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VERY Thorough explanation at the end:
I usually only buy multi potion until I get Asi and then wards for the rest of the game.
Pick Asi before Rage if you are getting bullied, pick Rage if you think you can get stacks fast
Pick Silverbranch if somehow you are leveling up way more than your gold amount
As of lately, you will rarely even get to Hunter's Cowl (games end much faster)
Leather Cowl
Ninja Tabi
Asi
Rage
Demon Blade
Silverbranch Bow
Hunter's Cowl
Elixir of Speed
Deathbringer
VERY Thorough explanation at the end:
I usually only buy multi potion until I get Asi and then wards for the rest of the game.
Pick Asi before Rage if you are getting bullied, pick Rage if you think you can get stacks fast
Pick Silverbranch if somehow you are leveling up way more than your gold amount
As of lately, you will rarely even get to Hunter's Cowl (games end much faster)
Leather Cowl
Ninja Tabi
Asi
Rage
Demon Blade
Silverbranch Bow
Hunter's Cowl
Elixir of Speed
Deathbringer
Nothing different here. Even if it is an attack speed build, you need your three to clear minions and all the usual boring early game stuff
Y
B
A
X
Tap each synergy level to view Artemis’s synergies
ALWAYS GET PURIFICATION is my rule.
The rest is by the situation and xZeroStrike has a way better explanation about the other relics
Purification Beads
Blink Rune
Aegis Amulet
Belt of Frenzy
Heavenly Wings
Horrific Emblem
I always use this regardless (may be my problem)
Leather Cowl
Boots
Multi Potion
Purification Beads
So what if you are getting bulliest constantly? This build doesn't have alot of defensive flexibility sadly. Luckily there are some offensive/defensive options.
Shogun if you absolutely need the defense but luckily silverbranch makes that aura equal to 25 power.
Poison star if you can get at least one or two shots in to make space.
Magi cloak if it's cc hell and Mantle of Discord if you drop hp low often (synergies great with Asi and Artemis passive)
Poisoned Star
Shogun's Kusari
Magi's Cloak
Mantle of Discord
HOPEFULLY you only need to use shadowsteel.
If you can live without Asi (remember leather cowl has life steal) then toxic blade is an easy replacement
Shadowsteel Shuriken
Toxic Blade
Again better analysis at the below but in general, you need a balance between penetration and power or else what's the point of sacrificing it all. The current lategame build is enough imo, avg of 650 dps against a 200prot enemy but these are the replacements I would suggest. Maybe you don't want wind demon proc or if they aren't hurting you too much take executioner over Asi.
Dominance is the new S8 favorite but the Executioner works with this build best.
The Executioner
Qin's Sais
Dominance
Berserker's Shield
More details below but it has potential to be better or worse.
Eye Of The Jungle
Protector Of The Jungle
Slightly less damage but being able to get your Endgame/Lategame build for $13150/$17650 is lowkey insane.
Eye Of The Jungle
Ninja Tabi
Devourer's Gauntlet
Rage
Silverbranch Bow
Demon Blade
Protector Of The Jungle
Elixir of Speed
Deathbringer
Hello, I am Hank. As of this guide I am account level 24. OKAY HOLD ON WAIT DON'T LEAVE. I am an MMORPG main and a numbers guy so at least let me prove my point on why this build isn't just good...it is GREAT (works on Apollo too but I don't like managing his passive).
So not only will I explain this build but I'll also compare its weaknesses and strengths compared to the generic examples of xZeroStrike's and Jakkyr's guides which are probably better than mine.
I won't really explain anything like how to play Artemis or the skills or whatever because honestly what I can do is explain how Vengeful Assault plays into this
Table of Contents:
TL;DR
First of all, I AM NOT trying to disregard the other 2 builds. They are obviously more experienced and better (I can't even play ranked yet). I just wanted to compare and show the benefits of each.
The build - mathematically does ALOT of damage is cheap; You want cheaper? Switch out Leather Cowl for Eye Of The Jungle, Want cheaper??? Switch out Asi for Devourer's Guantlet.
