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Shoes of Focus
Spear of the Magus
Rod of Tahuti
Shoes of Focus
Spear of the Magus
Focused Void Stone
Gem of Isolation
Polynomicon
Rod of Tahuti
Weakening Curse
Divine Ruin
Pestilence
Gem of Isolation
Purification Beads (Old)
Aegis Amulet (Old)
Magi's Cloak
Y
B
A
X
I would like to apologize if the title of this guide gave you cancer. Here's an image to finish the job and put you out of your misery:
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Agni is one of the few original gods, which means that he was designed during Hi-Rez's early development stages, he is still one of the most versatile magi in the game - every single one of his skills can be used for at least two different goals, and they can also combo off each other in multiple different orders. He's the only mage with a dash (which just so happens to also cause damage and provide CC immunity); he has an ultimate that can be used at regular intervals, or saved over time for immense burst damage; and he also has excellent zoning utilities, as well as hard CC (which can be triggered by three different methods) with the potential to affect the entire enemy team.|
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+Highly versatile.
+Only mage with a dash. +AoE hard crowd control. +Ultimate can be used often, albeit for a reduced effect. |
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-CC requires a two-skill combo; must plan ahead.
-Ultimate has a delay between successive firings, making it difficult to land three in a row. |
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RECOMMENDED SKILLSEQUENCE
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Gem of Isolation.|
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Spear of the Magus.
Searing Flesh, then casting Flame Wave in order to end its channel, earning a VVT, VER in the process.
Frost Breath.|
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Spirit Ball from 
Eset.
No Escape in order to prevent its pull (as of this patch).|
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Noxious Fumes, especially preceding it. That is, using the delay between firing it and its impact to also place down Fumes, resulting in a quick stun (explained further in the playstyle section).|
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Your build should be flexible, meaning that it should change depending on the enemy team's composition. However, there are certain stats that are necessary to build towards every game, and they're obviously listed below - that's kind of the point of this chapter.
What's better to follow a section explaining the stats to gear towards than one that provides a list of items with said stats? Bacon, of course! Unfortunately for you, you cannot have any of my bacon, because it's, well, mine. In lieu of bacon, I shall provide you with the next best thing: what items to build, and why to build them!
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Bancroft's Talon.|
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Divine Ruin and Magi's Blessing.
Honestly, don't stray from 
Purification Beads and 
Aegis Amulet or 
Aegis Pendant, except in the cases of building Weakening Curse against heavy-healing teams or 
Heavenly Agility to assist healers on your own team, or blink if you're scurred of Odin's ultimate.
I typically try to explain this section better, but I don't think it's necessary with Agni.
First and foremost, let's talk about minions - as boring as it is murdering mindless waves of artificial "intelligence" that follow a set path as they traverse the map, they're an essential part of arena. Because you have two methods of safe, instantaneous waveclear, do yourself and your teammates a favor and be the minion *****. A simple Flame Wave or Rain Fire will suffice, and if you manage to hit both minions and enemy gods with it as well, good for you. You can also use minions to build your passive, especially early on in the game when single spells don't incinerate them (well, completely).
Now for the actual fun part! What is your combo and how do you use it? Well, as I mentioned previously, Agni is extremely versatile, meaning he doesn't have just one, simple combo like some of the other, no-skill-floor-low-skill-ceiling magi *coughAnubiscough*.
How to use each spell was mentioned previously, but I'll mention a few common combos again.
1. Casting Flame Wave > Path of Flame > Noxious Fumes > Rain Fire is a quick way to inflict a lot of damage, but comes at the cost of using both your escape and stun. The reason it's casted in this order is because it makes it easier to properly land both Path of Flame (because you're not worried about both the enemy's position and Noxious Fumes's location) and Rain Fire (because they will be stunned).
2. Sometimes considered to be properly categorized under "tips and tricks," casting Rain Fire immediately followed by Noxious Fumes is a standard combo used in higher-tier play, often christened the "insta-stun ragequit combo" for its ability to make all affected players immediately punch a wall and toss their computers out of the nearest window. The goal is to use the delay between firing Rain Fire and its impact to your advantage; you will have just enough time to place Noxious Fumes under it, providing a "surprise," unavoidable ignite-stun.
3. Coming from behind enemy lines and casting Path of Flame to return to your teammate's side, followed by a Noxious Fumes to stun your enemies is an effective way to help your team initiate on them.
4. Rain Fire spam! This can either be used to inflict high-damage to CC'd targets, or as a zoning tool to help your teammates either escape or eliminate remaining enemies.
You can inflict a lot of damage as Agni, but you also bring heaps of utility - effective use of Agni's skills depending on the situation, whether it's zoning, CC, or even simply damage itself, will result in many victories.
