We’ve seen a whole lot of nonsense in the SPL recently: Apollo mid, Camazotz ADC, and Chronos solo, just to name a few. However, something that’s recently resurged that isn’t too far out of the water is putting Guardians in the solo lane. Sure, we’ve seen the same song and dance for seasons now, but what has changed between now and the end of Season 4 to really give Guardians the boost they needed to overtake the Warriors who were once the kings of the solo lane?

Let’s first examine the two classes. In general, Warriors are known for their flexibility. They typically possess a clearing ability, a movement ability, and some sort of self-sustain. Most warriors have one to two strong crowd control types (one hard and one soft) within their kit, but the control they provide is only ancillary. Instead of being the “jack of all trades” class, Guardians instead are masters of crowd control and setup or peel. Most Guardians possess between two to four crowd control types (two hard, two soft) and occasionally have ally-centric abilities such as Geb’s Stone Shield or Khepri’s Scarab’s Blessing. They also tend to have stat-boosting abilities, such as Sobek’s Blessing of the Nile or Ares’ Bolster Defenses. Altogether, these gods have much more variety in their kits, including the fact that some guardians like Ymir or Ares lack mobility altogether. Also, they aren’t typically the greatest at clearing, especially in the earlier parts of the game.

Out of all Warriors, Sun Wukong is a pretty good summation of what the class does well. The Monkey King’s clear is his first ability, The Magic Cudgel, his movement is his third ability, 72 Transformations, and his self-sustain is his ultimate, Somersault Cloud. The majority of Sun Wukong’s crowd control lies within his 72 Transformations being that his tiger form can stun for a max of 1.4 seconds and his ox form provides a knockup. The Warrior also has a 30% slow for 2 seconds on his second ability, Master’s Will. Using Sun Wukong as a benchmark for the average Warrior, let’s compare him to an average Guardian, Sobek.

The God of the Nile has a number of crowd controlling effects that arise from each of his abilities other than his passive. Firstly, Charge Prey is a stun into a knockup followed by Tail Whip, which is a knockup. Sobek’s third ability, Sickening Strike, doesn’t have any hard crowd control but does possess antiheal and a slight self-heal which are useful in a number of situations. Finally, his ultimate, Lurking in the Waters, has a nice 40% slow on it at max rank. Luckily, Sobek’s first ability is also used for movement and, as mentioned, it’s not totally uncommon for Guardians to have one form of movement.

While we’ve discussed the differences in the utility of both classes, we need to take a look at their base stats and scaling. Firstly, Warriors seem to be pretty outclassed in terms of base health and mana, especially considering that Guardians barely scale worse than them in those factors. However, Warriors tend to be slightly faster than Guardians and also have faster auto attacks. Warriors have fairly decent starting power, especially if you consider that physical power scales at 100% whereas magical power scales at 20%. Both physical and magical protections are nearly even on both sides, but Warriors beat out Guardians in HP5 and vice versa for MP5.

The numbers are out, but what do they mean? Guardians have Warriors beat in most non-damaging aspects of their stats. However, that good chunk of base power and the fact that Warriors, being physical, have 100% power scaling means their abilities do a ton more damage than Guardians in the early game. That being said, it’s much easier for the traditional Warriors to thrive in the early solo lane. But taking into consideration that they lack the huge amounts of crowd control that Guardians bring to the table, putting a Warrior in the solo lane isn’t always the best option for the late game. As long as a Guardian can survive the first 5-10 levels without getting totally crushed, a Guardian will certainly outscale a Warrior in terms of effectiveness and general utility.

Now let’s talk map. Conquest changed drastically between Season 4 and Season 5, and two of the biggest reasons we’re seeing a shift to Guardians in the solo lane is the size increase as well as the decrease in buff cooldowns. Because the map got bigger, junglers have are now faced with the choice of committing to rotations/invades or playing safe and farming up their own buffs which were changed to spawn every two minutes. As such, many junglers choose to hover around the solo side since a majority of their camps are in the solo side jungle, meaning that blue buff invades are a common occurrence. If a jungler is even remotely late to their solo’s buff, it is probably stolen away.

