How to build an aggressive Guardian (every role)

This guide is inspired by DukeSloth's and Incon's "Selfish Support" build presented via Youtube. I liked it, but find it to lack on important stats like cooldown reduction and some power and pen.

I play Smite since PC Open Beta and basicly main Guardians for the most time. I also like to make them work on Solo and Jungle and even as Support I like my Guardians to be capable of dealing at least some Damage themselves so I always prefer aggressive builds and playstyle.

I feel like playing Support is more then soaking up damage. To make the plays and setups that you are looking for you need CDR and a lot of it in my personal experience. And pressuring your enemies by better boxing potential or faster clear potential is a "stat" that nobody should ignore. Other importans facts I considered creating this guide are "the longer you can stay in fight, the more damage you will have dealt", "the more you control your enemies they can't control you", "Smooth stat progression through out the game is important to maintain the balance of tanking and boxing potential" and finally and maybe even most important "Playing an aggressive guardian is like playing Jungle, Support and Solo at the time so you need to be able to clear by yourself, farm by yourself and kill by yourself if necessary". May be I am wrong, may be that is just me. But here is my way to play Guardians!

Starter items depend on what Guardian you are playing and what role you are going for.

Support:
- Watcher's Gift! It will pay for itself and give you a huge amount of sustain. Easy choice. The more sustain you have the more farm you will get.
- Tier 1 Boots! Why? Because the enemy buys them and you don't want to be slower then your enemy, for he will eventually chase you down for your early death. You want to chase him down for an early kill setup, easy as that! It is about making plays and dodging.
- Potions! What potions depends on your Guardian and even relic choice, but you need the "sustain boost" to farm better aka. gain level lead.

Solo:
- Depends on your Guardian. Are you playing a Guardian that is capable of clearing a minion wave withouth stepping into it too much, for example by a line-AoE-projectile like Fafnir and his throwing hammer? Go for > Soul Stone! It is safe to do actually, because the faster you clear your wave, the faster you are out of the woods for fighting the enemy Solo Laner and his minions at the same time because he cleared faster then you then you are dead or loose lane sooner or later.
Are you a Guardian that needs to come very close to your opponent and you might end up not even fighting minions but fighting him at the same time, or maybe you want to box very early with minions around, or just want him to struggle with his own clear.... Go for > Mark of the Vanguard! You would be suprised how aggressive you can be in the early stages with this item. Your boxing potential sky rockets instantly.
- Second item depends on your Guardian and opponent. Are you playing a Guardian with leap ability or similar you might be safe to ignore Tier 1 Boots and go for Tier 1 Breastplate of Valour facing a physical opponent. But at the end of the day Tier 1 Boots is the safe pick here and actually help you perform better for you will finish your most important item faster the Shoes of the Magi, if you already buy into it.
- Potions! What potions depends on your Guardian and even relic choice, but you need the "sustain boost" to farm better aka. gain level lead.

Jungle:
- Bumba's Mask! Why not?
- Tier 1 Boots! Quicker rotations, getting Shoes of the Magi online faster. If you dont buy Tier 1 Boots, be very careful for you might loose early fights where cant chase or flee. Assassins are usually faster than Guardians!
- Potions! What potions depends on your Guardian and even relic choice, but you need the "sustain boost" to farm better aka. gain level lead.

The first time you are back in base you should already have enough gold to buy Shoes of the Magi. Do it!

You might think that most Guardians get a very good use out of Shoes of Focus or even Travelers Shoes. The Truth is if you don't buy Shoes of the Magie you will lose about 15-20% Damage Potential. Other boots are nice, but nothing is as valuable as Penetration at this point for you will clear waves faster, clear camps faster (thus farm better overall), have way better boxing potential and most important of all, there are not many other penetration items coming for at least not this early. Not buying Shoes of the Magi means not playing aggressive to me at least.

Even if you buy Void Stone second, you will still want Shoes of the Magi, because most gods in the game have around 30 Magical Defense especially the squishy ones. "Capping" at 30 Pen is exactly what you are going to do! So you will need Shoes of the Magi here even more.

Nothing is as valuable as Shoes of the Magie. In terms of stats progression you will regret it if you don't buy them. the 15-20% Damage boots they provide will help you though out the whole game!

