Athena a.k.a. MEGAKILL

Athena is the best god in the game. Her long and girthy spear will touch the butts of many an enemy and they will feel their nipples harden as she shows their health bars the power of her broiling sexuality. This is indeed the best possible Athena build, the kills will be great, the deaths will be few, and the penta kills will not be that uncommon.

This is mainly an Arena guide but it works pretty well in all modes. Some tweaking may be required based on the situation: for example, in conquest you might want to get some more sustain or tankiness.

This is a damage build. It is way better than a tank build. All Athena does as a tank is use her taunt and soak up damage, which is not particularly useful in my opinion.

Another thing I would like to note, apparently one of the top ranked Arena players uses this exact same build and playstyle, I'm not sure if he perhaps saw my guide here or came up with his own, but either way I think it just goes to show that it is indeed a strong build.

Pros:
-Tons of damage
-Tons of crowd control
-Tons of mobility
-Sustain
-Somewhat tanky
-Extremely high burst damage
-Very high cooldown reduction
-Sexy and awesome

Cons:
-Squishier than a more traditional Athena build
-No CC reduction

-In all modes except Conquest, start with Shoes 2. In Conquest, start with Shoes 1 and health/mana potions of your choosing.

-Go back to base for Shoes of Focus ASAP. I get the CDR over the Magic Penetration because your burst is usually enough to kill most squishies without it and you need your abilities up as often as possible for their utility.

-Second, get Chronos' Pendant, for the same reasons as mentioned above.

-Next get either Rod of Tahuti or Polynomicon, depending on the situation. Rod of Tahuti will give you more overall damage and mana, but Polynomicon will give you more sustain with the Magical Lifesteal.

-Now get whichever you didn't get earlier. Once you have Shoes of Focus, Chronos' Pendant, Rod of Tahuti, and Polynomicon, you have your core build. What you get after this does not matter as much, but you will be able to do very high damage at this point and you should start playing more aggressively.

-For your 5th item, I suggest Focused Void Stone. Unless the entire enemy team is Physical damage based, you can't go wrong here- more tankiness, more Magic damage, and more Magic penetration.

-The 6th item can give your build a lot of flexibility. Usually I take Obsidian Shard to give me even more damage and penetration. It makes it very hard to counter-build against her because she will nullify a lot of magic resistance.

-If you find that you aren't tanky enough, either because your team sucks ***, you are getting focused a lot, or whatever, there are 2 items I suggest. Both of them will bring you to maximum of 40% cooldown so even if you buy them to improve your tankiness than will still improve your overall damage output. Against Physical threats, get Mail of Renewal. It will also give you some nice sustain if you are killing or getting assists. Against Magical threats, get Idol of Concentration. This will make it significantly harder for a lot of burst mages to kill you, especially Anubis. The huge mana regen bonus doesn't hurt either.

Actives are entirely up to you. Unlike some gods such as Ares or Loki, she does not really need any actives to be effective. As such, you can get whatever you want, whenever you want. I suggest:
-Sprint: In general, this just gives even more utility which is never a bad thing. Use it for escaping or chasing.
- Combat Blink: Use it for saving your *** if you went in too deep and everything else is on cooldown. You can also use it to secure a kill but I suggest saving it for escaping.
- Girdle of Inner Power: This is really more of a troll item, but if you using it before you ult in on someone it basically is the difference between hitting them with a bunker buster or hitting them with an ICBM. It's not too practical, but it's really fun if you use it correctly.

UPDATE:

As of a recent nerf, Athena's ultimate now does much less base damage, however it is still quite powerful and should not change the way you play. Being a busy college student I don't have time to go through and change all the numbers so just keep this in mind, they are a little lower than I say they are.

BONUS UPDATE:

Polynomicon was nerfed (only deals 50% damage now). So you can't really fist people quite as well as you used to be able to. :/

I assume that you already know how her abilities work, so rather than telling you what they do, I'll just cut to the chase and tell you how to use them.

Prioritize Defender of Olympus, Preemptive Strike, Confound, Shield Wall

In Conquest, get the skills in the same order. Start with 1, then get 2, then 3, and 4 at level 5.

Obviously max your ult whenever possible. Leveling it up will vastly increase your damage, up to an impressive 950 damage. With poor teamwork, this is one of the worst ults in the game. With good teamwork it is one of the best ults in the game. I suggest grabbing a friend and trying some of these combos:
-Your friend plays Ares. (I call this one the AAA) He waits until the enemies are clustered together, watching from a distance. When he has a chance, he uses Blink to get in the middle of all of them and activates No Escape (now you start channeling your ult on him). When his ult goes off, all the enemies take damage and are pulled in. Assuming you timed it right, your ult will hit everyone he hit. If he got enough people with it, the stun actually lasts quite awhile-take this opportunity to use Shield Wall, and then taunt everyone so they are forced to get hit by it. By combing your crowd control abilities, you can potentially keep your enemies unable to take any actions for up to 4.5 seconds, which should be enough time to completely decimate an entire team. The main problem with this is that Purification Beads can nullify Ares ultimate, however assuming you both have high cooldown reduction you should always be able to at least get some of them.
-Your friend plays Loki. When he sees a target, he enters stealth (now you start channeling your ult on him). He goes near a target and uses Assassinate them. Assuming you timed it right, your ult should land right after his does. Since your burst does Magic damage and his does Physical damage, it's a difficult strategy to build against. If they survive, you can use your taunt and lock them in place for Loki to continue dealing damage. The nice thing about this combo is that there is no way to see it coming, and Purification Beads won't really help much, however it is not as easy to hit multiple enemies with it.

