Acquire Elo With Thoth - An In Depth Guide to Thoth - Build, Matchups, Tips and Tricks - Updated for Patch 5.15

Hi! I am XenoChief, a mid lane main, and welcome to my Thoth Guide! Be it DOTA, LOL or Smite, I have always been a massive fan of high damage magical mid laners in MOBAs, be it Invoker, LeBlanc or Scylla; and the moment Thoth came out I fell in love - a mobile high damage, high skill cap, versatile mage focused on dealing massive damage with stupidly long ranged skillshots.

Chances are if you are reading this guide, you have seen Thoth's insane kit and like me thought 'this is a ****ing awesome character, I should learn him so I too can acquire ELO by oneshotting people from 130 units away'. Well look no further! Thoth is not an easy character to play by any means; he's hard to learn and even harder to master, but once you've got past his steep learning curve, he can carry games by himself, do insane damage, set up picks; everything you want in a mage. With that being said let's get in to the guide!

Pros:

- One of the highest damage characters in the game
- One of the best late game mages
- Unrivaled poke
- One good ult can win a game
- Can apply his damage from miles away
- Can impact teamfights through walls
- 75 Unit Dash that goes in 8 directions: incredibly safe
- Very long ranged stun: can set up picks and peel for himself
- Can snowball very well
- Awesome walking animation
- Disrespectful laugh (be sure to spam this as much as possible)


Cons:

- Worst Level 1 and 2 in the game
- Bad early game
- Item Dependent
- Mana hungry in early game
- Struggles with characters that can stick to him - only has one dash to get away with
- Entirely line skillshot based - lacks the AoE of other mages
- Squishy: one CC and he is dead
- Reliant on kiting
- Hard to learn
- Harder to master

Passive: Dead Reckoning

Thoth pens the names of his fallen opponents in his book, recording their weaknesses. After killing 30 Enemies, Thoth gains a stack of 3 Magical Penetration, and killing an Enemy God will complete the current stack. He unlocks a new stack every 4 levels, up to a maximum of 5 stacks at level 17.

A suprisingly strong passive. Since on Thoth you generally farm quite a lot to get your items online anyway, this actually ties in quite well with that making it so not only you get gold, but you also get pen for free as well, one of THE most valuable stats in the entire game (it goes movement speed > pen > CDR > power for a mage generally speaking). Late game is really where this shines, with Spear of Desolation and Shoes of the Magi, you're shredding through most of the protections of most mid laners, healers and ADCs, aka the people you want to be blowing up, since all in all you'll have like 40 penetration, leaving mages with only 10 protections (meaning they won't be mitigating much of your damage). Considering how Thoth's ult can hit for 1200, his 2 for 600 and his 1 for 300 a shot.. yeah.

This is also what makes him so snowbally; upon killing a God, Thoth not only gets the gold from the kill, but also instantly gets 3 Penetration from his passive without needing to stack it, meaning he gets a lot more leverage from his kills than other mid laners.

All in all, it's one of the better passives for a mage, even if it is a more underrated part of his kit. In Patch 5.4 , Dead Reckoning was nerfed to provide 1 less penetration per stack, up to a total of 5 penetration lost overall. While losing 5 penetration does suck a bit, the good thing that this still provides as much penetration as a Divine Ruin or Spear of Desolation, meaning Thoth still only needs to build one penetration item to be shredding through 40 protections! This is still a great passive, as it means you can very comfortably go into the newly buffed Shaman's Ring or Soul Reaver still and not feel the lack of penetration. More on this later.

Ability 1: Hieroglyphic Assault

Thoth begins to gather magic from the air, ignoring the Basic Attack Movement penalty and conjuring 3 Hieroglyphs. His next 3 Basic Attacks pass through enemies and do Ability Damage instead. If these attacks pass through the Glyph of Pain, their range is increased.

Damage (per shot) 40/60/80/100/120 (+25% Magical Power)
Cost: 60/65/70/75/80.
Cooldown: 8s.

Thoth's main damage spell. Similar to Scylla's Crush, Ra's Celestial Beam or Janus' Unstable Vortex, this is where the bulk of Thoth's non-ultimate damage comes from. When fired through his Glyph of Pain, it will deal up to 175 (+30%) PER SHOT (for a total of 510 (+90%) damage) from up to 85 units away (more on the Glyph of Pain later). This is what makes Thoth the long ranged poke/artillery sieging monster that he is, getting hit by these shots hurt.

As of Patch 5.1, this spell got a 15 damage overall buff at all ranks. While not that impactful at later levels, at Level 1 and 2 this is huge. It makes his early levels slightly less painful, especially with the extra damage from Mage's Blessing.

One of the most crucial skills a Thoth player needs is to be able to consistently hit these shots from long distances through his Glyph of Pain. You need to able to hit 2/3 shots every time to really get use out of this character, but if you can pull this off consistently, you can, in conjunction with his other skills, delete people before they even get in auto range of you. These shots pass through EVERYTHING so they can't hide behind creeps or their tank(s). If you aim this well, they will die.

It's on an 8s base cooldown as well, which in conjunction with his 5s CD on his 3, makes him incredible at sieging with the barrage of poke he can output.

In Patch 5.4, this spell got a significant (though indirect) scaling nerf, as attacks passing through the Glyph of Pain now only get their scaling buffed by 5% as opposed to 10%, meaning this spell overall loses 15% Magical power scaling. Fortunately, this spell still hits really hard, at 515+90% of your magical power if you hit all three shots, it's just now going to be even more crucial to hit this ability consistently.

Ability 2: Evade and Punish

Thoth dashes in the direction he is currently traveling. After dashing, for 5s Thoth's next basic attack instead fires a magical projectile at the target which passes through minions, stuns, and deals ability damage. If either the Dash or Attack passes through the Glyph of Pain, their respective range is increased by 30.

Cost: 70/75/80/85/90
Cooldown: 16/15/14/13/12s
Damage: 70/110/150/190/230 (+60% of your Magical Power)
Stun Duration: 1s


Boy oh boy, where do I begin with this one? Possibly the most controversial spell in all of Smite, this thing is a gift from the gods and is what makes Thoth the S+ tier mage you see today. You see, on Thoth's release, this spell was the same 75 Unit Dash, but the projectile afterwards was smaller, slowed for 20-40% and the cooldown was a flat 18s. First, they made the cooldown 16-12s per rank, then they made the projectile bigger, then they changed the slow to a flat 1s stun.

This is the best standard mage ability in the game. Straight up. No other mage has a tool as good as this expect maybe Janus with his Portal. This spell, as dmbrandon so elegantly put it is 'longer range Anubis Mummify with a 75 Unit, 8 direction dash attached to it'.

This spell has so many uses. It does heavy damage, it can be used to make picks, set up his other abilities, makes him impossible to catch or lock down, allows him to juke other mages, it's unpredictable, it does heavy damage, secures kills, makes tea and cooks toast. This is also the spell that makes Glyph of Pain placement so important, to ensure you can get off those long range dashes and stuns, since otherwise, like the rest of Thoth's kit, it's short ranged and not the best ability.

You max this second. Having access to a shorter cooldown on this spell is crucial for Thoth, allowing more dashes, more stuns, and more opportunities to use this spell aggressively without being severely punished. A lower cooldown on this spell also allows him to keep his distance much more efficiently.

Since Patch 5.6, Evade and Punish has been nerfed so that the dash cooldown only starts once you have fired a stun. This means that you can no longer hold onto a stun, or time your dashes in such a way that you can get two stuns in the space of 2.2s with max CDR, Evade and Punish is still one of the best mage abilities in the game, nothing compares to the versatility of this spell.

Ability 3: Glyph of Pain

From his book, Thoth conjures forth a Hieroglyph in front of him. Thoth's ability projectile passing through the glyph receive increased damage, and a range increase of 30.

Thoth and allies Basic Attack projectiles receive a reduced damage bonus, but no range increase.
Ability Bonus Damage: 15/25/35/45/55 (+5% of your magical power)
Basic Attack Damage: 10/15/20/25/30 (+5% of your magical power)
Cooldown: 5 seconds
Cost: 25/30/35/40/45 mana

The glue that holds Thoth's kit together. A lot of mastering Thoth's kit is mastering the placement of this window. Without this ability, Thoth is low range and low damage, but with this ability, he's the ranged nuke monster we all know and love. This ability is low cooldown and low mana cost, so you can use it often.

The downside is, it completely telegraphs where you will attack from, making it really easy to dodge Thoth's attacks. The way to work around this is to play around walls as much as possible; and fire your [Hieroglyphic Assault]] and Final Judgement through them; even your stun goes through the wall (although the dash itself of course doesn't, though its range is augmented by the glyph). Fortunately Hirez have helped with this, and you can place a Glyph of Pain either behind a wall or actually inside the wall to fire your abilities through, to ensure enemies get as little warning as possible that you are attacking.

Because everything is augmented by it, you need to fire everything, including your dash, through the Glyph of Pain. Thoth's Hieroglyphic Assault especially is incredibly reliant on this. The glyph adds 15% scaling in total (that's a lot!).

In addition, this really helps with objective push. Place this in front of a tower or a Gold Fury and this adds so much extra damage to the damage you and your hunter can pump out. Although it doesn't increase your basic attack's range, the damage increase is very significant. Not much more to say, a lot of mastering this ability comes with practice.

Ultimate: Final Judgement

Thoth conjures a large glyph from his book, and then inscribes three more at its corners. When all four have been summoned, he sends them forward damaging all Enemies in their path.
Thoth may activate this ability again to fire the ability early, doing a reduced amount of damage based on the number of glyphs currently summoned. Alternately he may cancel this ability at a cost of 30 mana.

Damage (fully charged): 360/430/500/570/640 (+100% of your magical power)
Cooldown: 90 seconds
Mana: 100


Thoth's big money ult. This thing is the simplest ability on Thoth's kit, he charges it up, fires it forward, and it does **** tons of damage to everything it hits. Simple. In early this will deal hefty damage, in late game, this is a legitimate oneshot on many squishies. It's an instant burst of 695+105% damage on squishies from miles away, that's nearly much as a He Bo Crushing Wave, except this travels for 130 units and goes through walls. Yeah. Three things to keep in mind:

1. FIRE THIS THROUGH THE Glyph of Pain. It adds range, damage and scaling to the ultimate. It doesn't say it in the tooltip but this ult if firing through the glyph will hit way harder and from much further away. So use your 3 then charge the ult.

2. This is a charge up move. You can cancel this before you fire. This can be used to create a lot of mind games with opponents and bait out relics and escapes. The downside of this is that it's super telegraphed and the charge up can be interrupted by CC, so you want to be as far away as possible while charging this. The best case scenario is to fire it through a wall so the ult is hard to predict, but this isn't always possible.

