Heavenly He(a)l for everyone

Lore: Hel is the goddess of underwwworld in the norse mythology, and by some reason, also the goddess of prosperity (weird combo, though Osiris was somewhat similar in the Egyptian mythology). Her split personality is the reason behind her so different "attributes", when her pure side is on the front, she's blessing whoever she deems worthy, while when her dark side takes controll, she destroys whatever she deems unworthy of staying where it was.

Role: Hel is one of the top healers in the game, and used to be the #1 annoyance of joust in season 2. Her AOE heals can affect multiple targets, therefor she has an easy time for sustaining her team, while dealing reasonable damage too.
She's dissed by many players, but the biggest reason behind that dissing is simply that most people don't know how to use her well. Hel has 2 very strong, and dependable playstyles.
1: high deffense with high sustain, but low damage. This is what you should focus on hen you play assault, or some other MOTD where base healing is disabled.
2: sustain spammer glasscannon with reasonable damage, but low deffense. This is what'd make you a beast if you master, especially in solo lane, and arena, but it'd make you a great asset for joust as well, with the current map just as much as the old one.

I hope this little introduction of what she is got you fired up enough to try her out, it's really fun playing her, she's one of my favourite healer/sustain type goddesses in smite, right alongside Aphrodite.

Stance Attunement - passive
- basicly a bonus 20% damage/healing for whatever stance she's in (obviously healing
bonus in light, and damage bonus in dark stance)

Decay / Restoration - 1
- Decay: a massive skillshot with nice amount of damage, it stops at the first target
hit, and it can only be used in dark stance
- Restoration: a reasonably big (same dmg as Decay without the 20% bonus from dark
stance) skillshot, also stops at the first target hit. But it also heals Hel for
up to 230 HP. One of the best ways to get the kill in light stance if you want an
achievement for killing the same opponent in both of your stances.

Hinder / Clense - 2
- Hinder: a 3 seconds long protection debuff and slow that you can put on opponents
in a small AOE. Useful for trying to delay incoming enemy attacks by putting
this on them, they tend to wait it out and attack only when it expired.
- Cleanse: just as the name sais. Hel cleanses her allies (can includde herself) from
enemy crowd controll effects, and giving 1.25 sec crowd controll immunity as well.
if you cleanse 3 of your teammates from being stunned, you get an achievement.

Repulse / Inspire - 3
- Repulse: a bbig nice AOE attack around Hel, that can hit hard. One of your highest
damage sources, especially that it has the best magic power scaling in Hel's kit
too (70%)
- Inspire: This is one of your introduction skills. Your heal. In the same size of an
AOE as Repulse, you now not hit your opponents, but heal your team (yourself
included) for a nice amount of health (up to 180 + 40% of your magical power)

Switch Stances - 4 - "Ultimate"
- were you wondering how you got into one stance or the other? Did you think it was
rng? The answer is: you spawn in light stance after you die, and in dark stance
when the game starts. With this ability, you can change between the two. The best
part of this ability is, that it has almost no cooldown (2sec) meaning you can swap
between your stances all you want.
- Dark Stance: Hel gains up to 60 magical power (beside the 20% dmg increase in her
passive)
- Light Stance: Hel gainst mp5 (up to 35) that can help her stay in lane longer.

A good healer has to look out for 3 very important stat in their build
1: the most important: CDR. If you want to heal effectively, have at least 30%
2: the one that makes your heals bigger: magic power
3: the one you'll need because the opponents will target you: deffense (mostly health and physical protection)
(4: in earlyy game: mp5, because you'll run out of your mana all the time)



There are some items that can make healing a lot more effective. Such items are:

Chronos Pendant: 20% cdr (that's a lot) and 75 magic power, also 25 mp5 that can help a lot in early game.

Rod of Asclepius: 75 magical power (same as Chronos pendant), 10% movement speed and 250 hp so the opponents wwon't be able to catch you as easily, and also the aura of this item increases your heals by 25% (that's a lot)

Lotus Crown: 60 magical power (nice, even if less than the other 2), 30 physical protection (not bad, can be very useful against assassins and hunters), 20 mp5 (extremely helpful in early game, but nice to have in late game too). But the real strength of this item is in it's passive. Since your heals are AOEs, why not improve them with a nice protection buff? Sure you should.

Brestplate of Valor: 20% cdr (still a lot), 75 physical protection (that's quite a lot) and 300 mana that can be extremely important, since bigger mana pool means more time in lane.

These 4 items are the ost common picks you see on most of the healing specific gods in the game, especially in Assault, where they really have to specialise for this, since they don't have base healing.

Basic rules of healing:
-1: Stay alve.
- it might sound weird, but it's very simple. While you're alive, you can heal your team, and keep them alive too. If you sacrifice yourself for 1 team member, than none of your teammates will get heals until you respawn, and that can affect the course of a group fight a lot more than simply being 4 vs 5.

-2: Time your heals.
- don't spam your heals off cd, make sure you have them aviable when you have to use them the most, and heal with them when your team needs it. Try to keep yourself on a high enough hp with your 1, so you can use your 3 to focus on your team.

-3: Full HP is a nice amount, hatever number it might be.
- if your teammate or you yourself lack hp, and you're sure that noone will jump on you from the sides, you should heal them back up ven if they only lacked a little amount.

-4: Pre-heal -> Don't. Don't produce waste healing.
- Since your heals as Hel are not HoTs like as Aphrodite, Terra, or Ra, you shouldn't even touch your heal before your team takes damage, ven if it's plain as day that Zeus is gonna ult on your face. Wait until at least 1, preferably 2 strikes of dmg has aalready hit you before you heal, otherise it'd go to waste.

with this much info, you should be able to perform as a good healer.

If you chose to play as a healer, you might find yourself facing one huge problem.
"How am I supposed to deal reasonable amount of damage while I have healer items, not 5 100+ magic power ones."
The answer is simple: you should have one of those too. I'd recommend Rod of Tahuti, since it gives lots of magic power (the most, if we don't count stacking ones)
With the items from the healing build, you should have about 135-210 magic power as a start, even with only a single high magic damage item like Rod of Tahuti, your magic damage can already go up to 260-335 + 25%, and that's not counting that you'll also get bonus 20% from your passive if you attack in dark stance. Sure your damage output won't be as high, as Zeus, Anubis, or other non sustain based mages, but it'll be high enough, so you can clip their hp away while keeping yourself healed.

I've already described why the items I listed in the "Healing" part are so important, now for the optional items.


If you want to go for surviveability, you should build yourself some max HP. For this, you have 2 well used methods to chose from.
1: start building and stacking Warlock's Sash as fast as you can before you build anything else. It can be very powerful if you manage to farm enough to stack it full (recommended for solo lane and such)
2: Etheral Staff/Hide of the Urchin. These items give ****ton of deffensive potential, and can make you prettyy much immortal wwithout hving Sash too.

(3: build Sash early game, and in the endgame, build Etheral Staff too for being unkillable, but that wayy you'll lack damage a lot)



if you wanna go for offense (such as: you have good team who doN't need so much healing)
you have many ways. Such as chosing some of the items I listed as optional offensive items. the more n the left in that list they are, the more I'd recommend them. Warlok's Sash is good for damage too though, so building it early game is completely valid if you don't mind missing out on early game godlike heals.