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Arena Yemoja - Misunderstood Mage in a Misfit Mode

6 2 20,597
7.5
by cbj252 updated October 9, 2020

Smite God: Yemoja

Build Guide Discussion 21 More Guides
Tap Mouse over an item or ability icon for detailed info

Yemoja Build

Standard

Build Item Specialist's Blessing Specialist's Blessing
Build Item Shoes of Focus Shoes of Focus
Build Item Chronos' Pendant Chronos' Pendant
Build Item Lotus Sickle Lotus Sickle
Build Item Rod of Asclepius Rod of Asclepius
Build Item Rod of Tahuti Rod of Tahuti
Build Item Ethereal Staff Ethereal Staff

Situationals

Build Item Rod of Asclepius Rod of Asclepius
Build Item Rod of Tahuti Rod of Tahuti
Build Item Ethereal Staff Ethereal Staff
Build Item Void Stone Void Stone
Build Item Heartward Amulet Heartward Amulet
Build Item Hide of the Urchin Hide of the Urchin

Relics

Build Item Purification Beads Purification Beads
Build Item Aegis Amulet Aegis Amulet
Build Item Magic Shell Magic Shell
Build Item Heavenly Wings Heavenly Wings
Build Item Cursed Ankh Cursed Ankh

Yemoja's Skill Order

Bouncing Bubble / Moonstrike

1 X Y
Bouncing Bubble / Moonstrike
2 8 10 11 12

Mending Waters

2 A B
Mending Waters
1 4 6 7 9

Riptide

3 B A
Riptide
3 15 16 18 19

River's Rebuke

4 Y X
River's Rebuke
5 13 14 17 20
Bouncing Bubble / Moonstrike
2 8 10 11 12

Bouncing Bubble / Moonstrike

1 X
Bubble: Yemoja tosses out a bubble that bounces twice, dealing damage and slowing enemies by 30% before exploding into smaller bubbles that deal 50% damage. Enemies hit by both bubble bounces take 50% damage on the second hit.

Moonstrike: Yemoja calls upon the Moon to deal damage to enemies below. The inner strike is the largest, dealing full damage and stunning all enemies and enemy structures hit.

Ability Type: Area, Slow, Damage
Bubble Damage: 45 / 80 / 125 / 150 / 185 (+30% of your Magical Power)
Slow Duration: 1s
Moonstrike Inner Damage: 55 / 95 / 135 / 175 / 215 (+40% of your Magical Power)
Moonstrike Outer Damage: 25 / 50 / 75 / 100 / 125 (+15% of your Magical Power)
Moonstrike Stun Duration: 1s
Range: 70
Cost: 2 Omi
Mending Waters
1 4 6 7 9

Mending Waters

2 A
Yemoja sends out a wave of water that damages all enemies it passes through, dealing extra unmitigated damage to their shields. Once the wave reaches an ally it bounces to all nearby allies healing and shielding them for 3s.

Ability Type: Line, Heal, Damage
Damage: 65 / 95 / 125 / 155 / 185 (+40% of your Magical Power)
Bonus Damage To Shields: 2 / 2 / 2 / 2 / 3x
Heal: 20 / 40 / 60 / 80 / 100
Shield: 30 / 60 / 90 / 120 / 150 (+15% of your Magical Power)
Range: 60
Cost: 3 Omi
Riptide
3 15 16 18 19

Riptide

3 B
Yemoja creates a water ring that Knocks Up everyone that enters it. Allies are pushed further and gain both Movement Speed and Protections for 3s. Enemies go a shorter distance and are Slowed. After entering a ring you are briefly locked out of entering another. Yemoja can place the ring at a maximum distance to reverse the direction.

Ability Type: Area, Knockup
Movement Speed: 10 / 12.5 / 15 / 17.5 / 20%
Protections: 20 / 25 / 30 / 35 / 40 Physical and Magical Protections
Slow: 10% for 2s
Ring Duration: 3s
Range: 80
Cost: 3 Omi
River's Rebuke
5 13 14 17 20

River's Rebuke

4 Y
Yemoja unleashes her full power creating two large walls of water that block enemy movement and projectiles. After a delay the river cascades down, damaging, trembling and slowing enemies.

Yemoja gains a buff to her Omi regeneration while she is in the river field that lingers briefly after she leaves it.

Ability Type: Area, Buff, Damage
Damage: 240 / 305 / 370 / 435 / 500 (+70% of your Magical Power)
Initial Slow: 60% decreasing by 20% each second
Slow Duration: 3s
Omi Regeneration: 1 extra every 2 seconds
Buff Duration: 4s after leaving the area
Range: 100
Cooldown: 140 / 135 / 130 / 125 / 120s

Yemoja Threats

Tap each threat level to view Yemoja’s threats

Max
0
Major
1
Even
0
Minor
0
Tiny
0

Introduction



Hello! I made this guide on Yemoja as I find her a truly interesting character, and I feel her Omi mechanic may not be fully explored by players. Yemoja is, as Conquest players know, a high skill cap character. By no means do I believe I know everything about Yemoja, I still struggle knowing when to use her 1, but I seek to show new ways about thinking about her, in terms of gameplay, skills and builds that you can refine or even reject and ultimately understand this wonderful character better.

