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Izanami is a Japanese goddess belonging to the Hunter class. Like other Hunters, she has a strong, ranged basic attack that is her primary form of doing damage, making her best suited for the Carry role.
She’s the first god I ever got a Penta Kill with, which is where you kill five enemy gods on the enemy team within a few seconds. Her abilities are straightforward, but she has an interesting basic attack. Rather than using a bow to shoot arrows like most Hunters, she throws small sickles known as kama, and they pass through targets rather than stopping on them.
Once they reach their maximum range, they return to Izanami, doing slightly less damage on the way back. However, many items’ effects can only trigger once per basic attack, and the power of those effects is sometimes even lower than it usually would be. Her basic attack can make choosing items for Izanami confusing because what may seem significant on the surface may not work in practice.
If you want to optimize your builds for Izanami, these six builds will set you on the right path. I recommend starting with the General Build, which is the most versatile build and should be the easiest to use.
She has good attack speed and basic attack damage but is relatively low in all her other stats. Compared to other Hunters, her stats are pretty average. Something to note is that she has one of the lowest basic attack speeds of any Hunter at Level, making it more difficult and more important to hit her basic attacks. As a result, you may want to build for increased attack speed immediately.
Abilities
Her passive ability, Death Draws Nigh, gives her increased percentage-based penetration based on how much missing health she has. Her basic attacks’ projectile speed is linked to her attack speed. Her first active ability, Sickle Storm, is a buff that increases her attack speed and basic attack damage. However, it removes the effect of her sickles returning to her while active.
Her second active ability, Spectral Projection, does damage in a line in front of her and slows any enemies hit. If an enemy god gets killed while slowed by this ability, the slow effect becomes stronger. This increase in the slowing effect can happen twice per match.
Her third active ability, Fade Away, is a leap that turns Izanami temporarily invisible to the enemy team. If she attacks or takes damage, the invisibility effect gets canceled. Her ultimate ability, Dark Portal, does large amounts of damage in a sizable circle after a 0.6-second prefire. It silences any enemies hit.
Builds
General Build
This build mixes ability and basic attack damage, allowing for a very flexible play style. The build is my go-to build if I don’t have a more specific plan in mind. It works in all game modes and both Mid and Carry roles in Conquest.
To start, get Death’s Toll, which offers power and health, and has a passive that restores health and mana whenever you hit an enemy with a basic attack. This item will help you stay in action for longer. You will also want Purification Beads to make you temporarily immune to crowd control effects and get the Short Bow to upgrade.
You’ll want to upgrade Short Bow into Atalanta’s Bow as soon as you can. This item provides power, attack speed, lifesteal, and critical strike chance. It has a passive effect that gives you increased attack speed and reduced movement speed penalties for 10 seconds whenever you get a kill or assist on an enemy god. This item is like a jack-of-all-trades, providing a variety of boosts that are especially good for Hunters.
After that, you’ll want to get The Crusher. This item supplies power, attack speed, and flat physical penetration. It has a passive effect that increases ability damage and synergizes surprisingly well with Izanami. Sickle Storm increases basic attack damage by adding additional ability damage to each basic attack rather than increasing her power, meaning she can get the extra damage from The Crusher on her basic attacks as well.
From there, get Fail-not. This item provides power, critical strike chance, a significant cooldown reduction, and percentage-based penetration. It has a passive that, after using your ultimate ability, makes your next attack on an enemy god mark them, increasing the chance your whole team will land critical strikes against them. The passive effect isn’t too significant, but the cooldown reduction and penetration are helpful.
You’ll want to pick up Aegis Amulet as your second relic, which grants temporary invincibility but also blocks you from attacking while you’re invincible.
After that, you’ll want to get Malicious Deathbringer. It provides power and a significant increase in critical strike chance and increases the damage done by critical strikes. It has a passive effect that reduces your cooldown when hitting an enemy with a critical strike. This item is extremely powerful, but it’s expensive. If you feel like you’re falling behind, you might want to save this item for last.
Next, get Titan’s Bane, which supplies power and a significant amount of percentage-based penetration. It provides further percentage-based penetration to an ability every 8 seconds. Your basic attacks will already be doing large amounts of damage, which should help your abilities keep up.
You can replace The Crusher with Shadowsteel Shuriken if you want, providing power, attack speed, and critical strike chance. It has a passive effect that reduces the healing of enemies hit by your critical strikes, and with your overall critical strike chance being nearly 100% at this point, it will be very effective.
