Stacking stackable items

[GunSlinger]

I know in general it's a bad idea to invest in 2 stacking items and I don't question why. Having to build stacks 15-20 minutes into the game when you should already be at a fully functional 3rd item, if not 4th, is detrimental to your mid game spike.

But.. prophetic cloak..

As a support I know Thebes was meta pick for a long time and cloak trumps it in many ways. I have been swapping out Thebes for cloak as my first real "item" and just forgoing Thebes all together, making it an effective replacement. Games have been going well like that. Only real drawback is the early game sustain you get from glowing emerald.

And since cloak takes forever to stack, it makes sense to invest in it early so you can actually see an evolved version by mid game hopefully. But, I saw a video from a rather reputable 'authority' on smite building who actually made Thebes and cloak out to be meta picks as a duo.

I've tried it. It takes ages to stack cloak and many games I didn't get it stacked until well after 30 minutes. Anyone have input on this? Is Thebes really worth building into first and then trying to stack cloak?

[John]

Depend on the item, at the 20 minute mark it takes me like 3-5 minutes to stack a gauntlet of thebes.

for thebes, yeah i replace it from a first item, but i do go for an escape move as my second move as support instead of third. Also, health chalice, saves so much gold on potions early on.

[Mason]

You should always buy Thebes. Thebes first item, then go into Prophetic, then typically you go into something like Contagion, or if you're a healer, Lotus Sickle, or if you can heal yourself with an ability, Breastplate of Regrowth. After that, depending on whether they have healers on their team, you go into Pestilence to counter the healing, don't go Pestilence if you've already bought Contagion though. Or you can go into Amulet of The Stronghold, and finally last item is typically Pridwen or Spirit Robe. That's the build I use on support, and works pretty well.

If they have healers who are particularly bothersome, it would be better to get the anti heal as your third item instead of your fourth. Or if they have an insane amount of healing grab Cursed Ankh as your starting relic or you can wait until level 12 to get it.

You're not stacking it correctly if it takes you 30+ minutes, every 10 seconds you can damage an enemy and you gain a stack of prots, and in total you get 15 Magi and 15 Phys, and you need to hit the respective gods to gain the stacks. So every 10 seconds, find a god that is the damage type you need to stack... You can see which stacks you need by holding down Alt and mousing over the prophetic cloak icons just above your health bar.

[GunSlinger]

Originally posted by John:

Depend on the item, at the 20 minute mark it takes me like 3-5 minutes to stack a gauntlet of thebes.

Yea Thebes stacks pretty easily. But in my mind looking at both items, cloak is in general just "better" and I don't see the need to have both when there are better items. Felt like in general the only reason to go thebes first was the early game cost and sustain of the emerald.

But, I just saw a new patch dropped that nerfed cloak a little bit but buffed its stack time to 8 seconds. I'm sure it will help stacking a little bit but like in a team fight how many more times are you going to get a proc in real world? Maybe one extra proc now in certain situations? Idk. For a loss of 15 of each prot. Not sure I'd take that trade as a win. Rather it stack harder and provide more personally.

At any rate, I need to go rebuild all my builds now lol

[Mason]

Originally posted by John:

Depend on the item, at the 20 minute mark it takes me like 3-5 minutes to stack a gauntlet of thebes.

for thebes, yeah i replace it from a first item, but i do go for an escape move as my second move as support instead of third. Also, health chalice, saves so much gold on potions early on.

I agree Chalices are nice, but at level 1, Potions give you more health. So at level 1 I would say buy Potions instead, after which you can buy a Chalice.

[Geardo]

If Cloak is harder to stack, I would build it first.

Thebes, I have tried and seen others build it later before Season 10 and stack it fine especially as a match goes on and those lane minions get wiped by allies easy.

I forget since I have not done it in a while but I would say you could delay Thebes all the way to 4th item and still stack it easy.

[GunSlinger]

Originally posted by Zero:

You should always buy Thebes. Thebes first item, then go into Prophetic, then typically you go into something like Contagion, or if you're a healer, Lotus Sickle, or if you can heal yourself with an ability, Breastplate of Regrowth. After that, depending on whether they have healers on their team, you go into Pestilence to counter the healing, don't go Pestilence if you've already bought Contagion though. Or you can go into Amulet of The Stronghold, and finally last item is typically Pridwen or Spirit Robe. That's the build I use on support, and works pretty well.

If they have healers who are particularly bothersome, it would be better to get the anti heal as your third item instead of your fourth. Or if they have an insane amount of healing grab Cursed Ankh as your starting relic or you can wait until level 12 to get it.

You're not stacking it correctly if it takes you 30+ minutes, every 10 seconds you can damage an enemy and you gain a stack of prots, and in total you get 15 Magi and 15 Phys, and you need to hit the respective gods to gain the stacks. So every 10 seconds, find a god that is the damage type you need to stack... You can see which stacks you need by holding down Alt and mousing over the prophetic cloak icons just above your health bar.

