I feel like whoever made this decision has never actually played the game

Freya, Set, Vamana, Hera, Manti, Erlang this devs are coming for you

u/karulox I'm sorry your art was stolen :[

going through some relics of the past and I stumbled across this

It has a budget of a half a billion dollar scored by hans zimmer

Had this little idea awhile back, and I may have brought it up a small handful of times.

I've genuinely never seen it mentioned or suggested anywhere else!

Found one comment at the bottom of a thread with 1 upvote. Can't say it gained much traction 😄

Watched the titan talk and did the DiCaprio meme at the screen. Our ideas tossed into the aether do achieve something, right?

Joking, of course. There's no way they would have actually seen such a negligible comment. Either way, we're happy surely! Great-minds-think-alike.

I look back at my Cu Chulainn race with horror. Grinding classic Conquest for days. Trying to be the first one to pick the god. Feeling like you're basically wasting your time playing someone else because you weren't fast enough to lock him in. And even if you did manage to pick him and popped a booster, there was a high chance your team would just surrender or someone would disconnect. And it went on like this over and over again, basically non-stop. These races are the devil's invention.

I still don't really have any desire to play him to this day. Even though I was really hyped for his release, and if it wasn't for the race, I'd probably still enjoy playing him right now. I hope they scrap these races by the time Persephone comes out

NOTE: No accompanying picture today as there are no pictures that display Èpè. The only one I could find is AI generated and obviously we do not like AI generated pictures.

Yoruba Pantheon

Ranged, deals Magical Damage, Hexer Support, Intelligence Scaling

Debuffs | Lockdown

Passive: Cursed Aura

Èpè releases powerful curses from itself. Every 3 seconds, Èpè launches an Aura around itself that applies a curse. Curses reduce the Protections of enemies by 10%. The duration of curses refreshes with each appliance. Enemy gods can receive up to 3 Stacks. Enemy Minions and Jungle Monsters can only receive a maximum of 1 Stack.

• Protection Reduction per Stack: 8%
• Max Stacks (Gods): 3
• Max Stacks (Minions): 1
• Reduction Duration: 5 seconds
• Range: 5.6 meters
• Aura Cooldown: 3 seconds

ao1: Insulting Power

Èpè hurls insults at enemies in a long cone. Enemies in the cone take damage, have all shields on them removed and have a percentage of their Mana stolen.

- Damage: 50/85/120/155/190 (+30% of your Intelligence)

- Mana Stolen: 6/7/8/9/10% of their Max Mana (+5% of your Intelligence as a flat amount)

- Stolen Duration: 10 seconds

- Range: 8.8 meters

- Cone Angle: 50°

- Cooldown: 16/15/14/13/12 seconds

- Mana: 90

ao2: Enhanced Malevolence

Èpè empowers its next Curse dramatically. It consumes all Stacks of Cursed Aura currently on enemies, removing all Stacks from them. The next time Cursed Aura activates, its range is extended and it deals Damage based on the total amount of Curses consumed. Additionally, enemies that are hit by the Enhanced Cursed Aura are Crippled for a Duration.

- Damage: 15/25/35/45/55 per Stack of Cursed Aura consumed

- Extended Curse Range: 8.8 meters

- Cripple Duration: 1 second (+0.3 seconds per 75 Intelligence)

- Cooldown: 14

- Mana: 50/55/60/65/70

ao3: The Might of Curses

Èpè calls upon the Might of its power. Launch a vortexing projectile from its location to a target location of your Choice. Enemies within the Area of the Vortex take Damage every 1 second and are continuously vortexed to the Center of the Projectile.

