The Basics:

Assault is a 5v5 mode with one lane and no Jungle. Gods are assigned randomly to each player, and the player has the option to trade with another player or reroll the god they received in hoping of getting a better god. The catch to all of this? No backing. Once you leave your base, the only way to get back in is to die. This means that you can't instantly regain your health and mana, and you can't buy new items. Another rule of Assault is No Stacking. Items like Devourer's Gauntlet, Transcendence, and Warlock's Sash are banned. However, stacking items that stack based on kills and assists, like Heartseeker and Hide of the Urchin, are allowed.

The Map:

The Map layout is pretty basic. You have a Titan, a Phoenix, and two Towers (A Tier 1 and Tier 2). Note that there is only one lane, so everyone will be sharing experience and gold.

Strategies:

Sit-Back and Farm: This one is often considered "boring" but farming is important in any game especially SMITE. All you have to do is use your abilities on the wave and then wait under your tower for the next wave. You should use this strategy if your team has okay wave clear and a weak fighting phase. You could also try this if you get behind early-on.

Fight, Fight, Fight: This one is all about aggression. Maybe your team have Ares and Ah Puch, two gods who excel in Assault, and maybe your opponents didn't buy beads; this is your time to strike. You'd want to take the fight early and try to get your team ahead before your enemy can do anything. Taking an early fight must be a calculated decision, if your team can't fight early on, DON'T TRY. If your team loses the fight, you'll probably have to go to the aforementioned "Sit-back" strategy, and that's not too fun.

Balanced: This is probably the most common strategy in Assault. All you do is kill the wave and fight when you can. There is no particular focus on playing safely or aggressively

Push All The Way: If your team has good wave clear, you'll want to abuse it. Because Assault is all one lane, if you push your wave under the enemy tower, their gold gain will be cut drastically. This is one of the best ways to get your team ahead, and it happens to be what I recommend most if you can do it. Just clear the wave before your wave gets pushed, and fight if you can. You'll want to play more aggressively but not focus on fighting the enemies. You'll fight when you can, but your focus should be on pushing your wave.

Personal Strategies:

Die to Tower: This is the only one I'll comment on for now. Dying to tower is better than dying to an enemy- no exceptions. If you are playing Mercury and you have 50 health and all you're doing is sitting in tower, just use Sonic Boom to get by all the enemies and run into the enemy's tower. You'll deny gold and return to base. If you get a deicide and have 2000 gold and you just want to spend it, die to the tower and you'll get back to base without an adverse affect on your team.

Underrated Items:

These items are often undervalued by everyone, but they really do work and they will improve your gameplay.

• Watcher's Gift

Watcher's Gift gives you 4 Bonus Gold, 10 Health, and 5 Mana for being in assist range of a minion all for the low price of 800 Gold. Watcher's gives you sustain of both health and mana and will ensure that you stay farmed. It's a great way to get yourself ahead in Assault where your team will be splitting all of the gold from minions. Watcher's Gift will help you get ahead and stay alive, what's not to love about it? If you're playing a Guardian, you can buy Heartward/Sovereignty and Watcher's Gift right from the beginning, and this'll give you a massive amount of either health or mana sustain.

• Odysseus' Bow

Odysseus' Bow makes every fourth Basic Attack trigger a chain lightning (much like Zeus's) that damages the target hit and 4 nearby enemies for 30 damage +50% of your Physical Power. In addition to the passive, Odysseus' Bow also increases your attack speed be 40%, the most any single item an item can give. In Assault, Odysseus' Bow becomes much better due to the constant teamfighting that's going on. It'll increase an ADC's damage output dramatically, especially if the hunter has critical chance on.

Core Items:

These items are strong in Assault, and I mean strong. You would want your team to have at least some of these items in any of your Assault matches.

• Sovereignty

Sovereignty gives you 200 Health and 50 Physical Protection, and also makes all allied within 70 units gain 20 magical protections and 25 HP5. The important part of this item is the passive. Giving your teammates protections is good, but giving them HP5 in a mode where you cannot return to the base is game changing. Sovereignty will keep you and your team alive. That's why it's so good. Sovereignty should be prioritized over its counterpart, Heartward Amulet, on teams without a healer.

• Heartward Amulet

Heartward Amulet is similar to Sovereignty. It gives 300 Health, 50 Magical Protection, and makes all allies within 70 units gain 20 Physical Protections and 20 MP5. Heartward is more valuable on a team with a healer because keeping the healer's mana up will keep your team up. Aside from that, making sure that your team can have mana is a huge advantage.

• Stone of Gaia

Stone of Gaia is built to keep you alive and fighting. It gives you 100 Health, 70 Magical Protection, 25 HP5, 10 MP5, and Regenerates 2% of your max health every 5 seconds. You will always be able to fight. Against Magical teams, you will be unkillable. Stone of Gaia is probably the single best item in Assault, but other items like Heartward and Sovereignty get prioritized for the team affects. If you have 2000 health, you will heal for 65 health every 5 seconds. That's disregarding base HP5. That's crazy.

