[Updated] Support Aphrodite - Your Beautiful Soul mate

There are too few words to describe the radiance, the magnificence, the inequitable glory of Aphrodite, Goddess of Beauty. So wondrous is she to behold that one look can inspire tears, desire, jealousy, and love. Yet, beneath her flawless exterior resides a heart burdened with insecurity.

Welcome, to my Aphrodite guide. As arguably the only true support in Smite, Aphrodite is a very important character. Her sustainability is unmatched and while vulnerable alone, she is a force to be reckoned with along side her soul mate. It is possible to build Aphrodite as a mage, yet I feel this is a waste of her potential and as such this guide deals primarily with Aphrodite in a supporting role.

Pros

• Incredible sustain.
• High healing.
• Short cooldowns.
• Extremely fast.
• Easy to escape.
• Reliable Stun

Cons

• Quite squishy.
• Low damage.
• Reliant on your partner.
• Countered by Sobek.

First Items

Watcher's Gift
This starter item provides you with a small but substantial increase in durability through the 100 hp provided, and a much more significant boost to your sustain through significant amounts of mp5 and hp5, 5 and 10 respectively. Perhaps the most important part of this item is the vast quantities of additional gold that it generates, through guaranteeing the last hit bonus from minions, and also providing a small boost in gold per 5. This allows you to become relatively fed, much as Midas' boots did before their cost was increased, without stealing much, if any, of your partner's farm.


MeditationMeditation
Meditation can provide a boost of mana to both you and your soul mate at a critical moment. Picking this up early is an incredible help and remains useful long into the late game, as it can be used to replenish 30% of your soul mate's mana. Upgrading this is not recommended until the late game, as the rank 2 version is not a significant upgrade. Therefore, I would suggest that you wait until you have gold going spare and upgrade straight from rank 1 to rank 3, as the heal at rank 3 can save your life very easily.


Eye of Providence
While Eye of Providence was once an item of questionable value, it is now a must have for a support, as for only 300 gold you can have an infinite number of wards. With each ward lasting 3 mintues and a cooldown of only 60 seconds, this allows you to constantly maintain 2-3 wards at crucial locations, providing early warning of ganks on your lane and attempts on the gold fury's life. Once you become aware of enemy wards foiling your own gank attempts, you can upgrade Eye of Providence to rank 2, changing it's standard wards into sentry wards with the same duration and cooldown. This is an extremely useful item to have, as it allows you to remove enemy wards on demand, helping your team to establish and maintain map control. Upgrading to rank 3 is not critical, but can be extremely useful late game, as the ability to use wards to see through walls opens up a plethora of new placements which can spot crucial areas without putting the ward at risk of being spotted, such as under the Fire Giants feet.

Early Game

Shoes of Focus
Shoes are by far the greatest choice of footwear for Aphrodite. They not only look absolutely fabulous with their slick blue and black colour scheme, but they also bring you right up to the 40% cooldown cap, along with Chronos' Pendant. The magic power provided will contribute to your heal and be amplified by your Rod of Tahuti later in the build, making these the perfect boots. Other choices including Boots of Celerity and Midas' Boots simply do not compare, as the cooldown reduction has been removed from Celerity and the price of Midas' Boots make them simply a waste of gold.


Chronos' Pendant
This item provides your sustain, and helps to restore mana to your soul mate. The cooldown similarly allows you to heal, stun and ult more frequently. This item is core to the build, and is essential to preventing you from running out of mana. It should be prioritised above any actives, and rushed as soon as your boots are complete.

Mid Game

Rod of Tahuti
The famous rod, a good pick for any magical character, this really helps to boost your heal, and allows your limited damage to become noteworthy, as well as providing a little extra mana regen.