3. Try to co-ordinate this with your team's CC moves - it's one of the hardest moves to hit on its own due to the long charge up time. This comes with practice and experience, but communicate with your team, try to predict when your jungler will use CC moves on the opponent and gank. It's crucial since this is the lynchpin of Thoth's kit and the best move in his arsenal.

This is also incredibly powerful at securing and stealing objectives. I can't count the amount of times I have stolen an objective as Thoth and snowballed the game from there. This comes with practice but learn the damage of the move and then try to last hit objectives with it in casuals. It's a massive part of Thoth and a big reason he's such a good mid laner.

One last thing - a few months ago, this was buffed to do more damage when uncharged (although the overall scaling was nerfed, uncharged it does more damage now). Although you will want to charge this up in teamfights, behind walls or to secure objectives, a quick ult can actually be quite a powerful finisher, making Thoth's Level 5 suprisingly potent for such a late game focused god. Just be mindful when doing this.

Start

Build 1 and 2 - 2 Options

So you have 2 Options:

Option 1 - Book of Souls

The pro of this is that it provides a lot of power in lane for your abilities, giving a massive boost to your early clear with Hieroglyphic Assault. It also builds very quickly into Book of Thoth, allowing you to get stacking that Book ASAP.

The disadvantage of this is that you don't get the cooldown reduction from Mage's Blessing nor do you get the mana sustain, meaning you have to go less Healing Potions, and more Mana Potions. This means that you can get poked out more easily, and you also can run out of mana more easily, both of which don't fare too well in the laning phase.

Option 2 - Mage's Blessing and Spellbook

The advantage of this is that you get the mana sustain and cooldown reduction provided to you by Mage's Blessing, meaning you can stay in lane for longer, spam your abilities more and you'll feel less bad about your cooldowns early on. As a result of this, you also can go more Healing Potions than Mana Potions, meaning you are less vulnerable to poke.

The downside of this is that it provides less damage than Book of Souls does early game, and it also delays how soon that you get your power spike from Book of Thoth, meaning that you won't be able to stack it until later on.



Potions

If you have Mage's Blessing, you want more Healing Potions than Mana Potions - this is because the mana sustain from Mage's Blessing makes health sustain more valuable than mana sustain from potion.

If you are skipping Mage's Blessing, you'll want one more Mana Potion. This is because you don't have the mana sustain from Mage's Blessing.

If you have a Baron Samedi on your team, you're going to want to buy Baron's Brew with Multi Potions. This is because Baron's Brew is by far the best early game consumable in the game.

The 3 Builds for Thoth:

Okay, so as of now (18/08/18), you have 3 builds to choose from in general - first off, you have a Book of Thoth build that forgoes survivability for raw damage output. The next is a Book of Thoth build also, but with Book of the Dead earlier than Soul Reaver sacrificing in damage a bit, but making up for it with the survivability from Book of the Dead. The third build is a build that doesn't require stacking, prioritising an early Chronos' Pendant rush for a powerful mid game powerspike, in exchange for the sheer value that a Book of Thoth would provide. Unfortunately, a Warlock's Staff build isn't on here anymore, since it has been nerfed out of viability for Thoth, and Book of Thoth is a much better stacking item overall now - as proved by a sub-40% winrate With that being said, let's get right into it!

Build 1 - Raw Damage Book of Thoth

Start 1

Start 2

Item 1

Item 2

Item 3

Item 4

Item 5

Item 6

Start either Spellbook with Mage's Blessing, or Book of Souls. Get Shoes of the Magi first, since getting your boots first for the movement speed and indeed the penetration is very important. If you go Book of Thoth before Shoes of the Magi you are asking to get hit by random poke and ganked all of the time. Also don't bother with Shoes of Focus, the early game prowess that Shoes of the Magi gives is much more important. Then go Book of Thoth straight after Shoes of the Magi, and get that item stacked up as soon as possible - Book of Thoth is incredibly powerful, giving by far the most power of any mage item in the game, synergising well with all of the mage items that give mana, and giving you a ton of mana so that you can use your abilities freely. It even provides a decent power spike in the early game, something which Warlock's Staff does not provide. After this, you want Spear of Desolation, the Patch 5.15 nerfs have made it so that now Spear of Desolation provides more damage upfront than Spear of the Magus since Glyph of Pain no longer applies Spear of the Magus, so you want Spear of Desolation for the high power, good penetration, and the CDR it provides. Go Chronos' Pendant afterwards, since the CDR it gives is absolutely amazing, and I mean 90 power is nothing to scoff at either - the mana regeneration it provides also does no harm. Then you're going to want Soul Reaver, the 130 power is too good to pass up, and the damage-boosting passive is still very potent, boosting your already great poke and burst to even higher levels. Finally, you have a choice - Soul Gem to cap out CDR and give you extra burst on Final Judgement; Obsidian Shard if you need to muscle through tankier targets; or Book of the Dead if you want a bit of survivability. And the choice is entirely up to you.

Build 2 - Survivability Book of Thoth

Start 1

Start 2

Item 1

Item 2

Item 3

Item 4

Item 5

Item 6

Start either Spellbook with Mage's Blessing, or Book of Souls. Build straight into Shoes of the Magi then get your Book of Thoth ready for stacking - Book of Thoth gives the most power of any item in the game when stacked, along with plenty of mana to spam your abilities with - similar to the last build, Book of Thoth is just a really good item as a whole so you want it. After this, it's Spear of Desolation for penetration, power and CDR, similar to the last build. But then you're going to pick up Book of the Dead - this build sacrifices a bit in damage over going Soul Reaver fourth item, but it does make up for it by making you a bit more survivable against balanced assassins such as Serqet or Ne Zha. That powerful shield from Book of the Dead can be the difference between you surviving a Wind Fire Wheels and Searing Pain combo, or you dying. The Book of Thoth you build gives plenty of mana for that big, juicy shield, and Book of the Dead provides mana for Book of Thoth's power conversion passive - a fantastic combination. You then want Chronos' Pendant for CDR and more power. Finally, you have three choices for your finishing item - Soul Gem to cap out your CDR and for the amazing passive to add damage to your Final Judgements; Obsidian Shard to beat down tankier opponents; or Soul Reaver for raw power and for the passive. The call is entirely up to you, and it really depends on the match.

Both of these are fantastic builds, and the choice of what you will want to go is really down to you. They're quite similar, but the main difference is really whether you are prioritising either going just massive power and pen and blowing someone up, or whether you're okay with a slightly less potent fourth item power spike, in exchange for being able to survive against characters who can dive you a bit better. What you go is entirely your choice and both builds will work very well. The next build is really for if you don't want to stack and you just want to rush Chronos' Pendant - it also has by far the best start of any of the builds, but you are, as mentioned earlier, missing out on the raw value of Book of Thoth

Start

Item 1

Item 2

Item 3

Item 4

Item 5

Item 6

Build 3 - No Stacks! Chronos Pendant

Probably the jankiest looking build on here, this doesn't use a stacking item. When I previously said Chronos' Pendant was a late game pickup I was kind of lying - it is... if you are stacking - you just need over items more. Without a stacking item however, you are free to go this first and abuse the enemy mid laner, as while he's stacking his Book of Thoth, you've got 90 power and 20% CDR off the bat, with a cooldown reducing passive and mana regen - you're good to go! This build is great from behind or in matches where you know stacking won't be feasible, or where you just want to hit 40% CDR asap and roam around the map ulting everyone. This gives you access to the best sustain in laning as well, since you can take a ton of potions and have great natural mana sustain, making it viable against tough matchups like Eset where the enemy will just look to shove you in and poke you out.

Start Lost Artifact and Mage's Blessing. Build into Shoes of the Magi for early pen. Rush Chronos' Pendant for the power and CDR. Then build into Spear of Desolation - at this point, you will have max CDR thanks to Mage's Blessing, about 30 pen and 255 power! Not bad! You then will want Soul Reaver for the raw power this thing gives (and the value of it), Soul Gem for the burst and the fact that it means you can have 40% CDR without Mage's Blessing, and you're going to want to finish on one of either three items - Shaman's Ring, which gives great power, a damage amplification passive that stacks up quickly in late game and even movement speed; Obsidian Shard to muscle through tankier targets; or a Book of the Dead if you want survivability - even without Book of Thoth, the shield is pretty decent, though it's definitely the most situational of these three.

Other Power Items You Can Use

Bancroft's Talon

Cheap and early power. That's it's use. You can also use it to go a double lifesteal build, but the issue is that it's not the best on Thoth because lifesteal in general isn't the best stat on Thoth - and while the power a double lifesteal provides is bonkers, the issue is that all it provides is lots of power, and by that point you're better off stacking. Even if you don't stack, for 300 gold more you can get Chronos' Pendant which gives 100 power but also has CDR and MP5 on it. While yes, Bancroft's has a great passive on paper, in practice, it's a bit redundant since if you're on say, 50% HP as Thoth you're probably going to die anyway, and that extra power isn't really much use then - you could have CDR from Chronos' Pendant to have Evade and Punish up more often, or a shield from Book of the Dead to bail you out. Still though, it's something you can use.



Gem of Isolation

This one's interesting. This actually has a lot of viability on Thoth because on top of your stun you'll get 85-unit slows from your Hieroglyphic Assault . This sounds broken. It gives you easy shots of your 1, allowing you to burst squishies more easily, or even kite tanks in select situations. It even gives a bit of health for survivability! So why is this situational? Because in 99% of situations you're better just getting some of the power items listed above, because chances are if a mid laner gets hit by a full Thoth combo they die anyway, which makes the slow irrelevant. And 90 power+slow isn't as good as 130+Soul Reaver passive, or 100+15 pen. With that being said if your team lacks some CC this is certainly an option, and is a worthwhile purchase. Other items are just better.



Pythagorem's Piece

On well co-ordinated high end teams, you should pick, on paper, at least, pick this up every game. Second or third item. The extra power for your team wins games.

However, chances are you're not in these kind of games if you are reading this guide. This is a matter of preference in lower end, solo queue games because there is no guarantee that your teammates will not abuse the power from this item, and this only gives 70 power in comparison to Book of Thoth which gives you like 90 power off the bat including the passive. If you don't have a good team just go for the bigboy power and penetration items, and delete the ADCs, assassins and mids before they get to duel your questionable team. Even boosted monkeys can win a 4v5 or 3v5 teamfight.

If you know you have a great jungler, ADC or solo laner, pick this up by all means, you're boosting what they can do. If not, it's up to you whether you build this, but then again, chances are you're best off just going as much burst as humanly possible.



Rod of Tahuti

I have to concede defeat on this one and put it as another item that can be used. I personally prefer going items that give more useful passive, or that give stats other than power - Spear of Desolation or Soul Reaver spring to mind, although you can get this and do fine. You can't argue with 150 power on a character that scales as well with power as Thoth. And the passive isn't bad either, it shines as objective secure.

