Complete Terra Guide - How to build and play Terra

Hello everyone, this is my first SMITEfire guide. Terra is a guardian, with an aggressive play style, with a lot of versatility and good heals. I play Terra a lot and she is my favourite god, so here is my complete guide on how to build and play Terra in SMITE season 4, she's Terra-fic!

Pros:
Good engage capabilities
Can heal entire team at once
Global ult
high area damage,
high sustain,
double dash,
set up chain cc
Cons:
High cooldowns
mana hungry early game
hard to learn

I will just quickly go over her kit, with brief explanations on all her abilities:
Passive - Standing stones:
Terra's abilities create Standing Stones. As long as any Standing Stones are on the battleground Terra becomes Knockup immune and her Basic Attacks will Slow enemies and deal bonus damage. If Terra Shatters any stones she will retain this buff for an additional 3s after all of the stones are gone.
This is a decent passive, it makes your basic attacks deal extra damage with an inbuilt frostbound, and is really good when escaping from people like awilix and hercules, because your knockup immune.

1st ability - Force of nature:
Terra gains momentum, causing her to dash forward and deal damage to enemies she passes through.
Terra may charge through her own Standing Stones to Shatter them. If she does she may charge one more time within the next 3s.
Mana cost: 50
Cooldown: 15 seconds
This is how she engages and escapes. Notice that it can double dash, so when escaping place your 3, charge through it rooting enemies, and then charge again.

2nd ability - Crushing Earth:
Terra raises up two Standing Stone walls on either side of a target location. As long as both stones stand, Terra may activate this ability again to slam the stones together, damaging and Stunning enemies in between for 1.5s.
These stones can be Shattered into a cone of shrapnel with Force of Nature, damaging enemies in the area.
Mana cost: 80
Cooldown: 15 seconds
Good long range stun (If you can land it), can be used to catch escaping enemies, and block pathways through the jungle.

3rd ability - Monolith:
Terra summons a Standing Stone monolith surging with natural energy. The monolith heals nearby allied gods every .5s for the duration but can be detroyed early if hit by 3 enemy basic attacks.
Terra can Shatter this stone with Force of Nature to Root enemies in the area for 1s and create a damaging area that lasts 5s.
Mana cost: 100
Cooldown: 18 seconds
Good ability, can heal an entire team, and has a large area damage with a root). Be careful though, as it can be destroyed by 3 basic attacks, so watch were you put it, unless you are engaging with it.

Ultimate - Terra's blessing:
Terra channels her strength into the entire world, buffing all of her allies for 10s. While active, Terra and her allies gain increased Movement Speed, reduction of Mana costs for abilities, and increased Cooldown Reduction.
Terra also summons 4 stone around herself and each of her teammates. If any one of them take damage 4 times the stones will activate and heal that god.
Mana cost: 100
Cooldown: 110 seconds
This ultimate is amazing, it can completely turn the tide in a team fight. Great for mobilising an entire team, can be used for snowballing or an escape. Great counter ult.

The first thing I want to go over is how to build her. I generally split the way you build her into 3 categories, support/defence, balanced and damage. I'll go over what you can build and when to build it.

Starter items:
Usually you will build watchers gift on Terra, but if you want a more offensive early game, choose mark of the vanguard to begin you build with.

First item: Shoes of focus
If your playing Terra you should always build boots, as they have a high amount of utility and power. As Terra you always build shoes of focus first, because you are very mana hungry early game and 250 mana is extremely useful. You can also make use of 10% cooldowns, as Terra has really long cooldowns on all her abilities. So whenever you play Terra you need to buy shoes of focus.

Defence:
2nd item: If you want to build defence you should always aim to build sovereignty because it makes you quite tanky early game and is great for your entire team. You could also get breastplate of valour, as it has a load of physical protections and cooldown.
3rd item: Gauntlet of thebes is great on Terra as it provides great defence making it easier for you to dive the back line and boost your team mates.
4th item: Heartward amulet, great magical defence item, because it buffs your team. You could also buy bulwark of hope, but it focuses on you more. I would recommend buying it if you are ahead, or your team is relatively tanky. However if you feel you need more magical defence you should buy genji's guard, and if you feel you still need even more magical protection opt for oni hunters garb,
which should keep you safe.
5th item: Spirit robe, great defensive stats, awesome item, explained above,
Balanced: Mantle of discord, great for diving the back line, great defensive stats, only thing is it is quite expensive, so you can go for something like mystical mail if behind on gold.
6th item: Mantle of discord, great for diving the back line, great defensive stats, passive will help you survive

