Nemesis - Arena Guide !

This guide is a work in progress and hopefully will be a living and breathing document (constantly updated to remain current) dedicated to the most BAE of Assassins in Smite.

I will be updating this guide very frequently, and hopefully in a few months this guide will be the Arena guide Nemesis deserves.

Please leave suggestions on content I could add / use to help out those who are seeking it.

Hi, my name is Executioner and I am new to Smite and probably not the most qualified person to be a guide author. I am just a average player like many of you. With that said, the vast majority of my experience with this game has been in Arena and playing as Nemesis. I see a lot of new players picking Nemesis (best looking assassin imo) and building recommended items or glass cannon and simply failing to ever be a factor (outside of feeding) in the game. This guide (hopefully) will assist new players attempting to learn Nemesis and her various Arena play styles. I created this guide because when I was new to Nemesis, I could not find a guide that contained the information I needed. Most of the guides were outdated and contained irrelevant or inaccurate information or focused on game modes not named Arena.

If you are new to Arena or new to Smite you really need to familiarize yourself with the information in these guides. The authors of these guides have gone to great lengths to explain in great detail almost everything one could ever hope to know about Smite.


Pffft, Minions is a Arena guide created by TormentedTurnip and you would do well to study it so that you have a good working knowledge of the game mode before attempting to succeed with Nemesis.


The Tome of Athena is a list of links to some of the greatest guides ever written for Smite, The Tome of Athena was created by KingScuba a forum moderator on the Smite forums. Anyone serious about improving in this game would do well to click that link and study those guides. The guides contained in The Tome of Athena are written by many different authors and KingScuba has went to great effort to give proper credit to the authors of the guides contained there in.

Nemesis is Bae is the short answer, continue reading for the long version.

If you are picking Nemesis for Arena game play because you (for some reason or another) think she is strong or overpowered you are in for a surprise. Nemesis greatest strength in Arena is how mobile and flexible she is.

Nemesis is not an Assassin and Nemesis is not a warrior, she is something in between these and can excel as either. Nemesis lacks hard crowd control and has a very weak early game. Team fighting is the main theme of Arena and Nemesis kit is lackluster for a game mode such as this. This does not mean Nemesis is bad in Arena, she actually performs quite well in Arena if you are able to adapt on the fly and be what your team needs as much as possible. Some games your team will need a squishy assassin but the vast majority of the games your team will need bruiser Nemesis and that is why this guide was created. Late game in Arena Nemesis is an absolute beast if she is built in the bruiser style I am recommending in this guide.

To carry as Nemesis (in Arena), you are forced to build tanky enough to auto attack people to death while usually taking damage from more than one source.

Scales of Fate is a awesome passive that helps to solidify Nemesis as a great duelist.




Swift Vengeance is primarily useful for mobility and not damage. The most intelligent way to use this ability is to save it to get away from trouble, using this to engage a fight or to attempt to finish off an enemy could prove fatal and is something I would highly recommend you do not do. I prefer to have this ability set to quick cast. You should max this ability last.



Slice and Dice is Nemesis only non ultimate form of Crowd Control (2s slow if hit in the middle) and her primary wave clear tool. This ability can be pretty good for peeling for allies and is very good at "securing" kills. Managing this spell in team fights well can lead to victory for your team. I prefer to have this ability set to quick cast. I max this ability second after Divine Judgement.








Retribution is a fantastic spell that has a lot of synergy with Shield of the Underworld (active) and Hide of the Nemean Lion(item). Be cautious of available enemy crowd control when using this spell as crowd control will cancel the shield. This spell is yet another reason Nemesis is an excellent duelist. I prefer to have this ability set to instant cast. I max this ability third after Divine Judgement and Slice and Dice.








Divine Judgement is the best ultimate in the game and makes her almost impossible to duel. Early game Nemesis is pretty much only a Ult bot, this is due to her being a melee auto attack god that is item dependent. I prefer to have this ability set to quick cast. You should max Divine Judgement first when possible.


