Today, we are going to be looking over 2 major objectives in SMITE, the Gold Fury and Fire Giant. Both of these objectives play a big role in Conquest, and we all know what they do… right? Well, let’s talk about them both in detail.

Let’s start off with the smaller, less important objective, the Gold Fury. The Gold Fury is known to be a point of contention around the 15-25 minute mark. This is due to wanting to obtain a lead through gold/XP, as well as getting a possible teamfight out of attacking it. I could talk forever about the ways in which you can fight over the Gold Fury, but a reasonable question to ask first is, "What does the Gold Fury actually give?"

One thing that a lot of people know by now is that the Gold Fury grows in gold and XP value. It starts out at a measly 100xp and 150g, and has a peak at which it will no longer grow. At 15 minutes, XP stops increasing. At 20 minutes, gold stops increasing. This is one of the reasons behind why the Gold Fury is contested around this time, though this is a much smaller reason. So, what does the XP and gold stop at? Well to determine whether people knew what the Gold Fury actually gave, I took to Twitter and made a poll with the following question.

What is the max amount of xp and gold that the Gold Fury can give you?

300xp 400g - 29% votes
250xp 400g - 30% votes
250xp 350g - 33% votes
200xp 350g - 8% votes

You taken your guess? The answer is 250xp 350g. What does this mean? Well if you get the Gold Fury at the 25 minute mark but proceed to lose 2 members and a Tier Two Tower, you’ll be in the negative. The Gold Fury is a good objective to fight over and to gather a lead but if you lose a fight when getting it, you’ll only proceed to hurt your team. Getting a objective like a Tier Two Tower gets rid of a permanent objective, grants more pressure, and gives you 50 less XP and gold then a Gold Fury at the 25 minute mark. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t go for the Gold Fury as it does gives a lead that isn’t ‘synthetic’, but it is a good thing to take into account.

A Gold Fury bait commenced by Paradigm, they end up getting 3 kills out of this bait. Shows the Gold Fury is a good way to start a favourable team fight.

With the Gold Fury out the way, let’s talk about the big man himself: the Fire Giant. What do we know about him? He gives a buff that gives 50 physical power, 70 magical power, a 20% bonus buff against Towers and Phoenixes, and 4% regeneration of health and mana over 5s. As a bonus to this, he gives 200 XP and 150 gold. However, this is when you defeat him. What happens when you’re fighting him?

The Fire Giant himself has 100 physical protection and 50 magical protection. On top of this, he has 50% lifesteal resistance. The Fire Giant also has an attack chain that is worth taking notice of. It goes as follows:

Boulder Toss/Mighty Swing
Boulder Toss/Mighty Swing
Magma Blast
Boulder Toss/Mighty Swing
Boulder Toss/Mighty Swing
Magma Blast
Boulder Toss/Mighty Swing
Boulder Toss/Mighty Swing
Boulder Toss/Mighty Swing
Boulder Toss/Mighty Swing
Magma Pool

This is important to note for a few reasons. Magma Blast deals 500 damage as well as knocks up, which by itself can very much get the enemy to engage on you. It takes 1.5 seconds for it to detonate, and it slows you by 80%. So make sure to keep moving if you have aggro. Magma Pool is the second reason, Magma Pool deals 225 damage on its first appearance, and then proceeds to re-apply this damage every 1 second for 5 seconds. Knowing the attack chain allows you to minimise the damage dealt to you, as well as allows you to place the Magma Pools in a favourable position.

This gif is a great example of what bad positioning when faced with Magma Blast can do. In this game the Magma Blast pretty much gets Vamana killed, and loses FNATIC the fight. FNATIC lose the game after this Fire Giant attempt.

However, the final point of note is the Boulder Toss/Mighty Swing. This deals 155 physical damage, and applies 2 debuffs. One of his debuffs causes you to take 40% less healing and regeneration. This is why it is important for the support/solo to attack the Fire Giant, otherwise your team will have even less health and if you have any healing, it would be reduced. Now to determine whether people knew the next debuff I decided to take to Twitter again. The question was as follows.

What does the Fire Giant apply while fighting him?

20% Damage Debuff - 27% votes
20% Armour Reduction -18% votes
None of the above - 55% votes

Have you guessed? The correct answer was that the Fire Giant applies a 20% Damage Debuff for 3 seconds. Crazy, right? The majority of people got it wrong on this one, with many people picking “None of the above” thinking the only thing that is applied is the Healing/Lifesteal reduction. (Though these results do come from a limited amount of players - 314 votes overall.)

What does this 20% Damage Debuff mean? Well, this is one of the reasons as to why it is always better to aggress on people while they are on the Fire Giant. They are more likely to slip up and get hit by a Magma Blast, but also whoever is targeted by the Fire Giant has some major debuffs on them for a small amount of time. Taking advantage of this is key.

When it comes to taking this knowledge into account when you’re doing the Fire Giant, don’t let the ADC tank. You might think they have lifesteal, but in reality there is already a 50% reduction on the Fire Giant himself, and his attacks lower that by a further 40% (of overall healing). This means that in total he will be lifestealing for 30% of his original lifesteal. Not a good amount by any means. Moving onto what else you should do when fighting the Fire Giant. you need to spread out. You should never be standing close to each other so that if the enemy attacks and stuns two in one place, there is less chance of a Magma Blast hitting two people. As well as this, you should use the Magma Pools to block off entrances for the enemy. Sure, this isn’t always a major thing but it can always help.

And that’s it for this issue! I hope you’ve enjoyed looking over the Fire Giant and Gold Fury with me, as I’m sure I’ll be back with more stats later on. In the meantime check out DukeSloth's video version of this article, adding some extra information that I didn't mention!

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