Cupid sustain Errantsquire's build

Cupid is a ranged physical carry that can also do a good job of support. Cupid has high mobility allowing him to escape, split push, chase, and surprise enemy gods. Cupid is played best duo in the right lane with access to the speed and cool down reduction camps. His ability to sustain himself and his ally in this lane should not be taken for granted as it will allow them to remain when enemies are forced to retreat. When I play focus I focus on two main things when selecting items. First I select items for sustainability and, second I look for survivability. If you don't survive the initial burst damage of some champs then you won't have a chance to sustain the lane. Damage output is important also and most of the items the accomplish the first two main things will have a damage component however not all will.

The guide is finished!!!..... for now. I'll do my best to edit it as comments make me rethink Cupid or patches are released. I also plan on adding a jungling section but I feel that this will need some testing. Don't forget to comment on what you agree or disagree with!!!

Pros

- Decent Physical damage
- Excellent Sustain
- Brings heals, mobility, and stuns to team fights
- Two stuns
- Ok jungle clear with one life steal item
- Large AOE mesmerize/stun

Cons

- Low HP easily killed
- Collecting hearts gets annoying and sometimes your team ignores them
- Stun is not always available on demand
- Get's outshined by other physical carries damage output

This item is pretty standard as far as most AD's go especially with the amount of auto attacking you'll do to build up Cupid's passive. I was recently asked if I would sell this item to buy my 3rd item and the answer to that is no I wouldn't unless I felt I really need an item I'll keep this. The reason why is my primary focus which is sustainability. Not only does this heal me but it also gives me mana which incidentally I can use to heal, escape, or nuke my enemy.

Another standard item for AD carries. Some people like getting lv 2 first for the early mobility. They use the left over cash for potions. I'd only consider this if I was forced to mid lane with an AD. Although Cupid can do ok in mid lane he doesn't have a great ability to clear and loses to most AP's. Again lv 1 boots work well for me because the mobility gives me survivability but I'd much rather have the sustain of Death's Toll.

If I had to mid lane I would probably get lv2 boots and potions. Typically Cupid should be on a side lane and I find that the mana potion is much more important due to sustainability. A health potion is one dimensional for Cupid as it only gives him health whereas the mana potion = health, escape, and damage.

Item #3

Devourer's Gloves This is a core item, I would only ever consider trading this for Brawler's Beat Stick in order to deal with two or more healing type characters on the opposing team. Skip lv 3 boots and get lv 3 gloves first!!! You need to get stacks on this item ASAP. Not only does it allow you to have almost infinite sustain it also allows you to solo jungle camps and eventually the Gold Fury with some other items.

Consumables/Active Abilities -

meditation

I typically keep at least 2 healing potions every time I go home and try to pick up either 2 Ward or 2 Mana Potion. I need to get better about not taking Mana Potion because I normally also take lv 1 meditation. I know most of the "good" players do not like meditation because it has low impact on group fights however for someone who has a sustain play style like myself it is perfect and allows me to buy wards instead of potions.

Defensive Actives

An automatic item in a lot of situations. If the opposing team has a lot of suppression I may actually prefer this over Aegis Amulet. If the primary tank on the enemy team is Hades I always take this. If you don't like meditation most of the time you're going to go with this on top of Aegis Amulet. Remember that it's cool down is lower than aegis as well. CDR is always nice but as described later not essential on Cupid.

I feel that Cupid doesn't really need this to jungle once you have most of the rank 1 or higher life steal items. This is the case with most physical carries. It's a must if you're going to try to go straight jungle right away. I haven't attempted that or put a build together yet. I may try this later to see how viable it is. Every team needs to have at least one person with this though in order to make short work of the gold fury or the fire giant. You may even be able to dash in and steal either one most likely meeting a timely Cupid death immediately after but a steal is a steal. Also after the last patch they added a stun to this item which makes me a lot more interested in it. Taking this item means Cupid could have 3 stun type abilities which seems really good even if it has a short range like Apollo's Serenade.

