Starting with Sedna: A new players' rise to competence

By Crazie_Guy on November 18, 2009 7:34:12 AM from

HI! I'm fairly new around here. I've had demigod for a long time, but I've mostly played alone against computers, over lan with a friend against computers, or occasionally 1v1 with that friend. I was never very serious, but recently I've discovered that online play is awesome, and that Sedna is the demigod for me. So, I've been playing around and reading everything I can find on here and I've managed to reach a point where I'm at least good enough to enjoy online games and not be so daunted by all the godly players out there. I wanted to start posting so I thought I would talk about my game with Sedna and maybe get some pointers and tips from the pros out there.

When I first found I loved Sedna I used her with a very offensive Pounce/heal speed set, made to smite other demigods with constant pouncing/healing and superior speed. It worked well at first, but against better players the set quickly lost the ability to beat out other demigods as they got tougher and stronger.

At one point I got owned by a minion Erebus build, who easily took my HP down in seconds. Thinking that I should try using Sedna as a true general as well, I tried some Yeti builds. I quickly discovered that Yetis are almost completely useless.

At this point I came to the forums and started reading up. Reading various guides and testing them in single player I learned a lot of things, such as how awesome priests are (something I never got before), how awesome counter healing is (a skill I once thought useless), how to share a priest with the other lane, how useful a 45 second cap lock can be, new builds for Sedna, and most importantly I was able to leave behind the pure smite based mentality I used to have and realize that there are more things to be doing than trying to kill every demigod I see. Just overnight I was able to go from a complete (and obvious) noob to being able to appear someone competent, despite having no real experience.

So, on to the build I'm using. I've come to settle on a speed/healing build, after reading the guide for the pure healer. The first 8 levels go entirely towards the healing skills, and I don't get pounce at all until level 9, or sometimes 10 if enemy priests have already come out in which case I prioritize counter healing. At the beginning of the game I grab boots of speed and the swift anklet, and with these and later inner grace levels I'm generally set for speed for the rest of the game. After that I go around capping flags and hitting one or two creep waves, largely avoiding confrontation, until my gold hits 900 at which point I head back for priests. My skill selection generally goes Heal > Inner Grace > Healing Wind > Heal II > Healing Wind II > Inner Grace II > Heal III > Inner Grace III, etc.

As for items, after the speed boots at the beginning and the monks shortly after, I'll save up for Vlemish. I find that in the very early game, most demigods have trouble damaging Sedna with monk support, and I rarely have to use heal so mana isnt too much of a problem. After, that, I collect armor and Plenor as needed. I used to go for the +hp +regen armors to get the highest possible HP regeneration, but I've started going for the +hp +armor ones instead. I havent played enough to claim to have seen a difference and I havent done the math but I think that with Sedna's already massive natural regeneration, damage mitigation should make that regeneration much more effective in a firefight than simply boosting it a little bit.

As for play style, I've learned to bring out the supporter in her. Using her speed to run around capping unguarded flags is nice, but the main goal is to hold lanes. I can't really damage other demigods, but they just can't push me off the lane either. Occasionally I will get a kill just with auto-attack, which I can often pull off in the early game since the tanking focus lets her run past towers very early when a lot of players are still expecting those towers to afford them an easy escape, and no one can outrun me this early. But for the most part, the goal is holding lanes, controlling flags, pushing lanes when no one is pushing back, and especially helping teammates push lanes far beyond their normal limits with my awesome healing powers. Unfortunately, I get pounce so late that it is only really effective for a few minutes before everyone is just too tough, but it is still an effective tool for forcing other people to retreat before they out-DPS my healing and at least adding some damage while supporting a teammate against other demigods. At this point, though, the thing I use pounce for the most is for large chunks of hit and run damage on towers and forts while trying to push a lane that an enemy demigod is defending.

Sorry for the massive amount of text, but yea. There's my favorite build and strategy for Sedna, so you pros can tell me how much it sucks or what I should consider doing otherwise. I suppose I could try other favor items like blood of the fallen, but I love how swift anklet with boots of speed will usually carry me through a whole game, and I haven't had trouble with my tanking yet. I don't think I've actually been killed yet so far, at least not while holding a lane. I have gone down once or twice by overextending into too many towers too early to get a kill, but that's just me being stupid. Comments, suggestions, etc.

