The Official SMITE Magazine eSports Edition | Page 34

Did you know?
In the regionals,
Nu Wa was
banned from
45% of games.

The Importance
of Picks & Bans
f you can believe it,
there are now over
sixty different gods
implemented into
SMITE. While they are all great in
their own way, none of them can win
without being strategically placed
with four other gods on a team. This
team can not just be a hodgepodge
of randomly chosen gods and expect
to win. Some people would even
argue that games are won, and
lost, in the picks and bans portion
of any competitive game. Picks and
bans can shape the entire match by
negating the other team a hypercarry Assassin, a Guardian who has
the best save potential, or a god that
they know the enemy team loves to
use (also called a “respect ban”).
There are many reasons to allow or
disallow the other team to pick a god
and here is what you need to know.

I

34 • Contents

WHEN SHOULD A GOD
BE BANNED?
First you have to know how the
banning system works. If online, one
of the teams is randomly selected to
have first ban. If at a LAN, like at the at
SWC, whoever gets first ban also gets
first pick. But this means whoever
gets second ban gets to pick two on
their first pick. The teams alternate
banning one god at a time until there
are four gods in total banned from
play. Then both teams pick three gods
to use, returning us to one more round
of banning. This final round of banning
lets both teams choose one more god
to ban, followed by the last god picks.
When deciding what gods to ban
you have to keep a few things in mind.
First think of who you want to play
as. For example, let’s say I am going
to play the Hunter role and decide
that I would like to play Artemis.
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