Rotations and Information

Daily Ramble 129: Rotations and Information

Today I take a bit of a step back from the games I’ve been playing to see HOW I’ve been playing. In FFXIV, I’ve been moving along at what I consider a good pace leveling my Arcanist. I’ve managed to put together a decent spell rotation that’s gotten me through anything I’ve come across so far and while I haven’t worked to min/max anything yet, I think I’m on the right track for my low level character. In SMITE it’s another story. I’ve been playing a while but I have the strong impression the META has changed since I’ve been playing the game. Yeah, I know, it’s only been a single season that I’ve been in the game, but I’ve heard people talk about changes and some of the games I’ve watched look dramatically different than when I started a few months ago. In any case, I’m starting a personal quest to find a place for information about SMITE gameplay, strategy, and the META.

Arcanist Spell Rotation

I’ve been leveling up decently on my Arcanist and I’m liking the spells she has. For the most part, as I mentioned before, my Emerald Carbuncle does a pretty good job of doing damage on it’s own. I do contribute to fights, though, and while I set up the tactics for each battle, I pretty much have been starting with my Carbuncle attacking through the Sic command. Basically, I’ve been setting my pet to attack one of the enemies while I cast Miasma and Bio to get some nice damage over time going. This sets up that initial enemy for take down pretty quickly. After I get the DoTs going, I usually switch to a second opponent and start them up with some DoTs. If my Carbuncle is still fighting the first enemy, I’ll throw a Ruin or two at the second enemy and if neither is down yet, I swap back to the first to re-cast the Dots on him. This way, I keep damage applied to 2 opponents.

I really think this strategy helps me to get through the different Fates or Quests pretty quickly. So far, most Quests only require a few creatures to be slain so taking on 2 at a time gets through them fast. For Fates, managing an attack in this manner gets me some decent participation points for the fight and I usually get good rewards from this strategy.

This plan of attack seems to be working well but so far I haven’t faced anything that’s really powerful. Once or twice, I’ve inadvertently pulled too many creatures but then I’ve been able to use Physick to heal up my Carbuncle or even myself so I haven’t had to use potions or even died yet and I’m hoping to keep it that way.

Gonna Have To Learn Some Tanks

While my MMO focus has been on FFXIV so far this month, I’ve continued on in my learning of SMITE on PC and PS4. I’ve already mastered enough gods to play ranked on the PC but I don’t feel I know the game as well as I could. On the PS4, I still need to master a few more, but I’m slowly getting there. My big question right now is – what I need to know for the META. When I first started playing, things seemed to be pretty close to League of Legends with a Jungler, a Support/ADC lane, a Solo laner, and a Mage in the middle. This was familiar coming from LoL but it seems things might have altered a bit towards the end of the season. I was seeing the ADC going solo and the Support roaming in jungle such that there were basically 2 Junglers. Also, I saw quite a few games where a Hunter was manning the midlane more often than a Mage. It seems that perhaps Mages weren’t doing enough damage so Hunters were taking over. Beyond that, tanky gods seemed to be preferred in solo lane. Needless to say, I got pretty confused.

I really need to find a place to learn more about the META of SMITE. It seems a lot of coverage goes on in video format on YouTube, but I want a website that I can read. While videos are good for learning tactics and such, I really hate trying to dig through a video to what I am specifically looking for. Watching a movie just takes too much time and I can’t clip it and watch it during breaks at work like I can with a text web page. I think this is the largest difference I’ve seen between SMITE and League – there are just more resources for information about LoL than SMITE.

So I’m on a quest. A mission to find a good, up-to-date place where I can get information, tier lists, and tactics for SMITE. I’ll post with what I find.