Seems ok for lane sustain and you all know how much I like that. Again it gets overshadowed by aegis and beads to me. Given your low HP there's a chance that you'll use it.... think you're safe and then have a mage deal a ton of burst damage to you.


Offensive Actives

sprint An obvious choice for the more aggressive Cupid players. Chasing while shooting seems pretty good. Remember this won't stop you from being stunned. An 8 second run is a pretty long run as well.

If I were to pick up a chase item I'd much rather have this one. Typically I'm duo lane, and it increases healing at max level. Seems like a much better support item. I don't get to run for as long but the cool down is 30 seconds shorter than sprint. Still makes everyone immune to slow. I'm really not sure why Hi-Rez has 2 sprint type options.

Offensive steroid type item. This item doesn't fit my play style as you could expect and from what I know most of the time teams are throwing this on their tanks because Aegis Amulet and Purification Beads give everyone else the survivability they need that a tank can get by without having.

Hmmm do I want to chase my enemy or just simply slow them down. The choice is yours offensive Cupid players. Great anti heal item though so keep that in your back pocket. This plus Brawler's Beat Stick should leave bad healing players scratching their heads wondering why their heal buttons stopped working and, will make good ones angry when they check the character item screen.


Sub Par Actives

blink Seems pretty bad. I suppose if you're being chased and you get out of combat you could blink through a wall or something however chances are better that you'll simply get CC'd and have no chance to use it. Initiating with it seems bad as well because you don't want to be the first one in the fray and it can be difficult to accurately place yourself. Much better for a tank/bruiser to initiate with IMO.

Item #4

Man I love this item. Even after the nerf I think that it's great. First it gives us health which = survivability which in turn allows us to sustain our lane. Second it gives us a slow which makes it a lot harder for our enemies to get away from our team and allows us to land more Heart Bombs/ Fields Of Love. Sometimes if I'm doing well/the team is doing well I will skip this item and go straight into Deathbringer. If you're doing really poorly/getting focused a lot you may opt to go with a defensive item that will help with the biggest threat instead. Typically I go Hide of the Nemean Lion and witch stone vs AD and Stone of Gaia and Hide of Leviathan vs magic. I'll get into defensive items later.

Item #5

This is probably the best AD item out there. You almost always take it however it's not great without some physical power to back it up. I've never tried taking it first due to my two rules of playing Cupid which it doesn't support. This item is all about damage and does nothing by itself to give us sustain or survivability. Yes it gives us sustain if we have life steal, but not without that.

Item #6

Typically I would have taken a defensive item in slot 4 or 5 which would move those items forward sometimes I will pick up a second defensive item here. For offense though I find that.

This item gives us the ability to burn tanks and high hp bruisers pretty quick. The attack speed is nice to get our passive built up to ensure we can stun the enemy. On top of that it does exactly what Frostbound Hammer does by giving us more hp.

As Cupid I feel that you can't afford to pick up more than 2 items that are purely defensive and have no physical power component. This is due to your job taking to much of a hit. Of coarse your job is damage output not taking damage. Defensive items are for survivability. Survive the initial onslaught/stuns of the enemy then Flutter away heal yourself with Share The Love and rejoin the fight. At this point you won't be the focus and at the very least the enemy will have to re-focus you or ignore you. If you get re-focused simply evade again and re-engage. If you have competent comrades they will be using your evade tactics to focus down enemies that can't get to you.

VS Physical Power

This item is the perfect way to tip the scales in your favor when your dealing with an enemy AD until they get enough life steal to overcome it. HP also gives us more survivability (are you noticing a theme yet?).

witch stone This item deals well with any team that has multiple physical power type characters. If a team is running 3 or more it's a must. Remember that Aura's do not stack so if someone has taken this item already there may be a better option for you.

