Anubis - Face Melter - Body Decomposer

In this guide we will cover the Smite god Anubis. He is by far my favorite and best mage to play in the game. This guide is my personal opinion on what items are best for most situations and what items I found to be of better use than others. If you do not see a item in this build that you think would work well for Anubis, please keep in mind that I have most likely used that item on Anubis before and have not included it in this build for various reasoning which will be covered in this guide.

This guide is intended for you to pub stomp all normal games and understand Anubis's place in League (Ranked). So without further stalling lets get into the guide!

Pros
+ Highest damage of all mages
+ Devastating single target Crowd Control
+ Sustain (Life Steal)
+ 30% reduction to all Crowd Control
+ Buffs/Debuffs protections
+ Long range AOE damage
+ Amazing Laning phase all game
+ Can kill off of ganks

Cons
- Some abilities root Anubis
- CC must land to deal full damage
- No escape once a gank is in progress and succeeded
- CC countered by items
- Requires high level of map awareness, precision, and positioning

* Overall *
Anubis is a high damaging mage that destroys single targets. His CC is both his escape, shut down and tool for Appling damage. He can be countered in short intervals but has long range poke to deal with some of his downfalls. Anubis is considered a risky pick in League (Ranked) and often shunned upon because how difficult he is to play against high ranking individuals.

Please hover your mouse over the skill icons on the left to read the description of that skill, I am just going to explain the skills in more depth other than the description.

Skills

This is Anubis's passive. It is one of the most complex passives in the game in terms of having a passive which does a lot. All of Anubis's damaging abilities steal protections from enemy gods and minions. This is the first part of his passive. You can steal a total of 21 protections from enemy gods and minions meaning you not only lower their protections by 21 for 5 seconds but you also gain 21 protections for 5 seconds. Being that Anubis has the highest damage in the game for a mage, stealing protections is just going to make you melt even more.

Anubis's passive also grants him increased life steal, making him a high damaging mage hard to push out of lane. Life steal on mages are not that great compared to physical life steal so this extra life steal granted makes Anubis one of the few mages who can benefit from life steal. Keep in mind you only get extra life steal when you have a life steal item and will not receive life steal without buying a item with life steal.

The third and final part of Anubis's passive is that he has a built in 30% reduction to crowd control. This means that Anubis has a built in reinforced greavesreinforced greaves (p).

Plaque of locust is both a problem and a gift for Anubis. It is his highest damaging ability other than his ultimate. The problem is that this ability roots Anubis to the ground making him vulnerable to damage. This ability is only maxed out first when you play in the jungle since this ability clears the fastest. You will mainly be using this ability to burst down gods that are under Crowd Control. The only time it is ever okay to use this ability without crowd control is when you are positive your passive life steal will negate any in coming damage taken. This ability is maxed last but you will be putting a few levels into it because there will be times when you need the extra damage.

The ability that makes Anubis a threat. This ability makes Anubis a single target destroyer. There will be almost no god in the game willing to come close enough to Anubis while this ability is not on cooldown. This is the most important ability that Anubis has as a playable god. If you cannot land mummify at least 50% of the time then Anubis is not the god for you. If you have a problem with skill shots then Anubis is not the god for you. I would recommended that you land this ability at least 85% of the time to even be considered a good Anubis for your team. Its Anubis's only means of defense and the only way to shut down ganks and deal mass damage on enemy gods. Be aware that this ability can be shut down by certain items in the game but only for short intervals. A good Anubis must make enemy gods waste those intervals.

You will be leveling this ability up more often then other players who think they know how to play Anubis. The reason you must level this ability every so many levels is because it is your main tool for dealing damage. If this ability is not placing gods under hard crowd control then you as an Anubis are dealing less damage, simply put, the longer gods stay in your abilities the more damage they receive, this ability MUST be leveled up every so often. The longer duration will also help from incoming ganks which Anubis has no means to escape.

This ability is the main ability you will max out and level up first in almost every role besides in the jungle. Being that Anubis suffers from lack of mobility and can be shut down early from ganks, you will need to play it safe early game. Early game is when Anubis is most vulnerable since he does not have long lasting CC or escapes to save him. Maxing this will not only keep you out of danger early game, but it is your main tool along with mummify to melt gods with your ultimate. This is the only damaging ability that can be dealing damage at the same time when using your ultimate, this is the reason it will be maxed first. It has no problems clearing entire waves by level 3.

