jing wei build ideas

Jing Wei Build Ideas

Latest posts by Aaron Stevens (see all)

Jing Wei is a Chinese goddess and a part of the Hunter class in Smite. As with all other Hunters, her primary role is as a Carry, thanks to her ranged basic attack that allows for consistently high damage output.

She’s been my main Carry pick longer than any other god. I like that she has more mobility than most other hunters, which makes escaping a bad situation much easier. Her effectiveness comes and goes based on the season, but she’s extremely strong right now.

Bottom Line Up Front

jing wei

I have six builds for Jing Wei that will serve as great guides for your builds. These six builds are great as is, but feel free to tweak them to suit the situation or your playstyle. I recommend starting with my General Build as it is the most versatile, but don’t overlook the other builds!

Before we get into the builds, we need to understand how Jing Wei is unique, looking at her stats and abilities.

When it comes to her stats, Jing Wei is rather average. However, she has one of the strongest basic attacks in the game. Overall, this means that we won’t have to focus on getting items to supplement weak spots and can focus on emphasizing her basic attack damage.

Abilities

Her passive ability, Rapid Reincarnation, grants her flight for 4 seconds after leaving the fountain. She moves considerably faster while flying. 

Her first active ability, Persistent Gust, does damage in a small circle and knocks up any enemy gods in the circle into the air. It does a large amount of initial damage, as well as additional damage every second for 6 seconds. If Jing Wei walks into the circle, she also gets knocked into the air but receives an attack speed buff.

Her second active ability, Explosive Bolts, is a buff that makes her next three basic attacks do additional damage and explode in a small radius. These attacks also have increased critical hit chance.  Her third active ability, Agility, is a dash that also gives Jing Wei a power and movement speed buff for 4 seconds. She can use the dash in the air for extended range.

Her ultimate ability, Air Strike, does damage in a large rectangular area in front of her as she becomes immune to crowd control and flies into the sky. She can stay immobile in the sky for up to 2 seconds, then gets to choose where to land afterward. 

Builds

General Build

General Build

This build is my most balanced build for Jing Wei and my go-to build for when I don’t have a more specific plan. It provides lifesteal, critical hit chance, attack speed, and penetration for a well-rounded build based on basic attack damage. It doesn’t overly focus on any one aspect, which makes it harder for the enemies to counter-build around.

Start this build by getting Gilded Arrow, which gives increased basic attack damage, health, and mana regeneration. Gilded Arrow has a passive that marks an enemy minion every 10 seconds, and killing that minion gives you an attack speed buff, restores mana, and provides a tiny amount of gold.

This item is mainly for increased basic attack DPS, but it has a variety of small benefits. Other than that, you’ll want to get Spiked Gauntlet for early lifesteal and to upgrade later, and Purification Beads to make you temporarily immune to crowd control effects.

As soon as you can, you want to upgrade Spiked Gauntlet into Devourer’s Gauntlet. This item provides power and lifesteal, and it builds stacks when you kill an enemy god or minion that further increases power and lifesteal. At full stacks, it provides the most lifesteal of any item available to Jing Wei.

After that, you want to get Wind Demon as your next item. This item provides power, attack speed, and critical strike chance. When you get a critical strike, you get a buff temporarily granting you increased percentage-based penetration, attack speed, and movement speed.

Next, get Atalanta’s Bow, which provides power, attack speed, lifesteal, and critical strike chance. After getting a kill or assist on an enemy god, it has a passive effect that temporarily increases attack speed and reduces movement speed penalties.

Around this point in the match, you will want to get Aegis Amulet. This relic allows you temporarily become invincible but prevents you from attacking or using abilities while active. This can be very useful for surviving strong abilities from enemy gods.

For the next item, get Qin’s Sais, providing power and attack speed. This item has a very strong passive effect, making your basic attacks do additional damage based on a percentage of the enemy’s health. This is super useful in taking out enemy tanks.

Once you reach level 20, you want to upgrade Gilded Arrow into Ornate Arrow. This item provides a significant amount of additional basic attack damage, health, attack speed, and critical strike chance. It increases all gold received by 5% and increases attack speed and critical strike chance for every 100 gold, up to 2000 gold.