0 Karma | 20 Replies

i'm no pro (in fact i'm noob cause i only play single player. no time to start hardcore multiplayer gaming >.>) but if i were you, i won't invest in speed. honestly, the extra hp you get from BotF allows you to stay longer to support your friends / teammates and to survive more burst damage. i know having very high speed is awesome. yes it's awesome for capping flags and using cap locks but you're mentioned earlier that you want to be a supporter. a supporter should not prioritize speed if he/she is able to survive for long periods of time and not die. what's the point of dieing and leaving your team a player short for 30 seconds and waste more time running back to them ?

unless you're an assassin type DG, i would not invest in speed. and being a supporter, i would only use pounce as an interrupt. e.g. an interrupt against a DG who is going to do some serious burst damage / stun on you OR your teammates. i'd rather have that extra mp to do heal / support than to attack even if it means that my mp could be full for a while (thus you being inefficient) because i'm not using pounce to attack all the time even though you can. leave the attacking to the attackers. but this is just me. i'd rather prevent than cure. because it is true that prevention is always better than cure. however, if you know that your teammate's burst damage can reduce him to nearly 0 hp then give it a shot ! give your teammate that extra damage from pounce to help him finish off the enemy.

that's all i can think for now . am tired so yeah .. gl with your sedna

im no pro but i think i can tell you one important thing:

health > speed

which means: speed is good for running away and capping flags. if youre winning its ok, the enemy will always have to watch you since you can easily cap their flags BUT you most propably wont kill anyone whos halfway decent. also you wont be able to stand in the front line against multiple opponents because you die too fast. you are useless if you are alone and if you play that build you desperately need a great tank in your team who catches the damage. also you will propably lose against another sedna who didnt skill for speed but for heal, health and damage.

i mean really: you lose 2 slots for speed items (favor + boots) AND you level your speed skill. you will outrun most of the dgs but you also lack hp and damage. im suggestion is: first get monks. you can get favor OR boots but not both. get some hp item instead, that will also indirectly buff your monks.

a good combination with which you cant do anything wrong is plenor and vlemish for mana, unbreakable boots (also mana) hauberk and nimoth armor, perhaps later exchange unbreakable or hauberk for the narmoth ring. very important: get bishops! you buff bishops by having much health. which means you dont have to heal that much. for running aways you have your speed skill and you can get wand of speed, which does exactly the same for i think 7 seconds what favor + boots does (25% speed boost).

think of it that way: if you get health + damage then in most cases theres no need for running away!

it's really a wall of text.

i tried to get an quick overview, so if i missed something then sorry...

now, let me tell you my opinion:

1. the most important think about sedna is obviously her healing abilities:

heal most important, allways skill this as soon as possible

healing wind, second important. get fast healing wind 2 - of course this implies allways buying monks first. the benefit from monks is greater than any other item when yous start. usually i keep monks till i can buy bishops.

2. inner grace is a nice to have. here we have to differ two basic play styles:

the speed sedna and the non-speed sedna

if you want to be fast, take inner grace at least up tp rank 2, delaying eventually pounce or (depending on situation) delaying heal.

3. pounce: after 1. take pounce. if yuo go speed sedna you may delay it a bit.

for a speed sedna the ankhlet is a must have favor item. otherwise i think the best one is cloack of the night.

my favorit build is this:

1. heal

2. healing wind

3. inner grace 1

4 heal 2

5. healing wind 2

6. pounce 1 - here you can chose inner grace 2 if you go speed

7. heal 3

8. usually pounce 2, but if oponents have a sedna too, or 2 other generals you better take counter healing now (otherwise you can take it later)

9. pounce 3 or silence (depends on the enemies, hwo they play, what is needed)

10. heal 4

well, from here on you have to make situational decisions. your options are

pounce, inner grace, silence and sometimes magnificent aura or conter healing if you don't have it already.

now, items should be quite clear. i never buy an item for mor then 1750 gold. better put your money in citadel upgrades.

hence i usually end up with:

boots of speed (i usually take cloak as favor)

nimoths chest

vlemish helm, and the crown

hauberk of life or unbreakable boots (most times the firstt, because i don't need the extra mana but my bishops having more hp)

with cloak of the night you can be more aggressive and still able to get away. or you can catch up for a kill. additonally it helps very much at the first levels not going oom.

