Khepri, Fighter of the Night-Man

Personally, I've taken a liking to Egyptian Guardians, not sure exactly why it works like that, but hey. If you feel the same you should check out my guide for Geb!. A lot of my philosophies for building will be the same or similar, but there Khepri and Geb do function quite differently. Please Stand-by if you are interested my guide on the third Egyptian Guardian, Sobek.

One thing that I know needs to be addressed is the lack of boots in my build. You might be thinking that I just forgot to put them in, but the reality is that I didn't. Take a look at the building strategy section to see my reasoning there if you want, it'll be under the third item

I felt that I should also throw in the formula for how protections mitigate damage in this section so that it is easy to find and might make a little more sense.
The formula is 100/X+100 where X is the number of protections that you have. If you have 100 protections, it is 100/100+100 or 100/200, or 1/2. this means you take 1/2 the damage. This means that 200 protections is not double the damage mitigation of 100 protections as one might think. With 200 protections the formula is 100/200+100 or 100/300, which says that you only take one third of the damage. This works in such a way that you cannot become infinitely tanky in one certain damage source. At max protections, 325, the formula is 100/325+100 or 100/425, meaning you take a little less than 1/4 or the damage done. This does not factor in penetration, simply shows the way that protections work in the game. This isn't my work, it comes from The word of Thoth which I got through a link on a reddit post by Flareb00t. Not only does it explain protections, but most, if not all, other mechanics as well.

Pros
Great at helping allies escape
Decent damage output
Really annoying CC
Revival of allies
Sounds and looks awesome
Can prove quite dominant in lane
Largest hitbox in game, for bodyblocking

Cons
Poor team-fight presence for a guardian
Lower potential for kills
Little to no real escape
Being so thicc makes body blocking him easy

Weaknesses

Executes: These abilities are Bad News Bears for Khepri. Not only do executes provide an easy way to finish off a tank late game, but they also ignore the effects of your ultimate. This in turn gives Khepri the big sad because his friend died right in front of him.

Hunters: Hunters can cause problems for most parties on your team, but Khepri in particular can be rather susceptible to it. Not only is he really fat and really easy to hit, but his abilities can't really do much to secure his own escape. Even on the aggressive side of tings, if you grab a hunter with Abduct, you are basically givng them 0-skill needed free basics. Not fun for you.

Cernunnos: Specifically Cernunnos counters Khepri, because not only does he get free basics, his do an extra 25% damage when within melee range, making them hurt, real bad.

Assassins: If you've ever been shredded by an assassin, you should understand. If you haven't, they hurt, bad. Especially for big beetles with no great way to get away from them. Yay! Same as the hunters too, if you decide to abduct them, well... prepare to feel the hurt.

Counters

Channeled abilities: There are many gods in the game with channeled abilities: Bacchus, Cerberus, Anubis, and Bellona just to name a few. All of these can be force cancelled early by Khepri, thus stopping mass damage, and in the case of Bacchus, a stun as well.

Kukulkan: For the most part, all of Kuku's abilities are very easy to protect your team from with a use of your ultimate, Scarab's Blessing. There are some other good mages for this as well, but Kuku relying on tick damage and two abilities that I believe can be telegraphed easily makes it fairly simple to save an ally.

Full disclaimer, this is basically a carbon copy of what I have in my guide for Geb, just with some minor changes to work with the nuances between Khepri and Geb. That said, let's jump into it!

Preface
Just below, in the Items section, I've laid out just about every item I consider building on a regular basis, you'll notice that there's a wide variety of items from physical and magical defense to counter-building and damage. One of the biggest things about Geb is his late-game presence. As such, if you can build him up to that properly, you should perform very well, or at least you shouldn't be easy to kill. I intend to tell you how to prepare yourself for most given situations.

First and foremost you are a guardian. Your job is to keep your team alive. As a Khepri, you have a few different ways to go about doing that. You've got some really nasty single target CC to help out, and a nice root for small areas. The real bread and butter of Khepri is his ultimate. The best thing you can do to get your ally out of a rough situation is pop and ult and watch them die, or rather, walk away from the fight so they respawn on you somewhere safe. At that point, you want your CDR at 40%, you want to have some good auras out for your team, and you wanna be able to absorb a lot of damage.

