The Path to Justice

Welcome to a full, complete guide of the warrior Tyr, starting with the basics, and ending with the more advanced ways of playing this God. Tyr is a warrior in Smite, who has the main strength of being able to control the enemy team with his large cc abilities. Being a beads burner character, Tyr can quickly dispatch of squishies if they do not respect his fearless by using their relics. This can set up for some reasonable kills with your jungle, or your mage. For starters, this is my first guide, and well, probably my only guide. I'm making this because I have around 200 hours on the God of Justice, and I see a lot of other Tyrs making mistakes and having a rough time with him. Before going forward, I will explain a few things below:

- Tyr is a god that relies on healing in order to stay in the fight on lane against many matchups, if you hate healing Gods, Tyr is not for you.
- Tyr is not an S tier God. He is average at best, doing one thing, but doing it very well. If you want to do very well in high level ranked play, Tyr may not be the best warrior for masters.
- Tyr is a god that mainly revolves around the starter item Bluestone, which has recently been nerfed by Hi Rez, but is being buffed again in the mere future. If you do not like bluestone gods, do not pick up Tyr.

With those facts out of the way, let us discuss the basics.

As said before, Tyr is a warrior that focuses on being able to apply pressure through cc and relic burning. Tyr's main source of damage is his fearless ability, and his power cleave. While Tyr only has two abilities, he can stance switch with his third ability, and use the same abilities again, but with different effects. Let's go over what each ability does below.

Fearless (Attack)
Fearless is a dash ability that can push a God into mid air, hitting them twice before letting them free in the air. This is what fearless does in his attack stance, and is the main source of damage you will see when playing him.

Fearless (Defense)
The fearless ability in his defense stance is also a dash, however, instead of catching them into a cc chain of two hits, you instead knock them up once. The dash does not end when you knock them up, you will continue to move at the same speed for a small window afterwards. You will use this fearless usually to finish off enemy Gods at low health, or to get away from a fight at low health.

Power Cleave (Attack)
The power cleave ability is what you will use to maximize your damage with your fearless combo. Once catching an enemy God in your fearless dash, you will then use the power cleave to knock the enemy into the air just a tad bit more while in your attack stance. Power cleave can be used to finish off enemies, not just combo with your fearless, remember that.

Power Cleave (Defense)
The power cleave ability in your defense stance however, functions very differently. This is what you will use to stay in the fight, and keep pressure on the enemy team. This ability will heal you when you hit an opponent, or a minion. Keep in mind, when Season 8 was released, healing was changed, so in order to get the full healing out of this ability, make sure you are in combat with another god if possible. The strength of this ability is not from hitting one enemy god with it, but hitting multiple, and, usually, the minion wave along with it. The healing will stack at three stacks, healing you for a very good amount. What makes his healing strong, is that it's instant. There's no delay like Hercules, where you have to fight in order to get more health back essentially.

Change Stance (Ability 3)
The change stance ability may seem like it's worthless, however it is one of Tyr's most important abilities. Like most stance changing Gods, this ability will give you a passive effect upon leveling it up. Unlike most stance changing Gods however, this ability when leveled up changes the way Tyr performs quite drastically. When leveling the ability up, you get a bonus power while in attack stance in this order: 0/18/26/34/42/50, and when you are in defense stance, you get bonus protections, both magical and physical, in this order: 0/18/26/34/42/50, which is almost a free mantle of discord. This is huge, and allows Tyr to get away with a lot of funky builds.

Lawbringer (Ultimate)
Perhaps one of the most underrated ultimates in the game. Tyr's ult not only allows him to jump over walls, and traverse lanes with ease to catch opponents and squishies that are hiding in the backline, it also puts on a devastating three second slow. On top of the damage that it does, and the slow, it can be used through walls, and can be used to starts fights when your blink relic is down. To top it all off, this ultimate can save you from fights that you are going to die to, allowing you a quick escape, and can even be used to finish opponents off that have escaped through walls or have made distance on you. This ult can also be used to bait certain Gods' ults out, since you become cc immune in it.

Unyielding (Passive)
Again, like I said before, perhaps one of the most underrated passives in the game. Tyr's passive, unyielding, allows him to not be affected by stuns, taunts, intoxicate, and mesmerize effects for no longer than a second. Not only does this help Tyr and his kit drastically, it also stacks with other crowd control reduction effects, making stuns and such last less than a second. This passive is insane, and should not be something you take lightly. Use this to your advantage whenever you can, your opponent will most likely, if not always, underestimate the god you are playing as.