- Damage: 30/35/40/45/50 every 1 second

- Duration: 4/5/6/7/8 seconds

- Vortex Strength: 100% (+5% of your Intelligence)

- Maximum Vortex Strength: 140% (i.e. 800 Intelligence)

- Radius: 3.2 meters

- Range: 8.8 meters

- Cooldown: 15 seconnds

- Mana: 60

Ultimate: Cursed Needles of abhorrent Pain

Èpè self-banishes itself and curses out insults that physically sting like needles. While Èpè is self-banished, it may send out three needles that stick to the ground and cripple enemy gods hit. Enemies may not leave the radius of the needles and cannot receive healing while tethered. After firing the needles Èpè descends to the ground at her current location. Once it is back on the ground, Èpè can reactivate this ability to recall the needles to itself, dealing damage to enemies on the way back. Needles can be destroyed with Basic Attacks, immediately ending the tether. Destroyed Needles cannot be recalled

- Damage: 100/145/190/235/280 (+40% of your Intelligence) per Needle

- Self-Banish Duration: 4 seconds

- Needle Duration: 5/6/7/8/9 seconds

- Needle Health Pips: 4

- Antiheal:100%

- Radius: 2.4 meters

- Range: 8.8 meters

- Cooldown: 100 seconds

- Mana: 95

So with all the Nox discussion going on, I’m surprised no one has mentioned that in her card art it’s two veils but in game it’s still two spaghetti strips???

Hey, for non-conquest modes, what kind of outside the box builds or aspects are fun to try out? I really enjoy playing gods outside of their intended role. Such as a dmg-dealing tank/support or support/tank assasin. Ive tried some like auto attack geb in arena but felt that i didnt do shit.

What are your favorite off brand picks for this? Want some inspiration for fun gods with interesting builds to try :)

So obviously there's been a big discussion recently regarding what's happening with Nox. I actually don't disagree with Hi-Rez that things that are obviously broken and unfun should be looked at, I just don't think Nox is anywhere near as broken as everyone claims she is, and her performance in Smite 1 backs that up. The main argument against Nox being that you either needs to Beads or walk out of Nox's silence AoE in order to avoid being combo'd. The counter argument being, well there's tons of gods that can combo their opponents into oblivion so why is Nox somehow the straw that broke the camels back?

When it comes to things that feel unfun or unfair I have my own argument. When an opponent goes all in on you, is it feasible to react, respond and retreat/fight back? And where I come down to is abilities that are instant vs abilities that have a delay. Nox, for all her haters, is the very definition of a god where you do genuinely have a chance to react and defend yourself. If opponent Nox is within range you know that AoE is gonna drop at your feet at some point, when it eventually does it becomes a test of how skilfully you can dodge or react, and how skilled the Nox player is at anticipating that. There is inherent counterplay built into that interaction because of the delay in Nox's 2 going off.

Now, let's look at abilities that are instant. Classic one? Hercules' combo. Same situation, Hercules is within range so you know it's coming, you just don't know quite when. The key difference is that if you're in the wrong position and his combo lands, it's instant. There's no reacting to it, there's no feasible way to avoid what's coming, unless you're playing as the one (!) god who can fly out of it. You get hit, you get launched towards Hercules and unless they fat thumb their combo you're getting pushed back. Then (ideally) he drops his boulder on you. You're either dead, or you try to limp away and then it becomes a case of do you have the mobility to escape or is there a team member nearby to help you out.

The one get out of jail free card is Beads (or an item with that effect). If you get caught in his combo Beads can save you. Just like Nox. However, if you don't have Beads or it's down? GG. That's where Nox differs. With Nox you have a chance to avoid heavy damage without Beads.

Sobek is similar though not as punishing in my experience. Pluck is, depending on distance, either instant and not feasible to react to or fast enough that you're not gonna be able to dodge it on reaction. Maybe if Sobek is at max range and you're already moving the right direction to avoid it? Sure. But not as likely, similar displacement leads to similar follow up combos.

When Tyr makes it into the game you can add him to the list although at least he can't do his combo from range so less awful. Watch out for those Tyr's with blink though, they're a menace.