As a game with over forty different gods, think of Smite as a convoluted Rock-Paper-Scissors. There are many variables that contribute to how effectively a god counters another god, transcending abilities to include unexpected factors such as the environment (closeness of walls or quantity of pathways) and overall composition, such as one god having a dangerous spell on a long cooldown, forcing you to counter it, thereby increasing the potential danger of another spell considered to be less dangerous. However, it is possible to generalize counters, turning this convoluted mess into something slightly more manageable, like Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock.
For example, stuns are bad, mkay? They make it easy for enemies to violate Agni's hiney, and the gods who have stuns with excessive durations, such as 
Ymir, could be considered, at the very least, a potential counter to Agni. Stuns with shorter durations, or stuns at are more easily avoidable (e.x.: Isis's Spirit Ball thanks to Path of Flame), are less of a counter and more of a nuisance.
"Cut to the chase, Dr. TT; who are his counters?"
Well, since you asked so nicely, I'd be happy to tell you! But first, I'd like to mention that you're certainly not getting any bacon with that attitude.
Anyhow, let's list the top offenders of violating Agni:
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Yim Yims  How Much Does it Hurt? |
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Serberk Fling, Smack, Dead |
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The It's that damn ultimate, man. |
Noxious Fumes can be cast immediately after (and in the same spot as) Rain Fire in order to apply a surprise stun.
Path of Flame provides CC immunity, meaning it can be used to avoid spells like Ares's No Escape.
Not only can Path of Flame detonate Noxious Fumes by passing over it, but Noxious Fumes can be cast over an existing Path of Flame to be immediately detonated, and an enemy doesn't even need to be standing on the flames to be within ranged of the stun.
Casting a Flame Wave immediately after a 
Loki enters stealth will allow you to trace his movements for three seconds if 
Combustion is active. If both Noxious Fumes and Path of Flame are off cooldown, you can use Path of Flames in his direction and then detonate Noxious Fumes over him to break his stealth.
Ain't nothing done been changed, yet.
Any updates with no mention in the changelog are simply grammatical/spelling fixes.
Fall 2013Winter 2014Fall 2014Lebly (and Pieface) helped me test Combustion, which is pretty damn important. Huge props to them.
Raventhor has provided valuable input in improving the build, and he also has excellent guides of his own (that I feel receive far too little attention and updates). Check him out.
Sanguis has given me a beautiful template that integrates MOBAfire's skillsequence coding into Smitefire, which he put to great use in his top-notch Ymir Guide, and Greenevers has improved upon it.
Subzero008 has, as always, provided a helpful review. He's awesome, even if he has a ******* for Anubis Artemis. Check out his excellent guides and give them their well-deserved upvotes for me.
And most importantly, I'd like to thank the creators and producers of the Avatar series because it's totally relevant to the publishing of this guide.
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Ring of Spears
Combat Blink
"Your momma so fat she takes up 3 lanes and the jungle. Lmaoo
FG3000 posted a video with all his abilities and such too
http://www.twitch.tv/smitegame/b/546624368
Go to 14:40
I do agree that the columns are simply not going to provide enough space, but I really like the humor I could bring with the spoiler tags and such, so I've figured out a simple solution: same format, but only one god horizontally, if that makes any sense - think of the cleansing section of my Hel guide.
And fine, I'll change it to "has a ******* for Artemis." :P
And in regards to "glad to see the ideas put into practice," I don't ask for input just so I can ignore it xD
I agree with your assessment on Anubis, but I understand what Sub is saying as well - Anubis is much more dependent on positioning, so his skill floor isn't infinitesimally low, but rather just low. Skills ceilings are certainly based off potential, and Agni has far more of it than Anubis does.
And don't worry about going off topic; I welcome many almost any discussion.
Also, Subzero, Anubis isn't higher skill ceiling. Both skill floor and skill ceiling are barely separated, and low, as there isn't much room for outplay potential. The 'safeness' of agni doesn't make him lower skill ceiling; that actually makes him higher, as the outplay potential separates the floor (being able to play the god) and ceiling (being able to master the god).
Anubis will not change no matter what you do well or not. He has no mobility and no outplay potential as far as his skillset is concerned. He is made to position himself and use his combo, and that's it. While it can be argued that this reliance makes him a higher skill ceiling, that's not necessarily a god statistic more than a human factor, and is the same in every god; learning to place yourself doesn't make a god 'harder' or 'easier', just makes you better as a player. Agni, however, has the ability to dash around, avoid enemies, outplay them through his CC immunity, and has multiple different roles (Sustained Damage with much CDR, or nuke damage with very high MP, for example).
