Soulmates~ | Full Healing (S4, All Modes, Patch 4.16) Aphrodite Guide!

Hi guys! In game name LetUsBegin here with a full healing focused Aphrodite guide! This is my first guide, so sorry for no flair or pizazz yet! This build is best used when you want to enhance your teammates, keeping them alive, while doing slight damage to help poke. The goal is to keep your teammates alive, and keep them doing damage, providing utility to your team. This guide will help you accomplish that! I play Aphrodite A LOT (currently rank 7), and this is the custom build I use every game!

Aphrodite has a kit that is very balanced, doing decent poke damage while having utility such as healing and knock back for her team. The way I like to play her is as a support mage, focused heavily on healing my teammates and keeping them alive while they do the damage. Aphrodite's healing ratio is VERY nice, so if you have strong teammates, keeping them alive so they can do their full damage is a great idea!

PASSIVE Center of Attention: Aphro will gain 4 Physical Protection and 4 Magical Protection for every friendly or enemy god within 70 feet of her.

1 Kiss: Her 1 is a "kiss" to an enemy or ally which has two different affects, depending on the type of person hit.

When hit on an ally, they are "bound" to her. I will explain what the other abilities do to "bound" allies in the other ability descriptions. Being "bound" gives Aphro and the ally increased movement speed. It has a 3s reduced cooldown when hitting an ally, and 70% of mana generated by Aphro is given to the ally as well.

When hit on an enemy, the enemy is stunned, and the ally who is bound gets "jealous", increasing their damage to the stunned enemy.

2 Back Off!: When Back Off! is cast, Aphrodite does damage to enemies around her, knocking them back 25 units. If there is a "bound" ally, the explosion also happens around them, dealing the same damage and slowing them by 25% for 2s.

If an enemy is hit by both blasts, they will only be affected by the one from Aphrodite.

3 Love Birds: Aphrodite throws out doves in an area in front of her, damaging enemies every .5s for 3s. The doves also heal the "bound" ally, and Aphrodite.

4 Undying Love: While this ability is active, Aphrodite and her soulmate are invulnerable to all damage for a small duration. All CC is also removed upon activation.

Here is an ability showcase I made to show what the abilities do:

The ability sequence listed up above is what I have found to be the most useful when building for utility/healing.

If you look at the details on Aphrodite's abilities, you should notice the 3 Love Birds gains 7 extra healing each level up. This means in order to gain the maximum efficiency for your healing build, you need to max Love Birds first.

Kiss should be the second ability maxed out. The reason we chose Kiss over Back Off! is pretty simple. Kiss increases in movement speed, ally jealousy damage, and lowers the cooldown as you level up. Back Off! ONLY increases in damage. The slow and cooldown stay the same, and the cost rises, making it really inefficient to level up. That is why it is maxed last.

So, the order I use is:

Love Birds (to increase healing, making the build more effective)
Kiss (increases MS, ally jealousy damage, and lowers CD)
Back Off! (only increases damage, CD stays the same, slow stays the same, and cost increases)

If you want to go a more damage-y, also heal-y build, you COULD max Back Off! second. But because this build is more for a healing style, I'm definitely choosing Kiss as the second max.

I start my games with Rod of Healing and my Relic, which is Meditation Cloak.

The reason I do this is because this ALREADY increases my healing (and RoH will heal even more in combat, making it very useful for this build), and getting Meditation Clock allows me to heal all teammates at once if an early fight breaks out and everyone is in need of healing vs just one person. Meditation Cloak is also very nice because it will restore some of your mana as well as everyone elses, so all in all, it's a very nice support-y item to grab.

Now, if you're worried about getting RoH and not having any gold left to purchase maybe some potions for healing and mana, you could always go the safer route, getting Magic Shoes and consumables! That will give you movement speed to keep up to your teammates, while providing some power, and potions for safety.

So, let's talk about why we're building what is put in the item build!

CORE:

The CORE items needed in Aphrodite's healing build are definitely Shoes of Focus, Rod of Asclepius, and Lotus Crown.

