Oppa Guan Yu Style! (AP Tank) [UPDATED]

Hi everybody, I'm OMGev and this is my 1st build ever on this website, so i'll try to do my best!
In SMITE beta, there is a God who particulary cought my attention - Guan Yu. Yes guys.
Everybody should give him a try, he is exceptionaly good, well at least he is to me.
I'm here today to share with you my experiance with Guan Yu and give some advices on how to build him and play him. Ofcourse, all of this is just my personal opinion and my way of playing with him, but so far, i've got very good results with Guan Yu, and he is definetly my favorite God in Smite for the moment!
The way i play him is the AP Tanks way, which makes him very strong iniciator and thanks to his abilities a great survivor.

I hope you'll enjoy this and give it a try!

Thanks!

PROS

- Good enough heal
- Tanky
- Great escaping
- Great initiating
- Extra defence when diving / defending tower
- Good CC
- Good AP damage

CONS

- Mana depending at beginning

(I realy didn't notice any other Cons at the moment, but once i do, i'll add them here)

I'll explain here breifly the choice of my items. First of all, as you can see it's the tanky way of Guan Yu that will guarantee a good suvivability early, mid and late game, then at mid game you'll have enough dmg output and enough defence to take down almost anyone, and also initiate fights, heal team mates, etc etc...

THE CORE

reinforced boots - Good HP5, needed to be able to stay in your lane as long as you want.


Some Healing Potion Mana Potion just in case.


Breastplate of Valor - good physical defence, good mana, and 20% CR. All this will allow you to spam your skills, chase down ennemies, or escape. Because as i said, Guan Yu is realy mana dependant, and you don't wanna be on 0 mana in the middle of a fight.


Void Stone - magical protection, to balance a little bit, some decent magical power which is needed to do more dmg early ingame, and magical reduction of ennemie within 55 feet. Overall a perfect item for Guan Yu, a must have without any doubts.


Aegis Amulet - nothing much to say about it, gives extra 20 MR and DR, his active ability will save you from death a lot, when being ganked especialy.


Overall, this build will allow you to have a realy good dmg output and a great defence, if i'm not wrong i finish usualy with about 400 AP, and about 200+ physical defence and like 150 magical defence. Then it depends ofcourse who you play against, if you strugle or dominate since the beginning etc etc.

You can initiate battles with Guan Yu once you reach level 2 and even better, level 5.
Kill minions, solwly get closer to your ennemy and when in good range, use Warrior's Will and right after Taolu Assault. You will take lot of HP out of your ennemy. Then go back, regenerate some hp, and keep doing it.
And when you reach level 5, you are just gonna dominate them all. The skill order to do:
2 - 3 - 4 - 2 - 3
and heal when can ofcourse. Your enemy won't resist to this much damage and CC.

Later on you will be able to dive under towers, even tank the towers with your teammates or alone.

The AP / Tank way allows to Guan Yu to be very tanky and deadly strong at same time. You will simply initiate a team fight and make it victorious. You will also see you will be able to escape even when you are attacked by around 4 players, you will easily escape from any danger.

But of course to master all of this you will need to practice for a while.
When i 1st plaid with Guan Yu , i lost miserably and i was thinking, wow, why he sucks so badly. But after the 2nd and 3rd games, i was rocking. I was almost always the Cary+Tank of my team.

This core build will allow you a very good early surviability as well as you won't have to worry about your mana, cause trust me it's very important for Guan Yu when in fight, in fact as i said, he is mana hungry.
It will also give you some couldown reduction

The good sides of this build:
- Cooldown reduction
- Good mana
- Great defence
- Good HP5
- Good MP5
- High Magic resist
- High physical damage resist
- Great AP damage (for a tank)