I chose Arena in particular because Yemoja is, in my opinion, a character that plays very differently in Conquest and in Arena, which leads to a lot of mistakes playing her because you just cannot emulate her Conq playstyle and get results in Arena, as I'll try to show below and as of time of writing there is no Arena Yemoja guide yet on Smitefire.

I will assume you know what her skills do in the guide. If you do not, read her skill descriptions, or better yet, try her in Jungle Practice for a bit to get more familiar with her skills.


When to Yemoja

Essentially a pros/cons section, but it must be acknowledged that characters are better or worse in different situations. As a result, this is both a guide on when to pick her in the picking phase and a summation of her pros and cons.

Yemoja when:
- You want to play a healer/enchanter that somewhat rarely intentionally interacts with the enemy.
- You like getting kills when you really shouldn’t be able to.
- You want to play a low skill floor, high skill cap character that can make big plays when mastered.
- Your team isn’t really lacking in any particular area like damage or tanking.
- You like playing Yemoja!


Don’t Yemoja when:
- Your team has too many healing or high self-sustain gods already.
- You don’t like relying on your team.
- You want to play top tier characters.


Yemoja When:


Don’t Yemoja when:


Skills


Yemoja’s defining mechanic. It demands further exploration, so let’s see exactly what having this chopped up mana bar does for her:

It gives her an energy system where she can stock up multiple bursts of spell casts provided she gets some downtime in-between. If you’re familiar with it from LOL or HOTS Valeera, you’ll know that most characters with energy systems are better off saving their energy to use it all at once in an important situation (i.e. teamfights) rather than being constantly at 0 Energy/ Omi. Especially in Arena, where winning teamfights are crucial to winning the game, alongside minions, it’s best to make sure you are at maximum effectiveness for each teamfight. This means you need to minimise your Omi use outside of teamfights.

Since all her basic spells require Omi and have no cooldown, this means that if you are at max Omi, you are slowly wasting spell casts by not spending it and getting effectively 0 Omi regen. Therefore, to maximise your effectiveness, you usually want to be looser with your spell casts if you are at max Omi – this usually means using Mending Waters, even if only one person is missing 50 health and nothing is happening. It's also a great opportunity to waste Bouncing Bubble so your 1 becomes Moonstrike.

Omi also means all her spells have opportunity costs with each other. To illustrate this, I’ll give an example. If you’re playing Scylla, using Crush is completely independent of Sentinel. Using Crush does not affect how often you can use Sentinel, unless Scylla has little mana, which is rarely a concern. This is not true for Yemoja. If she has 3 Omi, and chooses to use Riptide, she can no longer use Mending Waters until she gets 3 Omi, and vice versa. This competition between her own spells exists whether she has 3 Omi or 10 Omi. As a result, she must decide which spell will get her the most value for the situation – she cannot just throw her whole kit in a teamfight in the same way as other characters. This is a major factor in her high skill cap.

The basic attack healing mechanic is very weak. The 10% extra healing is nice, but not much. It’s worth noting it has a generous duration of 7s and it doesn’t stack so don’t feel the need to constantly be basic attacking your teammates.




I’ll tackle her 1 separately. Bouncing Bubble, or Bubble, is her worst spell by far. It comes out slowly, the damage and slow are terrible at long range and can be somewhat easily dodged or missed at close range. The only saving grace of this spell is that if you have an enemy stunned right in front of you it does high damage. This is what provides the damage for Yemoja to do her infamous 100-0 stunlock by spamming 1.

This is also where Conquest and Arena differ. In Conquest, this stunlock is doable early game since whoever she’s doing it on will not have many teammates around to stop Yemoja while she does her combo. Even if she doesn’t actually 100-0, Yemoja will have done significant damage by the end of it as well as given her lane partner time to attack her opponent. In Arena, there is constantly 4 other teammates around your target. You will very easily get CCed or focused and die if you try to do this without a huge distraction, such as River's Rebuke.

Additionally, in Conquest, getting your lane opponent to back because you spammed 1 at their face is valuable for the farm advantage but in Arena it’s not particularly useful for your team if someone eats all your 1s and escapes with a sliver of health since you get no ticket advantage and the person will be back shortly. You can’t even try to force a 4v5 engagement afterward because you spent all your Omi spamming 1 so it’s actually closer to a 4v4 since you aren’t really useful.

