Overview
Everything you need to know about Conquest in Season 3!Will continue to update in the future!
The Unedited Beginning
The three lanes are Long Lane, Mid Lane, and Short Lane, since in Smite the mini-map completely flips depending on whether you are on the Order or Chaos sides.
Long Lane is on the left when on the Order (blue phoenixes and titan) side and on the right when on the Chaos (orange phoenixes and titan) side; it is the lighter half of the map which is where the Gold Fury and Red (Damage) Buff are located. Beyond the outer edge of Long Lane you can see a beach and an ocean. It is called Long Lane because the distance between the towers is the greatest of the 3 lanes, which makes it preferable to have two players in the lane for each team: a Duo. Usually this Duo consists of a ranged basic attack focused god (usually a Hunter, but some Mages are often used as well; Chronos and Sol are especially common in S3) who is typically referred to as the ADC (attack damage carry) and a defense/crowd-control focused god who is referred to as the Support (usually a Guardian, but some Warriors, like Guan Yu and Odin, are also used commonly in S3, most often along with a Mage ADC).
With the recent buff to Throwing Dagger the high-tier Hunters have flipped a bit, with Apollo being one of the most played Hunters in SPL currently, and the early S3 ADC Hunter build of Transcendence, Warrior Tabi, Asi, Quins’ Sais, Titan’s Bane, and Odysseus’ Bow now tending to replace Transcendence with Throwing Dagger and only upgrading it to Golden Bow towards the end of the game… Guardian Support builds have varied also so far with the early S3 Support Build being Watcher’s Gift, Traveller’s Shoes, Hide of the Urchin, Breastplate of Valor, Bulwark of Hope, Winged Blade, and Midgaardian Mail changing up recently to sometimes include Sovereignty and Heartward Amulet again.
Short lane is on the right when on the Order side and on the left when on the Chaos side, which is the darker half of the map where the Fire Giant and Blue (Mana) Buff are located. Beyond the outer edge of the Short Lane you can see a volcano and a field of lava. It is called Short Lane because the distance between the towers is shorter than Long Lane and about the same (or slightly longer) than Mid Lane. This makes it viable for a single player for each team to cover the lane: thus making them the Solo. In S2, the Solo role was the most versatile in terms of the viable classes, but most good Solo gods in S3 are Warriors due to their ability to take advantage of high-value utility items in both the defensive and offensive categories without screwing up their roles. Besides Warriors, in S3 a few Assassins have been the best performing gods in the Solo Lane, and occasionally you’ll see a Hunter, Guardian, or Mage. Because the Solo role is usually very sustain focused, the Solo god will most often be given the Blue Buff to help sustain their mana for staying in lane longer and avoiding losing any xp and gold there.
With the S3 map changes making the middle of the map a super contested area, the Solo and Jungler often start with clearing the “back camps” first before Blue Buff, though that sometimes depends on how quickly your comp can clear in order for Solo to make it to lane in time. This has also meant that the Solo Lane Boar camps have usually been the safest of the Jungle camps and usually are taken by the Solo god by themselves (no splitting gold/xp like the other roles often have to) with the Jungler being busy in the middle area of the map; that combined with the Solo’s easy access to the three Fire Elemental minions at the Fire Giant area has led to the Solo laners frequently getting the most fed early in the game. This has led to Warriors with good mobility for rotating across the map being some of the highest tier gods for the role, like Amaterasu, Odin, Guan Yu, Tyr, and Vamana. HiRez therefore removed one of the Boars from the Solo Lane Jungle Camp to lower the access to gold/xp that Solo Laners easily have access to, which has helped some, but Solo still tends to be the quickest leveling role in S3. Builds for Solo vary frequently depending on the god and the team comp, but items like Void Shield and Shifter’s Shield have seen an upswing while old S2 standbys like Frostbound Hammer are not as popular.
Mid Lane is obviously right down the middle of the map and represents the shortest distance for minions to travel to reach the enemy base. Because it is centrally located, the player there has easy access to the surrounding Jungle camps and bosses, as well as having equal availability to help either of the other two lanes; this means that the Mid role is usually played by a ranged burst damage and/or minion clear focused god in order to quickly farm the enemy minions and free themselves up to get extra xp/gold from jungle camps and ganking other lanes. Because of this, the role is most frequently filled by a Mage, though Mid-lane Hunters are still a common alternative, especially if the ADC is a Mage. Because the Mid role is very damage focused, the Mid god will often be given the Red Buff to provide them with better clear potential for quickly killing lane minions and jungle camps.
With the map changes in S3 bumping the “back camps” closer to the center of the map, right behind the buff camps, initial clear often has the Support tank one camp while the Mid tanks another camp and they both “pull” them together as close as possible so that clear abilities from the three players can sometimes manage to overlap both camps and clear them simultaneously. The closer proximity of the “back camps” often means they are much more likely to be stolen by the Mid/Jungler/Support and making deep wards to cover the enemy buff and back camps much more common. Other than that, the Mid lane hasn’t changed too much, besides the buff to Doom Orb and Soul Stone making them much more common stacking and starter items for Mid gods that can make use of them than in S2, and Dynasty Plate Helm is a frequently seen early item on a lot of Mid Laners for the power AND protections it provides. The meta for Mid gods has shifted much more towards big burst gods, with Isis and Scylla joining Janus in the top tiers of Mid Laners (along with Chronos and Sol, who are also flex-picks for ADC as well).
The fifth player takes the Jungler role, who roams the area between the lanes (the Jungle) and clears the camps of neutral monsters in order to take the most advantage of the available gold and xp on the map. The Jungler also will roam into any of the 3 lanes to gank and kill enemy gods, as well as to gain extra xp and gold for themselves while the jungle camps aren’t always available. Because this job usually involves fighting the AI monsters without an enemy god contesting them or rapid sneak attacks on enemy laners, this makes the role ideal for a melee burst damage and/or minion clear focused god, so they can quickly clear the camps or gank an enemy and move on to the next task. The Jungler will often have to team up with their Mid to contest the centrally located Jungle camps as they are most likely to run across enemy gods there, and because the Mid Lane is centrally located and the Jungler and Mid roles are so closely aligned, they will often share the xp and gold from minions waves in Mid Lane. All of this means that the Jungler is most frequently an Assassin, less frequently a Mage or Warrior, and occasionally a Hunter or Guardian.
The Jungler role has probably changed the least in S3 IMO (which may just be showing my ignorance of my least played Conquest role), though the Magical item changes have skyrocketed Ao Kuang to a top tier Jungler since he can take advantage of the boost that burst Mages have seen in S3. The major changes that Junglers have to deal with have already been covered in the Solo and Mid sections (Solo Boars, Fire Elementals, back camps, etc.), so I don’t have much else to say about them. Feel free to ask more questions as hopefully this guide will get more attention.