Athena
Goddess of Wisdom
Primary Role: Magical Bruiser/Off-Tank
Pros:
+ Good damage and lane pushing for her survivability.
+ Global teleport.
+ Unique and powerful CC ability.
+ Excellent chasing ability.
+ Has a dash for escaping or initiating.
+ GLOBAL TELEPORT!
Cons:
- Relies on chaining her skills for maximum effectiveness.
- Long cooldowns.
- Crowd Control is useless for escaping.
- Passive is situational and weak without sufficient magic power.
- Ultimate can be wasted due to unpredictable teammates.
- Looooong cooldowns.
Abilities
Passive:
Reach
Not a terrible passive, but it is a little awkward on Athena's kit, which relies mostly on being fairly close to an opponent. Still, once coupled with
Polynomicon, it can give Athena a substantial damage boost and chasing tool. A situational passive, but useful if built into.
Skill 1:
Preemptive Strike
Athena's Dash. This is where most of the utility in Athena's kit will be coming from. It goes through minion waves, damaging each minion along the way, and will stop on players, damaging them and slowing them. Hitting any enemy with this ability will also allow Athena to negate the next auto-attack from an enemy God. Thus, this skill can be used for a variety of things such as killing minion waves (at later levels), chasing down players, running away from players, initiating Athena's primary combo, and even getting back to the front lines faster (When Athena's ultimate is down), all while building some defense in the process.
One quirk of this skill is that it has a slight charge up before it can be fired. Though this may seem like a problem at first, it can actually be used to Athena's advantage. Once this skill is charged, Athena can cancel it at anytime without any cost to mana or cooldown, creating a distinct sound and flash, but no dash. Thus, the skill can be activated and canceled rapidly while on the front-lines in order to confuse enemies as to when you will approach, possibly even causing them to use a skill early.
Skill 2:
Counfound
This is Athena's primary crowd control skill. When activated, it will cause enemies to walk towards you and auto-attack for its duration. This skill has three primary uses: Pulling enemies into danger, pulling back retreating enemies, and pulling enemies away from endangered allies. This ability to control your opponents movement for up to 2 seconds is quite potent, and is useful in a multitude of situations. Unfortunately, unlike the straight stuns of other tanks, this skill is almost useless for escaping, as it will pull the enemies toward you. Its only use in this respect is to prevent enemies from using their skills for a short time. This skill is especially potent against enemies near your towers, as it will make them auto-attack you (thus making the tower target them) while they are pulled further toward the tower. This can lead to an early kill in some situations.
Skill 3:
Shield Wall
This ability, being a straight damage ability, is unusual on a tankier character like Athena. Still, it does give Athena some uncommon damage potential, especially late game. Due to its big Aoe damage, this skill can allow Athena to forgo buying
Hand of the Gods, as it allows her minion clearing abilities to be quite serviceable without it. Against players, Athena will almost always need to use
Confound in order to make both of its hits connect.
Ultimate:
Defender of Olympus
This is the ability that makes Athena special. With this, Athena can teleport to any ally anywhere on the battlefield after a 4 second channel. During the channel, the targeted ally will take 50% damage, and Athena will heavily damage enemies within a short radius of where she lands. Unfortunately, leveling up this skill only increases its damage, and the damage's radius is small enough, and allied behavior is unpredictable enough that I have found the damage on this skill to be fairly unreliable. This also means that Athena will have to rely doubly on her other 3 skills to do the brunt of her damage. Thus I recommend acquiring this skill at level 5 for its amazing teleport, and then maxing it last.
The teleport on this skill is infinitely useful and can save your teammates' lives. Use this on low-health allies that are being chased, then pull away their attackers with
Confound. Use this skill on an ally chasing a low health enemy in order to secure the skill. Use this skill on an ally in a struggling lane in order to quickly turn the tables on the enemy laners. If none of the above situations are happening at the moment, this skill can also be used to instantly return to your lane/a teamfight after returning to base, allowing you to get full health and mana, buy items, and return to the battlefield in the space of abut 10 seconds, even if your at the enemies' phoenix!
Primary Offensive Combo:
->
->
Athena relies on chaining her skills together in order to do her maximum damage, thus leveling her skills somewhat evenly (at least initially) is recommended for maximum effect. Although,
Confound should usually be maxed first, followed by
Shield Wall, then
Preemptive Strike.
Sorry that I haven't replied, I actually to a short break from smite shortly after I made this guide.
I'll probably return to it at some point, but for now I have been trying out Chang'e (lot of fun btw).
Thanks for your support guys, I'll try to update this guide at some point.
-Best Regards Xanderzilla(if you want to friend me my IGN is also Xanderzilla
The item choice depends strongly on the opponent team, so in certain cases I prefer to pick mag. defense in stead of Breastplate of Valor, that means either Stone of Gaia (solving also some mana issues) or Bulwark of Hope. The Bulwark of Hope would benefit more of a late Ethereal Staff instead of penetrating items.
On the other hand the Shoes of Focus will become mandatory in that case.
Actually, her playstyle triggering the polynomicon as much as possible means that you will need more items which increase her magical power. Her tankiness suffers then, so that a more secure playstyle is recommended. Chasing enemy gods will still be her primary focus AND harrassment of full HP gods as long as the Beads are not on cooldown.
Short: "The item build" is never a solid setup. Always look at your opponents builds and change some details. Keep in mind, that this also effects your playstyle then (for example if you have NOT max. cooldown reduction).
Best regards
Burning-Fart
this is the first really good Athena guide. Visualizing the abilities really helps players who actually do NOT play her. It's always important to know your enemies, so in this case knowing how far she can dash is really helpful.
Mostly I agree with your thoughts. But recently I fought Arena mode exclusively with her and I believe therefore you should implement your thoughts regarding other game modes than conquest as soon as possible. So I look forward to this. I like starting with
Shoes of Focus and Breastplate of Valor followed by Polynomicon, Void Stone and Rod of Tahuti. If I face lots of squishies in arena I like to buy Spear of the Magus for the flat penetration...
Purification Beads is also a Must-have. I feel the cooldown reduction (35%) is very important. However, in my opinion it is important to max. the Preemptive Strike first, in order to reduce the cooldown of your Preemptive Strike. Saying this you can start chasing wounded gods at level 7-8, since it does some decent damage and the cooldown is so short that you can retreat.
How important is the Hide of Leviathan to you?
I gave +1 for this guide.
Best regards
Burning-Fart