Narmoths is only good for the health and regen for a sedna, the life steal isn't effective due to her attack rate being low. With that being said i tend to wait until i can afford groffling, especially against minion and tower rook builds.

Stacking speed at the beginning: It is typically more effective to get monks first, especially if you get swift anklet. You're able to split the monks for 2 lane healing and you will already be the fastest or one of the fastest demi's on the field with swift anklet. Most demis that get swift anklet tend to be squishies anyways (TB, reg etc.) and you really don't have to worry about them too much at the beginning.

I also find magnificent presence to be quite useful, this will require that you dont get pounce at all, but it knocks a second off of your healing cooldown and all teammates get a cooldown benefit as well. If you haven't read it yet, read epiphenomenons post on sedna.

Anyways my preferred sedna build @ level 15 which is full support: heal IV, healing wind iii, innergrace II & silence III.

Sometimes i will swap out silence for innergrace or pounce depending on the game.

Preferred favor items: diamond pendant (removing a second from the heal cool down is great especially when combined with magnificent presence), BotF, cape of plentiful mana, swift anklet (please note that my build adjusts depending on which favor item i get.

Armor: Banded, scale, nimoths, unbreakable boots, hauberk, groffling, narmoths, boots, hungarlings (can be fun as well if im on a mana heavy team) ***usually hungarlings is a waste though.

Thanks for all the feedback! I think I'm going to continue using swift anklet, but skip boots of speed and just work with anklet + inner grace. I still like getting inner grace at 2 and healing wind at 3 since 10 hp and speed seems to outweigh 12 hp even if it's an aura, especially since I'll be foregoing the boots of speed and since my team mates are more likely to be working on a different lane with my second monk rather than with me and my aura. Of course, 2 and 3 go by so fast it really doesnt matter all that much. I'll also try getting the first level of pounce earlier, if only for a good interrupt.

@jongalt Now that I read your post I'm definitely going to try out a pure supporting set with magnificent presence instead of pounce. Sounds like a fun set. Other than that I think I've got the support build down pretty well, or at least a good enough one to worry more about learning to simply play well rather than build a character well. Other than my choice of first item I've already been more or less following the item progressions that have been suggested.

I'm also toying with a duelist set again for 1v1 with my friend. I'm liking a set that focuses on cooldown reduction, going for pounce/heal, inner grace and magnificent presence, and using diamond pendant and later the stormbringer relic if the game lasts long enough. I tested in one player and on a map with one cooldown flag i was able to get pounce and heal to 3 seconds and silence to 6 seconds, and it seemed strong enough to take on some of the later demigods that usually are too tough to match with the slower pounces i had on earlier duelist builds. I don't know how effective it would be against top players but I know I can at least match my friend with it unfortunately I'm still not that good at using silence effectively. A problem is that with those low cooldowns I was running out of mana despite stormbringer, vlemish, and hungarlings.

Quoting Crazie_Guy,

reply 5

this is only true if you are the first 2 or 3 levels alone.

especially since I'll be foregoing the boots of speed and since my team mates are more likely to be working on a different lane with my second monk rather than with me and my aura. Of course, 2 and 3 go by so fast it really doesnt matter all that much. I'll also try getting the first level of pounce earlier, if only for a good interrupt.

taking swift ankhlet without boots will be similar to my build with boots but wihtout ankhlel. thus i warn you, this will force you to be far less aggresive than you can be with cloak. you have to keep more out of the battle as you cannot risk being in melee if there are more than one opponents. you want escape the stunns. you will be always focused by good players. hence you will contribute far less to damage. on later levels.

a sedna going full heal support + pounce using cloak as favor will do the same support, but more dmg as she can risk to fight longer.

p.s. i love it to teleport with cloak and BAMM, killing the opponent who though he is save... or porting a bit closer to give your nearly dead mate the rescueing heal... etc.

What alot of new sednas fail to realize is her tanking ability. She has the highest hp per second in the game when maxed out. Whenever you are in a group battle who is the DG you always go for if sedna is there. You go for sedna.

