Category: Smite

Smite

Smite 2 Alpha Thoughts

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Smite 2 Alpha Thoughts

I have been playing Smite 2 since the earliest closed weekend alpha. Alpha software is still in a very early stage, with decisions being made on core gameplay and features that have yet to be added. The foundation of the game exists, but content is sparse; this stage is all about ensuring that the core mechanics can support the rest of the game. Complaints about the game lacking content at this point misunderstand the nature of development. Comparing an 11-year-old game to a brand-new one being built from the ground up is unrealistic.

The developers are currently focused on porting characters over while updating effects and designs. The emphasis has been on quality-of-life improvements and reworking older designs. The current alpha roster seems to be building a library of abilities that can be used as a basis for further character porting. Although this hasn’t been explicitly stated, it appears to be the case. More complex characters, which require additional time and resources, are being skipped for now, with various features either missing or yet to be added.

While the game mechanics generally make sense, I have some concerns with certain balance choices. It seems that balance has taken a backseat to content porting at this stage. Judging certain aspects of the game is difficult when matchmaking is inconsistent. Minor changes have gradually reshaped the gameplay. For example, the removal of the class system has shifted the focus toward INT (Intelligence) and STR (Strength) as more important factors in determining roles. Characters now deal either physical or magical damage: Physical damage scales with STR, while magical damage scales with INT. However, building INT on physical characters does not convert their damage to magical. For example, Sol deals magical damage but can benefit from STR in a carry role.

Some characters are designed to play multiple roles, gaining bonuses like extra utility when building INT. This approach shows promise in creating a flexible set of role archetypes. I hope the developers are bold enough to expand on this concept with early, middle, and late-game design. One possible idea could be that building STR on magical characters increases attack speed for ranged attacks.

In addition to changes in character design, itemization has also been revamped. The game now uses a recipe-component mechanic, allowing players to switch between build paths without being overly punished. If you make a mistake, the system is far more forgiving.

The two biggest changes, however, are how relics work and the introduction of active items. Relics can now only be selected at the beginning of the game and have long cooldowns. As a result, crowd control has become much stronger and more impactful, though there has already been a reduction in crowd control duration across the board. There is also less choice in terms of relics, with older relics moving to active items. These two changes have significantly altered how the game plays.

Additionally, wards now offer less vision and have shorter timers, meaning junglers face fewer counters than before. Combined with some buggy interactions, this creates a rough experience. At this point, I’m unsure about the direction the developers want to take the game.

Currently, the game feels snowball-heavy, with a focus on bursting down opponents and chasing them. The damage feels unavoidable, and there are few options for recovery when you fall behind. The early game has a punishing focus, with no trade-offs for characters that excel in this stage. Perhaps I’m wrong, but the base strength of characters seems off, and I worry that using this as a baseline could lead to future problems.

It’s also hard to describe the art and graphics; something feels off, as if the characters don’t quite fit into the world. The Conquest map remains unchanged, making the layout feel overly familiar. It’s still very easy to move between the jungle and lanes. While various new objects have been added, they don’t significantly change how the game feels.

Overall, Smite 2 feels like a love letter to the original game—more of a remaster than something entirely new. Even ability sounds have been transferred over. It seems like the developers are playing it safe instead of experimenting with bold new ideas. Despite this being a new engine with a new team building the game from the ground up, Smite 2 still feels like it’s treading familiar ground.

I understand that finding the right balance between innovation and preserving what works is tricky, but with no competition on consoles, Smite remains the only MOBA in town.

So, should you try it? Not yet—unless you can stomach an early-access game that could disappear, like so many live-service games over the years.

Smite

Balancing the Triangle: Rethinking Gods’ Strengths and Weaknesses

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Balancing the Triangle: Rethinking Gods’ Strengths and Weaknesses