Then we have the ult duo of Thor and Thanatos. Now, OK, they are ult abilities so the pressure isn't the same, but I'm sure all regular players have, at some point, been at near enough full health only for Thor/Thanatos to land on you seemingly out of nowhere and full combo you to death. Neither of those combos can be reacted to unless you have the reactions of a cat and zero latency, there's no counterplay, if the opponent knows what they're doing your one chance is to Beads and try to avoid some of the follow up damage, often even that isn't enough and then you burned your Beads for nothing.

The list goes on. There are lots of abilities that lots of gods have in this game, not to mention the existence of Blink, that leads to the kind of scenario where you're kitting kit dumped on with little to no chance of being able to feasibly react to it. To me, that's far less fun to deal with that abilities that can be reacted to Nox style and I would argue is more frustrating. What's worse, something you can defend yourself against or something you can't? I think the reasonable answer for most people is the latter. If you've ever been just fully deleted and you're sat there stumped, trying to figure out how it is you died so fast out of the blue, that's the worst feeling in Smite in my opinion.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be instant abilities in Smite 2, I would however argue that instant abilities shouldn't also displace the player. In a game where positioning is everything and the devs themselves have said movement speed is the best stat, I personally think it's too powerful.

We'll see what Hi-Rez decides to do with Nox and the other gods they deem problematic, and no game can be 100% perfectly balanced, but what I would hope for is that the game continues to lean more into the direction of putting the player in situations that can be reacted to, and less cases where there is no counterplay, the real "feel bad" moments.

Weekly Roundup

• October 12th Titan Talk - YouTube VOD
• Open Beta 46 Patch Preview
• October 14th Titan Talk - YouTube VOD
• Nox Port Update
• October 16th Titan Talk - YouTube VOD

October 12th Titan Talk - Solo Q&A w/ killgoon

Monday’s Titan Talk was a solo session of Q&A with killgoon with the other shows this week more focused on covering OB46.

Q&A Section

• Assault Queues Outside of NA/EU - They initially made the change to combine game mode queues for lower population regions due to issues with queues not firing at all in those areas, but they can check and re-assess if this would still be an issue now.
• Classic Voice Packs on Recolor Skins - Is something they’d favor and possible given that they’ve tried to preserve older voice packs through skins like Sacred Dragon Kukulkan.
• Bringing Back Soul Eater - Would be a little redundant since ability lifesteal is already baked into lifesteal in S2.
• S2 on Switch 2 - At the moment, porting to S2 would involve moving to a 1-a-month update cycle that they really don’t want to adopt for a live service in active development and would maybe be okay with doing it once the game’s more feature complete.
• Map Updates & Ranked Joust - They are working on Conquest map changes in the background and don’t have anything to share just yet, but they’re aware that Conquest and Assault are in need of drastic map overhauls. As for Ranked Joust, it’s harder to justify implementing it for S2 since it is likely to split the already smaller Joust playerbase for a queue that was historically much less popular during S1. Having bans for Joust and some form of ranked progression are things they’re aware of but are mostly from a vocal minority and they’re unsure that forcing the ranked rule set on unwanting Joust players is the right direction.
• Rod of Tahuti Changes - Earlier in the year the proposal to shift the INT increase from Tahuti to other items was being considered but this has become less necessary with the current balance state. From a meta standpoint, they don’t think that going through with this change would actually promote build diversity since having Tahuti as a power spike in a build is just the optimized meta build path and it would just be changed to a different item with smaller power spikes.
• More Pathfinding on Items - Is something they’ve considered though movement speed in general is one of the most powerful stats in the game so they’d err on the side of caution.
• More Map Mechanics Like Moonlight Phase - The difficulty with adding additional map mechanics is balancing uniqueness while retaining the core MOBA gameplay that SMITE is known for, where adding too many map-specific objectives is a little more geared towards HOTS and the like. They’ve discussed things like weather and different Gods appearing in the sky for gameplay purposes, but ultimately they don’t want to overcomplicate the game the way LoL did 2 years ago with map mechanics that they’ve since walked back on to their playerbase’s content.
• Races to Exalted - Hades’ is set to be the last one before they take a break for a while. They’ll be going back to the drawing board looking for ways to improve them since very few people have been participating in them and they’re unsure if it’s due to the races not being promoted enough or the lack of an in-game leaderboard for people to be aware of them. Changing the race start date to the weekends is a little tricky since people would want radiant races to start with the patch day and having the races overlap probably isn’t good either.
• T5 Skin Community Votes - Historically, when they’d turn the losing option from a T5 skin vote into its own skin later on, that skin wouldn't end up selling well compared to skins not part of a community vote, and ultimately they lean towards monetizing the game with skins people will actually buy.

