Valkyrie's Calling
Though Freya utilizes basic attacks, she gains a great amount of utility from having cooldown reduction. This build favors that reduction over sheer power, reducing the cooldown on her main forms of damage, Pulse and Irradiate, to 6 seconds.
This allows Freya to launch powerful ranged AoE attacks, or even stronger single target ranged attacks via the
Irradiate+
Pulse combination, with only a one second downtime instead of the usual 6. This prevents enemies from taking advantage of her lack of ranged attacks, allowing Freya to engage the enemy from a distance consistently instead of having to wait on cooldowns.
This build also gives
Valkyrie's Discretion far more utility, allowing it to be used as an escape from enemy ultimates, such as
Hades'
Pillar of Agony,
Cupid's
Fields Of Love,
Ares'
No Escape, and other abilities with a delayed or soft CC effect while simultaneously nuking the enemy god.
Playstyle
During the early game you'll be hitting things much more slowly and for less damage than a damage oriented build, as you won't have as much attack speed. This is, however, rewarded with an early -40% cooldown reduction which will allow you to spam your
Irradiate and
Pulse.
Once you hit mid game you've gotten your
Shoes of Focus and
Chronos' Pendant, and should now be building
Hastened Fatalis or
Demonic Grip depending on how you've been doing. This is where you'll hit your stride as you're finally getting your attack speed up. With the newly found attack speed increase in combination with your reduced cooldowns, you will start to have a large impact in fights.
It's time for the late game, and your
Polynomicon will be putting in a ton of work thanks to the large amount of power you gain from
Rod of Tahuti. Now that you've reached this point anything without huge amounts of defense is going to go down within seconds as long as you manage to hit your mark.
Freya remains squishy throughout the entire game, but once the mid-late game starts she begins to excel. Even with less damage than the usual Freya builds, you'll be able to cause huge amounts to damage once you've hit your late game stride. You'll need to be cautious against teams with heavy crowd control,
Greater Purification is a must.
Valkyric Destruction
As the name of the build implies, it's all about destroying your enemies. This build focuses purely on damage with the only utility item being one that allows you to stick to your target. Once you get your third item you'll notice a huge power spike, and once you've finished your core you'll be putting out some very good damage.
Playstyle
In the early game you'll want to farm farm farm. You won't be able to secure kills yet, unless your opponent just lets you hit them. Freya's early game isn't too strong so you'll want to get through it as quickly as possible. Once you've gotten your
Shoes of the Magi and
Hastened Fatalis you'll start being able to severely damage people and possibly get kills. Once you hit level 5 and have these two items your fighting potential becomes fairly strong.
Once you've reached mid game and finished your
Demonic Grip you'll be a force to be reckoned with. With good coordination between you and your team, and skillful use of your abilities you'll be able to seriously damage or even kill enemies with your
Pulse+
Irradiate combo. If you aren't able to secure kills with that combo alone,
Valkyrie's Discretion will likely finish the job.
Now we enter the late game. You've finished your
Spear of the Magus and
Rod of Tahuti. This is where you shine. You'll have insane damage output with your ability combos and the protection shredding of
Demonic Grip and
Spear of the Magus, and be able to outbox a fair amount of gods in the game.
Freya lacks any form of anti crowd control outside of her ultimate, and against CC heavy teams she'll need to buy
Greater Purification. You'll need to be able to land your skill shots with this build as well, as once your
Pulse or
Irradiate wear off they'll have a significant cool down which will make you vulnerable to attack.
Active Items
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Aegis Pendant is a great for absorbing burst damage from enemies, however it's extremely situational. This will mostly be used against teams with a lot of burst and low crowd control. It can also be used in situations when you don't quite know what to buy. This item has replaced Greater Aegis due to changes that made Greater Aegis un-usable while being stunned or silenced.
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Weakening Curse is an amazing item against teams with strong heals, as well as good for team fights. All enemies in range are slowed by a huge amount making their escape extremely difficult and all of your attacks easier to land.
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Heavenly Agility is a great item for escaping or chasing targets down, while it may lack the ability to slow multiple enemies it will allow you to catch any would have been out of Weakening Curse's range. High base movement speed from Shoes of the Magi or Shoes of Focus and Hastened Fatalis along with Heavenly Agility's boost makes you near uncatchable and inescapable. It will also give your team a movement speed boost, giving your whole team stronger chase or escape potential.
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Greater Purification is invaluable against teams with large amounts of CC. It removes any cc effects while giving you immunity to new ones for three seconds. This is one of those items that can singlehandedly turn a fight from a defeat into a victory.
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Situational Items
Due to the necessity of every item to make Freya builds work, it's very rare you'll ever replace an item. The exceptions to this rule are 1v1s or when facing certain types of teams. If they have a ton of CC and you're being locked down? Magi's Blessing. A lot of slows that are preventing you from escaping or chasing?
Winged Blade. There are a variety of great items that can help you snag a kill or survive longer against certain opponents, and you'll definitely want to consider them when playing the game.
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Magi's Blessing |
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Magi's Blessing is an item you will very rarely ever need, however against Arachne and Loki it's extremely useful. It will automatically cleanse their stuns and allow you to immediately counter attack or flee if need be.
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Witchblade is great against physical basic attack gods. It lowers their attack speed by 15% and their power by 25. It also provides movement speed, which when combined with the slow from Pulse will allow you to keep an enemy at a distance or make it harder for them to escape from you.
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Winged Blade is a very niche item, however when it's needed it can be very useful. This is great against an opponent or against teams that heavily rely on slows. It can be very useful against Nemesis, Loki, any other gods with abilities that slow you. It's also an option to consider when facing gods that like to build Frostbound Hammer such as Bakasura, or against gods that like to build Gem of Isolation such as Posiedon. Ironically, this item can be used against Freya as well.