Game Feedback: Balancing and Design Considerations

  1. Symptoms vs. Root Cause:
    • A symptom serves as a sign of an underlying issue but isn’t the cause itself.
    • In the game context, free beads are a symptom, not the root cause of gameplay dynamics.
    • Players’ safety improvements in Smite 1 stem from design choices, but the fundamental cause lies elsewhere.
  2. Design Triangle: Damage, Mobility, and Ease of Use:
    • Gods’ balance hinges on three factors: damage, mobility, and ease of use.
    • Currently, gods exhibit excessive strength with minimal weaknesses.
    • This imbalance leads to a race toward overpowering abilities and power creep.
  3. Practical Implementation: Example with Zeus:
    • Zeus, lacking mobility, should excel in high damage output.
    • His sole crowd control (CC) would be a short stun.
    • Design flexibility could allow abilities to adapt based on the player’s role.
  4. Trade-offs and Weaker Corners:
    • Gods shouldn’t excel in all three corners of the triangle.
    • As power increases, trade-offs should emerge (e.g., harder-to-use abilities or lower damage).
  5. Super Mobile Gods and Crowd Control:
    • Highly mobile gods should naturally lack immunity to CC or hard lockdown abilities.
  6. Difficulty in Dodging Abilities:
    • The game currently lacks the feel of a fighting game due to reduced skill shots.
    • Setup options are prevalent, making it easier to land abilities.
  7. Power Curve and Kit Weaknesses:
    • The overall power curve needs adjustment.
    • Some kits require more weaknesses and less strength.
Smite

Smite 2 alpha first impressions

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Smite 2 alpha first impressions

Smite 2’s first-weekend alpha has just finished, and it is in a very early state. It feels like an alpha piece of software, unfinished with barebones features. A fresh foundation to build on, with core mechanics being the most important thing to focus on during this alpha period. Once they are finalized, it’s unlikely they will change due to everything else being built on top of it.

Alpha patch notes can be found here.

Gods can now build any item, with Strength (STR) and Intelligence (INT) replacing physical and magical damage. These two different stats have different effects on scaling their abilities and basic attacks. The only negative aspect is that there are more terms that can confuse players—references to physical and magical damage feel odd with STR/INT floating around. I would prefer if Smite stuck to two terms when it comes to damage. Let me give you an example: magical and physical protections. Which items protect me against strength attacks? I can already envision new players and returning players who don’t follow the patch notes asking that very question for years to come. Having more knowledge to learn means a higher barrier to entry. I’m sure the designers are aware of the KISS principle (Keep it simple, stupid). On a positive note, I appreciate how each type of damage now has a symbol showing its type. Reducing the knowledge required with lifesteal and penetration, thumbs up here—this is a good change overall. Movement changes are also overdue. Displacement CC changes reduce the number of terms in the game, and that is a good thing.

Front End UI:

  • The current UI feels functional and temporary, as confirmed by the patch notes. However, on consoles, it appears rather clunky to navigate and use.
  • The shop experience on consoles is frustrating. Here’s a simple solution: add a virtual cursor that can be controlled by the joysticks. Warframe uses a similar system, and it’s cross-platform.

Gameplay Changes:

  1. Tower Bounties and Health Bars:
    • These small changes could be positive, but there’s concern that most players won’t notice them.
  2. Minions:
    • While a small change, most players will likely notice the adjustments to minotaurs.
  3. Infamy System:
    • The shake-up in how jungle camps work introduces some problems. First, there’s no progress bar. Second, it’s not obvious what’s happening. For average players who don’t read patch notes, there should be clear indicators of changes.
    • On a positive note, the buff descriptions before pickup are a huge improvement.
  4. Interactive Map Objectives:
    • Some objectives (like Warhorn) lack clear explanations. Players need to know what they’re doing and what the objectives do.
    • The change to jungle buff pickup is good.
  5. Stealth Areas:
    • I’m glad stealth areas made it into the game. They add an element of strategy, using the map as a tool.
  6. Gold Fury and Ancient:
    • It’s unclear if the UI shows the bonus given after killing the Gold Fury. Ancient provides another strategy for breaking into a base. Objective control becomes more important.
  7. No More Classes:
    • Removing classes is a positive change, but playstyle tags should be visible during god selection. A sorting system would prevent the overwhelming feeling from the large roster.
  8. God Ability Text:
    • Short and long versions of ability descriptions are perfect. However, accessing them on a controller feels a bit clunky.
  9. Full God Kits:
    • With limited playtime, I appreciate what you’re trying to achieve with full god kits. My concern is ability bloat—adding too much while reducing weaknesses and giving gods too much versatility.
    • Various changes have noticeable gameplay impacts.
  10. Item Changes:
    • The component-based system is a step in the right direction. However, there’s worry about how actives and passives work on controllers.
    • The crafting recipe system isn’t very clear in the current UI. It’s essential to ensure players understand it.
    • The flexibility to choose starters without being forced into a specific option is a positive change.
  11. Wards and purification Beads: Turning these two into free resources I hope will see increased use of wards and make beads easier to balance. My only worry about wards is not being able to replace them, being able to buy new one for gold that resets the cooldown would be good.