Death Gaze or better known as "Melt Face" is Anubis's most devastating ability. Death Gaze will obliterate just about every god in the game unless stacked with insane amounts of defense. This ability is so powerful that you can kill enemy gods without the use of heavy Crowd Control although it takes high level of skill to perform. The pro of this ability is that it has insane damage sure to obliterate any god trapped under any form of crowd control that allows you to keep this ability on them. The down side is that any god not under crowd control will be extremely hard to hit. Simple side stepping has been known to make this ultimate useless although I beg to differ and make the fact that with enough skill you can still use death gaze on enemies without the use of Crowd control although it is very difficult unless under certain circumstances where gods are on low health or running in a strait line.

Combo's / How to use the Skills
- Your general combo is to lay down grasping hands under a enemy god then hit them with mummify and before it lands activate death gaze to ensure maximum damage output.
* The common mistake is that players who play Anubis are taught to use mummify first, then use grasping hands into your ultimate. This is incorrect and is wasting your maximum damage out put as Anubis. You are laying your grasping hands down first to ensure damage is being done, following up with mummify to ensure they stay in that damage that is already activated, before your mummify lands you are activating your ult right away to ensure all damage is done with no chance of escape.

If you cannot land mummify this combo will fail, since I tell people to use your ultimate before mummify lands you will end up missing if mummify misses, but again it is your job as Anubis to always land mummify. I activate my ultimate when I know for sure my aim was perfect.

- When your ultimate is on cooldown your general combo will be to use grasping hands , mummify , then plaque of locusts .

Tactics
If you notice that your opponent is very skilled at not walking into your grasping hands, then you can play a cheap mind trick on them to get off some damage with either your plaque of locusts or ultimate. Its a very simple mind game. You start by placing grasping hands on either side of the enemy god, if you place it to the right their reaction will be to move left, if you place it to the left their reaction is to move right. It is a basic understanding of mind reading and knowing what your opponent will think and do before they actually do it. This skill is rather a skill you must learn yourself when trying to become better at games in general. You will throw your mummify at the opposite direction of your grasping hands predicting they will move to avoid your grasping hands.

In the jungle you are going to want to use grasping hands as a zoning tool to separate enemy gods from their team. Its not very complicated, simply zone the enemy team from helping any of their allies or being able to move across parts of the jungle you deem restricted by Anubis.

Anubis does not have an escape like I mentioned before, so this tactic is one which you must take full advantage of. Placing grasping hands below Anubis is one of the best defenses he currently has outside of his hard crowd control. Any god who is within range of you, will surely not step inside of grasping hands, and if they do they will take damage and you will fight them there until either one of you die.

With Anubis you are forced to fight when you are out of options, it is better for you to fight on top of grasping hands then it is for you to run away and go down with no damage done at all. Because of Anubis's passive life steal, it is likely that you will defeat the enemy with some health to spare. This tactic works well against gods like Thanatos who are trying to ult down on your position. A well placed grasping hands below Anubis will make anyone looking at him think twice before jumping on him.

If you are low on health while fighting in the jungle and running away, its best to fight a nearby jungle camp, while you pass it, throw down grasping hands and gain some extra life steal while on the run.

Anubis ultimate is also very great at securing kills even without the use of crowd control. Any gods on low enough health running away can easily be caught by death gaze because of its power and range. You do not have to keep death gaze on enemy gods long before they start to melt, so if you spot a low hp god escaping, do use your ultimate on them because its better to waste your ultimate on a secured kill then have your ultimate and they get away only to punish you later.

Starting items
You are going to start off with this item for the life steal benefits gained from Anubis's passive. This will help out Anubis's early game which in my opinion is the weakest state of Anubis. This will help you sustain your lane and recover any early damage you take from aggressive mages and problematic mages like Ra who can heal up their minions and easily have you pushed to your tower because of it. You do not need boots at this point because you will be using grasping hands to farm most of early game until you become strong enough to start melting gods. So you will pick this up as your first item.

2nd you will pick up a mana potion and not a health potion. Since we went for early life steal its as if we have a built in health potion working for us at all times when we damage enemies, thus we will take advantage of that and buy a mana potion allowing us to use more abilities which in turn will heal Anubis at the same time granting him more lane time.

Your 3rd and final starting item is going to be a ward. You want early vision to stop any ganks to ruin your early laning phase. At this point in the game you are very easy to gank without mummify leveled up so having vision is a must. Since you only have enough money for one ward you generally want to place the ward on which ever side you feel the jungler will most likely come from. You then want to stay close towards that side near your ward since you have vision on that side and not the other, when you farm you will be staying close to warded side and be paying attention the the non warded side at all times.

When in lane early game with these items your job is to stay safe and farm. Even when you have your ultimate at level 5 I highly recommend that you not get over confident because Anubis is still not that strong early game for the sheer fact that mummify does not keep anyone still long enough for death gaze to be effective yet. You will find most gods getting away on low hp because of it. After farming a bit you should return to base to finish off your item and start working on another.