These are just a couple examples, but her ult has really great synergy with many gods. It never hurts to experiment with a friend and see how much hurt you can dish out.

Preemptive Strike is the second most important because it's really her best ability, and one of the best abilities in the game. However the 15 second cooldown is annoying, so you want to bring that down as fast as possible. The main reason why it's so strong is because once you have it charged, it's practically instantaneous. Use it to catch feeling enemies, escape a dicey situation, or killsteal an ally.

You should priotize Confound third, again, because of it's great utility. The only thing that you get from leveling up Shield Wall is damage, which will be increasing anyway through items. Also, enemies can just walk out of Shield Wall unless you hit them with a reasonably leveled taunt, so there is really no reason to level up Shield Wall first unless you are farming minions with it. The taunt is a fairly short 1 second at level 1, but by level 5 the time is doubled, lasting an impressive 2 seconds. During this time your enemies can do nothing except run at you and use their basic attacks. Also, Purification Beads are not very useful in countering it because they still get turned around and walk towards you for a short time no matter what, and of course Confound has a much shorter cooldown. There are several good usages of this ability.
-Taunt enemies away from your low-health allies to escape. If they turn on you instead, you can always just dash away.
-Taunt an escaping enemy. They will be forced to turn around and run towards you, which will hopefully lead to their inevitable death. Even if a far away enemy thinks they are safe, using a combination of your dash and taunt can quickly catch unaware enemies by surprise.
-Interrupt enemy mages. A great example is this: Hades gets a great Pillar of Agony off on 3 of your allies, setting up a great opening for the enemy Zeus to drop his Lightning Storm for an easy triple kill. Luckily, you see what is happening and use your taunt on Zeus, drawing him away from the fight. By the time the taunt wears off, Hades ult has ended and his opportunity is lost. Note that certain channeled abilities, such as Death Gaze, Pillar of Agony, Anvil of Dawn, Regurgitate (for the first 1.5 seconds), Hovering Death, etc. will make them immune to all crowd control effects while they are using it, including your taunt. Make sure you use it before they use the abilities.

Shield Wall should be maxed last, but it is still a good ability. On cast it hits for a decent amount of damage and then does even more damage after a 2 second delay. The second attack is hard to hit with, but with a good taunt you can guarantee it will hit. Getting this ability to hit twice will really make it shine. In fact, it's actually the highest damage non-ultimate ability in the game, dealing a whopping 560 base damage, plus 100% of your magical power. Technically, there are a few (less than 5) abilities that do more damage.
- Ao Kuang's Tornadoes (only if you sit in the initial area for at least 4 seconds)
- Anubis's Grasping Hands (high scaling but much lower base damage)
- Anubis's Plague of Locusts (this ability, as well as Grasping Hands, both rely on hitting with Mummify - otherwise you can just walk out of them)
- Eset's Wing Gust (fairly easy to dodge)
Assuming you can hit well with Confound, you are basically guaranteed to do full damage with Shield Wall, while these abilities will very rarely deal their full damage. For that reason, I consider Shield Wall to be the highest damage non-ultimate ability in the game.
This is not counting abilities such as Vulcan's Inferno Cannon or Freya's Pulse which have no real set amount of damage.

Athena's scaling, just for reference:
Reach: 0 (+/.5/MP)
Preemptive Strike: 280 (+.5/MP)
Confound: 0 (+0/MP)
Shield Wall: 560 (+1/MP)
Defender of Olympus: 950 (+1/MP)

Polynomicon: 0 (+1/MP)

Total: 1790 (+4/MP)

Hopefully this illustrates how important Polynomicon and CDR is, I can't stress this enough. To your average player, you might see that she only has 2 damaging abilities that she can use in normal combat, and each one has a cooldown longer than 10 seconds, so a damage build may seem counter-intuitive. However, with cooldown reduction, and proper use of Reach/ Polynomicon, I can assure you that enemies will just melt before your damage. You can get off a ranged autoattack that deals 150% of your magic power as damage, and you can do it after every ability you use, including your ult and your taunt, which some people can easily forget.

