One item that has been making waves in the SPL recently is Stone of Gaia. This item has been picked up by solo laners mostly and has come out of nowhere, having not been built much prior to Week 2 of the Summer Split. This article will take a closer look at what this item does, when is a good time to build it, and some situations where other items may be better.

Base Stats

For only 2000 gold, you get 400 health, 25 HP5 and MP5. The base stats are very solid and are a big reason for this item being picked up. You are getting the most health from any item in the game (with a few others tying it) and some sustain to help the solo laner heal up without buying more pots. 2000 gold is a very low cost to pay for these stats and it is borderline being a transition item. The stats are good enough that you will most likely not want to sell it in the late game, so it will not fill the same role as Ichaival in the hunter role, but that is the general idea.

Passives

This item is also unique in the fact that it has 2 passives. The first is that If you are hit by a knock-up, knockback, pull, or grab, you are instead enveloped by the earth, becoming CC immune for 1s. This effect can only occur once every 90s. This is useful against things like Fenrir's ult or Sun Wukong's Ox transformation, but for the most part this isn’t relevant until the team fighting phase. The second passive is much more useful for laning. After finishing Stone of Gaia, you will regenerate 2% of your max health every 5 seconds. This, in combination with the innate HP5 allows you to sustain incredibly well, allowing you to do everything from poking your lane opponent to tanking the enemy minions with less risk.

Lane Sustain

One fact about Smite that a lot of people don’t know is that new minion waves spawn every 30 seconds. This means that, with Stone of Gaia complete, you will be regaining 150 + 12% of your max health between every wave. For perspective, a single health pot restores 250 health over the course of 25 seconds, which when stacked with Chalice of Healing provides you with 500 health over 25 seconds. For Stone of Gaia to be as efficient as having both ticking at the same time, you would need to have 2,917 health, which is something that would not be happening until later in the game. You will most likely start with a Chalice of Healing anyways, so you can rely on that and Stone of Gaia for the later stages of the laning phase. And either way, Stone of Gaia can give you a passive ticking Health potion and Chalice of Health for no cost, and still doesn’t prevent you from building those consumables. That is a lot of sustain.

The Costs and Matchups

This item isn’t the end all be all though. Generally, it either gets put off until after your Mystical Mail or Breastplate of Valor, sacrificing the obvious benefits of having those items, chief among them being the Physical Protections. You may heal the damage up with Stone of Gaia, but you can still get burst down by a well-timed gank or an aggressive lane opponent. This can cause you to fall behind and lose control over your entire side of the map.

When should you build Stone of Gaia before either of these items? Occasionally there will be magical lane opponents that do not have major sustain, such as a Geb or Xing Tian. Against these characters, whose poke is somewhat negligible and there is no sense in building physical defense against, building Stone of Gaia could be a good idea. Against Magical opponents that have more healing, such as Chang’e, you should always be building Pestilence after boots. If it is going to be built, building it after your first physical protection item is generally, in standard matchups, the way to go. That brings in the next item that causes problems with it.

Interactions with Spirit Robe

Stone of Gaia and Sprit Robe are generally not great to build together. Getting hit by hard crowd control is what triggers the passive on Stone of Gaia as well as Spirit Robe. While all the CCs that proc Stone of Gaia are ones that will push you into damage, becoming immune to these forms of knock-up and allowing you to stay out of fights effectively wastes the passive from Spirit Robe by allowing you to stay out of a position that you would be making use of the 15% damage mitigation you get. Against burstier compositions, building Spirit Robe makes more sense because you will generally be hit with some form of CC before the burst comes out, giving you more tankiness than Stone of Gaia. They are effectively items that serve the same purpose, but contradict each other and prevent you from getting full use out of the passives from both. Spirit Robe also provides CCR and CDR, both of which are useful stats, but more useful on certain characters. Stone of Gaia allows you to sustain and choose when you engage, while Spirit Robe allows you to survive burst and makes you more useful for a counter engage. Do not build both items if you are looking for an optimal build.

Conclusion

Stone of Gaia is a powerful item when built in the right context, but it is not always the right choice. Stone of Gaia may be an off-meta build choice, but it still has its place in the meta. In the right situation, a unique build choice could be the difference between winning or losing lane. Having enough game knowledge to know what is good and try new things is one of the best ways to improve your game, which should be the end goal.

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