Divine Judgement is one of the best ults in the game for dueling but the ult also allows you to select any enemy God and virtually assure there demise in a team fight. You need to make sure your team understands the power of your ultimate and how it can be used for the teams benefit. Make sure you inform your team that when you ult a enemy that every person on your team should be hitting that target for the next 4 seconds. Your team wide damage on that target will be massive and a kill should be extremely easy. Instantly dropping full build tanks with your ultimate and team wide coordination is extremely satisfying and I hope you soon experience this same satisfaction with Nemesis.


Divine Judgement is extremely overpowered and is basically a I win button when used in duels or with coordination in team fights.

Early game: Take all 3 of your spells and leave base with the items you feel are appropriate for the game at hand. Does the enemy team have Ares? Yes, then do not leave base without at least beads 1.

Proceed to the buff camps with your team and help them kill the buffs. Ideally you will allow your team to pick up the buffs because Nemesis is so weak early that the buffs will make very little difference for her. Either base and upgrade your boots or head to the middle with your team.

Early game when Nemesis is weak is the perfect time to size up the enemy team. Notice who is overly aggressive and who is passive on your team and the enemy team. Notice how the enemies use there important spells like crowd control. Notice which direction (right or left) your enemies prefer to move. Picking up on small nuances such as these early can be a deciding factor later in the game. If your team has good wave clear you should hold on to slice and dice to peel for your team or to damage enemies. If your teams wave clear is lacking you should assist with Slice and Dice (Never use Swift Vengeance (1) to clear minions).


Mid Game: Now that you have a couple items completed and a good idea of what your team and the enemy can do, you can begin to make some plays with Nemesis.

I cannot tell you exactly how to play this or any part of the game, because every game is different. Remember the early game when you were weak and watching the game around you unfold ? Now is the time that information will be critical to your success.


(A)There will be games where the most effective strategy is to hang near your team and ult and attempt to kill the initiators from the enemy team. Usually this strategy is best when you notice your carries are aggressive (meaning they will be willing to fight back against engage). This strategy is even more effective when the enemy carries are playing safe or passive. Nemesis excels at killing tanks and warriors, she was created to do this and there will be many games where you need to abuse this fact. However, if you use this strategy the enemy carries will be free to target whomever they like while your carries are feeling pressured from the enemy engage. If you use this tactic you should be able to discourage the enemy aggressors from engaging unless they know your ultimate is down.

(B)There will be games where you are more effective ignoring the enemy engage and walking into the enemy team to damage / zone carries. If you are able to successfully do this and get a kill or just force a retreat of 1 or more enemy carries you have performed admirably. That whole time the enemy teams damage was focused on you, the enemy guardian / warrior are in a 1 or 2 vs 4 scenario that they should lose.

I can not tell you how many times I have picked up kills on low health and fleeing initiators after I was done zoning the enemy damage.

(C)If your early items were damage focused or you do not feel tanky enough, then you could approach this fight as any smart assassin does (from behind). There will be a fair amount of games where you can circle around the buff walls and approach the enemy damage from behind. This is a devastating tactic if they do not notice your approach.


Late Game: You are now extremely hard to kill and are doing obscene damage, you are the scariest God on your team. There are very few Gods who dare stand before late game bruiser Nemesis, most of those that do pay for there hubris in blood. You should be able to kill anything you want at this point of the game as long as you are able to play around enemy crowd control.

With this build you have 2.08 attack speed and over 2800 health. You have a slow, life steal , penetration and you are doing 8% of your targets health per second. If you reach this point in a game, you should be terrifying to your enemies. You have utility, sustain and are somewhat tanky, everything you need to do your job.


Self explanatory, enemy team all has some type of hard cc and you know you cannot avoid all of it. Any god that can take your mobility from you is a serious threat and should be treated as such. This build is highly recommended vs gods such as Nox.