Besides the stunlock strat, this spell is also the culprit of what I call the biggest sin of Arena Yemoja, using it for poke at long ranges. Unless you’re at max Omi, this is just a waste of Omi. It does little damage, does not really initiate a teamfight and is easy to dodge. Furthermore, poke and getting people low without killing is not valuable in Arena due to proximity to fountain as mentioned above. Please please please don’t use this or Moonstrike for poke unless you know exactly why you’re doing it.

Oh, you can also clear wave with it. The clear’s not bad, but it doesn’t clear until well into the midgame and if there’s also a teamfight happening you’re using 2 Omi to clear wave rather than help your team. If your team has a clearer that sacrifices less to clear (e.g. Anubis, who can use Plague of Locusts which he doesn’t really need in teamfights) have them kill the wave instead.



A significantly better spell than Bubble, this serves as her main Assassin peel and kill securing tool. Unfortunately it’s rather slow. Use it either at close range when your team is getting run over or to secure kills at max range.

Do remember the opportunity cost of this spell. This is 2/3rds of a Mending Waters or Riptide, and this spell lacks the reliability of Mending Waters, it is fairly easy to miss. Ask if a simple Mending Waters will save your team better than a Moonstrike, especially if you’re bad at landing this spell’s stun.

This is almost always the preferred spell for your 1 to be on. i.e. You want your next 1 to be Moonstrike at the start of a teamfight since Bubble is bad and you often need to use Moonstrike as quickly as possible when you need it.

Can be used as wave clear like Bubble but isn’t ideal like Bubble. In fact, it’s even worse because it turns your 1 into Bubble, forcing you to spend 2 Omi to change it back.



The most reliable spell in your kit. Provides mediocre heals and shields per person but very often hits 5 people in Arena, resulting in high total effective health gain. Furthermore, it's quite hard to miss. In teamfights this is a very powerful spell when spammed and so I highly recommend using this as your bread-and-butter spell.

Since this spell hits your allies, this can be used from very safe ranges. This means Yemoja can still impact a fight even when she’s nowhere near the enemy. This is important if she gets focused in a teamfight and lives. Even if she has little health and needs to back, she can quickly spam this spell on her team from safety to help them win the teamfight before backing herself. She will get the Omi back via the slow walk back to her team so in most cases doing this is preferred.

Bounce Theory: This spell bounces to teammates. It usually bounces to the closest teammate, and it’s range is calculated using whoever it’s currently at as the origin, not the place where Yemoja originally casted it from. Using this, Yemoja can put herself in positions where all her teammates will get the effect of the spell.
For example, let’s say Bacchus flopped in and is fighting their team. Your backliners are roughly 90 units away (Ranged basic attack range is 55) and coming over. If you simply walked with your backliners and used this spell, Bacchus would not get your Mending Waters. If you were with Bacchus, your Mending Waters would not hit your backline. However, if you stood in between Bacchus and your backline, then Mending Waters Bacchus, the waters will hit Bacchus, bounce to you and then your backline. Do consider where you should position to maximise the number of people who get hit by the waters.



Forward (Blue Targeter): The less useful of the two modes. As an initiation it’s too predictable and suffers from the same problem as Neith Back Flip. It can be used to bring stragglers into teamfights and help chase when the situation calls for it, but it isn’t super useful. As an escape, it’s worth noting that Yemoja can’t drop this at her feet, so if she gets rooted she has no escape. More importantly, if she used Purification Beads, she can’t go through her ring. Way too many times have I died because I forgot about this. Of course, you can use this at fountain to help everyone at fountain get to the fight faster. This is only advised if you are at max Omi, 3 Omi is a lot to save roughly 2 seconds of travel time per person.

Using this on enemies is very interesting, and quite effective at peeling Assassins that move predictably, although I can't help but think Moonstrike does it's job at a 1 Omi discount, with some damage free to boot. Do consider using this spell to peel though.

Reverse (Orange Targeter): One of the hardest skillshots in the game, making it a high-risk high-reward play. Using it to successfully save allies means you traded 3 Omi for net 5 tickets, an amazing deal, but missing means you wasted 3 Omi. The reason why it’s a skillshot is because very often teammates in trouble will get chain CCed to death so you need to land your Riptide right on them. Furthermore, if you’re solo your teammates will often ignore the ring even if they don’t get chain CCed. For a spell that needs to be used the instant someone gets in trouble or they will die, the aim requirement is rather high. Not to mention you will need to be max distance away from the teammate in trouble – if you were 30 units away you wouldn’t be able to use reverse ring.

Certain characters are also soft countered by this spell. Characters who keep your teammates locked down in obvious locations can lead to a relatively less risky save. The most important example is Da Ji. Paolao telegraphs where it will pull via the chains and you have more than enough time to drop a ring where it will pull to so everyone pulled will be safe. If you are fast, Nox combos can be countered by ring.

Using it on enemies isn’t useful often. It just does too little and for kill securing, Moonstrike is better.