October 14th Titan Talk - Open Beta 46 Patch Preview w/ Hinduman, killgoon, & Caps

Wednesday’s Titan Talk started a little late and spent a good amount of time for Q&A to compensate.

Q&A Section

• Prominence of Lash & Devo’s - Though Sanguine Lash hadn’t been touched in a while, the buff to Devourer’s Gauntlet and a lack of other viable lifesteal items has helped Lash rise in build rate and the bug with Totem giving bonus stacks for Devourer’s Gauntlet has contributed to these being more prominent in Solo. Their intentions are to nerf both items since usually if they only nerf one, the other will still linger in meta relevancy due to players’ pre-conceived notions of its strength.
• Chest-Exclusive Skins - For the Discordia skin, it’ll be available through a chest for players that prefer obtaining skins from them but it’s also cheaper to get it from the event’s discounted bundle. Additionally, the skin is a classic skin so it’ll later be available for direct purchase or in the classic skin chest for just legacy gems.
• Starter Item Overhaul - As shared previously, they would like to do a pass on starters as a whole but probably aren’t just going to bring back the missing ones from S1 since the starters in S2 have changed to be non-role-locked and adaptive. The designers are largely in agreement with the community in that a lot of starter options share the same use as others and have had multiple discussions internally on how to best handle this, and are leaning towards starters being keystones of build playstyles.

October 16th Titan Talk - Open Beta 46 Balance + Nox Q&A w/ Hinduman, killgoon, Caps, & Quigley

Closing out this week was a Titan Talk going over the usual balance notes heading to the game next week as well as Q&A with Quigley, the God lead for Nox’s port.

God Balance

• Kuzenbo (Post-PTS Parity Change)
  • Sumo Slam (3)
    • Gods being pushed will no longer be able to Basic ATK, matching S1 parity
• Cupid (Buff)
  • Aspect of Love
  • Heart Bomb (1)
    • Fixed Talent heal not applying on initial projectile hit
• Chiron (Buff)
  • Aspect of the Heroic Tutor
  • Masterful Shot (2)
    • Damage no longer scales with Strength
    • Chiron now gains stacks when allies hit his Target Mark
    • Masterful Shot deals bonus damage per stack equal to 3/6/9/12/15
• Guan Yu (Buff)
  • Battle Fervor (P)
    • Now correctly grants stacks when taking damage
• Hachiman (Buff)
  • Iaijutsu (3)
    • Cooldown reduced from 16s to 15s
  • Aspect of the Steel Wind
    • Aspect base health and scaling increased by 4%
  • Iaijutsu (3)
    • Damage scaling increased from 50% to 60%
• Hel (Buff)
  • Switch Stances (4)
    • Hel no longer gains stacking Intelligence and Protections while instead now gains flat Intelligence and Protections as in Aspect
  • Decay (Dark 1)
    • Damage Scaling increased from 60% to 85%
  • Repulse (Dark 3)
    • Damage Scaling increased from 85% to 110%
  • Inspire (Light 3)
    • Ally Heal Scaling changed from 1 per level to 10% Intelligence
• Hou Yi (Nerf)
  • Suntouched (P)
    • Cooldown Reduction reduced from 2s to 1s
  • Mark of the Golden Crow (2)
    • Bonus damage reduced from 0/2/3/4/5/6% for every 10% missing health to 0/2/2.5/3/3.5/4%
• Merlin (Buff)
  • Elemental Mastery (4)
    • Damage increased from 0/80/110/140/170/210 to 0/90/120/150/180/220
    • Damage Scaling increased from 15% to 25%
• Thor (Nerf)
  • Aspect of Thunderstruck
  • Mjolnir's Attunement (1)
    • Damage reduced from 50/95/140/185/230 to 40/80/120/160/200
• Xing Tian (Buff)
  • Whirlwind of Rage and Steel (4)
    • Can now grab minions with his ultimate

