The game linked below is a prime example of good eSports entertainment: an underdog story, a back-and-forth, exciting game, and some high-quality banter from Hinduman and Aggro. The most interesting thing about this game, however, is how Noble managed to find the victory: not through superior mechanical skill or grand strategy, but by a simple, coordinated sense of Target Priority.

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What is Target Priority?

Target Priority is exactly what it sounds like: the choice of who to kill. On most competitive teams, Target Priority is set and enforced by the team’s shotcaller, which makes it a little more difficult to establish in a casual or ranked scenario with no designated team leader. That being said, there are really only two ways to apply Target Priority in a teamfight setting, and understanding them both will help you to pick your targets and position yourself.

Front-To-Back Target Priority

Front-To-Back Target Priority (FTB) is also exactly as it sounds; moving from the front of the fight to the back, focusing on each target in turn as they approach your team. You’ll find that this is the default mode that most low-rank players or teams with no communication fall into; it’s easy to understand, and comes naturally to even new players. The enemy Guan Yu is riding into your team? Start blasting him with basic attacks and abilities! The opposing Jing Wei chose her path poorly and wandered a little too close to your team? Let loose with an ultimate and take her out!

Noble seizes on a target of opportunity, in this case the unfortunate Copebby

The problems with FTB are immediately apparent. In the early game, you can take down enemy gods fairly quickly by focusing on them as a team. As items are completed and characters level up, however, the enemy team will increasingly be able to keep their tanky gods (usually Support and Solo) positioned in their front line, and mitigate a great deal of the damage you can do to them. If you employ FTB against a coordinated team once full 5-on-5 teamfights begin, you’ll often end up whittling away at the opposing Support’s health bar while their carries stand safely behind, unloading damage onto your team.

While FTB quickly becomes suboptimal late in the game, that doesn’t mean it’s always a bad way to go. Early in the game, when both carries and supports haven’t reached their full potential yet, it matters much less who you choose to focus. In the kind of scrappy, 3-on-3 engagements that characterize early game fights, it’s better to just take the picks as they come, and try to secure kills on any available targets. Even after the early game has passed, there’s opportunities to put FTB to good use: when you’re far ahead and can shred through enemy tanks, when the enemy frontline is weak or squishy, or when you’re trying to clean up a fight you’ve already won.

Back-To-Front Target Priority

So, if FTB is one option, then what’s the other choice? The alternative is, of course, Back-to-Front Target Priority (BTF), and although it takes a much higher degree of coordination, it will produce better results when the game is on the line.

BTF’s foundation is rooted in basic gameplay logic. The job of the enemy carries is to do damage, and the job of the enemy frontliners is to help their carries deal that damage. If you kill the frontliners first with FTB, the carries are still capable of doing damage, but if you focus down the enemy carries, their frontliners will be ineffective and weak, with all of their mitigation and setup abilities serving little to no purpose. Obviously, this strategy is less effective in the early game when frontliners still put out respectable damage and carries are relatively weak, but in the late game when the contrast is more notable, this strategy is essential to a successful engagement.

There’s no better place to see BTF in action then in Noble’s underdog victory against the veterans of Allegiance. Noble evaluated their opponents’ team composition and general playstyle, and clearly recognized that MLCst3alth’s Kukulkan was Allegiance’s dedicated hard carry. Instead of trying to take down Incon or Copebby and then push forward to engage the slippery Midlaner, Noble instead sent their Jungler Mirage and their Solo Whalrus around the back of several fights, flanking Allegiance and taking out MLC before he had time to react. While this often resulted in Mirage’s death as Allegiance collapsed on the intruder, the trade was a worthwhile one; junglers like Hun Batz, even with the power of Fear No Evil, don’t impact the fight as much as a potential one-shot from Kukulkan’s Spirit of the Nine Winds.

This is the heart of BTF target priority, and what makes it so important in teamfight strategy: if you can take out the enemy’s biggest threat, the rest of the fight will just be easy cleanup. There are two ways to employ BTF, each with their own advantages and disadvantages.

Rush

Rush means attacking in force and trying to break the enemy frontline, swarming an enemy carry with your team behind you and ignoring any losses along the way. This is certainly risky, but can be worth it in the right circumstances. Once again, it just comes down to evaluating team composition and the state of the game. Can you get to the enemy carry or carries and destroy them before you’re collapsed on? Do the enemy carries have good self-peel or boxing abilities that make them hard to pick off with a flanking maneuver? Take all the factors into consideration, and if you think you can make it to the enemy backline without losing too much, go for it.

Noble moves in to take down MLC at any cost

Dive

Dive means sending team members (usually the Jungler or Solo Laner) to flank or dive into the enemy backline and try and 1v1 or 2v2 the enemy carries. This requires much more trust in your teammates, and confidence in your team’s ability to take down the enemy gods. For this strategy to work, some of your frontliners and main carries will still have to engage with the enemy directly; otherwise, your divers will be collapsed on by the enemy team. Despite the high level of coordination and timing necessary to dive, it’s the correct option in many situations. If the enemy frontline has a large amount of initiation or counter-initiation CC, diving may be your only option to pick off enemy carries without losing your whole team in the process. In addition, some junglers like Bastet or Loki lack late-game teamfight presence, so it's better for them to try and trade out with an enemy carry, rather than moving around the edge of the teamfight throwing out Decoys or Razor Whips.

Whalrus sneaks around the back of a fight to dive ALG's unsuspecting carries

A Note on Unity

Now that I’ve laid out all the possibilities, it might seem as though you need to pick a strategy and stick with it, but that’s not remotely true. Good teams regularly switch their Target Priority methodology based on the state of the map, team compositions, item builds, cooldowns, and relic usage. As with many other things in Smite, unfortunately, correct Target Priority just comes with time and experience.

Despite all this information and advice however, never forget that the most important aspect of Target Priority is unity. Your team has to be unified first, or all of this means nothing; if Thor is landing on the enemy Support while the rest of your team is trying to rush down an enemy Chronos, then your Rush strategy means nothing. If Tyr is pinning the enemy Apollo against a wall while the rest of you are dumping everything into the enemy Sylvanus, then both your efforts will be wasted. Whatever you decide to do, or whatever kind of Target Priority you end up employing, make sure you’ve coordinated with your team and you’re all on the same page.

Recap

Target Priority (choosing who to kill first) can be done in two primary ways: attacking whoever you can get to, or purposefully going after the enemy backline with some or all of your team. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but attacking enemy carries is a more difficult and less intuitive skill to learn, despite being just as important. Let your game situation and circumstances inform the kind of Target Priority you decide to use, and make sure your team is unified under whatever tactic you choose.

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