Item Slots:

  • Inventory management now allows you to change slots around, which is a welcome improvement.

Consumables, Actives, and Passive Items:

  • Consumables taking up slots makes sense—early game, they’re crucial, but they become less useful late game.
  • However, the controller scheme feels a bit clunky when using these new items. Improving it is challenging due to the limits on button combinations.

Core Combat:

  • At times, hitting basic attacks felt a little off. I’m unsure if this discrepancy was due to the model style in contrast to the conquest art.

Conquest Map Design:

  • I would prefer the jungle to feel more like a maze. Creating difficulty in ganking lanes and deciding to give up farm for a gank feel impactful.
  • Currently, more cartoony style, but I was hoping for something different. Don’t mind this new direction being colourful. While I love the overall look of the game, it doesn’t quite fit the art style of the gods.
Smite

Smite 2 oh finally

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Smite 2 oh finally

Smite was originally released in 2014 for Windows, 2015 Xbox 360, 2016 PS4 and Nintendo Switch in 2019.  Using heavily modified and now outdated Unreal Engine 3 2004. Not just that but it uses software like Adobe Flash Player that is no longer supported and has reached its end of life. Unreal Engine 4 was released in 2014, and Smite is one last and longest-running games using that engine. Upgrading from 3 to 4 would be a challenge but upgrading two generations is impossible. Newer graduates and game developers have never experienced Unreal Engine 3. Therefore makes sense that Smite 2 would be coming sooner. During smite lifetime we have seen various failed spinoffs using smite assets.  Teams behind these games have been using Unreal Engine 4.

Sometime last year I asked one of the community managers about a PS5 client. I can’t remember the exact answer but in my mind, smite 2 was being worked on. Therefore 2 weeks ago I was not surprised to find out Smite 2 is coming in 2024. Combined with slow down in god releases and hints.

Long awaited squeal is being released in different gaming landscapes. The multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) genre no longer dominates the market. League of Legends Wild Rift, the console version was announced 2 years ago and no news. Apart from that MOBA space has been well empty, here are the wiki releases. Smite is the only game in town on console and few new games coming out.

The team plans to port the existing roster to a new game, including reworking and rebalancing based on new game mechanics. 50 promised on release with 5 new gods, release schedule 2 per week during the alpha, 1 bi-weekly during the beta. That means similar levels of content by 2026/2027. No details on the new designs just old assets coming to the new game. Rebuilding everything for the modern gaming landscape. The camera is changing just a bit and different styles of graphics. First impressions are positive so far, including from former pro players and community members who got to play it.

Older platforms are likely to see no new game but servers for Smite will be supported for a while. With over 1,600 skins porting everything over would be a massive cost. The solution is legacy gems rewarding you for money spent on the game.  I don’t care about skins.

Bugs with crashes have been increasing so a new game was badly required.

Looking forward to playing the new game but…..splitting the playerbase is a huge worry for me. Good news console player base lacks a MOBA and PC market would be open to a new one.

Smite, Video Games

Smite common mistakes people make

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Smite Common mistakes people make

  1. Three pillars of smite, mechanics, knowledge and decisions
  2. Lack of present – Being near a lane changes decisions that players make, kills are a bonus. not the end goal. Sometimes all you need to do is turn up and that’s it.
  3. Vision is important – Wards help you inform your decisions and allow you to play safer or understand what happening. Ward anything you view as important. Jungle ward under your feet before late-game team fights
  4. Side lanes matter – Solo and carry are important, presence is required in both lanes don’t ignore one.
  5. Focus on one side lane
  6. Miss and commit anyway – Not hitting a target is fine leave a fight don’t have to commit if your missing.
  7. No plan –  While playing most players don’t have a plan for what to do next. Result they become reactive over proactive. Look at the map and plan what needs doing next, fight afterwards.
  8. The other team is off-meta and not present – Even pro players don’t know the match ups do you expect the average player to know? Just turn up and help people out.
  9. Behind in gold – Just farm, jungle need to help secure buffs
  10. Being focused is fine and dying early is fine – Don’t worry about dying, do your job later
  11. Understanding your god role and point
  12. Counter-ganking matters – Don’t babysit but keep the other team in check.
  13. Builds and scoreboard – Failure to check the scoreboard to find out what people are building and who is ahead or behind.
  14. Supports left and right hand – You must protect your carry and mid-laners. They are your left and right hand.
  15. Solo and supports running at people – Need to be flexible, aggressive and defensive with your team.
  16. Glass cannons running at people – Jungle players stop attacking head-on during team fights, hit from the side and wait for fights to start. Bruiser hybrid tank builds IF this is your style.
  17. Not understanding win conditions
  18. No surrender – 20k down at 15 mins just surrender
  19. Not understanding what is reportable
  20. Insulting players won’t make them play better
Smite, Video Games