Rod of Asclepius
Rod of Asclepius has two major benefits which make it an incredible choice for Aphrodite. The first and foremost is the 15% increase to all healing. This is an aura effect, so it will also help out any other gods with heals, such as Ra or Guan Yu. With a full build, this provides a little over 15 additional healing per tick of your Love Birds. This is equivalent to 100 magic power. In addition to this, the 75 magic power provided is not a small amount, and as such this item greatly increases the strength of your heal. The second reason that this item is a great choice is the 10% movement speed bonus provided. Along with Aphrodite's already great movement speed due to the passive benefit of her Kiss, this allows you to evade enemy attacks with greater ease and prolongs your life through greater mobility and ease of positioning. It will also increase your chasing and fleeing capabilities for obvious reasons.

Late Game

Hide of Leviathan
If you are suffering from both physical and magic damage, or you feel that you are being heavily crowd controlled whenever you enter a fight, consider picking up Hide. It provides both physical and magical defenses, as well as a significant amount of health. This will greatly increase your durability in fights, and the Resolve unique passive will help you spend more time dodging and less time stunned.


Gem of Isolation
Gem provides you with some much needed health and causes your Love Birds to slow. 25% may not seem like a great deal, but consider this. The slow is reapplied with every tick of damage. That's 5 seconds of a 25% slow. This item is a must have.


Wall of Absolution
Absolution provides physical defense, and a little bit of magic power, which is always nice. It is worth noting that Absolution does in fact have the highest physical defense on a single item in the game. It's good. Choose this if you are having issues with enemy physical gods.


Void Stone
Void stone is a decent pick, as it will provide you with some magic power and significant magical defense. Consider taking this if you are taking primarily magic damage. I would highly recommend picking the aura version of this item to help out your mages, as the reduced protections to enemies will be much more useful than a personal increase in magic penetration.

Love Birds

You should max Love Birds first.



Alongside kiss love birds is your most important spell. Much like Aphrodite's other spells, love birds has two different potential effects. The first and most important is it's healing effect. Love birds will always heal both Aphrodite and her soul mate, the area of effect does not affect the healing portion of love birds at all. Use this spell to maintain both yourself and your soul mate at full health, and ensure that it is never off cooldown during a fight, the more healing the better. The second part of love birds is it's offensive functionality. Love birds is a directional line area of effect with a travel time. This means it does not hit all targets within the area immediately, and as such this must be accounted for when aiming, requiring you to lead targets. It does low damage over time, but is very useful for softening up minion waves for your partner to last hit, and for harassing enemy gods behind minions.

If possible, you should always try to hit enemies with your love birds even if the intention is primarily to heal, rather than harm. There is, however, one pitfall to this spell that you must keep an eye on at all times. Kill stealing. You should avoid this if at all possible, as it is more important for your partner to receive kills, and the gold associated with them, than it is for you, especially if you are laning with a carry, as opposed to an aggressive tank. I pick Love Birds first as this helps to accelerate taking Mana Buff at level 1, and you will generally reach level 2 after the first minion wave, meaning that you will still have Kiss before you are under any real threat.

Kiss

You should max Kiss simultaneously with Back Off.



Kiss is the key spell that defines Aphrodite. It has two main uses. Firstly, it has support capabilities, as it allows you to bind yourself to a friendly god, who then becomes your soul mate. This will only last so long as you remain within a reasonably close distance to them. This status provides several benefits to you both. Both of you gain a significant movement speed buff, your soul mate gains 30% of all mana you gain, including mana regen, and your Love Birds will heal your soul mate as well as yourself. Secondly, it has offensive capabilities. When not aimed at a friendly, kiss becomes a projectile stun which, upon connecting, provides your soul mate with a large damage buff, up to 20% at rank 5. Using kiss to stun does not break your link to your soul mate.

Using kiss is simple, but it is not always entirely obvious as to how it works. When aiming at a friendly, if they are highlighted it will hit, whether they move or not. However, when aiming at an enemy kiss can safely be treated as a projectile with a relatively fast travel time. You should remain bound to your lane partner at all times, reapplying the effect as soon as it breaks for any reason. Without this, you cannot heal or ult your partner. Due to it's short cooldown and low mana cost, you can continuously throw out kisses to stun enemies, both providing opportunities for your partner to capitalize on, and to deny enemy aggression, such as a Ymir coming in to stun.