DPS difference is very small for the cowl vs jungle item. Asi is +150dps on low protection (less than 70) but -100 dps on high protection (greater than 300).
Flexibility of the build - actually not very so keep in mind it's weaknesses and how changing it up can be
Playstyle - you are Artemis, you auto attack, build crit, shoot fast and stay by teammates so you don't get cc-d a single time and fall apart worse than a paper boat through niagra falls. That being said you are much more reliant on Vengeful Assault
Other builds (in my opinion)- If you expect a short game xZero's build works best. If you expect a game where you think you'll be using Vengeful Assault as a pseudo escape or you expect to be alone alot? go Jakkyr. NONE OF THESE THREE BUILDS ARE BAD.
Leather Cowl - Fantastic starter item. Power, Attack speed, and life steal all in one with a little bonus that fits the situation. Duo lane boxing? Get more life steal. You need to GTFO because you are the only one alive? movement speed
Ninja Tabi - You are an auto Attacker but don't worry come endgame this correlates to more power :D
Asi - with the fall of Atalanta's Bow, Asi has been my fan favorite. In my eyes it is a weaker version of Atalanta's bow and Devourer's Guantlet BUT it combines both of them to make something better. Additionally, with Leather Cowl having lifesteal, this should be more than enough for the rest of the game. I like getting this as the third item because 15 pen in the early game can do wonders. Endgame the boxing potential is insane with a total of 65% life steal when you are in a pinch. The only thing that can really stop you is CC or being a bad player like me.
Alternative Item #2; Devourer's Gauntlet - you want to save money and have more reliable life steal this is your guy. You will do less damage then Asi for majority of scenarios but sometimes not as much. Early game we are talking 10s of less dps (depending on your stacks)
Lategame, it actually depends on the enemy protection.
<170 protection without steriods, Asi wins
<250 protection with steroids, Asi wins
End game, the thresholds are higher. Keep in mind this might not matter to you. Against 70 protection, Asi gets a higher auto attack dps of about 30 (150 with Vengeful Assault, but you have 50 more power which lets you close that gap slightly with ability damage. Here just have a graph, it's easier.
Rage - without a doubt critical is the highest way to boost your damage. No other item but Rage can provide an easy access to that kind of boost. Plus you want to grab this pretty early to grab stacks. This is roughly the stage of the game when kills start racking up. REMEMBER Assists count!
Silverbranch Bow - HAHAHAHAHAHA so at this point you should be nearing about 1.8~2.1 attack speed, depending on what level you are. But this is the pièce de ré·sis·tance. Penetration, power, attack speed, and basically uncapping vengeful assault and other attack speed buffs for you.
Wind Demon - I used to prefer Poison Star way more for getting easy access for Artemis' passive but then wind demon got more crit chance. The passive is great for getting more attack speed and penetration. This is also the awkward stage of the game imo. You are strong but you start receiving diminishing returns on Vengeful Assault. I tend to save it only to finish someone off or as an escape at this point.
Hunter's Cowl - More everything but now you can thank your team for letting you get to this point by giving them attack power
Deathbringer - on paper it is the highest DPS increase after Rage. However due to the cost, I save this for endgame. Also there are going to be some caveats for running this before SilverBranch bow such as all that attack speed goes to waste, why didn't I just go crit build? Okay okay I'm getting there
BONUS:
Leather Cowl& Hunter's Cowl vs Eye Of The Jungle & Protector Of The Jungle
On paper they may seem very different but they are almost effectively the same but more circumstantial.
For the tier 1, 15 power and 15% attack speed is nearly identical to 10 power and 20% attack speed.
For tier 2 AND with silverbranch bow, 60 power and 45% attack speed is exactly the same as 65 power and 35% attack speed.
