Shield of Decay (Anti-Crit Item) Yes or No?

Okay, with so many people complaining about hunters and crit, I decided to come up with a item that I think is fair, I will explain why I think this item is fair and why it would help balance the game and why a item like this should be in the item shop when playing Smite.

Shield of Decay
+ 70 Physical Protections
Passive: Enemies within 65 units have their crit chance reduced by 15%. When crit enemies will have their crit chance reduced by an extra 5% (max 2 stacks).
(The duration of the extra crit reduction is 5 seconds and will reset when crit again)

Lets first explain how this works, first off, in order for this item to work at all the enemy will have to be in the aura range, meaning if the support is not near the fighting or the person being attacked this is doing nothing. Lets also point out that this item only stacks reduction only if the players with this item is crit, not anyone else. This item comes with no health, this way other items still have their chance to shine, hide still has 80 protections plus health, sovereignty still provides defense to allies and health, but this item provides no health because the passive is the soul purpose for this item.

So lets do the math

Rage gives you - 30% crit plus its passive to give an extra 50% crit with full stacks
Death bringer gives you - 20% crit
Malice gives you - 20% crit

Lets just assume someone built triple crit on the enemy team

This means they are sitting at 70% chance to crit plus the possible 50% extra crit chance from rage, meaning they can possibly get up to 120% crit chance (even though they would crit at 100%).
Basically with the rage passive they can have 100% crit chance and this is not including passives from gods like Artemis who have crit build into their kit.

Lets just say the enemy hunters have 70% crit chance without the rage passive.

This means that if you are a support and you pick up my item, they now have 55% crit.

55% crit without the rage passive is still alot of crit and they will be critting half the time.
Now you throw in the rage passive and they can still get 100% crit chance even with my item.

Why even have the item then?

Because it works and slows their crit down and they have to think more towards end game or choosing different builds like Unicorn, ect.

Now remember at full stacks with my item, you can reduce their crit by 25% but that is only if you have full stacks and have been crit twice to get those stacks.

This means someone with 70% crit now has 45% crit which is barely under half.

Again 45% crit is still not bad, that is why I think this item is balanced and fair.

How would this item effect game play?

It would just give more options and everyone would still be viable.

This item would be great early on because when hunters have low crit chance it may take them longer to get online until they buy more crit, hunters with triple crit will still be able to crit for high numbers assuming they get the crit, but this item will make it so that it slows them down instead of them having 100% crit almost all the time.

Hunters like Artemis may still go crit, other hunters may still go crit just for the big damage numbers, however other players may want to go unicorn if they don't want to wait for triple crit, ect.

It will also stop players from spamming all crit and force people to switch up their builds.

What do you guys think, would you buy the item? How strong would it be? Is it fair? Over powered? Why or why not.

I personally think this item should be in the game its that great.

I actually like it a lot, what would make it even more appealing is if they made it so that it reflected half of the extra damage (damage over base) caused by critical hits. This would make people favor death bringer less and maybe grab malice more. It would also make it scale better into late game as you could build that plus hide of the nemean lion plus shield of the underworld and force carries to not be able to safely kill a tank without double lifesteal.

This item doesn't fix the problem though. This would lead to further locking in of support builds which already basically need Sovereignty and Heartward Amulet to be effective, and may still not be enough to stop hunters from building crit builds since they're so much more DOT efficient than other builds. The problem with hunters atm is that it's not an issue that can be really solved by just one item, they really need a rework in their itemization, not enemies' counter building.

However, to your credit this idea was still well thought out and as a short term solution may work. The problem is that this doesn't fix the overarching problems behind smite's adcs and we'd be dealing with the same issues before long.

I'm kind of confused on what you mean

What is the exact problem with hunters because based on reddit people do not have one soul problem, people come up with different problems.

Here is the boats I see on reddit

- The boat which says the hunter as a class are OP
- The boat which says the hunter items are OP
- The boat which says we just need counter items to hunters
- The boat which says both hunters and their items are OP
- The boat which says everything is fine
- The boat that has their own idea of the problem

I have not seen a real consistent community saying what the problem is, most people disagree and go against each other, one person will say the items are OP and the next person will say the hunter as a class is OP, while the next person says we need more items.

Also counter building is suppose to be in Moba's?

I counter build all the time

- Winged Blade to counter Nemesis
- Hide of the Nemean lion to counter (usually on tanky gods)
- Magi's blessing to counter gods like Anubis, Ne Zha, Ymir
- Weakening Curse for healers
- Anti heal items for healers
- and when playing warriors I build defense for gods that do more damage to me

So.... I don't get what your saying, I counter build all the time and if your not counter building then your not going to beat a hel who keeps healing, a aphro who keeps healing, a hercules who keeps healing, you won't beat Anubis without beads or Magi's blessing, ect.

Well you can beat them but counter building makes it easier for you to beat them and harder for them to beat you.