However, you really need to consider carefully what you are giving up to get this on your build - as a rule, if you're not hitting at least 25 flat penetration and 20% CDR on a build that goes Rod of Tahuti, you need to be really hitting those magic numbers. Rod of Tahuti can definitely work if you are getting good stats elsewhere on your build, but it's not core by any means.



Shaman's Ring

Kinda cheating here because I did but this in a core build. Still, it's the most situational item there so I'm putting it in these 'Tier 2' kind of items. While I love this item, with the sheer power and movement speed it brings to the table for just 2400g, along with the fact that the passive once stacking is practically made for Hieroglyphic Assault, the issue here is fitting it in. This can be a bit hard since while movement speed is an absolutely overpowered stat hence why everyone and their mother gets boots on every character in every game (get rid of boots Hirez and buff everyone's move speed by 15% and maybe we can see items like Shaman's Ring and Atalanta's Bow actually get play, but I digress), the issue is that it doesn't provide raw damage unlike say, Soul Gem passive or Soul Reaver, meaning you have to sacrifice something to go this. Still though, it's a great item and something you should at least give a try.

Situational Items

Divine Ruin

Swap for Spear of Desolation if they have healing that justifies picking this up ( Hel, Aphrodite, Ra and the like). If you are still reading, well done, you know something that other people who didn't read this far won't. :)



Dynasty Plate Helm

A good bridge item if their physical damage is starting to snowball. This can actually stop them in their tracks. Pick up second always, and sell if you get to 6 items.



Ethereal Staff

Ethereal Staff generally is worse for Thoth than either Book of the Dead (if you want health) or Soul Reaver (for raw damage), but if you want a bit of survivability along with a nice bit of bonus damage on abilities, Ethereal Staff can be a nice pickup. Bear in mind that the stats provided from this aren't realistically that good, but if you get behind, Ethereal Staff can be a decent pick up since it gives both damage and a bit of tankiness, along with CC reduction, all very powerful things to have from behind. This definitely gets outshone by other items, I'd usually just suggest Book of the Dead if you want health, or Soul Reaver for raw damage, it's a bit of a niche situation, admittedly, where you want a middle ground between the two but the situation does exist, making this a situational item.



Obsidian Shard

I know I put this in my core build, but this item is still situational. You only want this item if you want to muscle through tanky targets. If the enemy team doesn't have at least two tanks, don't buy this, straight up, Soul Gem or just raw power or flat pen let you do more damage to squishier targets. Being able to damage the support only isn't worth it. However, if they have AT LEAST two tanks who are building magic defense, go ahead and pick this up, this really lets you punish the stupid Bellona or Sobek who's trying to dive you like an idiot.

I'd note, I'd only recommend building this before your 6th item if the enemy team are tanky enough to justify getting Obsidian Shard early. The reason you see this picked up so much in SPL is because everyone and their mother builds tank items there, in solo queue, it's more common to see more damage-oriented items on solo laners and full damage builds on junglers. Outside of people just laying on the tank items, flat pen, CDR and power are more valuable than a tank-busting passive.



Shoes of Focus

You're just gagging to lose the early game by going this first item. Simple as that. There is a reason that all of my builds have Shoes of the Magi, and that's because Pen Boots are crucial for the early game. Even with 55 power on cooldown boots, even with the penetration provided by Dead Reckoning (which actually isn't even that strong until like Level 13), you really are sacrificing a lot of damage in the early to mid game by going these. CDR is outweighed by penetration early game meaning that Pen Boots are pretty much a mandatory purchase if you want to keep up in damage.

The reason that it's situational and not garbage is because in late game, if for some reason you don't have max CDR (even though with Chronos' Pendant, Soul Gem and Spear of Desolation you should), you could sell Shoes of the Magi to get these and potentially pick up an Obsidian Shard, Spear of the Magus or Divine Ruin to make up for your missing pen.



Spear of the Magus

Since the Patch 5.15 nerfs, you're now only going to want to go Spear of the Magus if you have someone like Ao Kuang or Chronos on your team who can do more magical damage than you, and by buying this you are helping them. However, now since a Hieroglyphic Assault and Glyph of Pain combo will not fully stack this on a target, you're better off just going Spear of Desolation in most circumstances, since only your Hieroglyphic Assault stacks this up. Evade and Punish and Final Judgement only hit once.

Garbage Items

Doom Orb

Fine, I'm putting it here. The more I think about this item, even though I have found myself liking it at times when I've played with junglers and just aimed to go HAM in early game with Doom Orb, this is too situational to be considered useful. For 1100 more gold with a Lost Artifact start, you could go Chronos' Pendant which is actually useful in late game, or alternately if you want to go aggro, you can just go Book of Souls, or hell Shoes of the Magi since penetration outweighs power anyway, and you still get the movement speed. I think this item needs another buff to be a bit less situational.



Demonic Grip

Attack Speed Thoth is garbage. Also none of his abilities proc this.



Polynomicon

Thoth's abilities don't proc this, and you don't ever want to be in auto attack range after Level 3.



Rod of Asclepius

It's just too situational. As Branmuffin pointed out in my comments, if Hel, Aphrodite or whoever aren't picking this up, that's their shortcoming not yours. Although 90 power is okay, it probably would be better to go for items with more burst anyway, even though you can try to make up for your bad healers by going Rod of Asclepius. Before the nerfs potentially, but now that it's been nerfed? Eh. Not the best option out there.



Stone of Fal

I mean, before it had a clear purpose as a counter to super high damage ults like He Bo or Scylla, as a very situational item that was good in those specific situations, now? Since its stupid rework, it won't actually save you. 10% damage reduction is a complete joke - if a Janus Unstable Vortex would before nuke you for 800 damage, it's now only doing 720 YAY! Then you realise that Portal does 600 damage, Threshold boosts his damage by 200-300 and Through Space and Time does 1000 and suddenly Stone of Fal looks pretty useless. The stats are a joke, the protections just make you more vulnerable to Obsidian Shard and mages get so much penetration nowadays that 40 magical protections don't matter whatsoever. The power and CDR is similarly garbage on this item. If you want to survive mage combos, go Book of the Dead.



Telkhines Ring

Attack speed Thoth is terrible. I just need to reiterate that. No, the Glyph of Pain interaction doesn't make it viable.



Typhon's Fang

I don't know how I forgot to put this one in the garbage section. Since it's changes, and since Book of Thoth got buffed, this isn't really a good item on Thoth since double lifesteal in general is not good on Thoth. Thoth doesn't really use lifesteal, and if you REALLY want magical lifesteal in the late game, Soul Gem exists, and while yes it gives less power than Typhon's Fang, the health, the CDR and the passive of Soul Gem make up for the marginal loss of power in spades.

And remember how I said 'double lifsteal is not the best on Thoth'? This item necessitates that you build more lifesteal items than just Typhon's Fang, AND it has the Rod of Tahuti problem of just providing power, but worse! Since it requires you to invest not one but two item slots into getting dumb amounts of power. Yeah. I can't recommend this. If you want stupid power, Book of Thoth, people.



Warlock's Staff

This item has been nerfed out of viability for Thoth. Book of Thoth is a much superior stacking item to Warlock's Staff now in pretty much every way; it builds out of better items, it takes less time to stack up and stacks aren't as crucial meaning you can actually fight in the early game, it provides more power off of the bat, and it provides lot of mana meaning you can use your abilities to clear and roam without OOMing all of the time. The nerf to Warlock's Staff where it only gives 200 Mana now really killed the item for Thoth, meaning you should go your own book instead. If you need health and survivability, go a Book of the Dead, don't bother with this trash. It takes a long time to come online for less of a reward than Book of Thoth offers. Don't believe me? Check out Thoth's stats here, he has a 38.4% winrate with Warlock's Staff (meaning Thoth loses 62% of all games where he takes Warlock's Staff, as opposed to a 49.9% winrate with Book of Thoth (meaning it's a pretty even winrate). I mean the stats speak for themselves, don't buy Warlock's Staff anymore people.

Thoth isn't really a combo character. He's less about combos and much more about augmenting his abilities with his 3. The main combo you will doing is stunning with your 2 through your 3 then following up with shots of your 1. Thoth is much more about generally playing safe in the early game (we'll have a whole section on this later), predicting enemy movement and removing key targets. He's not really a character who requires much in the way of matchup knowledge. With that being said, I think it's important to have another more advanced section on Thoth's abilities here, since using these is what gives Thoth such a high skill cap. There's a lot more to explain here than there would be for someone like Agni or Ra who generally have more simple abilities. So here's a list of tips for using Thoth's abilities.

Passive: Dead Reckoning

Not much to say here, other than to ensure that this is stacked as much as possible. If you can't get kills, still make sure you get the stacks for this passive. The Penetration is a big damage boost.

Ability 1: Hieroglyphic Assault

Quite a self-explanatory ability honestly, it's Thoth's main damage (this makes up like 50% of his damage). Some of these tips will seem quite obvious as a result. But these are some tips I can give.

- Always fire these shots through your 3 ALWAYS. It adds 15% scaling throughout the ability, a lot of base damage (165 at max rank) and significantly boosts the range.
- Learn to predict enemy movements. This is vital to ensure you are dealing the damage on these shots. Once someone gets hit by this they will panic and put juke shoes on; the good news is these projectiles are HUGE and travel pretty quickly. Put them in the centre of the shots and it will be quite hard for them to dodge without significantly hindering what they are doing.
- Fire these shots through walls (I mean actual walls, as well your 3). They go a very long distance and do a **** ton of damage. As with the rest of Thoth's abilities, they allow you to take advantage of the map itself, particularly, and win teamfights without even being there.
- Learn the range of this ability! You want to landing max range shots of this, it will net you a lot of kills.
- When you use this ability, you have a decision - unload on one target or spread these shots out to multiple people for less damage. My personal inclination in fights is to unload this onto priority targets but the damage you can spread in teamfights with this can swing fights. A lot of this comes down to the situation at hand and your personal playstyle and will come to you as you play Thoth, but it's worth keeping in mind.
- This ability comes with the Hastened Ring effect, so you can juke and move around while firing these shots. This throws people off a lot more than you would think.

Ability 2: Evade and Punish

This ability is what separates good Thoth players from great ones. It's a super powerful tool but has a ton of uses and a lot of decision making involved.