Strong, but situational. Frankly, the Omi regen part is likely the better half of the ultimate, more than the walls. It lasts 8s if you stay in the walls the whole time, leading to 4 extra Omi. That may not sound like much, but on a character with 10 max Omi, that’s 40% of your burst output. As a result, you want to stay in the walls if possible, don’t leave it unless you will die doing so. Feel free to use this ult solely for the Omi regen – it really makes a difference. If you need it, ignore the walls and just use it for regen.

Regarding the walls, here are some ways they can be used, in decreasing order of preference:
- To get the Minotaur into the enemy portal safely.
- To save a teammate by blocking the path to them with the walls.
- To block the enemy fountain.
- To trap an enemy between the walls with some natural terrain (aka the walls in Arena) and spamming 1 to kill them.
- To zone people out of the fight.

Getting the Minotaur into the portal should be done when you can use the enemy's fountain wall to block access to the Minotaur from in front of the Minotaur as well as the sides. If no enemy / 1 person is next to the Minotaur, you can ult and escort the Minotaur safely to portal, a near guaranteed 15 tickets just for ult. Just make sure the Minotaur isn't so low that say one Scylla Crush from across the walls will kill the Minotaur. Remember you can still Mending Waters across your own walls while doing this!

Saving a teammate is best done by putting the walls perpendicular to the direction your teammate is running so they run through the walls. This tends to lead to the best result since projectiles can’t travel through the walls. This is fairly likely to save your teammate, which is a net 5 tickets and even if it doesn’t, chances are the enemy overextended for the kill, giving your team a chance for kills.

Blocking the enemy fountain is the oldest trick in the book, but I don’t really like it. Firstly, you rarely get a kill because it’s difficult to get into position to cover the entire tower area near the fountain with ult. If you use it to try to get a kill, the opponent will just walk to the end of it and wait for the walls to collapse outside the area. Secondly, while delaying the opposing team from entering/exiting teamfights is useful, it doesn’t often give direct ticket advantage like the above use cases. This is still decent – do it if you don’t see a better ult option.

Trapping an enemy and killing is where Yemoja’s stunlock comes into play. This is especially useful at your enemy’s side of the map, as you can easily use your opponent’s fountain walls to block them for a kill. However, do not forget about the using jungle walls or sometimes even the edge of the map to trap people. However, actives can destroy this plan hard. Aegis Amulet negates all your damage, Purification Beads provides the enemy the opportunity to try to run around and dodge your 1 spam, and Phantom Veil or teleports ruin the plan entirely. Furthermore, you often have to use 6+ Omi on your 1 to kill your enemy, which isn’t ideal. The 5 ticket advantage is rather inconsistent so I don't like this type of ult much, however fun it is.

Zoning people out of the fight is exactly what it means. Most “random ults” will fall in this category, preventing the enemy team from taking the positions that they want most. This is usually a weaker version of blocking fountain, but useful nevertheless.

One thing I sometimes see Yemoja players do is use Riptide to prevent enemies from leaving the area. This isn’t necessarily bad, but I want to caution against this, especially using 6 Omi on two Riptides. It is a lot of Omi, and the damage of this ult simply isn’t high enough to warrant it. Please know why you’re doing this and what you are giving up (two Mending Waters) by doing so.

Skill Leveling

> > >

Mending Waters is your best spell.

Bubble/ Moonstrike is your damage spell and Riptide gets little comparatively from being levelled.

River's Rebuke doesn’t get much from levelling as it rarely gets it’s damage off. Get at 5 and save maxing until 1 and 2 are maxed.

Riptide gets less from being maxed compared to 1 and 2, especially for such a situational spell.

Builds

Lotus Crown

Yes, this looks like a mage build. Why? Let’s consider what I’ve said in the skills section. Yemoja mainly uses Mending Waters and occasionally Riptide. Both these spells can be used at long range with little downside, and Yemoja rarely needs to get close to the enemy. Then, why would she go tank? Guardians tend to go tank because they have short range spells that require them to be up close where they tend to take more damage and because of poor scaling. Yemoja doesn’t use these short range spells often. She gets little out of being close, so she should stay near backlines most of the time. Lotus Crown’s protections and Guardian base stats can help her if she does need to go in. And in the backline, she doesn’t take much damage, not to mention she gains effective HP by healing herself midfight, so why should she build tanky? Hence a mage build to maximise healing.

This is not to say building tanky is wrong. If you have a reason why you want to build tanky, go ahead. Just make sure you know why. From where I am though, I feel mage is better way to build her. Also see my tank Yemoja rant in the Miscellous Tips section later.

Core Items:

Yup, I'm building Specialist’s Blessing. I know I need to explain this so this is here simply because Shoes of Focus + Chronos' Pendant + Lotus Crown gives 290 Mana/MP5, 10 short. To not delay the last Omi too late, Specialist’s Blessing is taken for the 20 MP5. It also nicely gives 10% CDR so we can cap CDR.