Back Off!

You should max Back Off simultaneously with Kiss.



Back off is an area of effect knock back which deals a significant amount of damage and is centered on yourself, making it a very useful tool for self defense, as you can push enemy melee gods out of range. One shrewd use of Back off is to use the additional movement speed provided by Kiss to run in front of fleeing enemy gods and push them back into your soul mate, or team in general, condemning them to certain death.

Back off can also be useful if you are stranded alone, as the knock back is particularly useful when being chased or attacked by a melee ranged enemy, such as Arachne. When running, if you knock the enemy back with back off then stun them with kiss you should have plenty of time to escape.

Undying Love

As usual, your ult takes priority over other skills.



Undying love may seem weak, starting at a mere 0.8 seconds of invulnerability, yet it is one of Aphrodite's most powerful abilities. If used correctly, this can counter any hard hitting ults you may encounter, and can save both you, and your soul mate's lives many times. While this spell fulfills the role of Aegis Amulet it has none of it's limitations. You and your soul mate can attack, cast spells and move during the duration, allowing you to safely tower dive, run out of Hades' ult and even prevent Ares' ult as a normal aegis would.

The greatest thing about this ult, is it's short cooldown. With the 35% cooldown cap that Boots of Celerity and Chronos' Pendant quickly secure, at rank 5 this spell has a mere 45 second cooldown. This is great as it allows you to use it extreme frequently, making you and your soul mate both extremely hard to bring down and extremely dangerous to the enemy team, as situations that would usually be suicide can be chanced with Aphrodite's ult, particularly as it can be activated while stunned, breaking the stun in question immediately.

Jungling is not something you should be doing as Aphrodite, although you may take a camp before moving into lane, as is fairly typical at the moment, however I will cover which buffs you should take and which you should leave to your soul mate.

+5 Mana/Sec and 10% cooldown reduction.

Blue buff is worth taking, rather than giving to your soul mate, for two major reasons. The first is obvious, it allows you effectively infinite mana for the duration, letting you spam spells without concern. The second, on the other hand, is slightly more subtle. Due to your passive, loving embrace, restoring 30% of all mana you gain to your soul mate, your lane effectively gains 130% of blue buff if you take it, but only 100% if your partner takes it. Therefore, by taking it yourself you both benefit, rather than only one of you. Coupled with meditation, this allows you to spam heals and go for early early level 2-4 kills. The cooldown reduction can be useful to you both, yet for the above reasons I still feel that it is ideal for Aphrodite to take this buff, rather than her partner.



+20% Movement Speed and +10% Attack Speed.

Speed buff is also a useful buff for Aphrodite, particularly if you lane with a fast character such as Sun Wukong, as it allows you to keep up with them. This buff is not always yours, however, and whether you or your soul mate takes it will be down to a judgement call at the moment.



+20% Magical and Physical Power.
+10 Magical Power and +5 Physical Power.

While red buff does allow you to heal for more, it is much more valuable to your soul mate, vastly increasing their damage. Your role is to support your soul mate, their role is to hurt people. Red is geared much more towards the latter.

Laning Strategy

Here I am going to talk in general terms, as I will cover which characters in particular are good to lane with, and any little tricks to try with them, later.

If possible, take left lane, as the Mana Buff can greatly benefit you and your soul mate. Ensure that you take the Mana Buff as quickly as possible, body blocking it yourself if you are laning with a ranged, or having your soul mate block it if they are melee.

While in lane remain behind your minions and soften up the enemy minions, with auto attacks or Love Birds to allow your partner easier last hits. Do not attempt to take last hits unless your partner has no chance of taking them, as every little bit of gold counts. Remain bound to your partner at all times and use your Kiss to deny aggression, such as by stunning an incoming Ymir or a Hades just after his burrow but just before his AoE.

Try not to spam spells, as you will run out of mana before you can complete your Chronos' Pendant, ensure that you make use of your Mana Potions, and return to retake mana buff whenever it respawns. If you are struggling to maintain your mana, considered backing early to pick up meditation, as it will cost a mere 250 gold.

