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.