Neith - Oseak's Joust Build

You may notice a few pieces of gear missing that some deem "necessary". There is a reason that these items were not used.

- Boots: while many people feel the need for boots, they simply are not necessary for Neith. She has one of the best escapes in the game, allowing for her to gain significant distance instantly. If you cannot escape with her leap, then chances are boots aren't going to help you much either. Another reason boots are not included is that this build focuses on massive damage and life steal, meaning you usually don't need to retreat. In most cases you stand your ground and simply gun down the enemy. Please note that early game you don't have enough damage and life steal to simply stand your ground, but the distance between towers is so minimal that it shouldn't be an issue getting back to safety when needed.

- Penetration: Asi offers a minimal amount of penetration, but ultimately penetration simply isn't required. You do enough damage and crit frequently enough that even against massive phys resist tanks you can stand toe to toe with them. Please note that a phys resist tank will still take some time to burn, but it won't matter if you can literally keep yourself fully healed on him. If a DPS jumps in simply focus the DPS instead of the tank (this not only reduces the damage you are taking but gives you significantly more life steal). Most DPS classes have very little phys resistances, and are generally killed with only 2-3 shots late game.



Weaknesses:

There are several weak points to this build...
- Assassins: Any squishy class has to fear assassins, especially if your team allows them to gain a few levels on you. There are a couple of ways to deal with these depending on the specific assassin. First, when they leap onto you, you should immediately leap away. This gets you out of their range, while still allowing you to fire upon them, and ideally root them. The second is the optional item mentioned under the items section. The Hide of the Nemean Lion can make a significant difference in handling assassins preventing you from getting one shot. Remember you can kill most squishy classes in only 2 hits late game, not only do you kill him but you will gain a huge chunk of health while doing it, restoring most of what he has taken from you. Lastly, pick up an Aegis active. If you get sucked in, or stunned, this can buy you critical time to either start attacking in order to generate health through your massive life steal, or to allow you to leap out of the way and escape. I usually wait to buy my actives until the very end, but there are some cases where you may need to pick them up early.

- Physical Resistant Tanks: Any tank worth his salt will stack some phys resistance, in most cases they will stack more phys resistance than magical. These tanks generally are not a problem for you with the normal build. But a really good tank seeing you wreck his entire team will stack full phys resistance and these tanks do become a problem. A tank with 300+ phys resistance will reduce your damage to almost nothing. Ideally your magical based teammates will simply handle him, but you will find in many cases they simply don't or won't. In this case you may need to swap out your devourer gauntlets for the Qin's Sais or hide of the nemean lion. Qin's Sais will allow you to do significantly more damage to high health opponents with high phys resistance than you could otherwise. With the Hide of Nemean Lion you will still have plenty of power to take out the enemy DPS, but this reduces the tanks ability to damage you, and helps with other high damage classes as well. The main thing to keep in mind when dealing with a tank like this, is that you want to ignore him. Take out the DPS first and then focus on the tank. If you pick up the hide of the nemean lion the tank is really very little threat to you, and the only real threat is the dps.

- Stuns: These will be the bane of your existence. In most cases you can survive a single stun, but when a team works together to chain stun you there is really very little you can. You can try using beads, but I have found aegis to generally be better than beads in most circumstances. Either way, once you are stunned you can't pop anything. Hopefully your teammates will come help you, but if they don't there really isn't much you can do. The best way to avoid this is by retreating early. Watch who is stunning you and how, when you see someone leap directly at you, leap away before they get to you and they won't be able to stun you. If you can immediately root them, then kill them with your basic attacks. If you are only being rooted and not stunned, then you have all sorts of options, the simplest being to attack them and heal yourself off them. The only CC that is a major issue for Neith is the full stun.

- Silence: Silence will interrupt your ability to leap. The main culprit of this tactic you will see is Cupid. His massive AOE will silence you, then blow up in your face. The silence its self isn't a major issue, so if you face off with Cupid simply get an aegis and use that to counter the detonation and you should win the fight, or at the very least be able to retreat.