What to buy

Starting out
For me, the first question always comes into the first item I buy before leaving base. I hightly reccommend that you buy Guardian's Blessing as it gives a ton of helpful benefits: Health, defense, regeneration, and even gold. From there, I always like to build up to some CDR and protections, but there are a few relatively cheap items that can do that for you. Those being Breastplate of Valor, Genji's Guard, and Shogun's Kusari. In general, I always build one of these items first, but which one? Try to assess the enemy team. For the most part you'll have an enemy hunter and guardian against you, but not every team works like that. Sometimes you will have a warrior and a hunter, other times you will get a kill lane, or one of the few magical ADCs. If you can anticipate who you are getting it makes it a lot easier to survive the first few minutes.

My experience says that if there is a magical god in your lane, build up to either Genji's Guard or Shogun's Kusari. Most hunter's don't do that much damage to you, I even find that they tend not to shoot at you for whatever reason, so long as you aren't trying to punch them to death anyway. Another reason that I like to start this way is the difference in first tier items. If you opt to go for magical protections the first tier Enchanted Kusari will, for an extra 50 gold, give 5 MP5, which is huge considering the mana pool of 190 at level 1. It'll start you out the game with an extra 10 MP5 when combined with Guardians Blessing, which yields an abilities worth of mana roughly every 25 seconds. Which will certainly net you more than buying a first tier Breastplate and a mana potion. The breastplate is going to be more helpful against a completely physical lane though, as it will give you some physical protections, and once you get it built up more, MP5 as well, also a 20% CDR instead of 10%

If you choose to build up to magical defenses, you are still left with a two way split. You can opt for the extra defenses and CDR of Genji's Guard or the attack speed and CCR of Shogun's Kusari. More times than not I go for Shogun's Kusari, it helps you clear waves on your own quite a bit, as well as really helping your ADC start to do more damage. A 20% boost in attack speed is roughly equivalent to one item for your ADC, which is huge early on when they still attack rather slowly. That said, Genji's guard till shouldn't be discredited if you need some extra defense and the CDR on its passive could be potentially very helpful, 3 seconds is a long time to wait for your abilities to come off cooldown

Second item
The second item isn't quite as situational as the first, but there is still some variation to be had. As my first item will usually end up being Shogun's Kusari, I want to build up to some physical defenses. Particularly so if the enemy jungle is physical, which they most often will be. If you feel that you and your ADC are performing admirably in lane already and don't need any extra health sustain, I would say go into a breastplate of valor. This combined with either Shogun's Kusari or Genji's Guard will net you 60-70 physical and magical protections as well as 30% CDR right from the get-go. It's also at this point that mana should not really be a problem as you start to build up a TON of MP5.

If you would rather have some extra sustain, go for a Sovereignty. It will give both you and your ADC quite a bit of regeneration at 5 health per second as well as giving you a total of 60 protections, and nearby allies another 15 to work with. Similarly to Breatplate of Valor, Sovereignty will give you a very admirable boost to your defense, but it does lack the impressive 20% CDR that Breastplate of Valor has. Really your choice here is between ability spam and longevity.

Third Item with a Splash of Controversy!
For your third item, things really start to open up as far as what to build. If you are asking the question "Why haven't you built boots yet?" Do that now. I find they just set you back if you build them earlier. Usually, I don't actually build boots for a couple of reasons. First, they are worth about 60-70% or another defensive item in gold, second Roll Out has great mobility on it, only a couple of gods can properly chase you once you get going. Third, that 1500 gold speed potion. Late game it is an inefficient use of your gold to buy boots and sell them later. Lastly, if you're slower than the rest of your team, you are likely to draw more fire. Nobody want to die, but it tends to be important that late game you target one or two of the damage dealers on the team. Well, that shouldn't be you (I've gotten top damage with 0 power before, its weird), so, if the enemy is busy shooting at you they aren't shooting at your damages. If it comes to this make sure you know the vgs command for save yourself (vrs for PC and YBBB for Xbox). That way nobody wants to come in and get themselves killed trying to save you. That is my philosophy on boots. Feel free to argue it with me, and don't feel you shouldn't buy boots. I just find myself not needing the extra movement speed for any purposes, although, the extra 10% CDR on Shoes of Focus is helpful in getting you quickly to that 40% CDR cap.
Considering my spiel on boots, lets move into the other possibilities for a third item.

