Arachne: The Bruiser Guide

Hello Community!

Smite is somewhat my personal pain relief from other MOBA games - that is what I considered it to be, before I really started to love it. This game is really unique, hard to image how the gameplay changes significantly just by the change of playing perspective. Arachne, the spider queen, is the first champion I have purchased and I don't regret that, since she can be played in a large variety of ways: jungler/melee carry/support or what I will be talking about in this guide: Bruiser.

A bruiser is defined as "A large, heavyset man" or "a strong tough person, esp a boxer or a bully" (TheFreeDictionary). The role of a bruiser is normally to pick a single lane and hold it against two or other bruiser or tank and profit greatly from farming rather from getting fed by getting large amounts of kills in the beginning.

Although being a single lane bruiser is the role I encourage you to try her out, I have tested this build as a jungler and in the supporting role for the right lane with a ranged physical damage carry and it all works well.

Arachne is characterised by the following:
1. Most viable Jungler with good sustain in the jungle and strong ganks
2. Good damage output with your Broodlings and Drain Life combined
3. Ultimate to displace single targets = kill puller
4. Silence = prevent enemies to do anything while active

but also:

5. Squishy and very weak in teamfights
6. Falls off late game pretty bad
7. Ultimate is a skill shot, hard to land and easy to miss
8. Not easy to escape with her once catched

This particular build assesses especially the weaknesses of this champion if played as a melee carry, so let's have a look at the pros and cons of this build:

Pros:
-Strong in 1vs1 situations
-Acceptable to good damage output
-Tanky, which means you can be a great help in the teamfights without dying right away if focused
-You will be much less avoided to be focused once the enemy team sees how much effort it takes to bring you down
-Sustainable in the lane and in the jungle
-You can secure your lane with Broodlings to avoid being ganked
-Strong laning phase with ranged physical damage champion, synergizes well with most of them

Cons:
-Low damage output in the beginning, relies on your tower to make kills
-Also lower damage late game, you rely more on your carries to make the main damage
-Ulti is easily missed, it's alway a pain in the ***

Here is a short overview about the items, sequence and a justification behind it:

I almsot always start the game with lvl 1 Devourer's Gloves and Warrior Tabi plus 1 Mana Potion. That will provide you with damage, critical strike, attack speed and life steal. Although we go tanky and you could go for Reinforced Boots, I would strongly advice you to go for a little damage unless you are going to support only or think Reinforced Boots are better for jungling.

Your aim is to go back to base when u can buy full Devourer's Gloves and start farming damage. You will gain permanently 0,5 physical damage and 0,25% lifesteal per minion killed - this is mainly where your damage comes from. You can achieve 200 physical damage (not farm 200 dmg! :)) in a conquest game if you farm well. But do not worry if you are below that.

Hide of Leviathan will provide you with everything your god needs: physical and magical protection of 45, 250 health and mana and a passive of 30% reduced crowd control durations.

Bulwark of Hope will give you 60 magical protection, 450 health and 15 focus plus a passive, which activates when you are below 25% of health, you will gain a shield that reduces damage by 50% for 2 seconds. Pretty nice.

Hide of the Nemean Lion for even more physical protection of 80 and 200 health plus a passive, which I personally love so much: 30% of all basic attacks are reflected to the attacker. With this item you can take out squishy physical damage carries 1vs1 because their own damage will hurt them a lot, since they are squishies most of the times. I have taken out such champs such as Loki and Artemis with little effort. If you happen to not like this item, you can substitute it for a Voidblade, which gives you physical protection(60), physical power(30), focus(20) and an aura, which reduces physical protection of enemies by 25 within 40 feet.

Stone of Gaia gives you huge amounts of magical protection, MP5, HP5 and a passive, which will regenerate 2% of your maximum health every 5 seconds, which would be around 58 health every 5 seconds.

Please note: You can change the sequence of the items according to the game. If there is a fed physical damage carry giving you a hard life, prioritise physical protection first or magical protection against fed casters accordingly. Be flexible.

Just some tips and tricks in no particular order.

My best experience is laning with a physical ranged carry on the left lane. You provide a good amount of crowd control with tangled web and Cocoon, tankiness and the ability to ward your lane with Broodlings, which is all the carry will need to get fed. And you will also benefit from that.

The skill order I figured out to work best is to place tangled web on the enemy or the direction where he will probably run to, place Broodlings next to him and silence him with Drain Life so he cant run away easily by using escape skills like Cupid's Flutter or Agni's path of flame for example. Your Broodlings will attack him and deal quite an amount of damage and the tangled web will make sure the enemy doesn't run too fast for the Broodlings to keep up with him. Then if he is not dead, use your Cocoon to grab the deserter back for more slapping!

If laning left side, grab the mana buff right from the beginning because you don't have meditation yet. Use your Broodlings to take down the mana camp. Arrive at the mana camp as sool as possible to place multiple Broodlings and finish off the camp with little effort. You can also decide to give the buff to let's say Artemis for her to harrass the enemy more.

If you use your ultimate, try to place tangled web on the enemy, this way Cocoon is much easier to hit. This is also how I prefer to gank other lanes, tangled web first.

Try to use your tower against enemies, grab them with your ultimate into your tower, place tangled web to ensure they receive more damage. If the enemy creeps are focussed by your tower, make sure they attack you to receive the aggro from the tower before grabbing them.

For laning I encourage you to take Heavenly Agility for you and your partner to chase or escape and meditation to place as many Broodlings as possible.

In general, with a good carry, we always get fed on the lane. I have a good success rate with this build with mostly mositive stats. However do not expect to reach stats like 20/1 or 30/3 or similar, be more modest, usual stats I have are positive but below 10 kills. That however doesn't mean you are not doing well!

So, guys and girls, I wish you a lot of luck and fun with this one. Ofcourse feel free to comment this build or correct mistakes or just add some improvements below!

DenMagicMan