Finally, upgrade Death’s Toll into Death’s Temper, which bears power, health, and a sizable amount of attack speed. It has a passive that, when an enemy dies near you, you gain increased basic attack damage.
The final build should look something like this:
- Death’s Temper
- Atalanta’s Bow
- The Crusher or Shadowsteel Shuriken
- Fail-not
- Malicious Deathbringer
- Titan’s Bane
When it comes to upgrading abilities, I often focus on upgrading Spectral Projection. It helps with early wave-clear and can be super helpful at securing kills.
Joust Build
This build is designed for the specific type of gameplay found in the Joust game mode. All three team members will be with you at nearly all times, so items that help your teammates and yourself are more important than in a mode like Conquest. Izanami’s role in Joust will be purely basic attack damage so that we won’t be getting anything for ability damage or cooldown reduction.
To start, get Leather Cowl, which provides power, mana regeneration, lifesteal, and attack speed. It gives further attack speed when near teammates and increased movement speed when alone. You’ll also want to get Short Bow to upgrade and Purification Beads.
Like in the General Build, upgrade Short Bow into Atalanta’s Bow. It’s an all-around item to get early since it has a little bit of everything.
After that, get Qin’s Sais, which bears power and attack speed. Its passive effect does additional damage based on a percentage of the target’s health, making it strong at fighting tanks. You’ll be dealing with a tank for the whole match in Joust, so it’s helpful to get this item early on.
Next, get Shadowsteel Shuriken. Anti-heal items like this are super important and valuable in Joust. You’ll want to get Aegis Amulet around this point in the match.
After that, you’ll want to get Silverbranch Bow. It provides power and a significant amount of attack speed, and percentage-based penetration. It has a passive that increases power for any attack speed over the attack speed cap. This allows you to increase your attack speed further without wasting any of it when using Sickle Storm since it’ll add power instead.
For your last item, get The Executioner. It supplies power and attack speed, but more importantly, basic attacks temporarily lower the target’s protections, effectively working as penetration for the whole team.
Finally, upgrade Leather Cowl into Hunter’s Cowl. It provides the same benefits as Leather Cowl but is much stronger. The best part is that the attack speed buff becomes an aura, helping your entire team.
The final build should look something like this:
- Hunter’s Cowl
- Atalanta’s Bow
- Qin’s Sais
- Shadowsteel Shuriken
- Silverbranch Bow
- The Executioner
Carry Build
This build is designed for the Carry role, focusing purely on basic attack damage, and taking out objectives in mind. The Carry is typically responsible for taking out the enemy Titan, so you need consistent and high damage per second.
To start, get Gilded Arrow, providing basic attack damage, health, and mana regeneration. It marks an enemy minion every 10 seconds, and killing the marked enemy gives you gold, a temporary attack speed buff, and restores mana. Get Spiked Gauntlet to upgrade later and because the early lifesteal will help a lot with sustain. Finally, before leaving the fountain, get Purification beads and a mix of Healing Potions and Mana Potions.
As soon as possible, upgrade Spiked Gauntlet into Devourer’s Gauntlet. It gives power and lifesteal, as well as builds stacks whenever you kill enemies that provide additional power and lifesteal. With the early lane phase in Conquest, you have a reasonable amount of time to build stacks, and items that build stacks tend to be the strongest in the game at max stacks. Devourer’s Gauntlet, in particular, has the most lifesteal of any item.
After that, get Qin’s Sais. You’ll likely have a tank in your lane, so getting this item early is helpful as a Carry.
Next, get Wind Demon, which provides power, attack speed, and critical strike chance. Whenever you get a critical strike with this item, you get a buff that gives you increased percentage-based penetration, attack speed, and movement speed. Critical strike items are strong right now, but since the bonus damage doesn’t apply to objectives, this will be the only one for this build.
Be sure to get Aegis Amulet when you can. Silverbranch Bow will be the next item we get. Penetration is incredibly powerful, and we will hit the attack speed cap if the buffs from both Sickle Storm and the Void Camp are active.
Before we get our last item, we’ll upgrade Gilded Arrow into Ornate Arrow. This item offers more basic attack damage, health, attack speed, and critical strike chance. Furthermore, it increases gold received from all sources by 5%, and you can gain increased attack speed and critical strike chance for every 100 gold you have, up to 2000.
