Sobek: The Troll of the Nile

April 7th: Sobek Guide published.

Hello, I am Sunfall, and for this SMITEFire guide, I will be covering a god that doesn't seem to get too much attention around here. That god is none other than Sobek, the God of the Nile!

Wait, what do you mean I mislabeled the title? Oh no, that is no typo. Allow me to continue...

Sobek was one of the initial 18 gods that has been around since the begining of Closed Beta. The role he plays is that of a tank, meaning he is supposed to be in the forefront of a teamfight, getting in the way of his enemies in order to safeguard his team. What sets him apart from other tanks, however, is that Sobek is a troll.

Just look at this guy. He carries around this big axe, and if you're new to SMITE, you might be thinking "Oh, he's gotta do lots of physical damage!" right? WRONG! He does magical damage with all of his skills! And speaking of skills, he has the most trollish kit of any tank in the game. Sure, Ymir can stun people who get too close to him and wall you off if you run into the jungle, but those pale in comparison to what Sobek can do in the lane. He can grab you and chuck you behind him for his carry to pick off if you're foolish enough to leave an open space between you and him. And if you think that's annoying, he can swing his tail to knock you around and throw you out of position. Trying to get away? He'll just throw you back to his team. Did he leave himself open? Nah, he'll just sweep everyone away from him and be fine. And that's all just from two skills, and I've barely scraped the surface of his potential!

Of course, it takes considerable skill and practice with Sobek in order to achieve the levels of trollishness I speak of. In fact, a bad Sobek could very well be a troll to your own team! Needless to say, he's not a perfect god, he's got his ups and downs. So lets take a look at those.

PROS
+Naturally tanky stats and a passive to compliment it.
+Good at inititating fights.
+ Sickening Strike has a built-in healing debuff and provides decent sustain.
+Zones very well with Charge Prey, and can potentially score early kills.
+Has a lot of skills that can mess with the enemy's position.
+Skills can be used in a variety of ways.

CONS
-Low mana + expensive skills = cannot afford to spam skills early on.
-Low damage ouput unless you stack cooldown reduction. Even then, you really shouldn't fight battles alone, you're a tank, not a DPS god.
-Cannot farm minions very well.
- Charge Prey and Tail Whip can potentially backfire or help enemies if used incorrectly.
-Ultimate is tricky to use correctly.

Lets move on to the actual guide!

Here's a rundown of the abilities.

Useful Abilities
How do you make the most trollish tank even more of a troll? Give him the ability to become invulnerable for 1.5 seconds every once in a while! This ability causes so much rage when used properly. That short space of time could be all it takes for your teammate to turn the fight around because your enemies wasted time focusing on you instead. It also lets you negate those one-shot ultimates with ease to boot.

These are just so much fun... and so useful too! Set one in a not-so-obvious location, like a jungle camp, and whenever you or a teammate needs to quickly return to the lane or show up for a gank, they can enter the teleporter back at the base to jump right to your portal. It takes some coordination, but if you can do that, you'll realize just how amazing this ability is.

Normally, this is something you should get for junglers, but Sobek is an exception. His farming sucks, so this helps him a lot in that regard. On top of that, he can use this ability to instantly clear minions out of his way for a Charge Prey that most people won't even see coming! Lastly, it helps for securing the Fire Giant and Gold Fury kills.

Other Good Abilities

sprintAs a tank, this ability is far less useful than it is on most other gods, simply because you neither do a lot of damage or die very fast. It still has some uses, but I often take other abilities over this.

To be honest, crowd control shouldn't bother you much you've built Reinforced Boots or Hide of the Leviathan. Sometimes though, it gets out of hand, and then there's Ares... always have beads ready for him.

If nobody else on your team has this, feel free to take it. A lengthy area slow is always nice for your team to have at it's disposal.

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

Early on, this is actually not a bad ability. Lets say you flung someone with Charge Prey. If you immediately activate this afterwards, your ally can quickly burst down your victim and get first blood! Later on, it sort of falls off, though the sudden damage boots you can provide your ally can turn fights around.

Abilities You Shouldn't Get

meditationDon't get this, please. I know Sobek's got early mana problems, but that's what Mana Potions are for. If you're still struggling to keep your mana up later on, consider buying MP5 items like Stone of Gaia and Wall of Absolution.

As a tank, Sobek should typically focus on items that will boost his defensive stats. This means you want mostly items with Physical Protection, Magical Protection, and Health.

Unlike my other guides, I'm splitting the core items into two groups. You can mix and match them if you like a bit of both styles.

Finally, note that depending on the circumstances, priority can be changed. For example, if magic damage is a bigger issue early on than physical damage, you might want to consider rushing a magical protection item first before going physical.

