Bellona Smite Guide: Damage, Tank, Jungle Builds, Tips and Counters

Bellona is one of Smite’s most popular Gods, and one of the best Warriors for the casual player base according to our Smite Tier List. She is one of the first Warrior type Gods to release, with a very adaptive playstyle, offering several different builds, weapons, and situational use. Furthermore, she is one of the more popular solo lane characters, with a great laning experience. With all that said, here is our Ballona Smite guide for everything from build paths and counters to her use on different modes. 

Bellona is a warrior, designed with different weapons each built with different niches and roles useful for every game. For more information relating to her lore, check out Hi Rez’s brief history lesson on the Roman Goddess of War.

Passive – Master of War

Upon giving and receiving basic attacks, Bellona Smite’s passive gains Protection and movement speed, capped at 5 stacks. Every stack grants five protection of both physical and magical, and 3% movement speed. 

Furthermore, all of her numbered regular abilities have weapon perks. Whenever Bellona fails to attack or get hit for 7 seconds, she loses her active weapon. 

1 – Shield Bash

Shield Bash is Bellona’s charge ability, which equips her with a sword and shield. Her Charge activation dashes her forward, dishing out damage and allowing enemies hit. Bellona gets a stack of block for enemies hit with the charge. The blocks absorb a portion of incoming damage and reflect it back at attackers. Every three auto attacks while in this stance grant another stack of block. Bellona can only have three block stacks at a time.

2 – Bludgeon

Bellona uses a hammer, spinning around and then overhand striking in front of her.  Each enemy god caught in the spin increases the overhand damage.  Her basic attacks then do AOE damage next to the target, which she can heal for 33% of her lifesteal.

3 – Scourge

Bellona gets a new weapon, a Scourge, which disarms opponents caught in a line. Enemies who are hit get disarmed for 1.4 to 2.2 seconds depending on the level. Her basic attacks then grant health restoration every 3rd attack, while gaining an extra +4 range.

4 – Eagle’s Rally

Bellona’s ultimate is a very powerful dive tool. She dices onto the target area, planting a Roman banner. Those caught under it are stunned for 1 second. The benefit of the flag improves her allies physical power for 20-60 damage, 15-35 protection, or 25-75 magical power depending on ability level. The flag lasts for eight seconds and has a large radius.

 

Bellona’s ability priority

Prioritizing abilities in Ballona Smite builds are fairly consistent across any game mode or skill bracket. Typically, you want to star Bludgeon and max that. It is the wave clear weapon of choice and your best bet at harassing your lane opponents. From there, your next best bet is to max your third ability for the healing and disarm duration. The disarm is too good against both your solo lane or jungle opposition, or Hunters after the laning phase ends. The third ability is your Q, as it only increases the damage and slow percent, which isn’t that big of a deal. Obviously, rank up your ultimate whenever you get the opportunity to do so.

As for the functionality of her abilities, Bellona has quite a solid kit for most situations. The Scourge is amazing at all stages of the game, disarming Solo Lane or Jungler Gods as they come to trade. In the mid and late-game team fights, Bellona’s dive, followed by the disarm on a Hunter will make them feel useless for a considerable time.

The best tip when it comes to using your abilities is to think smart about your ability cast order. Charging in with 1 could be best used for a counter engage, followed by 3 to disarm an opponent. Alternatively, having 1 up when a Jungler or Support roams to your lane is a lifesaver. Also, you can combine your Blink with your 2 to maximise damage output when you are free to be aggressive, then using Q to get out of harm’s way or to counter their trades.

Due to Bellona being a Warrior, she has several different build paths she can go. There is a Bellona tank build that works fine, with both hybrid and damage Bellona builds that work fine. Here are some suggestions on how to build Bellona regardless of playstyle or game mode. The damage and tank builds in particularly are relevant on all game modes, whether that is Smite’s Conquest, Joust, Arena, or Assault modes.

 

Bellona Damage and Hybrid suggestions Build

Solo Lane Bellona Smite builds come with a variety of playstyles, but one of the best bits about Bellona is she can be a kill lane. Bellona’s damage build centres around the Death’s Toll as a starting item, along with Chalice of Healing and Multi potion. The idea of this start is to maintain your mana and health sustain during the lane, keeping up with enemy Solo Laners and also applying her own pressure for a sustained period of time.

Relics: Blink Rune or Teleport, and Shield of Thorns.

From there, items like Ninja Tabi, Frostbound Hammer, and Berserker’s Shield are core to her playstyle, regardless if it is a hybrid or Damage build. Both items grant increased physical power, along with solid defensive stats. Berserker’s shield also grants some physical protection and attack speed, allowing her to match many aggressive Solo Laners.