To do this let's assess the enemy team again. The ability to check who is doing the most damage on the enemy team is very helpful for this, though at this point, the enemies in your lane are still your primary concern. It is probably that for this item you want to get some extra protections for whoever is hurting you the most. If you can swing an extra 10% CDR as well that is perfect. If you still need more magical protections at this point in the game, I would advise a Genji's Guard.

If you need physical protections, there are a couple of options. If the enemy is already building Crits, then it may be a good idea to go into Spectral Armor, which reduces critical damage by 50%. Alternatively, which I would recommend for Khepri, is that you build into Hide of the Nemean Lion. Even if the enemy is building crits, all that means is that your Nemean Lion will hurt them more when you grab them with an Abduct. Both of these items give you a whopping 70 physical protections and help defend against enemy basic attacks with their passives. Alternatively, if you want to trade some protections for health you could get either Mystical Mail for some extra damage, with its 40/s tick damage, or Midgardian Mail for its ability to slow enemy attacks and move speed when you are hit with basic attacks. Of the two, Midgardian Mail will most likely help you out a little more.

This is also the stage of the game where counter-building really can come into play. Say the enemy support has a heal that is really getting on your nerves, Sylvanus for example. He does a good bit of damage to you and heals both himself and his ADC right back up to full health, it makes it really hard to win a war of attrition. You can help stop that though. This would be a great time to buy Pestilence. It will give you a massive boost in magical protections as well as reduce nearby enemy healing by 20% Against the right gods, it can be a really good item for you to pick up.

Fourth Item
Now, on to the fourth item you pick up. Once again, assess the situation. At this point, if not before, standard laning should be coming to an end, and team-fights should start popping out. Unfortunately, team-fights are not where Khepri shines. Most other guardians outclass him in the situation, so you need to be able to handle it. If you don't have your 40% CDR at this point you should definitely get that. There are plenty of items that give 10% that you can grab. Two that I have yet two mention that would be very helpful in most situations would be Spirit Robe and Mantle of Discord. These two items both give 10% CDR and equal amounts of physical and magical protections to its holder. They are both great defensive options. Another very helpful thing you can do with Khepri if you are feeling that you'll survive most fights you get in is pick up Gem of Isolation. In combination with your Rising Dawn it actually gives you a good boost in CC as well as health and even damage

If you want to start taking a more aggressive building style, go ahead and buy Mystical Mail if you haven't already. If you have a Void Stone would be a good pickup. It gives even more magical protections and helps any other magical gods on your team do a bit more damage by stripping 15 protections off of the enemy. It's not huge, but it does help a little bit on enemies that don't build any protections.

Fifth Item
For your fifth item you should continue to look for counter-building opportunities. If you are having trouble with hunters and assassins build Hide of the Nemean Lion, Midgardian Mail, Spectral Armor, or even Witchblade. I personally really like Witchblade against Bakasura, as you cannot mitigate his true damage with any other items. Another good item is Stone of Gaia if there are some enemy knockups to deal with, as most of them will heal you for more damage than you took from the ability. If none of those suit your fancy just go or some extra protections, whatver you need. There's a bunch of good items I would recommend. This stage in the game, I would say Spirit robe or Mantle of Discord.

Finishing up
For final items it's more of the same. Keep going for your protections or counter-building. Once again, if you didn't earlier, Gem of Isolation is still a great pickup on Khepri, no matter when you get it. Often times I fin'd that with Khepri I'm still surviving just as well with Gem of Isolation as I would be with another defensive item.

If you do end up buying boot somewhere in the game just make sure that you sell them for another item with more added benefits like protections and such. Make sure it doesn't drop you to 30% CDR. To do that I like to replace them with Spirit Robe which gives 10% CDR itself.

And that is about it for building. It's important that you get protections and a few helpful auras for your team. Best thing you can do for yourself late game is make sure you've got them cooldowns and protections, which in turn, should help your team quite a bit

I believe that early survivability in lane is huge. A large part of that is knowing the limits of both yourself and your ADC. That being said lets have a look at some potential starting items.

enchanted kusari

breastplate

Enchanted Kusari or Breastplate? The ultimate goal is being able to survive in lane long enough to be able to afford you first full item and chalice of the oracle before being forced back to base here. The reason I like to go with Enchanted Kusari over Breastplate to start the game is that it give a slight boost in mp5 for 50 gold. You could choose to spend that 50 gold on an extra mana potion if you opt to buy Breatplate instead, but I have found that the mp5 holds up better the longer you are in lane.I also find myself being bullied by the enemy support more than the enemy ADC in the first few minutes of the game which means the magical protections offered by Enchanted Kusari. Remember, both are viable options, I just prefer to go with Enchanted Kusari over Breastplate

Core Items

shogun's kusari

sovereignty

Simply put, these are the items I find myself building almost every game. There are some exceptions like when they have a bakasura, I usually dont get to Mantle of Discord as I'm too busy counterbuilding him as best I can, but for the most part I always buy these three items.

