what's a Carry, or how do you figure out who/how many go left/right/mid for example..?
I was a complete Smite virgin a couple of weeks ago, so I've been doing a lot of research into its terms to get up to speed. Carry was indeed one that tripped me up. It turns out that it's "the one who carries the team to victory", or in game terms, a character/build that is extremely powerful at higher levels. The team's priority becomes to feed the character (letting them get the last hit on enemies, etc.) to get it to reach that level as fast as possible to gain an overwhelming advantage. The carry seems to be a hunter almost always.
From what I've read (I'm nowhere near that level of play myself, not by lightyears), the competitive meta has:
The carry and an assist on the long lane (this is the side lane that has the opposing center towers furthest apart).
Players three and four each on one of the other two lanes (the short lane, and the mid lane).
And the fifth (typically an assassing) jungling and ganking (killing camps and looking for unsuspecting/weakened enemies to kill, including the opposing jungler).
I found this pretty useful, as well as the wiki:
https://smiteacademy.wordpress.com/smite-dictionary/
What determines respawn time?
Sometimes I get respawn end in the arena very quickly, other times it takes so long.
This is another thing that boggled me, until I researched it; it turns out the arena respawns work differently from other modes: if you're the first to die in your team, you get a respawn countdown much like in any other mode, determined by yor level and how far ahead your team is. However, if more teammates die while one is waiting to respawn, they respawn at the same time. This means that if you die and get a 40 sec respawn timer, and another teammate dies 35 secs later, he'll only have to wait 5 secs.