Core. 250 Mana + 10% CDR is too good.

In Arena, teamfights happen often leading to a lot of strain on your Omi reserves. Hence, 40% CDR is important and Chronos' Pendant is the easiest way to reach it. It even has a passive that gives you a small amount of Omi every 10 seconds, which is nice.
Lotus Crown
Giving 20 Physical and Magical protections is a lot for squishy characters. For reference, using this means a character with 40 protections now takes around 8% less damage with this. Considering Yemoja can have near perfect uptime on this for her whole team, this item is extremely useful.
Situational Items:

Frankly, after Lotus Crown, Yemoja can kind of build whatever she wants and it will probably be useful in some way. There's a lot of discussion on this section in the comments. Do take a look at the comments if you're interested - Branmuffin in particular argues for many items written below. Here are my favorites:

You heal a lot. This helps you heal more, what’s not to love!

Further increases your healing, and improves your 1 spam damage significantly.

Provides somewhat high power and semi-permanent damage. Unfortunately your best way to proc it is via 1, so I would suggest this item more for players wanting to use 1 from time to time, not just using 2 from the backline. The added health is also nice. Best used against tankier comps since it scales with enemy health.

Useful defensive item that offers a nice aura that increases magical damage for your item. Take if you're worried about magical damage and your team has good magical damage dealers.

Probably the best magical protection item to take if you're worried about magical damage but your team lacks magical damage dealers that are doing well. It has a nice aura for your team.

Just a nice, generic defensive item if you need it. Normally Gauntlet of Thebes would be better, but this tends to stack faster than Gauntlet of Thebes, which is important considering how late you will have to build this. Also see Gauntlet's entry in the Overrated section.

Relics are standard. Purification Beads and Aegis Amulet if necessary, Magic Shell and Heavenly Wings to help your team if you don't need Beads or Aegis, and Cursed Ankh against high healing or sustain.

Overrated Items:

These items, in my opinion, aren’t as good as most people think they are. I am not calling them useless, but please think carefully about these items before you buy them.

Yes, I don't like BoV. The problem with this item is it’s poor synergy with Lotus Crown. Lotus Crown provides 80 Physical Protection with it’s passive up already. Very often the diminishing efficiency from the extra 65 Physical Protection will not be worth it. Furthermore, the two together leads to a build with 0 health and little Magical Protection so it doesn’t even really provide good protection for Yemoja. If you're going more defensive against a heavy physical team, though, consider Shoes of Focus into this into a item that gives health into Lotus Crown.

I love Gauntlet, but Yemoja just has no space for it. The problem is when do you build it?

- If you build it before Chronos' Pendant, you are massively delaying your Omi regen. Yemoja at 10/20% CDR really struggles to get Omi. I personally find it terrible to play. Not to mention you will get your final Omi only after item 4 and a blessing, very late.
- Building it before Lotus Crown is better but your final Omi is still delayed, plus the protections come a bit late considering the stacking and you delay Lotus Crown.
- Building it after Lotus Crown is just too late. By the time you stack Gauntlet, the game is nearly over.

I really can’t fit the item into the build. Sorry, Gauntlet.

Less common, but I sometimes see it and this item is really bad for Yemoja. She simply can’t use it very well. Mending Waters isn’t supposed to be used for procing Divine Ruin, River's Rebuke rarely does damage, leaving Yemoja with her 1. She doesn’t want to use Moonstrike for procing Divine since it does so much more when well-timed rather than to just proc Divine. This means she generally only wants to proc Divine via Bubble, which isn’t ideal as Bubble tends to be a waste of 2 Omi. If you just want this for stats, buy Spear of Desolation instead. Leave this for your team and buy Pestilence or Cursed Ankh instead.

Miscellaneous Tips

- Tank Yemoja rant: I just can't make tanky, BoV + Gauntlet Yemoja work. I wasn't expecting to be able to pressure at the frontline like Ymir or anything, but I find her presence is so weak that there's no benefit to being at the frontline, with or without another tank. Moonstrike is just not good enough as your only hard CC. It's essentially a single-target (it's so slow that only one person will be caught in it's AOE most of the time) 1s stun that costs 4 Omi if you need to recast it because you need to waste Omi on Bubble. Basically every other frontline character has a significantly better hard CC. I feel like the enemy can just ignore me and run over my team, like a really bad version of frontline Khepri and Khepri isn't even a good frontline to begin with. Bodyblocking is really situational and not a good replacement for actual hard CC.

I find Mending Waters is still the best way to prevent my team from being run over - in which case I might as well be at the backline anyway and make use of power. It also hurts that by being in front of your team, you make it a lot harder to use reverse Riptide to save your team.

Maybe I'm playing the character wrong - I don't play frontline tanks very often so maybe I'm just much worse at main/off-tank Yemoja than I am using my suggested backline build. Please try this and tell me if you get results with tanky Yemoja, but as of now I will not make a separate build for tank Yemoja because I think it doesn't work.

