Neith: Carry Softly, but shoot a Big Arrow!

February 17th: Neith Guide published.
March 15th: Updated as of Aphrodite Patch (3/13/2013), added the Matchups section.

Hello. I am Sunfall, and this is the second guide I have submitted to SmiteFire (my first one being a guide on Jungle Arachne, back when SMITE still had a viable jungle). Recently, I have taken an interest in the newest goddess to be released in SMITE, Neith. There are a lot of things I like about her as a playable god, namely I find her kit and playstyle to be very unique compared to the other ranged carries, and she's also got a very perky personality that I like :P

When I started using Neith, I'll be honest, I was pretty bad, though a lot of that had to do with me being more of a melee player ( Arachne is still one of my favorite picks, along with Sobek and Thor) and not being used to playing with a ranged fighter. But after some time, I got used to it, and I was eventually carrying my teams in pubs and often going well into the positive range more often now.

As for Neith's role in SMITE, I'd like to say she performs the role of a ranged "soft carry". When I say that, I mean she does have carrying potential if she's fed, but she usually won't be roflstomping teams left and right like Xbalanque or He Bo, simply due to the nature of her stats and kit. She has no steroid to boost her basic attacks, and her attack speed and damage bases are already lower compared to the other ranged carries. Much like Thor (another soft carry), her primary source of damage is through skills more than basic attacks, and makes up for her weaker damage with greater utility.

Anyways, let's take a look at Neith's Pros and Cons.
PROS
+Good ranged damage with both basic attacks and skills.
+Good lane sustain with Unravel.
+ Broken Weaves provide good zoning during the laning phase, and can serve as psuedowards late game.
+Backflip has the best movement range of any dash in the game.
+Ultimate has global range, and is great for setting up kills in other lanes or picking off runners.
+Has the most rage-inducing taunts in the game :D

CONS
-Squishy. You will die fast if your enemies get close enough to hurt you. Even with defensive items, you still won't last long against a commited gank.
-Very mana-hungry. Since abilities are a major source of damage for Neith, you will need to invest in items like Transcendence to maintain ability spam and DPS.
-No offensive steroids, so basic attack potential is lower compared to other ranged carries.
-Ultimate is not very useful in the heat of a teamfight.

Disclaimer: For the intents and purposes of this guide, I will only be detailing a Conquest game type. The strategies listed throughout this guide may or may not have any relevance to the other game types.

One more thing. I refuse to use the term "Auto Attack" in my guide, for the sake of logic. See, Auto attack is lingo borrowed from DotA, LoL, and other strategy games where basically, the units/heroes used their normal hits automatically just by being ordered to attack someone. In SMITE, it's different: you don't automatically attack like that. Rather, you have control over your attack swings and shots. For basic attacks to be considered auto attacks in SMITE, they would have to follow the same "fire and forget" nature that they do in those other games, but they don't, therefore I refuse to use that term.

With that out of the way, lets move onto the guide.

Here's a rundown of the abilities.

Useful Abilities

Crowd Control is one of your worst enemies. With enough enemy focus, a little CC can get you killed in a hurry, since your defenses are pretty bad. Having this around helps you avoid dying to stuff like that.

Somewhat more situational, but with more and more gods coming out that using strong, telegraphed moves, this ability has become much more useful than ever. Did Freya just fly into the air in hopes of turning the tables and finishing you off? Aegis will nullify those shots. Is another Neith planning to finish you off with her World Weaver? Aegis will save your life. Basically, you can survive a lot of high-damage ultimates and other attacks by having this around at the right time.

sprintLets say Backflip on it's own isn't enough to get you away from those overly vengeful types. Maybe a Bakasura threw up on you out of nowhere and is preparing to chow down on you while you're struggling from his slow. Sprint lets you break out of stuff like that. It's also good for chasing the enemy as well if you want to secure kills without wasting World Weaver.



Other Good Abilities

If you need slowing to keep your enemies from escaping you or your team, this can help immensely. Though it's probably better off on someone else like a tank...

Basically a shorter, team-based version of Sprint. It's more for teamfighting compared to Sprint, but still worth considering all the same.

Abilities You Shouldn't Get

meditationSince you should be building Transcendence and buying Mana Potions until it is completed, this ability is completely pointless to have.

While it now affects all nearby allies as well, Neith just isn't someone who should be wasting her ability slots on this.

With the current revamps to the jungle, this ability just isn't worth taking anymore. It's quite a shame, because Neith could've had some very good jungling potential before with her Backflip combos.