You will most likely pick this item up on your way back to base. This item can basically grant you an addition +99 magical power when you have 99% of your health missing. This becomes important because as Anubis your passive life steal will be working against your opponent as the passive on this item is making you stronger the more your opponent fights through your damaging abilities to kill you. You will be losing health from incoming damage, while gaining power because of it all while healing some of it back because of your life steal. Being that Anubis can get hit and lose a chunk of health this item will ensure you will be at your strongest when your at your weakest.

At this point in the game, you should buy mana pots and wards if you have any gold left over or be working on getting boots next. At this point you are just starting to become a threat, but not yet can you officially melt everyone you see just yet.

Next you must pick up these boots for the movement speed alone because at this point you need all the mobility you can get as Anubis being he has no real escape. The reason any smart Anubis player will choose these boots over the cooldown boots is because the cooldown boots provide no real benefit, even to someone like me who spent a majority of my Anubis learning using them. Remember all you are getting is cooldown and literally nothing else. It sounds nice to have cooldown on paper but in reality you need all the damage and penetration you can get. These boots provide a real stat that will help you burst through anyone tankier like a Hercules or Zhong Kui with his passive. The thing you need to know about Anubis is that he is a god that is all about damage. If you are not killing you are not doing your job, nobody should be surviving your full combo's which is why if you plan on landing them you will be picking these boots to make sure of it.

At this point in the game you can roam a bit without too much of a worry, you are starting to get powerful enough to burst gods down and probably kill anyone in the jungle you run into if you mummify them first. Still your mummify is not that leveled up yet so its best to keep farming for your next item.

The #1 Absolute MUST have item for Anubis!!! If you are not building this item on Anubis you are either insane or following a guide you shouldn't be! This item is key to playing Anubis and this item is key to victory for your entire team!!! Once you get this item the real fun begins and Anubis becomes a night mare to face. Forget CC when using your ult after you get this item because you can literally death gaze gods without the use of CC. They will be moving at such a slow place you will be able to land death gaze like a piece of cake. In fact you will find yourself more often using death gaze without the use of CC when you have this item. Not only that but nobody can escape from you now, the sheer size of Anubis's AOE from grasping hands devastates teams in the jungle. With this item nobody is safe from you and your ticking abilities will be at MAX potential. The problem with Anubis is people can walk out of his damage, that is why this is A MUST HAVE ITEM even over other items.

At this point in the game its probably around mid game. You should pretty much be able to destroy and melt most gods with slight ease. Almost nobody should be able to 1v1 you assuming you land mummify and they cannot get out. Be wary of people trying to shut you down if you been playing well for the duration of the match, nobody likes a fed Anubis because he melts everything in his path, so be on the lookout for people trying to gank you more often, be aware as other lanes will also come to gank you now.

I am not going to go into great detail but spear of the magus is better than shard as a penetration item for almost any situation on gods like Anubis because of their ticking damage. Shard is only necessary on gods that are problematic with extreme defense which in most cases you will never need. You should be focusing on taking out high damaging targets anyways, the reason we pick this item up is because its very common for your opponent to start building at least 1 defensive item to deal with your damage. We want to make sure that we have enough penetration to make those items useless and annoying gods like Hercules who are naturally tanky need to be delt with sooner or later. This should be all the penetration you need for the rest of the match.

At this point in the game continue to melt, although now you stand the chance of melting tanks who are either behind or haven't been building loads of magical protections.

The reason why I picked this item is very simple. 100 Magical Power at all times passive aside. Where as doom orb if you die you lose your stacks, this will let you keep your magical power up high allowing you to scale higher on all your damaging abilities. The passive is just a throw in bonus that allows you to guarantee a quick melt on anyone in the match when this passive is up. You might want to get this before rod only because its cheaper to finish earlier.

This is the last item because it takes a while to finish. All this will do is maximize your magical power to the fullest but at a cost of taking forever to buy. This is just the topping on everything, this is a standard for most mages because its not really a item that makes your build, rather its a item that just adds raw power onto your god. Being that Anubis is already the strongest mage in the game in terms of damage its safe to bet you don't really need this until late game anyways.

Active Items/Consumables

Its a toss up between this and aegis. More then likely you will need these so you can keep mobile as most gods in the game have more crowd control than they do abilities you can't avoid with aegis.

Anubis suffers from lack of mobility which is why sprint is almost a must. The only time you shall ever not use sprint is if you would rather use blink which is risky or need the extra aegis or beads. We are also choosing this sprint because we want to help our team mates escape and engage.