- First off, the biggest decision in Thoth's kit. Do you want a short dash but a long ranged stun, or a long dash with a short stun? In general, for an escape, placing the Glyph of Pain then dashing is the way to go, but sometimes that 85 unit stun is more useful (this would of course mean placing the Glyph pf Pain after dashing). Of course, as we will get to later, with good Glyph management, you can get both the long dash and the long stun!
- You can place the Glyph of Pain at your feet (casting it right over your model) then dash away for a quick escape - very obvious but this is how you will get your long range dashes off a lot of the time. This has the advantage of not telling your enemy where you will dash to, as once it is at your feet, you will get a maximum distance dash no matter which direction Evade and Punish is casted in.
- You can also place a glyph about 25 units away in the direction you want to dash for an easy 85-unit stun as opposed to 55-units, however, this HEAVILY telegraphs where you will go, so keep that in mind.
- This is a very powerful juking tool, even without the glyph. This goes in 8 directions making it very hard to predict. This gives Thoth beastly matchups against gods like Anubis and Discordia. He can easily dodge their key skillshots then punish with an 85 unit stun nuke to the face.
- Despite the first part being a dash, this skill works wonderfully through walls. If you feel safe enough, you can use a short dash into a wall, and send an 85 unit stun through the wall. This takes practice, but once you've got it down, a good stun can straight up win a game. 285+65% is a lot of damage in the late game.
- This skill can be a powerful tool for getting picks with your jungler. Thoth's insanely long ranged stun gives him some of the best jungler interaction in the game; Thoth stun sets up junglers like Thanatos, Thor and Ne Zha insanely well. There is not a single jungler that doesn't pair well with Thoth.
- This skill is great for ganking side lanes - Skadi will be minding her own business, being annoying as usual, when suddenly she takes a stun to the face followed up by Rama's Astral Strike, Thoth's Hieroglyphic Assault, a Bacchus Belly Flop and a Mjolnir's Attunement double tap from Thor - not even Kaldr can save Skadi there.
_ With a bit of CDR, Thoth can dash through a glyph, hold onto the stun, place another glyph then fire the stun.
- You will often use this spell for damage, however doing so comes at the cost of using your escape, making it quite high risk. It's up to you to choose whether you want to play more aggressively, using your 2 to rack up the kills and deal more damage in fights, or passively, using your dash defensively so you can play more around poking enemies as opposed to securing kills.
- This spell gives Thoth some of the best chase potential of any mage. A long ranged dash followed by a long stun can cover a total of 160 UNITS. This is insanely strong, and combined with his ult, Thoth can really punish enemies who decide in stay in lane at low health.
- With Patch 5.6, another decision comes into play in Thoth's kit - do you want to hold on to the stun to potentially have time to aim it and set it up with a glyph? Or do you want to fire the stun straight away, as the cost of accuracy and potentially range, in exchange for having your dash up again sooner?
- A point I should add is that you can fire the stun through the same glyph you dashed through even if you do use the Glyph of Pain at your feet as opposed to a bit in front of you, however doing this requires you to move forward 20 units assuming you placed the glyph at your feet before dashing away. This can be quite risky, especially as now Evade and Punish will not go on cooldown until you have fired that stun.

Ability 3: Glyph of Pain

This is what makes Thoth Thoth. With this spell, Thoth turns from a mage with average damage and a weak escape mechanic to a mobile ranged powerhouse of a mage. The vast majority of what makes Thoth such a high skill mage comes from this spell so let's get into it.

- This is obvious and I've said it a lot but always fire your abilities through this, including your dash, wherever you can. This boosts the damage and range of them significantly. The good news is that if any part of your ability at all touches the glyph it will gain the damage and range increase, so it's easy to do.
- Related to the last tip above, dashing in any direction and touching the glyph, no matter how little of the glyph you touch with any of the dash, will cause you to dash 75 units in that direction, meaning keeping track of your glyphs can make for very quick and easy escapes.
- Your glyph tells your enemy roughly where you will attack from, and that you are looking to attack. While this can be a disadvantage, this can be used to your advantage as well! You can put your glyph down activate your 1, wait a bit and get an idea of their movements allowing to aim your abilities better. Bear in mind your abilities have massive range so getting out of range will be difficult.
- Glyphs actually cover a small AoE, meaning you can place one at your feet while walking forward, then suddenly dash backwards 75 units. This little trick is insanely useful for escaping and is part of what makes good Thoths so hard to kill.
- Glyphs can be placed in walls, making them difficult to see for enemies, and ensuring they will not expect your abilities. This is part of what makes Thoth so good in the jungle and at ganking - his incredible interactions with terrain and walls make him unpredictable and hard to get to.
- Glyph management is key to playing Thoth. Glyph's have a base cooldown of 5s and a duration of 8s, meaning you can have 2 o the battlefield at any one time, with a potential of 3 with max CDR. Managing and keeping track of these glyphs is crucial. If you keep track of your glyphs, you can get very easy escapes and long range ults. Part of this is keeping track of where you place your glyphs. If you place them in walls, you won't get any dashes unless you placed the glyph in such a way that a dash could touch it.
- Related to the above, keeping track of WHEN you placed your glyphs is crucial. As time goes on, similarly to Thoth's ranges, you will get used to the 8s duration of the glyph. Keeping track of when you placed glyphs is important because if you don't, it can lead to some rather embarrassing moments. Like firing your ult as the glyph disappears, leading to it not hitting anything.
- Last one, I promise! But don't ever underestimate how good Glyph of Pain is at shredding objective. Every auto attack that fires through it (including your teammates' tanged auto attacks) gains decent extra base damage + 5% scaling - which also applies to towers. This makes Thoth one of the best mages at taking objectives out there. Whenever you're attacking a tower with your team, put a glyph in front of that tower whenever you have it available and watch it fall.

Ultimate: Final Judgement

A rather powerful ultimate. It may just be damage, but boy does it do a lot of it! The fact that's it a charge up move means that this has a lot of depth to it but when used properly this is such a rewarding move.

- Fire this through the glyph! This ability is notorious for going really, really far but when not fired through the glyph it's about the same range as any other mage ultimate. The extra 10% scaling also makes this move a lot better.
- Related to this, fire this through walls! When you don't fire this through a wall, despite the length it goes, it is a really, really obvious move (this does, however, have advantages that we will get to later). Thoth's ult noise is basically a meme by this point, he has to put the glyph down before charging it (telling enemies that 'HEY I'M GOING TO ATTACK') and he charges the ult for three whole seconds. Firing through a wall will mean the enemy team are much less prepared for it.
- Because of the sheer distance this thing travels, and the damage it deals, this is an amazing move for stealing objectives. At higher levels, enemy teams straight up will not do an objective until Thoth is dead, because Final Judgement is probably the best move in the game for stealing objectives (apart from maybe Janus ult). It goes really far (further than even Ra's ult), is an instant hit of damage, and unlike a Kukulkan Spirit of the Nine Winds or Vulcan Earthshaker there isn't a targeter saying where it will land. If there is an objective that can be stolen, try to steal it! A lot of this comes with practice but there is no better feeling in the game than taking that Fire Giant.
- This move is also decent for securing objectives as well. Not as good as an Eset, Raijin or Anubis ult since Final Judgement is much more about the range and the instant hit than the raw damage numbers, but this is still a key move for ensuring your team gets the objective.
- This is a charge-up move. Like I mentioned earlier, this make Final Judgement an incredibly obvious move, however, this also means that you can cancel it! This allows you to play mind games with your opponents. Something that you will get used to when playing Thoth is suddenly cancelling this at the last second (I say this as a figure of speech). This allows you to bait out escapes like Path of Flames, Aegis Amulet, and untargetable spells like Divebomb. Bear in mind this does cost 30 mana however.
- As this is a charge-up move, anticipating not just what your enemies will do, but what your allies will do, is crucial. A fully charged Final Judgement is a devastating follow-up to say, a Ymir Frost Breath or Athena Confound. A lot of this comes with practice but always be mindful of this.
- While in late game and at objectives charging this move up all the way is imperative, in early game or when looking to just secure a kill, you can fire this early. The uncharged damage at 60 or 80% (depending on how long you charged it) is a lot higher than you would initially think. Whether you want to do this or not, is up to you). Remember that the Glpyh damage is the same no matter how far you charge the ult.
- Try to hit this on as many people as possible in late game, even if it doesn't net you a kill. Hitting a Thoth ult on 2 or 3 people can straight up win you a game since your team (and you for that matter) can clean up before they can retaliate.

Disclaimer: This is for Conquest!

Early Game

Levels 1-2: Just survive. It's that simple. Don't try to make fancy plays, invade or anything like that unless the enemy really ****s up, and I mean really ****s up. At Level 1 you're like the worst god in the game for very obvious reasons, you have no range, no control, no AoE, no instant damage. At Level 2 you'll either only have 55 range or you won't have an escape depending on which spell you took.

Levels 3-6: You're in a better position now, but you still have to play quite passively. With that being said, you'll have a decent amount of poke, a good escape and at Level 5 there's actually some kill potential to be had. However, you are nowhere near the best god at this point, and should still be cautious.

Mid Game

Levels 7-9: Your first big power spike! Congratulations! At this point you should have 4 points in your 1 and your first item. You're not as aggressive as a Poseidon or Raijin or something would be at this point but you now can full clear a wave from very long distances and your poke is now something to be feared. While you're nowhere near at your full power levels, you now should have a pretty easy ride to late game. Typically junglers will be looking to gank your lane or fight at this point, because Thoth's Level 7 and 9 are really good should you play your cards right. Try to pick up a couple kills at this point, get some passive stacks, and get the snowball rolling.

Levels 10-12: This is where Thoth becomes really scary. At this point, you should have your first big power item, for instance, Book of Thoth and Shoes of the Magi or nearly be there. While your lane kill potential is a bit smeh (you don't have an instantaneous burst combo like a Poseidon, Zeus or Nox), your gank potential is TERRIFYING. You have insanely high ranged abilities, can fire everything through walls and insane poke - if ever the ADC overextends, go to that lane and punish them for it. Thoth's roams at this point in the game are ****ing disgusting, and his objective potential is second to none - this what you should be taking advantage of, and this is what's going to transition into that signature Thoth late game.

Levels 13-15: Thoth's Level 13-15 are really good. This the mid-late game, and is where the transition happens. At this point you'll have maxed out your 2 and your 1 and have three points in your ultimate, and will be at 2 1/2 or 3 items. At this point in the game you hit really hard. Your poke is a lot to deal with honestly, since you'll now have the items to really start abusing those scalings. Your roams are still fantastic but now is the point where the teamfighting starts to begin, and this is where Thoth really shines. In my opinion, this late-mid game point is Thoth's strongest point in the game. Basically, Thoth gets to his god phase sooner than the late game AoE monster mages ( Scylla, Discordia, etc.), and while his god phase isn't quite as good as theirs, he more than makes up for it by the fact he gets to his strongest point sooner, allowing him to exert more pressure in things like early Fire Giant fights. Plus he's no slouch in late either.

