Elite Agent Apollo

This guide is NOT a Pro-Guide!

I'm playing SMITE for quite a long time now, I'm level 30 and you could say I mostly understood the game. I didn't play ranked games yet, because I really don't know which gods I want to master next (I love playing some gods over and over again, to really improve).

I'm new to the role of an ADC and this guide might improve or be corrected by the time, I make a better expirience with other items and builds. All I can say is:

This build works well in non-ranked games (maybe in ranked games too, I don't know) on a non professional level. I wrote this guide all by myself with the impressions I had while playing SMITE.

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UPDATE NOTES
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*01.09.2014:
- Addet a second build, for common Apollo. Kept my personal item choice in the first build though (I still love it). New build will soon come with details.
- Changed Core Build and First Buy. Addet more options for offensive / utility items.

Hello Peeps!

First of all, welcome to my Apollo Guide! I'm not a native speaker, so don't expect a perfect use of english language.

I'm Harleqin and I play SMITE quite from the beginning. I stopped for a while due to the game not beeing attractive for me and having too many bugs, but I came back just in time to see how beautiful SMITE had become. So I started all over again!

First I played Mid- and Sololane a lot, but since me and my friends always needet an ADC, I finally switched to that role. Beside Apollo I play Neith and Xibalanque.

So let's see what Apollo can do!
(Note: Buy Elite Agent Apollo, it's totally worth the money. A handsome british-english agent, flirting and talking with that awesome accent. I LOVE IT!)

As everyone should know the skills of Apollo, let's talk about WHY did I make these item choices:


First I will tell you why I choose to buy purification beads at the beginning.
It's quite simple: to avoid early ganks or CC chains that will kill you. Yes, you can slide out with The Moves but it is really tricky and needs to be well placed.
For example I like to get myself out of CC with Purification Beads and check how low the enemys have dropped, so I could eventually slide in with The Moves to start a counter attack.
Purification Beads saved my life so often early on, I nearly always take them from the beginning, if the enemy team has some serious hard CC. I like to stay slippery!

Ok, so let's get to the items:

For sure the best starting item for any ADC out there. You gain health and mana for every successful last hit and also while hitting minions or champions. This item gives you AD and sustain!

Except in arena game mode, I think this is the best choise. There isn't much to explain, you have to choose between cooldown reduction ( Ninja Tabi) and penetration ( Warrior Tabi). I feel like the early penetration does a noticible amount of damage, especially on the tanky people on the enemy's team.

This is not too hard to explain: it gives you loads of AD and lifesteal, again (like Death's Toll) you are rewardet for successful lasthitting. Do you need more motivation? It gives power to your attacks and adds some decent survivability. I buy it first, even before I finish Warrior Tabi, so I can get the stacks up.

I really like to buy this item after finishing Devourer's Gauntlet and Warrior Tabi.
The point for me is quite simple: I love the fast and slippery playstyle you can do with Apollo and after you have stacked your Devourer's Gauntlet you have a lot of AD to make use of Hastened Fatalis.
The key is, to hit nearly every single auto attack on your enemy, so you loose your movement speed penalty and even run faster for 1 second. But if you miss, your bonus movement speed is gone really fast. Still I feel beeing more mobile, fast and slippery with this item, able to travel very fast and do a lot of hit an run, what in my opinion is Apollo's great strengh.
This item also gives a boost to Apollo's passive Audacity, which gives you the advantage of using it more often. The more attack speed you have, the more often Audacity triggers and gives you a massive bonus to outdamage your enemys.

After you have gotten your core build, it's decision time. I will show you my personal choices:


This item gives you both, damage and attack speed. So again you get Audacity ready more often, which results in more overall damage. At this point of the game (you might be somewhere in midgame now), your opponents start to build serious defenses, your enemy bruisers and tanks are getting really annoying by now. So the penetration on The Executioner comes in handy here! You will feel the difference with and without penetration, just try it.
Why do I take The Executioner and not Titan's Bane? It's quite simple. Apollo is a very auto attack depending champion when it comes to dealing damage, so the on-hit-penetration of The Executioner works overall better for your skillset, because it also gives you tons of attack speed (as mentioned above).

I think there is not much explanation needet to this one. Rage ist just an awesome item, giving you some power and highers your crit chance with every successful auto attack that did not deal critical damage. If you buy this one, you get your burst going! Pew, pew pew!
Note: You bought all those attack speed items before - happy crit!

