Smite: Neith God Guide .

ADCs are everywhere in the new Smite meta, so in this week’s guide, we’ll be talking all about the queen of hunters; Neith – the Egyptian Weaver of Fate.

Neith is most likely the first god you played when you installed Smite, since she’s the one to guide you through the tutorial. So you might be thinking; that’s because she’s madly easy to play! Well, you’re partially right, but there’s still some skill to her that you need to master to be a successful Neith. She isn’t your typical hunter after all. Most of her survivability and damage output is about using her abilities in a proper way, unlike most hunters that can just spam basic attacks.

 

ABILITIES            

 BROKEN WEAVE

Broken Weave is quite a versatile passive. Every time an enemy god dies, a broken weave spawns at the location they died. Having broken weaves on the battlefield allow your primary offensive abilities to have secondary effects. And the weaves last for a full minute! Broken Weaves are extremely useful for zoning out enemies and rooting a bunch of opponents with Spirit Arrow. The average Smite player knows about the burst that can come from standing in a weave however, so they’ll try to avoid it as much as they can.

 SPIRIT ARROW

Spirit Arrow is what makes you Neith! It does decent damage and allows you to root gods when you hit them. Enemies can still get away by using abilities, so I suggest you use this after you’ve forced them to use their escape ability (if they have one). This’ll allow you to get a couple of nice hits in and possibly get a kill! But by far the best thing about this ability is that you can get a damage output of 200%. If your Spirit Arrow collides with a Broken Weave, the damage from both the ability itself and the damage from the weave explosion apply. This is a massive boost in damage early game and will definitely secure you some kills.

 UNRAVEL

Unravel is an ability with multiple purposes. It mostly functions as a form of sustain that other hunters lack. It heals you for quite a hefty amount and if paired with a Broken Weave it heals you for double the amount! This is what truly sets you apart from most hunters; you have the possibility of healing besides life stealing through basic attacks.  It also applies a 30% attack speed debuff on an enemy god, which is extremely helpful in a 1v1 with another ADC.

 BACKFLIP

Backflip is your escape ability. It sends you flying backwards, but not before doing some damage and applying a slow on all the enemies hit. It also sets up a Broken Weave on the spot you were standing at. You can only create one though, so if you use this ability again, the old weave you set up with this ability will disappear. Unfortunately this ability doesn’t allow you to jump over jungle walls, but you can still jump over walls created by gods, like Ymir’s Ice Wall. Use this ability to set up weaves early game to boost your wave clear through the Backflip – Spirit Arrow combo.

 WORLD WEAVER

Nothing feels better than securing a kill on someone on the other side of the map without having to leave your lane. That’s what you can do with World Weaver. You can target anyone within your team’s sight (or in the area of your wards) and fire an arrow that locks onto the target. The only thing that’ll cause this ability to miss your target is when another enemy god body blocks for your target, which happens quite often since there’s a huge mark on the god you targeted. This ability isn’t only useful for killing people though! When it hits, it stuns the opponent for 1 second, and that can help your teammates catch up to the enemy and finish him off and get you that nice assist.

 

Here are the pros and cons of playing Neith.

PROS

• Lots of crowd control
• Global presence with World Weaver
• Great wave clear
• High sustain with Unravel

 

CONS

• Her basic attack damage isn’t all that
• Quite mana hungry (especially early game)
• Predictable escape
• Might have a hard time 1v1’ing hunters late game

 

Even though I said her basic attack damage isn’t all that, that mostly applies in the late game. As Neith it’s your job to finish the game as early as possible before you start to fall off. There’s a reason why Neith is banned more often than not in leagues; you just can’t get around her in the early game. You’re most definitely going to get out-pushed and her global presence allows her to snag some early kills/assists that give her a jump start in gold and experience. What makes her unique as well is that she doesn’t fully rely on basic attacks. Her Spirit Arrow pierces through enemies, Unravel has an AOE effect and so does Backflip. Body blocking isn’t always as effective as it should be when you’re playing against a Neith. Make sure you dominate the early game and carry your team through the mid game until they can take over in the late game and you should be set for a victory!

ADCs have been everywhere lately, especially those with high damaging abilities. That’s why Neith can be played in multiple lanes. Let’s scratch some off the list real quick though.

 

Do NOT play these roles

Jungle: Even though her damage is quite high early game and she could probably clear jungle camps quickly enough for you not to fall behind, her lack of unpredictable mobility is what will be the death of you in the end game. As soon as you use Backflip, everyone knows exactly where you’re going to land. It takes a fraction of a second to recover from the ability and in that time they will have emptied all their CC moves on you and you’ll be sent to the grave.

Support: Like all hunters, Neith is quite squishy. Even when you build her with tank items, you’ll never be able to last as long as an Ares, Ymir, Bacchus, etc. Pair that with your lack of hard CC (her root doesn’t cancel out abilities after all) and you won’t be as useful as other supports. Besides, if you build her with tank items, your damage will become negligible and that would be quite unfortunate for you and your teammates.

