With no silence into Nox's 2, all Eset needs to do is wait for Nox to cast her 2 first, then Eset is free to cast her 1 to clear the wave / poke Nox, and since she is root immune, Eset is able to be immune to Nox's entire combo. Even if Nox lands the combo first, as long as Eset didn't use the Wing Gust first, she can just use it to cleanse of the root and walk away. Nox LITERALLY has no way of ever dealing damage to Eset 1v1 outside of her ultimate and her dash.

The new rework does nothing to fix Nox’s glaring drawbacks as a god for conquest, and alienates players who enjoy her niche silence combo gameplay.

All this does is give fuel to players who want their most hated god to be trash, and people that still love her enough to still pick her get flamed in game for picking her or struggle for a nothing nerf. There is no health to this solution for players wanting to see or play returning Nox.

Coming back to Smite 2 I wanted and missed Nox, because so much CC exists. With plenty of gods having the ability to jump, latch on to a character and spam out their abilities for a kill.

Nox is a great counter for those scenarios.

There’s already so many set piece kill confirmed characters in the game, this complete gutting of a character and subsequent keep her abilities the same to try to appease returning fans does nothing for anyone.

Plenty of damage dealers, and damage guardians steam roll Arena and Joust in general play, so taking a casual anti mindset is wild.

The solution to give her more damage on her 1 and 2 also will not appease the people who hate getting snagged by her. So what are we doing?

This “fix” to her kit only causes problems for Nox to be viable, and the solution to solve this newly created problem keeps both sides unhappy.

The simplest solution is keep her the same, accept Nox is Nox, or rework.

Make a new aspect all together.

Hey y'all!

I've been working on a SMITE 2 Model Viewer that lets you check out 3D models of the gods, their skins, and their animations.

It's also a useful tool for content creators! You can use it to take screenshots of models from different angles and record their animations for videos, guides, and other content.

You can check it out here: https://smiteprime.com/model-viewer

A quick heads-up: this is still very much a work in progress! I've only finished up to Chaac so far, but I'm hoping to have all the gods available by the end of the week. I wanted to share it early and get some feedback from the community while I'm still working on it.

I'm also aware that some models are broken or need more work, particularly gods like Aladdin. I'll be revisiting those once I have the rest of the gods added. Or like Chaac base model, has some weird lines/sections where its not metallic. Oh and there is still a ton left to do with lighting. (Still learning my way around 3d stuff)

I'd love to hear what you think! If you run into any issues, have suggestions for features, etc...

Background:
I have thousands of hours on Nox, about 80% Joust, 19% Conquest, and 1% other modes, and I’ve played her through every version of her kit since release. I love the peaks and valleys of her skillshots and the character her silence gives her, but I also understand why people find her frustrating to play against. She’s tricky to balance because she has a high skill floor and a high skill ceiling: terrible in unskilled hands, dangerous in skilled ones. Any rework needs to make her feel good at every skill level without taking away what makes her scary when played well.

The problems with Nox right now:
- Her combo is binary and unfun to play against. Silence + root on two buttons means landing it locks you out of your abilities, so beads is your only way out. Missing it leaves her with nothing.

- Her 1 is all-or-nothing. Good players juke Shadow Lock easily, and when it misses, her damage and setup go with it.

- Her kit is one combo. Outside her 2-into-1, she has little to do in fights, and Shadow Step is her only real tool for anything else.

- Her passive is a stat stick. The candles stack magic power and that’s it; there’s no decision attached to them.

Design goals:
- Keep what makes her fun: the skillshots. Nox has always attracted players who love landing hard shots. The rework should give her more of them, not fewer.

- Remove the silence from her core combo without removing her lockdown. The void-into-lock combo no longer silences on its own, so enemies keep their abilities and dashes and can fight or escape without burning beads.

- Let skill bring back what the change takes away. A new ability carries the silence, so a Nox who lands all three skillshots gets a full silence-plus-root lockdown, on par with her original combo. The difference is that she has to earn it, and every step can be dodged.

- Give her more to do than one combo, and make her candles something both players can read and play around.

TL;DR:
Merge Siphon Darkness and Shadow Lock into one ability, replace the void’s silence with a night-style blind, add a new 2 (Nightfall Raven) that carries a skill-based silence, give Shadow Step an aimed exit blast and an ally refire, and make her candles scale her areas. The full silence-plus-root combo is still possible, but it takes three skillshots and every step can be dodged.

Passive: Flame of the Night
- Each ability Nox casts lights a candle, and so does each ability an enemy god casts near her (max 4).

- Each time she takes damage from an enemy god, one candle goes out.