Shogun's Kusari is a fantastic item for the early game all the way through the late game. With it the enemy guardian will do minimal damage to you and you will have plenty of mana to stay in lane with its 60 magical protections and 20 MP5. It also has the added benefit of 20% CCR, but the real good part of it is its aura. The aura of 20% attack speed really helps get your ADC online just that little bit faster. This early in the game its likely that they won't have any extra attack speed (though I have seen a few charged bow starts, which yields 20%). Even if your ADC does this start, you are still doubling their attack speed boost from 20%-40% which can certainly be the difference in winning a fight.

Sovereignty helps out early more than it does late, so I like to build it second item. The reason for this is despite the 60 physical protections and 250 health being very helpful all game, the aura of 15 physical protections and 25 HP5 begins to become less effective as the game goes on. Despite this, it is a good item to have, though when the game goes long enough for me to get the money, I do find myself selling it for other items, though that is rare.

Mantle of Discord is a great defensive item all around. 60 of each protection is major on its own, but then it gives 10% CDR and a passive that nearly gives you a second ultimate. Upon reaching 30% health, it sends out a shockwave stunning all nearby enemies and granting you CC immunity. Its a great item for those times when you just need to live and get out.

Magical Defense

pestilence

These are generally my go to items when looking for some extra magical defense given that they come equipped with a good amount of magical protections and a slew of other helpful perks

Oni Hunter's Garb yields 60 magical protections as well as a bit of health and some extra MP5(You might overcap on MP5, but that's no big deal), but the impressive part of this item is in its passive. In any late game teamfight, having Oni Hunter's Garb in your build will help you take just about 10% less damage from all incoming sources, which is a pretty good way to absorb some extra damage. Even early in lane, there will almost always be two gods around so you will get most of the passive's bonus all game long.

Pestilence can easily be overlooked as an anti-heal item, and the serious magical protections it offers can be lost. I believe out of all the items you can grab, Pestilence has the single highest gain in magical protections at a whopping 80 from one item, on top of the addition of 200 health, and a 25% anti-heal aura around you. This is a potentially very potent item

Genji's Guard makes for a great magical defense item due to its 70 protections, 150 health, and a lot of CDR with its passive. At face value the item only gives 10%, the same as most items, but it is possible for it to reduce each cooldown you currently have running by 3 seconds, which can really be huge when you are waiting to place a stone shield on an ally.

Physical Protections

midgardian mail

Often times physical damage comes in the form of basic attacks, so the best ways to counter it are items that counter basic attacks as well as providing physical protections to reduce the damage done.

Hide of the Nemean Lion is my go to item for when I am being shredded by hunters in a fight, late game they can certainly cause you a lot of problems. While hide of the Nemean Lion gives a hefty 70 physical protections, its real potential comes through its passive. The ability to return 25% of damage back to the attacker is something that can be very dangerous for the enemy. Its also important to note that the damage returned is 25% of damage before mitigation. From what I understand in from testing is it means the reflected damage is before mitigations as theoretically with 300 protections the hunter would take equal amounts of damage as me. This did not happen, but they still recieved about 50% damage, which is a lot, and with the application of Stone Shield, he actually killed himself with reflect damage before I died. This was all done with a build on Ah Muzen Cab that I find to be rather effective. Outside of that, it also gives you a pretty good boost of 200 mana and 20 MP5.

Midgardian Mail isn't quite as good in the physical protections department as Hide of the Nemean Lion, having 30 less, but it makes up for that loss in its addition of 300 health, and a passive that slows both movement speed and attack speed of the enemy by up to 24% at 3 stacks of 8. The idea here is that you have more health to tank hits, and they cannot hit you as fast, thus making you live longer in a firefight.

