Apollo, Riding in Style!

This is an in-depth Apollo guide, as well as my first Smite guide ever.. This guide will help new or older players to Apollo learn how to build his build, level his skills, and buying the correct items and will also explain why! In the end, I hope this will help or make people enhance their Apollo skills.

Introduction / Lore / Skill Description

Apollo's Lore
There are none without admiration for Apollo, God of Music. He is brash, cavalier, and dauntless, with the power to bring hope to the hopeless and change the course of battle with a single arrow. Voices of soldiers, mothers, kings and emperors, even Gods rise in glorious melody in honor of him; and he, basking in their adoration, shines victoriously.

Though Hera, Queen of Gods, challenged his very birth, sending the great serpent Pylos to slay Apollo, his twin sister Artemis, and their mother Leto, not even she could deny him victory. Merely four days old, Apollo, gifted with a legendary bow, slew the Gaia Serpent and defied Hera.

In his humble youth, Apollo was a cattle herder. The trickster God Hermes stole Apollo's charges and led them to a nearby cave. From the shell of a tortoise and the body of a cow, he crafted the first Lyre. Apollo finally caught up with Hermes, saw the instrument, and simply had to have it, trading the rest of his cattle to Hermes for it. Years later, Hermes would send his son, Pan, to challenge Apollo in a contest of musical prowess, but Apollo soundly defeated the satyr with dexterous mastery of the Lyre.

As Apollo grew into his rightful place among the Gods, his victories mounted, and the songs of the Faithful were sung more and more in his name. Now, they raise their voices for Apollo to take the field as Gods clash. Never one to deny his adoring public, Apollo prepares for one last show.


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Apollo, Omnipresent Split-Pusher and Teamfight Party-Crasher

Apollo strong in all phases of the game and compatible with any support, Apollo was the measure of all things AD Carry in Season 1. Through various nerfs he may no longer be overpowered in Season 2, but he has retained much of what made him OP in the first place which makes him ultimately still a very strong pick indeed.

His kit is pregnant with utility and covers every possible angle from attack to defense a hunter could wish for. It consists of a potent clear and poke, strong disruption (hard crowd control), a great dash ability, and a true global sky ultimate that does massive amounts of damage upon landing. To top if off, Apollo can also call a free attack speed steroid his passive.

Apollo gravely impacts how the match is played out. His global ultimate bestows on him the ability to split-push out of nowhere or to get in on team fights in a mere heartbeat — or do both together if he so desires.


Audacity

Key Bind: Passive

After 10 successful basic attacks, Apollo gains Audacity, attacking with both hands and increasing his attack speed by 100% for the next 5 attacks (hit or miss) he makes.

Ability Type: Buff
Attack Speed Buff: 100%
Buff Duration: 5 attacks


So Beautiful

Key Bind: 1

Apollo strums a single cord on his Lyre. It's so beautiful it hurts, and all enemies in a long range line take damage. Damage from this ability is reduced 15% for each enemy hit after the first.

Ability Type: Line
Damage: 80 / 135 / 190 / 245 / 300 (+80% of your physical power)
Cost: 70 / 80 / 90 / 100 / 110
Cooldown: 15 / 14 / 13 / 12 / 11s

Serenade

Key Bind: 2

Apollo uses his amazing voice to mesmerize all nearby enemies and bolster himself with additional protections. Any damage done breaks the effect.

Ability Type: Area
Mesmerize: .7 / 1.1 / 1.5 / 1.9 / 2.3s
Protections: 10 / 20 / 30 / 40 / 50
Radius: 20
Buff Lifetime: 5s
Cost: 75
Cooldown: 17 / 16 / 15 / 14 / 13s

The Moves

Key Bind: 3

Apollo runs forward and slides on his knees, dealing damage, knocking aside all enemies and adding a stack of Audacity for each enemy hit. At the end of the slide, the movement speed is decreased for enemies and increased for himself and allies.

Ability Type: Dash
Damage: 70 / 115 / 160 / 205 / 250 (+60% of your physical power)
Movement Speed Buff/Debuff: 5 / 10 / 15 / 20 / 25%
Buff Duration: 2s
Cost: 70
Cooldown: 15s

Across The Sky

Key Bind: 4

Apollo rides his chariot across the sky, choosing when to land, dealing damage every .2s for .8s enemies when he lands.

Ability Type: Ground Target
Damage per Tick: 70 / 95 / 120 / 145 / 170 (+30% of your physical power)
Damage (Total): 280 / 380 / 480 / 580 / 680 (+120% of your physical power)
Radius: 20
Cost: 10 + 60 per second
Cooldown: 110 / 105 / 100 / 95 / 90s

Itemization / Pros & Cons / Situational Items / Team Synergy

Pros & Cons

Pros

• High penetration
  
• High late-game damage even against tanks
  
• Good protections against other physical power carries
  
• High Mobility
  
• Versatile Kit
  
• Awesome Auto Attack Passive
  
• Late Game High Damage
  
• Can make high quality music

Cons

• Easily focused
  
• Very squishy against magical power carries
  
• Ultimate can be missed easily
  
• Squishy in general
  
• Highly Punishable
  
• Above Average Skill Cap
  
• Mana Hungry
  
• Shows signs of narcism

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Season 2 sees the return of the Death’s Toll start to the front and crit builds are once again the top-damage performers. In terms of actives hunters bade farewell to Greater Sprint.

