Smite season 10 first impressions
You can find Smite season 10 patch notes here. A brand-new conquest map, some major itemization changes with God changes. The promise is 4 major meta-shifting updates this year, changing the map and more. Last year we only had some very minor changes that did not really shake the meta much. Same promise has been made before so who knows.
The public test server is live and previews the new season. I have only played one conquest game, matchmaking for PTS is disabled due to the low player count. Judging balance is impossible to do at the moment.
The release date is the 24th of January. Outside of some balance changes or delaying certain things from releasing this is the final patch.
The new god is Surtr, a Norse fire giant. Surtr heavily inspires fire giant design, looping into his gameplay design and feel. Norse warrior takes mechanics and attacks from fire giant. Some of the people behind smite have used him in show matches before. Now normal people without access to dev tools can finally play a version of him. The art team has done all the way to animations are top tier.
Does mean a new character will replace him in the fire giant pit. The layout of the pit is different but the same old attacks as before. Would have liked new attacks or changing how that boss works. Balance change here is increasing the health gain, reducing critical strike damage.
- Fixed an issue where Starter Item upgrades were missing and couldn’t be built in the Console God Builder
Finally, that bug is fixed been around for at least a year.
Conquest changes
With so many changes, won’t be covering all of them.
Overall changes; new map is wider, new camp locations and new camps, leashing changes, longer buff timers and changes to how it works, roaming jungle minions with random spawning and more. Whole map is different, balance changes spread across the whole map. Going to take some time to learn all these changes. Reducing match length respawn time penalty is going go unnoticed but that a big change.
I have walked around the new map and played just one game. Wider map is only half the story, narrow and taller. Much hard to see around corners as a result. Certain objectives once you commit you have to be sure nobody is coming. Entrances to lanes feel a bit narrower with less vision. In many ways the map feels alive and colourful. Looks rather good honestly considering the unreal engine is older. Not noticed any performance issues. Learning this map is going to take time. Side lanes have more things to do. Middle lane I got small fear that clear heavy gods are going to be king. New map is overdue, we see how things play around.
Matchmaking changes
Ranked is now cross play between all platforms which is great in theory.
Ranked Modes aren’t the only ones getting matchmaking changes. Normal Queues will be changing back to the Non-Timed queue system. This has 2 primary advantages. The first is the return of Multi-Queue, where players can queue for many modes all at once. This feature is great for regions or times where populations are lower, and helps make sure everyone can play more SMITE. The other advantage is flexibility. The Timed Queue system is very rigid, when the queue pops it does the best it can and fires off the matches. It actually creates more sub-optimal matches with that style. With the change back to Non-Timed queues we expect to do make some heavy adjustments to our matchmaking systems to continually improve the experience across Year 10.
Not sure how I feel about this. Ranked will continue to use the time queue system which is an interesting choice. Given the reasoning given here I’m bit confused as to why. Surely it would mean sub-optimal matches for ranked? Guess we wait and see what happens.
Different shards not just vision which players never used much at all.
Items
Reduction of the total number of item trees and reordering. Seems to be push towards simplification when comes to balance here. Finally understanding that giving everything just leads to bloat and power creep. Hybrid style items here get a huge rework. Underused stuff is being removed loads on the cutting room floor. Some mechanics do find new homes.
Frostbound hammer becomes less frustrating, weaker slow that easier to counter. No longer can you get pinned down forever.
Healing
Healing Reduction Items (Anti-Heal) are often a necessity in SMITE. The passive effect is powerful and applicable in more situations than most players expect. It has always been a challenge getting people to buy them, sometimes even at the pro level. This year we are giving all of these items new and unique passives to make them more interesting to build, but also balancing that with a variety of nerfs to not push these items over the top.
About time we redesign and rework healing, self-sustain and group. These sorts of sticking plasters have been happening for years at this point. Not sure if global anti heal debuff exists still. Healing in smite is heavily linked to damage and power. Lack of items means many healers can’t play other roles. Instead, they become massive lane bullies whole overwhelm players. One or two just straight up cause havoc.
Something needs to be done about the level of healing, scaling, group heals and sustain in general. This would however mean a massive redesign and rebalance across gods. I don’t have much faith that the designers will come to similar conclusion to me anytime soon.
Couple further item changes which I can’t see doing much. Winged blade new passive is within a tiny radius and not helpful. Compared to spectral armour new passive 55 units about basic attack range vs 30. New passive is rather good.
PASSIVE – You take 40% reduced bonus damage from Physical Critical Strikes. When you are hit by a Critical Strike, you and allies within 55 units take an additional 5% reduced bonus damage from Physical Critical Strikes, stacking up to 4 times and lasting for 8s.
This sounds rather good; I don’t think this going be overpowered.
Cloak tree gets some major shifts. Some more new items which are being added. New idea is being added with abyssal stone.
PASSIVE – Successful ability damage to an enemy god applies a debuff that afflicts them with 20% Negative CDR for 4s. This can only occur once every 6s.
Even if you ignore the passive, you still have a good item. Long list of item shifts which impact most classes. Starter items get some changes, war flag could be good. Hunters get some item shifts and changes. My hot take here is like healing heavier handed rebalance and rethink is needed. Creating early, middle and late game hunters with real weaknesses. You could argue that a flaw most classes have but hunters have a huge power jump at certain points. Decreasing base power by 5 but increasing scaling is questionable.
I don’t understand why class bonuses exist but that a thing now. Seems like a blanket change across the board. Most major change here is base magical protections; certain gods have a higher base number compared to others.
God balance
Ishtar reducing her early game clear, means less pressure good change overall. Achilles gets some help with clearing minion waves; I don’t like this change at all. King Arthur gets minor clear damage increase. Vulcan changes are caused by the fact he no longer crippled in backfire. That pretty much the theme here, fixing past mistakes or addressing issues. Some weird why did you do this change moments in this list, like Fenrir who gets attack speed stim.
Vamana gets a huge shift, no longer can a single relic hard counter him.
- The Healing over time has been removed from this ability
- Added 30% Physical Lifesteal while Vamana is Colossal
- Increased Shield from 1% of Max Health per 0.2s to 2% of Max Health per 0.2
Making use of his passive gives you free power, jungle version becomes much worse. No longer having that heal makes diving much harder. Maybe Vamana gets more play with these changes and returns.
In conclusion
Alright that took me a while to review and look over the patch notes. Overall, I’m pretty happy with the changes and look forward to playing season 10. New map is lovely and should shake up the game. Even after one game in PTS, I had fun even if the game was unbalanced as hell. Blackeye is stupidly good at smite. Season 10 is the season of monsters.