Amaterasu is a popular god in the current pre-Worlds climate of professional Smite. She is generally played in the support role and is seen as one of the best characters in that position. Amaterasu is highly valued in professional play for several reasons. She brings a lot of early game pressure as well as great team fight presence. The shape of the meta around the map also favors putting Amaterasu in the support role. In this article, we will explore what makes Amaterasu an incredible support.

Amaterasu is a unique Warrior in Smite. She doesn’t bring the raw pressure and damage of other members of her class, but instead focuses on utility. All of her abilities manipulate the pace of a fight through buffs and crowd control.

 Her passive, Illuminating Strike, causes targets hit by 3 of her basic attacks to emit an aura for 5 seconds. This aura causes all enemies near the target to take 10% extra damage. This effect can stack up to three times with overlapping auras.

 Divine Presence is one of Amaterasu’s most important abilities. Activating this ability heals Amaterasu for a bit but also swaps between two permanent auras. The first aura, Benevolence, increases the movement speed of nearby allies by up to 25%, while the Valor aura increases their power by up to 30. This is a boost to both magical and physical power.

 Heavenly Reflection is Amaterasu’s wave clear ability. Her mirror starts charging, granting up to 15% damage mitigation to Amaterasu and after 5 seconds or reactivation, the mirror shoots forward dealing more damage based on the number of hits Amaterasu dealt and received during the charge. Amaterasu may use other abilities and actions while the ability is charging.

 Amaterasu’s movement ability is Glorious Charge. It is often used aggressively as it silences all gods in a line targeter before dashing forward and stopping on the first god hit, dealing damage.

 Dazzling Offensive is a multi-stage ultimate ability. Amaterasu fires 3 cone attacks in a row. If she hits any target with the first strike, the second will deal 20% extra damage and slow all targets hit. If the first two attacks hit a target, the third will deal 40% extra damage and stun everyone hit.

Amaterasu is all about controlling the tempo of a battle. Illuminating Strike and Divine Presence make her allies do more damage. Her Benevolence aura is very strong for engaging and disengaging fights as well as for rotations. The boost to tankiness from Heavenly Reflection may allow Amaterasu to escape or hold of an enemy for just a bit longer. The crowd control from Glorious Charge and Dazzling Offensive can disrupt enemies or set up your own allies for follow up kills. Amaterasu fits into the support role because makes a big impact on team fights even at a level deficit.

Amaterasu brings a lot of control from the support role.

In the solo lane, Amaterasu is a low-pressure character who often loses lane and just wants to scale to the late game. However, one of the strengths of Amaterasu support is the early game pressure she brings. A lot of the pressure differential comes to the buffs she brings to her allies.

Players skill up her Divine Presence auras first, giving her lane partner 10 extra power. The power gained from Divine Presence can add up to more damage than any other ability at level one. In addition, Amaterasu’s Illuminating Strike passive causes all enemies to take additional damage. All Amaterasu has to do it basic attack a melee minion 3 times and her Hunter will clear the wave faster. All of this extra damage at level one means that a lane with Amaterasu will often clear the wave first and then invade buffs.

Amaterasu can also bring kill potential at level one with this extra damage and buffs. If an enemy stands too close, Amaterasu can apply Illuminating Strike to them and run them down. Amaterasu can also switch to Benevolence stance to give herself and her Hunter more movement speed. This can be coupled with a Heavenly Agility for more movement speed and chase down. The enemy is only safe under their tower. The basic attacks of warriors will swing hard in the early game, meaning Amaterasu deals higher chip damage than other supports when trading. All these pressure plays put Amaterasu and her Hunter in a comfortable position in the early game.

Amaterasu has always been a great late game character, and this is true in the support role. The 30 power and especially the 25% movement speed from Divine Presence make a huge difference in team fights. The movement speed from Benevolence stance makes rotations a breeze. Amaterasu can ferry a small group or even her entire team around the map. Amaterasu also amplifies her team’s objective damage with her passive and Valor aura. Placement of Glorious Charge is important to interrupt or stall important abilities and can disrupt an enemy initiation or open up your own. The massive potential of Dazzling Offensive is feared, so the ult can be used to zone of sections of a fight or at an objective. Enemies caught out without movement abilities or CC immunity can be controlled by Amaterasu and given a swift death.

Amaterasu support is strong throughout the game.

Standard team compositions have three physical damage sources between a Hunter, Assassin jungler, and Warrior solo. Inserting a Warrior support such as Amaterasu into this type of composition can lead to situations where building physical defense gains too much value for the opponent.

However, magical solo laners have been very popular recently, which allows traditionally magical roles to have physical damage. This can manifest as double Hunter compositions or teams with Warrior supports. A few magical junglers, such as He Bo and Ao Kuang, have popped up in professional play and a Warrior support may be included in those compositions to pull the team’s damage profile away from being exceptionally magical-leaning.

Supports often aren’t a large factor in the realistic damage profile of a team, but Warrior supports bring strong damage into the mid game and recent experience changes mean that supports are not as far behind in level as before, allowing them to deal higher damage than expected. While not as powerful as solo lane Warriors that may have built some hybrid power items, Warrior supports such as Amaterasu can bring a surprising amount of damage.

Because of Amaterasu’s great showing during the Fall Split, she received a nerf in Patch 5.19. The power boost from Valor stance Divine Presence was reduced by 5 at all ranks, from 15 power at rank one to 10. The top end of the aura was reduced to 30 power. This nerf was implemented because Amaterasu was so dominant in the early 2v2 that most duos couldn’t match her. This nerf is intended to introduce more counter-play to Amaterasu in the laning phase, but 10 power is still a lot of give to a Hunter at level one. This nerf will not invalidate Amaterasu, but is a necessary change on the lead-up to Worlds.

Amaterasu needed to be nerfed before worlds.

Amaterasu has recently become one of the best picks in competitive Smite. She is played in the support role because she brings early pressure in the 2v2 as well as a great team fight later on. Magical solo laners are very popular, allowing Warriors like Amaterasu to be played as supports without disrupting the damage profile of a team composition. Amaterasu saw a nerf in Patch 5.19 aimed at her early game. Despite this shift, Amaterasu should still be strong, and we will see her divine light shine in November at the Smite World Championship.

Like our content? Support us by getting our merchandise in our shop