Tanking Core Items
These items will allow you to be a very effective tank that can fearlessly initiate fights for your team.

Reinforced BootsThese are pretty much the boots of choice for a defensive Sobek. It provides some of both protections, but more importantly, they allow reduce the duration of crowd control on you, allowing you to handle things like stuns and slows better.

This item just compliments Sobek very well. Since Blessing of the Nile builds up your protections each time you hit something, and this item's passive builds up physical protection each time you get hit, the two effects combine to make you exceptionally sturdy against physical attacks. Throw in the MP5 and the magic damage this item comes with, and you've pretty much got a core tanking item.

This item gets overlooked by newer players. Yes, on it's own, it's pretty damn expensive for seemingly underwhelming defensive stats. It's true power, however, lies in the aura. It stacks with the initial stats this item provides, already making up for the costs. Not only that, but since it applies to your nearby teammates, it allows them to survive a bit longer in teamfights as well! 20 extra physical and magical protection can easily make the difference between surviving a few more hits, especially when raw penetration could otherwise reduce most squishies' base protections to zero!

This is just such an amazing defensive item. Provides lots of health, plenty of magic protection, and a passive that can potentially save your skin in a hairy situation.

Not so much a tanking item, but by the late game, you'll get to the point where stacking more protection is pointless when things like Titan's Bane and Obsidian Shard start showing up on everyone. From this point on, stacking HP and trying to get some damage out of it will serve you better. This item succeeds in doing both of these things very well, not only by providing a sizeable amount of health, but also converting that health in magic power as well!

Trolling Core Items
If you prefer to be disruptive as all hell, and just make people want to cringe at the sight of you, these are the items for you. They sacrifice some of their defensive potential for the other effects.

These are a starting option if you favor more movement speed and faster cooldowns over the early protections. With these, nobody will be able to escape you (well, unless they built these too or that darned Fatalis!), and your skills will be available more frequently.

You pretty much need this if you're running Boots of Celerity. It gives you some protections to at least be decently tanky in the laning phase. While it isn't going to save you from a heavy focus, the passive does make it very strong against gods that rely on damage-over-time (DoT), namely Ares, and Arachne.

Lets say want to be really disruptive and just be a complete troll to your enemies. Combined with the Boots of Celerity, you'll be able to fling and spin your enemies left and right like the hulking green, master troll that you are, and the extra mana will make sure that won't be stopping anytime too soon.

Magi's BlessingAnother item that people seem to ignore because it appears to cost more compared to seemingly more powerful alternatives. The passive alone is pretty good; it nullifies ANY one ability completely, even an ultimate (though most players will never use on to initiate). That alone makes it a strong defensive item

This item gets a bad reputation for some reason. Maybe it's because so many gods already have slows that it becomes a moot point, but Sobek doesn't have any slows, so this is actually a decent option on him if you want to punish anyone who dares to attack you. The defensive stats aren't too shabby for the cost either.

Other Items
Items that fall into the category of being filler or situational, but can still be useful.

Mystical MarkOne of Sobek's biggest flaws lies in his inability to farm effectively. Building this item helps immensely with allowing him to clear minion waves, in addition to adding on some extra damage just for standing near your enemies! The extra health and physical protection are also quite good too.

This is what you build when the enemy team has a lot of physical damage, or when a physical god is carrying them. This will not only give you a lot of physical protection and health to withstand their attacks, but also reflect some of their damage back at them!

A cheaper alternative to the Bulwark of Hope. It provides more magical protection, even at early ranks, so it's a better item for soaking up purely magical damage. The passive regens are quite nice to have, as they reduce downtime and can spare you the trouble of recalling back to base.

This should only be built if you went for Boots of Celerity. It gives you that crowd control reduction that you missed out on, along with a nice mix of defensive stats.

I see this item getting built a lot, often for the wrong reasons. You do not build this to make yourself stronger, you build this to make your other mages stronger. If you don't have good mages on your team and you're just using this item to make yourself stronger, you probably don't understand your role very well.

Warlock's SashIf you can actually manage to find the time to farm up all 100 stacks, this item is pretty good. Sadly, Sobek is such an awful farmer, and your pressence will often be required in the teamfights, so building up all of those stacks is very difficult most of the time.

A weird little item you might consider building in the lategame to make it harder for your enemies to get away from you, on top of some extra health and power to make you a bit more of a threat. For the most part, Ethereal Staff is much better in these regards.

Start off with the boots of your choice, and take some Healing Potions and Mana Potions as well before you step out of the base. Before the game starts, your team will probably want you to help them tank one of the jungle camps (which spawn 10 seconds after the first minion wave). Do this, the experience is important early on, and the buff can really help your teammate too.

