[Misc] Learning Smite

Hi and first off, welcome. Smite's an absolute blast although it can be sorta tough to get into. In general, I'd say there's three different parts to learning Smite. **The mechanics**, **Gods and items** and **the Meta**.

##The Mechanics

This is something you can only learn through practice. Depending on how much previous experience you've had with (3rd person) games before, this will be more or less of a problem. Just play bot games, try to land your abilities and AAs as much as you can. If it's too difficult, practice in Jgl practice, change your settigns (sensitivity, etc.) to see what works best. There's no way to improve your mechanics other than practice.

##Gods and Items

This is something you'll somewhat learn paralell to your mechanics, although it does require some extra effort to truly master.
###Gods

This is something you can mostly learn by playing too, especially if you switch the Gods you play up. I generally suggest playing a small pool of Gods you enjoy, but whenever you're up against a God you haven't seen before, check out their kit after your match. Knowing all Gods is incredibly important, as your own playstyle heavily depends on their kit. I'm pretty sure that your previous MOBA experience will also help you out. It might be a good goal to try to master every God at some point, as this will give you a decent understanding of their kit.

###Items
This requires a bit more out-of-game work. While you can learn items just by playing and reading the description (and you should be doing that), it's quite tough. People have been playing this game for years, they've figured out what works best on whom (or who, sorry, my grammar sucks) and it'd be silly not to make use of that knowledge. Personally, I'd suggest [smite.guru](http://www.smite.guru). It's a page that looks at high level ranked player's builds and then compiles a "popular" build. While you generally don't want to follow a cookie-cutter build (although that might be a good choice early on, when you're still busy with other aspects of the game), smite.guru can give you good insight into how a God is played. Some Warriors will have lots of CDR on their builds, other's will sport Atk Spd. This not only tells you what other items you might want to add on your own (since you now know which stats to look for) but also tells you a lot about their playstyle. In general, item knowledge and true understanding of builds takes a little while to develop.

##The meta
The meta, that nebulous term that includes everything and nothing is what really sets good players appart from bad ones. Item and God knowledge also plays into it, but so do things like understanding of the more intricate game mechanics, where to start on the map, what buffs to take, when to rotate, when to engage, when to invade, etc.

In general, this is something that takes a lot of time to develop. You can learn a whole lot by watching streams, reading guides and from YT videos though.

###Streams

Pretty much all the Twitch streamers with a decent viewership are either pros or ex pros, with the exception of a loudmouth who'd wish he could be one. They tend to know quite a lot about the game and are usually happy to answer questions. While watching them will definitely show you how the game could be played, they don't always explain every move so you have to figure some things out. Watch out for Incon though because while he's a great streamer and a good player, he does often play Gods that his fans requested in very odd roles, so he might not be the best rolemodel when it comes to that.

###Guides

There's plenty of good guides around. I know SmiteAccademy used to have a few good ones (not sure if they ever updated to S3 though), Smite.guru is great for builds, there's a bunch of links to good ressources in the r/smite sidebar I think and they have a command on there (you'll have to look it up, but I think it might be  !help) that will have the bot post a whole bunch of useful links for you. I myelf have close to 90 guides backed up myself, ranging from God guides, role guides, AA canceling, Solo lane counter picks or even just a general overview of CQ. If you have any specific questions, feel free to post on here / Pm me and I'm happy to post what I have / write a new one. You can also find some of my guides on [pastebin](http://pastebin.com/u/Cpteleon), although the formattings horrible there.

##YT

There are a lot of YT content creators but honestly, I only know very few by name. If anyone has any suggestions, please comment below and I'm happy to edit this part. What I can suggest though:

[DukeSloth](https://www.youtube.com/user/DukeSloth). Probably the biggest theory crafter and tutorial creator for Smite. He's made a lot of videos on a lot of stuff, albeit not exactly suited for complete beginners. His youtube channel will answer your more indepth questions, questions regarding items, builds, etc. Once you've got the basics of building down (With the help of smite.guru), he's the one who'll answer those questions that remain. Why spear on God Y but shard on God X? Why can I build book late but not sash? etc.

[DmBrandon](https://www.youtube.com/user/dmbrandon) DmBrandon is quite a controversial figure in the community as he used to be part of HiRez but left after making some questionable comments. While I personally think he's a terrible human being, there's no denying that he's got a somewhat decent understanding of the game and, more importantly, creates a huge ammount of content where he explains what he's doing and why. As a disclaimer though: Take everything he says with a grain of salt, or whater it down somewhat. He likes to flip his shit over small things and items are either trash or gamebreakingly OP. Still, I think there's some value to be had from his stuff.

[Aviak Malembro](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwA2Icn_TNSR9qG55QDf-1g). Shameless self-plug. Me and a few mates have recently started doing reviews of high-ranked player's games, looking at a full game of a single player and discussing every minute of it. What we're trying to do is help people who've got a decent understanding of the game to notice those small things that better players pay attention to that you don't. We've only just started doing this though, so the quality, both technically as well as content wise is still something we're working on imporing. But if you can look past the mild cring and my shitty mic I think there's something useful to be found there.