Fun ways to Freya - (#8 is tl;dr) [late 2014 updated]

Freya is by far my favorite god in Smite, and she's one of the gods that can be built just about any way you want to build her. Are some of these ideal? No, but they are fun and different! Building the same thing 300 games in a row because anything else is "trolling" just isn't that appealing.


Ode to the days you could build demonic grip + executioner + whatever you felt like next... but alas the days of hybriding/adc Freya are over...stupid update >:( ... Don't get as grumpy as me about it though, because there are still various fun ways to build her!

Lets get started...

Builds

"Standard"

Standard Freya build. Well rounded with damage, penetration, dps, and burst. Get whatever 6th item you like, and you mostly can't go wrong with this build.
You can't really go wrong with the basic starter - movement speed and decent sustain and a little bit of tankiness, pretty straight forward.
For jungling take the jungle start, obviously, and it's just as straight forward. I'd put a couple of early points into 2 (pulse) but you can max 1 like usual. Set up good ganks with your 3 (banish). For more info on jungling, check out a general jungling guide here on smitefire.

There's a section later in the guide on what penetration item you should build. You should pick up an Obsidian Shard or Spear of the Magus after you finish Grip+Fatalis+Tahuti.

But building the same standard way every game is boring! Lets move on to some more interesting builds...

Holy magic power batman

One of my favorites. This build is focused on having tons and tons of AP, and killing people in 1-3 autos. Not to mention your ulti will absolutely destroy. 240(+35%) x 4.... with ~600 ap thats gonna be a ~1800 damage ult, assuming you land all shots. This build is excellent vs. squishy teams.
If you love rofl-bursting carries, this is the build for you.

Tankey dps

This build should probably be named 'adapt to situation build' - because it's just that. Depending on what your opponents power is, you can beef up accordingly. Generally this build works well when you aren't doing well - and you need to stay alive for more than a couple seconds versus the fed enemy assassins.
Sure your autos won't be wrecking the enemy team, but this build still does decent damage! As long as you land your autos and ulti slaps, you'll still be a threat to the enemy team.
If you're new and don't want to feed, or feel too squishy every game, or the enemies are getting fed and you're going down too fast, this is the build for you.

"QQ we need a tank," Fine, I'll tank.

Well, it's really quite simple. You build as tankey as possible and be the front line for your team. I know Irradiate (1'st skill) is Freya's most damaging skill - but this build isn't about damage. Focus on utility so max your slow and CC. Soak up as much damage as you can in place of your squishies. For actives get team based actives or fist of the gods for more cc.
If you like to tank or just feel like tanking or your allies are complaining about lack of tank, this is the build for you. Not super practical but can be fun.

ALL the attack speed

This build is, obviously, focused on getting as much attack speed as possible and shredding the enemies' health bars with your autos. This build is surprisingly very effective. There isn't much magic power in this build but don't worry - with the 40 damage from Telkhines Ring, along with the high base numbers of your first two skills, this build does TONS of damage for having no magic power in it. Hopefully, using its effectiveness you can finish it off with a Rod of Tahuti and by then you will do way too much damage. The main thing to take from this build is that it's good against tankeys as well as squishies.
If you like on-hit effects, tons of attack speed, or surprising your opponents with ridiculous damage and kiting potential, this is the build for you.
If only you could still build Qin's...

Anti-tank build

Should probably have named this "anti-tank items" because it's basically a list of items you'll want to consider when up against tankey "guardians." Magic resistance shred, flat magic penetration, and percent health are all straight forward. Something to note: attack speed does surprisingly well against tankey opponents. With sufficient penetration, and assuming you can stick to them with autos, you'll shred tanks faster than you'd think.
If the enemy lineup has 2 or more tanks on their lineup, consider at least some of this build's items.

