Hellow everyone

Hello again my smitefire friends.
As it's summer holiday, and I don't have a life and I'm bored to ****, I have decided to start playing Smite again :O
But Smite isn't complete without you guys of course <3.
I'm glad to see a lot of people are still here, and that there are a lot of new faces too :)!

So, with all these new gods, the new season, all the changes and everything like that, I don't think the meta is like it was last year. So could anyone give a quick briefing on that please? Would be greatly appreciated.

I think I may have unfriended you, add me again bb - IGN: Regen.

I'm not exactly sure how the meta was when you left but changes affected every role except for mid laners pretty much. Picks for solo lane are much more flexible due to the HoG nerf. Junglers usually don't get hog, they either start with beads, blink, or potion of physical might. Supports will sometimes get HoG and sometimes not. Depending on whether your team has good enough secure like Release The Kraken!, Circle of Protection, Shards of Ice, etc.

Mid camps spawn 10 seconds into the game like before season 2. However. the xp/gold from mids and first blood are smaller to reduce snowballing. So now, most do not start at mid camps. There are 3 different starts that are being used atm. The normal start, the AFK start, and the Paradigm start.

The normal start is your standard - Jungle clears speed and blue with solo, jungle can leave immediately or stay one wave if they have pressure. Mid, adc, supp start red, mid goes to lane and adc/supp do purple and go to lane. Jungle and mid will rotate out of waves to do mid camps and back camps together.

The AFK start requires the mid, jungle, and solo to start at blue. Solo will go straight to lane, mid and jungle do speed and head to lane and rotate out of waves to do mids, backs, and red. Adc and supp will do backs and purple or just purple. Or, if it is a kill duo lane, support might want red.

The Paradigm start is similar to the AFK star. Mid, jungle and solo will start on the same side. But mid will solo the back harpies and bring them to the edge of the the leashing circle while solo and jungle clear speed. That way, all three get gold/xp for backs and speed and faster than it normally would take to do it. Mid goes straight to lane, jungle and solo do blue and the rest is the same as other starts.

The advantage these other starts give is that you get to the mid camps faster while also clearing out the main part of the jungle. Not to mention, you put yourself in a position to fight for the other set of mid camps.

What was the HoG change?

• Each tier of HoG will hit correspondingly 1,2, or 3 targets. HoG will prioritize the NCP's with the most max health. This is why HoG is trash for solo and jungle now. HoG 1 will hit 1 minion/brute, HoG 2 will hit 2, and HoG 3 will hit 3.
  
  
• HoG 3 no longer has a percent execute threshold for gold fury and fire giant. Instead, Wrath of the Gods will do 1000 true damage to objectives. Since both Gold Fury and Fire Giant's maximum health scales as time passes, late game this active is near useless. A mage ultimate will do much more damage to secure an objective than a HoG late game. However, early game, Wrath of the Gods will do much more damage than before.
  
  
• So get HoG 3 if you're looking for that early gold fury and don't if you want two utility actives for your team. The amount of gold GF gives scales now as well. Gold Fury doesn't give as much as a lead early game as before.

Funny enough, an article was just posted about the HoG change here.

Thanks!
With the AFK and Paradigm start, won't you take way too much damage solo-ing the camps without HoG at that early level?

EDIT: Also, could you maybe tell me the roles of Nox, Ao Kuang, Awilix, Hou Yi, Bellona, Medusa, Ah Puch and Ratatoskr? I'm sure I could figure them out but it's much easier this way :3

Those starts are dependend of Vampiric Shroud start, with 2 health pots, 1 mana pot and Tiny Trinket. For the jungle, Bumba's Mask heals most of your health.

Nox - Mid and Solo
Ao Kuang - Solo and Jungle
Awilix Solo, Jungle and Support ( If you know wtf you're doing )
Hou Yi - ADC and Solo
Bellona - Solo, Jungle and Support
Medusa - ADC and Solo
Ah Puch - Mid and Solo
Ratatoskr - Jungle and Solo
Ravana - Jungle and Solo, and he's not even great at those.

Add me in game darling <3
IGN : ThePerfectPrism

Thank you!
I also added you in game :)

There was this fancy Smite pro player who wrote a series of articles bashing Smite about the exact same things I bashed Smite for years ago, and everyone praised him for his wisdom, because he's a ****ing pro player.

Did you play anything else during summer break? LoL, DotA, HotS, Gigantic?

* Bellona - Solo, Jungle, Support, Mid, ADC, Fire Giant, Titan, Jungle Camp Monster... She can play everything **** this god.

Also if you're unsure about any item changes I made a huge item guide that should be up to date on the current meta if you want to check it out. (also if you want to catch a game my IGN is still Zilby)

He didn't play dota I know that for sure he mostly played civ and skyrim (I got him on steam)

Also wb now I'm not the only Dutch person anymore :D

Also you missed a lot of weird **** in meta changes like the adc guardian meta (I only heard of it didn't see it) but the game has changed a lot (and got more broken and sometimes less broken with every patch. And as you noticed I'm used to Dota broken and some things even topped that (like Smites dusa on release was even more broken then dota's dusa))

Yeah I've seen everything, it's taken quite a bit getting used to (ask Greenevers, he knows how bad I am lol)



What do you mean with the first part :P? I hope you don't mean me :3
And no, like Devampi said, I haven't played any other MOBA's other than Smite, the top down view still doesn't really appeal to me :/