Introduction
Understand that situational items may have items that also work well in the build, there aren't only situational item. It's recommend you read the description that contains the reason of the choice and maybe some tips or which item should be changed.
Sometimes the Main Build won't work as well by many circunstancies, like enemy healers, take too much damage, taking stuns all the time, dying a lot, high enemy physical protection...So here there are other items to help you in this situations. Feel free to change what you think it is useless at the build and some items I make suggestion to change by others.
First, you have to understand 4 steps before changing any item:
- What is the problem?
- What item won't help me or aren't helping me with this problem?
- What is the best item below that better solves my problem?
- Will I loose something very important to this match changing this item?
If you answer all this question in the right way, you will change the right item and the new one will helps you a lot.
Protections Items
If you are dying too much or taking too much damage and always is in low health, put one of this in your build. I don't recommend more than one item 'cause your Cupid will become weak in do damage (your objective as Hunter).
Gives you some mana, health, magical and physical protection that increase by each God kill or assist you do (max 10). Cupid is easy to get assists so even when you are not being a serial killer will help you stay alive.
Gives Cupid a nice protection when you are dying and also gives power when you are not. Recommended in Assault and Arena.
Since you are squishy, one stun can open a chance to the enemy kill you without problems, so if taking to much stuns or other types of control, this item is for you. This item gives health, some physical and magical protection and absorbs a hard control on you giving you immunity for 1s after that with a reasonable cooldown. Recommended only if you are dying by enemies controls (stuns for example).
Damage items
Some matches it's better make other items such as something to stop healing, penetration, lifesteal and others. This kind of items that works well with Cupid are below.
Gives you attack speed and some penetration. But this item is good in lifesteal. Gives you 20% as an addition lifesteal and if you drop below 35% of your health you gain more 25% (45% in total). Combined with the
Devourer's Gauntlet fully stacked you will gain 69% of lifesteal when in low health. Perfect to make you high sustain in battle and if there is some assassin trying to kill you such as Loki, you can combine some basic attacks with
Heart Bomb and
Fields of Love and you probably will kill him and will stay with a good amount of life. Combining this with the main build will make you VERY VERY VERY SUSTAINABLE, so, put this item if someone is focusing you.
You can change
The Executioner in this item if the enemy is doing many physical protections. With this, you will penetrate in 30% their protection. Also gives you power but you will loose some attack speed.
This item passive (with each 4 basic attacks you do a chain lightning causing damage to enemies near of your last attack) will help you a lot with stack items. You can do this item as a 3rd or 2nd to gain attack speed fast and the passive.
You can change
Odysseu's Bow in this item. You will loose some attack speed but will gain more power. With this item, the enemy god will take as additional damage 4% of his maximum life in your basic attacks.
Gives you power and penetration. A "must item" if the enemy have some God that heals a lot like
HEL or
APHRODITE 'cause it makes everyone hit by your skills receive 40% less heal for 8secs. Notice that without this item it's VERY HARD to kill people because they receive a lot of heal.
Gives you power and Critical strike chances. This item is nice to Cupid 'cause will do more critical strike chances than any other. Gives you 20% chances and for each kill or assist gives you more 1%, with 5 kills or assists you gain more 10% bonus. So you will have 35% chances to do a Critical. Combined with other items such as
Wind Demon or
Deathbringer, half of your attacks will be critics.
Gives you more power than ninja but you loose the attack speed and the extra mana.
Thought I'd leave some comments. Welcome to the site, also!
Firstly, about your guide overall, it's great you put a lot of time into it. You have some good tips for each of the skills.
Regarding the builds, understand that power is the biggest component to his damage output...and often, to get the most out of power, you need pen. The reason I mention this will be explained further below.
First of all I want to say that I'm Glad that you give me some feedback and I'm sorry for any mistakes but for some reason I love this expression and I can't control.
But let's go to the point.
Build 1
Build 2
Build 3
I'll try follow your tips and see what happens. I will bring my final considerations later.
Thank you for your feedback and helped me improve this guide.
With Rage vs. Wind Demon, if you've got enough attack speed in your other items, Rage's 15% higher crit chance (at full stacks) gives you significantly higher chance overall, which is something I like. If you aren't as happy with your attack speed, I can agree that WD will help with that. Not that you max out AS, but you get a ton of attack speed between your Flutter (at max), O-Bow and Exe, not to mention Ninja Tabi if you choose to get that...in that build, I'd go Rage. Switching out to Warrior Tabi, I'd give more consideration to WD, but still hard to pass up Rage. Here are some average DPS values for squishy god/tanky god with Cupid at level 20 full build (using Smite Builder).
On build 3 for Assault, I agree and almost always get lifesteal on any hunter I get. Usually, with or without a healer on my team, I'll start Bloodforge for the power and lifesteal for sustain in the first part of the match.
That said, with Cupid, Jotunn's is definitely the way to go to start. I can usually live okay with a self heal here and there. If there's an actual healer on the team, then I likely won't even consider lifesteal, at least until late. Not saying Asi isn't helpful, but I prefer getting items with power, since even his healing has scaling to it (albeit somewhat minor). This is just my preference, and if you find Asi to be great for you, then stick with it.
About my playstyle, I always choose make balanced Hunters, doing great critics, great damage and fire at least 1.8 ~ 2.1 arrows per second. That's why I love Attack Speed items hahahaha. But I will test your suggest and I change the guide if necessary.
Thank you for helping me make this guide even better.