Spectral Armor provides 60 physical protections, 300 mana, and 10 MP5, pretty standard stuff so far, but the real interest of this item comes in its passive. From what testing I've done (Namely a custom game against 50 Artemis bots with 85% critical chance and Deathbringer in the mix too. I took about 480 hits from the bots) building Spectral Armor on Geb makes him nearly immune to crits. In combination with Geb's passive, hard as rock, making crits do on 25% extra damage and this item making them do only 50% extra, there is a total of 125% critical damage reduction. Against a Hunter or Assassin who has build death bringer, their crits do an extra 130% damage to you leaving a whopping 5% bonus in the damage, which basically makes you immune to critical hits, which can be pretty major against someone who doesnt just build Qin's Sais against you.

Breastplate of Valor gives a large boost in physical protections with 65 as well as 300 extra mana and 10 MP5. What really makes it a decent item though is that it is relatively cheap and gives you 20% CDR on top of the physical protections that it gives. Given that I find myself going for other CDR items, it doesn't always have a place in my builds, but it is a good item when you devote 4 items to counterbuilding somone I.E. Bakasura.

Additional items

There is a plethora of helpful items in the game, often times an items use comes based on the enemy team and what exactly is causing you the most problems. I'll go into some detail here explaining briefly when the best situations are to build each of these items.

stone of gaia

winged blade

relic dagger

Defensive Items

Mantle of Discord is generally my first go to when in need of both magical and physical protections. Considering that the most you get from any single item for protections is 70, getting 60 of each from one item is a really good bonus. It also gives a 10% CDR, allowing for even more options in that department, as well as a passive that can help get you out of a fight, or potentially turn the tide of a battle. This item potentially gives you a second 5-man stun, so long as they're all within the 20 units of you, which is unlikely. Even so, you do gain 1 second of CC immunity when you drop below 30% health, which can be extremely helpful in the right situation.

Spirit Robe is a great alternative or companion to mantle of discord as it gives 40 of each protection, which is respectable, as well as 10% CDR and 20% CCR. It also has the added benefit of giving you 15% damage mitigation after taking a hard CC. If you were to combine this with Oni Hunter's Garb, you could be seeing yourself with a 39% damage reduction on top of all your protections.

Utility

Stone of Binding is a good item for many purposes. At 30 of each protection, 20 power, and a 15 pen buff for your allies when you hit any of your abilities, all for 1700 gold, its a pretty good item to pick up in a pinch.

Relic Dagger is another one I don't often look at, but it also gives a sizable 300 health and 10% move-speed and CDR. It will also give you a 30 second CDR on your relics. I'd leave it to you if you wanna grab that one, it really depends on how often you are using your relics, and if you are often struggling with their cooldowns.

Counter-building

Stone of Gaia moves away from orthodox protection giving defensive items, but instead gives a boatload of health clocking in at 400, as well as 25 HP5 and 15 Mp5. The item focuses on regeneration. The item also has 2 passives to further aid your inability to die. The first being great primarily against gods with CCs that can alter your position, which is mostly going to be a warrior or a guardian. The second passive just helps you regenerate massive amounts of health over time. If you find yourself in very long fights in the jungle often, it can be the difference between half health and three quarters health as you'll regenerate 3% every 10 seconds.

Winged Blade tends to be helpful against a team with a lot of slows. Not only does it help counter them by giving you an extra 10% movement speed and 20% CCR, it can also completely negate a slow and increase your movement speed every 30 seconds. Often I'll forget that this item gives an extra 300 health as well, but it is certainly a helpful addition.

Auras

Aside from being unbelievably tanky, and lacking the ability to die in many situations, as the support another way to help out your team is to provide auras with many helpful buffs to them. Unless specified otherwise, the range is 70 units.

heartward amulet

sovereignty

pestilence

shogun's kusari

witchblade

Heartward Amulet provides you and your team a steady supply of magical protections and MP5. As the holder of the item you get an extra 250 health, 70 magical protections, and 20 MP5 with the aura included. Any allied god nearby will receive an extra 15 magical protections and the 20 MP5 as well. Personally, I feel this item is better early game, because often times, mana does not become a major issue late game, even for the most mana hungry gods in the game. They normally have items in their builds that negate the need for 20 MP5.

Sovereignty is the physical counterpart to Heartward Amulet. As the holder of it you receive 250 health, 60 physical protections, and 25 HP5. Similarly, any nearby ally will get an extra 15 physical protections and 25 HP5. In longer team-fights this can be particularly helpful by regenerating 5 health per second for your team. I generally think this would be more effecting than the aura on Heartward Amulet.