I haven't taken this item much however it seems to be pretty solid. It definatly fits my core 2 pre-requisites and also gives us decent damage output.

VS Magical Power

So this is an item that you might be like...... huh? Well thinking back to my 2 core builds it helps out with both of them and gives us the best magic protection of any item with magic protection on it and it sustains us as we're kiting. Even the mana regen is welcome because as we talked about earlier mana=health for Cupid and his buddies.

Typically that first item is good enough for magic protection however I'll include the other 2 viable options before going into the hybrid protection items.

magi's blessing Seems pretty good magic protection plus HP and bubble every 30 seconds. Sure this is good it could absorb a stun or snare. I haven't taken it much though. It's also worthwhile to note that it has the lowest magic resist of all the items.

I seem to take this one more than the last one but it seems less good now that I look at it closely. Typically if you're close to death you're not going to have enough HP or a quick way to regain it to take advantage of a damage shield. Typically you'll be getting crushed, shield activate and you're dead 2 hits later. Yeah that was a definite mistake I should go bubble as it will happen more often when I need it. Most of the time I don't build more than 1 magic defense item though. That's probably due to the representation I see in most matches of 1-2 magic damage dealers.

Hybrid Defense Items (both Magic and Physical Defense)

Awesome just awesome, this has CC reduction for all those pesky stuns that will stop you from Fluttering away. Health, mana, magic protect and physical protect all seem really good if you feel the opposing team is balanced. The biggest factor for picking up this item is the stun/snare factor though. Stunned Cupid is dead Cupid plain and simple as is true of most physical carries. You'll never get reinforced boots instead of this item and remember that the anti-stun effect does not stack. Also keep in mind that there is currently no item right now that will buff your damage and nerf your opponents stuns.

So all the above items are items that I have a lot of experience with however there are some other items that you may find work better for your play style. This is especially true if your focused on being more aggressive/bursty in lane instead of focusing more on sustainment. Most of the items I mention here are either alternatives in different situations or items that are viable that don't fit my style of play.

Seems really one dimensional I really don't like it but let me know if it works for you!!!

A classic item that damage/burst focused physical carries take. It doesn't fit my play style of survivability/sustainment so I hardly ever take it. Great item overall though.

CDR items

Shout out to my man Daniel from youtube for bringing this item to my attention. He swears by this item and I actually thought about it for a couple of days then I realized that it doesn't fit my core play style choices. On top of that firing off heart bomb more often means that it will most likely not be stunning very often. To me the best part of this seems to be the reduce CD on Flutter and Fields Of Love

So I think I like this one better than Jotunn's Wrath. The damage component seems to be better on this plus when you're leveling it you get some CDR whereas you only get the CDR on Jotunn's Wrath when it's lv 3. Again CDR doesn't seem great for Cupid IMO.

Crit items

Great item in certain situations!!! Example two crazy healing type gods on the opposing team Aphrodite and Ra I'm looking at you. Look at the champs on select and make the decision before the game starts to use this or not. If you do replace devourer's gloves with the beats that are this "ugly stick." You may also take it in addition to your gloves but typically I find that I only want one life steal item. This item also fits my play style nicely. It didn't make the main list because I don't take it all that often; again it's situational.

The AOE and clear from this are pretty neat and it seems to be pretty good however again it doesn't fit my play style. I have tried this one a lot when Cupid was first released but I think that I've moved on. I also feel that I only need 1 major crit item on Cupid (beyond boots of coarse) and that has to be Deathbringer.

This is an ok item but I'm really not into it. If you need more crit I'd rather go with Golden Bow mentioned above for faster jungle clear/minion wave clear. So this is after those other 2 as far as just damage dealing items go.

Life Steal Items

Seems pretty good especially if your on a multi physical damage god team. Really seems to shine in the Assault game mode where devourer's gloves will never get stacks. Yes I know they removed stacking items from Assault however you can still get to them if you put them on your favorites for that god. In every other mode though typically it gets outshined by devourer's gloves.