Late Game:

Levels 16-20: Teamfighting! Thoth's goal in teamfights is to apply constant pressure and as much damage to squishy targets as possible. Honestly it's quite simple and there's not really much to explain, prioritise either squishy targets or people who overextends, try to hit big ults, use your ult to try and steal Fire Giants and the like, use your Glyph of Pain for objective push, stay safe and set up picks with your 2. That's it, Thoth is one of those gods where it's much more about the execution than anything else, what he's meant to do is honestly really simple, it's pulling it off. By this point, you'll have a lot of items and points in your abilities so your damage will be nuts. Thoth's range is such a massive boon in the late game. The downside here is that what Thoth has in range, he sacrifices in AoE, so gods like Scylla will be a bit stronger at this phase of the game in teamfights. You have to play intelligently to have an impact as Thoth in teamfights, aiming your abilities well and from a max distance - the reward for this is that if you land your ****, you can instantly delete someone from the fight, making it a 5v4, which you can snowball into a straight-up win. No other mage has this pick potential, bar like Ao Kuang, but he needs to get close - Thoth has the best range in the game!

Agni - Hard

Difficulty: 8/10

This matchup is in Agni's favour. In order to win against Agni you really need to play around his ranges. He is another artillery mage, he has more area of effect damage than you but slightly less range. He has better waveclear, and comes online earlier than you. He's also safe, just like you. The idea is to stay unpredictable in your movements and ensure you always have your dash should you need to dodge his bombs. As soon as you see a Rain Fire bomb on you, that's it, you're immediately going to need to Evade and Punish backwards before the bomb lands, since Agni can't physically stun with Noxious Fumes you until it lands. You're never going to be able to kill a good Agni, unless your jungler can really punish Agni's terrible Levels 1-4. Something I like to do against Agni is take my [Glyph of Pain]] at Level 2. The reason for this is that Agni has very unsafe wave clear until he gets his Rain Fire. He will either need to walk in melee range to use Flame Wave, or will need to walk right up to you in order to clear the wave with Path of Flames - during this time Agni is incredibly susceptible to being poked down by your Hieroglyphic Assault, and gaining this range advantage as soon as possible helps in this matchup for that reason alone.

However if you can survive until Level 7, he doesn't have much kill potential on you either, but you need to respect his burst combos. If you get hit by Rain Fire this matchup can turn nasty very quickly against a good Agni.

Ah Puch - Easy

Difficulty: 1/10

Another of my favourite gods, Thoth hard counters Ah Puch. He doesn't have any mobility to dodge your spells, an auto attack through your Glyph of Pain oneshots corpses before Ah Puch can eat them with Hollow Ground or blow them up, and your Evade and Punish allows you to avoid his Corpse Explosion really easily. The only thing to be careful of is that in the early game an Ah Puch Undead Surge has a 6s lower cooldown than your dash, so be sure to stay at max range until your 2 comes back up. Then again that combo blows half of his mana and won't be oneshotting you until the late game anyway. A very easy matchup.

Anhur - Easy

Difficulty: 2/10

Thoth excels against Anhur in the mid lane due to his range with Glyph of Pain. Anhur's Shifting Sands into Impale combo spells out death if you get hit by hit, but he's going to have a hard time hitting it onto you since Thoth as a whole plays so far back. If you position far enough back against Anhur, he will be forced to use Disperse if he wants to kill you, heavily telegraphing what he's going to do. You can then use a quick Evade and Punish (even without the Glyph of Pain) backwards, and you're fine.

Play cautiously against Anhur, and play intelligently at max range, and he will really struggle. Despite this being an easy matchup for Thoth, be warned: you need to respect Anhur's Level 5-9 - why? Because Desert Fury hits insanely hard, so if you get Pillar Stunned, you're going to be a 560+240% ult to the face with 20 debuffed physical protections thanks to Enfeeble, and he's CC immune at the same time - ouch.

But if you do play this well, this will be an easy mid lane for you.

Anubis - Easy/Medium

Difficulty: 6/10 if inexperienced on Thoth, 2/10 otherwise

This is a matchup that really tests your ability to survive Levels 1-2, abuse your 85 range, and dodge skillshots with your 2. In other words, it tests how good you are at Thoth. If you know how to pilot Thoth well, there's absolutely nothing Anubis can do against you unless you really **** up or he has a really on point jungler. If you're not used to Thoth's kit, this matchup becomes a lot more difficult since Anubis will really punish your mistakes.

Basically Thoth can stay out of range of Anubis' kit really easily, Anubis has no mobility to dodge your damage, and even if Anubis gets in range Thoth has the mobility to get away. The only difficult part about this matchup will be that Anubis SHOVES you under turret in the early game because of his incredible waveclear because his Plague of Locusts will full clear a wave at Level 1 but if you can survive to the point where you have serviceable long ranged clear you'll be good to go. However, if you ever do get in range of Anubis' Mummify and you don't react fast enough with Evade and Punish, you're probably going to either have to use your Purification Beads (always take these at Level 1 against Anubis), or you're going to die, since the damage from Grasping Hands and Death Gaze will be enough to melt you down, and you won't have time to go for a long dash once Anubis has you. Remember that without your dash you are both squishy and slow. This is why kiting and familiarity with Thoth is so crucial in this matchup. Also don't go for stupid plays, since Anubis has great sustain with Sorrow - just play cautiously until teamfights.

Aphrodite - Easy

(As someone who used to play a lot of Aphro this is the superior card art)

Difficulty: 1/10

She has no kill potential on you whatsoever. You have little on her as well thanks to Love Birds and Undying Love, but every jungler, even if you don't tell them to, will focus the ever living **** out of an Aphrodite, making her a really easy matchup.

Her clear with Love Birds is a bit better than yours and her ult can **** you over at times but that's it, it's not like she can use any of this to her advantage in lane, since her kill potential is non-existent, she's slow and she's squishy.

Baron Samedi - Easy

Difficulty: 3/10

I love Baron Samedi, but let me tell you, he struggles against Thoth. Thoth pretty much has all of the tools needed to effectively deal with Baron Samedi. I feel as though Baron Samedi is more of a solo laner nowadays since his early clear with Vivid Gaze is absolute, absolute garbage wave clear in early game since his nerfs, and that fares really badly for mid lane, but people still play him there. Thoth's range is something than Baron Samedi really struggles against, and Thoth will outclear Baron Samedi very easily since his Hierogylphic Assault does a lot of damage. His Consign Spirits has a long windup time to it, and even though it's an unbelievably broken ability in teamfights, Thoth can dash out it pretty easily. Wrap It Up has a short range, so provided you position well, Baron Samedi won't be able to use his main Hysteria generator and his main burst combo on you. We all know why Life of the Party is a broken move, but Thoth can deal with it well - since Glyph of Pain extends the range of his dash, he can get out of the pull range really easily, and so long as Thoth does not get hit with Vivid Gazes and Consign Spirits for free in lane, Baron Samedi won't have enough Hysteria on Thoth to get the empowered pull on him. Purification Beads does nothing against the ult unless Thoth is at 30 Hysteria or more, if he is, you'll need Purification Beads to get out, but if he isn't, you won't need it, all you'll need to do is Evade and Punish through a Glyph of Pain. Remember not to try to damage Baron Samedi during his ult, since he gains 35% Damage Reduction.

Really with this matchup you need to be conservative with your Evade and Punish, and you need kite out Baron Samedi by playing at max range, and by doing this, the matchup becomes easy. The moment it's down and you get in range of Life of the Party or Wrap It Up or whatever, Baron Samedi can easily have his way with you, but if you play smartly, you are creating circumstances where Baron Samedi will really struggle.

Chang'e - Easy

Difficulty: 3/10

Same as Aphrodite. No kill potential, but every jungler will focus her to hell and back. A bit harder than Aphrodite since her spells can't be dodged and she's hard to hit thanks to Jade Rabbit and Moonlit Waltz but her range is terrible, so if you play well you won't have an issue here.

Chernobog - Hard

Difficulty: 9/10

Chernobog is completely broken and honestly if you have to play against him I feel very sorry for you. The only saving grace in this matchup is that Crystallised Curses has bad range, meaning you will avoid a lot of poke he can put out in lane. His early clear is some of the best of any hunter between his AoE Heart of Cold passive, Crystallised Curses and Vicious Barrage, meaning that you will get shoved in, over and over again. At Level 2 you need to be very careful that you don't get hit by a Chernobog combo, since you do, you will either die, or be forced back to base. Honestly, you're going to have to settle for being shoved in at Level 2, and you're going to have to ensure that you're not standing near a wave, meaning you won't be able to use Hieroglyphic Assault on all six minions until you get Glyph of Pain. You could circumvent this by getting Glyph of Pain instead of Evade and Punish at Level 2, but this will leave you very vulnerable - so really you have to choose what you want. At Level 3-5, you're going to need to play very carefully and farm up from range. Don't bother trying to kill Chernobog in lane, thanks to Into Darkness, he has Aegis Amulet pretty much on demand every 18s - your best bet is to try to bait out Into Darkness which will require Evade and Punish making it risky, and then work with your jungler to gank him in the 18s that it is down.

Level 5 and upwards this matchup gets really frustrating because of Living Nightmare allowing him unrivalled global pressure. You will always get outroamed by a Chernobog and thanks to his ludicrous damage, by the time you get to where he's roaming, it's probably already too late. You're going to need to try and take whatever objectives you can while he's roaming, be it the tower, the Gold Fury, Pyro, mid camps, the enemy red or blue, whatever you're just going to have to do something while he's roaming. What's worse, if you ever have to use Evade and Punish to get away from anyone that isn't Chernobog, he can very easily just ult in your face, and since his ult provides DAMAGE REDUCTION and REFRESHES ALL OF HIS COOLDOWNS, you can pretty much kiss your *** goodbye.

What's worse, he gets stronger as the game goes on thanks to his high attack speed from Vicious Barrage and his damage reduction from Living Nightmare reaching 40% at max rank.

Do yourself a favour and ban this god if you can honestly. The only counterplay that you have against this is trying to use Final Judgement on him sneakily when he hasn't got damage reduction, and trying to poke him out so it's more risky for him to roam, but with both of these options, Into Darkness gives him a very easy way to stop this.

Chiron - Easy

Difficulty: 1/10

Overall an incredibly easy matchup. Avoid getting hit by too many Training Exercises by positioning well and using your Evade and Punish to get out when necessary, and you will get some of the freest farm of your life. Chiron's early all-ins with Giddyup! can be a bit problematic at times, but luckily Evade and Punish allows you to get out of them very easily. Giddyup is a great escape but his turning is usually quite bad, allowing for easy Evade and Punish or Final Judgement shots. His Centaurus goes quite far, but you can dodge the shots, and he travels slowly during it, meaning you can once again, land really free damage onto him.

Chiron can deal with Hieroglyphic Assault poke well thanks to Herbal Medicine, but that's about all he has going for him in this matchup. He also falls off really hard late game, so yeah, overall, this is a free matchup, provided you don't get hit stupidly by Training Exercise.