Sorry for the off-topic, I just see skill-cap/skill-ceiling being used oddly in many situations. Generally, people with outplay potential through high mobility are the higher skill-ceiling gods.
Again, A+, +1, etc
I do have one problem, and that is the columns. The addition of columns, while aesthetically pleasing, sharply limits your space available. For something as important as god counter-strategies, I'd recommend creating a more in-depth analysis.
In short; you need more space, and should remove the columns.
One caveat on the Cons section: I don't think "melts under focus" should be a Con, since that applies to pretty much every god in the game. I think just two Cons is fine, at least for Arena. (In Conquest, I might put something about how the delay with his ult makes it really easy to get hit by smart junglers, but this is Arena.)
PS: Also, I don't have a ******* for Anubis, per se, I just like playing gods who rely heavily on a grasp of the basics, like Ymir and Ao Kuang and other "old-fashioned" gods. In other words, I like Artemis a bit too much.
Nice update. Keep it up!
I, myself, like how you head many skills and items with icons of increasing dimensions (without them ever getting too large), and I know I've seen a few people model theirs after yours.
I'm really hoping this guide does well, as the other (Sw)Agni guides on this site aren't very informative.
always get some new ideas by watching how you use the different cods :)
I think the main difference between this and my Hel guide is the absence of the, what was it, "gold fish oogly eyes," or something? :P The Hel guide was my first one, and I've gained a lot of experience since then - it's easier to start from scratch than to update major changes in, but the content of my Hel guide is so, um, reliable, that I can't bring myself to redo it.
His ragequit combo sure can be infuriating, so I will definitely make sure to dabble with it, especially focusing on when to use it. Oh, and I can't believe I forgot to emphasize on when and how not to use Path of Flame - that'll definitely be updated in soon.
Hm, I think the countering section will take priority over improving the actives section, but slightly below delving deeper into the playstyle section. It's certainly to be desired, even if some might argue that it's not mandatory, so, yeah, definitely going to have to work on that!
As for Anubis, you can argue that his skill floor is high in the sense that he has to play well when his skills are off cooldown, but I just dislike his design: extreme damage combo with no versatility - kill or be killed, essentially. I find having multiple options at your disposal to be far more fun, rewarding, and requiring of skill than landing a combo and playing safely when it's on cooldown, but I suppose that's personal preference.
I have one quibble with this guide: I think the insta-stun ragequit combo should be more emphasized, since it's the main reason why Agni is so terrifying.
Literally, that's it. You get a 5/5 or 10/10 on everything else. But I guess I should go a little more in depth.
Skills + Skill Explanations
[/rule]Just amazing. Each skill goes very in-depth to what it can do and when and where to use it.
Items + Item Explanations
[/rule]Again, this is incredibly well-made. Everything has a place and is well-explained.
"Feel" of the guide
[/rule]Amazing. The guide feels casual and humorous, without feeling like a gimmick. Of course, this is all a matter of personal preference.
Aesthetically, I like this a lot better than your Hel guide, for some reason. Everything is clean and easy to read. It's not as pretty as the Mona Lisa, metaphorically, but it's beautiful nonetheless.
Gameplay
[/rule]I like how you put a lot of emphasis on helping your team out over spamming your ult to deal damage, as well as the tips and tricks section. Nicely done.
One missing segment that some may view as optional is a Counter section. Which gods will screw you over and which gods that you will dominate, etc.
Off-topic
[/rule]I would say that Anubis is arguably higher-skill ceiling than Agni, especially in Arena. Why?
While Anubis' combo takes nearly no skill to execute, and Agni has a more versatile and therefore more hard-to-manage skillset, Agni is overall a more forgiving pick than Anubis. Let's say you screw up an insta-stun combo. You still deal high damage, and can repeat it quickly.
If you miss one Mummify as Anubis, you're done for. Your goose is cooked.
Similarly, Agni's dash allows him to avoid CC and reposition himself. If he makes a mistake, he can just dash out of it.
For Anubis, if he makes one mistake, he'd doomed. Mummify won't save him from an ambush by three other gods.
Lastly, the one component that makes both of them deadly - the CC - is far easier to use on Agni than Anubis. (That insta-stun is evil personified) Once you master the insta-stun technique, very few enemies can avoid it, especially with the huge combined area of Rain Fire + Volcanic Fart, while Anubis must react to enemy players when firing his Wrap.
(Also, I think Anubis is actually a pretty good counter to Agni due to his insane burst)
Overall
[/rule]This guide has almost no faults, and was a delight to read (Even though I've sworn off Agni forever). Full marks, gold star, A+ sticker. Upvote.