SMITE 2 Ares Guide
After getting Ares to rank 10 in Smite 1 and playing him in Smite 2, I’m going to make a guide focusing on the major differences and intricacies that are necessary to know to play Ares well in Smite 2. Fair warning, this guide is very long and detailed!
Overall Strengths: High damage potential and massive stat boosting effects just by staying with your team, and an ultimate ability that the whole enemy team must be prepared for.
Weaknesses: No hard crowd control effects outside of his ultimate, meaning that his peel and supportive potential are not as high as the other guardians. Lacks movement abilities to help initiate and retreat from fights.
Quick Play Style Overview: Ares is a very aggressive guardian, using his high damage and damage boosting passive to support his team by directly killing the opposition rather than locking them down with hard crowd control. As a result, Ares is very reliant on hitting his shackles, and his ult now requires a different and more dynamic thought process than it did in Smite 1, since it's no longer always correct to use his ult and move towards your team. More detailed explanations in the abilities section!
Abilities:
Passive, Blessed Armaments: This may be the biggest buff to Ares in Smite 2 when compared to Smite 1. Ares grants strength and intelligence in an aura around him, but the most important thing to note here is that it is now based on how many protections from items you have for the strength buff and how much cooldown you have for the intelligence buff. The strength buff has incredible scaling, ensuring that by just staying with your team during teamfights or objectives will make you very useful, even if your abilities are down.
1. Shackles: I would argue that this is actually the best ability Ares has now in his kit, firing up to three shackles as long as you do not miss. Deals high damage, slows, grants Ares movement speed, and cripples shackled enemy Gods, preventing movement abilities.
How to Use: Your entire game plan should revolve around whether you hit at least one shackle or not. I recommend moving as close as possible to an enemy God before firing the chain to maximize your hit rate, do not try to shackle an enemy from max range unless absolutely necessary! As long as you hit at least one chain, you should play aggressive and stick to the shackled God, if not, back away and wait until your shackles are back up, absorbing auto attacks from the enemy and body blocking enemy gods if necessary during a teamfight. While it is technically best to shackle two to three different enemy gods with this ability to both cripple them and maximize your movement speed buff, it is more practical to use all three shackles on one god if the others are too far away, ensuring maximum damage. This is especially true during laning phase, although this will be covered in more depth during the strategy section.
2. Call to Arms: A simple ability that buffs Ares and any surrounding allied gods with protections and auto attack damage. The duration is extended by dealing damage to an enemy god 3 times while the buff is active.
How to Use: Always try to use this ability prior to engaging on the enemy, and try to include most of your team. If you hit shackles, keep attacking aggressively, if not, either disengage or try to extend the buff by using Ares 3 to damage an enemy frontline 3 times to extend the buff. The basic attack buff is extremely useful when helping your team with objectives such as towers or jungle bosses.
3. Searing Flames: Ares will release flames from his shield, dealing damage in a cone in front of him that deals bonus max health damage. IMPORTANT: This is a channeled ability, meaning that you are unable to perform most actions while using this ability. You may still fire shackles, and are also displacement immune, which can save you from many crowd control abilities.
How to Use: This is the best ability Ares has to clear minion waves, and may also be used when multiple enemy gods are within the cone or your main target is too far away to basic attack. Being displacement immune is a massive benefit, protecting you from some enemy crowd control abilities, such as Bacchus belly flop. When against a God with a displacement effect, I recommend saving searing flames to protect yourself from the crowd control then deal damage with it as you absorb the crowd control. This is especially true against an enemy Ares, as you can avoid the pull from Ares ultimate simply by using this ability.
4. No Escape: Ares attaches a chain to all nearby enemy Gods around him, channeling for 2.17 seconds before they are pulled towards you and stunned once the channel ends in a small area around Ares. Ares is immune to crowd control and gains mitigations during the channel.
How to Use: This is perhaps the most iconic ability Ares has, but it now has several crucial differences and nuances that make it a much more complex ability to use than in Smite 1. The ability is significantly worse than it was in Smite 1 unless you understand these differences. For starters, the ability no longer simultaneously stuns as it pulls enemies. This means any enemy God with a displacement immune ability can completely negate the pull part of Ares ult by simply timing their ability cast. Anubis 1, Ares 3, Bacchus 3, Fenrir 3, and Loki 3 currently provide displacement immunity. This downside can be somewhat mitigated by moving towards your enemies when you ult, ensuring that the stun part of Ares ult will still connect even if they use these abilities. As such, it is no longer always correct to move towards your team after ulting enemies unless at least one enemy god has no way of avoiding the pull, since a simple basic ability may avoid the pull effect. However, it is still correct to move towards your team if it will force your opponents to use their purification beads or ultimate abilities to avoid the pull. This is what I mean by Ares ult being much more dynamic, you have to decide if you should move towards an enemy that could avoid the pull to continue the fight and try to get the stun off, or move towards your team and simply accept that you may have to disengage the fight if no one is actually pulled. Remember, if you move towards an enemy god and they have a way to avoid the pull or stun effect of your ult, you may still continue the fight by using your other abilities. And if they do get pulled, even if you did not move towards your team, you will still be able to guarantee that your shackles will connect, also continuing the fight.
Relics:
In conquest, you should always take Sundering Arc or Blink.
Sundering Arc allows you to claim objectives and start at purple buff, and sometimes help secure a God kill.
Blink provides a way for Ares to instantly get on top of enemy Gods, allowing for an ultimate follow up or shackles to surprise your enemies.
Items:
Starter: Both War flag and selflessness and strong options, although selflessness is usually better due to its ability to protect teammates affected by crowd control. I think war flag is very useful on Ares in particular, since both the movement speed and attack speed buffs are universally useful, helping Ares to get closer to hit shackles and even the attack speed benefits the strength scaling that Ares provides.