The most valuable use of your Love Birds is to heal yourself and your soul mate. However, as the heal will take place regardless of where you aim, it is important to make the most of this spell, and your mana. While laning, aim to hit as many hostile targets as possible. Position yourself so that you can damage an entire minion wave as well as putting down some light harass on the enemy gods.

In terms of initiating a fight in your lane, you will be vital to your partner, as it is your job to catch enemy gods out of position using your Kiss. Whenever an enemy steps out of position, attempt to stun them - assuming your partner is in the vicinity. If your soul mate decides to take the oppurtunity then you should drop your Love Birds over the enemy god to help sustain your partner throughout the fight, as well as dealing some additional damage to your target.

If your partner is engaging move close to the enemies with them and use your Back Off! to help contribute to your soul mate's initial burst of damage, as well as pushing the enemy enemy god into a worse situation to help prevent their escape. Be careful when using this spell on low health enemies, as you should try to avoid stealing kills unless it is absolutely necessary to ensure that they die, such as if Thor has just thrown his hammer and is about to teleport. One use of Back Off! is when you are escaping it can be used as a knockback to aid in your escape, or it can be used if an enemy god is attacking your partner and you want to put distance between your soul mate and the enemy. In this situation, it's knock back can be used to help your partner kite or escape the enemy, or it can simply contribute to the damage output of your partner.

Team Fights

No two team fights are ever the same, and there is so little about them that can be predicted that it is very difficult to give specific advice on how to handle them, but there are a few things that should be kept in mind when going into larger engagements.

For the most part, you should remain bound to the most fed character on your team, this will usually be your partner, especially if they picked a physical carry, but it may not always be. Making this god your soul mate will allow your damage buff from Kiss to stretch the furthest, and it will help them to survive the inevitable focus fire they will receive, being the biggest threat on your team.

Make use of the ability to switch soul mate quickly, as hitting Kiss on a friendly god does not put it on cooldown, and as such you can quickly switch from god to god in order to heal other people. However, be careful not to miss, or use Kiss offensively, when you are attached to the wrong person, as this will prevent you from supporting your partner for the next 10 seconds or so. This could be fatal.

Cast Love Birds every time it is off cooldown, as during a fight there will always be incoming damage, and as such you should be putting out as much healing as possible. Good use of Kiss offensively to stun dangerous enemies or catch out vulnerable ones can greatly help your team and a well placed Undying Love can save a life or turn around a fight.

You should use your Back Off! in team fights to cause the maximum disruption and damage to the enemy team. You can use it to interrupt the casting of enemies with heavily telegraphed attacks, such as Ymir's freeze or Hercules' ultimate. This can prevent a lot of incoming damage and rescue team mates who would be caught out of position. If you have missed your opportunity to interrupt important spells, use Back Off! to draw attention to yourself, keep yourself alive, or help burst down squishy enemies. Drawing attention to yourself may at first seem foolish, but you must consider that if you are not being damaged then half of your Love Birds' healing is wasted, so if you can ensure at least some damage is absorbed and healed by you, do so.

I have tried and tested each of these combinations and found all of them to be good choices, both theoretically and practically. These are made under my firm belief that lanes ought to contain both a magical character and a physical character, and that carries are the best characters to work alongside Aphrodite.

Anhur

Enfeeble
Shifting Sands
Impale
Disperse
Desert Fury

This combination is very powerful, as Anhur is heavy on crowd control, possesses very high burst damage and a reliable escape in the form of his Disperse. Successful use of Kiss will make it far easier for Anhur to land his Shifting Sands and Impale combo, as well as greatly increase the damage done by Impale, allowing this lane to easily take first blood and proceed to dominate the lane. More to this combination's credit, it scales well into late game as the Anhur can easily become fed quickly and greatly benefits from it.

