Aphrodite - Beautiful and Violent

Book of Thoth and the Early Game - Give Aphrodite great power and mana to clear her wave. Aphrodite makes for a great Book of Thoth rush thanks to her great sustain that lets her forgo health potions. If you are conservative with your abilities you should be able to comfortably pick up Book on your first back and forgo both health and mana potions from here, giving you extra money to ward or simply get a leg up on your competition. Since Aphrodite prefers to avoid early fights this gives her a great opportunity to focus on stacks and farm. Remember, you play for the late game, if allies are getting pressured out early, there is little you can do to help them. Focus most of your early efforts on maintaining your own lane. Throw Love Birds right over the wall when helping clear speed and rush to lane. Aphrodite doesn't have great early game damage but she can last, so play back and farm while looking for openings provided by your jungle. Level Kiss when you see fit as in can be great self peel or used to interrupt channeled clear abilities from Raijin or Isis. If you think you need it at level 3 or even 2, take it, but it's costly so use it sparingly until you get Book of Thoth online. Conserve mana as much as possible, and hold Love Birds for wave clear unless you or an ally are in dire need of a heal. This way you get the most bang for your buck, healing and clearing at the same time instead of healing straight after a gank and sitting awkwardly without your clear and draining extra mana. Your job in the early game is quite simple in theory. DON'T DIE. Aphrodite's camp clear is soso, you will need to focus all your efforts on the wave in the early as most mids will out clear you and enemy jungles may hover you looking for an easy gank. Stay close to your tower and wait until levels 7, 8, or 9 to start pushing into the jungle for mid camps and red when you aren't working with your own jungler. These are the levels you will really start taking off.

Shoes of Focus and the 10 Minute Mark - You should be able to last straight through lane until it's time to back for your boots. From here you get movement speed and cooldown as well as some more power and mana that will convert into 22.5 more power when Book is done. Your ult is short in duration early, you should be saving this to cleanse CC or block very clear attacks, like Scylla's I'm A Monster or Thanatos' Hovering death. Don't be fickle though. Your Undying Love's cooldown is low, so don't hold it if things look 50/50. With boots comes rotations, and greater ability to escape ganks, allowing you to pressure your opponent more. Come out from under your tower. Look to cooperate with your jungle and support. Aphrodite with her ultimate and Heavenly, has essentially three defensive actives at once which should allow you to escape enemy rotations. And there will be rotations. But you aren't an easy gank anymore. Take trades, Aphrodite wins her lane through shear endurance. If you didn't die, and they took damage too, you are winning. They should have killed you when they had the chance darling.

Chronos' Pendant and the Start of Something Beautiful - So long as you and your team aren't in the weeds, the hard part is over. Chronos' Pendant will give you a nice chunk of power and some helpful MP5, but of course the massive amount of CDR is the real value. The pendant is expensive but the item more than pays for itself with Aphrodite. By now you should already be healing and hitting for a fair amount and with team fights starting to enter full swing CDR will ensure you can heal and ult as needed, get the most value out of your two damaging abilities and kiss change when necessary. With Book, Shoes of Focus, and Chronos' online you should be well prepared to put out large healing and damage.

"It's Britney Bitch" - Spears, you'll need them. Penetration is something you will need to bring to the table to help against tanks. While you can usually expect your ADC or Jungle to do most of the damage to structures and objectives, you, even as a healer, are the next in line when it comes to focusing things down. Remember in a traditional team comp you provide most of you teams magical damage. Two great options are either Spear of the Magus or Spear of Desolation. Magus is great if you have an extra magical damage dealer on you team, or just a third magical in general. Not only will Aphrodite's Love Birds shred protections substantially and allow bigger hits from Back Off on fragile targets it will also weaken tanks. Another option is Spear of Desolation which gives more power and pen up front as well as cooldown. With a very handy passive for Aphrodite this item is more effective than spear when you teammates are killing tanks for you allowing you to simply focus on putting out bigger number heals more often and still hitting squishy gods hard. I think both items are good and if you can't settle on one, consider purchasing both, especially if your team is still overall having issues with tanks after you get one.

A Girl and her Rods - By now the enemy team has gotten anti heal and to combat this you will need Asclepius. Lucky for you the power is nice and the movement speed also can help the already fast when linked Aphrodite avoid attacks. Or outpace enemies when you teammates are running just slightly outside your Kiss range away from you. If the enemy is getting anti heal very fast, or has come in their kit, consider moving this item up as a priority. Rod of Tahuti is another fantastic pick to give a ton of power straight up, which you will find yourself wanting. The passive affects enemies you hit, and your healing onto yourself and your allies, so all damage Aphrodite should pick this item up, if any. By now you are into the late game a good ways and should be finding your grove healing and hurting and generally being very annoying to the enemy team and giving them a hard time.