Using this build, her short cooldowns and wide range of utility give her a wide variety of options which, when used properly and with good teamwork, can really decimate any enemy team. Athena takes a bit of skill to master, but with practice it should not be long before enemies cower in fear at the mere sight of you.

-Using her ultimate requires immense amounts of teamwork to be used most effectively, and voice chat is also helpful. (Most of the combos come from using it with your ally's abilities. See the "abilities" section for some ideas). However, in a normal fight you will not really be able to use it, so for the most part, assume you are limited to your first 3 abilities.

Now you should hopefully understand why high cooldown reduction and Polynomicon are so essential to being effective in a fight as Athena.

The basic Athena combo:
-Dash to an enemy. Autoattack them, which procs Polynomicon and your passive. Use Shield Wall, and the Confound. It's probably best not to try to sneak in an auto attack because hitting with Confound is essential to ensure the second hit of Shield Wall, and it won't proc Polynomicon anyway. Continue using basic attacks until Preemptive Strike comes off cooldown, dash to them, and hit them with another proc of Polynomicon. This should be enough to kill most enemies that aren't building tanky, in fact, if you are really fed, a squishy enemy might die to just a single dash and Polynomicon proc. Since you are mainly focused on bursting, you probably shouldn't be going for tanks, but if you are, just stay on them, try to land Confound and Shield Wall, and continue to intersperse basic attacks between your abilities for the bonus damage.

-In Arena mode, be sure to abuse the recall button as much as possible. Sustain and tankines are not very imrpotant because whenever you get low on health or mana you can always go to base and be back in the fight very quickly. Don't be afraid to go back for items either, there's no sense sticking around with 2k or 3k gold when you could spend it and be back in the fight again. Keep in mind that your ult has infinite range too. You can recall, heal to full, and ult back into the fight in around 10 seconds.

Early Game:
-Getting kills early will help you quickly reach your full damage potential. Don't hesitate to take kills from your allies early on- you will make better use of the money than they will. Killstealing is easy- charge up your dash, and wait for the health to drop. The dash is very fast, but it is not perfectly instant so you will have to lead moving targets a little bit.

-Play a little less aggressive early game until you have your "core build" as I mentioned above. Without Rod of Tahuti and Polynomicon, you won't do much damage (but cooldown reduction is more important to get first).

-Make sure to spam your VET and VEL as much as possible, since for the first couple minutes of the game there isn't much else you can do except sit around and gather experience. You can also press 1 and then right click to cancel it which lets you start charging it again. You can repeat this very quickly over and over, and it makes s a really loud and annoying sound which will piss off both your allies and enemies.


Escape Strategies:
-Drop Shield Wall while being chased- it is a useful deterrent.

-Charge up Preemptive Strike as soon as possible, but don't use it instantly- make sure you have a good opening for it. It will not go through enemy gods or walls, but it will pass through minions and monsters. Don't waste it.

-If you have a lot of health but get trapped by a lot of enemies, try using Defender of Olympus on an ally to escape. As long as they can't kill you within 4.2 seconds, it's a guaranteed getaway.

-Sometimes, while being chased it's useful to turn around and Confound your pursuers, as it temporarily prevents them from using abilities.

Well that's about it. As I have improved my Athena gameplay and perfected a build, I get around 1 pentakill every 5 games or so, sometimes more, sometimes less. Even just with her first 3 abilities, Athena is very strong. You could completely take away her ultimate and she would still be one of the hardest hitting gods in the game. However, with good team synergy, and voice chat, she is strong to the point where I sometimes almost feel like she is overpowered. I don't want to say she relies on her team, because she doesn't. With a bad team you can still do good, but you won't do fantastic.

I'll just tell you a little bit about my own Athena experience. I just kinda bought her for fun because she looked interesting. I usually play stealthy assassin type people like Bakasura, Loki, and Thanatos, so I wanted a different playstyle. However, I quickly regretted the purchase because I never did well as her, so I just stopped playing her.

Then one day, I got her randomly in an Assault match. My immediate thoughts were "wow, I get this ****py tank with no range or sustain in Assault, So I decided to just to a stupid damage troll build, expecting to do horribly. However, it actually ended up being my best Athena game ever- I did way more damage than any other player in the game and carried our team to victory. Inspired by that success, I tried experimenting with damage builds in Arena and she soon became my favorite champion.

I only have one friend who plays Smite, but I told him about my Ares Athena Arena idea, and he bought Ares and agreed to try it out. Since then we have played about 30 games together using the AAA strategy, and we have only lost one of them. That is an extremely good win-loss ratio.

So anyway, that's my story, and I really suggest you guys try it out. To date I have never seen anyone play Athena even close to the way I do. I'm sure there are some people who do play her this way, but I would like to spread the word about it because she is kind of underrated right now when she is actually pretty overpowered in my opinion. I spent about 2 hour on this guide, so I hope I helped some people realize why they call her MEGAKILL.

I will do my best to keep this guide updated when something happens that affects this build (ie. item reworks for example)