Last time, we talked about some tips on building team compositions in Smite games. This article will expand on one of those tips; balancing of damage profiles. The damage profile of a team composition is the relative amounts of physical and magical damage in the lineup. The damage profile is important because an imbalanced composition can be easily counter built, resulting in a loss. This article will go over changes to the traditional team composition and how to use damage profiles to compensate for those changes to maintain a balanced lineup.

Erlang Shen can be played in several roles to balance a composition's damage profile

Having a balanced damage profile is important for a couple of reasons. These reasons all revolve around counter building. Counter building is buying items based on the game state, as opposed to running a cookie cutter build. Having a 3-2 split in damage types means that your opponent must build both physical and magical defensives to be safe. A 4-1 split means that your opponent only has to itemize against one of the damage types. For example, a 4-physical comp can be stopped when the enemy team buys physical protection and either focuses or ignores the sole magical damage dealer. In this case, the physical protection stat has immense value. A 3-2 damage profile lessens the impact of a single defense type against your team and makes itemizing against you harder, increasing your chance of success.

First, we have to look at the traditional team composition. This contains one of every class in Smite, each in their typical roles, an Assassin in the jungle, a Hunter in the hunter role, a Guardian as support, a Mage in mid, and a Warrior in solo lane. This lineup consists of three physical damage sources and two magical sources, a balanced damage composition. This composition is the basis of the rest of this article, as deviations from this class dynamic could require adjustments in other areas to keep a good damage profile. In each example, we will first discuss the initial change and then how to adjust the rest of the composition around it.

Physical to Magical

The standard team composition has a 3-2 damage profile favoring physical damage. Filling one of the typically physical roles with a magical god still leaves the damage profile as 3-2, just favoring magical damage. This is totally fine, as the damage profile is still balanced. One swap is okay, but multiple physical to magical transitions will need to be counterbalanced. For example, a Mage in the carry role paired with a Guardian jungle would require a Warrior support or Hunter mid to keep the damage profile balanced. While a physical to magical switch does not need to be compensated, one might be needed to adjust for a magical to physical swap.

There are several magical gods in physical roles that are popular in the meta. There is a subset of Mages that are considered magical Hunters and played in the duo lane. Ao Kuang is a Mage that is designed for and played in the jungle. Several Guardians are played in the jungle or solo lane to provide more control to their team.

There are benefits to running a primarily magical composition. Most NPCs and objectives in Smite deal physical damage, so itemizing against a physical-oriented comp also strengthens oneself against the map itself. This is not true when facing a magical composition, as buying magical defense to deal with opposing gods leaves you vulnerable against creeps and towers. Items with magical defense are, in general, lower quality than those with physical defense, so forcing enemies to pick more up can weaken them overall.

Ao Kuang is a popular magical jungler.

Hunter Mid

Hunters are popular replacements for Mages in the mid lane. Most ability-based Hunters can be played in mid. Such Hunters are likely to have equal or greater clear than a Mage, have higher sustained damage throughout the game, and will have greater kill potential in a 1v1. Having a Hunter in the mid lane sacrifices burst potential and some team fight presence.

Putting a Hunter in mid pulls the damage profile towards physical damage, leading to a 4-1 with the support being the only source of magical damage. This is a problem and can be easily fixed by substituting a physical god for a magical one, such as a Mage in the carry position or Ao Kuang in the jungle. Ao Kuang is a strong jungler when a team wants to run a double Hunter composition. Hunters are strong in the mid lane, but need to be compensated by adding an additional magical threat.

Physical Support

The support role is traditionally filled by Guardians, but some Warriors can be played in the position. These Warriors all bring utility and control to the support role as well as an aggressive laning phase. Guan Yu brings team healing and protection shred, Erlang Shen has a ranged root/cripple, a taunt, and a knockup to set up his team, and Odin provides a cage to lock in enemies. Similarly to running a Hunter in mid, having a physical support transitions the damage profile to a 4-1 setup. This can be corrected in the same ways, by placing a magical god in a typically physical position.

Running a 4-1 Composition

There are situations where it is okay to run a composition with a 4-1 damage profile. The main reason to do so is putting a Mage in a hard carry position. It is generally not ideal to have a Guardian as your only source of magic damage, it can work with a Mage. As stated above, when you have a 4-1 comp, your opponents will counter build the 4 physicals, which can allow your Mage to have very high damage against their team. You would need to draft a team around keeping your Mage alive and setting them up, or your opponents will just focus the Mage and be very tanky against the rest of your team. Another case where a 4-1 composition can be run is when you have a lot of protection shred. Being able to reduce enemy protections makes their defense less valuable and having 4 of one damage type less punishing.

Janus is a great Mage to be set up in a 4-1 composition.

The damage profile is an important part of any Smite composition. The damage profile of a comp is the relative amount of physical and magical damage in the lineup. In most cases, a 3-2 split is ideal. Changing the class dynamic from what is standard can require additional changes to keep a balanced damage profile. Any role can be filled with either damage type, but this relationship should be taken in consideration when building a composition.

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