With the basics of Tyr's kit out of the way, let's move on to the intermediate knowledge of Tyr that you will need to know in order to play him to his full potential.

Tyr is a God who relies heavily on a relic called blink. It's by far his best relic, similar to Hercules, he needs it in order to properly set up his combo to output damage. There is never a game, even when I am Tyr support, that I do not buy blink. When I first began playing Tyr, I was able to wait till level twelve to buy blink, because of my patience. However, as you get better, I recommend always buying blink on this God. It's simply, too good.

Situations that you will need blink in are almost every team fight. Upgrading blink early on, may not be a bad idea. Blinking behind a God, and pushing them into your tower is your greatest strength on lane. Use this to your advantage, enemies will always underestimate a low health Tyr, thinking they're safe to stay on your lane and flaunt their victory over you with their minion wave. Do not let them stroke their ego in front of you, blink behind them, and push them into your tower. If they somehow kill you, they will most likely, is not always, die with you.

Outside of lane, Tyr needs his blink relic to blink onto squishies that are hiding behind the backline, and push them out towards your team so they can confirm the kill. If the squishy refuses to beads, then they will die. If they beads, they will have no beads up for you next combo, or for your teams kits.

With the last paragraph in mind, Tyr is a team focused God. He needs his team to follow up on his blink relic combos late game, they have to help you confirm the kill.

This is not an easy thing to get used to, and you will miss blink combos sometimes. I still do, even with around 220 hours on the God. It happens. And if you're just learning him, it will happen a lot. It's hard to get used to, but when you do, I promise, you will feel satisfied.

I will let you in on a secret, my young Tyr player. Tyr can cancel his fearless by using his power cleave in the middle of his fearless dash. This is one of his most effective tools, that no one seems to do when they play Tyr. Most notable in his defense stance, if you use your fearless, and then press your power cleave activation key, you will cancel your fearless early, still doing the damage and knocking them up if you hit them with your fearless, but cancelling the animation early, and allowing for faster damage from your power cleave. This can be used to get healing faster from minions in your defense stance, and even to confirm a kill extremely fast without having to swap stances, ult, or use your relic.

This does not just have it's perks in your defense stance, it can also be used in your attack stance. If you fearless and miss, and are about to fearless your way into a tower, press the power cleave activation key, and you will stop in your tracks, power cleave, but not go into the tower. It can be used as an emergency brake, something that has saved me multiple times when I make the mistake of playing too aggressive. Not only this, it can be used to confirm a kill faster, as mentioned before, by only using one fearless proc in your attack stance, cancelling it early, and power cleaving them to death

This does not just apply to fights, either. You can use this tactic to get totem faster, to clear camps faster, to get objectives faster. It's a very very very powerful tool, because the enemy will never see it coming. Learn it, adapt to it, learn how to curve your way into them with your power cleave, and kill them with this tactic. It will not let you down.

Think of this as a bonus chapter. This is just some simple tips to help you when you are first learning Tyr on the solo lane. First thing is first, always start with your two as mentioned earlier. It has a shorter cooldown, and while it may do less damage, you do not make a mess of your buff. You can clear it in a calm and patient way, without using too much mana. Once you arrive at lane, take note of Tyr's auto attack chain, how it works, how fast the autos are dished out, and how much damage that they do. You will be relying on your autos for the first couple minutes of the game, like any warrior. Once you hit level two, this is where things begin to take a turn for Tyr.

Hitting level two is an instant wave of stress for your opponent. He is an extreme force to be reckon with at level two, the fearless combo hurts most solo laners a lot. you need to learn how to properly turn quickly, and up your reaction time, to not only hit the enemy solo laner and the wave, but do it in a way where they do not expect it. Most warriors focus on the minions, which is something that you will have to do as well. But thanks to your massive cc chain and your insane damage early game, you can clear the wave faster than most warriors, and not only that, you can damage them too if you position yourself correctly. This is huge, since the art of Solo Lane is clearing wave faster than the enemy. You take that power away from the enemy solo laner, and you have won the early game.

Tyr's totem clear is not the best, which may be an issue at times, since Tyr is a rather mana hungry God in the early game. What you need to understand, is that it's not as bad as you may think. Many Tyr players think that it's only possible to hit Totem of Ku in your defense stance. They are wrong. Positioning is key here, since you can allow yourself to hit the Totem of Ku while using the attack fearless, hitting it for one tick of damage. You can then use the previous art I have explained to cancel the dash early, and use your power cleave to clear it even faster. You may be thinking this isn't as important. Trust me. You will need it against certain matchups, and getting totem helps your team in ways you may think don't matter, but really do.