Also your not forced to lock in support builds, people just copy cat the meta, for example, where was all of the hunter threads about them being OP a month ago? Exactly, nobody was complaining because the meta did not revolve around more than one hunter, now just because some pros decided to play neith mid everyone is complaining hunters are OP and people are spamming Cabrakan more often now.

People just copy cat the meta

Just like your not forced to buy support items if you don't want to, you can be greedy and buy items to make you more powerful instead of your team.

If you were playing lets say Hercules support, your not forced to get sovereignty to help your team out, you can be greedy if you want, you can buy items for your own self if you think you can make a bigger difference by being greedy with your items.

Anything the pros do people jock and think is OP

- Pros a month ago where not doing neith mid, nobody was complaining about hunters
- Now they are doing two hunters, suddenly hunters are OP because of this
- nobody was playing Cabrakan they said he sucked
- Because of pros like Divios playing him, now everyone is playing Cabrakan saying he is strong

What is the EXACT problem with hunters then?

Because based on reddit I have yet to find the EXACT problem when 200 people have 200 different answers to what the problem is.

The real question is : Is there a real problem in the first place or are people just now screaming OP because pros are playing two hunters in the meta and nobody was crying about it before the meta change. Just like nobody thought Cabrakan was good now he magically became good because of a pro picking him.

I think I may have been unclear what I meant in my previous comment. Just to preface this, I'm not so much in the boat of "both hunters and their items are op" (although at the moment they are when combined), I'm more of the opinion that the framework upon which smite's hunters were built upon was faulty. I've thought this for a long time, prior to the new meta after reading articles like this one by prof proxy on smitecentral that analyzes the problems behind hunters' build rigidity.

This is of course an opinionated issue and I'm not saying that what I'm saying is definitively correct or whatever, however I don't understand where you're going with this
When I said that supports are locked into Heartward Amulet and Sovereignty, I said that because in 99% of competitive games, you will see those items on supports, just as you'll currently see hunters go into their "locked build" Heartseeker, Ninja Tabi, Asi, The Executioner, Rage, Deathbringer (with some exceptions for dev gloves + ichaival or Malice rather than Rage for artemis). This isn't people just blindly copycatting the meta, it's simply that these builds work better than other builds the vast majority of the time, and have for quite some time now.

What I fear in adding your "counterbuilding item" is that it's not going to be a counterbuilding item. Since there's an ADC in every game, and every ADCs' best build is still going to be the crit build (yes even with this item that wouldn't change, unicorn build nerfs were way too strong for that), I'm worried that the new standard for supports would just change to Sovereignty, Heartward Amulet and shield of decay, every. single. game. While this may balance hunters to be equal to other classes' power in the short term (which it probably won't since the main issue is that hunters' early game is too strong which is why they can play any role and this item focuses on reducing their late game presence), I believe that it will still only make builds even more rigid for other classes than they were before and not really solve the issue that hunters' itemization is an inherently broken system.

To be fair, I think the only builds that aren't "locked in" are in solo lane. ADC is either Heartseeker or Devourer's Gauntlet start, builds that we all have memorized by now. Support is Traveler's Shoes, Sovereignty, Heartward Amulet, Magi's Blessing, Winged Blade, then either a damage item or a protection item. Mid is either CDR or burst. Jungle is either ability power or auto-attack. Sure, there are exceptions like Freya/ Chronos ADC or Thor/ Hun Batz jungle, but solo is the only class left unscathed by the item power creep.

This item would lock in all 6 items of the support build, and it's not even THAT efficient. I'm starting to agree with Zilby that the entire item system of Smite needs a rework; even writing this paragraph, I'm scared about how much creativity has been thrown out the window. So many items are "useless" or "inefficient" in the current meta, and that needs to change. One item is not going to fix this meta, just like introducing Bellona to the game did not make ADCs any less viable. Good luck finding a solution, HiRez, because by the fall, this is going to get stale.

Annnnnnd even if they fixed the items around the meta then when the next meta happens people will still complain around the next meta and it will be the same thing over and over because meta will change forever.

You didn't see anyone complaining about the meta in Season 1, when multiple ADC builds with different playstyles were viable (Crit, Unicorn, Zapicon, Pegasus), Sovereignty was one item, and the hunters didn't dominate games. I'm not complaining about the existence of a meta, I'm complaining about how HiRez has made certain items so good that others become unviable even if they should be played more. This would add to that problem. I know there's another thread about this issue, but the entire game needs an item rework. This isn't a good temporary solution, it just hampers creativity, and honestly, I expect supports, solos, and probably even junglers would be forced to pick up this item just to make hunters a little worse in game.

^This is so accurate

The item changes in S2 have been particularly harmful though, especially for the typical occupants of the duo lane. While I don't think that EVERYTHING has to be redone, the physical item branch is just a mess right now for assassins and hunters since there's basically a definitive "best build" for most of these gods (warriors have enough flexibility to not be as affected).