Item Balance

• Alchemist Coat (Buff)
  • Potion cooldown reduced from 60s to 45s
• Devourer's Gauntlet (Nerf)
  • Penetration reduced from 10 to 5
• Eros’ Bow (Buff)
  • Passion Strength bonus increased from 3.5 to 5 per stack
  • Passion Intelligence bonus increased from 5 to 7.5 per stack
• Eye of The Storm (Buff)
  • Damage Scaling increased from 15% to 20% Strength per Tick
  • Echo increased from 20 to 30
• Midgardian Mail (Buff)
  • Now has 5 Plating
• Riptalon (Fix)
  • Tooltip update:
    • While above 50% health, Basic Attacks Gain +10% Damage
    • While Below 50% health, Basic Attacks Gain +25% Damage
• Sanguine Lash (Nerf)
  • Base Damage reduced from .75% Health to .5% Health
  • Cooldown increased from 60s to 75s
• Vital Amplifier (Fix)
  • Tooltip update:
    • Heal yourself with an Ability:
    • Basic Attacks Gain +5% Damage (Ranged)
    • Basic Attacks Gain +10% Damage (Melee)
• Xibalaban Effigy (Fix)
  • Fixed an issue where the buff visually indicated it lasted 6s but actually lasted 4s
  • This remains at 4s with visual clarity improved

Nox PTS Preview

• Since Nox is a more divisive character kit-wise, Quigley felt it was necessary to have a post out on socials to outline their intentions with what all had changed and if anything was different from these on PTS, those are still WIP and unfinished.
  • To clarify, it is intended for her 1 to both root and cripple, but the latter was not being applied. Additionally, her base kit 2 is also intended to cancel any channeled abilities, while her Aspect 2 keeps the silence field but not dealing damage.
• From the initial feedback they received from ambassadors and community sentiment, the main pain point they wanted to address was Nox’s easily landable and powerful CC 2-1 combo, which didn’t have much for the opposing side to combat it.
  • To achieve this, their intentions are to lessen her disruption factors in her base kit and allow her damage capabilities to be more malleable as a Mage while her Aspect leans towards her previous Support utility and retaining her usual silence usability.
  • A common front that they’ve heard frequently and Quigley is largely in agreeance with is that there isn’t enough added to the 2 to compensate for what’s being lost and maintain the power budget of the ability so it isn’t just worse to land than Scylla’s combo.
• They have experimented a lot within the time allotted for Nox in the development pipeline, particularly with changes for her ULT. In the current state of the port process and VFX work, they’re unable to change the shape of the 2 or add additional effects such as a blind.

