Smite pro league season 10 rosters

Smite pro league season 10 starts March 2023. 8 teams are taking part.

Team name followed with roles carry, support, mid, jungle, solo and coach.

Camelot Kings: Jarcorr, Genetics, BigManTingz, CaptainTwig, Variety, Biggy

Season 9 championship team

Atlantis Leviathans: Zapman, Ronngyu, Sheento, Adapting, Fineokay, sLainy.

Jade Dragons: Vote, PolarBearMike, Dardez, Lasbra, Nika, Cherryo

Highland Ravens: Barraccuda, Hurriwind, Venenu, Screammmmmm, Haddix, Masked

Styx Ferrymen: CycloneSpin, Aror, Paul, Cyno, Baskin, Realzx

Oni Warriors: Netriod, AwesomeJake408, Pegon, Panitom, SoloOrTroll, Oxiledeon

Eldritch Hounds: VaporishCoast, Quig, BennyQ, Oathh, Duck3y, ElChuckles

Gilded Gladiators: Stuart, Inbowned, Snoopy, Kyrmi, ScaryD, Ksier

Best team? Tossup between Camelot, Atlantis. However, Jade, Highland, Styx could reach 1st seed.

Worse team? Gilded performance during play ins was rather bad. Making a long list of mistakes but did show mental strength to come back against the odds.

Which team do I plan on supporting this year? Hounds who I have decided to call the Mighty ducks. Atlantis and Styx both getting support from me this year.

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.

COLOSSAL FURY

• 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.

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

• God
• Map
• Items

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. 

Smite pro league SWC

Atlantis leviathan homegrown Latin American team, finally won the SWC.  Squad that been together for years before entering the pro league together. Each player showing off they worthy of the top league. Stand out players in my mind are Jarcorrr / Ronngyu who have been masters in control. Coach for this team Oxiledeon notepad warrior.

Team stuck together after an impressive first season in the pro league. At the key moments the team would choke or find the pressure of big games to much.  That only half the story, Zapman never was part of the original line up. We don’t have full story but bad team environment in two teams caused a roster swap mid-season. Zapman ended up on leviathans’ team full of promise. Two different teams, two roster swaps three titles in a row for him. Looks like Zapman made the right choice. Respect has to be given to whole squad for turning things around. No idea how much of an impact Zapman had on this team. Often so much we don’t know about team the environment. Viewers don’t get to see the drafting or planning or practise just brief bits of gameplay. The team was finally able to click and play dominating sets of smite. Not the best players in every role but best team overall. 

As for Zapman thank you for providing us average players with knowledge to get better. Thanks for the funny moments in ranked too.

Tartarus Titans rocky start to the year made me doubt this team. Credit is due they worked past that rough spot was able to pull it together. Team was unable make a take any games off leviathans. CycloneSpin is somebody Zapman has admitted is scary to play against. Rest of the roster is stacked when you look at the records behind each player. 

Every single player in the league has earned that spot. Viewers like to make jokes about players being washed up or should retire. Been fun watching the league this year, any banter or shit talking has been small.

Due the timing of the event was only able to catch bits of it. Pro games are different game, but are things you can learn. Also, the healing meta here to stay annoying I know.

End of Season 8 smite is unfun but playable

Card games have various deck types, aggro, control and mid-range. Most video games have similar playstyles, smite you often see the above. Aggressive starts lead to snowballs which overwhelm teams. Control seeks to slow the game down but counter any threat reducing risk. Mid-range mixes the two styles together, control the early game and aggressive in the mid game.

Most starter items are aggressive or defensive, do offer some control if you want it.  Each one having different upgrade paths. Always a trade off with pros and cons to each one. Consistency is what makes warrior axe so powerful, other starters like it.

Carry – Death toll, leather cowl, bluestone and glided arrow for magical carries.

Support – Benvolence / Sentinel’s gift and war flag (Very risky option)

Mid – Sands of time, conduit gem

Jungle – Bumba, Eye and Manikin.

Solo – Warrior, warding, tainted, more aggressive options include death toll, bluestone, vampiric.

Moving towards the end of season 8 what are each roles building?

Carry role is building critical strike focused burst build.  Supports are building aura items with team buffs and cooldown. Mid is countering burst heavy jungle by using book of the dead. Jungle is building cooldown, focus on burst. Solo cooldown with some burst. Notice small trend here cooldown, allowing full rotation of somebody kit sometimes even 2 or 3 during each fight. Which has created rather weird yet unbalanced but oddly balanced meta sort of fun but not on receiving end meta. Most powerful roles come to the lobby skill, higher levels of player support, jungle and solo are kings. Lower levels of play damage rules the lobby.

Mana shield mid build is symptom, of far bigger problem, within the balance of smite. Core of the problem is way too much damage and kill potential caused by bloated kits and numbers. Current itemization has caused power curves to accelerate. Rotation of abilities now pretty much kills anybody without extra protections. Add into the mix bloating of kits, faster camp clear times due weaker camps and high mobility gods.

At times smite can feel rather unfun, tanks deal damage but die in same time as before. However, glass cannon damage roles get melted. Reason why healing and shield builds are so good they counter burst. Choice needs to be made do want to fix these problems or keep the same in this state. Undoing some of the changes would require dozens of changes. Not just one thing that needs adjusting loads of tiny connecting things. One solution would be increasing health pools but I don’t think that would be wise.

Needs to be major rebalancing of every role and itemization. We gotten here due to over tuning problems caused by the last couple of patches by increasing the dial.

Physical jungles right now at level 2 have the power to kill mid in one rotation of skills. Nothing new in many respects but does not feel fun to play against it. Most jungles can perform that task that is huge balance issue on display. No longer have early or late game but everything is early. Can still have that chance but at the moment feels way to easy to pull off.

I feel like damage needs to be toned down across the board. Damage kill focused supports should be high risk high reward idea. Supports can do damage and building full tank be a threat.  Understand the community prefers damage on tanks because without it hard / impossible to do anything. I would like there to be some trade off which balances it out.

Fixing the current issues won’t be easy, need to understand what causing the problems and what the problem to fix. Don’t think catch all solution like global anti heal reduction works.

End of the day I still play smite, so must find it still fun to enjoy. Community is not happy with current state of the game, honest discussion needs to happen. Season 9 is around the corner we see what changes.