There are quite a few different physical protection items that could be placed into this build for different desired effects. This one has Midgardian Mail for the slow and the attack speed slow, you will miss Frostbound Hammer a lot less and have good dueling potential.


There are other options against mostly magical damage teams as well, I find Pestilence to be pretty overpowered. It counters life steal, health regeneration, healing abilities and actives.


My favorite assassin build, this gives you enough damage to assassinate anything. Tanks and soft targets alike will fear you.


Alternate critical strike focused assassin build. This build works great and has a lot of pretty big numbers. I find the Rage Qin's Sais combo from the previous build to be more flexible. You need to build Ninja Tabi in this build where the previous one allows you to build Warrior Tabi if desired.


Your team has no guardian, but you still want to win the game. The auras from Sovereignty and Heartward Amulet are much more powerful than you probably realize. You should play the boots that best fits the game at hand, most likely Ninja Tabi or Reinforced Greaves. As long as you have The Executioner and Qin's Sais you are a serious offensive threat as well.


You will do more damage with this build than you realize. Scales of Fate + The Executioner gives you solid damage. Use Divine Judgement wisely and you can post a really nice kda with this build, not to mention actually winning the game. Obviously trying to play a assassin / warrior as a tank is not optimal, it can be fun and is more effective than you might realize.



Most of my builds lacked any significant cdr (and I needed to get a build up with some cdr because it is very good on her) and BranMuffin suggested this build to me in the comments below. Already familiar with most of the items I knew it would be solid, I tried it out and liked it. This build is good to use verse teams with balanced damage and a lot of crowd control and slows.


A build copied almost directly from the Nemesis arena player with the second most wins on Nemesis in arena. I am constantly working to improve myself with Nemesis and this includes researching builds and trying them for myself. This particular build I have found to be very good throughout the game. The player I copied it from uses Warrior Tabi instead of Ninja Tabi, I prefer the better attack speed. You can not take the punishment with this build that you can with some of the bruiser builds I listed above, but this build is very good and you should try it for yourself. This build is very well rounded and not as good vs specific things such as guardians / tanks as a qin build. This build gives Nemesis 2600 health, 1.88 attack speed and 35% cdr.

Mainly you will need to build Nemesis as a bruiser to be most effective in Arena. The goal of the bruiser builds in this guide is to get Nemesis to the highest possible effective health, while still bringing game changing damage to the table. You will need to focus on items with attack speed, resistances and health. The build listed at the top of the guide is the most common build I use, but I build every game based on the game at hand and you should do the same. The following is a list of items I like using accompanied by a brief explanation on how good it is and who to build the item against.



Tip: Clicking on any one of these sections will open a list of items with my opinions of the items strength and when it should be built on Nemesis.

Hopefully you have found this guide helpful in your quest to master my bae Nemesis in Arena, if you have ideas or suggestions on how to improve this build guide then please feel free to leave a comment. My intent is for this guide to be a living breathing guide that constantly evolves to reflect the state of Nemesis and the game itself. I 100% would love your feed back on how to improve this guide. Thank you so much for the read and good luck in Arena, if the enemy team has a Nemesis you will need it !




Credits:

Zilby Thanks for the tips on picture adjustment and on how to center text and pictures !

TormentedTurnip and Jordenito for creating and maintaining Code Blue: BBCoding for Beginners it has been extremely helpful to me. Maybe at some point I will be able to use some of the more advanced tactics in the guide!

TormentedTurnip For his Arena Guide Pffft, Minions

KingScuba for his compilation of amazing guides, The Tome of Athena.

BranMuffin17, ty for suggesting the Muffin CDR build. It is a welcome addition to the guide and should be helpful for me and others learning to live the Bae Life in Arena. Thanks for all of your helpful suggestions.

I also wish to thank all of the Smite forums users who helped me learn how to be effective with Nemesis in Arena, you can find the names of those who helped me and see my progress through out this forum thread. Nemesis - How do you build and Carry with her ?