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.

Gilgamesh first impressions

This release is defined as a low skill floor but a high skill ceiling. The base kit is simple to understand, a couple of mechanics add to the ceiling. The high skill ceiling tricked me, making my first impressions negative. Failed to find success but quickly noticed other players performance. After a couple of games, you start to understand how everything works. The community has found him fun, stats don’t lie with the average player finding success.  Strangely success has been found on every skill level and mode. Hinting that he could be over tuned, more data is needed. Expect any changes will be to every ability, not just one thing. Only warrior in the game without sustain or crowd control immune.

In terms of playstyle dive the other team’s damage, locking them in place. Here comes the problem any sort of mobility starts to counter him. Gods with crowd control immune make diving difficult. Flexible in terms of build path, ability or basic attacked or could go hybrid. Like many warriors, bruiser builds can work on him. Attack speed even some can be a huge benefit. Recommended roles are jungle or solo. I found more success with jungle over solo, wait for frontline to dive first.

At the moment bunch of items worth considering, whatever route you take the kit just works. Feels weird playing a warrior without any sort of healing or immunity.

What makes his skill ceiling so high?

Lack of crowd control immunity, in most fights this causes huge issues. Anything that can cause disruption, cripples or stuns create big issues. Forces you to pick your fights carefully, as players learn how to counter him. I can see some matchups in solo against anybody with sustain or healing hard. Lane bullies exist with high base damage and sustain. Makes him more suited towards jungle over solo. Still think he viable in whatever role but don’t expect much playtime. Ultimate can be used in two ways zone control or lockdown. Nobody wants to be stuck in the giant circle with the risk of being locked down.

Unlike past releases trying to get experience with the gods more. High skill ceiling releases normally end up defining the meta, causing chaos in ranked for months. Better to abuse it over having some sort of morals. He also fits my playstyle is flexible diving but focused on team fights. Before release, he did see some damage reductions.

Smite – Season 8, Ranked meta snapshot

Here my meta snapshot, note this for the average ranked player. Applying majority of the playerbase, anything below diamond. Majority of players find themselves around gold for reference.

Here some brief thoughts on season 8 so far. Starter item upgrades shake up the build paths. Been enjoying the new season outside of the server issues. Ranked is still the same old shit show at times. Full of trolls, DCing players and rough start as always. To be fair I had less people DCing so far than last season.

I found my own games are around 30 minutes. Sometimes you don’t get to finish builds, any starters need to be good enough. Result is racing to level 20 for upgraded starters. Pressure leads to more efficient farming, most players sink when playing from behind. Name of the game is pressure, risk management vs opportunity.  Starter items have good base stats with excellent upgrades, good bases with weaker upgrades.  Weird small group of heavily niche or lacking identify starts too. Huge amount of build diversity created from starter items alone.  Quick overview options for each role.

Solo – Start speed with jungle, go do one or both XP camps before heading to blue. Laning phase starts at level 2.  Want to be careful with death toll or bluestone early ganks can happen. A lot of solo laners are ignoring that jungle can gank. Can abuse that get cheeky early kill after clearing blue. Just need some patience waiting for the other solo to step up. Not too common at the moment.

Bluestone pendant – Base item has good aggressive stats but comes with raw health. Only want to consider corrupted over brooch. Aggressive option of brooch is weaker compared to defensive corrupted. Lowering attack speed is far more helpful over extra damage. Can skip the upgrade path build something else.

Death toll – Designed for hunters, skip the upgrades. Aggressive item for AA warriors. Similar to bluestone making you an easier gank target.

Warrior’s axe – Both upgrades are worth considering. Sundering axe is more aggressive, Hero’s axe is more defensive. Jack of all trades just good enough defensive stats.

Jungle – Pressure is king, want keep track of timer. Don’t always need an kill some poke can open up the map. Even forcing people to back gives you control of the jungle. Invading is weaker this season but still strong.  Rushing boots is an option if you want an early gank heavy start. Start speed go to solo xp camps before heading to blue. Choice is clear can gank the solo early or go to mid xp. Early solo gank opens up an duo gank after you buy boots.

Bumba’s Dagger – Just good base stats, hammer is easier to use and better. Spear however does offer some very niche objective killing potential. Hammer as an upgrade is mix of just great stats with hybrid bruiser items.

Eye of the jungle – Good base stats terrible passive early on, lacks the sustain of dagger. Protector offers the best upgrade, designed for AA junglers.