So here's where you got to choose your preference and situation:
For the tier 1s, if you aren't playing duo lane then there is very little point of Leather Cowl. Now the lifesteal is nice early on but when you get Asi it get's a little redundant. Meanwhile Eye of the Jungle can give you more damage on Jungle monsters, which can definitely help and of course the kinda of meme Jungle Ward(?). The only thing left to compare is 10% lifesteal vs +15hp5, both of these stats probably only matter before Asi come in but on one hand you are getting +15hp per 5 seconds, on the other hand you probably heal for 5~10 hp per arrow depending on what you are hittng and what level are you.
MORE importantly are the Tier 2 versions. So I don't know how the math works but at level 20 and the builds above, somehow you get 5 more power with Hunter's Cowl over Protector of the Jungle. I am going to link the stat comparisons below
So you may be thinking, 5 power vs 35 protection? this should be a no brainer. However let's put some more thought into this.
Hunter's Cowl gives you the ability to escape with Ninja Tabi and all your friends dead, you can run away with 28% movement speed. It also gives you the ability to give everyone 25% attack speed and guess what?IT STACKS WITH SHOGUN AURA
So if you have a team with another hunter, Freya, Ao Kuang, Sol, Bakasura, Osiris, etc. it would be pretty selfish not to run this build. On the otherhand, having 12% protection and power in the jungle where nowadays is quite common in the lategame could be absolutely huge. I'll leave this to your discretion. Oh and naturally outside of Conquest you can't really use anything but Hunter's Cowl.
NOTE: need to compare to Jakkyr's latest build. This is not updated yet, See exact items used to calculate dps below. Some maths will likely still need to be edited
The moment you've been waiting for. Here I will compare
Hunter's Cowl Ninja Tabi Devourer's Gauntlet Dominance Rage Deathbringer
Ornate Arrow Ninja Tabi Dominance Asi Rage Wind Demon Hunter's Cowl Ninja Tabi Asi Rage Wind Demon Silverbranch Bow Hunter's Cowl Devourer's Gauntlet Dominance Rage Deathbringer Poisoned Star Ornate Arrow Dominance Asi Rage Wind Demon Deathbringer Hunter's Cowl Asi Rage Wind Demon Silverbranch Bow DeathbringerSo this is assuming the following:
Vengeful Assault is active. Jakkyr gets much less damage because his build uses attack speed to compensate for ornate arrow, while xZero is well undercapped in attack speed and my build has silverbranch. Overall the dps is roughly the same without 2 active but then there is a difference from Jakkyr's build and the other two. (I will get to the non-auto attack information AFTERWARDS) Deathbringer is one of the biggest damage boosts you can get and this graph shows it. xZero's build which already had Deathbringer barely moved, while Jakkyr's and mine shot up like crazy. The other thing is because Poisoned Star adds enough attack to the crit build, that attack speed cap is closer and vengeful assault reaches diminshing results sooner. With vengeful assault active, xZero's build does LESS damage than Jakkyr's build without it. And then of course to toot my own horn, sure my build does less damage than xZero's without vengeful assault (~60dps) but by the power of Silverbranch Bow, my damge is between 100 dps against high protection and 200 dps more on low protection.Red being far below in COMPARISON, Orange being ok but still has a difference between the highest, and Gren being noticeable higher. The 3 right columns are with venegeful assault activated. (You can also see how protection really influences you base power) Eye Of The Jungle path.) Calydonian Boar, one of the best ults in the game, gets 100% of your physical power at max level. Ornate Arrow being maxed out, and of course with its passive and the previous 
Gilded Arrow can help get there faster. Is it worth 15% more cost than the other 2 builds? That is up to you, because getting to Endgame may be way faster with Ornate Arrow. While it is $3000 more than the other 2 builds, by this point you've had that arrow for awhile so perhaps this is easy (Don't forget you need to buy speed elixir). Dominance will not get penetration with Artemis' abilities) Dominance, that's an additional 20MP5 and 200 Mana. May save on potions in the long run, but definitely very helpful early game. Devourer's Gauntlet to stack which is just one more thing to note. Leather Cowl and Hunter's Cowl, you have to play with the team to really get the most use of the builds.