As I have already mentioned earlier, Neith is a physical ranged who is heavily based around using her abilities . This means building her requires a very different approach compared to most ranged carries. I'll explain my reasonings for these item choices at the end.

Much like my older Arachne guide, I will list core items, and branch off into other options.

Core Items
These are core items that should almost always been present in your build. They mainly focus on damage output.

This is pretty much a staple of physical builds now, especially since it now provides you with much-needed physical penetration at Rank 3, which is the main draw of these boots.

Get this as soon as you've completed your boots. Because Neith is so mana-hungry, you'll want to have plenty of mana to throw around. This alone will give you all the mana you need, so you can spam those awesome abilities all day long. But what makes this even better is that once fully stacked and at LV20, it provides a very hefty boost in physical damage as well!

The big reason you're taking this item over The Executioner is because of World Weaver. With this, your ultimate is always penetrating 33% of your opponent's armor on top of the penetration Warrior Tabi gives you, thus improving your ability to secure kills, especially on tanks who would otherwise survive them even at low HP.

Useful Items
Other items that can usually be fit into most builds.

Since Neith has good survivability, this can actually be rushed as a first item instead of a Warrior Tabi. Since you will also be building Transcendence, you should be getting stacks on this anyways, assuming you aren't getting yourself killed a bunch by coordinated ganks or something...

This item seems to get a lot of hate, but I find it works well for Neith. 50 physical damage is quite good, and the passive isn't too shabby either, granting you an extra 30% damage after each ability cast, which you are going to be using a lot of. 30% more of your already-high damage is quite a lot when it can occur every two seconds if you're spammy. More importantly, there's cooldown reduction, which help your skills refresh faster.

I usually build this later on when my skills are maxing out and I need to improve my basic attacks to keep building up damage. This provides you the attack speed that you're missing, and that passive combined with your already-high damage build means you will often crit some pretty good numbers!

This is best built after Rage. This is yet another high damage item, but the reason you build this after Rage is because it's supposed to supplement your basic attacks by making the already-frequent crits stronger. Without Rage, your attack speed isn't fast enough to really burst someone down with those boosted criticals (nor will you get them as often).

A good alternative to Hydra's Lament if you prefer having more cooldown reduction over increased damage. Also cheaper too. Both are fine options, though you might not want both of them!

Situational Items
Only build these if you have to.

This has potential if you're up against tanky or HP-stacking opponents. It gives your basic attacks some extra punch anyways you wouldn't otherwise have, but against the squishies, there are better items to pick.

I don't like this item. I honestly feel that if you're building this, you're not using Neith's kit to it's fullest potential. That said, only build this if you are really having issues keeping your enemies within reach.
(Yes, I literally copypasted this from my Arachne guide, same principle applies here)

Witch StoneIt's more for bruisers really, but that extra armor and passive might just save your life against other physical fighters.



With the except of Warrior Tabi, Heartseeker, and Transcendence, you can go about the rest of the build in whatever order works best. For example, Titan's Bane could work better as a 3rd if you're dealing with armor-stacking tanks, but if that isn't an issue, picking up Rage might work out better.

Wait a minute, something's missing here...
Where's the Lifesteal?!: I'm going to be frank: lifesteal is a rather moot point on Neith, simply because she can already heal herself using Unravel. At Rank 1, Unravel can heal a little over 120 HP if you use it on minions near a Broken Weave, and by Rank 5, it restores 480 HP minimum (It is NOT hard to find three creeps)! This is why I don't recommend building Devourer's Gloves: you sacrifice an item slot for a stat that is made redundant by an ability. That gold you're spending on lifesteal could be put to better use increasing her mana pool with Transcendence, which also provide much more damage too!

With the recent nerf to her heal though, it might not be a bad idea to pick up Death's Toll or Vampiric Shroud as a starter item to help your sustain. The latter might seem like a counterintuitive choice, being a magical power item, but it heals both HP and MP any time you last-hit minion, which you should be doing anyways to maximize your farming.

Why so few Attack Speed items?!: There are two things you should know about Neith's kit. One of those being that all of her abilities inflict damage with a nice 80% physical power scaling (120% for World Weaver), and the other being that she has no attack steroids. Every other ranged carry except for Neith has some kind of steroid that enhances basic attacks. Not only that, but her base attack stats are also slightly lower compared to the other ranged carries. This means it is much more practical to build Neith purely for damage with her abilities, because if you try to go down the usual Damage+Attack Speed route most carries do, you're really just playing an inferior god. If you really want to play Neith like that, I suggest you find another god like Xbalanque or Anhur, because thanks to those steroids, they are much better basic attackers than Neith could ever become.

