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Start with protectors and cloak, and build prophetic as soon as possible so you can have full stacks maybe pre-10 mins. Pay close attention to the timer for getting prophetic stacks, and remember that you need 15 each of magical and physical for the mitigations.
Protector's Mask
Cloak
Prophetic Cloak
Then build archdruids, late game it'll be hitting for like 500, and early game the stats are great. Glad shield next, as it's probably the best item in the game rn, and then oni hunters for the added mitigations. At this point you should be level 15 and have enough defense stats for max lono's stats, so pick that up. Then it's up to you between abyssal for enough stats for the second prophetic stack, cyclopean to deal a surprising amount of damage on autos, or ethereal for damage as well. I personally like having the extra 7.5% mitigations since it makes you extremely difficult to kill.
If your enemy team is all phys or magical this build guide doesn't matter, just build 3-4 defense items of whatever damage type they are and ethereal and cyclopean and it should be ez.
Lono's Mask
Prophetic Cloak
Archdruid's Fury
Gladiator's Shield
Oni Hunter's Garb
Abyssal Stone
Cyclopean Ring
Ethereal Staff
Prioritize 3, it's your main poke tool and it goes down to a 2-3 second cooldown at max cdr. Then do 2, it's your main ranged poke, and isn't bad amplifying aa's either. Then 1, as sometimes you might even get a kill with it. Upgrading the ult doesn't reduce cooldowns or increase the execute threshold so it doesn't matter: You mainly use it to execute tanks anyways.
Y
B
A
X
Tap each threat level to view Ao Kuang’s threats
Tap each synergy level to view Ao Kuang’s synergies
Axe is a little busted rn, so here's a variant build based around it. Archdruid's isn't bad early for the stats, and Glad Shield/shoguns second and third items let you do damage and be tanky. for 4th/5th items, if you want to be tankier, go contagion into oni, and if you want to do more damage with autos build abyssal into cyclopean. Be sure to upgrade into sundering axe as soon as possible, pre 5th item if possible.
Warrior's Axe
Druid Stone
Archdruid's Fury
Gladiator's Shield
Shogun's Kusari
Contagion
Oni Hunter's Garb
Abyssal Stone
Cyclopean Ring
Sundering Axe
Blink is good for surprise executing people, and shell is good for helping your team stay alive. If they have tons of healing consider an ankh. Sprint is a good alternative to blink if you want to upgrade into the rooting one later. There is also a point to be made for the sunder tree due to how hard to kill tanks are right now.
Blink Rune
Magic Shell
Cursed Ankh
Heavenly Wings
Corrupted Blink Rune
Phantom Shell
Blighted Ankh
Entangling Wings
Sundering Spear
Sundering Siphon
As everyone should be aware of at this point, season 10 (at least the beginning of it) is a tank meta, and hunters, mages, and damage assassins are having a rough time (mostly). There are a few characters that are really good in this kind of meta (mostly execute gods), and this will be my guide on what in my opinion is one of the better gods in the current state of the game.
Ao was a recipient of non-conquest buffs that decrease his damage taken by 5%, and also decrease his ultimate and non-ultimate cooldowns by 10% in modes that are not conquest (like arena). This, in addition to the fact that he has an execute, is hyper mobile and can escape for pretty much free with his 1, and has a pretty good poke on a sub 3 second cooldown, makes him a great choice of character at the moment.
Keep in mind this is an Arena guide: feel free to use it/try it out in slash, but I do not recommend attempting to use it in conquest, as I do not play that mode, and I don't think it's a great idea to try using it in joust either, as cc matters way too much there. That being said, here's the guide.
Disclaimer: this guide assumes you've already played the game a decent amount, and already understand how all abilities of all gods work, and understand the concepts involved in teamfights such as zoning.
The reasoning behind the build is to be able to zone out the backline long enough for your backline to get their frontline low enough for you to execute them. As everyone is tanky, kills are worth more since they're harder to get. The build is above.
Early game, just pay attention to building prophetic stacks: treat it as a sort of minigame. Your 1 is a free escape in many situations, so you can feel free to overextend a little to get your stacks. It's probably better to just play it slow since you become more and more unkillable as the game goes on, so try not to int early. Feel free to pick up execute kills if and when their tanks overextend.
Once you've completed your minigame of collecting all the prophetic stacks, or once you have glad shield, whichever comes first, just start poking their tanks with 3 on cooldown. They won't want to stay too long since you have a percent health based execute, thus exposing their backline to more danger.
You can probably outbox most full damage characters once you have full lonos, so feel free to just poke everyone with your 3 and 2, and prioritize executing tanks.
At this point you're tanky enough to be extremely patient with the execute, so wait until you know their beads, cc cleanse abilities, and cc immune ults are down.
Just being in their tanks faces is enough for them to want to back away, so you have presence based peel you can use to save your backline if they're getting dived too much.
In conclusion, maybe this will help make games more playable into the most oppressive tank meta we've ever seen.
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