Pestilence is listed earlier under magical protections because it gives so many of them, and the anti-heal can always be applied to normal enemy HP5 (I believe, that makes sense anyway). Against a team with a healer, it is absolutely crucial to build anti-heal. You don't want an Aphrodite waltzing in and completely healing a 3000 health brick wall to full health in the matter of 12 seconds, do you? Generally, no. So I list it here again for its 25% anti-heal Aura.

Shogun's Kusari marks where the auras become more offensive for your team. On top of being a good magical defense item with 60 protections, 10% CDR and 20% CCR as well as 20 MP5, It gives a powerful attack speed aura for your team. This aura doesn't help you as a tank too much, but it certainly can help a hunter or an assassin quite a bit, in some cases warrior and mages can benefit greatly too (When I play Kukulkan, I'll sometimes do upwards of 200 damage per basic, it can get nasty). This is a helpful one if you've got the right team to combine it with.

Void Stone is another offensive aura item that gives the owner a good boost in magical defense. With 150 health and 60 magical protections it is a decent item defensively, but It also provides you with 20 power and an aura that reduces enemy magical protections by 15, which can be significant against a mage who has built nothing else for defense. This item also has a smaller aura at a range of 55 units

Mystical Mail offers a lot of health with 300, along with 40 physical protections and 20% CCR to help beef you up a bit. The aura on this item does not directly aid your team, but rather can build up quite a bit of damage on the enemy team in the case of a prolonged fight. Dealing 40 magical damage per second to enemies with 25 units of you can build up a good chunk of damage, especially on enemies with low amounts of protections. Also, just because its fun and really sad to die to, it gives you the ability to run people down. By that I mean you can walk with a fleeing enemy and it will slowly chip away with their health and kill them. Only do that if you know you can secure the kill regardless, don't try to if there's serious risk of them getting away.

Witchblade is not one I often go for, but it does give a bunch of good things that you could use to your advantage. It gives a respectable 200 health, 10% CDR, 10% movement speed and an extra 20% attack speed, but your basics are going to be doing about very little, so its not a huge boost. It does have a pretty decent aura on it though. The ability to reduce the enemies attack speed can be very nice, especially since this should be able to be combo'd with Midgardian Mail for a grand total of 44% attack speed loss.

meditation cloak

Meditation Cloak is my preferred first relic. It offers the ability to stim both you and your ADC's health and mana instantly. Often times I will grab it along with my ADC, and we collaborate to keep each other in lane as long as possible. It's a simple spell, but quite helpful. Often times too, suppose you revive a mage with 2000 health with your ultimate late game, you can give them a pretty large boost in health. The ult will bring them back with 900 health and the Meditation Cloak will bring them up to 1215 health, which is pretty good.

magic shell

Magic shell is a good way to provide an extra bit of health in the form of a shield to your team if a team-fight looks like it might get dicey. When up graded it has the potential to block 2 very powerful basics as well which can be very helpful as long as those blocks aren't absorbed by a guardian who will, decidedly, not hit very hard with basics. It can be a great way to help secure the escape of someone who has just been revived with your ult.

heavenly wings

Heavenly Wings is always a helpful one for getting you and your team in or out of a fight quickly. Much like meditation, it's a very simple relic, but when used in the right spot, it can be the difference between securing the enemies death, or your own team's safety. With it, one thing you can do is right after your ultimate revives one of your team-mates, you can pop the heavenly wings and they can run free. It is also important to note that when upgraded, the basic attack penalty is negated for your team for the duration.

shield of thorns

Shield of Thorns can be a great relic for Khepri due to his Abduct. The idea is that you pop the Shield of Thorns, and then grab someone who would normally be scary otherwise. Suddenly, supposing you have Hide of the Nemean Lion as well, enemy basics are reflecting 65% damage back at them. Now, I'm no expert at assassins, but I'd say they have less health than you by quite a bit, perhaps even 40% less health than you. It's possible that they end up killing themselves in an attempt to kill you. Even if that doesn't do it. It certainly saved you a lot of damage

horrific emblem

Horrific Emblem has a similar function to heavenly wings, but can be avoided by items like Winged Blade or Purification Beads. It's important to note that Horrific Emblem has a shorter range, but it also does more than Heavenly Wings. On top of a very painful slow, it also lowers enemy attack speed and, when upgraded, damage dealt.