I usually start the game by buying a starter and the two components leading to gauntlet of thebes alongside 2 health potions, but you may forgo a component to upgrade to a health chalice instead.
High Priority: You should always buy these items every game and as early as possible, providing high survivability.
Gauntlet of Thebes: This item provides health and both high physical and magical protections, providing great value while also maximizing the strength scaling on your passive. I have been rushing this item in Conquest, but keep in mind it provides little protection until stacked (by assisting minion or god kills), so be mindful of your health during the laning phase!
Prophetic Cloak: This item also provides high protections, and even more survivability than Thebes once fully stacked. I personally have not bought this item before Thebes in my conquest games, but it may be better to do so due to the fact that it grants immediate protections and allows you to begin stacking it by dealing damage to enemy gods as early in the game as possible.
Great Items: I recommend buying at least 2 but usually 3 of the following items every game, providing great stats or supportive effects. This is the fun part of item building, in which you gauge the current situation and thus the items you need. (Keep in mind that you can currently only own 3 active items per game!)
Breastplate of Valor: A good physical protection item that provides mana and cooldown reduction, which is always helpful and supports his intelligence aura.
Oni Hunter’s Garb: Provides magical protection, health, mana and a passive effect that greatly increases your survivability, since you will usually be in close proximity to enemy gods.
Genji’s Guard: Breastplate’s magical counterpart, providing magical protections and strong cooldown reduction. It does not provide mana.
Mystical Mail: I was considering classifying this item as a situational item, but it provides a whopping 350 maximum health on top of 40 physical protections, while also providing a passive that further increases your damage potential.
Shogun’s Kusari: While it’s magical protection is quite low, since Ares has such a large strength buff due to his passive, boosting your team’s attack speed can really increase damage output overall, be it on objectives or teamfights.
Amanita Charm: Reasonable protections backed up by a strong active effect that can heal your team during a teamfight or objective.
Ruinous Ankh: Most gods build lifesteal or have some form of healing in their kit, meaning that anti heal is almost always useful. The item also provides good stats.
Talisman of Purification: A powerful active item that can protect your team from teamfight swinging crowd control abilities or ultimates. This item requires skill, timing and awareness to use effectively.
Situational Items: I recommend buying 1, sometimes 2 of the following items, since they are not always useful but may be key to winning certain games.
Spirit Robe: Gaining 50 of each protection can help you survive against heavy crowd control teams, just be aware that the item gives no maximum health and thus is not always valuable.
Spectral Armor: If the enemy carry is the main danger to your team, or if multiple enemies have built critical hit items, I recommend this item to help reduce their crit chance.
Pharaoh's Curse: Similar reasoning to Spectral armor, but the active is also useful to help engage in fights by slowing enemies and reducing attack speed.
Stampede: This item may help your team engage in fights as you charge in due to the movement speed that the active grants.
Screeching Gargoyle: This item may be helpful if an enemy mage or ability based god is the most dangerous member of the enemy team, granting you a silence.
Eye of Providence: Great item stats, but wards currently only last 60 seconds, and as such an item that counters wards is also not always useful. May be used to secure vision on objectives, and may become much more useful if wards are buffed.
Phoenix Feather: This item can keep you alive in a pinch, and at worst may help you provide your stat boosting passive aura for longer. Just keep in mind that this is typically a selfish item to buy.
Hussar’s Wings: Reasonable stats, provides an active that can help you engage if the enemy team has many slows. Compared to Stampede, this item only affects you, although stampede has a 90 second cooldown while this item is on a 30 second cooldown, so Hussar’s Wings might be generally better.
Circe’s Hexstone: A very interesting item with an active that can provide you with a small knock up but most importantly a charge to help you initiate a fight.
Detailed Strategy: (Conquest) As of when this guide is posted, if you take sundering arc, start at your purple buff and use it to clear the camp as fast as possible. This should allow for your lane partner to get the buff and make it to lane without missing any minions. Start with your 3 to clear the wave, and try to hit level 2 before you lane opponents do. Level your shackle, and immediately try to hit all 3 shackles on the enemy support, attempting to go for an early kill. If you miss, no problem, just clear the wave and beware an enemy counter engage. While you usually want to engage, you may also use your shackles to punish an enemy support that engages you ( such as Bacchus flop or Ymir freeze). Use health potions as necessary, and try not to back to base until you can afford to buy the components leading to or a full gauntlet of thebes or prophetic cloak (whichever you want to buy first). Always try to stay in lane with a teammate to soak up experience and gold, and keep track of who has purification beads or an ultimate that is crowd control immune. Whether it be in lane or as you are rotating, as long as a teammate is nearby you should always use your ultimate whenever it is up to try to force an enemy to use their beads or crowd control ultimate, and coming back once your ult is ready once again to guarantee the pull (please see the ‘how to use’ section on Ares ultimate for crucial tips and ideas). Even if you miss your shackles during a teamfight, remember that you are providing a high amount of strength and intelligence just by staying with your team. Your 2 even provides protections to increase survivability across the board. As such, you should also always be around your team when pushing towers or objectives, granting high damage and speeding up the process.
Arena: Much of the above still applies, just make sure to take blink and try to hit as many enemy gods as possible with your ultimate ability. Otherwise, if you hit shackles and have teammates nearby, engage, and if not, stay with the team and try to absorb damage. You can also save your abilities to counter engage or punish engaging enemy gods.
If you read all or most of this guide, I hope you found it useful and will enjoy playing Ares as much as I do! Keep in mind that the game is still in its early stages, meaning many things are subject to change and may thus affect parts of this guide.
