Beginner's Guide: The Basics of Smite Support Builds
Getting started with building a Support in Smite!
Hello, fellow Smite players! Today I’ll be going over the basics of how to build a Support character. Since the power levels of specific items tend to vary from patch to patch, I’ll be doing my best to explain the why of Support builds, not just the what, so let’s dive right in!
Team Play
The first thing to understand about Support builds is that you’re not building for yourself, you’re building for your team. This means that you’ll have to strengthen your team in the areas where it’s weak, and do the things no one else is willing to do. While most other roles are trying to optimize their builds to be the most damaging or disrupting to enemy gods, you’ll be looking at items that help absorb damage, initiate or peel for your team and defend your vulnerable carries. This will often mean picking up items that don’t provide you much personal benefit, and will prevent you from making a big individual impact. The sooner you get used to this, the better. Supports are not designed to carry in Smite, so stop worrying about hybrid builds or power buffs and just focus on helping your allies.
Protections, Health, and Damage Mitigation
In Smite, the role of Support is almost always filled by a tanky character, and with good reason. One of the best ways to benefit your team is by being as tough to kill as possible. Having a high amount of health and damage mitigation allows you to block incoming damage from enemy gods and objectives, activate powerful initiation abilities without dying, and pump out CC and buffs without worrying about being picked off. While some players have experimented with low-health or “squishy” Supports, the opportunities created by having a high-health Support are too many to ignore and so the core of every popular Support build consists of tank items.
Health and Protections are the two very different, but equally important ways of reducing incoming damage. While the math is a little too complicated to get into here, think of them both as ways to boost the time you stay alive. Additional health increases the amount of damage you can take before dying, while protections keep your health at the current level but reduce the incoming damage by a percentage value. Protections also come in two varieties: Physical Protections reduce damage from Assassins, Warriors, Hunters, and most objectives, while Magical Protections blunt damage from Mages, Guardians, and special map objectives like the Blue Cyclops Camp and the Fire Giant’s Lava Pools. Therefore, since you don’t want to be extra vulnerable to half the map, you’ll have to build some of each if you want to be an effective damage absorber.
With all of these factors in mind, the core items of your Support build should be a solid mix of health, physical protections, and magical protections. Some classic choices for these stats are: Hide of the Urchin, Sovereignty, Heartward Amulet, and Breastplate of Valor.
Utility Stats
Of course, health and protections aren’t the only valuable things for a Support in Smite. There’s also the broad category of utility statistics, bonuses that don’t directly improve your ability to survive but still allow you to help your team. The most obvious of these is Cooldown Reduction. CDR allows you to pump out more stuns, heals, or shields, and abilities are almost always more useful than some extra protections. This category also includes things like Crowd Control Reduction, item-based CC, and movement speed (speaking of movement speed, you should almost always start your build with boots, which provide some good utility and tank stats right at the start of the game). Some statistics are even more specialized, but equally devastating on the right god. The item Lotus Crown only provides 30 physical protections if used on the average Support. However, if your Support is an area healer like Sylvanus or Terra, it can provide 40 additional protections to each of your allies, providing a massive amount of overall damage reduction.
While utility stats are useful, be careful not to go overboard and compromise your tanky core. The last thing you want is to die to a big burst ultimate because you loaded up on Crowd Control Reduction. When you can, try to get your utility stats packaged with some decent tank stats as well; the usual example is Breastplate of Valor, which offers a hefty 20% cooldown reduction in addition to the 75 physical protections. Even Sovereignty and Heartward Amulet provide a utility component in their aura of protections. Pure utility items (that don’t provide any tanky stats at all) are usually best on specific gods, and should only be included after careful consideration.
Utility stats (especially Cooldown Reduction) are important to a Support build, but shouldn’t be allowed to overwhelm your core tank items. Always buy boots, but other than that, try to find hybrid defense/utility items or limit yourself to just one or two pure utility items. Some common Utility Items include Breastplate of Valor, Winged Blade, Traveler’s Shoes, Rod of Asclepius, and most varieties of Boots.
Damage
While most new players build damage items on every character, Supports can and should be the exception. There’s nothing wrong with picking up a little bit of power incidentally on your boots or on a utility item, but don’t focus your build on killing enemy gods. Most Supports just aren’t going to put out any substantial damage, even with a fully damage-focused build, and so it’s best to concentrate on tankiness and utility stats.
That being said, when you’re playing an aggressive Support, like Ymir or Ares, who peels and zones by dealing high damage, some bonus early power doesn’t hurt. Shoes of the Magi provide early flat penetration and power, and hybrid offense-defense items like Mystical Mail or Void Stone can help burn down squishy targets while not leaving you too vulnerable to burst damage. Even in these cases, however, be very careful not to go all in on damage: even the most damaging Guardians have low scaling that causes them to fall off hard late in the game, where the lack of extra defense will be strongly felt.
Pure damage is worthless on most Supports, but some hybrid items are worth consideration on aggressive gods like Ymir, Bacchus, Ares, and Sobek. If you buy damage at all, buy early when you're ahead and sell late for more health and protections.
Counterbuilding, and the Future
These guidelines I’ve laid out here are just the most basic steps in building a Support in Smite. Next, start trying to adapt your build to your team and to the enemy team. Does the enemy team have a lot of basic-attack focused physical gods? Well, perhaps you should find a place in your build for Midgardian Mail this game. Are you finding yourself stuck in the middle of the enemy team at low health? Maybe you should sell that Heartward Amulet and pick up a Mantle of Discord. Don’t be afraid to experiment and play around with your basic build once you find something that works. If you want to keep up with the latest and most effective Support builds, try following the Smite pro scene or finding some skilled Smite streamers to watch. Be careful not to just blindly copy builds, though; think about what you’re trying to do as a Support, and how a build will help you accomplish it. And remember: It’s all about the team.
Happy Smiting!
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