Looking through the all the various styles of playing Smite the sustainable style is very formidable. However, players have recently opted to not use it in order to provide a better counter to the enemy team and utility of crowd control to their own.

What is playing sustainably?

Playing sustainably in Smite means picking a character that is able to stay active for a large period of time in order to live in the game much longer than the opponent. Playing like this can lead to a big lane advantage and a great opportunity to take towers in the early game whilst having great potential to siege a lane in the late game when the whole team is present.

What characters come under the sustainable style?

The obvious characters to fall into this category are the major healers, like Aphrodite, Chang’e, Guan Yu, Hel, Ra and Sylvanus. These characters are the best for the sustainable style as not only can they heal themselves but they can also heal the rest of their team as well.

Other characters would include self and semi sustain characters, while some aren’t considered at all in the style. They would include characters such as Ah Muzen Cab, Arachne, Bakasura, Bellona, Chaac, Chronos, Cupid, Hercules, Isis, Ne Zha, Nemesis, Sobek, Sun Wukong, Thanatos, Tyr, Vamana and Zhong Kui.

For a character to be viewed as sustainable a player shouldn’t just look into how much health they can recover but how much mana the character can use and gain. Isis and Sobek are both great examples as both of these characters have abilities that can heal themselves but they also have ways of using mana effectively to stay in lane longer than the opponent. Isis has her passive ‘Funeral Rites’ which will increase her health and mana gain over time as she sees enemies die and Sobek has direct mana regeneration with his ultimate, ‘Lurking in the Waters’. These two Gods are much more suited to play against their opponents for a longer amount of time and will probably force the opponent to recall much more as they build a lane advantage.

What does sustainability provide to the team?

In the early game being sustainable doesn’t provide much for your team except lane confidence and an early push. It can slightly expose you to invades as you won’t really be with most of your team that much in the early stages of the game, meaning the regeneration abilities will only really apply to you.

The late stages of the game are when this style comes to its best. The use of sustaining abilities are then great to keep teammates together and will allow you to constantly contest the various points of the map. By ruining their poking potential, you can create an unstoppable lane push.

What is this style best for?

I’d personally advise the use of this playstyle against opponents that wish to poke you out of lane or opponents that have burst on a long cooldown. My reasoning is that it renders the idea of the enemy pointless if they apply to the above as sustain means that they are putting work into nothing and will therefore get nothing back from it either. It is important to not be overconfident against these though, you aren’t unstoppable on any character and will easily fail if you choose to become overly aggressive toward the enemy team.

When could this go wrong?

Generally this playstyle goes wrong when you get too ahead of yourself. The style may be a counter but it is also very easily countered and is even countered by Gods like Chang’e and Sobek especially. Once the enemy team stabilizes itself, it's likely they will buy into a huge amount of healing reduction, thus making your whole build up to the unstoppable sieges of late game near impossible.

How can you pull back when things go wrong?

Though it is typically hard to pull back Smite matches, it can be done. It's likely you will be invaded as most sustaining characters will struggle to put direct pressure on enemies. Aphrodite is even considered one of the easiest characters in the game to invade.

Once things start going badly you should begin to rotate. If you are sustainable then the best thing you could do is provide an alternative support toward the lead around the map which would then greatly increase the pressure on the enemy. At this point it's important to be confident as it's likely you could lose a tower or two whilst constantly rotating. However, if these rotations have worked well it shouldn’t matter, your team will be much stronger overall and will likely end up winning the game anyway.

I hope this brought up good information and advice for all. Find me on Twitter!