Tricks:
- Creeps are your friend. Enemy creeps can be a significant help to you with this build. If you find yourself getting whittled down by a phys resistant tank, drag him near some creeps and heal yourself by attacking the creeps. You can easily go from empty to full health on a single creep wave. Also keep in mind that you can do this on camps.

- Camps are not just one shot heals for you. You can shoot 1-2 times into a camp, then back outta the camp and let them reset. This gives you a way to permanently heal yourself if needed.

- Also keep in mind that once you reach the enemy Phoenix you can simply go in attack a few times, then run to the nearest camp and heal yourself off the camp, then go back and do it again.

- In the final push into their base, the creeps spawn right outside their base near the phoenix. Whenever you get low on health back out and heal yourself on their creeps as they spawn.



Buffs:
- Early game when your damage is most lacking you will benefit the most from the Red (damage) buff.
- Late game when your damage has been built up a bit, you will benefit significantly more from the speed buff, allowing you to attack much faster.

Start:
- Bluestone Pendant: While this may not seem like the most ideal piece to start with, it really makes a huge difference in your early game damage and abilities. You get a little attack power and a little extra health, but the primary purpose of this item is actually for the mana regen it offers. This extra mana allows you to use significantly more abilities and ultimately results in a much stronger early game. I keep this until I reach my final piece of gear, then sell the pendant in order to free up the slot for my last core piece.


Core:
- Bloodforge: This item was selected for its massive chunk of early attack power and life steal. Helping to again help improve Neiths weakest area, her early game.
- Asi: This item works well in combination with the other early items, to again help improve your DPS by increasing your attack speeds, and also gives you a boost to your life steal which helps your surviveability a lot and helps prevent dots from slowly weakening you. The extra chunk of life steal when you are low health also comes in handy with tight battles.
- Malice: This is your first real damage piece. We need a way to start really putting some hurt on them, and this is the item for that. Note that I chose Malice over Deathbringer here for a very specific reason. Most people do not associate a dot with Neith and do not take that into account when they choose to run. This ultimately results in extra kills that you may not have gotten otherwise and is the purpose of using this particular piece.
- Golden Bow: This is huge for several reasons. The most strategic reason for this is that it prevents gods from simply being able to hide behind creeps. As long as they are still nearby they will get hit. As an additional bonus this also make clearing creeps and camps significantly easier, and again helps with battles against more than one god. This also has the nice advantage of helping boost your life steal significantly on groups of creeps which can really piss off opponents trying to hide behind them.
- Deathbringer: Our next really big damage piece. Some people prefer to use Rage instead of Deathbringer for slightly more consistent crits, but I find the huge crits this provides are overall more useful both in the actual fights (ie extra life steal), and for making people much more afraid to engage you.
- Devourer's Gauntlet (Optional): This adds another huge chunk of attack power, plus a massive chunk of life steal, both highly desired in our build. Many people think it is a waste to build this late game, but buying it early game significantly gimps your early damage, and you will find that you build stacks incredibly fast late game. This piece can be important for providing enough damage and life steal against heavily phys resistant tanks allowing you to stand toe to toe with tanks and wipe them out along with any nearby DPS.


Optional:
- Hide of the Nemean Lion: I have found that certain assassins have such incredibly high burst damage that you can't survive their initial assault, making you free kills for them. This can be easily countered by simply replacing your Gauntlets with this item. This particular item was chosen for several reasons. First, it provides the single highest phys resistance of any item. Second, it helps weaken the attacker by returning 20% damage to them, which can be significant since this is designed to counter assassins. This also gives you a slight health boost, all of which help deal with assassins and prevent them from jumping in and one shotting you. This also helps counter your other major problem, "tanks" that stack phys resist. While it doesn't help you do more damage to them, if they are stacking enough phys resist to be a problem for you, then their damage is lacking enough that this can essentially prevent them from slowly whittling you down, allowing you to again generate enough life steal off the tanks to stand toe to toe with them.

- Qin's Sais: If by some chance you end up against a team with all tanks or mostly tanks, this can be used to help damage all high hitpoint characters. For most DPS this item is fairly lack luster due to their limited health, but it works very well against tanks or other super high health targets.