Devourer’s Build

• 1.
  
• 2.
  
• 3.
  
• 4.
  
• 5.
  
• 6.

Apollo starts out with Death’s Toll, Spiked Gauntlet, and a health potion. He then finishes rushing Devourer’s Gauntlet in order to begin stacking and continues with the remaining core of the build — Warrior Tabi, Ichaival, The Executioner — before branching off into crits with Rage.

Death’s Toll is eventually sold for the complementing crit item Deathbringer, and in the end game Ichaival is traded in for Malice to round out the build with triple crits.

More so than other hunters, Apollo benefits from carrying extra mana potions up until the end game. He can pop a potion and then Ult in from a great distance away without having to fear running out of mana once he lands with Across the Sky due to how mana-consuming his sky Ult can be.

Hastened Fatalis

Apollo has the option of building Hastened Fatalis in lieu of The Executioner. Doing so reduces the sustained damage output of the build by a significant 100–200 damage per second, but the item’s passive is not irrelevant in chasing down kills as a hunter, especially because Greater Sprint no longer removes the in-hand movement speed penalty and is thus foregone as an active entirely. In the end the decision to build Fatalis is as much personal preference and match-situational as it is a meta call.


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Situational Items

Frostbound Hammer - This item is good for both kiting and chasing, the slow is the main reason you would pick this up but the health portion doesn't hurt either. I normally leave this item to the melee physical carries like Thor or Hercules but I have used it in the past.

Soul Eater - I would take this item if you felt you needed a bit more health and attack speed in your build. The physical lifesteal is pretty good along with the aura which helps other physical damage Gods on your team, as well as giving your team physical protection but I would honestly take devourer's gloves as my main source of lifesteal.

Jotunn's Wrath - This item is a good source of cooldown reduction if that's what you're looking for. It's also has a decent amount of physical penetration which is what this builds all about. The mana will help a little in team fights, it will give you that extra boost to spam your abilities. Of course the extra physical power never hurts. I would take this item if I felt like being super aggressive.

Qin's Sais - If you're fed at this point you're going to do a stupid amount of damage after you pick this up. Have fun :) If not, this will help bring you back as long as you're landing the auto attacks. This will help to take down high protected gods as well.



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Team Synergy

Information is everything! As a Hunter, you must be aware of where all of your enemies are so you can make the judgement call to be aggressive or not. If you're not paying attention AND your team isn't calling when their opposing laner has left then it becomes GANK CITY population Apollo. If you're solo queuing make sure you stress to your team to communicate about everything in the game; made easy using the VGS system.

As Apollo you ideally want to lane with:
Ymir
Athena
Hades
Khepri
Aphrodite
Xing Tian
Geb

And have trouble against:
Ymir
Athena
Khepri
Chronos
Ah Puch
Ao Kuang
Bellona

Actives

• 1.
  
• 2.

With the beneficial passive gone on Greater Sprint (it no longer removes the in-hand movement speed penalty), Apollo is looking to invest into actives that increase his survivability instead. This is especially true with Hastened Fatalis as part of the build whose passive outclasses everything Apollo can build in terms of Sprint actives.

Beads is still the go-to must-have against crowd control for any hunter. Rather novel for hunters, however, is the use of Aegis to counter bursty Ults or for overcoming clutch situations in a showy but effective manner à la Zapman.

The buy order for actives relies heavily on the match at hand. For example, with an Artemis on the enemy team Apollo is forced to go for early Beads due to the mere threat of her boar Ultimate.

Buying Actives


Zapman prefers to get as far down the build chain as he can before investing into any actives. In his own words, “Getting actives too early is a huge money sink and delays your power spike which you want to achieve as early as possible.”

Leveling / First 5 Levels

So Beautiful (1) has the highest leveling priority for the clear and poke, followed by Serenade (2) for the offensive and defensive disruption. Apollo’s dash ability, The Moves (3), is maxed out last. The Ultimate, Across the Sky (4), is leveled as necessary or upon impending use.

Audacity


Apollo’s passive is a free attack speed steroid making him a force to be reckoned with in 1-on-1 duels. After 10 successful basic attacks (structures included), Apollo gains Audacity, attacking with both hands and increasing his attack speed by 100% for the next 5 attacks (hit or miss) he makes. His passive also allows him to clear the jungle buff camps very quickly at the start of each match, which should give him lane advantage most of the time due to how early he enters duo lane as a result.

First 5 levels

Level 1


Level 2


Level 3


Level 4


Level 5


In the early game Apollo needs to unlock his entire kit first. The focus lies on So Beautiful (1) for the clear and poke. Apollo wants put a level into The Moves (3) as soon as possible in order to be safe in lane or to go on the offensive.

Play Style / Early / Mid / Late /

Apollo’s play style is greatly influenced by the global map presence his ultimate allows him. As such, it is possible for him to do multitasking by, for example, pressuring one side lane while also getting in on a team fight on the complete other side of the map. Apollo’s lane push is underwhelming in the early game when compared to Rama, his nemesis.

