Smite has a range of different game modes, but they all affect your Conquest play in different, subtle ways. This means that you are constantly improving your skills, and subconsciously improving your Conquest skills. From teamfighting in the chaotic Arena, or laning efficiently in Joust, your skills are always improving without even playing Conquest itself.

Arena

One of the more popular game modes, especially when starting out in Smite, Arena offers a fast-paced fighting environment. In Arena, you must reduce the enemy team's number of tickets from 500 to 0 before they reduce your own team's tickets to 0 first. Tickets are reduced by killing minions, minions entering a team's portal and (most importantly) player deaths.

With high XP and Gold spooling and a small map, this 5v5 mode is fast paced and encourages fighting enemy Gods throughout. This helps with your ability to team fight in Conquest. You will learn to combine your abilities with your team's abilities to throw out large amounts of damage, for example by combining your abilities with those of other players to effectively wipe out the enemy team (Ares' No Escape and Poseidon's Kraken, for example). However, you will also learn to deal with the enemy team's damage and will learn some ways to avoid taking damage or predicting oncoming abilities from enemies.

Arena encourages teamwork and synergy with other players in your team and is also a good playing field to get used to a new God, or for trying out a new build and testing its effectiveness on the battleground.

Clash

The most recent map in Smite, Clash combines the chaotic brawling of Arena with a laning and Jungle environment. Teams are large with 5 Gods each side, and both lanes are very close to one another with the Damage Buff Camp in the centre of the two; forcing confrontation between the two teams to contest for this buff.

Clash is a good mode to introduce the concept of laning to a newer player, but is more chaotic than your traditional laning game mode, with high XP and Gold spooling, meaning games are quick paced. Also, all 5 members of each team are in close proximity to each other. This provokes fighting easily, and team members can rotate quickly, ambushing and ganking the enemy. The traditional Boss Monsters of the Gold Fury and the Fire Giant are introduced in this mode too, promoting teamwork to capture these and gain bonuses for your team.

Joust

Joust is a good mode to transition from the mass-brawling of Arena and Clash to a more strategy based mode involving lanes.

Teams are relatively small, with only 3 players on each side, each with only one Tower and one Phoenix to protect their Titan. Joust also introduces a more concealed Jungle area than Arena, with the Damage Buff next to the lane, to be contested. The concept of a Boss Monster is also introduced here, with the Bull Demon King. Players who defeat this objective will gain +4% HP5 and +2% MP5 for 90 seconds.

Joust helps with a team's general laning and Jungle rotations, introducing the idea of pushing lanes and combat within the lane environment with smaller numbers of players in each lane than Clash.

Siege

Siege is another mode promoting laning, which is similar to Joust but has a larger Jungle area. There are two lanes with 4 players on each team; generally splitting teams into 2 Gods per lane on each team.

The Jungle area in Siege is extensive, with 4 buffs on each team's side and a Boss Monster in the centre of the Jungle. Throughout the game, each team will get points for minion kills, clearing a Jungle camp and killing an enemy God, eventually getting enough to spawn a Siege Juggernaut at 100 points; which will push one of that team's lanes with minions. If players slay the Boss Monster (the Wild Juggernaut), this will also spawn a Juggernaut in one of that team's lanes.

Siege generally promotes the idea of pushing lanes more than other modes, and gets players used to having a smaller amount of players in each lane. Players are also introduced to a larger and more hidden Jungle area, promoting ganking other lanes and Jungle awareness as it is difficult to see enemies in this sheltered area. The point gain system promotes not only minion and God kills, but also Jungle camp clearing with 9 points received for each camp cleared.

Assault

A good game mode for making the most of the God and team that you have, Assault gives each player a random God. This could mean that you have a team with little Magical damage or little 'tankiness'. Although not ideal, you will be part of teams that are not 'perfect' in terms of balance, but this game mode will help you to deal with difficult team combinations. Assault may also offer you the opportunity to try a God you have unlocked but have never played.

More importantly, Assault is focused on staying alive. Unlike all other game modes, you cannot return to the Fountain to upgrade, sell or purchase items after leaving at the start of the game or after each death. This also means that you cannot return to base to heal or replenish your mana after leaving.

Assault helps you learn how to fight when at low levels of health and mana, helping you to make the most out of you abilities to maximise the amount of damage you deal with them. You will learn how to better manage your Mana, keeping an eye on ability costs and your current Mana available. It will also help you learn about safe positioning, protecting yourself when you are at low levels of health by utilising body-blocking from teammates or body-blocking basic attacks or ability for your team mates if they are low on health.

Duel

Duel is a game mode that is only available in Ranked play, with no 'Casual' version available currently. Unfortunately, this means that generally it is overlooked and forgotten by a lot of players.

Duel is a good game mode to play if you wish to improve your ability to 1v1 your opponent in lane. You will need to manage the Jungle, push your lane and be aware of your opponent's positioning throughout the game. You can also focus on building to 'counter' your opponent, for example by building magical defence against a Chang'e (displayed below). This will help you in Conquest if you are in Mid or Solo where you are often laning on your own against opponents. It can also be useful for other roles if you find yourself alone in a lane against an opponent.

So, if you're starting out in Smite, you won't necessarily be starting from scratch. You are likely to already have some knowledge and skills from your experience playing game modes other than Conquest. You will then implement these skills into your game without even being consciously aware of it! On the other hand, if you are confident in playing Conquest, you will find that your experiences in other game modes also help to build upon your existing skills and improve them further.

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