First impressions of Charon – Smite

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First Impressions of Charon – Smite

Charon is a guardian, closer look blog post and patch notes 10.7.

A couple of bugged item interactions which I’m expecting to be patched soon enough. Effects are reapplying when they should only happen once. Certain items are stupidly powerful and increase his damage output way higher than it should be.

Passive provides you with extra health and gold gain. Some soft crowd control with slow combined with silence. Marking opponents with attack speed reduction creates a shield if people hit the mark. Dash that roots and gives movement speed. Ultimate is a tidal wave, fears providing movement speed and protection.

Well, a rounded kit that is aggressive with some peel against diving characters. The combo is ult follow by a dash into a fight, throwing mark down followed by a soul throw. Appears to be designed with solo and support in mind, leaning more towards the support side of things. However, until the bugs are removed it is hard to judge his damage output. Seems to be on the weaker side for damage without the bugs. Overall I like him and got a positive impression of him. Only two games played but I did learn a decent amount from both games.

Using two into 1 seems like the best starting combo. Unless you want to fully commit to a fight. Therefore using 4 with 3 to get into position before 2 and 1.

Quality of life improvements ultimate, after you cast it needs to be shown on the map.

Feedback, Smite

Smite 10.4 balance problem and feedback

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Smite 10.4 balance problem and feedback

I disagree with the current balance and design philosophy of Smite. I’m frustrated with the current state of the game and the reasoning behind balance changes. The MOBA genre has three core pillars: mechanics, decisions, and game knowledge. With over 100 playable gods, professional players don’t practise every interaction. Decisions based on the game state matter, such as when to go for the gold fury. Mechanics include using abilities and moving around the map.

Currently, damage, mobility, and ease of use are at the heart of current balance woes. They are born from the design philosophy being followed.

Damage is just too easy to apply instantly, making it harder to dodge incoming bursts. On top of this, clear has been power crept across the board.

What’s more, in my mind, there are way more hard and soft mobility options. Deities that lack mobility have been given soft options or newer designs with it in mind. This has caused an imbalance with certain more traditional gods’ weaknesses gradually being removed. 1/3 of gods should have hard mobility skills, 1/3 should have soft mobility mainly and the remaining should have none. Rock paper scissors approach I admit may not work for a game with so many moving parts.

It’s much harder to dodge abilities now, making it feel less like a fighting game. There are far fewer skill shots and way more setup options built into kits that require less effort to land. That’s just how I feel currently about the game.

Combined together, these have indirectly created a burst-heavy meta – a race to the bottom in terms of skill and power creep with bloat. Small balance changes that don’t undo or properly address underlying constant creep are not just affecting gods but specific items.

Currently, items are over-tuned and typically lead to power creep. You can gain certain caps without much conscious effort. Leading to item trees filled with numbers and increasing game knowledge. Pretty much every item right now has at least 3 stats or more. A severe problem at the moment is the power curve for everything is out of wack and needs toning back.

Purposed item trees

Aggressive

Attack speed

Power / Mana

Penetration

Movement speed

Defensive 

Cooldown / Mana

Health / HP5

Protections

Crowd control

Utility

Life steal

Anti heal

Healing boost

Passives

Room to expand and add more if you wanted to expand certain playstyles. Possibly help the PC-centric UI work better on the console.

The design philosophy for standard kits should be moved back to basics. Early, middle and late archetypes should serve as the basis for balance. Gods should traditionally have a series of strengths and weaknesses. Soft counters by specific items have really been a clear priority over hard counters. Therefore should be considered and crafting soft weaknesses. A super mobile god, for example, should naturally lack immunity to crowd control, gently forcing the talented player to pick their successful fights wisely and carefully. You could indeed make it because they have lower health pools.

Early gods have high base damage, excellent clear, likely poor scaling 5% and lower than average health late.

