Solo Lane Starts for Warriors and Guardians

Greetings, fellow Smite players and Solo Lane enthusiasts. I’m Barrin and today we are looking at the most common starts in the short lane, with a few uncommon ones for you to explore. Before we begin, “starts” are the items you will be buying with the initial 1500 gold that you are given to start the game. With that out of the way, let’s jump into the common Warrior starts.

Warriors

The starter items you buy depends on the type of Warrior you’re playing. If you are using an auto-attack-based warrior (gods like Osiris, Bellona, Erlang Shen) buy the Death’s Toll starter item. Death’s Toll provides extra health, physical power and sustain through the passive. For ability-based gods (gods like Hercules, Odin, Sun Wukong), buy Bluestone Pendant. Bluestone Pendant will provide additional mana, MP5, and additional damage through its passive.

There are two Warriors that can make a choice on their starter item. Ravana, despite being a basic attack warrior by design, can make use of both Bluestone Pendant and Death’s Toll. In matchups where Ravana can control the lane (against gods like Guan Yu and Vamana), Bluestone is the starter that you want. In matchups where Ravana will go even or possibly even be out cleared, Death’s Toll is the way to go. Nike is primarily ability based, but having two cleaves in her hit chain allows her to make use of Death’s Toll. While Nike can make use of Bluestone Pendant, only the first instance of Rend will proc the passive, and a Plan of Action enhanced Rend will already full clear the wave once it’s leveled up enough. These reasons are why some professional Solo Laners opt to use Mark of the Vanguard, especially in matchups where Nike’s Rend can be interrupted. Use the starter item that best fits the matchup when playing these two.

Guardians

For Guardians, there is only one real Starter item that is viable now: Vampiric Shroud. Vampiric Shroud provides extra sustain, health, and physical protections. In seasons past, Mark of the Vanguard was the go-to starter for Solo Guardians, but it is now best used as a small bridge item that is gotten after boots. While going into Soul Stone or Sands of Time may seem like a viable idea, you will have no extra defenses and can find yourself taking a trip back to the fountain the hard way.

Uncommon Starts

These starts aren’t something you’ll see too often, but they can be useful. The first start is the Silver Breastplate start. By spending 950 gold, you're getting extra mana, 35 physical protections, and 10 MP5. This start is useful on every guardian and is extremely beneficial to Guan Yu, who suffers from being easily bullied and having his mana buff invaded. Rushing Silver Breastplate then allows for people to go into Breastplate of Valor and reap all the benefits of that item.The second uncommon start, known as the Golden Sash Rush, is exclusive to magical characters. Golden Sash is the tier 2 of Warlock’s Sash and is a high risk, high reward start. For one, you’ll only have 250 gold to buy potions, so if you get poked out you may have to back to fountain earlier than expected; it is of utmost importance that you don’t take too much damage and manage your mana well. Before you even finish off Warlock’s Sash, you are probably going to want a defensive item against the damage type of your lane opponent. Even upon finishing off Warlock’s Sash, you still have to get around sixty stacks to make the item cost-effective. However, if you do manage to get through the early game unscathed with this start, you will be incredibly tanky as you can build into pure protection items and frontline incredibly well.

Chalices

Chalices have seen a rise in usage over the past few patches allowing for even greater sustain in the laning phase. For Warriors who have an easy time securing their own blue buff, going a health chalice and two health potions allows you to get a starter item and tier 1 boots and means you have incredible boxing potential in lane. For Guardians (and Guan Yu), going the mana chalice means that even if you lose your blue buff, you’ll still be able to stay in lane for long periods of time. Buying a mana chalice can even be combined with the Silver Breastplate start as you can get the chalice and the item for 1250 gold, with 5 health potions for another 250 gold. All this combined means you can stay in lane for quite some time.

I hope that the explanations given might help you understand why some players choose the items they start with when in the short lane. I also encourage you to try both the Silver Breastplate and Golden Sash starts if you are confident in your abilities as a Solo Laner.

Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you in game or back here, where we will take a look at how to maximize your lead as a Solo Laner.