I only recommend having some attack speed with [Rage] or [Qin's Blades] for the sake of being able to do SOMETHING between your ability cooldowns. It should not be the primary focus of your build.

What about Potions?
When starting off, only buy Mana Potions in addition to your initial item. Why only mana pots? The main answer is because of your Unravel. When used on minion waves during the laning phase, will return a good chunk of your health back, up to 90HP at Rank 1, and even more if you target a Broken Weave. Buying mana pots means you can use your abilities more often during laning. Meaning, you can use that Unravel ability more frequently to keep sustaining your HP in case of enemy pokes.

In addition, you also have Backflip, which is probably one of the best escapes in the game simply due to how much distance it covers. So if your opponent tries to initiate on you, you can jump away from whatever they might throw at you.

There are a few other reasons for the mana potions as well. Buying mana pots sparing you the trouble of wasting an ability slot on [Meditation]. Another reason is because you are a ranged fighter, and you shouldn't be putting yourself in a position where you'd be taking a lot of damage in the first place.

Okay, so let's quickly review what we know about Neith.

-She is a ranged physical carry, but her basic attack potential are worse compared to other ranged carries.
-All of her 1-3 skills inflict damage with an added +80% physical power contribution.
-She has a snare.
-She has the best dash in the game.
-Said dash deploys a trap you can use against your enemies.
-She can heal off of enemy minions and gods alike.
-Her ultimate can be used to snipe from anywhere in the map.
-Your item build is focused on maximizing physical power, building a mana pool to spam your skills, and having raw penetration to make said skill hurt.

Spirit Arrow

Unravel

Broken Weave

Transcendence

Rage

Rage

Deathbringer

Hydra's Lament

Hydra's Lament

Side Lanes
For the most part, laning is simple practices: know your enemy's capabilities, know their zoning, know your positioning, know when to push and retreat, etc.. I'm not going over this basic knowledge, as it can be applied to pretty much any god in the game. I'm going to be more specific to Neith here.

Ideally, you will start with a Rank 2 Warrior Tabi or Heartseeker if you're feeling more confident in your skill, then buy as many Mana Potions as you can. The mana pots will allow you to sustain and use your abilities with greater frequency, and you should have a couple around at all times up until the late game, just so that you aren't caught without any mana. Trust me, people don't like it when you can't snipe that nearly-dead runner because you happened to be OOM.

With a Broken Weave and three skills ready, you can actually burst someone down pretty quickly if you can get them to stand near your weave and unload your 1+2 skills, and use 3 as a finishing move. With the help of your lanemate, you should be able to secure a kill quite easily if you coordinate it correctly. This strategy usually works best when the enemy is pushing against you and thus, most likely to stand near your weaves.

But what if you're pushing the enemy instead? Well it's no biggie. Should anyone ever come to gank you, you've got Backflip to get you out of any dangerous situations, and even if the enemy is tower hugging, you can still keep poking them with any one of your skills.

Once you reach Level 5, you'll have World Weaver. Before using it, take a quick look around and check your other lanes. If you see an overextended enemy mid or a sidelaner that's missing some health, you may want to call a gank to inform you teammates that you are about to use your ultimate. This will allow them to prepare for your setup. Once your arrow hits the target, assuming it wasn't blocked or nullified by abilities, your allies should be able to get a kill thanks to your help.

Also keep an eye out for low-HP runners. If they're only at like two bars of health, [World Weaver] should finish them off. If neither of these are the case, you should probably use it in your lane for an easy stun or save it for later. You don't have to always use it when it's up.

Middle Lane
Neith can be played as a mid, but you will probably want to buy just a Rank 1 of Tabi/Heartseeker so you can have more potions to sustain yourself, as sustain and push power are far more important in mid if you cannot score kills on your opponent.

Neith's greatest strength in mid is that she is nearly un-gankable thanks to her Backflip. If you have any decent map awareness, you shouldn't die from a gank, as you can just jump away from anything that could possibly harm you. The other thing Neith has going for her is her skills have decent push power as well, and she can sustain off of Unravel.

The biggest problem with Neith mid is she's mana-hungry, and that is a problem when you're faced against the likes of Ra and Ao Kuang, who have more than enough mana to drive you under your tower with little effort if you don't use your own skills to push back. If the enemy picks up Meditation, don't expect them to be leaving mid anytime soon, unless you can cripple them enough that they can't stay.

The way you will want to be fighting most mids is by using the Broken Weave created by your Backflip. With it, your Spirit Arrow can do a lot of AoE damage to minions and potentially snare the enemy mid if you can bait him into it. From there, you can just start shooting basic attacks at your enemy, and when the enemy minions aggro onto you, just use Unravel to damage them and heal yourself. If you can do enough damage after your snare, you may be able to score a kill!