• Meditation and Salvation

These are probably the most important actives in Assault. Meditation is normally considered to be "bad" and it definitely is in every other game mode. In Assault, Meditation, which restores 75% of the owner's mana and 15 MP5 for 15 seconds, provides you will amazing mana sustain (shocking, right?), and Salvation gives the owner 45 MP5 for 60 Seconds and heals the owner's and his teammates' mana by 35% of their maximum mana and it also heals the owner and his teammates for 15% of the owner's maximum health. Salvation is just great in Assault, that's it. It gives health and mana, it's like having a healer.

Common Build Starts:

Mage:

Chronos Pendant + Shoes + Meditation. Meditation can be exchanged for Purification Beads if the enemy team has high CC. This build will basically ensure that a Mage will never run out of mana, the 25 MP5 form Chronos Pendant makes a huge difference early on and Boots just gives you some movement speed.

Hunter:

Bloodforge + Boots+ Meditation + Healing Potion + Mana Potion. Like mages, Meditation can be exchanged for Purification Beads if the enemy team has high CC, however if your team does not have a Heartward Amulet, I do not recommend switching away from Meditation. This build gives you a good bit of power, lifesteal, movement speed, and sustain. This is everything a hunter is looking for in a hunter early on.

Warriors and Guardians:

Preface: Warriors and Guardians have much more diverse starts and will change depending on how many Warriors or Guardians you have and the type of protection the enemy has. And this is what I'd recommend

Against a Magical team:

With Watcher's Gift:

Without Watcher's Gift:

The only difference in the two builds is that one provides team sustain, while the other gives gold, health, and mana. I'll let you decide which you prefer.

This build will basically keep you alive forever. The downside? No possibility for Watcher's Gift. I recommend starting Stone of Gaia on Warriors and giving a Guardian Heartward Amulet. So if your team has a Guardian and a Warrior, the Guardian should get Heartward and the Warrior should get Stone of Gaia.

Against a Physical Team:

With Watcher's Gift:

Without Watcher's Gift:

Both builds give protections. Both give decent sustain. One has Watcher's Gift, which gives you bonus gold, and the other will help your team a bit more early on.

Strong Assault Gods:

Every Healer:

• Ra
• Hel
• Chang'e
• Aphrodite
• Sylvanus
• Guan Yu

They can heal you, what more could you want in Assault?

Ares:

Ares brings strong CC on a low cooldown. Having him on your team as a support who will want to purchase team items (due to his passive) and who can group the enemies up will help you drastically.

Ah Puch and Zeus:

These two do very similar things so I'm grouping them together. High AoE and Ranged Damaged. If you have either of these Gods on your team, you're already in the lead. Zeus brings absolutely crazy confirmable damage while Ah Puch makes you not want to heal or play SMITE. If you have these Gods, play them, you'll be happy you did.

Cupid:

Many people like to hate on Cupid, but he brings some nice positives in Assault. His Hearts don't make him count as a "Healer" so you can easily get a healing advantage over the enemy team. He has good damage, and his Ultimate, Fields of Love, is easy to hit on the wide-laned Assault map.

Ah Muzen Cab:

Ah Muzen Cab is probably the most underrated Hunter in Assault. I rarely see an AMC perform poorly in a match. Now, everyone and their mother knows that AMC is considered to be (see what I did there?) pretty bad, so why is he good in Assault? His Passive, his hives, and Honey! His Hives give him passive health regeneration, which is great in the backless Assault. His Passive, Bees!, deals damage to enemies and that damage can spread to nearby enemies. This is good for many reasons. Assault is basically a big teamfight with minions running through every now and then, everyone is grouped up. Ah Muzen Cab can easily poke the entire enemy team just by throwing Honey! out. The damage is pretty low, but it adds up over time. If AMC decides to spread Bee! to the minions, he'll get at least an assist for every minion kill and Bees! will most likely spread to the enemy team.

Xing Tian:

Who would've thought that Xing Tian is good in Assault? Anyway, Xing Tian is good in every game mode, but I still feel like I should include him here. His passive grants him HP5, which is what a God wants in Assault. He can easily reposition the entire enemy team. He can easily deal massive damage while just buying Sovereignty and Heartward Amulet which will benefit his team. He is just so good.

Jump Parties:

Jump Parties are peaceful groupings of both teams in the middle of the Assault match where both teams just jump around and have a grand old time. They're probably the oldest SMITE tradition. Be Careful though, some people like to take advantage of Jump Parties and attack while everyone is grouped. Don't be one of those people, enjoy the jump parties, don't destroy them.

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