With Nu Wa on the rise, you will need this to prevent her from stealing her team mates kill they are about to get on you. This will totally shut down any plans she had of going positive by stealing her team mates kills. Also useful against gods that have one shot burst ultimate's.

Situational Items

You really only need this if you are either behind, or feel you are taking way to much damage from physical gods. You are choosing this item because its the only item that gives you a useful passive you could use which is cooldown while providing you with defense you need against your problematic gods.

I would recommend only get this item if you need the magical protection, if they are heavy with magical power or you simply want to take less damage against a strong mage in the game while not losing much power because of it, this item is what you want to pick up.

This item I have debated myself over, it does give you much more life steal then any other life steal item and with Anubis's passive would grant you a bunch of life steal compared to anything else. Its really up to you, I'd buy this only if you feel you need extra sustain because you may take to much damage that other life steal items can't keep up with.

A rather risky pick that does not pay off until you finish it. At lower ranks blink does not cut it, only at combat blink does this item pay off. Sprint benefits you because you can get away at all times, combat blink is only effective when you have combat blink and nothing else. This tool can devastate players who do not expect Anubis to blink mummify them. I have blink melted gods that literally stood still because they were so caught of guard they didn't even see what just happened. This is a risky pick because it only pays off when its finished.

You don't really need to buy health pots until late game when you have plenty mana, believe it or not health pots save you late game. You don't have anything else to buy so you might as well just heal up while you are in team fights rather than buy a mana pot when you can just go grab blue buff anyways.

Pick this up late game after your build is finished and you have enough gold. Basically its just extra power on top your build.

At this point in the game its late game, you are very powerful but also die easy, on top of this you will be focused by almost everyone on their team. You job is simple, find a single target and melt it. Do not waste time on gods like Ymir or Hercules. Anubis does have the ability to melt them but it will be at a cost. You will be focused because you simply cannot melt them as fast as their team mates can melt you.
When melting damage dealers they will die almost instantly so your 1 second root does not impact Anubis that much as people claim it does.

Anyways that is it for the items, remember I found these items to be the best for Anubis and I have played many ways. At the end of the day when you land your combo you want that god dead and melted!!! I feel these items do that job just fine.

You are free to build anyway or order you like, this guide is to give you the best chances of winning, the best chances of balancing what items you need and giving you the best chance to fulfill the role you were given.

Anubis is ment to damage and melt, not to provide short cooldown CC or to soak up damage by buying defensive items. Defensive items are more for if you are behind or having trouble in your lane.

Anubis's job is to destroy single targets, provide CC, Zone and that's it. Anubis is not ment to be played as a defensive god who eats damage, Anubis is not ment to be played as a someone who can both do damage and tank. He is best played when his build fits his kit. Let me explain what I mean by that in this conclusion.

Why is building more than 1 life steal item on Anubis a bad idea? Anubis's passive is allowing you to gain more life steal not more defense!!! Remember that!!! Even if you had every single life steal item in the game you would not be able to out life steal the amount of burst gods can lay down on Anubis. Those items become worthless on Anubis because even with 6 Life Steal items your defense is so low that once you get hit with a strong ability you will die before you ever get the chance to use life steal.

The only way multiple life steal could ever be effective on Anubis is if you mix it with the defense to survive burst but then you would give up your own burst potential.

Anubis's kit is ment for him to sustain by recovering from small burst or burst that you survived, its ment for when you take a bit of damage for you to recover it back! This means when you take some damage you can get your health right back only if you didn't take a strong burst of damage, that's what his passive is for. His passive is utterly useless when he gets bursted because he is dead before he can ever life steal anything. That is why you do not build multiple life steal items on Anubis. When Poseidon hits you with a kraken and kills you, your 2 life steal items are not going to do anything about it. Only defense would have been effective in that situation.

*League Tip* - If you are hell bent on playing Anubis in league realize that you will be looked down upon and maybe laughed at for picking Anubis. Also realize that other players will start to build to counter you. First I will say I have won many games with Anubis in league with no problems but it can be tough dealing with players countering you with active items and magi's blessing. In order to defeat those players you will need to defeat them by landing CC mummify every single time without missing. It is recommended not to play Anubis in league unless you feel you are good enough with him you can land his mummify and not feed from being over whelmed by league players picking counters like Aphrodite who can save her team mates by using her ult.

So this concludes my guide on how to melt faces with Anubis. I am sure there is more to be said but its almost impossible for me to mention it all. Get out there and melt some faces. Anubis is a strong god, underrated by those in league and complained to be over powered by those in normal matches. Any god can be played, this is how you play Anubis!