Only time it's taking 30 minutes to stack is if I'm waiting till 3rd item to buy it. Even with sentinels it can take quite a long time to even get a third item unless your team is rolling hard and you're just banking money all game. In which case build seems to become a moot point when you're 10k ahead and the score is like 23-9 by 20 minutes. But stacking both prots can be difficult even if you buy cloak first item if you're running up against a sol ADC. At that point the only phys on the team is solo and maybe jungle.

My builds are tailored to the god I'm playing but I've been toying with and having a lot of fun with off meta picks. My favorite right now is Shiva. But even Hercules and chaac make for some really fun support games. For Shiva I been starting sentinels and cloak, moving on to thebes and maybe contagion or genjis depending on how I feel about their healing output. Then the build gets fluid depending on how we're doing. I may go glad shield if I feel like I'm not having trouble surviving team fights and want to add more damage to the mix, or if the warrior/supp just won't die I may swap that out for an executioner to help shred their prots with my autos.

I always try to build at least one damage item into the kit unless I'm on an actual guardian and even then I'll default to glad shield unless we're getting stomped and I need aura prots on everything I'm wearing.

[GunSlinger]

Originally posted by Zero:

Originally posted by John:

Depend on the item, at the 20 minute mark it takes me like 3-5 minutes to stack a gauntlet of thebes.

for thebes, yeah i replace it from a first item, but i do go for an escape move as my second move as support instead of third. Also, health chalice, saves so much gold on potions early on.

I agree Chalices are nice, but at level 1, Potions give you more health. So at level 1 I would say buy Potions instead, after which you can buy a Chalice.

Interesting theory. I've always just bought a chalice. Never even paid attention to the health difference

[GunSlinger]

I just went and checked the wiki out of curiosity. Did something change about the items that's not updated there? Both potion of healing and chalice of healing have an identical description. "Heals 250 health over 25 seconds."

If that's the case, unless you're at 250 gold or less after starters, you should never buy regular pots unless u need multi pots or barons brew is available. Right? Or am I missing something.

[Mason]

Originally posted by GunSlinger:

I just went and checked the wiki out of curiosity. Did something change about the items that's not updated there? Both potion of healing and chalice of healing have an identical description. "Heals 250 health over 25 seconds."

If that's the case, unless you're at 250 gold or less after starters, you should never buy regular pots unless u need multi pots or barons brew is available. Right? Or am I missing something.

Weird, I guess they either changed it or I was wrong about thinking Potions giving you more health this entire time. But I coulda sworn they did, I know I heard it somewhere, and even people in the game itself will say buying potions over chalices gives more health. And technically it does, lemme explain.

Chalices are limited to only 3. Whereas potions... say if you have 300 gold, you could buy 5 health potions and a mana or multi potion. So you would have more sustain than someone who only bought the chalice, because again chalice is only 3, where you can buy 5 health and a multi pot for the same gold. SO technically at level 1 it's still better to buy pots over chalices. You do get good value out of chalices IF you back to base, but that can cause to miss farm, if you have more pots than the other guy you can stay in lane for longer than them, thus getting more farm.

So for some reason I though potions give more health, but in reality they don't. But the reason you buy them is for the early game sustain, because again, for 300 gold you can buy 5 health pots and a multi pot or mana pot, where for the same 300 gold you can only buy a chalice and only get 3 pots. So I would still recommend pots at level 1. Then you can go into a chalice.

[GunSlinger]

Yea I can see that logic. For the same money you can buy an ass load of pots and come out ahead in the end for hp. But, for a support who's going to be pot spamming most the game it's an investment. Just play a little safer. But for a solo or mid or whatever I could see wanting a stronger start at the cost of higher total cost through the game. But I'm a support main so my mentally tends to always default to that. And money can be scarce for us lol gotta think about that long term.

[Konomi☆Nanasaki]

As a support main I personally don't like chalice, because I prefer the increased sustain before the first back and not having a consumable slot blocked I'll want to use for wards afterwards anyways.

Wards feel like they got scarce anyways with the bomb filling consumable slots aswell, especially compared to when everyone had their ward shard.

edit: also regarding getting both stack items as a sup:
it's simply so much stats in a few items leaving you with a broader choice of utility for the rest of your build

[Geardo]

Wards were scarce before ward shard existed, I still recall people giving me attitude over using wards

[John]

Originally posted by Zero:

Weird, I guess they either changed it or I was wrong about thinking Potions giving you more health this entire time. But I coulda sworn they did, I know I heard it somewhere, and even people in the game itself will say buying potions over chalices gives more health. And technically it does, lemme explain.