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Hide of the Nemean Lion is a great defensive item against basic attack gods like Mercury, Loki, and various Assassins that depend on this method of killing as it punishes their offense by reflecting damage. Large amounts of lifesteal render the damage this item deals nearly worthless, so be cautious of using this against hunters who almost always have lifesteal in their builds.
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Obsidian Shard grants 70 magic power and 33% magic penetration, making it a great item to get through an opponent's defenses. If you aren't getting decent damage on enemies this is certainly a great item to consider. It will also allow you to kill objectives significantly faster, so be sure to pick it up of that's an issue for you or your team.
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Spear of the Magus gives only 40 magic power and 15% penetration, but for every hit you'll reduce your target's magic defense by 10+10% for 5 seconds, up to 2 stacks for a total of 20+20%. Thanks to Irradiate and Pulse making your basic attacks count as abilities you can maintain this debuff throughout the entire fight with your target. This item won't allow you to kill objectives faster like Obsidian Shard will, however it's great against teams with multiple bruisers/tanks due to Freya's ability to keep its passive stacked on multiple targets throughout a fight.
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Mystical Mail is good to use against teams that use ability based physical damage. This will allow you to get free damage from simply being on the battlefield. This item has limited use, as Freya gets more benefit from Midgardian Mail or Hide of the Nemean Lion when 1v1ing Assassins or Hunters, and will rarely build any of these items outside of 1v1s. That being said, this item is still worth mentioning.
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Midgardian Mail is strong against Assassins and Hunters, it allows you to slow their basic attacks and movement speed making it easier to box them or escape from them. It provides a very fair amount of health and physical protection as well, though it does come with the downside of only having a chance of working instead of working on demand.
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Hey Zanryuu,
Great guide. Upvoted. I'm thinking of making an arena guide for her, and I think my general build (mentioned in more detail in my assault guide) is similar to yours overall.
Since you probably have a ton more experience with her than I do, wondering how you might differ a general build for an arena match. I'm trying to decide if at least 1 CDR item would be worth it, or if 1 protection item (e.g.
I start out the same way your Valkyric Destruction does...
So, final 2 items. Depending on how people are building,
With regard to your guide, if you like your setup right now, more power to you. But since there are large chunks of text, have you thought of using spoilers? Check out one of my guides to see how I employ it myself. Might make it look a bit cleaner.
With regard to the 1/2 combo, you might go into a bit of detail to how you can start with
Finally, I think you only mention
Thanks a lot, I appreciate your opinion of my guide. I was worried about my guide having too many words when I first created it, I always brought it up when I asked the people I know what they thought of my guide so it's good to have feedback on that. I'll definitely work on including the defensive potential of Hastened Fatalis when I have some time to really get in there and edit my guide, since there are a few other things I want to change as well.
As for your question, in Arena I consider Shoes of the Magi, Hastened Fatalis, Demonic Grip, and Rod of Tahuti (with Rod being the 6th item) core items. For the remaining two slots I usually build Spear of the Magus and Bancroft's Talon/Pythagoreom's Piece. I'd recommend keeping Spear of the Magus for dealing with warriors and gaurdians. Spirit Robe would be great against CC heavy teams, especially if it's magic AND physical damage that's taking you out. If it's mostly physical, consider a Breastplate of Valor or Hide of the Nemean Lion if they have two or more basic attacking gods. If you want a little bit of cooldown and some extra sustain after kills the new Mail of Renewal is pretty good. If magic is taking you out consider trying a Stone of Gaia.
I personally prefer full damage, but if you want a bit more utility then Chronos Pendant is good. I'm not a fan on Polynomicon on Freya anymore, since it's harder to confirm that hit after banish and you can't hold the proc from Poly, as once you've used your steroids if you don't attack you're just wasting them. If you want to be a jerk, Gem of Isolation is a great item. It basically ensures that anyone without anti-slow can't get away from you unless they have an escape. If it's got Gem of Isolation in it, call it the Doombringer build 'cause there's not really much anyone can do to get away from that kind of slowing power. It's easily one of my favorite things to build on her.
Great guide. Upvoted. I'm thinking of making an arena guide for her, and I think my general build (mentioned in more detail in my assault guide) is similar to yours overall.
Since you probably have a ton more experience with her than I do, wondering how you might differ a general build for an arena match. I'm trying to decide if at least 1 CDR item would be worth it, or if 1 protection item (e.g.
I start out the same way your Valkyric Destruction does...
So, final 2 items. Depending on how people are building,
With regard to your guide, if you like your setup right now, more power to you. But since there are large chunks of text, have you thought of using spoilers? Check out one of my guides to see how I employ it myself. Might make it look a bit cleaner.
With regard to the 1/2 combo, you might go into a bit of detail to how you can start with
Finally, I think you only mention
With the first build here, with
I personally prefer
There was also a
Also ive been using
My friends also tell me shes a Mid lane.. And its pretty rough. Ive been pit against Poseidon and Anubis. That nonsense dont feel right :/
Actually that's what I do these days, at the time of writing the guide I primarily did 1v1 and I used the same build in Conquest because I enjoyed the ability to take towers easily. It was written before the changes to
Not a problem, good guide, thanks for taking the time to write all of this. +1
Have you ever thought about getting
Actually that's what I do these days, at the time of writing the guide I primarily did 1v1 and I used the same build in Conquest because I enjoyed the ability to take towers easily. It was written before the changes to
Thanks for your reply! :)
In the meantime, I had plenty of time to test that by myself and confirm what you said! :D
Awesome! Good to hear you're enjoying Freya and interested in maximizing her potential. Freya is bae yo
In the meantime, I had plenty of time to test that by myself and confirm what you said! :D