Guide to Hua Mulan in Smite 2

Welcome Welcome, one and all, to a guide to Hua Mulan for smite 2. I have mastery 10 on Mulan in smite 1 with 2 stars, and very quickly got her to mastery 10 in smite 2 as well. The way I'm going to write this, you'll get the gist while also having more in-depth information than you can shake a stick at. I have entirely too much fun playing Hua Mulan and I hope that by the end of this, you'll have enough knowledge to cyberbully the enemy team into alt-f4'ing back to smite 1.

Mulan's skills are her Sword Strike (1), Spear Thrust (2), Grapple (3), and Divine Assault (4 or "ult").
All of these weapons have 4 ranks, those being Base (rank 0), Skilled (rank 1), Adept (rank 2), and Mastered (rank 3).
All the abilities have bonus effect, and what they give are as follows:

Sword gives temporary increased attack speed (skilled), a third cone hit (adept), and permanent attack speed (mastered).
Spear gives a slow (skilled), a second hit with bonus damage when you hit both ticks of the spear (adept), and permanent Strength (mastered).
Grapple gives bonus protections upon hitting an enemy god (skilled), the ability to dash to walls (adept), and bonus move speed and protections (mastered).

I go into more much depth on which you want to level first in the notes on the skill sequence, but I will summarize them here. Typical skill start is your 1 and 2, if you know you can get kills/want the bonus prots when hitting an enemy sooner or the mobility with dashing upon hitting rank 2 with the bow, go sword and bow.

The typical way the will occur is to Grapple the opponent, then group the minions to hit as many of them as possible with Spear while still hitting your lane opponent. There are also back harpy camps. Group those by hitting them with one auto per camp, then hit them with the spear as well till you get rank 2 at the very least. Once your spear hits rank 2, you are a brawling machine and can fight most anything that is in your lane unless it's named Ra.

First and foremost: the pros and cons

Items. The lifeblood of MOBAs. If you've gotten this far, you have earned this random on the internet's respect. Let's get into the nitty-gritty, shall we?

Mulan's start is bluestone. Always. You lose clear and damage with warrior's, and the passive on warrior's and sundering is not really worth trading bluestone tick damage for.

Your rush item is Entirely dependent on what you're against in lane. If they have major sustain anywhere in their kit, your rush is Ruinous Ankh. Period Dot, end of discussion, good bye, the end. Any questions?

For Physicals, go Gladiator's shield for bonus damage on your abilities. Shield of the phoenix is a good item to go immediately after for a bit of bonus sustain, or if they build anti heal, Void shield for the percent protection reduction.

For Magicals, Screeching gargoyle is good for the silence in a cone and protection reduction. Phoenix feather is also a nice option for sustain, and should your opponent build anti heal before you get the flaming pigeon feather, Talisman of Purification is also good, with oni hunter's slightly behind due to not having as much magical prots but making up for it slightly by granting you bonus damage mitigation in teamfights.

Now that the first few items are in your build, let's talk about a few items that counter specific abilities on likely lane opponents.

Ruinous Ankh: Beating a dead horse at this point, but if your lane opponent has healing of any kind, think Herc 3, Hades 3, Chaac 3 (I'm starting to notice a pattern here), Mordred 1, Amaterasu 1 (never mind) the like, grab Ankh. it will annoy them to no end.

Hussar's Wings: This item ignores all slows. Attack speed slows? Gone. Movement slows? Gone. This item negates all of them. Buy this against a Chaac in your second or third item slot and watch the light leave that Chaac's eyes.

I don't know how to segway into the next section, so have this haphazard sentence that makes you question how many sessions this college thesis of a guide took me to write

Wow, what a great transition. Such elegance, and definitely no shenanigans. Anyways, time for some tips, tricks, and combos. Ready, Set,

Tip 1: Do be aware that both hits of the spear can apply the slow, and that if you want to help your backline get a kill, you can spear even if they're slightly out of the first hit and you will hit them with the second one. You won't get the bonus damage, but your backliner will get a kill freer than a Costco sample.