Chronos - Easy

Difficulty: 4/10

An interesting matchup. He has more early clear than you but it blows through his mana pool. His poke is decent with his Time Rift but you can dodge his Stop Time really easily, meaning that he doesn't have much kill potential on you. Snowballing on him is quite hard because of his ult making him hard to kill, and his Quadrant 1 heal from Accelerate is actually pretty good at countering your poke.

Overall this is quite an easy lane. What gives this the 4/10 rating, making it nearly a skill matchup is that Chronos WANTS a farm lane because he's the hardest carry in the game arguably, he's a very safe laner and wants to get to late game thanks to his insane power scalings and his Time Lord free power. You really want to force him behind honestly, and that's going to take ganks onto Chronos, using your CC and damage in an optimal manner so he can't get his ultimate off. Late game you can do your thing against him, poke him out with your 3+1 so he can be killed, but his insane AA damage, high ability scalings, crazy ult and bonkers objective push make him quite hard to deal with, so you really need co-ordination to specifically put him behind.

Discordia - Easy

Difficulty - 3/10


Right so Discordia is pretty broken right now (I used to think she was quite bad but as time has gone on and people have learnt to use her. more this character is disgusting), but as Thoth, you counter her! Hooray!

The main thing is you outrange her hard. You out-poke her, you can avoid the second part of Unruly Magic easily, you can dodge her spells with your dash even when rooted (since Strife doesn't cripple, and unless you're clumped out she won't ever get Madness on you). It's hard for Discordia to hit a 2-1 combo onto you just because you have an instant dash. Don't bother to put the glyph down in this matchup, dash out of the 2 then stun her and unload as much as humanly possible onto her. Ask for ganks since your 2 will always bait out Discordia's Erratic Behavior , making her a hilariously easy gank and giving you outrageously easy kills onto her. While her Golden Apple of Discord hits hard and can turn fights, it's a very easy move to dodge if you pay attention, with a very slow travel time.

What makes this a 3/10 matchup is that if she does catch in any of her kit, you WILL die, so you need to be very conservative with your dash, but if you are then congrats you've won. Also her stealth can be annoying but it's the only mobility she has, making her a really easy gank on top of her complete lack of pressure onto you. The late game will be hard since she blow your whole team up with 2-1-4, but if you got ahead she won't ever get to that point anyway since you'll blow her up again and again. If you play this matchup well it's a hard counter.

Freya - Medium

Difficulty: 4/10

New Freya is pretty broken. Not going to put it lightly. She's strong in early game, and only gets stronger as the game goes on. Early game her clear is really strong with Aurora Blade and Northern Lights. Level 1 isn't too bad, Level 2 you need to be really careful that you're not standing in minion waves - even after the nerfs, getting hit by a Northern Lights in a minion wave will absolutely chunk you, and what's worse it slows you, setting up more auto attacks. Getting hit by Banish is pretty much a death sentence, since it sets up her burst combo perfectly, and Valkyrie's Discretion even after the nerfs does dumb damage, especially considering that she's building full power and penetration, allowing her to really abuse the high damage numbers on that ability. It also removes her from her from the fight. As the game goes on, Freya's items will come more and more online, and by late game she becomes a monster with Polynomicon.

What you have to take advantage of in this matchup is Thoth's ridiculous range. Freya can attack from a maximum of like 60-65 units away, whereas you can attack from up to 85 past Level 3. Level 2 will be hard, and you need to play very cautiously. Past Level 3 you can take advantage of that beast range. Freya has absolutely stupid mana sustain, but in order to take advantage of this, she needs to walk up to the wave and melee attack the creeps - there is your window to punish her with Hieroglyphic Assault! Freya struggles against long ranged poke mages like Thoth pretty hard in lane, so if you play smart, the lane won't be hard. If you take advantage of your range, you won't be standing in waves, nor will you be in range of her Banish or really anything that she can do. The late game will be hard, mind you.

Hades - Medium

Difficulty: 5/10

Harder than you would expect actually! He doesn't have much kill potential on you at all if you play your cards right, since he's so close range. This matchup is really about abusing your 75-unit dash to avoid anything Hades can do damage-wise.

Why is this not a 1/10 matchup then? Well first, really good Hades players might buy Blink Rune, Blink Rune on you to bait out a short dash, then leap onto you with Death From Below and use his combo. Ensure you are always dashing through a glyph, and that you are using that dash at necessary moments only. Do not be baited by Hades using Blink Rune, if he is good, he will use Death From Below to catch up to you then catch you in his Pillar of Agony which will either mean that you use Purification Beads or you die, but he can only do this if you don't dash through the Glyph of Pain to get the extra range on your escape. Secondly, Hades' early clear with Devour Souls is really good. Like really good. You will get shoved under tower and get your jungle stolen when against a good Hades, it's just going to happen. What's worse is that this clear comes with amazing sustain, meaning you can't poke him down since he's close range. You just have to ensure your jungler takes advantage of the fact Hades has to blow his escape to instaclear a wave before Level 6. After this, you'll have your wave clear online anyway so can somewhat cope with his crazy push, but by this point he'll only need his Devour Souls to clear, meaning he will typically be using Shroud of Darkness to clear, so he will have his leap up pretty much all of the time. The third thing is that Hades is tanky for a mage, meaning you can't really kill him on your own unless the Hades ****s up. You'll really need help from your team to kill him. Hades will typically build like a bruiser and take actives appropriate to this like Bracer of Undoing or Shield of Thorns which completely **** you over.

Apart from these three very big considerations, this is a simple matchup but honestly not respecting Hades can lead to you losing a game, hence why's he's Medium.

He Bo - Medium

Difficulty: 5/10

Ah, the god of three ultimates. Your advantage is your insane range. His advantage is his burst and very easy poke. This would be an easy matchup if it weren't for the fact that if you slightly overextend you will lose like a quarter of your health to Water Spout and potentially get knocked into two more of He Bo's ultimates (which hurt by the way), and there's nothing you can do about it.

You really need to take advantage of your ridiculous range in this matchup, and position well. Preventing a He Bo snowball is honestly just as good as snowballing this matchup, since He Bo is so reliant on getting fed, since his Water Cannon and Crushing Wave but requires him to get very close to his opponent as a super squishy mage. With that being said, He Bo can punish you for playing too aggressively very hard, so you're going to need ganks in this matchup. If you get to late game without feeding He Bo you can just poke him down to like 20% health before he can even combo anyone.

Hel - Hard

Difficulty: 8/10

It's hard to die to Hel early game, but honestly her free poke with Decay, lane clear with Repulse, CC cleanse ****blocks with Cleanse, minion heals with Inspire and sustain preventing you from doing anything will make you want to smash your head into a wall. That's not even mentioning her late game where she will draw out every fight to ridiculous lengths and stop anything from dying.

Buy Divine Ruin, and ask your jungler to camp the ever living **** out of Hel (he probably will anyway). If you can put Hel behind enough she will be useless but putting her there will require a lot of babysitting.

Isis - Hard

Difficulty: 9/10

Eset is THE early game mid laner, and as such is a pain in the ***. She will either ABUSE YOU Level 1-3 or take all of your farm. After the brutal Level 1-3, assuming you don't get an Eset snowball rolling, this matchup becomes somewhat easier, not that you should get complacent.

The key to this matchup is dodging that Spirit Ball, so she can't follow up with Dispel Magic to slow you and high damage Wing Gust shots to do a huge chunk of health. Against a good Eset this is nigh on impossible without using your escape at the 55 unit distance (before you get your Glyph) since you wont have boots if you're not using your Glyph of Pain to clear. This is why the Level 1-2 against Isis is so hard, along with the fact that she outclears you hard with Wing Gust, one of the highest damage Level 1 spells in the game. Once you have your glyph, play at max range, so you have plenty of time to dodge the Spirit Ball.

If you survive the early game against Eset, then congratulations, you've won! Eset is super reliant on getting ahead early as every other mage offers more range or confirmable damage than her. That however is assuming you play very well in early game. Be wary of Circle of Protection, since a good Eset can use it to mitigate your damage, and also, Eset will use this spell to take objectives early on since it is probably the best move in the game at securing objectives, ensure you ward up the area around the Gold Fury with both normal Wards and Sentry Wards as a team.

This matchup gets easier as the game goes on, hence why this a 9/10 as opposed to a 10/10 matchup. In late, if you can dodge max range Spirit Balls, Eset doesn't do anything at all. Words cannot describe how hard you outscale her. It's just the brutal early game that makes this matchup so hard.

Izanami - Easy

Difficulty: 2/10

Izanami struggles into Thoth since her auto attack boomerangs constantly slow her down and put her slap bang in the middle of the wave to clear, allowing you to poke her out with Hieroglyphic Assault very easily from range. Her kit is generally out-ranged by Thoth, Spectral Projection has decent range and slows you, but it's easily dodged, and if you do get hit, an Evade and Punish will stop her from landing too many shots of Sickle Storm on you. Her Fade Away can be a really annoying escape, so it's best to wait until it's down before using Final Judgement. Fortunately, you can usually tell where she will go, allowing you to reveal her with a shot of Hieroglyphic Assault and then you can swat her with Final Judgement. Dark Portal is annoying, but you can dash out of it with Evade and Punish if you are fast enough. If not, Izanami usually doesn't have enough burst to kill you before the silence ends, so you can usually just dash away after it runs out so long as you haven't taken a ton of free poke in lane.

The only hard thing about this matchup is that she really heavily outclears you at early levels, but all in all this isn't too hard.

Janus - Medium

Difficulty: 5/10

Standard farm lane skill matchup. There are a few things to keep in mind (as a Janus player myself, these are kind of things I will be looking to do against Thoth):

1. WATCH OUT FOR PORTALS FROM BEHIND! Your dash may be quick but it isn't CC immune! A good Janus will place a Portal behind you, then place a Threshold on your feet to try and trick you into dashing directly backwards. If you do, you're going to take Threshold scaling damage plus the full brunt of a Janus 1+2 combo which leads to a dead Ibis (you), and probably a dead ADC since that guarantees a roam for Janus.

2. Janus has a lot of mobility but only when near a wall. If he's not near a wall, Janus is really easy to hit, he only has a speed boost. If Janus gets too cocky he's really easy to kill.

3. Janus has to get close to the wave to clear it with Unstable Vortex until Level 7, when he only needs one side of the move to full clear a wave. If he goes to hit the wave with both balls of his 2, poke him with Hieroglyphic Assault in order to punish him for it, while still clearing your own wave.