For the final item, get Dominance. This item provides power, mana, mana regeneration, and percentage-based penetration. It also gives basic attacks additional percentage-based penetration.

The final build should look like this:

  • Ornate Arrow
  • Devourer’s Gauntlet
  • Wind Demon
  • Atalanta’s Bow
  • Qin’s Sais
  • Dominance

As for upgrading abilities, the exact order isn’t important outside of Conquest, but I focus on upgrading Persistent Gust first since it’s her most effective ability for wave clear. 

Joust Build

Joust Build

This build is designed specifically for Joust, and in Joust, your entire team of three will be in the same place at nearly all times, right across from the enemy team of three. This makes items that nerf enemies or provide auras buffing teammates much more powerful and important.

Start by getting a Leather Cowl, which provides a small amount of power, mana regeneration, physical lifesteal, and attack speed. When near a friendly god, you get increased attack speed, and when alone you get increased movement speed. You’ll also want to get Shuriken to upgrade, Purification Beads, and possibly some Healing Potions to increase health regeneration. Thanks to Jing Wei’s passive, you can pretty safely omit the potions for extra gold, though.

Next time you’re at the fountain, upgrade Shuriken into Shadowsteel Shuriken, providing power, attack speed, and critical strike chance. With this item, enemies hit by your critical strikes will receive reduced healing.

After that, get Asi, providing power, attack speed, lifesteal, and flat penetration. If your health drops below 35%, you gain a massive increase in lifesteal for 5 seconds. This item will help with sustain, but I get it in Joust primarily to make it possible to take out the Bull Demon King by myself later in the match.

For the next item, get The Executioner, providing power and attack speed. When you hit an enemy with your basic attacks, it temporarily reduces their physical protection. This is particularly helpful if you have a teammate that does physical damage, but even if you don’t, it’s still strong.

At this point in the match, get Aegis Amulet.

Next, get Envenomed Deathbringer. This item provides power and critical strike chance, as well as increases critical strike damage. It has a passive that temporarily slows and reduces the damage output of enemy gods that you get a critical hit on. This not only significantly increases your damage output and makes it easier for you to get kills, but it can help your teammates as well.

When you can, you will want to upgrade Leather Cowl to Hunter’s Cowl. This item provides the same benefits as Leather Cowl but to a greater extent. The attack speed buff for being around teammates becomes an attack speed aura buff, increasing your teammates’ attack speed as well.

Finally, get Dominance for the last bit of additional damage and penetration.

The final build should look like this:

  • Hunter’s Cowl
  • Shadowsteel Shuriken
  • Asi
  • The Executioner
  • Envenomed Deathbringer
  • Dominance

In Joust, your team will normally have a Mage that can clear waves much quicker than you, so you might want to upgrade Explosive Bolts to max level before Persistent Gust.

Carry Build

Carry Build

My build for Jing Wei in the Carry role is heavily reliant on critical hits. Since Jing Wei’s Explosive Bolts ability already gives a critical hit chance, items such as Wind Demon and Envenomned Deathbringer that trigger effects on getting a critical strike naturally get more use.

When the build is complete, you can take out most enemy gods in around three or four basic attacks. The downside is that you will have reduced damage on objectives like the Titan as critical hit damage doesn’t affect them, but that’s not a problem when you can get rid of the whole enemy team.

We’ll start this build by getting Gilded Arrow, Purification Beads, Healing Potions, and Light Blade to upgrade.

We’ll upgrade Light Blade into Asi when possible. I prefer Asi over Devourer’s Gauntlet in this build for a few reasons. The main reason is that Asi gives you immediate power, while you have to build stacks to reach the full power of Devourer’s Gauntlet.

You can use the early advantage of Asi to push the enemy Carry out of the lane, either by killing them or making them return to the fountain to heal. It also has flat penetration and attack speed that will help you keep the enemy Support at a distance. Another good thing about Asi is that it’s really strong for taking out the Gold Fury by yourself.

After that, we’ll get Wind Demon, starting our investment into critical hits. Sometimes I build Wind Demon first and just use the Healing Potions for sustain. Either option works pretty well, but Wind Demon gives percentage-based penetration while Asi gives flat penetration, and flat penetration is better early. However, with critical damage, penetration is more of an afterthought.

