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NOTE: Tiamat can instead build contagion and another form of magical resist in Oni's and Genji's, however, the lack of stats from Breastplate may be a detriment to some people.
War Flag
Shoes of the Magi
Bancroft's Talon
Lono's Mask
Breastplate of Valor
Pestilence
NOTE:Bancroft's Talon can be replaced with a different item if you are finding it hard to sustain due to anti-heal or feel you are doing too little damage.
NOTE:Spear of the Magus can be replaced with almost any other power item, suggestions being: Gem of Isolayion, Rod of Tahuti, Chronos' Pendant.
Spartan Flag
Spear of the Magus
Bancroft's Talon
Lono's Mask
Breastplate of Valor
Pestilence
Early Game
Tiamat has a slow ramp up during the early game.
She'll need to hit level 2 in order to make a big impact.
Her 1 is basically mandatory at level 1, it allows her to both clear with her ADC for pressure, and it gives her an early poke tool, where-as her 2 is only used to poke at level 1 and her 3 wouldn't give her the clear that she needs.
How I play Tiamat support is that I try to give off as much pressure as early as possible so I can start levelling up faster than their support, I'll:
- Start purple after seeing my ADC has finished clearing red.
Although Tiamat is able to tank purple, I'd advise against it due to the enemy duo being able to aggress on you early for a first blood at such low health.
- Clear wave as fast as possible.
Using 1 to hit the entire wave without taking any minions from the ADC allows Tiamat to out clear the enemy duo lane (unless they have a mage support) and lets her rotate with her ADC to harpies, scorpion or even oracles if your jungler is available.
- Engage at level 3.
I keep saying how Tiamat's level 1 is awful for engagements, but once she gets her full kit online, with a co-ordinated ADC, she can rip apart an ADC. Poke enough with air form and dive with land form along with your ADC to secure first blood.
Mid Game
Mid game is where Tiamat shines, by now you'll probably be tanky enough to peal against multiple enemies at once whilst still being able to 1v1 squishy targets. At this point, you've hit your first power spike.
My personal favourite thing about Tiamat mid game is how she can pressure other lanes. Simple places your serpents on the opposite side lane you're going to, i.e., placing them on solo side when going to duo lane, and it will allow you to help the lane push.
NOTE: Tiamat's serpents will prioritise the scorpions on both side lanes when in lane and there is wave pushed up, so unless the scorpion is already taken, or a minion wave is pushed up, I'd suggest placing them in mid lane, or the other side lane if possible.
During the mid stage of the game, you're not going to be a character that snowballs with a lead in support. Of course, you could change this by buying power items earlier with your lead such as Rod of Tahuti or Spear of Desolation, but then you might as well play her as a rotating mid laner.
At this stage of the game, I like to invade the enemy red and purple buffs to split them with myself and the mid laner or ADC with her execute. If you have a very aggressive team comp, you could try to take the solo side back camps whilst the enemy is one down. You'll be tanky enough by now to sustain yourself against the jungler and you may be able to kill them yourself if they make mistakes.
Late Game
Tiamat's late game, in my opinion, isn't as impactful as her early game status. She essentially does the same as before, except at a grander scale. You're going to be pealing more for your teammates than you were before as you're going to be doing less damage whilst building tank items. I personally like to play Tiamat two ways at this stage of the game.
- As a Guardian.
Pealing for your team as any guardian would, play back and poke with your damage dealers using air form, and hold off attacks with ground form and your plethora of CC.
- As a Warrior.
This one being the more fun playstyle to me, you're going to be disrupting the enemy backline to such a degree that a fight can easily go in your favour by making squishies back off from taking too long of an exchange against you. You're diving damage dealers, invade camps, stealing objectives. Anything a warrior would normally do, you can do yourself.
Overall, I think Tiamat's kit makes her the most diverse in ways to play her in support. The world is your canvas.
Y
B
A
X
Primordial Onslaught (Flying): Tiamat gathers power, allowing her to fire orbs of energy at the end of the channel. Each orb damages enemies and stops on enemy gods. Hitting the same enemy deals 15% less damage each time, to a minimum of 70% reduction. This ability can fire additional projectiles at ranks 3 and 5.
Consume (Ground): Tiamat fires a cone dealing damage and slowing enemies hit. Minions, Large Monsters or Buff Holders hit under a health threshold are executed. Tiamat can immediately consume her Serpent and Beast pets to provide a Hardened Scale. When Tiamat consumes a Buff Holder she gains their buff while the original can still be picked up by allies. This allows Tiamat to pick up a second buff as well. Tiamat can only have one consumed and one regular buff at a time.
Ruination (Flying): Tiamat creates an energy field dealing low damage to enemies in the entire area and then a larger amount in the inner area. The inner area of the field also stuns enemies for a short duration.
Outburst (Ground): Tiamat slams the ground creating seismic rifts that erupt in succession in front of her, damaging and knocking up enemies hit.
Grounding Dive (Flying): Tiamat dives into the fight landing on all fours, dealing damage and switching to her Ground stance. This ability also provides Tiamat one Hardened Scale.
Rising Flight (Ground): Tiamat rears up sending out a blast of energy, dealing damage to enemies and sending herself backwards as she returns to her Flying stance.
Children of Creation (Flying): Tiamat is able to summon one of her children onto the battlefield.
Summon Serpents (Summon #1): Serpents that travel down lanes and act as minions.
Summon Beast (Summon #2): Kusarikku who stands guard waiting for enemy gods.
Summon Storm (Summon #3): Umu Dabrutu, the storm that chases enemies.
