Athena (S10 Conquest Support)

This guide is made by the mentor team from the SMITE Official Discord. Anyone can join and receive help from the mentors, participate in inhouses, look for people to play with, or just talk about the game with other people who enjoy SMITE.

Athena is one of my personal favorite gods. Her powerful taunt can turn any losing situation into a winning situation. On top of having a global ult that lets you be wherever you want, when you want Defender of Olympus. Being able to move from one side of the map to another in just a few moments lets Athena have the advantage of running around the enemy jungle with her Jungler looking for more early fights in weird chokes. You are allowed to do this because once someone is threatened in lane, you are able to turn to them, and ult on top of them, providing the person being ulted with much needed protections. Most players will do their best to walk away from someone being Athena ulted as they do not want to take poke from you landing on them, and they do not want to be in range of you taunting once you've landed. Defender of Olympus

The only thing holding Athena back from being a top tier pick is her dash. Preemptive Strike She has a few seconds of channel time before she can dash. This was put into place so that Athena was not instantly dashing, and taunting enemies with Confound. However with your dash it is not all bad, if you dash into an enemy you will collect a block stack which will be displayed on your Athena passive shield. You can also tell you have a block stack by looking at your shield on the character, you will see a glow around this letting you know you have a stack. On top of collecting up to 3 block stacks, Athena will also slow all targets hit by 25%.

A lot of what makes Athena great is her taunt like discussed above. I am here now to provide you with a few things you should be looking for, and things you should be looking to do with Athena throughout the match.

When you are starting to lane, you will only have your Shield Wall for clear early, Athena's early game can be strong if the enemy chooses to pressure you early. Getting your Confound second level creates some out play potential for you and your ADC. Early game the duo lane will most likely be stacked on each other creating an easy time for hitting double taunts (Taunt is an AoE with no cap on how many can get taunted) Taunting them into your minions early, and into your ADC's poke will almost always cause the enemy to either use their actives, or burn more potions. A lot of early duo is playing the "who will run out of pots first" game. After you have moved to the mid game you will be roaming around a lot with your Jungle, and or Mid player. You will be looking for choke points in jungles that will force enemy actives, and or they will lose their life to your follow up. Please do your best not to just waste taunt, if you have no follow up there is almost no reason to taunt as now you are down your only form of CC, and the enemy can cc chain you before your dash is ready to go off.

Athena is a team god. You need your team to follow up off of every taunt you do. Athena does not have solo kill potential when built for Support, you will need the help of your team to secure kills.