THE SKY IS THE LIMIT
So this build is strong, but it can get even stronger. Let's say you want be a nice teammate and let your jungle and mid take both attack buffs. Well now the void buff can give you 10 power or if enhanced 25 power. Now I know it's not as good (You get roughly 20 power in lategame with this build) but it's helpful.
And of course like I said beforeStacking 2 attack speed auras, where the whole team has +50% attack speed??? That's insane
Belt of Frenzy just got even better with already it's base 10% damage buff but another 15 power to go on top of that.
Fafnir on your team? 
Coerce just gave you 30 more power.
And then there's the opposite situation.
You got hit by Fostbound Hammer or they stacking 
Witchblade? Yes it sucks to lose power but you still have a whopping 2.5 attack speed.
And finally, skill ceiling. I suck at this game, probably because I am new is what I tell myself. I try not to miss, but it happens. Being able to ALWAYS be at a 2.5 fire rate can significantly help a player (maybe it'll bring up so bad habits but it shouldn't!).
Oh and I guess there are some bad habits that this build may promote. Again you get to take more shots and maybe miss more. You get more movement speed so maybe you overextend because you know you can get away with it. You feel the adrenaline of knowing you have 1500 dps against a 300 protection God and just see red. That's my fault not yours. Err the other way around.
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Alright, let's see where this goes. Firstly, I want to say again that it's really cool that even at an early stage of your SMITE career, you've already delved into the numbers. It's clear the game has you hooked, and playing with the numbers and understanding the mechanics can be totally fun. Hope you keep this up. I was similar, but with regard to build variation in Assault...brought my Assault guide out pretty early in my SMITE playing days.
You seem to have a pretty good overall grasp of most of the item concepts, build requirements, and build structure. This isn't to say that I think I'd build necessarily the same way, but I usually don't deep-dive into a build's numbers, because while it's important to make a build with good end DPS, it's also important to consider other factors, such as:
- Power spike / damage progression throughout the match
- Cost of items at various points of the match
- Intangibles or stats that have utility that's not always factored into the DPS calcs
You've already touched on some of these with Devampi. This feels like, and I think you'd agree, that you're not looking at the best build, you're playing a numbers game and looking at highest potential DPS with a bit less consideration to the variables that happen within individual matches. Basically, this is like sports analytics rather than the "eye test."To that, we've got some general concepts:
When going
These will be partially addressed in the rest of my comment.
Quick reference to my Hunter DPS calculation sheet...if / when you use
If I were to try for a build that provides all the things I would want, it would be a blending of some of these builds. Something like:
The lifesteal leaves a bit to be desired, but the crit chance is also very reliable (85%), you get the Poisoned Star passive, mana sustain from Dom, and high pen from Dom + Exe (yes, there's some inefficiency w/ Dom + Exe as well, but I'll take it for the Exe AS and helping teammates deal more damage).
The numbers? Against 100 prots, 1060 DPS without steroid, 1306 with steroid. Against 200 prots (max Exe stacks), 776 DPS without steroid, 956 DPS with steroid. Not too shabby, and consistent against squishier and tankier enemies. But you have to be okay with less lifesteal potential. Hopefully the PS passive damage mitigation helps decrease your taken damage, acting in a sort of way as getting more lifesteal. Sort of.
Directions I didn't cover here:
So some final comments based on your writeup underneath your spreadsheet pic.
- On the "money" topic, stating that Gilded is 15% more expensive makes it sound bigger than I feel it is. Yes, it's 15% based on the builds you're comparing, but at the same time, that passive really starts adding up and it's honestly absolutely no problem for the rest of the build to be more expensive.
- Penetration: Does in fact matter against tankier targets and objectives, especially if you get Exe and you have 2 other phys gods on your team attacking that FG, Titan, or front-line tank. I'm pretty sure your numbers are off somewhere or you're not fully calculating everything. Would be interesting to figure out if that's the case, or if I screwed up somewhere.
- MP5: Dom is going to help ALL game for the MP5. You stay out doing things for a while, and then want to keep pushing after you finish a FG for example, you might find yourself pretty low. Dom will prevent you from running out.
