Ra, the Bird on Fire

Ra, the bird of the sun.
Ra is a healer mage, but his skills can also be very deadly. If you get the right build, you'll be able to deal about 800 damage with just your Celestial Beam. So he can definitely stand his own, but he has great healing to. Ra is one of the only healer gods I use and I have my healer medal at platinum. I would say Ra is definitely at least one of the top 5 gods in SMITE (my opinion though).

First of all, in Conquest, it's nice to be able to get around fast, so you get the Shoes of Focus, but in Joust, it is a smaller map so you should just go straight to the Warlock's Sash, which will give you more mana and health.

Then, since you have Celestial Beam, you can kill minion fairly quickly, and you will be able to stack a lot. By the time I normally have about 25 stacks on the Warlock's Sash, I am able to buy the Book of Thoth, so since Warlock's Sash goes up to 100, and Book of Thoth goes up to 75, in the end it will all add up to max stacks. The Book of Thoth gives you even more mana, and it changes part of your max mana into power, so you will do a lot of damage.

After that, is the Rod of Asclepius, which will make Solar Blessing give out a lot more health.

Finally, there are the two items that give you even more power, the Polynomicon and the Rod of Tahuti. The rod will just give you 25% more power, but the Polynomicon will give you power only when you have recently used a skill on the enemy. Because of this I suggest that if you are attacking, don't forget to use your basic attacks, and before attacking either set up a Solar Blessing and just stand in it for a while, or use your Celestial Beam on them.

Pros
powerful
has a good amount of health
healer god
skills go through walls
has a funny laugh

Cons
once in a tough spot, there is no escape (so keep fighting till the end)
slow when haven't used a skill in a while and without boots
has an annoying laugh

Ra can definitely be a very good teammate at times, however, the player has to know when to use his skills. For things such as his Solar Blessing, you would have to know when it is a good time to use it to make the enemy leave a certain spot, or when to heal your teammates.

Ra can also be a good soloist in Conquest, because if you just make sure you manage your mana and health, and use Meditation at the right times, you will not have to go back to your Titan for a while.

Another thing you should know, is how to kinda "time" the enemy's movements. Sometimes in Joust someone will go too far and almost die, but they could get away and go behind a wall to go back to their tower. This has happened before, and if you can guess where he would be once he has walked a little, then you can use your ult, Searing Pain, or Celestial Beam.

So I have kinda covered the skill part of this except Divine Light. To be honest, I am not a big fan of this skill, so I normally try to level it up last. The reason that I think this is because it just slows them a little. It might be good to just get it to level one, but I would rather level up my Celestial Beam and Solar Blessing first.