Smite 9.5 small changes big shifts
Smite like any video is a sandbox that designers set the rules and craft mechanics. Bunch of systems are interlinked one small change can create ripples. Live service games are always changing, require balancing revising past bits of content.
Pre 9.5 smite was in a bad balance state, balance choices around map design, gods and items was wacky. Top 20 gods over last 5 years had been twisting the balance out of shape, last 3 years being the worse. In many ways the game had become power creeped not in a good way. Designers was doing minor changes after knee jerk changes, design choices years in the making was causing serious problems. Last patch was the start of undoing some balance changes made in the past.
After 9.5 we saw mainly changes to map design and balance. Two biggest changes camps and minions became slower to clear. Decreasing the amount of gold / xp on the map with some timer changes. Structures like towers became more deadly, dealing more damage with higher hit points. Everything on the map became more threating early on, don’t really feel it later on. Global health with protection increases for everybody, about 15% on average. Some minor item changes reverting past buffs bringing everything down.
Carry – Minor changes to the game have caused huge benefits for the role. Most gods are safe picks with good clear, mobility and not much in terms of weakness. Slower clear times make more hunters viable, much harder to snowball in duo. Less burst makes everything feel safer, can play more aggressively.
Supp – Aggressive picks have dominated for very long period of time. Less value now in aggressive picks can’t snowball as easy. Slower early game has allowed more choices to appear. Reducing the threat of the supp but still room to act like a traditional god.
Middle – Give with one hand take with another. Mage burst has been reduced with extra health reducing burst due item changes. Second spawn of damage camp is way harder to solo, leading to most mages finding it hard to clear quickly. Slower early game has made snowballing way harder. Role feels weaker given the strength of basic attack in general. Power curve has changed but role purpose remains the same.
Jungle – Extra health has reduced ability burst, increased clear times of camps have created an imbalance. Basic attack just feels better, feels stronger does more against mages can box carry better. Golden blade means clear times can be pushed back up once online.
Solo – Guardians slowly pushed out of the lane, but Artio dominated at higher levels. Most likely some space for guardians to exist. Warriors acting like traditional frontline zone extender, playing setup not really a threat or bully. Hybrid bully role is now much weaker, high risk high reward playstyle. Indirect changes with huge number of items getting reverting back to older numbers.
Clear goal was slowing down the early game, reducing the power curve making it feel less punishing early on. Aim was clearly towards the normal players, comments about it in the patch notes. Focus was squarely on reducing snowball by increasing clear times and map complaints. This approach did have some serious consequences, highlight balance issues that need to be addressed. Normally takes a while to understand but becoming clear just days later.
Smite has three main issues
Gods have too much clear, mobility and high ease of use. Been serious dumbing down when comes to skill ceilings and floors. Can just run at people and it works too well. Just have damage focused archetypes, healers need a support archetype. Flexible picks need some archetype allows them into different roles. Gods have been picked due the snowball or cheese power offer very little else. Right now, we have jack of all trade’s warriors with not much else variety. Early game gods don’t exist, middle or late don’t exist too. Early archetypes should have high base damage but crap scaling. Middle archetypes should have okay base damage with okay scaling. Late archetypes should have awful base damage but high scaling like 500%. Slower general clear times has hurt ability-based playstyles, basic attack focused has suffered much less. Fixing this imbalance make it basic attack gods move towards being middle and late style archetypes. Could even change basic attack scaling for certain gods making them weaker. That would require some reworking of certain pub stomp gods.
Map has couple problems pre patch it was clear times, amount of gold / xp and rotations. Rotations have been core issue due how map layout is designed. Travel time between lanes is 15 seconds, camps are easy to access within the jungle. Before 9.5 designers had smart idea of increasing jungle farm with gold / XP. Result was snowball mess something that happened so many times in the past I lost count. Jungle role needs to make choices between farming or attacking, needs be trade off. Death ball group up around camps needs come with trade off. Should not be able to clear lane, clear jungle camps not miss a single bit of lane gold. Changing how jungle map is played and layout would refresh the game.
Items have too much, with certain trees causing huge balance issues. Once again, we don’t really have early or hybrid items, fine line of balance is off. Universal item trees need be simple stats but should have special archetype trees for certain classes and roles. Too much across too many items leading to power creep and huge issues.
I do think 9.5 heading in the right direction but loads more that needs to be done. Would love to see huge changes to God balance reworking reducing the W key nature of certain kits. Appears the designers want to focus on items and map over core god design. Maybe that the right way of doing it but I’m having more fun compared last couple of patches. I don’t think hunters are over powered just feel the design of each hunter is too strong with little to no weakness.