Neith

Broken Weave
Spirit Arrow
Unravel
Backflip
World Weaver

A very strong character in her own right, Neith meshes very well with Aphrodite. The use of Kiss can remove the posibility of any misses with Spirit Arrow, and enhance the damage of this already very powerful spell. With both Love Birds and Unravel, this lane has so much sustain that your biggest problem will be finding a reason to go back and spend your gold. The capability of back flip to escape from almost any situation, even Odin's ultimate, means that even in a situation where you may die, your Neith can get out without even a scratch. Finally, World Weaver allows this lane to support all of the others and helps Neith to become fed extremely quickly if she manages to catch out most of the enemy gods who would otherwise have escaped on low health. Neith does not scale as well into late game as other physical carries, but with the help of Aphrodite she can become almost unstoppable.

Odin

Birds of Wisdom
Lunge
Odin's Shout
Gungnir's Might
Ring of Spears

This is perhaps my favourite partner for Aphrodite. Odin is strong at the best of times, especially when built as a bruiser character, but with Aphrodite to back him up he can quite safely play extremely recklessly. Being able to heal up any minor damage that Odin may suffer with Love Birds can allow him to effectively use Lunge as a poke, to both farm and soften up enemy gods before going for the kill. This will result in either an engagement, which enemies without escapes will regret due to Ring of Spears, or the enemies will back up, allowing your Odin to freely farm and force the enemy lane under their tower. This lane can easily rack up the kills, and the combination of a tanky character with a healer is extremely durable, yet this lane also has a huge amount of damage potential. The passive of Gungnir's Might provides extra sustain and due to Odin's tanky nature it is easily possible to quickly and safely take jungle buffs, especially Mana Buff, when moving back into lane. A fed Odin is extremely dangerous, and as such this combination can carry very well into late game.

Xbalanque

Dead of Night
Branching Bola
Poison Darts
Rising Jaguar
Darkest of Nights

The high burst damage and chasing potential of Xbalanque is very well complimented by the sustain and crowd control capabilities brought by Aphrodite. This lane can easily farm, harass and kill enemy gods in lane. The use of Kiss can allow Xbalanque to easily move into range and Darkest of Nights allows this lane to engage, leave lane, or gank with ease. Xbalanque's damage scales well into late game and Aphrodite's increase to his movement speed allows him to supplement his otherwise lacking mobility. The combination of damage over time from Poison Darts and Love Birds provides a very dangerous tool for harassment, and the use of Undying Love and Rising Jaguar makes this combination very much capable of safely tower diving where under normal circumstances it would be inadvisable.

In summary, Aphrodite provides three major perks to a lane:

• Sustain
• Stuns
• Safety

With Chronos' Pendant and meditation in hand, your lane will never be lacking mana, and Love Birds will always keep you topped off at full health, providing a significant buffer to any attempted ganks and a clear advantage in engagements in the lane.

Adept use of Kiss can easily catch fleeing foes, boost your soul mate's damage at a crucial moment, aid in escapes, save lives and is the defining factor between a good Aphrodite and a superb one.

Laning with a physical carry will allow your lane to pack heavy damage and great late game capabilities, while also being extremely hard to take out due to the healing and invulnerability that Aphrodite provides.

You may lack the damage to be a direct threat to another God, but you can certainly still go out there and slap them down.

25/04/2013

- Added Abilities section.
- Added Updates section.

02/05/2013

- Updated to patch 0.1.1491
- Added Fenrir as a recommended lane partner.
- Removed Apollo as a recommended lane partner.

24/06/2013

- Updated to patch 0.1.1581.4
- Changed Sun Wukong to Hun Batz. (R.I.P. Wukong)
- Altered item purchase order.
- Altered skill order.
- Adjusted the guide to fit the new items, and slightly improved strategies.

21/10/2013

- Updated to patch 0.1.1774.1
- Altered skill order.
- Revamped item purchase order.
- Generally updated the guide to fit the most recent version of Smite.
- Updated pictures to include new ground targeters.
- Pruned some Gods from the recommended laning partners list.

10/11/2013

- Minor visual improvements to the guide.

23/11/2013

- Updated to patch 0.1.1850.0
- Most changes center on the change to Back Off! when linked to a soul mate.