This passive makes Khepri one of only two gods that can provide a health shield for his allies. Interestingly enough, it is also one of his better team-fight aspects in my opinion. If your team is grouping up where-ever waiting for some fight to break out, they will all passively start to build a shield worth 10% of their maximum health, which can be pretty big in the right spots and for you, it is basically an extra 300 health come late game. Even so far back as the beginning of the game, this passive can stop you from taking actual health damage from the minion waves. Given the right scenario, its a pretty good passive

Every Guardian has their signature thing that they do, they get "that look in their eye" when they're walking forward trying to do it. For Ymir its a stun, and for Ares its an ult. Well, for Khepri, its a grab. Abduct is a nasty bit of CC early game and what's even better about it is that it can be very easily followed up with another CC from your team. Early game it does a great job keeping people under towers if they choose to tower-dive. Late game, if you're lucky, you can pull someone into your fountain and watch them no longer have health. It's a very rare occurrence, but also very fun when it works. And don't brush off the damage this does either. That 280 at level 5 is nothing to shrug off for a mage.

This is actually a very interesting ability that has some aspects, that I know I always tend to forget. It has both offensive and defensive properties to it. Sure it does spooky amounts damage early game, but it can also be used defensively. For example, lets say an Ares and Poseidon are coming after you and your team. Ares does his thing, blinks and ults. Pulling all of you to one small spot. Then poseidon comes in, expecting to get a triple kill or something with his Kraken. Little did he know, Khepri packed damage mitigation for lunch. Upon having everybody grouped up, before any Krakens can be released, Khepri simply rolls the sun at his team, y'know, as you do. At this point, everybody else is taking 30% less damage from external sources, which is absolutely huge in a situation like that. Just don't forget it does that, toss it at an ally from time to time. You don't even necessarily need to hit an enemy for it to be worth it. Another thing, also on a pretty impressive note is that enemies damage by it have a physical protection debuff of 25% at max level. Put that in combination a Titan's Bane and whoever they are, they are out 58% of their protections. Good stuff.

As bright and flashy ask Khepri's other abilities are, this one is very simple. It's a circle. It does a bit of damage. It has a pretty nice root on it. That's about it. What you can do, as it has a longer range than your abduct, is you can root them, catch up a bit, and then pull. This is really the ability that allows Khepri to have combos, which I'll get into in the next sections.

If you have ever wanted to just deny the enemy a kill, or perhaps just to keep your team alive, really, really bad, this is the ability for you. Not only does it give a 40% movement speed boost, and immunity to slows to whoever should receive it. If the enemy want's to kill them during that time, they simply can't. If they do, they'll just be sending them your way and very likely healing them a bit. On thing that can be really fun with the use of this ability is popping it down on an ally and, for lack of a better term, Yeeting yourself out of there. Doing this can have one of two effects; A: getting whoever it is really far from the bad situation, or B: You've literally just left them to die. Usually the only time to use it like this is when they're vastly outnumbered and you can barely get there in time due to some sort of unforeseen circumstances, like your own death earlier in the team-fight. Very effective if it works, very much so not effective if it doesn't. P.S. Never forget the 40% power boost on release Khepri's Ultimate.

Khepri's ult is his most defining feature, and not his only one at that. This is the only ability of it's kind in the game. Most things that are unique have a few counterparts to them, that have slightly different functions. Geb's ability to give an ally a shield has been matched by your's truly, Khepri's passive. The ability to reflect damage, previously known only to Nemesis, is now known by Kuzenbo. The point is, most effects in the game have a few different sources, but not this one.

While this ability as at level 5 the movement speed gain is 40% along with an immunity to slows. That combined with the enemy not wanting to kill the effected god to avoid bringing them back with more health can easily be enough for your ally in need to run away from the fight. If the enemy does choose to kill the effected ally then they will be brought back to your location with 45% of their maximum health. The effects of the ability are actually fairly simple and easy to explain and understand. When to use it, and how to use it effectively is the tricky part.