Tempest of Undoing (Ground): Tiamat causes a celestial outburst around her, dealing initial damage and a damage over time effect to every enemy nearby. Tiamat also gains one Hardened Scale per enemy god hit.Tap each threat level to view Tiamat’s threats
Tap each synergy level to view Tiamat’s synergies
Opportunities
Tiamat's main goal in this role is to push the enemy team in to situations in which they aren't comfortable in when she hits her power spike.
She's excellent at preventing opponents from going where they want to with the amount of CC in her kit nearly going in to the double digits, she controls fights very easily, as long as she can survive in them.
This also includes controlling the map, Tiamat is very good at preventing objective captures. If you or your team is stocked up on wards, you can be sure that, unless a team fight goes horribly wrong, that the enemy team will never take an objective whilst you're alive.
She's a perfect character to invade with. Now, what I mean by this is taking enemy buffs after a couple of jungle rotations. After leaving duo lane, make sure you have eyes on both the enemy jungler and yours at all times to judge whether you can execute an enemy's camp and get away with it. Later on, you'll be able to use this to bait the jungler in to a fight that they may not want to take, leaving you with a free buff and a death timer for the enemy.
She's also a good character to play on the backline. You can easily stop invades after level 2 with your execute, but before that, you're basically a sitting duck unless you pump some damage in to them.
Overall, as Tiamat, you want to create opportunities for your laners early to get you ahead, co-ordinate with your damage and your jungler for dives. Taking kills isn't even detrimental as you're going to want gold as soon as possible.
Later in the game, you want to put the already asserted pressure on to the enemy team by being a constant nuisance, taking camps, stealing objectives, hell, even your presence should be intimidating.
Even if you're behind, Tiamat has the tools (after Lono's Mask) to peal for your team so much that a lead for the enemy team will feel as even as ever.
You're in luck!
Fortunately, Tiamat doesn't necessarily need a team to be drafted around her like other gods that are played in a role that isn't their primary role. Although, consider:
- A Solo Laner with decent peal.
Depending on how you want to play Tiamat support, you may want a solo laner that will be able to constantly switch positions between them and you in a fight, a god like Hercules, that provides good frontline and can aid carries when being dived.
- Self sustaining Carries.
An ADC that can hold by itself is a great match for Tiamat as it allows her to leave lane early and let's her stay in the solo side jungle without having to worry about her carry.
Engaging
Tiamat can engage a team fight at ease as long as her team is aware that she's doing it.
She has a pretty straight forward combo that you should use in any situation:
- Use your leap to switch to ground form in to the backline followed by your team.
- Use your 2 to knock up enemies to deny escape options and let your team deal high burst damage.
- If disengages are down, continue to use your 4 and 1 to gain damage reduction stacks and cripple enemies.
- If disengages are up and used, switch to air form towards them and stun them with your 2, followed up by your 1 if the enemy is low enough or using Kusarikku to stun them and allowing more follow up.
This strategy can be used in any situation as long as cooldowns are up and managed.
Tiamat is a battle mage, akin to Baba Yaga.
She uses her plethora of abilities and crowd control to disrupt a fight and pester the enemy along with helping her team during a dive.
Early game, she can't sustain against constant pressure from warrior supports of hyper aggressive carries but she can scale enough to compensate as long as the game doesn't snowball out of control.
She struggles against gods that can escape her CC and burst her down before she gains her damage reduction stacks, along with gods with invulnerable leaps or teleports.
However, she's great against immobile gods and gods that only have a small amount of escape options.
Tiamat also benefits from the element of surprise, being common in solo and mid lane, playing her in support is a wild card and somewhat relies on the opponent not knowing what she will do in support.
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I think if I were to tweak your build a bit I would probably say
I think swapping Bancroft's and Lono's for Pythag's and Mantle would give you just as much survivability and it would probably increase both your damage and your team's. Switching to shoes of focus is just personal preference, but I do see the value in shoes of the magi
I'll just finish this off by saying I haven't tried this in game at all. I'm just thinking through how it might work. I do have a few solo builds I could give you if you're interested though.
I'd understand how it's quite a weird concept though since the masks are usually for meme builds and bancroft's is an item you would expect with this combination, but I've been using it a lot and I've seen great results: being able to engage a fight with damage reduction and being able to self sustain yourself with lifesteal against targets that have increased damage delt to them synergises really well imo.
Your main goal isn't to downright kill someone, it's to annoying them and drag out the fight for so long that your team rotates on to the fight.
I'm sure this build wouldn't work in solo lane since Lono's will be too drastic of a change, which is why it being a support build is great since you're always gonna be with a damage dealer.
PS: Not sure whether I put it in the notes, but I like building Bancroft's for early game power and sustain, it's replicable for Pythag's, for example, it's just nice to have such power and lifesteal in the early game.
It's far from gold efficient, but maybe you could sell it in the late game for pythag's as having a pure damage item on a Lono's build is counter-productive.
I think that's the only thing I'd change then is the bancroft's. Because you are right, the bonus damage from spartan flag and spear of the magus roughs out to probably 15% or so which would put a dent in the 20% reduction. And, as you said, your job isn't to be the one doing the killing, its to set up and annoy.
I just so happened to use Bancroft when I played. I found it really nice to have before Lono's since it just increases your raw damage output, whereas Pythag doesn't give as much early game pressure in the shape of power (the difference between 40 and 100 being significant), although you could go for either.
Maybe you could use Pythag the health bonus, but I don't find $200 to be enough to sacrifice Bancroft's power, PLUS it offers 150 mana which Tiamat has trouble sustaining.