Smite S4 how to build mages

Understanding how to build requires basic ability knowledge. At the time of writing 91 gods within the game. Understanding the basics base numbers with scaling. High base power with low scaling benefits from penetration.  Low base power with high scaling benefits from power with penetration. Oversimplification which is rather a generic rule. More power equals raw damage, more penetration makes that damage more effective. Simply put you build power with penetration, more penetration means that power goes further.

General rule build power, build penetration to make use that power. 

Protections reduce incoming damage abilities which do 400 damage, in reality, do 300 damage. Add some penetration that damage can be increased to 400 damage. Penetration allows for power to be more efficient damage wise. Penetration is rather important to mages and should be building it.

Two types of penetration, flat and percent based. Which one you build depends,  on the other teams builds and your own goal. Against high-value targets which don’t build protections want flat penetration. Against targets which you want to kill with protections over 110 want percent.

Protections reduce how effective power can be. Consider that power does not give you a 1:1 return. Not every ability scales at 100%, extra power you build could be wasted due to protections.  All damage is subject to protections apart from true damage.

Can learn more from the book of Thoth which covers smite mechanics in detail.

What counts as high scaling and low scaling?

Magical high anything above 70%, low anything below 60%. Guardians on an average scale very poorly with high base damage. Mages scale rather highly with decent base damage.

General rule build power, build penetration to make use that power. 

Seen far too many players ignore penetration on the console. Main damage classes have base 30 magical protections at level 20. Penetration boots with one penetration item remove base protections completely.

Every single god can make use of flat penetration. Just need abilities which can easily apply it. Damage of time abilities works great with the spear of the magus. Below is a table of gods I build spear of the magus. Note I don’t always build spear but these can make very good use of it.

Name

Agni

Ah puch

Anubis

Ao Kuang

Aphrodite

Freya

Kukuklan

Nox

Poseidon

Raijin

Thoth

Zhong Zui

Core concepts behind builds are likely to stay the same. Items are likely to change. General rule build power, build penetration to make use that power.  Penetration is undervalued by far too many players.