Artemis SMITE 2 Guide

Overview

Artemis is the clearest statement of the hunter archetype: survive the early game, farm, and become the most dangerous damage source on the map after three items. Her passive grants free critical strike chance, which lets her item build prioritise attack speed and penetration earlier than hunters who must buy crit outright. Her ultimate — a summoned boar that stuns — is genuine self-peel, which is why she survives dives that kill most other hunters outright. The cost is one of the weakest laning phases in the role.

Power spike

Third completed item. She is genuinely weak before it and genuinely dominant after it, which makes her comp-dependent — she needs a team that can protect a slow start.

Skill ceiling

Low mechanical ceiling, high discipline ceiling. Her kit is simple; the difficulty is the patience to play a losing early game correctly.

Strengths and weaknesses

Every god guide here lists the weaknesses as prominently as the strengths, because the weaknesses are what tell you which games this pick will not rescue — and that is usually the more actionable half.

What Artemis is genuinely good at

• Free critical strike chance from her passive frees an item slot compared with most crit-based hunters.
• Her ultimate is real self-peel: a stun on the assassin who jumped her, not a positional escape she must aim correctly.
• Her traps provide genuine map information and zone control around objectives, which is rare for a carry.
• One of the highest sustained damage outputs in the game once fully built.

Where Artemis falls short

• Very weak early — she loses most level 1 to level 6 duo lane trades outright.
• No dash or leap, so her positioning must be correct before the fight rather than corrected during it.
• Entirely reliant on farm; a disrupted early game delays her spike past the point where it decides anything.
• Her traps take setup time and are wasted when placed reactively.

Build and reasoning

Because her passive supplies crit chance, Artemis gets more value from attack speed and penetration early than from a second crit item. Lifesteal first is not optional — it is what lets her farm through a lane she is losing. The last slot is flexible between more penetration against a tanky frontline and a defensive item against a comp that reliably reaches her.

Core build path

These are item roles rather than fixed product names, because specific items are rebalanced every patch and the reasoning behind a slot is not. Match each role to whatever currently fills it best.

1. 1 Hunter starter
2. 2 Lifesteal and power item
3. 3 Attack speed and penetration
4. 4 Critical strike item
5. 5 Attack speed and crit
6. 6 Late-game penetration

Situational purchases

Anti-crit defensive item

The enemy carry is crit-based and winning the damage race against you.

Crowd-control reduction

You are being chain-stunned before your ultimate is available.

Anti-heal

Nobody else on your team bought it, which happens more often than it should.

For the reasoning behind these stats — why penetration outperforms power against a built target, why anti-heal has to be bought before it feels necessary — see the item and stat reference and build fundamentals.

Counters and synergies

What beats Artemis

Dive assassins

They reach her before her ultimate is up and she has no movement ability to buy time.

Early-pressure duo lanes

She loses early trades, so an aggressive duo can deny the farm her whole game depends on.

Long-range poke

She cannot contest poke and cannot disengage from it.

What Artemis works with

Peel guardians

Any support who reliably keeps an assassin off her converts her late game into the team's win condition.

Shielding supports

A shield buys exactly the window she needs to land her ultimate.

Practical tips

1. Play for farm, not kills, until your second item. A 0/0/2 Artemis with full farm beats a 3/4/3 Artemis with half of it.
2. Save the ultimate as an escape button rather than an engage. Spending it to force a kill and dying to the follow-up is the classic Artemis mistake.
3. Place traps on the jungle entrances near your lane during laning, not on the objective. Early warning beats late zone control.
4. Decide your positioning before the fight starts. Once it begins you have no way to fix a bad starting position.

Frequently asked questions