- The lit candle count when she casts sets the size of her void (1) and her raven’s cone (2): about 60% size with none, plus 10% per candle, up to about 100%.

Credit to [u/Party_Original8865](u/Party_Original8865) for the idea of candles scaling her zone.

1: Siphon Darkness → Shadow Lock
- Cast: Nox places a void of darkness on the ground, sized by her candles. It grows to full size over 1s.
Enemies inside the void’s current radius are Blinded (darkened vision, no health bars or minimap) while inside and for 1s after leaving. This refreshes rather than stacking with other night effects.
2s after cast, the void explodes, damaging all enemies inside.

- Refire (within 3s): Shadow Lock. Available as soon as the cast finishes. Nox sends her shadow forward to root the first enemy god it hits. The shadow speeds up and widens when it passes through the void.
——If the target is inside the void, the root ends when the void explodes.
——If the target is outside the void, or gets pulled or knocked out of it, the root lasts its full 2s.

- The cooldown starts after the refire or when the window ends.

2: Nightfall Raven (new)
- Cast: Nox sends a narrow raven in a line. It passes through all targets, damaging every enemy it hits. It doesn’t silence on its own, so it works as poke and wave clear.

- Refire (while in flight): the raven spreads its wings and bursts into a forward cone, sized by her candles. All enemy gods inside take damage and are silenced for 2s.

- If she doesn’t refire, the raven flies its full range as a damage-only poke.

- The silence fully stacks with Shadow Lock’s root. Landing all three skillshots should be rewarded.

3: Shadow Step
- Nox dashes forward, damaging enemies in her path. If she reaches an ally god, she slips into their shadow, becomes untargetable, and travels with them for up to 4s.

- Refire from the shadow: Nox bursts out of the shadow with a cone blast in the direction she’s facing, damaging all enemies inside, then dashes that way. The dash is shorter than the first and the blast does damage only, with no crowd control.

-If she doesn’t reach an ally, there’s no refire.
The cooldown starts when she leaves the shadow.

4: Night Terror
- keep S1 version as is

How it plays
- Full combo: raven → refire cone silence → void (blind) → refire Shadow Lock. That’s three skillshots, and each one can be dodged. A clean, fast combo gives a longer lockdown; a sloppy one gives the target time to escape.

- Without the full combo: the void is strong wave clear, the raven is poke and a standalone teamfight silence, and Shadow Lock is a pick tool from outside the void.

- Root choice: root inside the void for her burst, or outside for a longer root that sets up her team.

- Shadow Step exit: dash toward enemies to land the blast, or dash away to escape and give up the damage.

Counterplay
- The void is small with few candles, grows slowly enough to step away from, and the blind doesn’t stop abilities, relics, or dashes.

- The raven’s silence requires a well-timed refire, and the cone’s direction is telegraphed by the raven’s path.

- Hitting Nox knocks out her candles, shrinking both her void and her cone.

- Shadow Step only gives two dashes when an ally is nearby. In a solo lane, she’s still a squishy mage with one dash.

- Hunters and divers remain her natural counters.

Balance levers if she’s too strong
- Silence duration (2s → 1s)
- Per-candle size bonus on the cone
- Shadow Lock root duration outside the void
- Cooldowns

(TLDR - Nox wasn't even a midlane god in Smite 1 because she had no AoE outside the ult and no poke, and initial impressions are that her updated kit will still have exactly the same issues)

First of all, shoutout to Quigley for transparency and engaging with the community over this. And there's already been lots of conversations about whether she SHOULD change, I'm not looking to get into that side of it here.

An Update on Nox's Port : r/Smite

But getting into the kit, it's kind of hard to figure out what Nox is meant to be even *before* those changes. Going back to smite 1, Nox was rarely seen as an even vaguely viable midlaner. When she was seen at a high level of play, it was in the support role. I think there are two clear reasons for this (and this is just looking at Nox in Smite ONE, this is before the planned changes)

1 - She has basically no AoE at all, just the ult
2 - Her 2 can basically never do damage on its own.

Looking at most other 'mages' or general midlane gods that can really be described as COMBO gods, the abilities still function on their own.
- Disco wants to combo 2-1, but the 1 still works without the 2 setting it up.
- Ullr wants to combo his bow 3-1 off the axe, but both of those abilities can still be cast freehand and hit pretty consistently.
- Baron wants to hit his 2 and 1 off the 3, but the 2 and 1 work perfectly fine on their own.
- Agni can throw out single bombs for poke or he can bomb-1-bomb-2 for a big combo.