If you can last until Level 5, you can easily gain the upper hand by using World Weaver to do some extra damage and stun your opponent. Just be sure to do it after your enemy has blown his ultimate: otherwise you'll be an easy shot for Searing Pain or Spirit's Tempest while you're in that sniping stance!

Regardless of which lane you started with, you will inevitably start roaming the map, primarily so you can look for some farm (you want to build up the Transcendence stacks anyways) and potential ganks. Lets begin with farming: Neith can clear a minion wave pretty quickly by the midgame with just two of her skills: Backflip and Spirit Arrow. The same combo is also very strong against the jungle creeps, particularly the cyclops with the buffs. You should have no difficulty building up your stacks so long as your enemies don't have control over most of the map. All of the buffs are good for Neith, so feel free to take your pick.

Now for ganks: Neith's Spirit Arrow and World Weaver are very strong ganking tools, so it will usually be your goal to set up ganks for your teammates. Like with most gods, ganking is best done from behind, though with Neith, you can take this one step further by using Broken Weaves. By now, there should probably be several Weaves scattered throughout the map. Most of them will probably be in the lanes, since that's where players usually die. So either use those, or set up your own with Backflip, and just wait for your teammates and enemies to engage at that spot. When they do, you can fire off a Spirit Arrow or a World Weaver into it to inflict AoE crowd control, then close in for the kill with your teammates.

Alternatively, you can just run in and try to land a Spirit Arrow without Broken Weave. It can still work, and you can even shoot it through walls, but the skillshot is trickier to land and not as damaging as the AoE. It's basically the same strategy as Mummify ganking with Anubis, but with less burst.

When you get to this stage of the game, you should be at or close to Level 20, and have most of your items built. If you followed my item build, you should have a build that makes your skills hurt a lot while still providing decent basic attacks to sting your enemies. It is during this stage of the game that you will want to stay near your allies in order to overwhelm the enemy team.

So what can Neith do in a teamfight? Quite a bit actually. Unlike most carries, Neith actually provides very good utility through her Spirit Arrow. Even without a Broken Weave landing one is quite easy when the enemies are constantly milling about in the same place, and you usually only need to snare one opponent to get the ball rolling. A snared opponent can easily be hit by other ranged attacks like Rain Fire, Celestial Beam, Tornadoes, you name it, it'll hit for sure.

Other allies with stunning/immobilizing CC such as Ymir, Anubis, and Thor are very useful since they make it much easier to land your basic attacks, and you can even chain-CC with your own skills as well. This chain-CCing makes Neith that much more dangerous in the teamfights. Speaking of allies, Odin is surprisingly beneficial for Neith compared to other physical carries since your skills can go through his Ring of Spears, not to mention he provides you with a steroid to make your basic attacks much more useful!

Since Neith is a carry who is also quite frail, do keep in mind that your enemies will most likely be setting their focus towards you. Normally, this shouldn't be a problem as you are a ranged fighter with a strong escape and no need to be so close to the enemies, but when there are assassins like Loki prowling around or Sun Wukong, you should be on your guard because you'll probably be their main target. Thus, it is always wise to stay near your allies and keep your Backflip ready during the teamfight phase to quickly escape from the assassins while your team punishes their failed attempt.

You can easily punish those assassins with your snares after they've exposed themselves. With your damage on top of your team's focus, they will usually die in seconds after a snare if they don't have any kind of movement skill.

Finally, don't forget about using the minion waves! You can heal yourself off of them through Unravel if you ever need some recovery, and it's generally a very safe move most of the time too.

This is a list of some notable opponents you may face, and how you might want to deal with them. Some opponents, particularly those with the new Cripple debuff, may prove troublesome for you should be facing off against them

The dragon isn't really a threat to you in a fight, but he has the best push in the game and can do so from a very safe distance. There are particular locations and timings that Ao Kuang will position his Tornadoes so as to catch your entire minion wave in them. Stay out of those spots and you won't get hurt by him--if he places the tornado anywhere else, it weakens his push and wastes his mana. After the tornado, try to chip in some damage on him with your own skills. If you can harass him enough, he won't be able to keep pushing against your lane.

Try not to draw out a lane against Ao Kuang. Once he's around LV9, he can clear your minion waves with a single tornado, save for the cyclops which he will use Squall on. At this point, you will never be able to take his tower from him, and you will have to draw him out from it somehow.