Q&A Section

• Aspect Nox Losing Too Much Damage - This is a fair critique as Nox is losing damage on two of her abilities and following PTS testing they are intending to look at her wave clear support capabilities in comparison to other Support picks.
• Complete Re-Kit of Nox - The direction they wanted to follow was to keep her 2-1 combo and the 3 still being the unique dash, which was what most of the community feedback reflected. The application of her silence was less agreed upon and decoupling the ability to silence and deal damage from 1 ability was what they decided on. Using her pre-rework kit isn’t really viable considering she received a rework for a reason.
• Comparison to Scylla - From a design standpoint, they’d like to have each God be unique and have roles or strengths that they excel with. They don’t want to compromise on the more iconic parts of Nox’s identity just to make her do exactly what Scylla does but have her be able to do just as much in her own equivalent way.
• Being Able to Agility Relic Out of Nox 2 - This is something you can do as there isn’t any additional CC on the field to prevent this. Ideally, Quigley would like it to be easier to land the 2-1 combo as Nox is right now, but historically this is one of the more annoying easy to land combos and fun for the Nox player and not so much the opposition.
• Hesitation on Future Major God Changes - For Nox and God ports in this vein, the community discourse is being seen as ripping off the band-aid as these types of God kit changes will generally generate this kind of discussion. A large % of the playerbase loves the characters as they are in S1 and while they’d love to port some Gods 1:1 as they were in S1, there are specific cases like Nox where change is needed to address something that’ll ultimately be better for the game.
• Silences Tied to Damage Abilities - By and large, most silences in the game aren’t tied to damage dealing abilities and Kumbhakarna’s mez is not being changed from how quickly it applied in S1.
• Just Disabling Chat for Banned Players - Referencing the system in Marvel Rivals, this is something they’d like to do in the future but don’t have the technology in to do just yet.
• Most Polarizing God Left to Port - Is most definitely Persephone, which they can guarantee the community will be upset about in some way since they almost certainly can’t bring back her old kit as it was and there are already people with strong feelings on what they’re expecting.
• God Quigley Would Like to Work On - The Gods Quigley mained in S1 that have already had their ports on the timeline were Xing Tian, Hachiman, and Heimdallr. The only God yet to be confirmed that Quigley also played a bunch was Fafnir.

This god got a really good +1 in Smite 2 giving him a 2nd knockup (thus making the 1 an useful ability actually), and we all know Knockups are the best CC in the game.

How come he's still underperforming? He should be good against Hunters (has 5% Plating and anticrit on his passive and can give it to allies too with his shield) and against Tanks (big % HP damage on the ult). Tanks and Hunters are meta right now. He should feel good, also because the meta is kinda shield meta with all the lifesteal builds right now.

Well, the shield is about 430 HP, which is pretty much similar to Shell relic but only for a single target... They did put scaling but it's 0,05% HP SCALING LOL compared to Athena ult that is 15% HP SCALING. Ok, we're comparing it to an ult, but like also that ult is giving global mobility, damage mitigation, movement speed and does damage.

The hp scaling could go a bit way up, or just change the passive to work against all autoattack proc items. He's got powercrept by Upgraded Shell honestly.

Good thing this is no longer possible on Smite 2.

..right?

Hey guys quick question, until now ive always played arena or joust with my brother, i want to start playing qonquest (solo lane) but i dont really know how. for example when do i rotate when do i proxy when do i go back all these kinda stuff im not really sure. and i dont think i can use the same builds that i use in joust right? for example for my two mains sun wukong i always went with an full int build and with nike full strength. i often watch the youtuber snaddy and he mostly uses devos, leash etc so i think i need a whole new build. Idk would you recommend just playing or to watch more guides? cause i dont wanna be a bad teammate. also i saw you can play qonquest againt ai now, would that may be the move?😭 thank you in advance!

What I mean by that is what they themselves discussed in a Titan Talk.
Make at the very least healers locked to their aspect, because it's so frustrating having a full dmg Nut when the enemy has Hel or whatever.
It also increases the amount of healer games IMMENSLY if you can turn so many gods into efficient healers (Chronos, Cupid), healers that far outcompete other healers like Guan Yu, and some are still 'unofficial' healers like Bellona, Eset and Chiron I think.
Out of my last 100 games, no joke, over 80% have healers in them, and anyone who plays assault knows that healer games are by far the most boring. (not to mention that assassin type gods are mostly useless in that scenario as no one will ever be low HP)

This is something I think needs to be changed asap, but I would go a step further and demand that every aspect is locked.
I can't remember when was the last time I saw normal Cabrakan unless it was someone who had no idea what they were doing.
Some aspects just double the chances of getting a broken god (Cabrakan, Gilgamesh, SWK).
Assault should be all about random matchups and variety, but currently it's all about picking the most broken aspect.

This post might trigger some people who play assault once a week or less.