From there, we’ll get Atalanta’s Bow for a variety of beneficial effects. It increases both attack speed and critical strike chance, meaning we’ll get the additional buff from Wind Demon more often. The additional lifesteal is a great bonus too.

At this point, you’ll want to get Aegis Amulet whenever you’re at the fountain.

After that, we’ll get Envenomned Deathbringer. This greatly enhances our critical strikes, which will be 70% of our basic attacks, or 90% when using Explosive Bolts. Not only is critical hit damage significantly increased by this item, but the debuff they inflict on enemies will completely shift the battle in your favor.

When you hit level 20, upgrade Gilded Arrow into Ornate Arrow. At max stacks, you will have a 95% critical hit chance, meaning every single basic attack buffed by Explosive Bolts will be a critical hit.

Finally, get either Dominance or Qin’s Sais. Both are good options, but if you want more attack speed, go with Qin’s Sais. Otherwise, Dominance will likely be the better option at this point.

The final build should look like this:

  • Ornate Arrow
  • Asi
  • Wind Demon
  • Atalanta’s Bow
  • Envenomed Deathbringer
  • Dominance or Qin’s

For abilities, I get Persistent Gust first to help clear the camps at the start of the game and to clear the minion waves. At level 2, I normally get Agility in case I need a quick escape. That means that I get Explosive Bolts at level 3. At level 4, I typically upgrade Explosive Bolts for the early critical hit damage. I get her ultimate, Air Strike, as soon as I can at level 5. From there, I focus on upgrading Explosive Bolts because the critical strike buff is so strong. 

Hunter Meta Build

Meta Build

This build is the go-to build for Hunters that you will often see in Ranked play, focusing on attack speed and penetration. This build was starting to fall out of favor with many players as critical hit builds became very strong, but with Spectral Armor being buffed again, we can likely count on this build staying the meta build for a while.

Hou Yi is also a common pick in Ranked, and his passive is that he can only take critical hit damage once every three seconds, making it hard to compete with him if you build for critical damage. Unfortunately, this build doesn’t utilize Explosive Bolts’ potential, so I don’t typically use it with Jing Wei, but it is still a tried-and-true build that might work best for you.

We’ll start this build by getting Death’s Toll, providing power and health, and has a passive effect that makes basic attacks restore a small amount of health and mana. This is great for early sustain. We’ll also get Purification Beads, Healing Potions, and the Mace to upgrade.

We’ll upgrade the Mace into The Crusher, which gives you power, attack speed, and flat penetration. It also has a passive effect that increases ability damage, which can help with wave clear. After that, we’ll get Asi. This item is being used primarily for the lifestyle here, but it also offers attack speed and penetration, which is perfect for this build.

Next, we’ll get Qin’s Sais. This item will make dealing with high-health enemies much easier and synergizes extremely well with other attack speed items. For your second item, get Aegis Amulet.

Silverbranch Bow is the item we’ll get next. This item provides power, attack speed, and a significant amount of percentage-based penetration. Most importantly, any attack speed that goes over the cap will be converted to power. This allows us to build up to attack speed cap without worrying about wasting the buff from Persistent Gust or the Void Camp.

When you’re level 20, upgrade Death’s Toll into Death’s Temper, providing power, health, and attack speed. When an enemy minion or god dies near you, you gain stacks granting you temporary basic attack damage buffs, going up to 35%. This is extremely powerful for team fights, where you will likely stay at max stacks.

Finally, we’ll get Odysseus Bow. This item increases attack speed and makes every fourth basic attack chain lightning out to nearby enemies, dealing damage to them as well. This item is really strong both for wave clear and team fights, but I would say it is also the most replaceable item in the build.

The final build should look like this:

  • Death’s Temper
  • The Crusher
  • Asi
  • Qin’s Sais
  • Silverbranch Bow
  • Odysseus’ Bow

Mid Build

Mid Build

This build is a heavily tweaked version of the Carry Build. If you prefer the Carry Build over this, it works well in Mid as well, but this build is generally more effective for the intricacies of Mid Lane.