4. Janus will outroam you thanks to Through Space and Time. This is a fact. When he ults, first off, call 'VBA' and 'VF2' in chat so they have a bit of warning. You're then going to need to make a decision as to whether you want to counter-gank, or whether you want to farm and push the lane. Now I'm not going to tell you what to do, since it's entirely dependent on the situation, but be aware that this is what will inevitably happen when against Janus.

Kukulkan - Easy

Difficulty: 2/10

This God is honestly so bad. He has no control to speak of, you won't ever get hit by his Whirlwind unless you really **** up since it has a really long cast time, and his Spirit of the Winds is like the most telegraphed move in the game. His Slipstream is a decent escape, but you have so much range that you can just hit him anyway.

The only thing making this a 2/10 matchup is that Kukulkan's early clear is really good, especially at Level 1, it's better than Eset' clear. But he can't do anything with that gold since all of his spells are just so easy to avoid.

Medusa - Easy

Difficulty: 2/10

Medusa is a nice safe lane for Thoth, simply because as a hunter, she doesn't really have the range to be able to deal with him that well. Viper Shot is standard basic attack range, and Thoth can outrange that by 30 units thanks to Glyph of Pain. Acid Spray can poke you out if you position poorly, especially at Levels 1-2 before you get Glyph of Pain, but if you position well and play around Acid Spray's cooldown, it's usually nothing much to worry about, if you take Evade and Punish at Level 2, she won't be able to all-in you anyway. Lacerate makes it hard to kill Medusa since it's a very good escape, and can lead to some nasty Level 2-3 kills, but it has a wind-up time, and with Evade and Punish, if Medusa uses Lacerate aggressively, she'll usually end up dead since you can stun her and the jungler can kill the snake. Petrify can be nasty, there's no reason that you should ever end up stunned by this move since you can easily turn away, but even when looking away the damage isn't bad and you still get slowed pretty heavily. Usually the play will be to turn away and then use Evade and Punish through your Glyph of Pain. You then should be out of harm's way, while being able to lay down some poke on the Medusa.

All in all, quite an easy matchup.

Neith - Easy

Difficulty: 1/10

This is just as easy as Chiron. Her Spirit Arrow and Unravel are easily avoided and won't hit you if you play well from range - even if you get rooted, you can still use Evade and Punish and get away from her. Her clear isn't that much better than yours realistically. Her Backflip is the single most telegraphed escape in the game, allowing really easy hits of Final Judgement onto her. Her World Weaver can be annoying, but stunning her out of it with Evade and Punish is hardly a difficult play to make.

Thoth generally excels against a lot of hunter mid lanes, and Neith is no exception.

Nox - Medium

Difficulty: 5/10

Nox is a really cool character with a lot of strengths but also exploitable weaknesses that you can play around. She has a bad early game like you, so you don't need to worry about getting shoved under turret. Your advantage in this matchup comes from your range. If you play around the maximum ranges of your abilities it's going to be really hard for her to get a combo onto you. Her advantages come from her control and her instantaneous burst. If you get caught in Nox's Siphon Darkness, you can't rely on your 2 to dodge Shadow Lock, you have to move in such a way that it's not easy for Nox to read you then hit the root, while at the same time you need to ensure you're not just juking inside of the silence until it blows up for ultimate level damage! This is why you need to play around your maximum range, if she hits a silence on you and you're in the edge, you can just walk out and even if she hits the Shadow Lock after you've escaped Siphon Darkness you've just avoided 60% of her damage about.

Always take Purification Beads in this matchup first. It allows to you get out of a burst combo once every 2.6 minutes approximately, which is HUGE, since Nox's combo isn't the easiest thing to land in the world. Granted, if she hits more than one combo every 2.6 minutes, you're in trouble, which is why you need to play around her ranges. And her cooldowns. Nox is the most ability reliant character in the game, she can't even auto attack when she's comboing you.

Fun fact, if she silences you, you can still fire your 1 and 2, and these will go through the glyph so up until late, if she gets you in a combo and your beads are down, punish her! Bear in mind that you can't activate the abilities inside the silence, and these will be harder to hit since Nox has no strafe penalty while you are rooted, but you can just about return the trade, since it doesn't disarm you!

One thing to keep a note of is that Nox's Night Terror reduces your damage by 40%. If Nox hits you with this, you won't be able to return the trade. Just wait out the 5s, or if you're low return to base. In order to juke this, ensure that you're not hugging walls (since Nox's ult explodes upon contact with a wall), and that you're not going to be at max range of the ult (since Nox's ult explodes upon reaching max distance), Nox's ult is easily dodgeable unless one of those two conditions is met, so ensure you aren't playing into her hands before going for the kill.

Nox is a very safe character thanks to Shadow Step, so really this will mostly be a farm lane, you just need to ensure that you are always on your toes so she can't **** you up with her 2+1 combo. If she can't root you inside the silence, then you'll be fine, since her ult isn't like yours where it hits for bonkers damage, it's much more about the utility, and her dash-pop out combo only works when she has a jungler to do it with.

Nu Wa - Easy

Difficulty: 2/10

She won't ever get a minion stun with Shining Metal on you unless you really **** up. You outdamage her throughout all phases of the game. The only difficult things about this matchup are her stealth juking with Mysterious Fog (which you can wait out) and her strong wave clear. If she does get a minion stun on you this matchup can turn around in a heartbeat but you have so much range and strong mobility so that's not going to happen.

Poseidon - Hard

Difficulty: 10/10

Ok, this is our counter. Everything about him ****s Thoth over. His early clear is notoriously good, making it easy for him to shove you behind from the get go, and unlike Kukulkan, if he catches you in that Whirlpool (which is easy since Whirlpool has a much shorter cast time than Whirlwind), prepare to use your active or get blown the **** up before you can even do anything. He has a lot of movement speed thanks to Surging Tides and Trident meaning he can juke you out well and out roam you 10/10 times. I mean that's it but those three things just completely **** Thoth over as a character.

To win this, you need to use your actives wisely. Take Aegis Amulet at Level 1 to avoid the inevitable Level 5 Release The Kraken! Take Purification Beads at Level 12 so you can get out of the Whirlpool with Evade and Punish before the Kraken connects. Poseidon gets wrecked by actives and you need to take advantage of this.

Apart from this, you need to position flawlessly and take advantage of your range, making it as difficult for him to catch you in that Whirlpool. You have more range than him but the movement speed means he can catch you by suprise, so always be wary. Rotate when he does, and try to counter-gank him - Poseidon has one combo and that's it. After he uses that, he's actually really easy to punish.

Other than this - ASK FOR GANKS. Poseidon has no leap, dash, teleport, or stealth, he literally only has a speed boost, making him easy pickings for strong gankers like Thor or Susano. His Whirlpool is his clear but it's also his only proper self-peel since the Kraken stun or Tidal Surge when not used with Whirlpool is easy to dodge, so he opens himself up to ganks all of the time.

This is a pretty rough matchup but it's not completely impossible.

Ra - Easy

Difficulty: 4/10

You can't kill him, he can't kill you in early. His early game clear from Celestial Beam and his sustain from Solar Blessing will be quite hard for you to deal with, but late game you deal more damage than him and from better range, so it evens out. Unless you mess up he doesn't have kill potential on you, his abilities are all very telegraphed and easy to dodge. However, his speed boost from Speed of Light ensures you won't be getting damage off on him either.

He will be looking to gank you, since while in a 1v1 situation Ra's damage is hard to get off, Ra's follow up to CC heavy junglers is beastly, every Thor or Susano loves ganking for a Ra, and not just for the damage, but Solar Blessing gives healing and protections, so these strong early game assassins are able to commit even harder to you. However, your Thor will also love ganking Ra, since he's immobile, squishy and has little control, all he has is Divine Light in the way of safety, giving Thoth the slight edge in this matchup. Just be sure to not open yourself up to ganks.

Raijin - Medium

Difficulty: 6/10 (since the nerfs)

This matchup got a lot easier since the nerfs. He's no longer the mage that completely dominates early game only to oneshot everything in late. He has been significantly nerfed, but you still need to be careful.

I will give a disclaimer - Raijin is still a complete lane bully. He will kick your **** in Levels 1-7. His clear is weaker now but still strong thanks to Percussive Storm - however, Levels 1-3, which used to be where Raijin would go 'lol I win', it is substantially weaker - meaning if you don't **** up, you won't be at a huge deficit like you would be before, especially since Thoth's clear was buffed significantly at the same point that Raijin's was nerfed. His abilities are still easy to hit. He still punishes bad positioning hard since Raiju is impossible to dodge and his Percussive Storm is easy to hit, and he can always leap with Thunder Crash to gapclose after your dash then follow up with Taiko Drums. However, as long as you don't mess up, you will survive. The key is not ever to get in Raiju range (which should be easy, since you're Thoth and have the best range in the game). This is because Raiju bounces are now significantly weaker, meaning if Raiju bounces onto you from a minion, you won't just die like you would before the nerfs, since it does significantly less damage. His ult is still a threat, but he will have it up less often. 10s actually makes a world of difference, before it felt like he had this stupidly powerful ultimate up all of the time, but now the window where you can punish him for messing up an ult is much higher.

Raijin's late game was significantly nerfed from what it was. The Raiju change was a massive nerf for the character, you can now just hide behind a tank and Raijin will be a non-factor in teamfights. Raijin lost a lot of his teamfight prowess with this change. Sure, there's his ult, but that will be up a lot less now. Play safe, and you will outscale him. He's pretty much just a lane bully now, and a worse lane bully than he was. With that being said, he's still a lane bully, so you need to still be careful.

Scylla - Medium

Difficulty: 5/10

Skill matchup. I have 4k worshippers on Scylla so I know this matchup pretty well. Scylla has less range but better AoE and CC and a slightly better early game than you. However you have more range and dodge her spells better than she can you (provided you use your dash well).

You both have pretty much the same powerspikes and both have great escapes making it hard for either of you to die honestly. If she hits Sic 'Em on you, she can very easily snowball this matchup since that will guarantee a Crush, so always be on the lookout to dodge that spell and hide behind your minions. If she has a CC-heavy jungler like Thor or Ne Zha, do all in your power not to get ganked so that you won't get CCed into her damage.

On your side, should she look to fight and you use your dash to dodge one of her spells, hitting a stun on her will really ruin your day, and similarly, you should look to get ganks from your jungler so you can snowball this matchup instead.

Sol - Hard

Difficulty: 7/10

This character is a nightmare for a roaming kill mage like Thoth, hence why she's on hard. Because you're Thoth she won't have much kill potential on you, but that won't matter with the sheer amount of clear, tower push and poke she has, which will force you behind anyway.

You also have no kill potential on her at all unless she's bad, because of her Disapparate, which allows for some of the most ******** escapes you will ever see. Against Sol, you just need to try to survive and not lose your tower (easier said than done). Don't ever try to fight her head on if you want to live, just abuse the fact that you outrange her and have a good escape.