- It's best to leave the buffs for your team. Red does little since your scaling, while not terrible, aren’t really at Mage level and Purple obviously is not useful. Out of the three, Blue is best but 10% CDR isn’t really that great and someone on your team with mana issues is better off taking it.

- Your early’s rather bad. Not as bad as Thoth or Merlin but close, because your omi regen is super bad and Mending Waters does really little until rank 4. Don’t be too aggressive early if possible.

- Quick Mini-Assault Guide since she plays so similarly in Assault as in Arena: Start Chronos’ Pendant for more Mending Waters. Play more defensively – people will try and kill you, the healer, the first chance they get. It’s not a bad idea to buy more defensive items as a result. Largely, just play her like you would in Arena, except even more healbotty due to healing’s importance in the mode.


Conclusion

Thank you for reading my Arena Yemoja guide. I hope it was as fun for you to read as it was for me making it, and that you have learnt something about Yemoja along the way.

Many thanks to Jordenitos guide: Code Blue: BBCoding for Beginners as well as A Guide to Creating a Guide by nanoyam which were of great help in making this guide.

I know I focused heavily on Mending Waters, because it's really her best ability, especially for beginners to Yemoja, but when you get better as her, do consider the use cases of Moonstrike, Riptide and Bubble. Truly mastering her requires skill in all her spells.

"I must be versatile" - Yemoja

May you be versatile when using this character's wide toolkit.


Changelog

Oct 10 2020 - Patch 7.10 - Situational Item revamp from Branmuffin's suggestions (see comments) and tank rant in the Miscellaneous section.

Oct 7 2020 - Patch 7.10 - Minor edits for spelling errors and poor expression in some areas. Also changed River's Rebuke uses, in particular lowering preference for trapping enemies - too easily countered by relics and teleports or just accidently leaving a small gap for enemies to run through.

Oct 4 2020 - Patch 7.9 - Guide Published.

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1
Branmuffin17 (399) | October 11, 2020 6:04pm
Alright, so I had it in mind to try this. Made my buds play some Arena and tried both your base build and my tanky concept.

Game 1: So I barely play Yem, and haven't really liked her kit that much, even though it's really a pain playing against her early-game in Conquest. This was my first game in a while, esp in Arena.

Firstly, I'll say that the heal focus playstyle is right up my alley. She never felt right to me in Arena, and I was playing her as a normal tank. Definitely got CDR and Omi up, but wasn't specifically thinking about healing over other things.

As you can see, this game went poorly for our team, despite the lack of anti-heal on the enemy team (Ah Puch ability 3 + Neith BBS). The big kicker though was that mostly it was one teammate or another getting burst down individually...there weren't a lot of great teamfights where I got a bunch of heal bounces. Thus, even though there was little anti-heal and the high power build, I didn't heal that much. I also didn't die (got close a couple of times), but couldn't really step up when needed because I was frankly very squishy. One major thing I noticed was that, despite being able to throw 3-4 heals in a row, I couldn't save my teammates from the burst at least 3 times. If there was more anti-heal, it would have really hurt my sole function.

Game 2: Straight up, this one felt better for multiple reasons:
  • Team played together a lot more, so I had multiple great bounces with functional heal effect.

  • Being more tanky allowed me to step up more confidently and tank for my team.

  • Shoes of Focus straight into Breastplate of Valor is much quicker for extra Omi than Blessing -> Focus -> Chronos -> Lotus, and BoV is cheaper than Chronos. And while you get max CDR by your 3rd item in your main build, I also did so by picking up Shogun's 3rd (more expensive than Blessing, but it's not a big issue).
Although I didn't take nearly as much damage that 2nd game, it's also something where the overall balance felt better. Again, it feels better to me that although I still concentrate on healing, I can do other things better. I don't like the idea of being completely shut down by anti-heal and taking away what ends up being my single purpose. I found myself in this game using my 1 more often. Not a bunch more damage, but there was lockdown / CC function, and I feel that holding that Omi just for healing also doesn't feel that good.

So in the end, my preference is tankier, but still focus first on healing. I actually don't know that I'd pick up Rod of Asclepius all the time either. It's helpful, but since Yem's healing base isn't super huge, in a tankier build with lower power / less scaling, you'll get less use out of it.

I plan to do this more and make some slight adjustments and get a better feel through multiple games (since they're all different). Will let you know of any other conclusions I have.
1
Gulfwulf (81) | October 11, 2020 10:11pm
I'm gonna make you play Assault since you put me through this experiment of yours. :P
1
Branmuffin17 (399) | October 12, 2020 12:17pm
Ha. Ha. Ha.
1
cbj252 | October 11, 2020 8:04pm
Hello, good to see you like the heal playstyle. I really think focusing on 1 like I see all the time from other people in Arena is worse than focusing on 2.