Warriors tend to suffer a lot more than Guardians without a blue buff unless, of course, you’re Cu Chulainn and don’t even have mana. But that isn’t to say that a Guardian is invincible to ganks. While Warriors will struggle if their third, fourth, and onward blue buffs are stripped away, Guardians will not be able to clear if they don’t get their first few. This would lead to the enemy solo slowly gaining an experience and gold lead as well as allowing him to eventually steal away blues or back camps if your jungle really isn’t on the mark with his camp clearing. An easy way to avoid all this? Be on time with jungle clear and/or pick a jungler with high clear like Ravana, Ratatoskr, or Camazotz.

Another thing to note is that Guardians are incredibly susceptible to early ganks. As I mentioned earlier, the best time to strike against Guardian solos is in the first few waves. If you’re an early game jungler, maybe try to push an invade by skipping your back camps and immediately going to the enemy’s blue. The enemy jungler could also be going for the start where he clears speed to red, depending on your duo lane’s pressure, so if that seems to be the case, your jungler should have free reign over the enemy’s back harpies and blue buff. If your jungle can then take that extra bit of experience and hit level two, that would be the perfect time to gank, especially if the solo laners got into a pretty decent fistfight and are both relatively low.

If you’re not able to shut a Guardian down early, then good luck. Guardian solos never truly “win lane,” per se, but they do stalemate it. What’s so good about stalemating is that a Guardian probably won’t be losing their tower and will stay very even, which is exactly what you want going into the mid game. Having another frontline or engage is almost always helpful, especially when the game currently heavily revolves around the carries. Like stated previously, Guardians simply scale better because they’ve got a larger amount of crowd control which is central to Smite’s gameplay.

So then what does one build on Guardian solos? Well, to start, one should pretty much always buy Warrior’s Blessing, tier 1 Shoes, and Teleport Glyph. Some solo laners have experimented with Mage’s Blessing, but it seems to be the consensus that the passive of Warrior’s Blessing is simply a necessity in the solo lane. Also, you could look toward other actives, but you’re typically going to be stuck under tower for a lot of the early game, so making sure that you miss as few minions as possible is crucial to keeping the stalemate. Most solo laners will go into Shoes of Focus next because cooldown is still incredibly essential in the solo lane.

After that is where things can get a bit funky. One could go for the typical solo-esque build of Breastplate of Valor or Void Stone (depending on whether you’re against a magical or a physical opponent) but others have been experimenting with Warlock’s Staff. Getting Warlock’s Staff does bring a great deal of flat health into your build, but the downside is spending so much time stacking that thing, not to mention how expensive it is. As such, your power curve could get a bit wonky, but it certainly pays off in the late game.

As for what you should purchase next, it heavily depends on who your direct opponent is and what sort of composition your enemy has. The most important thing to remember, however, is baseline stats. If you’ve already built into the type of protections you need versus your lane opponent, maybe go for the opposite, especially if the enemy jungler is the opposite damage type as compared to your lane opponent. Next, you could look into more utility items, such as Winged Blade if they have slows, Pestilence if they have healing, or Midgardian Mail if they have a lot of auto attack damage. Rounding out your build with a Spirit Robe and/or Mantle of Discord is always a good idea, considering the phenomenal passives of both items within the Cloak tree.

Image courtesy of Jay R

Looking at the solo lane as a whole, Warriors still have a place if you’re looking to bring early aggression to the table. However, Guardians have resurged as strong alternatives and now continue to pop up through all levels of play. Want to learn more about playing Guardians? Check out Team Dignitas’ own support player, Jeppe “Trixtank” Gylling’s stream here. Or if you’re feeling up to the challenge, try to convince Harry “Variety” Cummings to play a Guardian in his solo lane ventures by checking out his stream here.

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