Other key items to her damage build include Stone Cutting Sword, as that scales perfectly alongside her passive. Bellona’s passive increases her protection and movement speed, with Stone Cutting Sword also doing that. The item increases the user’s Physical protection, by 10 to a max of 30. Furthermore, it lowers the enemies physical protection by 30 at max stacks too.

Alternatively, you can grab an Asi for that extra damage and life steal bonus when you drop low, or a Mantle of Discord for the tankyness and low HP AOE stun. You can also get a Void Shield for the bonus Physical Power and Protection while shredding your opponent’s protection too.

The benefit of this damage build is you can gain a significant amount of attacks speed, power, and still maintain some level of physical ramp courtesy of items and Ballona’s passive. You can also shred Hunters as they can’t attack you for 2 seconds when disarmed.

 

Bellona Tank Build

In case you need a bit of survivability or are the only engage, a Bellona Smite tank build might be in order. Tank Bellona’s starting items default to shared tank starting builds, like the Warrior’s Axe, Boots and sustain like Chalice of Healing or multi pots. The starting items offer crowd control reduction, some bonus physical power, protection, and health.

Relics: Blink Rune or Teleport, and Shield of Thorns.

Once when she gets some gold, you can upgrade the boots to Ninja Tabi, with your gold moving into Frostbound Hammer once again. Once when these items are in play you can begin deviating to tanky items as the enemy carries and your opposing Solo Laner scale up. Items like Mail of Renewal, which adds more protection stacks, scaling with Bellona passive. Also, MoR heals you after you get the full stacks for 15% of your max health. Besides, your allies located 35 units away heal when the stacks reach the maximum value over 20 seconds.

 

If you fancied a shield, then the Gladiator’s Shield is a great pick. It grants Physical Power, plenty of physical protection, health and Cooldown Reduction. Gladiator’s Shield puts out plenty of damage when you get resistance with its 60% HP passive proc. This scales very well with Breastplate of Valor, with its 20% CDR and boost to physical protection.

For some magic resistance, a Mantle of Discord helps to reach 40% CDR, along with 60 protection for each damage type. It also does an AOE stun when you drop below 30% max hp. You’d need to swap out the Frostbound Hammer to achieve this build though.

Furthermore, another hybrid defense item worthy of note is the Hide of the Urchin. The item scales into the late game, granting protection stacks, which then evolves to build shields out of combat. Very solid item, especially if your comp is team fight orientated.

 

Ballona Jungle Build

The thing with the Ballona Jungle build is she can take either the core of the damage or tank build, with a few alternatives. For starters, you start the Eye of the Jungle, which helps clear jungle monsters early on. Follow this up with a Short bow for bonus attacks speed and some healing and multi potions to sustain.

Relics: Purification Beads or Horrific Emblem, and Shield of Thorns.

As for aggressive jungle items, you can alternate your Frostbound Hammer for an Odysseus’s Bow for fast damage dealing, jungle clearing, and acting as a damage dealer. In addition, Qin’s is a decent item too because of its tank shredding, ideal for taking out Solo Laners. For an alternative jungle defensive item, Shogun’s Kusari is great as it grants the ally you are ganking for bonus attack speed while providing you crowd control reduction. The added benefits of mana and magical protection are nice too.

If you need some anti healing, then Toxic Blade is a great item to get. It grants protection penetration, some health, attack and movement speed as core stats, along with 20% reduced healing stacking to two times for six seconds.

While understanding her build styles, ability usage and other helpful information, counters are just important for knowing how to play Bellona Smite. 

While Bellona has a considerably decent laning phase against most opponents, there are a few to watch out for. The biggest counters to Bellona are Smite Gods that interrupt. King Arthur, Tyr, Vamana, even Smite’s newest God of Season 8.4, Gilgamesh, can counter her Bludgeon. Enemy Smite Gods who counter Bludgeon pressure her, as she relies on the 2 to wave clear and trade effectively. With that said, Bellona could see herself losing trades, and losing lane pressure as she has to juggle creep waves.

There are a few more counters that have stuns, just like Achilles and Guan Yu, but there are methods to outplaying them. This often requires better wave management, positioning and skirmish trading and anticipating combat with passive stacks. In these situations, Bellona Smite can appear rather difficult to play, especially at higher skill levels.

This concludes our Bellona Smite guide. We hope you enjoyed our Bellona Smite guide, and now know a thing or two about how to play her various build paths and playstyles. Once again, most of this information is adaptable to Smite’s many game modes. Whether it is Conquest, Joust, Arena, Assualt and more. Good luck climbing with one of Smite’s most popular Warriors and Gods in general.