Tip 2: Grapple has a lot of funny interactions and also feels noticeably longer in smite 2 than in smite 1. one of my favorite things is whenever Chaac decided he wants to ult, you can simply bow him a moment before he lands and avoid the entire thing, including the silence, because you are cc immune during the mini dash/pull animation. this takes some practice to get the hang of, but is one of the best ways to entirely negate an ult for free. This is actually why I have rated Chaac as a minor threat, simply because you can mitigate a TON of his ult effects. By the time he has it, you'll likely have rank 1 on the bow, which means you're getting 25 free protections the moment you hit him. And if timed just right, you avoid the silence entirely. (again, this takes practice, do not be upset if you miss the timing the first few times, I still don't have 100% accuracy with it xD)

Tip 3: Her ult in smite 1 took a half second to cancel. That is entirely gone in smite 2, and it is smooth as silk to get out of the ult. Do not be afraid to use it as an escape tool, be it in teamfights, escaping a gank, whatever it may be. Because you are cc immune during the entire ult, it is also insanely helpful to ult in front of someone trying to chase your backline like a mordred charging ult or chasing in ult. his ult doesn't cancel anything, so he just stops in his track and his soul leaves his body in dismay.

SOLO

On mulan you can proxy but you can struggle, especially if the enemy team decides to pinch you and force you to not have any fun. Unless you are confident in yourself and your ability to not get deleted instantly, I would recommend escorting your wave to lane then placing your flag in a spot that covers all the enemy minions (this flag grants bonus xp and is a good tool to grab yourself an early lead), then hit as many as you can with your abilities. If possible, hit the enemy solo laner over 2-3 minions but if they walk in such a place as to where you can hit them and all the minions, you're golden.

After you hit level 2 from the second minion wave, go look for your blue buff cause you will need it. You don't start your blue in smite 2 cause it takes too long to clear before level 2, and by the time you hit level 2 and head towards that blue buff you'll likely have a jungler heading that way to split the xp. Once you've acquired the blue, spend the next few minutes clearing waves and the back harpy camps in sequence, while grabbing as many totems and gold camps as able.

Once level 5 is reached, start looking for fights with the enemy solo laner of if they're hiding on their tower, ganks on duo lane through the top teleporter (if you have the a teleported to lane available), or mid lane (it's next door and there's no world where any mid laner will be mad at you for helping them get ahead of the enemy mid laner).

After that, just play the game, group with your team where it makes sense and after you have 3-4 items online, go help push the lane that is most likely to kill the tower sooner.

JUNGLE

Your first priority in jungle is hitting level 2 and taking the neutral camp in the pyromancer pit. The way you want to do this is to place your flag in such a spot that the area will cover portions of both the speed camp and the shield camp right outside of base. you'll see what I mean when you're in the game. The clear order is Speed, Shield camp, go across the lane to the cyclops camp beside the red buff, then go the the contested camp in pyro pit. Once you've gotten that, you can look to invade the enemy red to give your own red a head start into a gank on middle, retreat into your own jungle to clear your red buff, branching into either eye of the jungle then shield or directly to blue buff into a solo lane gank.

After ganking mid or solo, clear a few camps on the way to gank duo lane, either by taking the harpy camps beside the teleporter to duo lane for the solo gank or the gold blessing, oracles, and shield camp for the mid gank. When you gank duo you'll most likely be above level 3, and therefore have all your abilities. Use the bow to pull the support our of position once they use their cc and/or mobility.

If you can bully the frontliners out of the game it doesn't matter how fed the carry could get cause they won't have tanks to fall behind when your team so much as glances at them. This does not mean you don't get kills on the backliners, but sometimes it's more worthwhile to break the tank's mental so you have significantly less to fight through. Breaking mentals is just as important as getting objectives in my book.

All of these points for teamfights will work if you're solo lane or jungle, just do keep in mind that for jungle, you will have to tread somewhat lighter due to the decreased bulk owing to the hybrid build. That being said, teamfighting breakdown time.

In teamfights, you are the initiator. Your 3 is the tool for that. Pull a frontline into a lashing from your team, pull the Carry or Mage into deletion at best, a forced recall at worst. The only sketchy pull you can do is the enemy solo laner cause they typically have what it takes to live long enough to set up the rest of their team.

Do not overextend to get your pulls. You are a massive line of defense for the backline. Use voice chat to tell your team who you pull and how much to actually do to them. Use your ult to cc as many people as reasonable. When all weapons are mastered, the second hit of your ult will increase active enemy cooldowns by 3 seconds. Use that to your advantage by ulting a mage or adc who just used their mobility, the cc of the tanks, whatever you think would give your team the best chances of winning that fight.