Way too much sustain

This build is the most nichey - and really isn't super useful in many situations. It's certainly not useless - but it's not ideal for all situations. If the enemy lineup consists of a very pokey lineup, such as Ao, Ra, Agni, Thanatos, etc with long range damaging abilities they're just spamming, getting a significant amount of lifesteal will be a must. It would probably do well in assault, where you can't back until you die - it will allow you to stick around for quite a while.

Support

If you're supporting, or "supporting," you're going to want to always start with the "Watcher's gift" starting item and rush Midas boots - buy them as soon as you can. Between these two, you'll get a free 72 gold every minute by doing nothing. In ~35 minutes, that's a free full core item. Plus the extra gold you'll be getting from your allies last hits - you'll be more wealthy than you'll expect.

Actual supporting: buy aura items. Lots of them. Preferably aura items that help give you some power so you're somewhat of a threat to the enemy team. This is a decent build because you'll be helping a lot by just being there, and you'll do a bit of damage yourself. May not be as good as some other supports, but certainly unique and your 3 (banish) will help set up a lot of kills.
"Supporting": Basically building what you'd build if you went mid, just delayed a bit due to less gold income. Still rush the gold per 5 items, they give you a ton of gold! Otherwise you can continue to build whatever offencive items you want, and by 30 minutes in you'll be a pretty big damage threat to the enemy team - a 2nd magic damage carry basically. The only downside to this build is that you may not be very useful for the first third (or half if you're behind) of the game or so.

Actives

Cant go wrong with:

Aegis pendent/amulet (2 seconds of invulnerability)
Purification bead (cleanses cc, reduces cooldowns by a few seconds at max rank)

There are 433858309084 & 1/2 reasons to have Aegis pendent - it can save your hide in many situations. Especially take it if the enemy team consists of gods that have damaging abilities with a warning - what i mean by this is abilities like Ymir and Neith's ultimates - which give you a nice "heads up, youre about to take a lot of damage!" giving you time to pop aegis.

Purification bead is very useful in most situations as well. It combo's well with Aegis, because you can use bead to cleanse yourself of CC to use Aegis to save you from impending doom in the form of damage. It also has a unique use of its own - lowering your cooldowns by a few seconds.
Its an arena game, and everyone's dead except you and an enemy, and 3 tickets left - you beat on each other and oh no your 1 and 2 just went down, gg for sure - wait no! i use bead and bam can finish him off because my cooldowns were up right away. (yeah i know its not exactly a common use but its still there).
Get this if the enemy team has multiple forms of CC, and please don't be a fool and forget to buy bead if there's an enemy Ares!

Not quite as awesome, but still good!

Sprint (lots of extra movement speed for a few seconds)
Fist of the Gods (aoe 1 second stun around you)
Combat blink (blink with a longer cooldown, useable in combat)

Spring is usually a preference thing - I personally don't like it, I'd rather have other actives, but a lot of people take it because it's still a decent escape/chase tool.
If you're using a kite-heavy build, and want some extra mobility to match your enemies, definitely take sprint.

Fist of the Gods is a 1 second aoe stun around you... very useful! The only downside is how close you have to be - it's more of a self peel tool than a go-in/chase tool. Plus it builds out of Hand of the Gods, which is useful in a lane vs. an opponent that loves to push hard and its difficult to match it - or if you're jungling.

Regular blink is meh on Freya, but i suppose it could have its uses. Combat blink on the other hand will be very nice for getting you out of sticky situations. Don't be scared off by its long cooldown - it's certainly worth it if it means not dying, especially in conquest.

You're a team player

Heavenly Agility (big AoE movement speed boost to your whole team)
Girdle of Support (AoE damage buff to your team)
Creeping Curse (AoE enemy god slow)

Heavenly Agility and any item like it in MOBAs, is basically extremely useful - helps your teammates escape, is a huge buff to your team during an engagement/fight. It's also barely off from Sprint, so I'd recommend Heavenly Agility over Sprint if you want movement speed.

I hardly ever see Girdle of Support, probably because it's not that useful until decently late into the game. If you're a team player though, it will be very nice and give your team quite an edge in teamfights.

