The Ninth Wind [Perfected for Season 7] by 15 Star Kuku Main

(old stats from last year, updating this guide for S7, this is sort of a pre-release)

I pretty much play Smite to land Kuku snipes. Kuku's ability to turn the tide of the game in one ult is nearly unmatched. Your job is to put yourself in the right places at the right times to use the chaos of a late game team fight to hit 3-4 enemies with a devastating
ult / combo to secure the advantage or victory for your team. I mostly enjoy Joust, but can do equally well with this build in Conquest.

Kuku in high ranked play is like a stealth bomber approaching a battle. Very vulnerable if caught out of position, every enemy outclasses you in single combat, and everyone on board knows every moment is potentially their last, but with careful execution and with an even moderately capable team, a well placed nuclear Kuku combo can take out a winning enemy's flagships and suddenly it's 5v2, 5v1, 5v0, and two phoenixes are down when you were just losing. Do it one more time and it's over. That's the game you're playing with Kuku.

So a little data on my background with Kuku:

Test, test, test! Instead of explaining passives and stats, I'm going to compare the raw numbers of what happens when you use various builds against tanky and squishy players. Note that builds with staff of Myrddin will list Zephyr damage as the two hits combined, since you should be using the item's passive to double Zephyr, and the sequence is relevant depending on other passives such as the new season 7 version of Spear of the Magus, which now stacks damage increases based on sequential hits with the same ability.

You can find charts below and a Google Sheets table with even more data supporting this build.

Guide To make things fit...

Build #1 (Winner)							Combo Dmg v Tnk: 1684	Combo Dmg v Sqsh: 3235
Build #2							Combo Dmg v Tnk: 1460	Combo Dmg v Sqsh: 3155

When replacing boots after buying speed pot, the items listed below have various advantages depending on your situation.

chronos pendant Chronos Pendant This is great for its cool-down reduction, plain and simple.

Spear of Desolation: This adds pen, CDR, and power. It's the highest damage boost you can add plus it keeps the CDR you had with CDR boots.

Breastplate of Valor: This gives good CDR and offers magical protection if you're being targeted.

Staff of Myrddin: This creates a very unique new combo in which you can zephyr twice after an ult, in which case your combo becomes: Whirlwinds to force the enemy to choose a direction of motion, ult them, then zephyr twice. Useful against bruisers and tanks blinking or jumping past your team onto you and you need to be able to delete them.

Relic Dagger: WTF? you might ask. This is actually a strong pick in some situations. Let's say the enemy team has an Odin, or a Ne Zha, or any god who can essentially delete you once your beads or phantom is burned, having 40 seconds off your relic cooldown can be an absolute game changer. Consider it.

Since an experienced commenter (who's helped me improve this build in the past) suggested a Doom Orb start instead of Book of Thoth as a way to boost early game damage, I spent a morning testing it in depth, and the damage curve is as follows (with the higher early curve being Doom Orb start, and the higher late curve being Thoth start. Long story short, at some point to reach optimal late game damage you have to sell Doom Orb for Thoth, but when exactly? How much will starting Doom Orb improve your early game damage? How much will it delay your transition to optimal late game damage? Here's the detailed Google Sheets data.



Analysis: Building Doom Orb will significantly increase your damage output during a small time frame strictly between your first and third item. Your overall average damage contribution throughout the game will statistically drop slightly. After your third item, this buff you chose for your early game will fall off and you'll begin to do less damage than you would have starting Book of Thoth between your 4th and 6th items, and until you finish stacking Book of Thoth. I've tried it in ranked play against a strong early game team (double warrior) and the consequence was that while it may have helped thwart their early game strength, the usual falloff their composition would have had mid game was negated by MY falloff, and I wasn't able to output enough damage mid-late game to hold them back.

Ability 1: Zephyr:

Zephy actually hits for a very small AoE. That means if the enemy is hiding just behind another enemy or minion, you can often hit them through the front target or minion.

Enemies will often underestimate the speed and range of this ability - it can hit all the way from the outside of tower to an enemy god nearly touching their tower. This is really useful for pegging a low enemy god, when they think they're far enough, and you'll often kill them, or you just drop a whirlwind on top of them and run away, and they'll be too slow to get out in time, and die.