Support:
While Incon and Dukesloth recommend buying Hide of the Urchin at this point, which is definitly a good choice but I am still going for Breastplate of Valour here. You need an item with Physical Protection because you should be like 5-10min into the game and you are expected to start your rotations about now. Not only will you now face your enemy Hunter in Duo lane but also jungle camps, maybe even Gold Fury, propably the physical enemy jungler. Also you need the Mana boost to be able to do more than one teamfight and to me personally the cooldown reduction is extremly valuable.
Most Guardians have very high cooldowns and their abilities are the very key to their performance for they dont have any real basic attack damage and are expected to protect teammates and setup enemies with the CC in their kit. In common levels of ranked matches a teamfight will also last for more than or pretty much exactly 10-12 seconds in my experience. If you build CDR you will have about every ability up twice in those fights, if you don't exactly once. So your performance as a support might even double if you focus on CDR on the long run.
It is about improving what you can do best as a guardian. Your best is your abilites! It is all you are designed for: CC and valuable plays! Micro-Strategy some would call it. CDR improves that the most and even more. Also dealing damage with one ability within 10 seconeds is good. Using it twice also means double the damage!
Breastplate of Valor is the best item to have high CDR and every other stat you need at this point. and also you dont need to stack it, walking out of base with a fresh Breastplate of Valor is exactly as powerfull as walking out with an unstacked Urchin, at least in my opinion!?

Jungle:
You might consider buying Silver Breastplate (Breastplate of Valor Tier 2) and keep it there for the next few minutes, while focusing on Voidstone to deal more damage earlier. But one way or the other this item is key within the first 4 Items you are buying. If you are really confident and ahead you can adjust the buying order but at least the Tier 2 version will help you "tank" jungle camps and it is really cheap for what it offers. The +200 Mana boost will help you farm too.

Solo:
If you are facing a magical opponent you even should adjust the buying order and maybe even skip Breastplate of Valour. Buy the "3rd" Item with Magical Protection first, and buy Breastplate at the 3rd or 4th spot depending on how often are you ganked by a physical enemy or how early do rotations and team fight start in general. Still Breastplate can help you. Minions, Towers and Jungle Camps deal physical damage... You get the concept... If you are facing a physical opponent on solo lane buy it no matter what.

Support:
- Genji's Guard! It improves your cooldown reduction stat by actually a lot and also provides a lot of sustain with its Mp5. As explained above with Breastplate of Valor especially as a support you want to focus on that now. Some might argue that other Magical Protection items for example Bulwark of Hope might be better because of their high HP-Boost and they may be right, but once more: In my opinion CDR is key to those plays you are looking for. I rather hold back before teamfights to prevent poke damage but focus on CDR that gives me the the capability of winning the team fight at the end for I will have used way more tools while fighting... speaking Micro-Strategy!

Jungle:
- Void Stone! The bonus penetration is an extremly high damage boost while you still build some Magical Protection. Also it helps your magical teammates for example the mid laner to deliver more damage!

Solo:
- First of all: Are you still in laning stage of the game? Are you only facing physical opponents so far? Then you might consider adjusting the buying order and skip the magical Protection. Buy it on the 4th Spot and get yourself the HP-Iteam now. If you are already moving into the mid game and find yourself fighting in team fights with magical opponents go:
> Void Stone OR Genji's Guard! It is hard to tell which one is better, it depends on a lot of small factors... I would say whatever you feel like. When in doubt look at your team composition. If you are playing a Guardian Solo and there is another Guardian Support your team overall might benefit more from you buying Void Stone...

Whatever Position you are playing. Support, Jungle, Solo... you should be about 15-25 minutes into the game now and usually all Positions now melt into big team fights. Playing a Guardian you are way better off in teamfights anyways so from now on the Build goes on for all positions and is not longer different by position but by the God you are playing! Improve what your God can do best by buying the right item for him now but:

Now you need HP!
You have enough Protections now and need an HP boost now to deliver the tankiness you actually have. DukeSloth would call it the "effectiveHP" that skyrockets the moment you have a good combination of HP and Protections.

And if possible get some Power now too!
Especially if you are capable of dealing good amounts of damage depending on the god you are playing you should try to build some Power now, for you have the most amount of Penetration you will get now anyays. Building Power here is the best way to improve your own damage output decently.

