Passive - Infused Strikes
Infused Strikes is the core aspect of playing
Hun Batz. Essentially what it means, is that you should always weave one basic attack between abilities. Only chain two abilities together if you have to chase/escape/etc, else you are giving up free damage from the bonus to that 1 basic.
1 - Somersault
Somersault at first glance seems like a good opening move, but it has some ending lag that makes it hard to combo into a basic or other ability. On
Hun Batz that is better suited to the harder to aim
Sacred Monkey. Instead,
Somersault should be saved to use as a chase (the slow is a nice help there) or as an escape when the fight goes sour. Its ability to go over walls also makes it a handy tool navigating the jungle, especially to land on mid-harpies or other camps. The one time this should be used as an opener is for an over-the-wall gank into a low health target, as you will likely not need to escape from a near-dead mage or hunter. I recommend leveling this 3rd for the increased slow.
*tip: use this at your feet to dodge
Bludgeon, Eagle’s Rally,
Anvil of Dawn, etc, and damage/slow the attacking god instead
2 - Overhand Smash
Overhand Smash is
Hun Batz's bread and butter. Wave clear, camp clear, main damaging ability, etc. It does solid damage throughout the game, has a very low cooldown, has a huge area, and combo’s into your passive very well. In any fight, this should basically be used on cooldown for both damage and
Infused Strikes procs. You can often hit multiple gods with this, and from the side can usually hit the whole minion wave. Also it literally flattens minions and is hilariously satisfying.
3 - Sacred Monkey
Sacred Monkey is an interesting ability, and is definitely the hardest one to use on
Hun Batz. It does a decent amount of damage, and can give you some good openers/chases assuming it lands on the target you want. The thing to remember is that it teleports you to the NEXT target hit, not the last one. If you want to teleport to the god you aimed at, you need to immediately hit the button again before the monkey lands. This can be leveled over Somersault if you prefer the increased poke over the better slow.
A few tips:
If there are minions around, aim at them instead of the god unless you plan to teleport immediately, else you will land in the minions.
You have a few seconds, so wait for that god to dash/portal/leap/etc before teleporting, they will be easy pickings on the other side (Janus hates this especially).
You can bounce the monkey off Loki Decoys/Kaldr/etc. It also will bounce to people in stealth (use lokis decoy to find him in stealth!)
4 - Fear No Evil
Fear No Evil is the figurative icing on
Hun Batz's cake. One of the best Teamfight ults in the game, massive amounts of CC and damage, as well as zone control, and the AoE is huge. Land the center close to people so they take damage as long as possible, but make sure its on the opposite side of the direction you want to push them. Pulling people into your tower is great fun, and you can beat them up with
Infused Strikes and
Overhand Smash on the way in and on the way out. Blink +
Fear No Evil is a great opener for a team fight, especially if
Zeus or
Scylla is around. This skill will keep you in the game even 4 levels behind.
If your new to
Hun Batz or the jungle in general, I would recommend only ganking when this is off CD. A good gank with
Fear No Evil is nearly a guaranteed kill, but it is also your only CC, so it can be hard without it.
I also think you should get Brawler's instead of Titans. And Transcendence seems really strong.
I think my go to build would be:
Warrior's -> Trans -> Hydra's -> Jotunn's -> Malice/DB -> Brawler's/Shifter's
40% cdr is just hilarious!
I also like getting sacred monkey at level 2 instead of the jump for the extra damage for clearing. Unless I need the jump for escaping or chasing with the slow.
Good tips with the monkey, IMO monkey usage is what makes a good Hun Batz :)
You could maybe also add that it is a great tool for escaping as well as engaging. Just the confusion about where you are can make you jump over a wall unseen in the middle of a teamfight or you can insta TP to jungle camps etc.
Also I prefer Blink first relic. Yes beads is super important, but like 90% of the time you don't need it before level 12. Sucks if you need it before level 12, and fall behind because you dont have it. But in my experience blink often rewards me with 2-3 kills before level 12 that I would not have gotten without it.
I picked Titan's in my base build because he does more Area damage than focusing a single target, and it helps against the Warriors and Guardians. Brawler's is discussed in the pen section though.
The reason to take DB over Malice is because of the synergy with Hydra's. Malice's passive is not affected by the Hydra's boost while DB is.
So with Malice the one crit after an ability is: Basic x 2.8 + .75 x power DoT
With Deathbringer the hit is: Basic x 3.64
So at level 15 with Boots + Hydra's + Jot + Crit (so basic attack is 70+Power, and you have 135/145 power)
Malice: the crit does 711 damage after the DoT finishes
DB: the crit does 746 damage
But in that case DB is definitely a lot better! If you combo properly and are lucky with the crits you can easaly get in 2 AAs with in the 3 second window of Malice proc.
And I can live with the reasoning behind Titan's, but I would not go it I think. And CDR more important for my playstyle at least than pen is. When playing Hun Batz.
So here's what I did in Jungle practice. Did standard Ability Monkey build. Got him to level 20, and just attacked the stationary Odin.
With Deathbringer, the basic attack immediately after using an ability did 754 damage when it
critscrittedcritically-struck.Switching out DB for Malice, it dealt 682 + 61 + 61 + 61 = 865. To me, looks clear that Malice as a single crit hit does more damage in total.
Now, Malice has 10 higher power but 10% less crit chance...so it's give and take. I think I'd choose a higher crit chance over a bit further damage, especially if I got lucky and dealt 2 crits in a row, which would mean I wouldn't get as much out of the passive DoT as I otherwise would.
There is something going on with those numbers too, because with Deathbringers passive, the base hit should be ~25% harder than with malice, even if it doesn't stack (30% damage, -10 power).
754/682 = 1.1 , so even the base hit is only 10% stronger?
I'm using a calculated resource for this try...my favorite Smite Builder (which has been updated to patch 5.2). Have to take the following numbers with a grain of salt, because we can't confirm these numbers are accurate.
Same level 20 Hun and as an enemy, Agni. Mitigations are calculated here, bsaed on Agni's inherent 63 physical protection. Note that it doesn't calculate the Hydra's passive, so I have to add that in.
With DB, a crit will deal a base 387 damage. With Hydra's additional 40% damage, this is 541.8 damage.
With Malice, a crit will deal 358 damage. With Hydra's additional 40% damage, this is 501.2 damage. Then we have to add in the DoT.
HB has 170 power in this build. 75% is 127.5 damage. However, this is before mitigations. Base basic attack damage is 251, but a normal basic will be 179 to that Agni, so we're talking 28.69% mitigated. This means Malice will deal an additional 91 damage...total damage therefore is 592.
What I think is going on is that we have to understand that mitigations will affect end numbers...% mitigated means hard numbers calculated before mitigations mean that % differences in damage will be less than we'd expect. Add in the 10 extra damage from Malice, and the advantage gained by DB's passive is shrunk further.
Again, I might be missing something...but that sort of makes sense to me.
question: why did you link your Hun Batz guide twice in the other guides section?