She has a very strong early game, but you can deny her much of that thanks to your ranged and AoE skills. Pop the eggs whenever possible to prevent her from pushing your lane, and just keep your distance so she won't hurt you. She's a threat only when she has her ultimate to pull you. Don't ever let her pull you with this, because she can follow up with Drain Life to deprive you of your skills, and go through most, if not all of your HP (you probably will die if she pulls you in a duo lane). Without that (or a jungle ambush), she is harmless, and you can shoot her from a safe distance for an easy kill.

Ever since his Shackles gained Cripple, he's become much more of a threat than he used to be, now that he can deprive other gods of their escape mechanisms. That aside pick up beads and/or aegis if Ares is on the enemy team! If he pulls you with his ultimate with anyone around to help him inflict damage, you will die!

If you can avoid those two things (hint: don't stand still), he's not that scary. His damage sucks without those. Just ignore him and go after his lanemate, he's nothing without someone else to do the damage for him if he can't hit you with Shackles.

This guy is your worst nightmare when playing as Neith. If he catches you in a Whirlpool, you will be unable to use your Back Flip to escape until you get yourself out of the water: meanwhile the suction effect makes it easier for him to land his other skills and Trident-boosted attacks. Much like Ao Kuang though, if he's using Whirlpool to push minions, he will be placing it in certain spots, so use that to your advantage. Just know that unlike the dragon, this guy actually can (and will) kill you with the whirlpools if he doesn't need them to push your lane, and that is when he will get aggressive. When in doubt, get Aegis Amulet to block his ultimate when it's up--it can take out a LOT of your health otherwise.

The best solution is really to not be laning against Poseidon with Neith at all. If he's in your lane ask for a switch! It is much better than dying repeatedly from him blocking your escapes!

This guy is kind of tricky in the lane: he has more sustain and push than you do, on top of more mana to throw around too. However, all of his skills are quite easy to avoid, and should he ever try to actually get close to you, you can Back Flip away from him. His other flaw is his lack of an escape move, meaning if you can snare him with Spirit Arrow, he's a sitting duck.

People seem to get this idea that Neith is the most broken carry in SMITE, yet the reality is, she has difficulty facing other the carries. Xbalanque is probably the most troublesome one you will face, primarily because he outdamages you easily. Branching Bola is the thing to watch out for here: it boosts his physical power, while also allowing his basic attacks to ricochet off minions, possibly hitting you if you're behind them.

Basically, he has good zoning against squishy gods like Neith. So what can you do? Use your zoning against him. Try to get him near your Broken Weave so you can stun him for nice damage whenever he starts to play aggressively. Speaking of aggression, Backflip away when he shoots the darts, because he is most likely going follow up with the Rising Jaguar. Without that move, he won't hurt you too much early on. It's the later game when Xbalanque becomes a monster, as his basic attacks are stupidly powerful at that stage. Don't give him that late game, and don't try to duel him then. You won't win if he's any good.

Not really much of a threat early on, he shouldn't ever be landing his Freezing Breath on you if you know to keep your distance from him. You can even Back Flip over his wall too, so he really shouldn't be killing you during laning, unless he's got someone like Thor with him or something...

So why is Ymir even here if he's such a joke in the lane to Neith? Roaming. Most Ymirs will roam the map when they're decently leveled and their lane doesn't need them around to hold it. They love sneaking up on unsuspecting players to gank them with the stun breath. Since crowd control is your worst enemy, you should always be alert whenever the enemy Ymir goes missing. If you can juke his stun, he has no hope of ever catching you, and you can just shoot him back in response.

Don't stand near friendly minion or gods when facing Zeus. He can bounce his Chain Lightning off of either to build up charges on you, which he can detonate for more damage. As he ranks it up, it does more bounces, and I've seen people get instagibbed by a Zeus bouncing a bolt off of two gods who happened to be standing near each other, built up three charges each, and lost tons of HP in a matter of seconds.

He can inflict a lot of damage, but he has no crowd control (just jump out of his ultimate) and his Aegis Shield won't protect him from your Spirit Arrow's snare. Since he's frail, catching him in one should make him an easy kill. The tricky part is getting near him, since Zeus can fight from a very safe distance.

That's pretty much it for my Neith guide. Since she is a new god as of this writing, I'm pretty certain I've only scratched the surface in terms of how you can use her. On the other hand, I do feel that at this point, some idea of what to do with her is better than nothing. I do intend to continue using Neith and continue experimenting with different builds and theories, so who knows, maybe I will come across something even better?

Thank you for taking the time to read my detailed guide on Neith, Weaver of Fate.