Utilize yourself with Movement tools!
Most Guardians can make very good use of extra movement speed, for you can chase-setup fleeing enemies or flee from enemies yourself. Sometimes it even helps your teammates, because you are chasing an enemy that chases a teammate? if you are the guy with the highest movement in this 3 person scenario you will be able to save your teammate! It is a choice of Utility and especially focusing on CDR thus our tools overall this will help you perfom better in longer teamfights overall. Don't forget many enemies buy extra Movement themselves, don't fall behind!

All that leaves us with the following Item choices:

- Gem of Isolation: Slowing your opponents, especially if you are using AoE-DoTs like Kephris Sun or already slowing abilities like Ares Chains is strong. The amount of Crowd Control you get out of this is just huge.

- Rod of Asclepius: If you can make any use out of the passive this item is my personal favourite. It has good HP, good Power but most importantly high movement speed boost! I Buy this item as every healing Guardian and even as Xing Tian. It is a boost to his passive and is now able to get more people with his ultimate too!

- Winged Blade: A good choice to counter specific enemy gods such as Nemesis. Consider yourself harder to get stopped with this item. Again it depends on what god you are playing but also what gods the enemies are playing. When in doubt go with Winged Blade!

- Ritual Dagger: The best about buying this item at this point is you get a huge amount of tools. The Bonus movement and HP will help you perform better overall. The passive is great if you use Shell or other time-related Relics. But the best thing is you will be capping the cooldown reduction early. That means you can now completly skip on Spirit Robe, get your 40% CDR online very fast and now you still have two item slots free to buy a bigger amount of late-game item comps such as Sovereignity + Heartward Amulette or Voidstone + Mystical Mail/Celestial Legion Helm.

- If you are absolutly sure that you dont need any form of movement tools you could go with Mail of Renewal. I personally do not recommend it thou, but it leaves you with more options for the last to item slots as said at Ritual Dagger.

- Spirit Robe is one of the most underrated items in the game. At this point is it the perfect choice for you with this build. It gives you the protections you still need without overperforming, it caps your cooldown reduction and if you bought Winged Blade it also caps your Crowd Control Reduction, too. The passive is extremly powerfull. It helps your tankiness by a lot because stuns and similar is what kills you in the late game. There is no point in not buying it but there are still some exceptoions.

Especially if you bought Ritual Dagger or Mail of Renewal on 4th spot, capping CDR already, you will find yourself with some more options now.

You still need some protections to improve your tankiness because at this point enemies will probably have high amounts of penetration by now. Also some bonus HP still is very helpfull now.

If you dont want to buy Spirit Robe I recommend the classic support combo:
- Sovereignity + Heartward Amulette! Classic Support! Why not?
- Mystical Mail + Void Stone (If you didn't already buy Void Stone)! Burn Baby Burn! Helps your wave clear potential by a lot and people underestimate how much damage a 35 damage/sec-DoT actually is! It adds up to 300 Damage easy! I would even call it even with Soul Reaver in terms of Damage Potential, just different!
- Celestial Legion Helm + Void Stone (If you didn't already buy Void Stone)! Anti-Crit all day! And the overall bonus damage you will get out of those two items is definitly worth loosing some HP in the end game. Buy this item to counter enemy team comps with high crit potential like when they have more then one carry buying crit or if there is a crit heavy Warrior or Assassin like Hun Batz!

Well now the game has gone a long way you just have to feel yourself what is needed at this point. I will call the 6th Item the situational slot!

When in doubt an HP item might be your best choice but there are many ways to go. Some ideas:
- Stone of Gaia
- Etheral Staff
- Gem of Isolation
- ...

or Power (and Penetration):
- Spear of Desolation
- Soul Reaver
- Polynomicon
- Rod of Tahuti
- Spear of the Magus
- ...

or Utility (if you can make use out of it!):
- Lotus Crown
- Gem of Isolation
- Magi's Blessing
- ...

or Counter Items (If they counter more than one enemy god!):
- Witch Blade
- Divine Ruin
- ...

No, I don't like Dynasty Plate Helmet. I just don't think it provides a good stat progression overall. That is just me and most people will try to tell me that i suck because this item is the best for an aggressive Guardian Build, what I am going for, but i feel like i should sell it later, but that messes with my progression and that i could overcap on Penetration if if also build into Void Stone and Shoes of the Magi, which are key items to me..

Oh yeah and i know: BBCoding and stuff.. im lazy.. so no! If you are interested enough you will read the text anyways! Eat it!

Pls comment!