Shoes of Focus are very important, seeing as they let you heal more and more often. You get mana, which allows you to spam your healing more often. You also gain CDR which keeps your abilities up more often. Keeping your abilities up often, and also boosting your healing, means it's VERY essential to have in your healing build.

Rod of Asclepius is the most important healing item, giving you a percentage increase to your healing. After all, healing is what this build is about! Giving you Magical Power (which in return will increase your healing, Love Birds uses 15% of your Magical Power for additional healing), giving you movement speed to keep up with your teammates to keep bound to them, and giving that passive that increases healing is VERY important.

Lotus Crown is the least necessary in core, BUT it is definitely still very important. While you COULD build other things if needed, I still consider this a necessary core item. Lotus Crown gives a shield to not only your teammate that is bound to you, but also you. So not only does it give EXTRA protection, because it gives you a shield as well it can keep you alive so you can keep them alive! It's a fun chain of shields and healing, haha.

OFFENSIVE:

Because your Love Birds also scales with your Magical Power (15%), and your Back Off! does extra damage based off of it, Magical Power is also a necessity for Aphrodite. Because of this, I recommend the following items:

Rod of Tahuti is a wonderful item to get, seeing as it will give you 125 Magical Power, increase your Magical Power by 25%, and ALSO give you 30 MP5. MP5 is HIGHLY important for Aphrodite because of the spamming you'll be doing on your 3. The cost of your 3 is relatively high, so having mana and MP5 can be VERY beneficial. Unless you're getting Mana Camp every two seconds, I would recommend getting that MP5.

While not necessary, Chronos' Pendant will also give you a nice MP5 boost that can be helpful (25 MP5). If you would like to build a more cooldown reduction build, you can definitely get a Chronos Pendant to give you increased CDR (20%) and a passive that lowers your abilities CDs as well. It's definitely not a bad idea to get a Chronos Pendant to keep your Love Birds up more often! Healing more often means healing more overall!

Now, Obsidian Shard is not necessary. You could always substitute it for other items. HOWEVER, if you want some damage to be able to protect yourself, this is a wonderful item. It will give you damage and penetration to be able to protect yourself from being jumped on, keeping you still very powerful and not just a frail weak healer. I believe this is a great item, seeing as if you do a good job healing, you WILL be jumped on. Your teammates should protect you, but you also need to be able to protect yourself by doing some damage. This helps with that.

DEFENSIVE:

Two of these items are used for the same reason, but let's talk about that.

Hide of the Urchin is a great early-mid game item to get for Aphrodite. The reason this is SO good on Aphrodite, is with each kill or assist, you gain +3 Physical and +3 Magical Protections. Max is 10 stacks. Now, because you're going to be healing people a lot, you should be getting A LOT of assists. You are the one keeping them alive and able to kill the enemy. You should be able to easily stack this item, I would just recommend getting this after Rod of Asclepius so you could start stacking early.

Breastplate of Valor is just overall a wonderful item against a Physical-heavy team, especially for Aphrodite. The item gives Mana and MP5, which we've already talked about. It also gives Physical Protection (65) and CDR (20%). If you would like to go for the more CDR heavy build, or are against a very Physical-heavy team, definitely get this item for survivability.

Both Void Stone and Jade Emperor's Crown are included for the same reason: the passive. Depending on if your team is Magic or Physical heavy, reducing the Protections of the enemies greatly increases your team's damage. As the support mage you are with this build, doing anything you can to protect your team and increase their damage is what it's all about. These items are wonderful for that.

CONSUMABLES:

Consumables that enhance healing, mana, defenses, or power are all good consumables to get. All will increase your abilities in some way, making you stronger and making it easier to keep yourself and your teammates alive.

DON'T FORGET TO GET WARDS, THEY'RE VERY IMPORTANT!

This build is VERY good for focusing on healing and keeping your team alive so they can do full damage and kill the enemy! You are important in your game, making sure people stay alive so objectives can get destroyed and so the victory screen can pop up!

To sum it up, make sure to get your healing items, bind to the carries (or very low teammates), watch your mana (build MP5), and GET WARDS.

You are a Healing Honey, go out there and heal! ♥