Janus God of Portals and Transitions [Conquest]

Hello there, I have been playing smite since mid season 3 or so. Currently I am diamond 2 in conquest and unqualified in other modes(dislike joust if not with friends and duel). My preferred roles are Support, Solo and Mid in that order. I decided to start doing some guides due to the fact that there is a shortage of them and since smitefire helped me out when I was starting out so might as well return the favor.

NOTE: All of my guides are for conquest mainly, builds can be used in other game modes obviously. Do not take the guide for granted! I encourage you to discuss and find better build than from what I have putted up there.

Pros:
-High Mobility
-High damage during the late game
-Good utility for his team
-Global Ultimate

Cons:
-Relatively squishy
-Focused if his portal is down
-Short range(beside his ult)

Passages> His passive is quite simple, every time you go through your Portal(ones from ult as well) or over a Threshold you gain an extra 15% of magical scaling on your damaging abilities.

Portal> Your main escape ability and ability to get around, pay a close attention when you use it, portaling into enemy mid and jungler isn't usually a great idea.

Unstable Vortex>Your main damaging and clear ability(he doesn't have anything else to clear duh!), if you hit enemies where both of vortexes meat they will be damaged by an extra 20%.

Threshold>Makes your or your teammates go fast or slow the enemies.

Through Space and Time> No, this is not a 360 no scope thing to spam, it's a global ultimate that allows you to quickly rotate from mid to any of the sidelanes or to wherever the team fight is occurring. Early game the ability deals almost no damage at all so having it used as a way of transportation in early game is recommended, mid to late game once you have your core items you will be able to start doing some damage with it, you can use this ability to get into the team fight trying to snipe someone and instantly portaling and following up with Unstable Vortex and using your Portal to get out of any threat and wait for your cooldowns to come back on.

For Janus depending on whether enemy team has a lot of dive potential on you or not we either can go Warlock's Staff or Book of Thoth, Warlock's Staff is recommend for those that are either new to the game or god or the enemy team has a lot of dive potential on you. The obvious disadvantage of Warlock's Staff is that it doesn't offer a huge power spike in early game and it takes time to get stacked, but once stacked you get that huge HP benefits and still a decent amount of power. While Book of Thoth on the other hand offers a better power spike in the early game even if not stacked but makes your quite susceptible to ganks. The reason why we are going Shoes of the Magi over Shoes of Focus is because if you follow the build and get Chronos' Pendant and Soul Gem you will have maxed cooldown with Potion of Magical Might. Chronos' Pendant is because Janus benefits from the cooldown plus the extra MP5 allows him to spam his abilities in team fights without having to worry about running out of mana. Soul Gem cooldown but more importantly you proc the passive every time you go over Threshold or through your Portal Heal is really nice but the damage is just incredible. The rest of items are really situational Divine Ruin obviously into healing compositions, Etheral Staff if you are looking to chuch their frontline constantly, Soul Reaver is good for the burst, the sheer power after the buff is really good, you might even look to pick it up instead of Book of Thoth and try to experiment a bit with the builds, Magi's cloack having an extra pair of beads is always nice, considering you are relatively short ranged and have to get up close. Obsidian Shard is usually a pen item to go tho, it's really good for frontliners and the defense on the carries is neglectable.

Early Game>Janus isn't really that great in the early game, you will be looking just to farm and farm some more, rotating to those xp camps in the background since your mobility allows you to easily outfarm the enemy mid laner as long as you don't give up every rotation of mid harpies to him or he manages to get some kills. You can look to use your ult towards the duo lane if the enemy duo overly agresses or if there is a kill potential.

Mid Game>You will most likely have either your Warlock's Staff or Book of Thoth stacked, Shoes of the Magi and Chronos' Pendant. You will start doing some damage, but you will still be mainly looking to keep farming.

Late Game>Now is the time where you shine, your damage will skyrocket at this point and you can most likely one shot squishies with your Portal into Unstable Vortex combo or even with that good old snipe with Through Space and Time. At this point you will be playing more as an assassin, get in throw your combo and portal out, repeat. My advice is to keep holding the walls if you need to teleport out in case situation gets too hot for you and keep poking enemies around the corner.

Janus is a fun god to play, probably one of those that never get boring, so keep up farming till late game or until you don't get some of your items online, help your teammates with portals and have fun sniping.

Thank you for reading the guide I hope you have learned something, as always if you have any suggestions on improving the guide feel free to let me know.

Good luck!