- I don't think mentioning stacking is important at all. Yes, only Zero's requires stacking, but I mean...you're laning early game with that. You're going to get your stacks. It matters absolutely nil for late-game consideration.
- Wind Demon: Jakkyr's build has 100% crit chance. He will never NOT proc. Yours is 85% chance. You will almost never miss a proc, though yes, the game handles crit chance a bit weirdly and you might in fact find yourself not critting a couple times in a row.
- Starter: When mentioning Cowl requiring the team, well that's part of the intangibles, right? If you had to back and you're trying to catch up to the team...or if your team died and you're getting chased, or if you got separated in a teamfight and you need to relocate...that MS is pretty nice. Otherwise, you should ALWAYS be near your teammates late-game, and that Cowl passive is going to help your entire team take down objectives due to the AS aura.
- In the following chapter, you do touch upon some points I mentioned above that are good points. Frost/Witch keeping your build at 2.5 and having high AS being just nice in case you miss. Additional AS boost from Shogun's or Faf's ability. Good points.
Whew. Anyway, interesting read, cool of you to put this much time into it, would still like to clear up these calculations somehow. Thoughts?First of all sorry LOL one problem I have is not writing out what I mean badly. When I say penetration doesn't matter, it was supposed to be when comparing the three builds, you cannot outright say one build is better because it has more penetration, as the plot shows. You need a balance of both because it was very rarely that the difference in which build had more dps was due to protection (as in very rarely did the dps curves cross vs protection). I did not intend to make a statement of "don't build executioner" but more of don't pick which of these builds based off of their penetration.
Secondly, how do you get that + sign with the drop down? I need to learn how to do that lol
I defintely am a victim of being new to the game, since as you can see I left out alot thoughts about how progression should go. I'll look more into that whole attack speed vs power as well as mp5, progression, gold, etc.
So calculations: this is what I was working on ASAP. First of all, I did everything by hand first but now I am going in the training room and writing down the values. That being said you may need to check your spreadshoot:
xZero's endgame build did indeed have 295 power.
Jakkry's build likewise does indeed have 180 power. He has updated since then but I have yet to update my sheets to his current guide
As for my current math. It is a simple firerate formula: fire rate * [cDmg*cRate+ base damage *(1-cRate)]. The expanded table is below:
FINALLY: my probably controversial decision NOT to include the debuff from poisoned star in my calculations is:
You have to at least land a single crit first on your target (different from Wind Demon because you can just active that passive on any target since it's a self buff).
If you have multiple targets, your damage is no longer linear because you need to go target to target.
Poisoned Star can be cleansed.
If the target is already cc-dd (I don't need to explain how with Artemis' own kit not including your allies or relic), then the passive is redundant
I may end up just having a third measurement of xZero's endgame build + artemis passive because it is more likely, but again I'm really on the fence because how often is an enemy NOT cc-d.
P.S. I apologize for my formatting. still getting used to this
Regarding the power numbers, Jakkyr's should be considered 230 for the sake of DPS. Sure, Ornate doesn't have actual power, but it has 60 basic attack damage. Physical gods translate 100% of power into their basic attack damage, so while that 60 won't add to ability scaling, it absolutely equals 230 for DPS.
So my "average" damage per attack calc is:
((IF crit % > 0 then N=crit %, if not N=0) * (IF you have DB, N=2.3, if not N=2) * [Basic Attack Damage]) + (([Basic Attack Damage] * (1 - crit %)) * [Situational Art passive 15% bonus damage])
The calc in my spreadsheet is a bit more complex, as in the end it also calculates Qin's passive based on the enemy health you input, and if you have Silver added and AS is technically over 2.5, it calculates and factors that in as well.
[Basic Attack Damage] = level damage per attack + item damage per attack (aka power equivalence from items)
Then you factor in the mitigation value based on the end enemy prots. I'm pretty confident in my calcs, but again, I could have screwed up somewhere.