And so on. But Nox? The 2 will NEVER do damage to anyone unless you hold them in it with the 1 (unless your team provide some insanely long CC chain or you deploy it under something like a Ne Zha ult for when they land)

Combine this with the obvious fact that the 2-1 combo is entirely single target, and we're left with a supposed midlaner that (outside of the ult) can basically only ever hit one enemy with their main damaging abilities and one ability that does not even function AS a damage ability unless another ability is used with it. The only part of her kit that worked well as a midlaner was the ult, which 100% did work very well there.

So that's CURRENT Nox, a 'mage' who is functionally not suited to the midlane at all. And because of that, all her viability was in the support role. The 2 is solid anti-dive much like how a Ganesh silence is solid anti-dive, the 1 is GREAT single target lockdown to set up for allies or to peel for them. She wasn't a common support, but it was her best role and she could absolutely put in WORK there in the right teams.

__________________________________________________________________

That brings us to the plans for Smite 2 Nox. The 2 is still never going to deal any damage unless you 1 them in it. The 2-1 combo is still single target. She still has no real AoE beyond the ult. So what in her kit is going to enable her to be a functional or viable midlaner? The ult getting a silence does add teamfight value for sure, but doesn't change that her base kit is just not a midlane-oriented kit.

I have seen on PTS that, compared to Smite 1, her 1 can be fired much sooner and faster after casting the 2. So that will make her core combo more reliable, smoother, and more consistent. W change. But that doesn't change what the god does at its core, that doesn't change the lack of AoE or the lack of poke or the 2-1 being completely single target. AND, because the only CC you'll be subject to is a root-cripple, that means people trapped in it can still cast most abilities / active items / etc (so you can aegis, you can use a CC immune ability of your own if you have one, you can presumably use things like circe's hexstone, etc)

So we're left with a 2-1 combo (again, no AoE / is totally single target / 2 will never do damage without the 1 / etc etc) that is a lot easier to hit but also has a LOT more options to get out of it if you do get hit. And it's really, really hard to see a reason to play a kit like that as a midlaner unless the damage numbers are SO high that if you do get caught in it then it's basically guaranteed death (which doesn't exactly align with the 'make Nox less frustrating to play against' objective if her much-faster-and-easier-to-hit combo is a guaranteed kill against anyone without a way to escape!)

Idk what a solution to this might be. Maybe make her 2 deal burst damage on deployment and then tick damage after that, so that you are rewarded with extra damage on top of the control for the 2-1 combo but can still throw out the 2 on its own for poke? Not sure. But as the kit currently stands, even in Smite 1 Nox was not a midlaner and from what we've been shown it's pretty hard to see anything in the updated kit that is likely to change that.

The tittle says it all.

Yes, if you have a good team that can take advantage of small advantage it does make a difference but unless you play in master and above you can go 20-0-10 and still lose.

The problem is that it is way to easy to catch-up by sitting in lane and do nothing. I understand that you need some comeback mechanics but the way it is now it is just not a good game design.

If I stomped my lane the enemy team sits in lane for 20 min and wait until they are all 20. If I get stomped I do the same and then we play the late game phase and hope we win.

I'd say 90% of the game goes this way.

The laning phase a little to no impact on the rest of the game and I get that it's more fun for casual player, but as someone who tries to actively get better at the game it feels like there is no rewards to it.

The minions in lane gives way to much XP compare to the rest of the objective in the map. You go rotate and don't get a kill. To bad, you are behind now. Even if you killed you opponent 2 times.

As a solo, I can go rotate, get a kill and the GF and the gold resulting of that is the same as my opponent sitting in lane. That should not be.

I love the game but this gameplay design is making me want to stop playing the game seriously and I am sure other feels the same way.

Who do you think the top most oppressive laners are in smite 2? Just in lane.

EDIT: NOX RELEASE SHOULD *BE HELD BACK, CAN'T EDIT POST TITLES

Pretty clear that the matter about Nox has been getting extremely polarising reactions, but most importantly, increadible amount of discourse that won't slow down till she will be officially showed off.

With that said, is also pretty clear that alot of people are unhappy with the "current" state of her proposed kit, and contradicting solutions has spread up.

Even if there are several gods with BS CC or mechanics that are as equally as infuriating that yet got the balance greenlight or got even buffed, no one seems to have collected a more polarising type of reputation as Nox.

She's basically the Loki of mages in terms of hatred.

Therefore it was very clear that she wasn't going to stay that way going into SMITE 2, but the devs got faced with a conundrum knowing the community's "hatred" for reworks and rekits.

And at this point is clear she can't stay in the proposed way either.

My own take on this matter is simply for Titanforge to hold back on her release and get her kit back on the drawing board, and focus on pushing Maman's other releases or take a patch cycle break to focus on other matters.

