is way too long if you miss an ally target
• No real ranged AOE Love Birds isn't that easy to place, and Back Off! is melee

Thanks to Jeepcrew and his Aphrodite arena build from where I took the pictures and some informations about the skills.

Thank also to everyone reading it ;)

Aphrodite is my favorite support and I do really have a lot of fun because it's like you decide from the fate of your ally, will they live or die? It's your choice!
It is also rewarding to turn the tides of a fight by healing your allies, slowing and damaging enemies, denying ultimates or kills with undying embrace, and keeping enemies from getting their kills.

Playing support can be so annoying if you are alone, I would recommend to find a team as fast as possible or at least an adc if you are enjoying to play support.

So if you have inferiority complexes it is not a good idea to play a support.

But if you are in a team, and you like the people you play with or lets say the most, you gonna enjoy to help them out, and they gonna be gratefull for it :p

It´s also normal if you die often in mid-lategame as support, that is part of your job, sometimes you have to sacrifce yourself to save the team.


Well guys it was a plesure for me to make this guide,I gave my best for it, this one is my first guide and I did it after 5 long hours!
I hope it won't disappoint your guys and that you will enjoy to read it!
Leave some comment and feedback please.

Thank you for reading.