We’ll start by getting Death’s Toll rather than Ornate Arrow. We won’t have the Support in our lane at the beginning, so we could use the early sustain. We’ll also get Spiked Gauntlet and Healing potions. For the relic, you could get Purification Beads, but depending on the enemy in Mid Lane, you might want Aegis Amulet instead. Several Mages can wipe you out with a single combo or ultimate ability.

We’ll upgrade Spike Gauntlet into Devourer’s Gauntlet. We’re getting this rather than Asi since it has more sustain overall. It’s also easier to build stacks in Mid Lane.

Rather than Wind Demon, we’ll get Shadowsteel Shuriken. This item provides power, attack speed, and critical strike chance, but instead of giving you a buff when you hit an enemy with a critical strike, it gives enemies a debuff. This debuff reduces healing received, and the enemy in Mid Lane will most certainly be relying on heals or lifesteal for sustain.

After that, we’ll get The Crusher. The additional ability damage will help us keep up with the high wave clear that Mid Lane picks typically have. When you can, you’ll want to get either Aegis Amulet or Purification Beads for your second relic. Get whichever one you don’t already have, of course.

Rather than Dominance, we’ll build Qin’s Sais. Titan’s Bane can also be a good option. I pick Qin’s Sais in this build because it offers a little more consistency, doing a percentage of the enemies’ health as additional damage each basic attack, and because we won’t have any additional percentage-based penetration to build upon.

When you’re level 20, upgrade Death’s Toll into Death’s Embrace. This item has the same effects as Death’s Toll but to a stronger effect.

Finally, get Malicious Deathbringer rather than Envenomed Deathbringer. It provides the same power, critical strike chance, and increased critical damage.

Rather than the debuff that Envenomned Deathbringer inflicts on enemies, Malicious Deathbringer reduces your cooldowns on all abilities except your ultimate ability when you get a critical strike. This will allow you to spam your abilities to make up for your slightly lower basic attack damage per second compared to the Carry Build.

The final build should look like this:

  • Death’s Embrace
  • Devourer’s Gauntlet
  • Shadowteel Shuriken
  • The Crusher
  • Qin’s Sais
  • Malicious Deathbringer

The order that I get her abilities is the same as the Carry Build, but after level 5, I focus on upgrading Persistent Gust for the wave clear.

Solo Build

Solo Build

Playing a Hunter in Solo is becoming increasingly common because of recent balancing changes to the game. Thanks to Jing Wei’s passive, she’s my favorite Hunter for Solo Lane.

However, playing a Hunter in Solo means you will be down a tanky character, so you may want to refrain from doing it unless the Jungler is playing a Warrior or Guardian. Similar to Mid Lane, the Carry Build would work in Solo Lane, as would the Mid Build. This build is slightly defensive to make up for the lack of what would typically be a Warrior, though.

We’ll start this build by getting Manikin Scepter if you think the enemy in your lane is going to deal physical damage. This item provides increased basic attack damage and physical protections. Enemies hit by your basic attack take additional damage over time and have their basic attack lowered.

If they’re a jungle minion, they’ll restore health and mana if they die while afflicted by the damage over time effect. You’ll also want to get Purification Beads since you don’t need Teleport Fragment like you normally would in Solo, thanks to Jing Wei’s Passive, Spiked Gauntlet to upgrade, and Healing Potions.

If you don’t think the enemy is going to deal physical damage or are just not sure, skip a starter for now and get Cursed Gauntlet to upgrade rather than Spiked Gauntlet. Be aware that the enemy will have a big advantage over you in this instance, and you’ll be primarily trying not to die at the beginning.

As soon as you can, upgrade Spiked Gauntlet or Cursed Gauntlet into Devourer’s Gauntlet. Building stacks won’t take long in Solo Lane, but you will still want it as soon as possible.

For the first defensive item, get Void Shield if the enemy does physical damage or Runic Shield if they do magical damage. Void Shield provides power, physical protection, and health. It also reduces the physical protection of any enemy within your basic attack range.

On the other hand, Runic Shield provides power, magical protections, health, and an effect that lowers the magical power of any enemy within your basic attack range. After that, get Shadowsteel Shuriken. The enemy in Solo Lane will most likely be relying on some form of healing.

