How to play as Tiamat in Smite Season 8

Tiamat is an extremely technical goddess to control in Smite. She has a different passive each time she jumps into a new form, and all of her abilities change when she’s flying or on the ground. She will have plenty of burst and heavy damage potential for a mage character, but this is primarily in her flying form. When she dives to the ground and is on all fours, Tiamat has significantly more damage mitigation, and if you build her correctly, she can become a bruiser for the team.

If you’re struggling to find a way to approach Tiamat, it can be overwhelming. Here are some important things to keep in mind while you’re learning how to play her.

How to level up Tiamat’s abilities

Keep in mind when you start the game, Tiamat will be in her flying form. When picking what abilities to level up, you almost always want to go with Tiamat’s first ability, Primordial Onslaught. This is a massive blast that she charges up and does a heavy amount of damage. This will be Tiamat’s lane clear, and you want to use it to clean up your lane, regardless if you’re playing her in the middle or the solo lane.

After that, the next ability you want to level up will be her second ability, Ruination. This is the attack that fires the circled triangle on the ground. The outer portion of the triable will do decent damage, whereas the middle section does the most damage. Any enemy god caught in that middle portion will be stunned, which is a great way to set up your first ability.

When you’re ready, level up the third ability, Grounding Dive, and this will be Tiamat’s stance chance. From there, Primordial Onslaught becomes Consume, and Ruination becomes Outburst. Consume is the ability that deals damage in a cone in front of Tiamat, slowing down enemies that are hit. If a minion, large monster, or jungle camp is under a specific health threshold, Tiamat’s ability executes them. Tiamat can do this with her minions to gain a hardened scale. If she does it to a jungle minion holding a buff, she gains that buff and can hold a second one.

Of all the abilities, you want to level up Tiamat’s first ability to reach the highest level. After that, we recommend focusing on her third ability, her stance change, and then her second one. The exact order for these choices might vary depending on how your battles are going, but the second abilities, Ruination and Outburst are useful, but not as critical as the first and third ones.

Should you play Tiamat in the middle, solo, or the jungle role?

For those first learning how to play Tiamat, we recommend going in the middle lane. She is a mage, and as a squishy role in the game, keeping her in the lane she was designed to battle in will yield the best results. You’ll need to find the correct balance of how to play her, how she can do the most damage, and what other gods she works best on each new team.

After you’ve played about a dozen games with her, we recommend going to the solo lane, repeating the process, and then trying her out in the jungle. Tiamat is one of those rare gods who can potentially float around the game to different roles. Unlike many mages, she can potentially succeed in the jungle, but it won’t be easy, and you need a different strategy. For example, in the jungle, Tiamat will benefit from having her first ability and her third ability, her stance change, quicker, so she can receive damage mitigation.

Tiamat will be a difficult goddess to master. With having multiple abilities, and several ways to use her ultimate, players will struggle when initially battling with her to find the best method to counter other established competitors.