Replying to both your comments here, maybe it's a playstyle preference/experience difference. I see from your profile you play way more frontline Guardians than I do. I play way more Yemoja and Khepri than I do other Guardians so I'm not experienced enough at frontline :p. I'll work on my frontline if I feel like it.

Yes, I noticed this build does struggle with focus fire/single target burst a lot. Mending Waters power comes from hitting 5 people, it does somewhat low heal + shield on one person. Riptide is your tool for dealing with focus fire.... except it's super hard to land. Focus fire in general is one of the better ways to deal with this playstyle because you force Yemoja to land her super hard Riptide rather than the easy to land Mending Waters.

One thing I didn't mention in my guide because I exclusively queue solo but on second thought I really should have mentioned was Riptide gets significantly better in parties. One of the reasons why Riptide is so hard to land is because solo queueing, if you miss it even by a little bit, your teammate is not going to use it. In a party, assuming you have comms, you can just tell your ally to take it. They could still get chain CCed, but chain CC doesn't happen all the time.

Ultimately, play in the way that makes you feel the best. I'm happy that you find decent success with a tankier build and I'm glad this guide showed you how focusing on 2 could be more effective on Arena Yemoja :).
1
Branmuffin17 (399) | October 12, 2020 12:17pm
You'll also note my damage wasn't high. I was concentrating so much on working the heal that I was holding Bubble too much, even when my Omi was full and I didn't need to heal anyone. That would probably be a general suggestion I'd give especially when she has max Omi...if you're not doing anything else with it and a fight hasn't really started, throwing the 1 here and there isn't a bad thing.
1
Branmuffin17 (399) | October 7, 2020 9:27am
So honestly, cbj, I looked at the items in your build and balked a little, then read the comments and your response, and that led me to take the time to read your writeup. That writeup is, IMO, extremely well thought out and gives people a very interesting, non-meta way to play Yemoja that can have a positive effect on your team.

Some specific thoughts:
  • With regard to the build, I know you're not fully happy w/ Specialist's Blessing, but I think it's a good fit here. I think it's actually a pretty strong item used in the right situation. And it helps you with the added Omi when you pick up Lotus Crown. Sure, you could get the Omi faster by getting Breastplate of Valor in place of Chronos' Pendant, but I think I get what you're doing by going Chronos, as you're not doubling up on phys prots w/ Lotus being purchased next.

  • That said, I think you could explore 2 build paths, one with Chronos 3rd, and one with the more regular BoV 3rd. With Mending as your main focus (and power helping a bit with scaling for heal and shield), Chronos' power is nice. But the scaling is somewhat low, and Chronos is a bit expensive. BoV would give you the extra Omi way earlier, allow you to skip Specialist's Blessing, and give you more flexibility later in the build to pick up another team-utility CDR item like Shogun's Kusari, or allow you to go Soul Gem if you really wanted.

  • In your estimation, how detrimental is enemy anti-heal to your overall function and contribution to the team? I know you're able to counter slightly with Rod of Asclepius, and Lotus Crown's prots aren't affected by it, but my concern would be having your main focus shut down pretty hard, especially if they're more likely to pick up anti-heal if you have other healers on your team.

  • And that also gets me to...I know they're only options, but adding lifesteal items to an obvious healing kit makes it again really easy to cut down your effectiveness quite a bit. Keep in mind that anti-heal really drops the efficiency of not only her healing ability, but also cuts the value of Asclep, and would hurt the output that Tahuti would bring late game. In this way, I think being a bit tankier and able to absorb some damage for your teammates would add some utility that can't be countered in the same way.

  • I like that you identified the best uses of her ult, since you're mostly unlikely to catch enemies in it for the damage.

  • Sort of like a passive Aphrodite, this playstyle could be really nice for players less comfortable with in-your-face fighting or lower skill that just want to have some fun with friends and support them from the backline.

  • If you do go with the squishy mage-ish build, I think it's better to do this with friends that know you're not going to be front-line tanking, otherwise you might end up with no tanks.
Basically, I think having 2 build directions would give players options. If they find themselves as the only healer, making it less likely for enemies to build much anti-heal, your main build example might be just fine. But in a case where you find your team with multiple healers and you expect the counter, building into BoV and some other magical prots over Chronos + Tahuti might be the better option.

Thoughts?
1
cbj252 | October 8, 2020 2:48am
Hi Branmuffin, thanks for the feedback. I'm glad you see this build as a possible option in Arena, even if it isn't meta. Actually, I made this guide because I saw many standard 1-focused tanky Yemojas, both as my ally and the enemy, and they struggled to be impactful. I thought this build and playstyle might be more impactful in Arena.

Maybe Specialist's Blessing is the right item. I'll continue looking for better options, but I'm starting to warm up to it.

