Sylvanus - Keeper of the wild (Full Guide S3)

Before I start my guide, here's a little about me so you know you're getting a the best guide for your support gods. I'm an Xbox smite player currently playing under the organisation Senix_eSports <- hit up on twitter if you feel like and give us a follow. I'm (as you may have guessed the support for Senix's smite team. To begin with, a little of why I chose Sylvanus to make a guide on. Sylvanus is always that one guardian where everyone looks at in the loading screen and goes "pssshht, piece of cake... this duo lane will be easy". Whenever I hear this I always just sit there and think just you wait. Sylvanus, if not played properly can be a literal feeding, walking hit box. Very hard to play when you're playing levels behind so this build is the way to keep ahead of your enemy. Little do people realize, Sylvanus' kit is extremely strong once you've hit level 3-5 (only if your adc is doing it right as well). And, don't get me wrong pulling the adc at level 3 for that 1 minute first blood is by far one of the most satisfying feelings you could have. With this, let's get started...

Starter Items
Okay, so Sylvanus played right is literally an animal right off the bat. You want to start with watcher's gift regardless of how much lane pressure you have, strictly for the fact that you are very mana hungry and that extra little bit of mana you get each passive proc that your adc gives from killing minions (or minion finishing minion) allowing you to assert your dominance on lane. Additionally, even if you are stuck under your tower, your enemy duo lane will always be scared of that pull dragging them under your tower and chunking their health away (generally taking a minimum of 2 tower shots from your pull alone), thus changing the tides of duo lane. Shoes are standard on all supports so you can move and get to where you need to be. The wards, as soon as you spawn waste no time at all buy your shoes and watchers gift and be the nice guy/girl you are and run to solo throw a plant under their tower for extra mp5, make your way over to mid lane through the jungle dropping deep wards on the mid camps run back to the mid tower drop another plant and recall, at this point there should be approximately 30 seconds before game starts, quickly grab your potions 3 of each (pretty self explanatory) and make your way to the damage camp for start, you should get there with about 3-10 seconds to spare, that's why there is literally no time to waste and it gives the mid lane early vision which is critical.

Core Items
To stop yourself from being a walking hit box you want winged blade, this is due to the fact it gives you so much for what it's worth and you can hang around lane due to your sustainability until you have enough for it (stay for 100 more gold so you can get more wards). Winged blade gives you 10% movement speed so you're about as fast as you would be with full boots if you have shoes and winged blade. 90% of the time the enemy team will have slows to try and stop you so it counters those slows off the passive proc. Breastplate of valor, just look at the item and you know why we buy it on every support. However, there are two reasons to not buy Breastplate of valor as your first defensive item.
1) If it's a double magical duo lane (versing sol, chronos, or freya and any guardian), at that point you skip straight to your magical protection item that I will discuss in the next paragraph.
2) if your team is getting a lot of kills, this calls for buying hide of the urchin, the early stacks give you ridiculous hybrid protections and you can freely walk the map.

Magical Protections
There are 3 situational magical items to grab in the current meta.
1) Bulwark of hope - buy this when you're getting focused in fights by the magical damage characters the shield proc is basically extra health and gives you a little more in the fight or another chance to make like a duck and get the flock out of there.
2) pestilence - If the enemy team has healers (even if it's just a Guan Yu) build pestilence, the amount of times the fight has been turned by a simple heal for 200 and a near squad wipe or an objective gets taken because of this is a serious pain in the...
3) Genji's guard - one of my favourite magical items at the moment, if the enemy team is smart and leaves you alone in a fight and tries hitting your back line build genji's due to that 10% CDR can make or break your fight and additionally a sexy 80 magical protections is undeniably an amazing item to have and a passive to make it even better.

Hybrid Protections
At this point you must always grab mantle of discord, it's ridiculously broken as an item 60 protections of each, with a stun passive when you drop below 30% health is great when you have a Bakasura, Belona, or a Kali glued to you with either Hastened Fatalis, or Frostbound hammer, it generates self peel without the need to use an ability, it's kind of always just there I suppose. By this point if you build urchin it must be before Mantle because you want to stack as quickly as possible, if your team isn't killing don't build it it'll be next to useless because you won't be stacking, so only build urchin if your team is killing.
6th item

There is a lot of choice in your 6th item, so now it's time to list them out and why to build them.
1)Mantle of Discord - if you built Hide of the urchin in your hybrid protections just build this to be even bigger and tankier, it really is disgustingly broken to have I can't stress this enough.
2) Ethereal staff - if you're tanky but you want to be a little tankier but have damage output this is the item for you, the passive converts health to magical power so you can offer more healing through scaling and who doesn't want 400 more health?
3) Hide of the nemean lion - if you're versing a team that revolves around basic attacks, build this (it's very self explanatory reading the item).
4) Gem of isolation - if you're tanky enough and just want to be an outright ******* build this so you can slow every proc off your wisps or off your ult, plus gives you a little more damage.

Shoes
1) Traveler's shoes - if you're miles ahead early and are making early rotations to mid build these after winged blade really quickly so you can rotate faster and you get free gold (they pay for themselves in the long run).
2) shoes of focus - if you still have only shoes until the end with your winged blade and you're sitting even with their support build these at the end for more CDR, sell traveler's at the end if you have them and replace it with shoes of focus (you're fast enough already)

Stack your wisps first, that's your main damage/healing so it's the obvious choice. Once your wisps are stacked up, upgrade your pull, it reduces cooldown so you can be an ******* a lot more often. your 1 isn't as important as it still roots regardless so that's the last thing to stack and of course upgrade your ult whenever you can.

So for my summary I'm going to explain how supporting with Sylvanus differs from supporting with others. So you have your start where you rush out to drop wards, this is standard. Your laning, between waves look to pull for massive poke/early kills. Once your carry can clear for them self safely, take a hike to the middle lane and meet up with the jungler, you're now their walking ***** you move with them because your pull hits through walls so you can pull their mid or jungler into the jungle for the kill with no consequence, they don't see it coming even if they have wards they only know you're their not what you're doing. Come a team fight you're obviously at the front, you can either look for a pull to initiate or save it and wait for someone low health to pull towards the end to secure kills (don't be that guy that pulls someone out of a fight preventing the kill from happening). Map awareness is key.

Sylvanus is typically a ranked play god only, due to publics being crowded with people that are clueless even on your team, so unless you're partied up with a carry, I wouldn't use him in publics.

It's now come to the time where I make Sylvanus sound like a killing machine, and then crush your dreams when I tell you what stops him.

PROS

Great Laning
Heals
Very Tanky
CC kit
absolute creep in the jungle when you have a damage built god by your side

No escape
very immobile without winged blade
reliant on being grouped
abilities can be hard to hit
anti-healing completely shuts him down
Ah Puch destroys Sylvanus

Works absolute wonders in a grouped team that uses range. Peel is ridiculous, but you may get turned against once you peel, so positioning is key.