If you are in there battleing with the rest of your allys theres really no need to have a huge heal that takes up all your mana pre double mana helm. When you can just tank whoevers on you while your dmg dealers take them down. And the only thing speed does it keep you out of the battle as a useless healbot or to be able to run away because you wont be able to have much lane control.

Heal I

Healing Wind I

Inner Grace I

Pounce I for interupts and finishes (you wont have enough mana to chain heal and pounce yet use it spareingly)

Healing wing II

Inner Grace II

Silence

Heal II switch with silence if you notice you or your allys need bigger heals

Pounce II

Pounce III

Inner Grace III

Heal III

Silence II

max pounce and heal

the rest of the pts can put where you wish and what you think the game needs

Start with monks, unbreakable boots, plenor, nimoths chest, banded armor and vlemish, sell banded for narmoths ring. Somewhere in there get bishops.

With this build you should be able to tank in a 2v2 situation and hold a flag 1v1 easily with hp regen alone. With silence and pounce you should be able to interupt a qot sheild or sedna heal. And when the situation gets hairy you can run out.

There are several nice builds proposed here by the comunity, and you should definitly try them all and see which ones fit for which situation, and learn how to adapt and change a build during a game depending on the situation. But here's is my favorite build for sedna:

Favor item: blood of the fallen

starting item: monks + 1 mana pot

With this two items, if you play start, you can stay in the field until at the least level 7.

Skill order:

1. heal I

2. healing wind I

3. inner grace I

4. pounce I

5. healing wind II

6. heal II

7. heal III

8-9. counter healing / magnificent presence I (depending if they got priests or not)

10. heal IV

11 - above focus on maxing pouce + magnificent presence

items in the order I usually prefer:

sell monks and get bishops

unbreakable boots + NATURE'S RECKONIN + velmish + nimoth chest + pleanor

Nature's reckonin is my favorite item for sedna, gives her the AoE she lacks, and really surprises the enemy. Sometimes it procs 2-3 times in really short fights Im always happy when it does.

I like the skill order Izuz posted with pounce at four. I'll also be trying the cloak out as teleports sound great too. I have a lot of different things to try now!

THAT'S the spirit!!! try things out, see what works well for your playstyle and ALWAYS adapt to your oponents' playstyles and builds

PM me online if you want do a 2v2, I will be happy to play with yyou.

I also am starting to play sedna, I was playing regulus, but I realized in a batttle where your partner isnt that skilled, regulus just cannot hold his own. I'll try jona's and izuz's strategies to see how well I can do. feel free to add me as a friend and try and game with me sometime!

so, wow, just had my first match , me and an oak vs two erebus. creamed them so bad, i didnt have enough favor to buy the cloak, so i bought staff of the warmage, worked out okay though just worried how i'll do against an unclean beast or DA

Sedna + Oak is one of the more vicious 2v2 combinations... though it does have drawbacks.

Quoting abuggeredhedgie,

reply 13

Sedna + Oak is one of the more vicious 2v2 combinations... though it does have drawbacks.

Sedna and Oak are THE vicious 2v2 combo.

Having read the OP, I would say that you should stick with BotF. Your monks heal you better with it. Cloak on Night is a bad favor item for Sedna, because she relies on bishops. She needs to max her HP.

Though I will agree that BotF is typically a better choice than Cloak, Sedna is actually the one who gives up the LEAST early-game by going Cloak. For Sedna, Mana = HP, and you get 2/3rds of a heal with the +Mana bonus of cloak (+400 hp, or half the static bonus of BotF) and the +4 mps roughly translates to +5 HPS as well, which matches the regen bonus of blood. What you are giving up is the smaller heals from Monks which is where it hurts. It's up to you to decide if the regen from monks is better or worse than the ability to blink. In smaller matches, where it's a lot of 1v1, clearly holding your lane is all that matters. When you're sharing a lane alot, blinking may be more useful, really just depends.

"Sedna and Oak are THE vicious 2v2 combo. "

What map are we talking about?

Prison: game is decided in first 3 minutes. Oak is weak for the first three minutes. Against a Sed/Beast or Erebus/Beast you're going to get pushed around in the beginning which means... you lose. Oak/Erebus going minions means tower rapage with little that you can do, with only 1 AoE skill between the two of you.

