The Amazing Bootless Freya S4/S5

I'm Bringutonya on PC and Panazoonkyo on PS4. I started playing Smite in its season 2. I have three diamonds on PC and five on console. I mainly play Arena; I play all the modes but I try and stay away from Conquest because it can take so long compared to the other games. I've mainly played Freya in Arena, but I think this guide would work for most modes except I haven't considered starting items.

Until you try it.

The first time I tried this, I went 15/0/something. I'm not a particularly good hunter; I think I've only gained two or three levels in Freya. You wouldn't believe that a bootless build could be so good, and you really won't, until you try it.

Here's the thing. What's good about Freya? If you're using her as a hunter, attack speed and pen. You don't need power. What's bad about Freya? Very squishy.

There are currently five attack speed items for mages. These are the first five items you buy. You round it off with Spear of the Magus to get rid of any lingering protections and you're done!

Here's why it works so well. Witchblade gives you 100 health, 10% movement speed, 10% CDR and 20% attack speed. It also has an aura that reduces enemy attack speed by 20%. It's considered a defensive item... but not on Freya. Freya needs attack speed to be effective if playing her as a hunter. (You can play her as a straight-up mage, but that's just not my style.) CDR is useful on her. The 100 health is most useful near the start of the game. You're still a bit slower than anybody who bought boots, so you have to be a bit careful, but you're already on the path to high damage with this item.

Toxic Blade gives you another 100 health, 10 penetration, another 20% attack speed and another 10% movement speed. You now have more movement speed than anybody with the same base speed who bought boots! It also has up to 60% anti-heal. What's not to like about that?

Demonic Grip is third. This gives you a big boost to your attack speed (30%) and 12% protection reduction for each hit. I know percentage protection reduction isn't great with flat pen, but it's still OK, and you do build up to 36% whereas with Obsidian Shard you only get 33%. You need that attack speed. Oh, yes, and another 7% movement speed. That's 27% added to base at this point; people who just went for boots only get 18%.

Hastened Ring gives you another 25% attack speed and another 7% movement speed, now at 34% added to base! As soon as you get your first hit on the god, you get haste, so you are no longer slowed down by your basic attacks for six seconds. Remember the irritating hunters who used to build Hastened Fatalis and Frostbound Hammer when it was an option? They were really fast and hard to hit and you were a sitting duck, with really slow movement speed; you never could get past the kiting! Hunters pay for that in reduced damage per second. Freya doesn't!

Shogun's Kusari gives you another 10% CDR, 20% CCR which makes you less squishy, 40 magical protection, and another 25% attack speed (along with your mates because of the aura). It's aimed at guardians but it's ideal for Freya.

And Spear of the Magus gives you 15 flat pen and up to 50 protection reduction. That'll pretty much cut through a Void Stone on a guardian at full stacks. Along with your 36% protection reduction, you can get 75 flat on this ridiculously defensive Freya build. You'll be doing equivalent to true damage from your third hit onwards against squishies at level 20 with 48 protections! At the end of five hits, that's going to bring someone with 117 protections down to nothing!

This is how the stats look at the end of the build at the time of writing (end of season 4):

Power: 140 (doesn't really matter)
Lifesteal: 15% from her passive
Pen/Protection Reduction: 0%+25 rising to 36%+55 after three hits and 36%+75 after five hits
Attacks per Second: 2.47 (just below the 2.5 cap)
Physical Protection at level 20: 70
Magical Protection at level 20: 88
Health: 2205
HP5: 17.4
Movement Speed: 493.4
Cooldown: 20%
Mana: 960
MP5: 32.3
CC Reduction: 20%
Anti-Heal: 0% rising to 60% after three hits

Basically, use your 2 (Pulse) to initiate. Your basic attacks slow the enemy and have an area of effect around the enemy they impact, so this is what you use to attack minions.

Use your 1 (Irradiate) for extra damage after you have initiated with the 2 if you need to do so. You still need the enemy slowed.

Your 3 (Banish) banishes the enemy for a few seconds. Tricky to get right. If you're being chased, it might be worth aiming it at your feet while you're running.

Your 4 (Valkyrie's Discretion) makes it so that you cannot be hit and you are CC-immune for a little while and you get four AoE hits on enemies with it. It's a fairly good escape. You won't do much damage with it with this build but if an enemy is low, it's worth trying.

The passive is easy to understand. Brisingamen's Blessing gives you 15% lifesteal. I never go for more lifesteal on Freya.

I recommend the priority order 2 -> 4 -> 1 -> 3. Your 2 gives AoE damage until you engage your 1 as well. You get more damage if you level your 1 first after putting a point into 2, but it's not AoE any more and it makes you mana-hungry.

If you're going bootless, you'll need either Witchblade or Toxic Blade as your first item, and you need the other of the two or Demonic Grip or Hastened Ring as your second item. If you use Demonic Grip or Hastened Ring, your movement speed increase will be 17% which is close enough to the 18% you get from boots to pretty much match it.

After that point, it becomes more flexible. I just played a game with four magical opponents, so I decided on Shogun's Kusari third. It gave me decent protections and a bonus to my CDR which was welcome. It didn't give me more movement speed. I went 12/0/something in that game.

I wouldn't build Spear until at least fourth item. Spear of Desolation may work well as a replacement if you're mainly targeting squishies, and it will improve the performance of your 4. You'd get another 10% CDR with it, too. You don't need to consider Divine Ruin for anti-heal because you'll get it with Toxic Blade. Obsidian Shard may be what you decide to go for if you have to take down towers etc because protection reduction won't work on them.

If the enemy team is made up of mainly physical gods, or you're getting troubled by a Loki every two minutes or something like that, I'd insert Breastplate of Valour into the sequence, probably around fourth item. I'm loath to give up an attack speed item so I'd say that replaces Spear of the Magus, although I imagine that's actually sub-optimal. You would end up with the full 40% CDR and that allows you to keep Pulse (Freya's 2) active almost all the time.

It may be worth considering Rod of Tahuti in place of something, but I haven't tried it out.

Boots as sixth item? You'd get to 52% bonus movement speed, but you may start to get into diminishing returns then (at a certain point, bonuses have less effect).

For most of the game, you'll want the attack speed buff in my opinion, or possibly the CDR buff. When you've got your five attack speed items, you'll not need that one any more. You could then go for the power or CDR buff.