The Smite World Championship saw the rise of several new strategies and playstyles. Staple meta picks were refined and new old gods discovered new strengths. Terra was a great solo laner before the Hi-Rez Expo placement round, but that tournament saw her become a monster. A new build was developed that used Soul Reaver to make Terra a damage threat in her own right. In this article, we will examine the new Terra build and how her playstyle changed at the Smite World Championship.



A Terra build with Soul Reaver made waves at Worlds.

The solo lane meta slightly changed heading into Worlds. While Warriors were already being built aggressively, players were building Guardians with more damage than before. Penetration was the key to unlocking more of their base damage. Terra was taken a step further once it was discovered how strong Soul Reaver is on her.

Solo lane Guardians such as Terra, will typically start with Guaridan’s Blessing along with basic boots or a Chalice. This Blessing provides early sustainability and generates a lot of gold over time. Shoes of the Magi are the boots upgrade often ran. These boots have 55 magical power and 10 penetration for the start of the damage core.

The order of the next items tends to vary based on the lane matchup, but Void Stone and Breastplate of Valor are picked up after boots. Void Stone is built first against magical opponents. It comes with 150 health and 60 magical protections for defense in lane and also provides another corner piece of the Guardian’s early damage with 20 power and a passive that reduces the enemy’s magical protection by 20. This effectively gives every magical god on your team 20 free penetration, boosting their damage considerably.

Breastplate of Valor is a defensive item with 65 physical defense and promotes spell usage with 300 mana and 20% cooldown reduction. The first three items are consistent for the meta build for Guardians in the solo lane.

Soul Reaver is built on Terra as a fourth or later item. This item is the lynchpin in the build. It brings 130 magical power, 300 mana, and a passive that causes abilities to deal an additional 2% of the target’s maximum health. If the target’s health is at least 2000, Soul Reaver’s passive will deal an increased percentage of their HP, up to 8% at 2750 health. When combined with the penetration earlier in the build, Soul Reaver allows Terra to do serious damage against squishy characters and tanks.

The remaining two slots in the build are filled with situational defensive items. The mixed-defense Cloak items are popular, but any defense item can be used based on team compositions and what the player wants or needs.



The core items of the Terra Soul Reaver build.

Back in the mid-season patch, 5.13, Soul Reaver was changed from a burst item to a more consistent damage effect. The effect has no cooldown, so all 4 of Terra’s damaging can proc on multiple targets in a single fight. This means that on its own, Soul Reaver can do 8% of a squishy’s health and 32% of a tank’s health, pre-mitigation. Enemy teams will take a lot of beating from a well-played Terra’s Soul Reaver.

Terra’s Soul Reaver build does a ton of damage. The penetration on the Shoes of the Magi and Void Stone items increase Terra’s overall damage, including the passive of Soul Reaver. The combination of penetration, power, and high base damage allows Terra to hit like a truck and cause devastation in the enemy battle lines.

The Soul Reaver build still has four tank items, so Terra is still pretty tanky, especially when she has a level lead from being in the solo lane. Terra also gets artificial tankiness from her healing abilities. Including Soul Reaver into Terra's build does not sacrifice too much frontline for the destruction it can cause.

Earthen Fury is an incredible ability. Despite not having crowd control or flashy impact, Terras have been building Blink just to get in the middle of the enemy and ult. This debuffs the enemy for 10 seconds, causing them to take 5% more damage from all sources and if they take 4 instances of damage, they receive a chunk of burst damage. Earthen Fury also provides an effect to friendly gods. Any allies hit by the ultimate will be buffed for 10 seconds, receiving a heal over time and take 5% damage mitigation. If an affected ally takes 4 hits of damage in the duration, they receive a burst heal. The teamfight prowess of this ability cannot be understated.



Earthen Fury is a great inititation tool that can spread Soul Reaver through an enemy team.

A Terra carrying a Soul Reaver supports her team in a similar way to Ares, by softening up opponents and lowering the kill threshold. And then Terra has her crowd control. Enemies that take the burst damage from Terra’s ultimate will also take damage from Soul Reaver. Blink ulting into the enemy team will significantly reduce the damage your team needs to wipe out the opposition.

Instead of Soul Reaver, Terra can also build Ethereal Staff in a bruiser build. Ethereal Staff comes with 90 magical power, 200 health, and 20% crowd control reduction. Ethereal Staff will allow you to steal 8% of a target’s maximum mana and 5% of their max health when you hit a someone with an ability. This effect has a 45 second duration and can occur every 15 seconds. The user and targets can have multiple stacks of the Ethereal Staff effect at a time.

When replacing Soul Reaver for Ethereal Staff, you exchange 40 magical power and the mana for health and crowd control reduction. Soul Reaver’s passive is all about doing damage while Ethereal Staff softens up enemies and makes the user tankier. Ethereal Staff is a great pseudo-tank item if you want to be safer than a Soul Reaver build, but still desire to be more than a meatball.



Ethereal Staff can be used in place of Soul Reaver to exchange damage for health.

This penetration and damaging Terra build does have a weakness. It isn’t as tanky as it could be, especially in the mid-game. The build sacrifices a whole item slot for Soul Reaver, and the penetration choices, while being pretty common in the solo lane meta, do leave Terra slightly squishier than she could be. In addition, Terra’s weaknesses to Ah Puch and Cursed Ankh do not go away, the incidental healing she does can be punished. Terra can also be punished in lane by Ares.

In the lead up to the Smite World Championship, a new build was discovered for Terra. This build utilizes Soul Reaver and penetration items to turn Terra into a tank with a surprising amount of damage. Soul Reaver can proc on the entire enemy team and multiple times per target, accumulating a lot of damage numbers during a fight. Bruiser Terra has some flexible build slots to adapt to various situations. The Smite World Championship and Hi-Rez Expo showcased several new and interesting strategies. Soul Reaver Terra is just the first one we are covering.

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