So many things I liked about S1 are missing in S2:

1. Default announcer pack (I get why it was removed but please add it back it‘s so iconic)

2. The combat feed makes no sense. It was so perfect in S1. I don’t want to see what my ult damage was on the minions I want to see how much damage I did to the enemy god and how much they mitigated. I also want an actual death recap back that doesn’t go away after 20 seconds

3. Assault was so fun in S1 it feels so lazy now with the map just being the conquest mid lane. Bring the old Norse map back and delete the stupid god pool system it defeats the purpose of the mode

4. I had 1000 hours on Daji. Her old ult was so fun and had so much skill expression why did they ruin it?

Other comments I have:

1. I feel like minion waves come too quickly? It feels like you always have to be clearing waves and it’s hard to make time to do other things.

2. There‘s so much random stuff in the game that takes forever to learn. I still don’t know what most of the aspects do, what the trinkets do from the back camps, or what a lot of the items do since they are poorly worded. Why did Vulcan get all that extra random stuff like turret upgrades? I get they want new exciting stuff but sometimes simpler is better

3. Really dislike crossplay for ranked. I get the game has few players so it’s needed for MM purposes but it sucks having console players on your team. I also just found out they can’t even read text chat. When I look through my match history all of the players that performed horribly or trolled or were raging in VC were on Xbox or PS4

4. Still don’t like the Int and Strength thing. Thought the old way was perfectly fine.

5. As a jungler I really dislike the new free wards. It makes jungling, already the hardest role, even more difficult as now everyone gets free vision with almost constant uptime. It really defeats the purpose of having to decide between buying upgrades and wards.

6. I don’t think the visual clutter is that bad YET but there’s a lot of times when you just have no idea what’s going on because a lot of the big circle abilities look similar and are hard to see on the ground

7. Game has a lot of stuttering problems especially early in the game I’ve noticed

Overall the game feels polished and doesn’t have a lot of bugs, and most gods are ported. Still, there’s something about S1 that makes me miss it. Maybe it’s the aesthetic with the cartoony look, maybe it’s the simplicity, or maybe it’s nostalgia. S2 still pretty fun though.

Siphon Darkness
Nox creates a shadow zone that expands its radius over the next 1 second. When reaching max radius, any enemy inside the zone is silenced while they are inside of it. After 2.5 seconds the zone explodes dealing damage to all enemies on the area.
For each Flame of the Night flame lit, the zone expands 12.5% faster and explodes 5% sooner.
[OPTIONAL +1] For each Flame of the Night flame unlit, the zone max radius becomes 7.5% larger.

This way, at 4 lit flames it explodes in 2 seconds and takes 0.5 seconds to expand, its literally double what kukul tornadoes takes. And if you took lots of hits and have the flames unlit, it takes longer to explode giving more silence value so you can get your flames back more safely.

She is deemed to have the flames going up and down anyways, this makes it affect it directly. This also makes it cool with the VFX of her shadow being all wobbling and unstable looking. As for implementation it can either snapshot the lit flame count at cast and use it, or dynamically adjust the speed/time/size if it changes while the skill is out, up to the developer disclosure.

If you tell me you can't choose to use your skills and run in 0.5 seconds then the problem is definitely not NOX but your reaction time and you should not have a driver's license.

Also, apply this same rule for ALADDIN ultimate, make so it takes 0.25s or so before you get eaten by the LAMP, like the NE ZHA ultimate does, so you can choose whether or not to BEADS.

Ranked is barely a competitive experience, casuals with bans at all levels of play. Actually that’s a bit of a lie I’d say it does get a bit better past ob but still not what ranked should be.

I think part of the issue is people don’t see ranked as ranked, they see it as “conquest with Horus disabled because I banned him” (or insert whatever god they don’t like) and that’s it.

You see people CLEARLY not trying, building to meme, W Key feeding on cooldown after the first death because they’ve just given up. Or where never trying to begin with because they’re pushing buttons for the dopamine while chatting to their friend over discord or watching a YouTube video. At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if half my carries are treating this game like Minecraft and have sound off listening video essays.

Left SSL on accidentally when I left the house and just got this video from my wife 🤣

Rules:

- No promotional skins (Unless the skin can work on its own without a big remodel)

- No crossover skins

- No recolors

- No retro skins

You vote one skin as your absolute favourite, and that's it!

Poll link here: https://strawpoll.com/ajnE12zeBnW

Also remember, you can find the results for the The Morrigan poll in the second image.

(FWIW I just wanted to draw this I still have faith in the devs don't jump me.)

Me and my buddy we play conquests together and one of us will try to get a good god in the first few picks for one another but then can trade gods some times does anyone know why not?