Finally, get Dominance. This item gives you power, mana, mana regeneration, and percentage-based penetration. Basic attacks further increase percentage-based penetration. This should be enough to make taking out the Titan a breeze.
The final build should look something like this:
- Ornate Arrow
- Devourer’s Gauntlet
- Qin’s Sais
- Wind Demon
- Silverbranch Bow
- Dominance
For abilities, start with getting Spectral Projection. This ability will help clear the first several minion waves. At level 2, I recommend getting Fade Away to have a way to escape. At level 3, get Sickle Storm. At level 4, I typically get Spectral Projection again. At level 5, get Dark Portal, of course. From there, focus on upgrading Spectral Projection until it is maxed out. Sickle Storm is excellent, but it’s more useful later in the match.
Mid Build
This build is similar to the Carry build but with a few tweaks to make it more suitable for the Mid lane. The Carry build works as well, but this build should be slightly better for Mid Lane.
We’ll start mainly in the same way as in the Carry build, getting Gilded Arrow, Spiked Gauntlet, and potions. You may want to get Aegis Amulet before Purification Beads since many mages have strong ultimate abilities and ability combos that can kill you within a second or two.
Like in the Carry build, upgrade Spiked Gauntlet into Devourer’s Gauntlet. The first change from the Carry build will be getting The Crusher next. This will help you with early wave clear, which you will need to keep up with most mages.
After that, we’ll get Shadowsteel Shuriken instead of Wind Demon. It’s a similar item, but Shadowsteel Shuriken’s anti-heal passive will be super helpful in Mid Lane. Mages typically have low health and rely on healing or lifesteal, making things much harder for them. You could go with Wind Demon instead if you prefer it instead.
Be sure to get either Purification Beads or Aegis Amulet, whichever one you don’t have.
Next, get Qin’s Sais. It’s not needed as early in Mid Lane, but it’s still a solid item to have for the late-game team fights. Those team fights should be starting at this point in the match if they haven’t started already.
We’ll upgrade Gilded Arrow into Ornate Arrow at this point.
Finally, get Malicious Deathbringer. We didn’t build for any cooldown reduction, but we shouldn’t need it with Malicious Deathbringer. At this point in the match, you may need to play the role of the Carry if they’re not doing well. If they are doing well, you’ll want to thin out the enemies to support the Carry. Either way, this build will get the job done.
The final build should look something like this:
- Ornate Arrow
- Devourer’s Gauntlet
- The Crusher
- Shadowsteel Shuriken
- Qin’s Sais
- Malicious Deathbringer
For abilities, you’ll want to upgrade them in a similar, if not the same, pattern as with the Carry Build.
Hunter Meta Build
This build has been the go-to build for most Hunters for a little while now. Penetration is super strong, and one of the best items for penetration gets extra use from high attack speed. As a result, the build focuses on both attack speed and penetration. Critical damage has been quickly coming back into the meta though, so my Carry Build might be closer to the Meta by the time you read this. Regardless, this is a great build, and the high attack speed makes it easier to use consistently.
To start, get Death’s Toll, the Mace to upgrade, Purification Beads, and potions.
We’ll upgrade the Mace into The Crusher after that. We want to get flat penetration early since it will have more effect than percentage-based penetration.
After that, we’ll get Asi. This item provides power, attack speed, lifesteal, and flat penetration. It gives additional lifesteal if you’re low on health.
From there, we’ll get Qin’s Sais, partly for dealing with enemies with high health and partly because it synergizes exceptionally well with attack speed items.
You’ll want to get Aegis Amulet when you can.
Next, we’ll get Silverbranch Bow. By now, we’ll be hitting the attack speed cap when activating Sickle Storm.
For the last item slot, we’ll get Odysseus’ Bow. It provides a lot of attack speed and has a passive effect that makes every 4th basic attack shoot lightning out to nearby enemies, sharing some basic attack damage.
Finally, upgrade Death’s Toll into Death’s Temper.
The final build should look something like this:
- Death’s Temper
- The Crusher
- Asi
- Qin’s Sais
- Silverbranch Bow
- Odysseus’ Bow
Fun Jungle Build
Now, Izanami is a lot of fun in the jungle, but she has one major downside that you have to be prepared for. Unlike popular Jungle picks, Izanami has no hard crowd control or the ability to stop an enemy god entirely. This means it’s easier for enemies to escape, and you’ll have to accept missing out on some early kills. With recent changes, however, matches are lasting longer, and Hunters are the strongest class in the late game. This means the trade of some early kills for late-game power can be worth it. If you ensure that the enemy Jungler doesn’t press their early advantage too hard, you should do quite well. You’re going to need a lot of wards though. This build would do well in Slash as well.