Early Game

The early game is all about first blood in lane and denying the opponent farm.

While he doesn’t possess the strongest push in the early game, Apollo’s laning phase is nonetheless rock solid. His kill potential in lane is high due to his free steroid passive and the overall raw strength off his kit (penetrating clear/poke, disruption, mobility), allowing him to punish overcommitting opponents easily or outright focus underleveled supports for the first blood.

After unlocking his global ultimate at level 5 Apollo can start looking for fast rotations to get in on team fights worth having or for securing the important kills the team needs. Mana is only ever an issue for Apollo if he decides to Ult in from a long distance away. In that case it is beneficial to use a mana potion before initiating Across the Sky (4) to avoid being mana-starved when landing and attempting to secure the target.

As always, it helps to push the first minion wave hard in order to gain the lane advantage for the first 3–5 minutes of the match depending on how active and successful the enemy jungler is. It also helps to have a support with good level-one clear so that the jungle camps at the start of the match can be cleared as fast as possible to enter lane early and exert lane pressure.

Mid Game

The mid game is all about items, rotations, and Gold Fury.

Apollo is in mid game form once his third item, Ichaival, is finished and work on building The Executioner has begun. Apollo should look to farm as much as possible until he reaches that point. Only then will he become a real asset in team fights. During the mid game Apollo should look for rotation opportunities more so than he would in the early game.

Apollo’s prime objective in the mid game remains securing Gold Fury and towers off the backfoot of rotations and team fights.

Late Game

The late game is all about team fights, split-pushing, and Fire Giant.

Once Apollo has started building Rage he can already be considered in late game form and should be a beast in team fights and boxing duels. Apollo is now capable of completely shredding most targets (including towers and phoenixes), and his ultimate deals such massive amounts of damage that he can, virtually out of nowhere, annihilate the backlines of the enemy team where the squishy damage-dealers (mages) are bound to hang out.

Thanks to his ultimate also, Apollo is unarguably the best split-pusher in SMITE and perfectly capable of taking down, on a whim, phoenixes, Fire Giant, or even the opposing titan if the enemy fails to watch out for it.

The Audacity is in Your Hands

Remember, if you ever play Apollo.

The Audacity will always be in your hands.

[Arctem]

@Qotroz

I'll pay you in crates. Everyone likes crates, right?
Also, just how many hours do you have in Smite and as Apollo specifically? Cause I'm taking the steam hours with a grain of salt.

I'd appreciate it more if you made a guide on the D&D damage system implemented for KOTOR 1 and 2 and how to really understand it in laymans terms.

Well duh, of course I'm a new player to Apollo, SMITE, and MOBAS in general. Leave the whole positioning and rotation stuff for when people want to get really serious about playing a god, maximizing for crits or penetration, counter building for other gods, etc.
An example of this would be CS:GO. You've got casual matchmaking, gun games, ZM, ZE, surfing.... and then you have competitive matching making, which includes the servers that valve has, Faceit, CSL, ESEA, CEVO, AltPug, etc. And I'm sure you know just how serious that stuff can get. If not, watch some CSGO streams on Twitch or play a few comp games yourself.

[Felflame]

@Qotroz
Well, I'm very certain that I made this guide for newer players to Apollo.. and I don't really mind. If people are wanting a really good guide for expierenced players then they should go find one.
But, if you expect more from me you can check out my Comprehensive ADC guide, that would probably be at the top of your expectations

[Craith]

@ LoS | BakaThanatos

Sure, I can make you a guide for Apollo.
Will you pay me if it is good?

Would you also like me to make a guide on how to throw a dice on a table?
Because that is literally an easy comparison for people who have alot of experience with Smite.

I am not saying that that you or Natelie are stupid, I am just stating that I think a guide like this is only useful for new players and not experienced ones.

[Arctem]

@Qotroz
So if I had asked for a guide about SWK or Hel, would that make me a warrior or mage instead?
Even though I try to play all of the classes when needed?
Also, check my friends list and see if you can find her. Please, I welcome you to try.

Maybe you should make a Apollo guide yourself, with all of that included. Go for it man, no ones stopping you.

[Craith]

@ Natalie_Bear!
All kidding aside, is your profile picture really a fotograf of yourself?

[Craith]

@ Natalie_Bear! Where in the guide do you state anything about positioning, skill rotation in relation to opponent gods? Any experienced Smite player knows how to build any god they play, as it is obviously the easiest part of the game. The only thing in this guide that might be useful for new to semi-experienced players to know, is which gods pairs up well with Apollo.

[Craith]

@ LoS | BakaThanatos
Ofcourse you don't see anything wrong with this guide, being an assassin player yourself.
I also assume you are Natalie_Bears little pet, so I doubt you would question anything she has to say.

[Arctem]

Darn, was hoping if you could make a guide for her.

[Felflame]

@Baka
Nope, not fond of assassins that much sadly ;p

[Arctem]

Ok, cool. Do you happen to have any experience with Nemesis in Arena btw?