Just another awesome must-have item. Your crits deal increased damage and Deathbringer is of course the best combo with Rage. With both items together you crit more often and your crits hurt as hell. Do you want more?
Note: I would recommed to always buy both items together, since they just fit perfectly. If items were able to marry, these two totally should!

These are my prefered item choices on Apollo. This item build is an idea for you guys, it is simply the way I can get the most out of Apollo, while playing him my way: fast and furious!

Now, I expect a lot of flame and posts about the missplacement of Hastened Fatalis. Yes, you are partly rigth with all your comments and I would agree with you on any other god!

So calm down an listen:

In my opinion Hastened Fatalis is just perfect as third item for Apollo. It gives you movement speed and aditional roaming potential, also the ability to dodge your enemy's shots very easily, while hitting them. Yes, you won't hit as hard as with an additional item that gives you more power (like Deathbringer) but your mobility greatly increases and this is, where you skill kicks in.
With Hastened Fatalis you can be Neo and you freaking feel like Neo. If you use it right, it will bring you big advantages together with Audacity.

Here comes the Active Item section!

It will not get as big as the item section, but I think it's worth to talk a bit about the differences and when to choose what best.

I choose this skill, when there is mostly hard CC on the enemy team, such as Ares, Kumbhakarna, Athena, Fenrir or Hades. In case you ask yourself: can I use Greater Aegis, too?
Greater Purification ist better than Greater Aegis in these cases of hard cc, because you don't stop moving. You cleanse the CC, use your escape ability and you're faster out of the danger zone than you have ever imagined.
Greater Aegis makes you stop your movement and you stay in place. Yes, you're invulnerable, but after invulnerability fades, you're pretty much dead, because your enemys just stay around you and wait for the kill.
Aegis Pendant makes no sense here, as you can't use it while affected by CC.

This one here is pretty much made for enemys like Poseidon, Ao Kuang, Apollo, Thor and so on (I think you get where this is going). Yes, they have a hard CC too, but mostly they will use it after they approach you, because their best rotation tells them to spare the CC for the middle of the fight, e.g. to prevent someone from escaping. So while they try to blow you up with their ultimates, use your Aegis Pendant an run.
If you're a lucky *****, one of your teammates will help you. Then turn around again after the effect of your Aegis Pendant and shoot your attacker in the face! PEW PEW **********ER!

There are only a few cases so far, where I use this item. See the list of gods above and mix them up as you like it, to create a hard and soft CC enemy team of hell. Mostly I buy Greater Purification and Greater Aegis together in such heavy match ups. When the enemys are extremly good at combining ultimates like Release The Kraken! and Anvil of Dawn you should consider to buy Greater Aegis and pray, your team will get them off of you quickly.
Also I would buy this item when playing versus a good Loki or Serqet, as you WILL be in CC while they ripp your *** off. Use Greater Aegis fast and you will see they need to back off, as you blocked their nice combos with your invulnerability.

I like to use this in combination with Greater Purification as hard escape, or when the enemys have a lot of gods that can chase you up easiliy, like Nemesis, Mercury, Sun Wukong and others. That's where I just escape through the wall, and that's it. Combat Blink can also be used to cut off enemy's escapes through the jungle.

Other active items you might ask about:

As I build Hastened Fatalis I don't use this skill usually. If you disagree on Hastened Fatalis with me, this would be a good choice for any ADC, since you are significant faster while still auto attacking. Greater Sprint can make the difference between kill and no kill!

I don't find this item very bad. When there isn't much CC on the enemy's team, this is a viable choice in my opinion. It gives you a heavy burst on damage and penetration, even tanks will be killed easily with this extra power buff.
Note: The duration is time based, which is great on Apollo, because you are able to do more hits in time with Audacity.

Don't use this in fight, since any damage taken interrupts the effect. Still, this active item is a viable choice for backdooring, splitpushing or a heavy pushing team composition. It also works very well with Across The Sky. You can travel all over the map and push turrets, while your enemys can't follow up that fast.

Now is the time to try out the item section by yourself!

I'll update this guide soon on chapters like "Gameplay" and "Early Game". So you don't just have the items and skilling order, but also a red line you can follow while playing Apollo!

For now I would be grateful for any response to this guide. Feel free to criticize my build choices or make better suggestions, but please, do it like a civilized human. Flames like: "OMG you suck!!!" are not very productive and won't help anybody.

Thanks for reading my guide to Apollo so far, stay tuned for updates!