We’ll start by getting Manikin Scepter, providing basic attack damage and physical protection. It has a complex passive, doing additional damage over time after hitting an enemy with a basic attack and lowering their attack speed. Killing jungle monsters with this item restores health and mana. We’ll also want to get either Round Sheild or the Mace, depending on how aggressive you want to be, as well as wards to know what’s happening in the jungle and Heavenly Wings to give yourself temporary movement speed boosts. Something I like about Heavenly Wings in this build is that it can be upgraded into Entangling Wings, which roots enemies when activated. This gives Izanami some much-needed crowd control.
From there, we’ll either upgrade the Mace into The Crusher or do what I typically do, upgrade Round Shield into Shifter’s Shield. Shifters Shield provides power and physical protections, giving additional power when over a certain percentage of health and additional protections under that percentage. I think this item works well with Izanami’s passive, and the physical protections will help with fighting the enemy Jungler and jungle camps.
After that, get Bloodforge, providing large amounts of power, lifesteal, and movement speed. It has a passive that gives you a health shield upon killing an enemy god and increased movement speed while the shield is active. This item is good here for several reasons. It provides more power than Devourer’s Gauntlet and does so immediately. It doesn’t bestow as much lifesteal, but we won’t need as much since Mankin Scepter will restore health. Finally, movement speed is handy in the Jungle role, and unfortunately, movement speed items for Izanami are limited.
Next, get Fail-not. The critical strike chance and cooldown reduction will help with getting quick kills.
You’ll want to get Purification Beads as your second relic.
For the next item, get Jotunn’s Ferocity. It offers power, mana, flat penetration, and the last bit of cooldown reduction needed to hit the cap. It marks an enemy god every 30 seconds, making them receive increased damage.
Get Wind Demon to increase critical strike chance and mobility for the last item slot.
We’ll upgrade Manikin Scepter into Manikin Hidden Blade, providing power, physical protections, and damage reduction. If you haven’t dealt or taken damage in 5 seconds, your next attack will do 20% of the enemy’s health in damage and slow them. This is great for quickly killing unsuspecting enemies.
Finally, we’ll replace either The Crusher or Shifter’s Shield with Heartseeker. This item provides power, mana, mana regeneration, and percentage-based penetration. It has a passive effect that makes abilities do a percentage of the target’s health as additional damage. The protections from Shifter’s Shield won’t be as helpful at this point anymore, so you may as well go for more damage.
The final build should look something like this:
- Manikin Hidden Blade
- Heartseeker
- Bloodforge
- Fail-not
- Jotunn’s Ferocity
- Wind Demon
For abilities, you’ll upgrade in a similar pattern to the Carry Build, but you’ll want to make sure to upgrade Fade Away before Sickle Storm.
FAQs
Question: Can Izanami’s basic attacks “proc” items more than once?
Answer: No. Despite being able to hit multiple times with a single basic attack, it will only “proc” or trigger item effects once. Furthermore, Oddyseus’ Bow has a weaker impact with Izanami’s regular basic attacks than most Hunters because her normal basic attacks are at reduced power. Luckily, it’s not that significant of a difference and can be negated with Sickle Storm.
Question: Is lifesteal good on Izanami?
Answer: Yes, lifesteal can be good on all Hunters, but Izanami doesn’t fully benefit from lifesteal with her regular basic attacks. Izanami’s normal basic attack is considered an AoE attack and receives only 33% of lifesteal. This can be negated with Sickle Storm, and overall, I’d say lifesteal is still worth it in her builds.
Question: Can Izanami play Solo effectively?
Answer: Currently, yes. Hunters are extremely strong right now, and the meta team comp often has 2-3 Hunters. I don’t personally use her in Solo, but I have seen many people do it to great effect recently.
You would probably use something similar to the Mid Build, maybe with Shifter’s Shield replacing Devourer’s Gauntlet because of early pressure. Remember that you’re sacrificing a tanky character when doing this, so I would personally only do it if there’s a Warrior or Guardian playing Jungle on your team.
Izanami Build Ideas: Conclusion
These six builds will help you reach Izanami’s full potential as one of the strongest gods at the moment. As you play with these builds, feel free to tweak them based on circumstance or your playstyle, but you should do great with these builds as they are.