Hopefully before the game started, you decided who you were going to lane with, so you can quickly run to the nearest lane with that player. Sobek works pretty well with most gods, unless they are also tanks or support gods. This means pairing up Sobek with Guan Yu or Aphrodite is a very bad idea, since they will not put out enough damage to really kill their opponents, even if the composition does prove to be very tough to kill.

Now for the actual laning. For the most part, you want to try to stay somewhere in front, close to the melee minions, whacking them so you can build up your passive. You want to do this so that just in case the enemy tries to get aggressive, you will be more resistant to their pokes and your teammate can retalliate against them after they draw your minion aggro. If you do sustain some damage, you can use Sickening Strike on a minion wave or even an enemy god to heal off some of it.

You'll be picking up Charge Prey once you hit Level 2. Before I go any further, let me just say right now, do not spam this skill! I see a lot of inexperienced Sobek players who feel like it is their sworn duty to just charge, charge, charge at the enemies, regardless of the situation, just to see if they can pick up the opposing god a bunch and feed his carry a ton of kills. This is not how you should be using the skill. When you do this all the time, it makes you predictable, and your opponents will simply position themselves to always dodge it or worse, punish you for it. Charging puts you in a vulnerable place as well, and it almost always results in drawing minion aggro to yourself as well, so you should only use Charge Prey if it will count.

That said, you should only use Charge Prey as zoning tool. Keep an eye on your enemies and their minions. If you spot them going out of position, and your side has more minions than they do, go for it!

Finally, lets assume you did catch someone. Your lanemate should be able to set up on your victim if he was paying any attention. Meanwhile, you should do your best to try and bodyblock your victim as he attempts to run away from your lanemate. If you have Tail Whip, you should always use it as a follow-up to a successful Charge Prey, as you can push your victim even further back into your side of the lane! If everything goes well, you or your lanemate will score a kill!

Other than that, just play passive. Use Sickening Strike to heal a bit once in a while, and use Tail Whip to shake off aggressive enemies. Most importantly, keep an eye on your mana. You don't have a lot of it, so only use skills when they will count. You do not want your lanemate to get mad that you didn't save him just because you ran out of mana at a bad time.

After a while, usually when the lanes are being pushed into the towers and lanes are being frozen, this is usually when players start to roam. This is usually what signifies the start of the midgame. What you should do depends on a few factors. Are any towers in danger of being destroyed? If so, you should quickly run to that tower and fend off whoever is attacking it. Are you underleveled? Find an empty lane to farm for a bit.

If the towers aren't in any danger and you're at a good level, start looking to help your teammates. Sobek is a very good ganker thanks to his skills allowing him to completely screw up the enemy's positioning. For example, lets say you're ganking a Ra mid. You can just run into him from behind, smack him with a Tail Whip, and use Charge Prey to pull him back as he runs past you (or tries to take a jungle escape route). If that still doesn't do it, you can use Lurking In The Waters to slow him down and finish him with a heavy damage burst, assuming he has no Aegis Amulet to save him. Even then, he's sitting still for your mid to finish the job once it wears off. Who by the way, should've been helping you kill him this whole time.

But what if your team isn't ready to go on the offensive? Well, that's not a problem, because Sobek can play defense very well--he is a tank, after all! If the enemy is standing close to your tower, you can throw them under it with Charge Prey, so unless you're outnumbered three to one or something, you can easily hold a tower on your own, so long as you've got mana to spare.

Finally, don't be afraid to roam solo. If an enemy encounters you, you should be more than tanky enough to survive and escape. In fact, you want them to chase you, as you should be able to last long enough to lead them into a trap!

This is where Sobek really shows off his trollish side. The amount of disruption he causes in teamfights by himself, combined with your tankyness, will make you very irritating for your opponents.

When it comes to teamfights, there are usually two ways a tank like yourself can approach them.

The most obvious is to just be in the forefront

Tail Whip

Charge Prey

Sickening Strike

Lurking In The Waters

The other way to approach a teamfight is by surprise.

The objectives. Towers, Phoenixes, and the Minotaur..

Lastly, don't be afraid to die.

That's pretty much everything I can say. There is more I could write up, but it would be very difficult to explain every little trick to playing Sobek, as a lot of learning how to play Sobek largely boils down to just experience. Item builds and skill orders can only go so far, and the difference between a decent Sobek player and a great one is practically night and day. Using him to his full potential requires a lot of practice, planning, and a willingness to experiment on your own... but once you reach that potential, you will be well on your way to becoming a master troll at SMITE!