IMO Healing Reduction (HR) actually doesn't do much to Yemoja unless heavily stacked. While gods like Hel will feel the impact of say a Divine Ruin, Yemoja doesn't really care because her 2 shields as much as it heals so effectively Divine is only cutting 20% of her 2's power. 20% really isn't much, it's around 30-40 health per person Divine is on. Not nothing, but not enough to make the build unviable.

It's more than possible to get even 30k+ healing even against Divines/Beatsticks. See this game where I managed to hit 30k vs 3 Divines and a Beatstick, https://imgur.com/a/CMacGzz . This is one of my better games and a bit cherry-picked, but I wanted to show 40% just isn't enough.

What does hurt is multiple HR stacking: e.g. multiple of Divine Ruin + Contagion + innate kit HR and Cursed Ankh. Then it actually becomes significant. 100% HR does cut Mending Waters's power by 50% after all. Cursed Ankh is especially dangerous because it also cuts shields.

Yeah, Soul Gem probably isn't the best choice. I'm wondering why I even put it there, I barely even build it. :p Will take it out when I next update. I think Pythagorem's Piece is fine despite the LS, it's largely there because of the power buff anyway. Thoughts?

Interesting suggestion on the 2nd tankier build. I'll definitely give it a try, I admittedly haven't tried a tankier build since I was like Mastery 3 when I felt like I had no impact on the game with it. I can see how bodybuilding and being a nuisance with a tanky build could be helpful. I'll test it out for sure and update the guide once I experiment with items a bit more. I especially see it being effective when the enemy has high innate kit HR - you can't exactly see the enemy team in Arena before you pick Yemoja after all.

Again, thanks a lot for the feedback.
1
Branmuffin17 (399) | October 8, 2020 9:11am
Although handpicked, 30k healing is quite impressive. Looking at the kills and deaths for each god on both teams, that match looks like it plays out exactly as I'd expect. Although some of those builds are suspect.

Good point on shield in addition to healing.

Cursed Ankh is dangerous not so much on cutting shields...it's exceptionally dangerous if the enemy picks it up and is smart in getting the upgrade and the 20% more damage it provides to healed enemies. It's the single best item against an annoying Herc or Vamana ult IMO.

Although Pythag's has appeal, again I look at anti-heal, and basically when affected, it's temporarily cutting healing or lifesteal stat by that percentage. I DO like the item a lot, and feel it's a consistently underrated item. Note for a time it was considered the single most impactful item, but then it fell off hard again, even though it picked up % pen. In a situation for a god without healing in their kit, it can be very helpful, especially for aggression in a teamfight. That said, it's something I'd consider more for the sustain purposes in Conquest when it could allow you to stay out longer, and it has more appeal when there's less healing and thus less likelihood of being counter-built. For arena, it wouldn't be a regular pickup for me except maybe for an interesting Ares build. (Ares passive Aura power boost + your team collapsing together when you ult and getting the Pythag's aura for higher power)
1
Kriega1 (143) | October 8, 2020 3:45am
Get Ethereal Staff instead of soul gem
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1
Call me Sato | October 7, 2020 12:39am
I would highly suggest a different approach on the 1. It is by far the best ability in her kit

You should be leaving your ABILITIES 4,1,3,2

The 1 is a high damage ale slow and stun and it cost 2 omi. The 2 cost 3
So you get 5 of your 1's off and 3 of your 2's.... That should be self explanatory to how the dps difference is. The 3 is over statted too. And if youre going damage probably build some pen..
1
cbj252 | October 7, 2020 3:36am
Hi, thanks for the feedback. I'll really like more reasoning behind some of your ideas though, because I find it hard to accept most of them.

(Disclaimer: This is purely an Arena guide. What I'm about to write next does not apply to Conq, where you should absolutely max 1 first and it's probably your best spell early game.)

I really can't make 1 work in Arena. As mentioned in the guide, it gets interrupted way too easily because your target has 4 other people around them, unlike Conq. Maxing it first makes this situation even worse because levels 3-7 tend to be the levels where players in Arena stick together the most so you will die if you try to spam 1.

Just because 1 is 2 Omi and 2 is 3 Omi doesn't mean 2 is worse. Mending Waters is absolutely better than 1.5 Bouncing Bubble and imo, quite close to 1.5 Moonstrike. At rank 5, it's an reliable 1300 total health (260 base heal + shield on 5 people) in teamfights before scaling, that doesn't get completely shut down by healing reduction. Even if only half of that heal + shield gets used, that's still a lot of mitigation.

What do you mean by the "3 is overstatted"?

This isn't a damage build, really. The build wants to spam 2, and 2 doesn't scale with pen. I'm actually starting to lean towards a more defensive build, say replacing Rod of Tahuti with a defensive item though. I'll do more testing about this.

Again, I'm not dismissing your ideas, but I'll like to hear more about why you think 1 is her best skill in Arena.
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League of Legends Build Guide Author cbj252
Arena Yemoja - Misunderstood Mage in a Misfit Mode
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