The use of this ability is going to be different depending on the circumstances at hand. If its a situation where an ally has been collapsed upon by 3 or 4 enemies it can be best to wait on the sidelines until the right moment to guarantee that the revival happens and then proceed to run away as fast as possible, so that not only can they get out, but you as well. In that situation, if you were to rush in there, you wouldn't be able to get out while simultaneously dragging somebody else back into the same situation and wasting your ult. If it's during an even team-fight that you need to revive somebody it can be placed on them at the right moment for the revival to happen, or so that they can use the movement speed to get away, enemy focus will likely shift off of them and onto somebody else. The final scenario to be listed here is when you get left behind from the scraps of a team fight. Being a tank it can take a while for them to break through your defenses and quite frankly, reviving yourself with 45% of your maximum health can really waste a lot of enemy time. Sometimes all that needs to be done is buy time. If you can run around and live as long as possible, you're doing somebody a favor.

One thing that I've done with the ult before is when a late game hunter is trying to split push your pheonix and you're the only one there. Chances are, they wont think you pose much of a threat and will try and take out the pheonix anywan. This is the great part about Khepri being so fat, You can take those shots. What I've done is use a shield of Thorns in combination with Hide of the Nemean Lion and well, their health was gone but I wasn't. When they do commit to this, they usually end up at fault and dying. It's pretty fun to pull off successfully.

It is very important to note that the any executes (Thanatos, Ao Kuang, and Achilles) will go through the ability and the revival will not take place.

Ole Khepri's Combos are pretty simple. One of them, probably his best one, reads like this:

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LITERALLY ANYBODY!

This is where Khepri does about as much damage as he can, and then puts one an enemy on the cc train back to the fountain, supposing there's someone else around to capitalize on it.

Honestly, his combo's follow that same chain just in different order, depending on what you can hit the easiest for his first ability.

Early Game:

Khepri has surprisingly good lane pressure, make sure you take advantage of that. All three of his non-ultimate abilities can have a huge effect in the 2v2 fights. Keep in mind that Rising Dawn will do some mad damage early game, I've actually been able to hold on to top damage with it for the first couple minutes of the game before. If you're using it right it'll do massive damage. Aside from that, you can really cause some havoc if you use your Abduct to pull an enemy into a minion wave. Early minions can be some of the scariest things on the map early game. Forcing unnecessary minion damage on the enemy can cause massive damage. Similarly, if they wanna get aggressive and push you back to tower, show them what that tower is made of. Pull them right in there, root them in there after too.

Aside from applying pressure in lane, make absolutely sure that you are warding. If you don't ward, you'll be surprised when the enemy jungle or mid decide to pop by and tell you to leave, usually, they don't ask nicely in my experience. With wards though, you get to see the gank coming from a pretty good distance, that way you can pull out and not die.

It is also possible that you will not be the aggressor in lane, but will rather be pushed back by the enemy. Should this be the case. Just keep in mind, that you are very good at keeping people off of your ADC with your Abduct, and once you hit level 5, they've got an almost foolproof escape out of any fight as well. All you have to do there is figure out how to time it, which mostly comes from experience.

Mid Game:

Khepri still has a pretty decent mid-game presence in a conquest. For the most part, there's still some laning going on without too much 5v5 team fighting happening around. Smaller team fights are where Khepri has a good edge, not too many people where you are at risk of catching yourself out with a pull, and still small enough where a root will likely be of major significance.

As respawn timers continue to get longer for your team, your ultimate continues to become more and more meaningful as well. Just do your best to keep people alive and you'll be doing what you can. This is also about the time where you should start keeping an eye on the Fire Giant with a Sentry ward now and then.

Late Game:

While Khepri can still be powerful in the late game, sometimes there are better options if late game is what you want. He lacks the ability to initiate team fights or disrupt the whole enemy team with a hard CC. What he can do is select a single target and cause them to get blown up by his team. Late game he is more of an incredibly tanky revival machine, it's by far his best attribute late game, along with the 30% damage reduction buff from Rising Dawn.

Personally, I've taken a liking to Egyptian Guardians, not sure exactly why it works like that, but hey. If you feel the same you should check out my guide for Geb!. A lot of my philosophies for building will be the same or similar, but there Khepri and Geb do function quite differently. Please Stand-by if you are interested my guide on the third Egyptian Guardian, Sobek.

If you've got any questions about this guide, or maybe even some other guardians I'll be happy to do my best to answer them. If you enjoyed this guide lemme know!

Your guys's feedback is very important to me, if you've got any questions or advice, feel free to either pm me or just put it in the comments!
At the end of the day, when Ra goes away and Khepri comes to stay, just remember that "You must fight on!"