An important side note - never roam unless you know Sol is roaming too. You probably know why, but in case you don't, Sol is capable of taking a tower in the mid game from one wave thanks to her Unstable Manifestation, you NEVER want to leave her alone with a tower, especially after Level 12, where she can use Radiance and get 80% of her passive straight off of the bat.

Bear in mind that her Disapparate takes 3s to go into her 'get out of jail free' form, so try and get some nice ganks from your jungler and burst her before she goes into that form. Just don't ever expect to get a well-charged ult off on a Sol with half of a brain cell.

The good thing about the Sol matchup is that all of her damage is very to easy to avoid as Thoth. You typically won't be in auto range of Sol anyway, meaning her damage and boxing potential from Unstable Manifestation won't matter much. Her Stellar Burst, while impossible to avoid if you are within like 60-70 units of Sol, is very easy to dash away from with Evade and Punish and can be dodged very easily provided you aren't near a wall or at max range. Speaking of easy to dodge, Supernova is one of the most easily avoided moves in the game, so if you're paying attention, Sol can't kill you. You just need to very mindful of Sol's disgusting split push, objective control and escape potential. In late game, so long as you kite well, you can just poke Sol out to ensure that she can do is just throw out her 2 and ult, and won't be getting in-hands off, similar to Chronos.

The Morrigan - Medium

Difficulty: 6/10

OK so The Morrigan herself is quite easy to beat. Her clear from Dark Omen and Doomsayer isn't the best out there, so you'll have a pretty safe early game. Her stun from Deadly Aspects is very obvious when not used with her stealth, and she doesn't have a dash or anything so she's easy to poke down. You need to be wary of her suddenly popping out of stealth from Confusion and comboing you, but this usually doesn't do enough to kill you until quite late so you should be okay, and is easily anticipated by keeping a track of her movement in the lane in the early game.

What makes this relatively hard is Changeling. Basically Thoth gets hard countered by gods that can stick to him past his dash - think Thor, Susano, Serqet, those kind of characters. The Morrigan can turn into these characters and completely destroy you if you're not careful. The key to beating The Morrigan is ensuring you're making it hard for her to all-in you with that ult. You need to poke her down and be conservative with your escapes. Also take advantage of that stun of yours when she decides to get too frisky, it can be a very powerful disengage mechanic. Also bear in mind that The Morrigan's ult is the longest cooldown move in the game until late game - if you know that move is down, punish her for it, take her jungle, roam to side lanes etc. The Morrigan's base kit is really **** until like four items where a 2-1 combo will do a massive whack of your health, but before then it's quite bad.

Thoth - Free

Difficulty: 0/10

LOL. You read my guide, now go **** him up. For maximum chances of victory, get a VEL macro.

In all seriousness, the better Thoth will probably win, this is the epitome of a skill matchup.

Ullr- Hard

Difficulty: 7/10]

Ullr can actually be really annoying in mid lane for you. Level 1, he has very easy clear with Bladed Arrow and if you step one bit out of position, you will take a Thrown Axe to the face, which is hard to dodge since the Ullr buffs, along with probably a Bladed Arrow and a few autos, chunking you down. Ullr's Level 2 is brutal. Absolutely brutal. You need to be really careful to not get caught out here - if he hits you with a Thrown Axe, it's game over if the Ullr knows how to use his combo, and if Ullr gets a kill, he is an absolute menace as we all know. And no, you cannot, and I repeat CANNOT, take Glyph of Pain Level 2 against an Ullr, you need to be able to escape against that character. At Levels 3-5, he still has the same kill potential, but will a bit easier to deal with since generally you can sit back and abuse your long range with Glyph of Pain, but you still need to be cautious. One Thrown Axe and it's game over, same as ever. Levels 6-9, he becomes a bit easier to deal with still, until he gets his Transcendence or Warrior Tabi online - you need to be very cautious once Ullr gets his first item online, since while you will at least have an amazing keep-away game, you still will get popped like a damn balloon if you get hit by an Ullr combo. Fortunately, Ullr has a predictable escape, and no CC immunity nor an ultimate, so you can easily retaliate with Evade and Punish, you can still play a good keep away game and poke with Hieroglyphic Assault, and can still land Final Judgements on him.

The longer the game goes on, the more easy Ullr becomes to deal with, provided he hasn't got kills under his belt. Ullr blows in teamfights and basically falls off a cliff in late game, but Level 2-5, and even after that, you need to be really careful, otherwise Ullr can very easily end a game before it gets to the point where he falls off.

Vulcan - Easy

Difficulty - 2/10

You have range advantage, which is huge against Vulcan. Vulcan excels when enemies engage upon him because of his Inferno Cannon, Magma Bomb and Backfire, however as Thoth you won't ever be doing that, making his attacks really predictable. He deals less damage than you so even if he gets poke off on you, you will hit much harder. Your dash makes Earthshaker very easy to avoid.

He has better wave clear than you, which can be hard in the early game, and he can punish your mistakes quite hard thanks to his damage and CC, which is why he is a 2/10 instead of 1/10 matchup.

Zeus - Easy/Medium

Difficulty: 4/10

This really depends on your jungler honestly, Zeus is known for his strong early game - his Aegis Assault clears the wave fully at Level 1, he has a ton of poke and his camp clear is disgusting. Level 1-2 will be pretty rough due to his insane wave clear compared to yours, which is terrible at early levels. However literally all he brings to the table is damage. From Level 3-5 a good Jungler will be able to abuse Zeus because of his lack of any safety or control, with some follow up you can actually kill him.

If you're caught in a lane against Zeus on your own, and you don't have a jungler with a ult that instantly puts him on top of Zeus from across the map (read: Thor or Ratatoskr), you will need to play passively, don't go aggressive on Zeus because if you over extend the slightest bit he will bounce his Chain Lightning off his shield, probably use Lightning Storm, and you'll get hit by a 300 nuke to the face with Detonate Charge. Speaking of Zeus in lane, DO NOT EVER STAND NEAR A LONE MINION. He will use Chain Lightning and guarantee 3 stacks of Detonate Charge for insane poke damage. Because you are Thoth, this is quite easy, but bear in mind this all of the time when against a Zeus. 99% of Zeus snowballs are the enemy ****ing up and trying to kill Zeus without a gameplan, Zeus is designed to punish mistakes. However, a lot of the time, because Zeus has such strong waveclear, but sucks at farming under tower, he will end up 'ganking himself' by shoving in the wave so hard as Zeus. You won't even to need to ask for ganks most of the time against a Zeus since even the most braindead jungler will focus the **** out of him. Just play around ganks and snowball off of them.

Late game - you hard counter Zeus. Zeus does rather a lot of damage, so he will typically be hiding behind his team, throwing out Chain Lightning, ults, and looking for big disgusting Detonates. However, since Zeus has no mobility, if he ever gets within 85 range of you, you can just hit him with your full 1 and force a back, and if not an ult to face should equal a dead Zeus.

Zhong Kui - Easy

Difficulty: 1/10

As Poseidon is to you, you are to Zhong Kui.

First off, his early clear is just as bad as yours, and just like yours, becomes good at Level 7! So he can't punish you in the early game at all. His Expose Evil, Exorcism and Book of Demons are all close range so if you position properly he can't poke you. Second, he is a close range mage who excels at sustained damage output and sustain - just like Hades, except unlike Hades, Zhong Kui has no mobility at all, meaning he won't be able to deal any meaningful damage on you. If you ever find yourself in a Zhong Kui Recall Demons, you can literally just put your Glyph of Pain down, dash away, and you're fine. There's no way he'll ever hit a stun on you if you have a working keyboard and mouse.

You won't be able to kill him because he's tanky and has great sustain but that doesn't even matter, you will have the easiest laning phase of your life against a Zhong Kui.

So that's Thoth! A really cool mage with an amazing kit, who when you learn him, will win you a **** ton of games! His damage and ranges are off the charts, he's pretty damn safe and he even has control now.

Before I leave you, here's a very quick list of counters and gods that work with Thoth, that aren't mages:

Counters:
- Artio
- Thor
- Susano
- Ratatoskr
- Serqet
- Hun Batz
- Da Ji
- Cu Chulainn
- Khepri
- Geb
- Bacchus
- Achilles
- Hou Yi
- Nemesis
- Odin


Works well with:
- Ganesha
- Artio
- Ne Zha
- Thor
- Fenrir
- Erlang Shen
- Athena
- Rama
- Artemis
- Izanami


And with that, the guide is over. Hope you enjoyed, and if you have any questions or anything like that, drop a comment below.

Cheers,
XenoChief

20/11/17 - Am updating build for what will probably become meta on Patch 4.22. Will also update item section. Doom Orb buffs are too good to ignore

30/12/17 - Will update this guide in Season 5. Edited the Discordia matchup section a bit. I would like to clarify that I still stand by Doom Orb being very strong.

1st Edit - 30/01/18 - Updating for Season 5! :D Updated the item section (and boy are there some changes!) and matchups where appropriate. Bear in mind, these are early days for Season 5, and this is based mainly on quite limited experience, since Thoth was so bugged on PTS! Things are bound to change, and I will update the guide as such.

2nd Edit 30/01/18 - Some of this is WIP since Chrome decided to seize up, luckily I saved! Will be finished today, but if you are reading this, now that the Item section is still being updated - refresh at about 8:30pm GMT and it will be done.

3rd Edit 30/01/18 - Updated for Season 5.

1/2/18 - Did a quick proofread. Will also say that Thoth is finally enabled again, so go wild, he's a beast in S5.

16/2/18 - Updated Item Section since S5 has settled a bit.

28/2/18 - Quick Update for Patch 8.3. Updating Builds 1 and 3 based on how beastly of an item Book of the Dead is mainly. Added a changelog!

2nd Edit - Made Ethereal Staff 'another item you could use'. Forgot about it.

17/03/18 - Have updated the guide based on Patch 5.4 Changes, and have also improved the BBCode in a long overdue update! Enjoy!

21/04/2018 - Quick Update due to 5.6 Nerf to Evade and Punish. Also added some extra tips to the Evade and Punish section.

21/04/2018 (Later On) - Forgot to finish my Evade and Punish write-up (updated for latest patch), whoops! Is complete now.

12/05/18 - Updated the item section to better reflect the current meta and what is best for Thoth.

2nd Edit - Moved a stray Shoe of Focus where it was meant to be. Will clarify that this changes are for LIVE, I have no experience on the new Stone of Fal so can't comment on whether it will be OP or whatever.

20/08/2018 - Updated guide for Patch 5.15! Added Hunters, reworked Freya and Baron Samedi to the matchup section. Updated Items Section to reflect the multitude of changes to mage items.

21/08/2018 - Some further changes to the item section. I concede defeat. Shout out to Kriega1 for suggesting edits and being so active on this site.