 

The roles you CAN play

Middle lane: In Season 1, you couldn’t have dreamed of being a hunter in the middle lane. You simply didn’t have the burst for it and you’d be massacred. In Season 2 however, hunters have risen to the top mid lane occupants. Especially Neith is seen in this lane quite often. She has amazing push potential and an escape to get out of tough situations, no matter how unreliable it might be. It’s not my favorite lane to play in with Neith, but she can rock it like no one else.

Solo lane: Having two hunters in a team is quite successful in conquest these days. How many times I’ve faced a Neith or Apollo in solo lane while playing Aphrodite is unbelievable. But they’re just killing it there! Neith is a scary god to face in solo if you’re playing a god with no escapes, since she can root you and crit you to death.

ADC: This is what you were born (made by Hi-Rez) to do. Hunt minions and gods and protect those needy of protection. With a good support you’ll get a ton of kills in the early game and you’ll push your opponent out of lane like a scared little cat. This will greatly benefit your team and might cause you to end the game earlier than you might have initially envisioned.

I’ll be talking about the items necessary for your role as ADC, but most items are the same items you’ll need in the solo or middle lane. It’s quite the basic Season 2 hunter build, but it’s still worthy of a mention in my opinion.

 

STARTER ITEMS

Bluestone Pendant got nerfed recently, making it quite a useless starter item. Death’s Toll isn’t that great on Neith, since her attack speed isn’t that great early game and your damage comes from your abilities in the early game. I recommend you to skip the “starter items” that Hi-Rez recommends and just build straight into your final build!

 Start off by purchasing Charged Morningstar. It gives you a nice amount of mp5, allowing you to spam your abilities more often. It also grants you 20 physical power and 150 flat out mana. But most importantly; it’ll allow you to build into Transcendence very fast and that’ll benefit you greatly in boosting your ability damage. Pair this with 3 health potions and 3 mana potions and you should be able to stay in lane long enough for you to get Transcendence on your first return to base and maybe snag a kill (or two, three, four, etc.).

 

CORE ITEMS

 As I mentioned in starter items, you NEED Transcendence. It’s just so good! It gives you a bunch of mana and physical power and provides you with that nice mp5 to stay in lane and not have to back as often. Pure power is the way to go for a Neith in my opinion, but if you feel like you need more basic attack damage late game you can always drop this once you have enough gold for the item of your choosing.

 The second item you should get is surprisingly not a pair of boots. With other roles I’d rush boots as fast as possible as you need it to rotate, but as an ADC you still need that lifesteal from your basic attacks. And it’s never wise to have two stacking items, so we’re saying no to Devourer’s Gauntlets in this build. Get Asi instead! It provides you with a 15% physical lifesteal, 20% attack speed and 15 physical penetration! ALL OF THAT IN ONE ITEM! Asi is just a way of life, it’s clear as that.

 This is always a tough decision for me; which boots do I pick? After having juggled between the two choices, I finally made up my mind. Warrior Tabi gives you that nice bit of extra physical power and you’ll have plenty of attack speed with the other items on this list already, so Ninja Tabi aren’t as necessary for Neith.

 To get a little more attack speed (and penetration through basic attacks), we’re adding The Executioner to the build. It grants you 30 physical power and 20% attack speed and its passive is great for lowering your opponent’s physical protection for 24% and 18 at the maximum of 3 stacks. Unfortunately you can’t stack it on towers, but that’d make it too overpowered I guess.

 

FINAL ITEMS

 Even though I said Neith’s basic attacks aren’t all that, you’re still a hunter. So crits are the way to go! So the obvious pick would be Rage, as it gives you 30 physical power and 30% chance to crit your opponent. It also has a nice added effect to it, as it makes you more likely to critically hit your opponent if you haven’t had a critical hit in a while.

  No ADC build is complete without Deathbringer. Not only does it give you 50 physical power and an extra 20% chance to crit(!), it also boosts your critical hit damage by 50%! That means your critical hits now do 150% more damage than your basic attacks, which is quite the hefty amount if you ask me.

 

ACTIVES

In my Aphrodite god guide I forgot to mention which actives she should get (greater purification beads and heavenly agility of course), so I won’t be making the same mistake twice!

 Greater Sprint recently got a nerf, but it’s still worth getting. It doesn’t remove the auto attack penalty anymore, but it still makes you immune to slows and that serves as a great escape or a way to catch up to your opponent!

 Greater Purification is a must have for every god. It removes crowd control and makes you immune to other crowd control effects for 3 seconds. On top of that it reduces your cooldowns by 3 seconds!

Neith isn’t a very difficult god to master and she’s played like any other ADC with the addition of having some kickass abilities. Whether you play her in the solo lane, middle lane or as a regular ADC in the duo lane, you’ll be fine as long as you fully utilize your abilities and make sure you don’t get into sticky situations. Neith out!