Manikin scepter – Super aggressive early game choice, flex pick into solo with some gods. Mace has an attack speed slow, hidden blade passive is difficult to control. Build path mace allows is rather good.

Mid – Start red with carry, before heading straight to mid wave. Depending what jungle does farm whatever is around.

Conduit gem – Bonus power makes clearing easier, saves you health and mana. Upgrades archmage’s even more bonus burst. Gem of focus is difficult to use without of certain caster mages.

Sands of time – Mana sustain option that just lacking an identity of mana sustain. Pendulum of ages main draw is mana sustain not that helpful. Alternated timeline not very good within the current scope of things. Not worth considering at the moment.

Vampire shroud – The sustain option for lifesteal focused mages or healers. Problem is blood soaked looks to be an healer item. Sacrificial on the other hand is rather good.  Weird upgrades and build paths for mages in general here.

Support – Start purple pull it, wait for the carry to finish red.

Watchers gift – Gold standard in support items, boon is extra gold you don’t need. Embrace shares protections with your team. Obvious just good upgrade path for most supports.

War flag – An aggressive version of watchers, banner and flag both look useful on physical gods.

Carry – Same start as mid just go to duo after red.

Death toll – PSA do not build this on Izanami, her basic attacks function differently to other hunters. Trade off she has better clear, leather cowl or gilded arrow are better choices. Even eye of the jungler is an option.  Build path is clear sustain base upgrades. Want to craft lifesteal focused builds.

Leather cowl – Bonus attack speed or movement speed rather nice passive. Hunters cowl is an obvious this just very useful and good upgrade. Leaders cowl is just very difficult to control unless you stand near your team. I don’t think the bonus power is worth it.

Gilded arrow – Changes how you play carry, extra gold for last hitting the selected minion. Diamond arrow is going to make snowballing so much stronger. Magical carries likely to favour it the most. Physical carries can still pick it up for an insane power spike. Ornate is just weird, need gold to make use of it. Both arrows are interesting buff upgrades.

Still learning to become an better player. Ranked is not the be all end all. Journey takes ages must be willing to learn from past experiences and think outside the box. At the moment I been climbing using the classic jungle. I do enjoy support with an party. Slowly started to notice that I enjoy shot calling in smite. Part of me would to scrim just finding groups of players. Trying to find console smite players who are EU is difficult. I be honest not done much searching. Not even sure how to find the groups. Now to enjoy some late night ranked. Time to win I hope.

Smite mid season patch review

Time to review the newest smite patch, middle of season patch. Designers have made it clear, some minor adjusts not massive changes. Gentle changes to solve any balance problems, new goal going forward. 

Five recent items, one new tree, four items totals with minor changes to balance. Hard to fault anything wrong with this patch, goals have been reached. Three gods had some big balance changes, Nike, Thor and Isis. Thor gained better clear, extra damage for the ultimate. Isis casting changes and small health shield with the silence. Nike one creative ability, no more sustain or this benefit at the cost of much weaker passive. 

God re-balanced what happened?

Nike used to pick between better clear or sustain or faster jump or longer slow. You could exactly decide on one between the four options. Passive represented the most influential part of the god, but super situational difficult to use. Bonus percent power and movement speed which was global. Values from the passive were not tiny almost worth one item. 

Her main clear ability hits three times unless interrupted, last hit always a disarm. New ability front facing shield which blocks basic attacks, you move slower when casting it. Crowd control was added form of pushback which can be canceled for damage. The shield is frustrating but can be countered, slow movement speed during casting. Jump is faster plus further compared to the old version. Ultimate gains the benefits which were locked away behind an incorrect choice. Redesign of Nike makes her much more useful, decent front line present at last. Team fight is no longer merely walking passive. 

Thor had just two changes, faster casting and extra ultimate damage based on the combo. Faster casting on the clear much shorter cool down makes thor strong early to the middle. After landing the ultimate, each ability fires lighting for short period of time. Chain lighting effect is similar to Zeus. No longer a weaker version of ratatoskr who shares similar kit design. Isis two changes faster casting, death casting on one ability. Health shield was added to one ability. Minor changes which make her safer, harder to dive. Initial pressure at the cost of being immobile, worth the trade. 

New item tree mainly luxury items designed to push new build paths. Trait of this new tree after any ultimate X bonus happens. Health shield based on your protections, no mana cost for one ability and critical chance against anybody hit by basics or abilities. Last item is weaker compared to the others, providing you with ward vision and movement speed. Don’t forget the visible anti heal item which was added. 

