Zhong Kui Build in SMITE

Welcome all my fellow geeks and gamers. For those that are new to my posts, I am Kathryn Dragoste from DraxisWeb Gaming. I am the founder of DraxisWeb and writer of most of its articles. I have decided in this new year to branch out to other platforms like Vocal and see if I can get more eyes on some of the content we create and this way I can rework my site to focus more on our crafts while we bring our geeky goodness here. One of the first things I have planned is a series of blogs about SMITE which I just recently got back into playing in 2020 after an absence of about 2 or 3 years. So, without further ado let’s just jump right into things with our first story on Vocal.

Many years ago on a console far far away from what I use now, I started playing a game called SMITE. I quite enjoyed it and it took up most of my gaming time. Back then I ran on the XBox and I collected quite a few skins and had gotten several gods high enough in level to get the diamond skins for them. These gods included Neith, Sol, Kukulkan with a few others very close to getting to that high level. Then I purchased the Playstation 4 as I believe it was Season 5 in SMITE had just dropped. The problem was I had a small child and I had to consider finances and I couldn’t see paying for both XBox Live and PS+, not when I had to buy diapers and such. So XBox went the way of the Dodo in our household and I became a full-time Playstation user but quickly found out with SMITE none of my stuff transferred over! I lost my enjoyment of the game as I lost the skins and levels I had worked so hard for and until this past year I just gave up on it. But I came back for the last battle pass to check out new gods and to re-find the joy I once had in this awesome game and today I want to take a look at some of my new builds I’m using in Season 8 which just dropped recently with the new starter items. This first story will look at the God Zhong Kui.

Now I’m going to be honest here, in October I came out as Trans. It was a hard decision to make but for me the right one I think. The reason I mention it here is because for the most part when you see me talking about gaming things you will see me talking about a LOT of female characters as for the longest time I used them as a coping mechanism for my geek life because I wished I could be like them. However, in certain games where you can be a multitude of characters each with different abilities, I do find myself jumping back and forth to try other characters just to see what I like most game-wise. Though I do always come back to main female characters even if they aren’t as good in the game. Now there are many gods in SMITE from many pantheons and while I gravitate mainly to Sol, Neith, Nu Wa, Hell and Aphrodite there are some male Gods that have really stuck out for me that I constantly go back to. One of those is Zhong Kui especially with his Demon Catcher skin (Yes I am a sucker for skins! Especially cute or creepy skins!) So the other day, I came across a Zhong Kui player who came into Arena on the opposing team and simply wiped the floor with my team! I had never been burst down so effectively by a mage before so at the end of the game I checked out his build and I decided to try a variation of it for myself and this is what I came up with. Now while I explain what it is and why it works so well down below you can also see my first game with it in our DraxisWeb Gaming video linked HERE and HERE. Honestly, with this build, I could get more kills if I didn’t focus so heavily on the minions but I have found that if I don’t focus minions in Arena most other people don’t and that’s a good way to lose a match. So onto the build now.

The first part of this build comes from the Conduit Gem which is great on any burst mage types. The reason is every second it gains a stack of power that when you hit something with an ability can do an additional 2 true damage this can stack up to 20 times so gives your ability attacks an extra 40 damage on a hit. This also starts you off with 25 magical power and 10 mp5. Once you hit level 20 you’ll want to upgrade this to Archmages Gem which ups the power to 100 and ups the damage per stack from 2 true damage to 2% of your magical power! Now I think this would pair well with a Book of Thoth that has evolved but I haven’t tried that quite yet...I may try that on a Hades build!

Next, I add in Shoes of the Magi for movement which also adds in 75 Magical Power along with some Life Steal and Mana. Now if the game goes long enough I do end up switching this out at the end after buying a speed potion and replacing it with the Divine Ruin that gives you 90 magical power and a 10 magical penetration for a low price of 2300 gold.

The next 3 slots are kinda interchangeable as to what you want to build when however I tend to go with the Spear of Desolation next. This item will give you a lovely boost to your power of 110 with 10 penetration and a 10% cooldown reduction. I am loving cooldown builds lately as you’ll see when I do my ultimate cooldown build for Kukulkan later. This item has a passive that adds even more cooldown on any kills or assists against enemy gods.

There’s also the Spear of the Magus that I like to build in one of these mid slots which is a cost of 2550 altogether. This is another high power with extra penetration items which is the point of this build. Zhong Kui is excellent for bursting people down and the best way to do that is to get some significant power coupled with penetration and this item will add a nice chunk of magical power at 110 with another 10 penetration. It also comes with a passive of marking the target of your abilities to take extra damage from all other sources for 7 seconds.

Rounding out the mid slots is the Warlock’s Staff. This item gives another good boost to power with another 85 to that stat, 150 to health, 200 to mana and another 10% to penetration. This also has a passive ability that adds health and power per stack with you getting 5 stacks on a god kill and 1 per minion kill up to a max of 75 stacks.

Last but not least we add in the Rod of Tahuti to our build which gives a massive boost of 145 points to our magical power. On top of the power boost, the Rod of Tahuti also gives 30 MP5 and yet another 10% penetration to your stats! If all of that wasn’t enough this item also gives a passive assist where if your enemy is below 50% health you hit with an extra 25% magic power behind both abilities and normal attacks!

So far, this has been a great build for me to use for Zhong Kui. I am looking forward to writing up some more of my guides for the builds I use in SMITE. The next ones on my list will be Kukulkan and Hades and hopefully, soon I’ll have a nice little guide for the newest Goddess Tiamat that was just released! Have a great time in-game and remember to check out our old blogs and stories at draxisweb.com!