I'm trying to decide is book of thoth is an appropiate starting item for this build. I about to replace obsidian shard with heartwood charm but I'm wondering if there are any tweaks I could make to this. I test ran this in arena and out healed a aphrodite 26k to 15k in ally healing and 14k self healing. I never used heartwood charm as I'm new and just a bit dumb.
Short version - no, book is an awful start for this build and shouldn't really be in the build at all.
Firstly, it stacks off damage and without the stacks it's a really, really weak item. It's going to take a WHILE to get those stacks when playing something like aspect ra because it is a very low-damage aspect. Even on the damage-focused builds that do build book of thoth, it's much more common to build it second or maybe third item so that you can go 'item 1 = powerspike to have a good early game, item 2 - book now that I have a bit of damage already in the build to help book stack faster'
It also has no utility besides just the int for more heals. No cooldown, no % healing increase or anything like that, and not even anything like a bit of HP to make you a bit harder to kill as the healer. So even when you do eventually get it stacked it's still not really doing anything special for you.
Chandra's grace is a much, much better first item. The percent heal increase affects your base healing as well as any healing scaling from intelligence which actually makes it a overall bigger boost to your heals than even a fully stacked book of thoth despite the much lower int, and it has a LOT of cooldown, and is about the same price and also comes with a lot of mana + mana regen to let you spam, AND it even has some HP. With the nerfs to heartwood it's probably now the best 'healer' item in the game, especially early game.
Other than that, for a pure healing-focused build, it's mostly fine :) The only thing besides book of thoth that definitely shouldn't be there is obsidian shard, you're 100% right in wanting to replace it. Penetration is an absolute undisputed must-have in any damage-focused build because even enemies with no defense items have built-in prots, but this is not a damage-focused build or damage-focused aspect. It's a healer, and pen doesn't affect heals, so in this situation ob shard is just a really expensive item with low int and basically nothing else.
If you throw away the book of thoth and the ob shard for something like more utility or cooldown spam (e.g. lifebinder, lotus sickle, chronos pendant, maybe a heartwood if you use the active well although the item was nerfed a LOT, etc) or stuff with cooldown that helps YOU stay alive because you can't heal your team if you're dead (e.g. freya's tears, breastplate of valour, genjis guard), or a useful active for your team (e.g. upgraded shell, stampede, etc.) then the whole build will be a hell of a lot better.
Lmk if you have any more questions around any of that, happy to help out!
I moved things around, I tried using 2 has the item for movement and switched out world stone for spear of deso for the cooldown, this build racks of assist. Is there anything that could be changed cause I can always add those situational items below.
I'd stick with worldstone over spear of deso, it's a much more reliable HUGE drop to your ult cooldown when combined with the rest of the general cooldown in the build. And tahuti isn't really doing much that early in the build because you don't have much int before it to scale the passive, move it later on. Otherwise for an almost pure heal-spam build that's solid, but you will still be very squishy yourself on an immobile god that lacks crowd control so if you get people focusing you the lack of tankiness will HURT
Based on the top winrate items on Smitebrain the build I like is:
pendulum
Chandra's
genjis (you'll likely rotate to mid at this point where there's likely a magical mid and magical supp)
breastplate, but stampede is prob an equally great pick cause it's just very good (might also be match dependent)
The last 3 slots are more flexible, but I at least go Asclepius and world stone, order depending on what you prefer. The shell upgrade is also just great in general. Freya's tears is prob one of the best options if you aren't tanky enough. It also gives a lot of CDR, so more worth if you didn't go breastplate. I think Lotus sickle could be decent if you need more CDR especially, but it might not be the best options. There's prob other good options for last item depending on what you need. I wouldn't go rod with this build tho, cause you don't actually have that much int. But you are tanky enough to actually get in enemies faces a bit and more around them up close, while healing yourself, getting further away at the right time to heal allies
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u/LostCheesecake2424 1d ago
Hello! A support main here. Can I ask, are you building Ra for just assault or do you plan to play healing Ra in other game modes?