For the second relic, I normally still grab Aegis Amulet. This build is slightly defensive, but Jing Wei can still get killed pretty quickly if something goes wrong. After that, you’ll want to get either The Sledge or Spectral Armor if the enemies are building heavily on critical damage. The Sledge provides power, health, mana, and crowd control reduction.

It has a passive effect that provides both magical and physical protections based on the number of enemy gods that are around. Spectral Armor provides a significant amount of physical protection, health, mana, and mana regeneration. Most importantly, Spectral Armor reduces critical hit damage received by 40%, which is very strong.

When you hit level 20, you want to upgrade Manikin Scepter if you have it. I normally go with Manikin Hidden Blade, which provides power, physical protection, and a small reduction of all damage received. It has a passive effect that, if you haven’t dealt or received damage in 5 seconds, the next enemy you damage takes an additional 20% of their health as damage, as well as becomes slowed for 5 seconds.

This item tends to benefit more ability-focused builds the most, but here it helps make up for the lower damage and lack of penetration that the rest of the build has. Given Jing Wei’s mobility, she can get quite a lot of use out of the passive effect by strategically retreating, and it greatly helps with taking out the Fire Giant and Furies.

You could also get Manikin Mace, which provides basic attack damage, health, and physical protections, and a slightly stronger version of the Manikin Scepter passive effect. This will provide more consistent damage and can help supplement the role of the Carry if they’re struggling.

If you didn’t get Manikin Scepter, get Animosity at this point. It provides health, health regeneration, and mana regeneration. It does additional basic attack damage based on 3% of your health as magical damage, and that synergizes well with the rest of the build since we have several items that increase health.

The reason we wait until the end of the match to get a starter item here is that Animosity’s predecessor, Benevolence, isn’t useful to this build.

Finally, we’ll get either Talisman of Energy if you need magical protections or Malicious Deathbringer if you want to play more offensively. Talisman of Energy provides magical protections and health. When you get a kill or assist, it creates an aura that buffs the attack speed, movement speed, and mana regeneration of you and your teammates.

The final build should look like this:

  • Manikin Hidden Blade or Animosity
  • Devourer’s Gauntlet
  • Void Shield or Runic Shield
  • Shadowsteel Shuriken
  • The Sledge or Spectral Armor
  • Talisman of Energy or Malicious Deathbringer

For this build, I upgrade her abilities in the same manner as the Mid Build, focusing on Persistent Gust for wave clear.

FAQS

Question: Is Transcendence a good item for Jing Wei?

Answer: Transcendence can be a great item for all Hunters, but I don’t personally use it on Jing Wei. It provides more physical power than any other item. The downside is that it needs to build stacks to reach full power, and so you would only want to put it into your build early on.

You also want to refrain from double-stacking since stackable items are weak until they reach full stacks, so you have to decide on getting either Transcendence or Devourer’s Gauntlet. You would likely need to build lifesteal early on, and Transcendence doesn’t provide that, so it ultimately delays building items that give you a critical strike chance. I think one of Jing Wei’s strongest aspects is that she can do significant critical hit damage before other Hunters, so my builds for Jing Wei don’t include Transcendence. 

Question: Are ability damage effects triggered by Jing Wei’s Explosive Bolts?

Answer: No. I have heard the rumor saying otherwise persist over the years, but it’s simply not the case. This means that items like The Crusher are only triggered by Persistent Gust and Air Strike when being used by Jing Wei. 

Question: Is Rage a good item for Jing Wei?

Answer: At the moment, not really. Rage synergizes well with Jing Wei, but it’s just far too weak currently for me to ever justify using it. If anyone could make good use of it, though, it would be Jing Wei. The good thing about Rage is that it has over double the critical strike chance of most critical strike items. This allows you to build less critical strike items while still dealing consistent critical damage.

However, it offers no other benefits beyond a tiny amount of power, while items like Atalanta’s Bow, Wind Demon, and Shadowsteel Shuriken do. I find that you’re often better off just getting two of these items over getting Rage. Feel free to experiment, though!

Jing Wei Build Ideas: Conclusion

Jing Wei is arguably the strongest god in Smite right now, so now’s the perfect time to learn how to play as her if you haven’t already. Whether you know how to play as her or not, these builds should have you getting win after win.

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