Chalices are limited to only 3. Whereas potions... say if you have 300 gold, you could buy 5 health potions and a mana or multi potion. So you would have more sustain than someone who only bought the chalice, because again chalice is only 3, where you can buy 5 health and a multi pot for the same gold. SO technically at level 1 it's still better to buy pots over chalices. You do get good value out of chalices IF you back to base, but that can cause to miss farm, if you have more pots than the other guy you can stay in lane for longer than them, thus getting more farm.

So for some reason I though potions give more health, but in reality they don't. But the reason you buy them is for the early game sustain, because again, for 300 gold you can buy 5 health pots and a multi pot or mana pot, where for the same 300 gold you can only buy a chalice and only get 3 pots. So I would still recommend pots at level 1. Then you can go into a chalice.

9 out of 10 times i hold out with 3 potions and cloak of meditation until i have either 1700 or 2100 gold so i can at least buy a prophetic cloak, with 2100 i can also buy the ward chalice and start putting down some wards at objectives. If i can't hold out, i'll just go back and restock and be back in 30 seconds. Most times i'm back when the new wave is still busy being killed. If i can't make it back in time i'll just go lure a green buff in the mid lane tower to get some exp and gold and be back for the upcoming wave, might even hold out a mid lane wave or help kill the enemy mid laner.

Support is very versatile, you just gotta adjust to get that early game xp to keep up with the rest, but a well kept up support is a game changer and the difference between getting killed and getting out alive. I'm just sad so many people don't see that and think support is there to make sure you get killed instead of them.

[GunSlinger]

Originally posted by Konomi☆Nanasaki:

As a support main I personally don't like chalice, because I prefer the increased sustain before the first back and not having a consumable slot blocked I'll want to use for wards afterwards anyways.

Wards feel like they got scarce anyways with the bomb filling consumable slots aswell, especially compared to when everyone had their ward shard.

edit: also regarding getting both stack items as a sup:
it's simply so much stats in a few items leaving you with a broader choice of utility for the rest of your build

I know when built they provide quite a bit it just seemed like there would be better things to invest in than Thebes. But I've been running both the last few days with decent success. I still need to tweak my builds a bit though to min max prots. I really wish you could choose to full stack items in God builder. Hate having to go to practice mode to play with builds just to look at stats.

As for the chalice, I never really felt like i was missing much In the way of room. Yea it would be nice to have sentries and wards available at all times but I still need to keep sustain in my kit anyways and the benefits of not having to back as often cuz I just didn't have a way to Regen well while roaming after a fight would be tough to live without.

[GunSlinger]

Originally posted by John:

Originally posted by Zero:

Weird, I guess they either changed it or I was wrong about thinking Potions giving you more health this entire time. But I coulda sworn they did, I know I heard it somewhere, and even people in the game itself will say buying potions over chalices gives more health. And technically it does, lemme explain.

Chalices are limited to only 3. Whereas potions... say if you have 300 gold, you could buy 5 health potions and a mana or multi potion. So you would have more sustain than someone who only bought the chalice, because again chalice is only 3, where you can buy 5 health and a multi pot for the same gold. SO technically at level 1 it's still better to buy pots over chalices. You do get good value out of chalices IF you back to base, but that can cause to miss farm, if you have more pots than the other guy you can stay in lane for longer than them, thus getting more farm.

So for some reason I though potions give more health, but in reality they don't. But the reason you buy them is for the early game sustain, because again, for 300 gold you can buy 5 health pots and a multi pot or mana pot, where for the same 300 gold you can only buy a chalice and only get 3 pots. So I would still recommend pots at level 1. Then you can go into a chalice.

9 out of 10 times i hold out with 3 potions and cloak of meditation until i have either 1700 or 2100 gold so i can at least buy a prophetic cloak, with 2100 i can also buy the ward chalice and start putting down some wards at objectives. If i can't hold out, i'll just go back and restock and be back in 30 seconds. Most times i'm back when the new wave is still busy being killed. If i can't make it back in time i'll just go lure a green buff in the mid lane tower to get some exp and gold and be back for the upcoming wave, might even hold out a mid lane wave or help kill the enemy mid laner.

Support is very versatile, you just gotta adjust to get that early game xp to keep up with the rest, but a well kept up support is a game changer and the difference between getting killed and getting out alive. I'm just sad so many people don't see that and think support is there to make sure you get killed instead of them.

Support is a job. Everyone in the game has one. Mid mages job is to rain heavy damage down from the back and not die, ADC is to keep sustained damage going at all times and quickly burst down structures, jungle is supposed to pick off stragglers and infiltrate back line in team fights, solo and support is supposed to disrupt their formation and harass them while everyone else does their jobs and peel for the team when they're getting dove.

I enjoy my job. I don't think doing big damage is some trophy of your contribution to the win that some seem to act as if they believe it is. Like congrats, the Morgan had top damage on the team. You did your job. But without the 0/8/36 support you would have been eating dirt all game and thus, unable to do that job. People cling to weird ♥♥♥♥ in role centric games like this.