Attack Speed Items

At first you might think hmmmmm..... I need 10 stacks for Cupids passive therefore attack speed so that I always have my passive maxed. Truth is most of the other items we've discussed had other great aspects that I value higher but if the best thing is the attack speed it probably means that I'm going to take an unacceptable hit somewhere else.

Great tank item ok item for Cupid. Again I have a hard time justifying this because I shouldn't have crazy health as I'm not a bruiser or a tank. There's better things like Frostbound Hammer to give you survivability. Lackluster IMO.

Great item on other physical carries like Artimis and it gives you some evasion but does nothing for your overall survivability. If your going more offensive this could be ok especially combined with Frostbound Hammer but it really doesn't do enough for me.


Bad items are..... bad

Maybe you're some amazing player that never get's killed but for the rest of us mortal SMITE players this probably won't work. Cupid is squishy and even though I'm sustaining/evading etc.... I'm going to die and building up 50 stacks sucks. A definite no go for me and probably for most other Cupid players.

Seems pretty bad. How much mana am I really going to have? It has sustain but not survivability. Skip this one on Cupid.

eye of retaliation Same problem as Transcendence how much health are you going to have? And how much is going to be missing on Cupid when he's healing himself? Yeah this item was seems to have been specially designed just for Hercules (and tanks maybe?) so leave it to him and skip it on Cupid. Yes it gives him life steal but there are other items that do it so much better it's not even close to call this one.

All of Cupid's specials are NOT magical which makes this useless in a 1v1 situation. An argument could be made to have this debuff enemies in a team fight for your allies but it's not a very strong one. This is an items for hybrids like Freya plain and simple. Skip this on Cupid unless you want give your team a good lol.... or get flamed.

Buffs your damage/buffs your healing long story short always have 10 stacks up ready to go. This means that you may not have a lot of minion kills however making sure that your ready to stun seems more important. The most important part of this is building up your passive in order to stun with Heart Bomb and Fields Of Love.

Your nuke and stun when your passive is built up. It does AOE damage when it explodes so keep that in mind if you need to clear minion waves. Heart Bomb will get buffed from all your damage items as well.

Your heal that gives you sustain in lane. Couple this with a life stealing item and [meditation] for infinite lane sustain. This is important as you will normally be laning with a tank or melee bruiser.

If you're going for a more offensive build then you'll want to prioritize this over Share The Love. If your mid you will probably throw more ranks into this but Cupid isn't a real good mid so that shouldn't happen to often. I prioritize one rank at level 3 and then finish it off at the end of my build. Most of the time I use it for escape not attack. Also keep in mind that right after you use it you'll have increased attack speed which buffs your DPS. So if you've just cleared your lane and your going to attack a tower you may consider using it to burst down the tower a little faster. Keep in mind that this will leave you really vulnerable to a gank though.

One of the best team fight ultimates around. Even if your passive isn't charged it'll mesmerize opponents messing up their rhythm. Normally if I'm joining a team fight out of the jungle and I see a swirling melee I'll lay it down immediately. However if it's more of a stalemate face off in mid lane you need to wait for the enemy to commit before laying it down. Remember that if you've hit an opponent with your charged up heart bomb you can double stun them with this.

Second video guide (better audio and full game)
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Third video guide (short game, good example of sustainment)
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First video guide.... (some audio problems)
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Cupid in a ranked game
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Cupid is a great character to play especially if you are focused on team play/support. Thanks for reading my guide, watching my videos, and commenting. Please feel free to agree/disagree with me with your comments below or on my youtube videos. I'll do my best to answer your questions in a timely manner. I'd like to give another shout out to my man Daniel from youtube. I'd also like to thank my wife for watching my sons which made the video portions of this guide possible. Until next time this is Errantsquire saying God bless you and your family, and try not to rage to much ok?