Balanced:
2nd item: Gauntlet of thebes is great on Terra as it provides great defence making it easier for you to dive the back line and boost your team mates
3rd item: Spirit robe, has great defence stats, great passive and more cooldown and cc reduction, great item, you will almost always be building it on Terra.
4th item: Telkhines ring is a very potent damage item on Terra. It provides 80 power and can stack up to 50 power after hitting something 5 times. It adds up to 120 magical power almost as much as rod of tahuti. this is an item you should build if you want to deal more damage.
5th item: Mantle of discord, great for diving the back line, great defensive stats, only thing is it is quite expensive, so you can go for something like mystical mail if behind on gold.
6th item: void stone, helps tear down enemy tanks late game and provides small damage burst.

Damage:
2nd item:Celestial legion helm is really good on Terra as it has basic defence stats, but it can buff your entire team with your heals. Also when you charge in and smash monolith, you will gain more power making the damage from scorched earth more effective. If you don't like celestial legion helm you could also build lotus crown to help you survive longer or shield of regrowth giving you the movement speed buff as you charge through, good for catching up to an enemy or escaping.
3rd item: Telkhines ring is a very potent damage item on Terra. It provides 80 power and can stack up to 50 power after hitting something 5 times. It adds up to 120 magical power almost as much as rod of tahuti. this is an item you should build if you want to deal more damage.
4th item: void stone, this is a great item as it not only helps you deal more damage, it helps your entire team as it removes magical defence and provides decent stats.
5th item: Etheral staff/gem of isolation, both of these items are good late game damage items, as they provide offensive capabilities while being tanky items. Chose etheral staff if you need the extra damage, otherwise chose gem, as it provides more utility for your team.
6th item: After choosing gem or staff build mystical mail. Mystical mail is a great item, that provides protections and deals a surprising amount of damage.

When should you build defence, damage or balanced?
Arena: I would recommend damage, unless if you are losing badly, build balanced instead.
Joust and clash:
I would generally build balanced. If you are dominating build damage, and snowball, but if you are being dominated, build defence and hopefully you'll survive longer.
Assault: Just build defence, but make sure you build rod of ascelpius, and stone of Gaia could be quite useful as well.
Conquest:
Support: build defence - duh,
Solo: Balanced

Consumables:
Always buy a mana chalice to get you through the early game. Usually buy the health chalice, because when you need healing, your 3 will be on cooldown a lot so this is really good for the early game but not necessary.
In the late game you'll just want to get potion of magical might, and chalice of the oracle (unless playing conquest, get oracle over health at the start) leaving one spot for rituals.
Flickering ritual is really useful for any god, allowing for a quick escape or good for finishing off an usually out of reach enemy. frenzy ritual is a must, when you are playing with a lot of auto attack gods, revealing ritual is only good for conquest. Rallying ritual is good for quickly helping team mate in some circumstances such as taking the fire giant/gold fury, attacking phoenixes, or the titan.

Relics:
Meditation is good for quickly restoring health and mana in a pinch, thorns are good when you are solo laning, or facing of gods with continous damage ults, such as hades. Heavenly wings, goes really well with your ult, so is shell. Purification is a must when facing gods such as ares and xing tian.
If you are playing solo lane get teleport, and maybe sunder, for the surprise finisher.

Because Terra is a support/guardian, it is important who to pair her with so her is a couple of suggestions,
Good team mates:
Izanami, Terra's crowd control makes it very easy for Izanami to land her abilities more easily
Anubis, because of the large area damage

Surprisingly, she pairs up really well with most other guardians, because of crowd control chains,

The best team mate I can think of for Terra is Nox. Their cc chains very easily, and they create a very formidable combo.

Terra is weak against:
Rama - he deals damage from a long range, and can evade Terra's abilities with ease.
Ah Puch - High damage, from his abilities making it hard to get close to deal damage, but her ult counters his very well
Chang'e - can evade abilities very well, and deals damage at the same time
Odin - Terra has no leap, so if she gets caught in his ring, she is pretty much stuffed

Terra is strong against:
Basically any god that relies on knockup for their combos, good examples are:
Awilix - no more ult
Hercules - complete combo shut down

Thanks for reading, my guide for Terra, the earth mother. Please feel free to leave any feed back and I hope you enjoyed it.