The reason I DO calculate Art's passive (at least in some of the presented numbers) is because 1 hit out of several means calculating the passive will be closer to actual DPS than not. We're looking at max DPS values here, not situational things. And while you might change targets, that's not what you're TRYING to do. Hopefully you get to focus on one target, so I'm going based off of the intention, not a chaotic teamfight...again, we're calculating DPS, not total effectiveness based on intangibles. If we want to calculate intangibles, we should talk about effectiveness of PS's damage mitigations, or WD's movement giving you ability to chase/escape, etc. Straightforward is best here IMO.
So yes for the sake of simplification I just take the stats I see in game at the time of attack (thank god I none of the comparison's uses Qin's Sai)
Anyways, I agree with Artemis' passive being calculated with xZero's build, I guess since it's a guarantee I should include it. But I will probably add additional plots of Jakkyr's and my build with Artemis' passive active because unlike the other comparisons, this is not an exclusive damage increase
Either way this has been an interesting exercise and always fun to look at these types of values. It also forced me to update my spreadsheet hahaha!
progression wise it is a bit lacking and that is considered to have a lot more impact. A lot of builds depend more on their first items to even reach that stage of the game.
And this will show quite well why a lot of adcs start with
And not only that also the reliance of ability usage to bump your dps up a bit.
I am not saying
for pen, the same reason exists slightly. Late game with a crit build it doesn't matter as much (for a qin's build it is even more impactful) as crit is enhancing your auto attacks to do 'double damage' (modified by
Lastly, I am wondering for zeros endgame build did you factor in the increase from
I am pretty curious to see the remaining analysis on the build progression, factoring in the ability damage progression etc. (which comparing is going to be slightly harder as gold amount plays a part and
I do plan on expanding but I am waiting for more feedback to just do one big change. The biggest thing on my list is noting how mana hungry early game is and
Edit: Did some quick numbers. Late game with
Therefore I would say that $150 difference is either preference of life steal, or if you believe that dps increase from Asi is worth it and there are few/no enemy gods with a final build of 170 protection.
As for penetration in say early/mid game.
https://imgur.com/a/l8FhFV0
Here's a plot of the 15 pen from
So including the math for
You have to at least land a single crit first on your target (different from
Wind Demon because you can just active that passive on any target since it's a self buff).If you have multiple targets, your damage is no longer linear because you need to go target to target.
If the target is already cc-dd (I don't need to explain how with Artemis' own kit not including your allies or relic), then the passive is redundant
Now for the "lategame" stats, if we just assume poisoned star should be treated as +15% damage always, well xZero's build goes from just slightly highest dps in comparison to noticeable higher. For the "Endgame" stats, all it does is bump the damage without
Overall yes, I probably need to include progression. Still fairly new at the game and my only thought was
for the pen you have pretty much proven my point as while 3% might not be much the higher hp bruisers have they win the war of attrition to easily as that small amount of damage causes you to take more basics which is more time for them to kill you. Don't forget that the moment you finish
that is also why progression is hard to check the effects of as it differs in the matchups or what you're attacking
Look forward to what you think!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l3TLpndi7RYr53PVvAtCLvKpBeW5T0MJzsQLshDu9-4/copy
*edit* spotted further screwups, the Runeforged toggle is at 15%, not at 20%, leaving it at 15% to toggle Art's passive bonus damage for the upcoming discussion...had to fix the calc for this as well as it wasn't applying appropriately.
The only thing i'd comment on is that I changed up the build slightly for more sustain since I really don't like Artimes' bad mana sustain.
Other then that, great stuff!!
Ornate Arrow is fine you're going crit also.
Since a bit into the game, one combo is realistically going to take half your mana, and you're not going to kill anyone with it without help.
Ornate has crit yes, but when you're at level 20 you would usually get more out of an upgraded deaths toll or upgraded cowl, since she if you're going crit, you could lean further into just more damage and speed, or lotsa lifesteal.
So being able to just survive and dont feed until you can shread people super fast is the safest bet i'd say.