Smite 2 OB25 Patch Breakdown

The last patch of the year is bigger than normal. This is mainly because the update cycle will be four weeks, not two, due to Christmas. We’re getting a new god, three new aspects coming to older gods, plus a bunch of conquest changes and a massive relic overhaul. As for what the January patch is going to look like, no idea. So, here are my thoughts on this bigger patch.

New God and Aspects

Nut (available December 16th) is a magical damage hybrid carry, scaling with both Strength (Basic Attacks) and Intelligence (Abilities). Whatever you build changes how her passive works, which means her role can pivot from carry to mid.

She also gets the Aspect of the Cosmos, which makes her a Support focusing on ally buffs and healing. And we also get a stun with a slow here too, so with everything on offer, that’s pretty good utility.

Also, I just realised I was completely wrong in how magical and physical damage works in Smite 2. One of my bits of feedback was how confusing it was, and here we are. Red = physical on the scoreboard, Blue = magical. You need to check each god to get an idea of what damage type they do, and yes, some INT gods still do physical damage. The UI is still not clear without checking each god outside of that.

Aspect Reworks

Two new aspects are coming to older gods:

1. Geb gets his Reworked Aspect, Aspect of Calamity, officially turning him into a Ranged Carry. He gets slow, piercing ranged basic attacks, damage falloff, and his Shockwave (2) now Crits and triggers on-hits. Against carries with no hard CC immunity, he could be quite good. A self-peel carry with a stim—that’s a pretty good on-paper design.

2. We also get Kukulkan’s Aspect of the Squall, intended to make him a short-range Jungler. I still suspect this will be weaker compared to the power of the Geb carry aspect, but could it be good? Not sure. It seems like you trade safe zoned poke for risky close-range damage. On paper, I feel this is far weaker than his base design and I’m not sure it’s a good idea.

Relic Revamp: Active Items

The next big change is the relics getting a revamp. You can now upgrade your relics to turn them into Active Items. You purchase the new Mote of Chaos and its upgrades to use more than one relic, potentially up to four, BUT it takes up an item slot. Which means relics are in competition with full items that could be here instead.

I can see people grabbing the 1,250 gold Mote of Chaos upgrade for that extra 5% of all stats. That’s just a good deal, really. I don’t think having two fully upgraded relic active items is worth it right now, outside of certain edge cases. It’s not cheap either: 1,250 gold, plus another 2,500 gold per item. There a plenty of trade-offs here that don’t make it an easy choice. Tier 3 relic active items give you an extra +7.5%$ of all stats, so an extra 2.5% on the final upgrade, plus whatever stats they have. Balancing-wise wise you can see they have given them fewer base numbers.

Let’s look at the stats on Shell of Rebuke:

• Passive Stats: 2,500 Gold, 20 Magical Protection, 20 Physical Protection, +7.5% of all Stats from Items.

That’s a decent defence item overall. If you have 200 protections, that 7.5% is an extra 15 protection. So this item gives you 35 protection if you have an equal amount between both physical and magical. That’s not bad, honestly. The problem here is, is it worth it? I would need to do some theory-crafting because you’re giving up an item slot for this. The fact that you get 7.5% of everything—cooldown, health—might make it worth it.

Quick maths here: 2700 health total plus 200 protection

This would be the same as 35/35 210 health defence item, plus whatever else you have. Honestly, it’s not terrible. Anything else on top of that makes it make sense to consider this.

Next up, Sundering Echo:

• Passive Stats: 25 Strength or 45 Intelligence, +7.5% of all Stats from Items.

• On use: Bleed enemies, dealing 25</> (+4 per Level) True Damage 5 times over 4s. Jungle Monsters and Bosses take 50 (+8 per Level) instead.
• Enemies who die while bleeding explode, applying the bleed to nearby enemies.
• 120s CD, -30s CD if only used on Jungle Monsters/Bosses.

Say you have 400 Strength; you get 30 free Strength from the percentage, plus the 25 base, so 55 Strength overall. Not bad considering things.

The damage changing from burst to DOT hurts, so that’s a nerf. But you do get true damage in return. No longer used to secure objectives like jungle bosses, it’s more for camps. So this shifts it from confirming bosses to a more god damage item late game.

The Agility relic is weaker than the rest, but if you use that, it still gives you a benefit. Again, that 7.5% bonus is nice to have. Blink gets the same STR or INT as Sundering Echo and 7.5% bonus.

On Use: Teleport up to 5.6m. Can be used in combat, but not while firing an ability.

1s after Teleport: Deal $150 + (30\% \text{ Strength } \& \text{ Intelligence})$ Magical Damage in a 3.2m radius. If this damages a god, reduce cooldown by $-50$s. (140s CD)

If you get a good engagement with Blink, I can see Junglers wanting to use this relic. Also, Solo Laners, and maybe Supports. But you do trade one item slot for these numbers. Removing the cooldown on a successful hit means you can quickly have another fight off the back of this once your ultimate comes back up. The only problem is the very short range that Blink has, so you can see they have tried so hard to balance it.

Aegis just gives 7.5% bonus with nothing else, making it weaker than the rest at base.

On Use: Become time-locked, unable to move and act. You are Immune (to damage and healing) for 3s.

While Time-Locked, rapidly restore 30s worth of Regen and 10s of Cooldowns. Reactivate to exit early.

If you can cancel that early, I can see that being pretty good. Why? Well, health regen plus cooldown means you get another full rotation of skills to throw out. Given how certain jungle items reduce cooldowns… you get the point. Standing still—that’s going to be the real kicker here.

My friend who finds active items a pain is going to love this. I can’t see a world in which people don’t utilize the defense and mobility by getting both Shell and Blink. This relic change kills the mandatory need for Sunder IF the base version changes, on solo/support, which is a great balance choice. We are likely going to see a Starter rework or revision soon; I believe they have talked about doing that on Titan Talks.

Item Changes

Item-wise, we have one new item and one rework.

The new item is Ragnarok’s Wake (2,600 Gold, 45 Phys Prot, 250 Health).

Active Effect: Buildup for 2s before flying for 2.5s to your target location as a meteor. Enemies near where you land take 600 Magical Damage and are knocked straight up.

Originally, they said they wouldn’t be adding items similar to god abilities, but here is basically Surtr’s Ultimate. This is kind of a hint in my mind that he won’t have the same ult as Smite 1.

Jade Scepter now has a 1-second windup before it knocks enemies away. I’ll be honest, I couldn’t remember what the item did before, and I don’t really build it. It makes sense not being instant, so I’m glad they’ve done it.

Conquest Map Changes

The Conquest map is getting significantly streamlined to reduce downtime and push fights:

• Removed: Side camps and the old side teleporters are gone.

• Base Teleporter Buff: Winning the Moonlight Phase now resets your Base Teleporter CD. This is massive for instant rotations, especially since the base teleport can now move you to the Naga lane pushers.

• Objective Changes: The mid and late game objectives are strictly tied to the Moonlight phases:

  • The Moonlight Queen Naga spawns at 15:00 and grants a team-wide STR/INT buff and a damage consumable.

  • The Enhanced Fire Giant at 33:00 grants a buff that allows you to ignore Tower Backdoor Protections. That’s a definitive end-game push tool, which should make Fire Giant better and easier to end games in low-level lobbies. But then, these games are usually team fight clown shows anyway.

It’s about two patches rolled into one. The update is going to last for four weeks over the usual two. I don’t know what the January patch is going to look like, but this gives you an idea of the direction. Because this is the biggest patch of the year, I have written about it. Anyway, those are my thoughts, and I can’t wait to see how terrible Geb is going to be as a carry.