Ability 2: Slipstream:

A buff to the early game speed of this ability single handedly brought Kuku from a B or C tier god to an occasional ranked first pick / ban. It's extremely valuable to escape and enter positions and negates slows, making it great for thwarting many gods who reply on slows in their kit.

Ability 3: Whirlwind:

This is almost always used as a follow up to zephyr, or else waveclear. It's big enough to cover half of the lane, so place it on the side of the lane, not directly over the minions (still close enough so they walk through it) and that'll force the enemy team to walk to the other side of the lane to push.

This is also great for protecting you from assassins. If they do go into it, just Zephyr them and Slipstream around making it hard for them to basic you, or even aegis while they chase you inside of it, and you'll easily kill them with poly after whirlwind takes their health down.

Ability 4: Spirit of the Nine Winds:

There's an entire section on Kuku's ult later in the guide in the Advanced Tactics section. Read on.

Core Combo - It's really simple: Zephyr, basic attack (proc Poly), Whirlwind, and Ult.

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"Oh ****! / F*** Off! Combo You turn a corner and are face to face with an mage or hunter who can kill you just by sneezing. Or one of those cheeky bast**ds dives over your team or into your tower to get you. Zephyr, Ult, basic attack (proc poly), then Whirlwind. I'm sorry, were you trying to kill me? How did that work out for you? Enjoy your respawn timer. If you don't have time to Zephyr first (which makes ulting them easier), you may need to ult first to get the knock-up before the enemy can CC and kill you, and land the Zephyr as the knock-up ends, Poly proc, Whirlwind, Slipstream.

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Now here we are. This isn't going to cover a whole lot of information, but it's going to take alot of practice to use these tips correctly. Remember, this guide assumes you already know Kuku's basics and are looking for a way to play Kuku well on a higher level, versus good players.

Control - Before anything else, its vital that you use a mouse that you can map all of your abilities to. You need to be able to execute your skills extremely fast and easily, while keeping your hands on your AWSD keys. If you're going to play any ability based god at a high level against fast, skilled player, you absolutely cannot be using your 1-4 keys to trigger abilities.

Placement - Kuku is an easy god in terms of his basic combo. Until you're up against good players, who dont just walk through your whirlwind, or get close enough to let you hit a Zephyr, without having an escape. Then he's not hard, but placing the whirlwind properly becomes something you have to focus on. Even if you land the Zephyr to slow them, it's not as effective early and you still need to lead the Whirldwind to where they're running.

Spacing - Hit and run. You're like a UFC fighter or boxer with a longer reach. Your Zephyr is a hard hitting ability that hits further away than many mage skills. Practice staying at the maximum length from your opponent, as if there's a pole connecting the two of you over the length of Zephyr's range. Hit the zephyr, if you have Poly, basic quickly, move an inch forward to drop the Whirlwind and quickly back up.

Sneaking - In the tense environment of the late game 3v3, where a single kill or death can win or lose the game very quickly, equipped with a high burst mage like Kuku who can handle many close encounter situations in the jungle, I often find myself sneaking around the sides rather than up the lane, placing sentries and hoping to ambush the enemy team in the lane with a whirlwind over the wall, followed by an ult through the wall to get a kill or two without putting myself at risk and without the enemy being able to fight back. However this is a delicate tactic. You have to be careful not to spend too much time doing this, trying to be the lone hero when it might be safer and more advantageous to stay with the team and have a straight forward 3v3 team fight. This is something you have to get a feel for and choose wisely.

Ulting - Kuku's ult is a great tool for chasing down kills. But any moron who isn't terrible at the game can juke your ult if he can see you. That's why you aren't going to ever ult a long range target from where they can see you. For the final tips of this guide, we're going to go over a few specific situations for ulting, and how to land those hard to hit snipes time and time again. This is where you win games, early, mid, and late.

But first, quickly let's look at leading targets. This is something you have to practice. A lot. You have to know how far to lead which gods, from what angles. Often times if you aren't hidden when you ult (try to always be hidden, but sometimes you don't have that luxury) you need to employ some reverse psychology. Expect the enemy to be smart, and juke your ult. Feel which side they'll juke towards, whichever side would be safest for them. Where would you go if you were expecting the ult? Aim there and launch it. I hit about 70% of these shots or more.