Cataract:

Rook is a decent counter to Sedna and deals with Oak relatively well. Shield helps a ton, but that only happens later levels, and if their Rook has pushed me (Sedna) out of my lane and out of the creep-waves I'm going to have a horrible level disadvantage.

Plus, Sed-Oak has very few ways to force an engagement. They have no stuns (though the double-interrupts that Sedna has makes porting out impossible) and though they have nice single-target focus with Pentitence-Pounce it's not unbeatable. Meanwhile, we are hard to kill: we have sigils, we have massive heals, and we have a 6-second shield that heals us as a final fall-back.

What they are awesome, at, however, is being fast, which makes your opponents burn teleports when you try to ninja portals. They also can hold an enemy portal like no other.

Irek and I had a match against Janook and Orcun. J+O certainly had the upperhand a lot of the match, but I think we were a kill ahead. Anyway, they got Giants. We were still at WS8, and we locked a portal. Irek keeps a timer next to his comp, he would port in at 41 seconds, then he would shield, start casting the lock and the cast would finish AS THE LOCK DROPPED. At m ost the flag was unlocked for half a second. Then he would Wand-of-Speed, and I would wait for him with a 1500 hp heal at the HP flag. Nothing they could do. Ended up winning the match.

In short, a Sed-Oak combo is pretty successful against anything else lacking a Sedna. Irek and I ran more than 75 games as Sed-Oak, so I think I know pretty well how it works against high-caliber players It is extremely strong, but it does have its counters.

Do you invest in minion idols against Rook?

Quoting Epiphenomenon,

reply 16

'course. I rarely drop 2k for Siege Demolishers I do tend to get Siege Gunners as soon as I can, and Berserkers as well. I understand the basics of the game: attack with creep wave + minions to draw tower fire, etc etc. There are two ways a Rook can build a tower farm:

(rook)

-- --

-- -- -- --

That's a crap-ton of towers ontop/next to each other so as soon as you get close you take damage: you can't really work a tower down one-by-one because you take too much damage to take a single tower, so you're forced to take a deep breath, run past them and attack the more-exposed Rook. A Rook will only do this against people with no AoE ... Sedna + Oak (don't really count Surge when Surge does < 500 dmg most of the game and Rook towers are in excess of 2k hp). Regardless, the splash of the towers rapes your creepwave if it is just minos + archers (4 * 80 + splash == dead in one volley, they switch to you). Your minons follow quick and the Boulder Roll ensures you take at least a decent amount of damage before you can engage him, and which point his teammate is porting in.

-- (Rook)

Here, yes, you can use Siege idols to slowly wear down his farm and push him back. However, since you lack AoE a lot of good Rooks won't do this (or they will do some type of hybrid between the two formations). Idols are far more effective against this type of formation, and this is when I don't have an issue at least contesting a Rook. The thing is, this won't happen -.-

so for sedna vs queen of thorns, how do you beat her? her minions along with shield make for a tough combo...got me alittle confused as what to do

QoT can only beat Sedna around levels 7-12 (spikes/shield/morale/minons can beat anyone around this time)

After that armor + regen goes up too high so QoT can't even dent Sedna.

The only reason QoT has this "sweet spot" is because of the way people play the game. They stack life and regen early, so a level 7 ground spike pretty much disintegrates their damage resistance and they are turned away. (it's hard to get kills with QoT against good players, they can simply teleport out and you can't stop them)

Around level 12 people have stacked armor and have powers and DPS that can cut through QoT's shield cycling. She is doomed at that point in a 1on1 fight. Most any life stack + good DG build can beat her lifestack and shields with 25% health left.

Quoting Subdragon,

reply 18

so for sedna vs queen of thorns, how do you beat her? her minions along with shield make for a tough combo...got me alittle confused as what to do

AA until her shield drops. Pounce - Silence. Autoattack some more.

If you Silence while she is open, she can't close, and then closing takes 2 more seconds before she can mulch-shield.

If you silence while she is closed, her AA and attacks aren't much of a threat anyway.

Just be mindful you aren't doing something stupid like fighting in an enemy creep wave (a special power of Queen. Her native cleave means that she can farm and kill you at the same time. Then her wave moves forwards to contribute damage).

Don't stack a heavy heal if you're laned against a Queen.

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Starting with Sedna: A new players' rise to competence