Creeping curse is just as much hurt to the enemy team as Heavenly Agility is a help to your team. It may not be that great though, because you're ranged and you don't want to be getting too close. Certainly still useful though - especially if you're building tankey enough to get close enough to use it.

Other

Meditation (tons of mana regen and heal)
Teleport (teleports you, duh)
Girdle of might (power and penetration self buff)
Other

Meditation isn't really something I'd recommend, because there are simply better actives. However, if you're new or your opponent is really shoving the lane and you need to be able to stay to keep him from eating towers, it would be very useful.

Teleport is mostly nice for global presence, and defending lanes that are being pushed (especially with how fast towers go down in this game). Pretty straight forward.

Girdle of might is something I'd rarely get, but if you're wanting to power up to do the absolute most damage possible it's obviously decent for that. If you're wrecking in an arena game and realize you haven't gotten any actives because you haven't needed them yet, it would be a decent option. Generally I would prefer more useful actives though.

Any actives not mentioned I'm sure can be used for something specific well - I wanted to list all the main ones though, the ones that you should probably buy most of the time.

Well it's basically all of the above. However one of the main things is that you have more freedom to build whatever in arena. In conquest, you're somewhat confined to what you can build - at least for the first third of the game, due to the laning process (or even jungling), where if you're in arena you can get straight to whatever.

How viable these builds are in competitive? Depends. Any of the more "legit" builds are certainly viable - standard, tankey dps, magic power heavy, even jungle, but depending on the skill of your opponents, they may know how to play against/deny you. (basically don't build tank freya or lifesteal stacking freya in competitive). I honestly think support freya would be a legitimate pick in competitive, partially because people won't expect it/know how to play against it, and partially because shes an awesome god pick in general.

OR
Question: Should I build Obsidian Shard, or Spear of the Magus?

Answer: Yes.

Well, rather, it depends.

The simple answer is that either one will do just fine. If you have a preference, stick with it.

Spear
pros:
-shreds resistances well
-goes well with attack speed
-some flat pen, which does well against low protection enemies
-stacks awesomely with Demonic Grip
cons:
-have to keep stacks on enemies which can fall off
-have to get stacks on enemies, cant be missing autos
-only 40 magic power (compared to the 70 of shard)

Obsidian Shard
pros:
-does better against higher magic protection
-don't have to worry about stacking it, it'll always be the full penetration if you land a hit
-can't really go wrong with this item on a mage
-70 magic power
cons:
-isn't as effective vs low protection enemies
-doesn't have all that much synergy with the rest of your kit


So both are good, but here are some guidelines might help you decide what to build:
-How tankey are they?
-How much attack speed do I have?

These are basically the main questions to ask yourself when deciding between the two. Generally, if you have more attack speed, Spear will be better for you. As in:
-If you have any more than the standard Demonic Grip + Fatalis (3+ attack speed items), you should definitely build Spear.
-If you have only one, or no attack speed items, build Obsidian shard for sure. With really low attack speed it'll be a bit trickier to land 2 quick hits in a row to stack Spear.
-If enemies have no defensive items, Spear will be better than Obsidian Shard, because the flat pen + shred will get through more magic protection than shard.
-If enemies do have a ton of protections though, the shard will probably get through more resistance than Spear.
-If the enemies have some protections, Spear and Grip will shred through it awesomely.
-Shard is probably better in arena (constant AoE fights), Spear is probably better in conquest (somewhat frequent skirmishes/duels, then some big fights)


Conclusion/tl;dr
Stat-wise, in a perfect environment,will probably be an all-around better item for Freya, however it's not better by very much. You really can't go wrong with's simple effectiveness.

This is a work in progress, as stated by the title of this section. I intend on adding more to this guide - just not right now at 5:20am. But i certainly plan to add more in the near future!

If you don't like the guide, let me know why! If I've missed something stupid then feel free to point it out and i'll fix it right away.

not sure if the site is under maintenance or something but it's slowing down my editing and ill probably have to wait to edit