It just takes practice learning where people will go. Its important that you learn to lead people behind walls, even when you lose vision on them totally. The lower health they are, the more predictable they become; save your ult for these low health, predictable targets.

The hardest thing to guess is dashes. But you can land ults at the end of dashes. Lets say you got wiped, you're coming back to tower and there's an assassin with a dash trying to get as many basics in on your tower as they can before you get there. Ult away from them, expecting them to dash out of tower when they hear your ult, and you can hit them at the end of their dash or jump. This kind of situation happens often.

So lets go over some specific ult situations on the Joust map:


[*] Your target is low, the enemy team is falling back under their tower, your team is pushing the lane. Step into the Red Buff jungle quickly, go around and look around the corner, hidden, and look for the low person to back within range. Aim and release fast, often times, even in ranked, people are already looking at items, thinking they're safe to back, and you get the kill.

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[*] Your target is low, the enemy team is falling back under their tower, your team is pushing the lane, but the enemy isn't backing. Same thing as before, but the low target is staying, wanting some more wave XP before they back. You have a few options here while you're looking around the corner from the jungle. First, if they seem to be moving predictably, lead them with your ult, plan on them backing to safety when they hear it (but they wont see it coming, you're hidden), and throw it so that they back into it. Or, if they get close enough, drop a whirlwind on them, come into lane, and often times they'll run at the edge of the map toward their tower - launch the ult at their side pinning them to the wall, down the side of the map, they'll almost always veer away from the wall thinking you're aiming right at them, and run into it.

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[*] The enemy team is all very low, falling back under their tower, your team is pushing the lane, but the enemy wants to clear the wave before they back. Go into the jungle at their Blue buff, either wait for your team to get close enough to get vision through their blue buff wall or place a ward over the wall, and predict their movement. You'll often get kills hitting them from the side like this. They rarely expect it, and have no idea whether you're going do FG or their blue buff, and cant see the ult coming fast enough to react.

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[*] Your low target ran away, you're out in the open, but they're at the edge of the map about to pass behind their tower. Even though you're in the open, you're about to have a moment where their tower is between them and you. This happens from time to time, they think they're pretty safe, but theyre too smart to just back behind tower. As soon as they get behind it, ult the other side of it, where they'll come out as they run past it trying to see where your ult is going (as it hits them in the face).

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[*] You're doing Red Buff or FG, and the enemy team is coming to contest. Finish the buff with your ult, as your aim it through the buff and into the passageway where the enemy team is stuck on their way to you.

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[*] You're being chased out in the open by an assassin. Turn to the side, ult sideways, and walk past it, the assassin trying to land basics on you will walk through it before they have time to react, drop a whirlwind between you and them and keep running, they'll be too low to keep pursuing.

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[*] You're being initiated on out in the open by an assassin with a jump. The moment they begin their jump, ult forward, Zephyr them as they fall from the knock-up, and Poly should finish them with 1 basic.

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[*] You just got CC'd and attacked from behind by a melee god. Don't waste time turning around, ult forward. Kuku's ult hits targets immediately behind him. They'll be hit if they're on top of you trying to finish you, turn around and Zephyr / Poly, then run.

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Get. A. Team. Do. Not. Solo. Queue.

You can execute every aspect of Kuku perfectly and still get sh*t on in ranked play if you don't A) have a guardian to protect you from dives B) have a team who is more skilled than the enemy, period. In ranked you will have a very very hard time ranking up without a good team on your side because it's not based on how well you play, but whether or not you win (and you won't play well no matter how good you are if you have a trash team).

For example I played Kuku solo queue, qualified into bronze, and worked my way up to silver 1. It was not easy or fun. I found a team and made it to plat in just a few weeks, but by the time I got there, I had played over 600 ranked games. If you look in the leaderboard of the Plat rank, you'll see people with only 20-40 games played to get there, most of which who qualified into gold or even plat, and did it all with a skilled premade team.

Do. Not. Solo. Queue.

As you can see I left placed marked in the guide where I want to add video examples - Ive recently started recording games, and just have to catch the right moments to turn into gifs for the guide.