Baron Samedi is the lone Voodoo god in Smite. Does that stop him from being a fan favorite? Absolutely not! He was in the final two for the highly coveted Tier 5 skin, a once-a-year skin type that transforms as the game goes on or certain criteria are met.

While Baron has certainly fallen from the meta in high tier play, his kit, playstyle, and swagger are more than enough to still win games coming out of the solo lane!

Let’s get into the nitty gritty, shall we? Baron’s abilities are very utility based, a lot of debuffs for your opponents, healing for your team, and set up for either yourself or others. Pretty standard for a solo laner. His drawback? He is a Mage, so he does not have a Warrior or Guardian’s scaling and his abilities are different than your average “front liner”. This is also a reason why he could be effective, the same reason why a curveball works. It doesn’t move how you’re expecting it to.

Baron’s passive, Hysteria is what can set good Barons apart from great Barons. The first part of his passive is Baron’s Brew, an item that appears in the item shop for your team. It comes with 3 charges and replenishes 140 health and 100 mana over the next 20 seconds. One trick I do is use the VGS system to utilize the “Have Fun” command. The Baron will say “Be sure to grab some brew," and hopefully your team will be reminded to pick up this potion for themselves.

The much more difficult to manage aspect of Baron’s passive is Hysteria points and managing them on your opponents. Each of Baron’s abilities and auto-attacks add various numbers of stacks of Hysteria to the opponent. The full range of utility Baron brings is backed up once he has his passive stacked on the enemy. We’ll go over how Hysteria enhances each ability when we go over the individual abilities a little later.

Vivid Gaze - This is Baron’s first ability and one of his major sources of damage. Vivid Gaze is a unique line attack that utilizes 2 lines, one on each side of Baron that intersect at a point of the user’s choosing. It stacks 10 points of Hysteria per hit, so you are able to stack up to 20 Hysteria on an opponent with Vivid Gaze if you hit the opponent with both beams. You also inflict and additional 15% damage if both beams hit. This is ideal of hitting the archers/back of the wave during the laning phase.

This is what the numbers look like to get that quick maths:

Damage: 60/105/150/195/240 +60% of magical power

Hysteria Enhancement: 30% power and 30% attack speed reduction on any enemies hit by this attack.

Consign Spirits - This is Baron’s heal, speed boost, slow cleanse, and second aspect of his damage. It’s a circle targeter and I love this ability! The stats on it are as follows:

Damage - 70/125/180/235/290 (+70% of your magical power)

Heal - 40/64/90/115/140 (+10% of magical power) AND a 10% of your missing health as a separate heal. A note about this heal is that you have to hit an enemy god with it in order to receive the heal, otherwise it will just do damage.

Hysteria Enhancement - if the enemy has more than 30 hysteria on them, the heal will cleanse all slow effects currently on the “healee” and will increase their movement speed by 25%

I know that’s a lot of information in a very short amount of time, but it helps to lay it all out there. This ability brings so much to teamfights all throughout the game, it’s only slightly conditional (meaning you have to hit a god as the condition), but it still can help turn fights.

Wrap It Up - This is really your main form of CC. It’s only a slow ramp-to-root so it’s considered soft CC. This is also the best way to apply Hysteria to your opponent (up to 40 Hysteria can be applied). Let’s take a peek at the numbers.

Damage - Every .5 seconds for 2.5 seconds so you get 5 ticks total dealing 10/18/26/34/43+5% of your magical power per tick.

Slow Duration - 1.75 seconds

Root Duration - .75 seconds once the ramp-to-root reaches completion.

Hysteria Enhancement - If an enemy has more than 30 hysteria on them, the ability will branch out to gods are are near to the wrapped opponent and deal the full damage of the ability (50/90/130/170/210+5% of magical power) immediately

Now it’s time! FREE YOUR SOUL TO THE OTHER SIDE!

Life of the Party - Baron’s ultimate ability, colloquially referred to as “the vacuum”, is one of my favorite abilities in game. Baron hops on top of a coffin and pulls all enemies towards him while he receives CC immunity, 35% damage reduction, but is slowed by 60% for the duration of the ultimate. This also applies a lot of Hysteria points to any targets in the ability cone, 5 Hysteria per tick is added for a max of 50 (although to be stuck in the cone for the entire 3.5 seconds is very unlikely). The numbers for this ability are slightly complicated but I’ll lay them out for you.

Damage when inside cone - 17/24/31/38/45+6% of magical power every .33 seconds.

Damage upon hit (only the first god to hit the coffin takes this damage) - 100/170/240/310/380+50% of magical power and an additional 10% of their total health.

Hysteria Enhancement - If opponents have above 30 hysteria, the pull strength is increased.

Builds

Solo Baron is a slightly different beast than most solo laners. He needs cooldown for his healing and utility, defense to stay alive to make sure that he can get a lot of abilities off during a fight, and magical power to increase the power those heals. This is an often difficult situation to find yourself in. But that's why I'm here!

Right out of the gate, get Warrior’s Blessing and depending on who your lane opponent is the next items will vary slightly.

If against a physical opponent: Warrior’s Blessing, Imperial Helmet, one health pot and Baron’s Brew with Teleport for your first relic.

Items: , , , 

Relic: 

Turn your Imperial Helmet into a Lotus Crown as soon as possible. This will give you physical protections, as well as MP5 to help spam those abilities. After Lotus Crown is complete, Shoes of Focus are next, then Breastplate of Valor, then Void Stone, then Mantle of Discord if you’re ahead or Spirit Robe if you are behind in experience and gold and your opponents have a CC heavy team composition.

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Your final item should be a utility based item regardless of if you were against a physical or magical in lane. By the time you reach this point in the game, it will be more team fighting than anything else.

If you feel your healing is not good enough, Rod of Asclepius is a good option, or if you feel like you aren’t surviving long enough, Spirit Robe or Mantle of Discord (whichever of the two you did not take previously) is a great option.

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If against a magical opponent; Warrior’s Blessing, Druid Stone, one health pot and Baron’s Brew with Teleport as an active to start, the ending build is going to be the same, just the order in which you purchase the items is not.

Items: , , , 

Relic: 

For the final build against a magical opponent, Void Stone and Lotus Crown will be switched.

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Once you get to level 12 and you are able to select a second relic, your team composition and your enemy team's composistion will be the deciding factor. Magic Shell or Heavenly Wings (Sprint) are good team fighting relics, while Purification Beads and Aegis Amulet are great for your own survivability.

I really hope you like this Solo Laner’s guide to Baron Samedi! Feel free to follow me at twitter.com/roomba_ggfor bad puns, worse memes, and a lot of other nerderies!

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