Rest of the balance changes are minor compared the above focusing on gold costs. I quite like the changes overall feel it shifts the game towards the promising direction. Still some things I disagree with about the current balance mainly movement speed and clear. Honestly would like clear across the board reduced against high movement speed. Clear lack of weakness which causes big balance problems.

Ranked received some quality of life improvements making the ladder experience way better. Shorter wait times picking and banning, shorter time waiting for games. Experience still toxic pool sometimes, lobby chat is broken muting players don’t mute the chat. Not sure what going to be done about toxic players, something is implied to be planned. Overall I quite like this patch don’t like the balance on movement speed or clear but that it. Back to climbing up the ranked ladder and teaching my friends how to play better. 

Majority of players undervalue movement speed, misunderstanding the strength. More speed means quicker rotations which opens up more farming opportunities. Allows players potential ganking opportunities. Leaps or dashing allows players to avoid incoming damage if timed correctly. Walking faster allows the same thing, able to dodge incoming attacks. Rather frustrating watching somebody dodge everything just from movement. Haste effect which removed basic attack movement speed penalties caused major balance issues. Changes around general movement speed increases the list goes on. Two types of mobility hard or soft, soft mobility is movement speed, hard is anything that quickly moves you. Weird thing most players value both yet don’t fully understand how much it can shape the game.

Mobility with clear is problematic, designers understand this have made changes in the past around this. Increasing general clear or decreasing clear based on how mobile somebody can be. Recent example was golden blade mercury who could one hit camps. High soft movement speed with high hard mobility causes big problems with high clear. Currently smite has very high clear in general, high jungle clear and lane clear. Combine that with high movement speed you don’t have that much risk. Throw in some hard mobility, things start to power creep. I feel like the game has been creeping towards this for some time now. Limited weakness on various gods which just dominate. Strange thing the game has reached weird state of balance around it. I find it rather frustrating to play against high level players who abuse it. Lower level average player is unaware.

Recent changes have reduced the amount of power from Talaria, traveleers shoes or boots. Reducing the power from 20 to 15, should make minor impacts on the middle of the game. Other item players have been abusing is bumba mask. Couple minor price increases for certain movement speed items.

This that enough I don’t know yet…

Been playing Orolrun for last two days, on the face of it the kit is rather simple. Line projectile ability charging it up increase the range, attack speed steroid with stacking element. Heal with knock-up plus protections. Opponents are slowed down, you speed up within a giant square.  

Amount of depth hidden away is quite awe inspiring. Enjoying newest magical attack damage carry or ADC. Last ADC physical hunter released smite 2 years ago. Designers wanted to bridge that gap, magical ADC was designed. One of my biggest complaints for the whole class, similar formula is often used. Leading to each class feeling similar with little to no depth. Often creating cookie cutter formula which is boring. Other games have different attack ranges, various buffs which change everything. I be honest not sure what else they do. Even mage attack damage carries are similar to physical carries. Designers have decided to release new mage ADC. Orolrun freatures new effect which slows down time. Apart from that freatures many older mechanics blended together.

I enjoy playing him which is weird normally hate ADC role. Orolrun requires some serious decision making to play well. Stacking ammo mechanics are nothing new, rama freatures this idea. Linking the idea together with some steroid charge is new. Increasing ability ranges is nothing new, Toth can increase his range. Don’t forget the heal with protection buff with small slow and knock back. Result is Orolrun who forces you to think about every decision. Maybe that a result of the current meta over design. Orolrun makes me think of Skadi, need to think about every decision. Need to be aware how each ability can be used when to use it. How best to control your opponents using the ultimate. Looks simple yet loads of depth across the board. 

Difficult to play in the middle lane due lacking lane pressure. Lack pressure is super important at the moment. Weakness of him immobility mixed with very weak lane clear no crowd control no self peel. Together deadly combo which lets any jungle or mid match up walk over you. Carry role the support can help babysit and patch up any weakness. Still have to be careful but much safer.  Hunters can outbox him until the middle game. Magical carries still don’t win against critical strike hunters. 

Do think some balancing is required mainly fixing the damage bugs which exist. Some minor improvements with some minor changes downwards. Been playing around with various builds focused on attack speed. 

First impressions are good who knows what everybody else thinks.