Middle gods have mid-base damage, good clear, good scaling 50% and middle health value.

Late gods have awful clear, poor base damage, high scaling 200% or more and higher than average health late.

A balance idea could properly adjust basic attack damage based on these archetypes. Chronos, for an excellent example, gets higher basic attack scaling but lower base numbers. Opposite end Neith starts off stronger and falls off much harder.  This would have added the benefit of naturally tweaking critical strikes.  Pressure gets balanced with less late-game damage.

Ah Muzen Cab and Izanami both could be classed as early. Loads of levers you can pull within my vague archetypes. Don’t have to follow an inflexible path just use it as a guide.

I clearly have a different vision and idea of what the game should look like compared to the designers.

Smite

Smite pro league season 10 rosters

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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.

Journal, Smite

Smite pro league rosters season 10

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Smite pro league rosters season 10

Ranking the rosters

  1. Kings
  2. Jade
  3. Oni
  4. Styx
  5. Leviathans
  6. Ravens

Really difficult to rank the rosters, we don’t know so much and won’t know how the team environment looks. What is clear all teams seem to value thinking about the game. Two more rosters are left and need to win play ins before they can join the league.

Camelot kings

The world championship roster stays together, last season approached the map in a focused farm manner. How the roster approaches the next season is worth keeping an eye on. Helped define how the play the map and played it better than anybody else. Not the best players in the world but they certainly are some of the best minds in the game. CaptainTwig and Genetics are both thinkers. Genetics is a mechanical monster. Two main sources of damage are mechanical machines, Jarcorr and BigManTingz. Variety rounds out the team, in the past, helped defined the meta.

Coach biggy helps keep the show on the road

Atlantis Leviathans

After the success of Kings Zapman needed some brains. Picking Adapting and Fineokay, certainly adds some brains to the team. A big question mark is over how flexible Adapting can be. Fineokay is one of the bigger brains in solo, a strong player at every stage. Slainy is more brain!

A trio of Zapman, Ronngyu, and Sheento are strong together anyway.

How Adapting plays with Ronngyu and Sheento will make or break this team. Fineokay is going to be key to success for him. Normally he creates space for the team. In the past, he has complained about being locked into certain picks. Flexibility in drafting along with picks and bans helped create success for the Kings. Selection of players who think about the game and consider how it fits together. Leadership here from everybody, they like to talk in the game too.

Jade dragons

Oni warriors were reborn with two new players. PBM and Lasbra give this team much-needed brains with leadership. PBM likes to play the game fast and loose, an aggressive player who likes to fight. The question is how much he shapes the direction. Active support player who plays off other players. Can he fit into this team? During his interview, he stated this year going to be a different style of play.

Lasbra is well at times night and day, depending on who is on his team.

Vote, Darez are talented players. Nika at times has shown his skill but follows the pack. He can be a thinker at times.

Unsure if the core of this team is the problem but it lacked leadership now it has it.

Styx Ferrymen

Thinkers with mechanical skilled monsters, this team is a collection of talent. Therefore this group is rather nasty, shaping the meta and pushing it.

Cyno does weird stuff and constantly pushes what is viable. Aror with Cyclonespin is both great minds together. Paul is just the mid version of Adapting, a mechanical god that is one step ahead. Baskin and Cyclonespin are both considered two of the best smite players in the world. New coach Realz provides a social edge to this already game-knowledge-heavy team. I don’t expect this roster to pop off early but get better.

Highland ravens

Barra ranked league of extraordinary gentlemen. Just Barra and Ven remain together with a new supp, solo and mid required. Hurri is the support, bringing a brain, shot calling and draft knowledge. Not the best support often has found it difficult to make an impact. Scream is a hot or cold jungle that gets added. Hard to say if that is a downgrade or not here. Mask is the new solo for this team. Lack of leadership shot calling and draft knowledge hurt this team in the past. High hopes that this team has what the bolts lacked.

Oni Warriors 

On paper, this roster is full of creativity and flexibility, unconventional with huge amounts of unpredictability. Something dangerous about a roster like this, they know each other and know the game. The question is who leads this roster and in what direction they go.  Jake plays bruiser-style support but is unconventional. Throw in Pegon and SOT, and see the game in creative new ways. Panitom follows the curve of the meta, and Netrioid is similar. This team is young and full of talent.

Jake plays similarly to the joker full of chaos and creating huge problems.

Smite

Smite season 10 first impressions

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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.